This is my Halloween costume—at least the one that I wore to my composition classes. Most of my students didn’t get it:
I was a cereal comma. Fun stuff.
Regular readers of Biblioklept may know that for the past year or so I’ve posted a death mask every Sunday. Sometimes these “death masks” are actually life masks or even busts made years after burial. Obviously, these bizarre statues—which belonged to Jackson himself—are not death masks in any literal sense, but I think that they capture some of the strange horror of MJ. As I argued in an essay written shortly after his death, Jackson’s physical body was a concentrated site and signal of the American Dream as process, as change, as commodity capital written on the physical self. The death masks above (as I choose to call them) embody the bizarre fascination that will always mark any serious consideration of Jackson’s career as a public figure. As he showed us repeatedly in his music videos and short films — not to mention in his multiple radical plastic surgeries — Jackson posited his physical body as a site of mutation, transformation, and disruptive change; these changes ran the gamut of physical possibility, from the organic werebeast/zombie dancing king at the center of “Thriller” to the mechanized cyborg we see above. In any case, forgive this post’s (probably) lurid title—it is simply offered in the spirit of consistency, affording me an opportunity to share some strange pics of a tragic, horrific figure this Halloween.
Ti West’s tense, suspenseful 2009 film The House of the Devil is a slow burning, stomach bending study in horror tropes. It synthesizes its sources (Carrie, Psycho, urban legends about babysitters and Satanic cults, Rosemary’s Baby, the 1980s), to move beyond mere pastiche or parody. At first, the dance montage appears to offer a respite from the nervous dread that West spends most of the film building—it’s also another dead-on moment of eighties filmmaking—but the montage’s content (the violence of the careening billiard balls, the furtive glance into the dark basement, the breaking of the vase) ironically redoubles the isolation of the film’s protagonist. The affirming, protective power of her Walkman cannot resonate beyond her big earphones.
The House of the Devil is a great, smart, scary film that you may have overlooked. Recommended.
How the Mistakes Were Made, a novel by Tyler McMahon. Description from the author’s site—
Laura Loss came of age in the hardcore punk scene of the 1980s, the jailbait bassist in her brother Anthony’s band. But a decade after tragedy destroyed Anthony and their iconic group, she finds herself serving coffee in Seattle.
While on a reluctant tour through Montana, she meets Sean and Nathan, two talented young musicians dying to leave their small mountain town. Nathan proves to be a charismatic songsmith. Sean has a neurological condition known as synesthesia, which makes him a genius on lead guitar. With Laura’s guidance, the three of them become the Mistakes—accidental standard-bearers for the burgeoning “Seattle Sound.”
As the band graduates from old vans and darkened bars to tour-buses and stadiums, there’s no time to wonder whether stardom is something they want—or can handle. At the height of their fame, the volatile bonds between the three explode in a toxic cloud of love and betrayal. The world blames Laura for the band’s demise. Hated by the fans she’s spent her life serving, she finally tells her side of how the Mistakes were made.
Book trailer—
In case you need to dispatch a co-worker this Halloween. From the University of Florida’s 2009 Zombie Attack plan—
Takashi Miike’s Imprint was produced as part of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series; however, the film was never broadcast by the pay cable network, who felt it was too extreme for their audience. Like any Miike film, Imprint is not for everyone; however, fans of films like Audition and Ichi the Killer will find something here. And hey, it’s free.
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