THE POPULAR UNCANNY
Guide Dog Books, 2009
The Popular Uncanny (2009)
Nonfiction Book
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Publisher's Description:
Over a century ago, Sigmund Freud wrote an essay called "The Uncanny" in an effort to understand art, fairy tales, ghost stories, and other phenomena that arouse dread and horror. In the process, he initiated a critical theory surrounding "the return of the repressed" that remains current to this day.
In The Popular Uncanny, award-winning horror author Michael Arnzen critically examines how the aesthetic of the uncanny has circulated in mass culture since Freud's breakthrough essay. After an insightful introduction to the theory and its legacy in 20th century criticism, Arnzen takes us on a cultural exploration of the key icons of the uncanny in several media. A chapter on the doppelgänger (or "the Double") in advertising analyzes the interesting history of the Doublemint Twins, revealing how uncanny images are packaged for the mass market and what their "double pleasures" have to show us about our cultural anxieties. Arnzen's look at the "dismembered hand that acts on its own accord" provides a critical account of that horror icon as it has appeared in art and cinema history and uncovers its ideological functions along the way. Turning to bestselling genre fiction, Arnzen analyzes the metafictional uncanny in Stephen King's novel Misery, exposing how the revelation of "all that ought to have remained secret" (as Freud famously put it) points to uncertainties regarding genre, gender, and authorship. The Popular Uncanny concludes with an enlightening survey of the uncanny media of the World Wide Web; here we learn how the icon of the haunted house and other elements of the uncanny offer a fruitful way of reading what is unspoken about "home" pages and other online technologies.
This fresh take on the uncanny in popular culture provides ways of understanding the arousal of dread in a manner that points us not only toward what we fear as a culture, but also toward a doorway that often leads to progressive cultural change.
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See also: Pop Culture | The Return of the Uncanny | Nonfiction
