Welcome to Litsy!

A nice selection of essays on themes related to cult films. Definitely more on the academic side (so might be dry for some readers), but pretty accessible overall. Definitely added some films to my watch list!

Took my little Sunday walk and now enjoying my Sunday coffee (iced mocha, extra shot) and snack (red velvet cake bites)

Got my Covid vaccine this morning 💉 Treating myself after to a pumpkin sweet cream cold brew and an egg, cheddar, and hash brown on an English muffin.

Killing some time with a mango smoothie and a pumpkin cake bite before my haircut 💇‍♀️

“The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile-in a word, natural-enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane.”

“But the movie theaters are faced with more urgent tasks than refining applied art. They will not fulfill their vocation-which is an aesthetic vocation only to the extent that it is in tune with its social vocation-until they cease to flirt with the theater and renounce their anxious efforts to restore a bygone culture. Rather, they should rid their offerings of all trappings that deprive film of its rights . . .”

“However, I would not want to end here, without acknowledging that there are implications to the ideology of anime which go beyond national interests. In fact, the product and consumption of anime within Japan are dramatized in Otaku no video, the partly-fictionalized anime story of Gainex corporation, a huge anime producer in Japan. Otaku no video is the tale of two college student otaku who form a lucrative company . . .”

“I‘m not trying to resurrect the auteur here, but authorship does complicate the idea of western co-opting as well as suggesting that a more international production does seem to have opened a limited space for such material (even if it took twenty five years for the scene to find a Western audience). The scene has other implications, because it gives Lee a dual narrative function . . .”

“The giallo is quite difficult to pin down as a body of films. Criticism tends to gather around auteur directors or singular examples. However, if we can understand the giallo discursively, we may begin to make interesting connections between its textual, industrial and cultural features. Such a strategy would allow us to open the giallo up rather than close it down. . .”

“The official Urban Legend (1998) and Deep Blue Sea (1999) sites provide a slightly higher level of information. The former, against a black-and-gold background, lists showtimes, offers credits and ‘behind the scenes‘ images, provides a library of contemporary urban legends, and invites visitors to participate in a sweepstakes contest. The latter, against a black-and-green background, offers images, text, and interviews . . .”

“There can be no denying the fact that Eraserhead is a complex and challenging film. The extent to which Lynch here renders plot and narrative subservient to what we have called ‘the primacy of the audio-visual image‘ has been amply demonstrated. But it is an overstatement to claim that ‘the uncanny in Eraserhead is what literally exceeds the limits of representation‘ (Freeland 2000: 234) . . .”

“I do not suppose that everyone laughing during The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is laughing for the reason that I have just suggested. The operations of the economies of the comic and the joke, particularly in the face of blood and gore, are quite complex. However, I would conclude by noting that scholars have produced substantial work on the types of intertextuality.”

“It was the not-so-secret daydream of many a cinéphile to run away from school and join Corman - to make the old genres dance to new themes, topical and metaphysical, and to lard them with personal touches like the ones people were always finding in Ford, Hawks, Lang, and company. Everyone wanted to make a film rather than to write the Great American Novel; those with auteurist leanings wanted to be directors . . .”

Enjoying an iced carmeliscious (with an extra shot, of course) and a cake bite while reading about blaxploitation horror films 🎥

“Any particular horror movie can be offering a number of mixed and contradictory messages-for example, that women ought to be helpless, but if they are, they deserve whatever happens to them, or that nuclear weapons are really bad and can create monsters, but when we use them against the monsters they created, then these weapons are really good.”

Need to stop at Petsmart and Target, but since there is no rush today, I am enjoying some reading time first with a pumpkin espresso shaker (with an extra shot) and an Asiago bagel with garden veggie cream cheese.

“A dialect is a special form of communication, a language set apart for special uses.”

First line from the essay “Orson Welles and the big experimental film cult” by Parker Tyler in the tagged book

Making it a perfect three out of three days for enjoying coffee (an iced carmeliscious with an extra shot), food (egg and cheddar biscuit sandwich), and my cult film book. Actually on an essay now that I didn‘t previously read for undergrad!

Another weekend day with no plans means another excuse to go to a cafe to read my book 📖 On the menu today - a dirty horchata and and egg sandwich.

Time for one of my favorite weekend activities - coffee (an iced pumpkin crafted press), food (bagel and cream cheese 🥯), and my book 📖

“It seems cult is everywhere.”

First line from the editorial introduction. #FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Took a short, hot walk for an iced mocha (with an extra shot) and an egg and cheddar biscuit sandwich. Starting a new book! My toxic trait is definitely starting a new book when I have many other books that I am still reading 😆