im supposed to be writing a paper

[monkey]

on postmodernism and horror films and the exorcist. and instead im on this (bored, by the way. we need a good sex thread. ill make that next) and watching the cosby show and eating oreos.

and my friend said "i know, i feel horrible. the guilt is eating me up inside. the guilt sounds like snoop dogg." which caused me to chuckle... lots of chuckles...

i hate being such a procrastinator. and yet... i is. :(

[The Notorious LOL]

just go off on unrelated tangents and use loaded words that professors enjoy. That shit is fun.

[Bob]

correction: that shit is convivial!

[QueenAdrock]

A lady I work with has a daughter who goes to CUNY Hunter. She's a theater major.

[b i o n i c]

she best not walk over to the 60s between amsterdam and bway or some amda bitches will fuck her shit up

[monkey]

crossing town is too hard. (n)

[ericlee]

Fuck writing the paper. Roll the paper.

I wish I could but the company I work for has it's own lab that can do a wizz quizz at the drop of a hat.

[jennyb]

I'm supposed to be finishing up this electrical diagram for a private villa in the carribbean tonight. Instead I've got it up on my screen as I pound a few Budweisers, ordering Chinese food, downloading music, surfing the board, doing laundry, watering the plants, text a friend numerous times, pound a few more beers, visit some other sites, turn around to watch some Simpsons, download some more music oh yeah and check in on thee ol bbmb again ... AARGH! I'm sooooo fucked. :(

I swear in order to get any work done I should just rip the internet connection right outta the back of my computer.

[monkey]

fuck im procrastinating still. :mad:

i fell asleep watching how high.

[Schmeltz]

Did you light yourself on fire, fall out the window, and get run over by a bus?

[monkey]

yes. and i still have to write this paper.

[camo]

yes. and i still have to write this paper.

what films have you considered for your paper?

[camo]

I found this a while back:

Cannibal Holocaust, realist horror, and reflexivity.
Publication Date: 22-JUN-02
Publication Title: Post Script
Format: Online - approximately 7627 words
Author: Jackson, Neil

Description
[It] contained absolutely disgusting scenes of a man being hacked to death, decapitated and disembowelled... I have never seen anything like this before and I have no doubt that the scenes were genuine.

Dr. Mike Hilburn, Chairman of Birmingham (UK) Trading Standards Committee, 1992 (quoted in Martin, 246). (1)

This so called documentary footage is offensive, dishonest and above all, inhuman.

Professor Monroe (Robert Kerman) in Cannibal Holocaust

This article considers the various ways in which Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (Italy, 1980) represents a realist horror paradigm while simultaneously addressing its own methods of construction. Placing Cannibal Holocaust within the context of its own generic heritage, I will offer an analysis of the film's textual structures, arguing that its reflexive modes offer valuable insights into the stylistic presention of realist horror.

I

Cynthia A. Freeland argues that an Aristotelian, "classical" approach (meaning, in this context, a consideration of the meanings generated by the text's mimetic representations) is not adequate for the assessment of contemporary "realist horror" texts. She comments that "Realist horror requires us to to think in new ways about the moral assessment of films precisely because of its realism-or rather, because of what we may call its postmodern reweaving of the relation between reality and art" (127).

Freeland differentiates between "art horror"--a category suggested by Noel Carroll (1990)--and "realist horror," stressing the emphasis on the supernatural (vampires, zombies, lycanthropes, etc.) in the former, and on "naturalized" or "ordinary" monsters (human psychopaths, serial killers, etc.) in the latter. (2) She sees a close relationship between realist horror texts and the contemporary media through their respective fascination with serial murderers, arguing that such immediacy diminishes a complexity of narrative progression, privileging sensation and horrific spectacle instead. Identifying realist horror as a "postmodern phenomenon" (133), Freeland posits Psycho and Peeping Tom (both 1960) as its key progenitors, a cycle which has continued since the 1960s to include such diverse examples as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1990), and The Silence Of The Lambs (1991).

Freeland's invocation of a postmodern lineage of varied realist horror texts immediately introduces a problem of classification, however. Aligning a "realist" approach with postmodernism complicates the already convoluted arguments over the distinctions to be drawn between a text which strives for a tangible relationship to its informing contexts and one which consciously recycles a multitude of socio-cultural and cinematic reference points. More recent "postmodern" interpretations of horror film such as Scream (1996) and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) have stressed what Graeme Harper and Xavier Mendik call "intertextual media-smarts, cross generic cultural parameters, its self-referential nature, and its simple disregard for historical and cultural parameters" (238). Steven Jay Schneider has expanded upon this argument to contend that such "humourous self-referentiality [has given] way to serious self-reflexivity" (73). However, both as a text and as a "postmodern" experience, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer represents something entirely different to Scream. In turn, both of these films present significant variations on the representation of serial killers to that which distinguishes Silence Of The Lambs.

Postmodern inflections in Henry derive chiefly from its utilization of the video image in one important sequence that confronts spectatorial engagement with death and horror. But the film also mounts a socio-psychological investigation into its eponymous character which transcends the postmodern aspect of the serial killer as mere cultural icon (Jason, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, et al.). Its realist features are defined not only through its reference to the contemporary boogeyman embodied by the serial killer, but are contained in its social realist aesthetics, largely eschewing elaborate directorial technique. Moreover, its lack of intertextual activity delineates it from the hip posturing and genre literacy of Scream and From Dusk Till Dawn, where the primary point of textual reference lies not in the socio-psychological realm but in the pop-cultural.

Isabel Pinedo (1996) has very usefully tackled postmodernism in terms of its application to the horror genre. She stresses the very elusiveness of the term "postmodern" through its vague status as historical condition, its evocation of the breakdown of master narratives, its blurring of category distinctions, and its erosion of the distinction between "high" and "low" culture. She identifies the postmodern era of the horror film as that which followed in the wake of George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead (1968), again citing an eclectic range of examples (including Halloween [1978], The Thing [1982], Videodrome (1983), and A Nightmare On Elm Street [1984]). Pinedo argues that postmodern horror highlights the breakdown of moral divisions, lack of narrative closure, and bodily collapse or breakdown. These elements are buttressed by a blurring of subjective and objective positions and a play upon temporal and causal logic, with comedy and violence often intermingling within a form that is at once parodic and n ihilistic. Importantly for this discussion, Pinedo suggests that self-reflexivity (specifically in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets [1968]) is a pivotal feature in the transition from classical to postmodern horror paradigms.

As Dana Polan has argued, many "classical" films embody at least some level of self-reflexivity--"the text making strange its own devices" (662)--and of course reflexivity was a common feature of modernist art works, perhaps exemplified by Bertolt Brecht's theatrical experiments. However, postmodernism appears to have diluted reflexivity of its political (and more specifically, Marxist) potential, absorbing it into a vocabulary that equally accomodates allusion, intertextuality, pastiche, and irony to the point where these terms have often become interchangeable. While Cannibal Holocaust fulfills some of Freeland's realist horror definitions, foregrounding both the human monster and the spectacle of violence, its reflexive modes (that is, its frequent foregrounding of its status as a celluloid construct) strike a balance with methods of realism that intensify moments of horror and violence. In achieving this, the film establishes a dual discourse that both exploits and critiques its horrific content for maxim um emotional and cognitive impact. Indeed, from Peeping Tom through The Blair Witch Project (1999), several films deemed central to the development of a realist horror tradition actually adopt strategies which interrogate realist or "classical" modes of articulation. Psycho and Peeping Tom form an important bridge between modernist and postmodern texts, fulfilling many classical narrative functions while seeking to transcend their parameters. (3) Cannibal Holocaust therefore constitutes another important bridge in the cycle we can shakily identify as realist horror. Even a cursory glance horror paradigm suggest that style is not necessarily a unifying factor. In Cannibal Holocaust, the quest for realism is pursued in quite literal terms in that it attempts to pass off much of its narrative as recorded, unscripted document.

The film adheres not only to those realist features outlined by Freeland, but also persistently attempts to pass off mimesis as actuality, a strategy which results in a fusion of techniques recognizable from both classical film narrative and documentary. While it eliminates postmodern features such as parody and comedy, its reflexive form, nihilistic tone, apocalyptic conclusion, and layers of media allusion link it to more recent horror films such...

[monkey]

im using the exorcist and its use of body horror.
cannibal holocaust is gonna be the subject of my final paper:cool:

[abcdefz]

The sooner you finish, the sooner the weight is off your shoulders.

[camo]

cannibal holocaust is gonna be the subject of my final paper:cool:


good choice. good choice