ayymartinez

[ayymartinez]

Essay #3

Horror, something that inevitably frightens us all yet we crave the thrill and excitement that horror films have to offer us. “Horror films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience.” (filmsite.org/horrorfilms) When I think of horror films I find myself thinking back to Freud’s The Uncanny, in the sense that there is always and I mean always this sort of unknown and fear of the unknown as we sit and watch these types of films. The plots are always the same depending on what type of horror film it is but we know what is going to happen especially if it is a sequel we know even more what is going to happen. So why then, is it that we are still afraid and are sitting at the edge of our seats when we know that something is around the corner, or under the bed, or that the thing in the basement is evil. “One would like to know the nature of this common nucleus, which allows us to distinguish the ‘uncanny’ within the field of the frightening” as stated in Freud’s The Uncanny. We watch these films because in the back of our minds we know that they are not real, or at least we hope that they’re not. We watch them knowing what we are getting ourselves into and we walk out with this fear that someone is following us, or fear of turning off the lights when we are grown adults and we know that there is nothing hurdled up in the corner waiting for us. But do we? Is that what we really believe or is that just what we tell ourselves to make it through the night?

I can honestly say that one of my biggest fears is the thought of the paranormal, not being able to see these entities and demons and being possessed by a negative spirit. Among other things that frighten me, haunted houses, ghosts, spirits, and possession are my absolute worst fear and the types of films that frighten me the most. With that being said, this is the topic we will be discussing throughout this essay. As defined in Horror Genres and sub-genres Paranormal films are “The paranormal and the fear of the unknown is naturally a classic topic of horror. Gathering everything from ghost to demons and even witches, it is usually the part of horror cinema that gets the scariest.” I feel better now that I know I am not the only one who thinks these films are the scariest. There is just something about rituals, occults, possession, and the religious aspect of them that makes them so terrifying. From this article by Horror on Screen, the genre of Paranormal is broken down into subgenres (ghost & spirits, haunted house, possession, demon & hell, witches & occult, and supernatural power) I believe this is a good break down of the genre based on the example films they’ve given, each one fits into a better subgenre rather than all just under one. Although the paranormal genre is broken down into all of these categories, for the particular film I chose to analyze I think that it fits into all of the subgenres except for witches & occult. However, if you followed this movie and its sequels in the following sequels the movie does relate back to this subgenre of witches & occult.

I believe that this type of genre for horror films is so popular nowadays because it is the fear that everyone in some way or another believes could be true. For those that are religious, demons and the devil and exorcisms are one of their greatest fears. Also the fact that there have been documented cases where possessions and hauntings are real, and have been witnessed by people, film, or photos. The thing that gives these types of films their edge I think it the beginning of the movies when they start off with “based on a true story” or “based on actual events”. When audiences see this kind of disclosure and they immediately know that something like this can and has happened, which makes them even more frightened deep down inside. These are the kinds of films that older siblings will scare their little brothers and sisters with by saying “the demon in your closet is going to get you” or “Toby says he doesn’t like that”. But I honestly think that people are mostly afraid of these kinds of movies because they always relate to religious things, and the possessions usually but not always deal with children and women. What also frightens people is when these kind of movies add a location to their already frightening “based on a true story”. Just like the film we will be discussing.

 Based off of actual events that occurred in Rancho Penasquitos, California the first Paranormal Activity movie was released in 2009 with the lowest cost a movie like this has ever had, costing the producers only $15,000 the movie became so popular that it made almost a 720,000% ROI (Return on Investment). The following sequels Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) and Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) were the film’s that were most closely related to the original, however there were three other films made after those that also tie back to the first three films. Like I mentioned before the fact that this movie added an actual location and stated the story was true, most people (especially in the San Diego California are) were really spooked by this movie even before it begun. For the sake of not getting too confusing with all of the different movies, I will only be talking about the original Paranormal Activity (2009), and perhaps mentioning the others to make more sense of the story line. This is the kind of film that goes backwards, it starts its story at the end and the sequels are the middle and the beginning. I believe that this film hits all of the points of a paranormal horror film, and all of the subgenres discussed earlier. The house is haunted by some kinds of ghost/spirit or demon, later we find out it is in fact a demon, the main woman character becomes possessed by this demon, and after the possession she acquires the supernatural powers from the demon (strength, telekinesis, etc.) and like I said before the later films will reveal, that the events that have occurred in the first film relate back to witches/occults.

A couple of the myths that this movie series displays are the myths of bloody mary and also demon worshipping. In the 3rd and 5th movie we find out that the two main girls record themselves in the bathroom mirror, chanting bloody mary. Moments after, the demon or entity appears and frightens the girls by displaying acts of paranormal activity. However, in the 2nd and 3rd movie we find out that the girls’ grandmother had made a deal with the devil many years before they were even born and I believe that is where the main hauntings came from. The films are all different in the type of subgenre of paranormal, however they all relate back to whole idea of paranormal activity. And that is the overall theme I believe these films have in common, obviously that is the title of each of these films but I do really believe that each one tells a different story that all play back to the actions and consequences of the first film. Hauntings (not to be confused with haunted house) and possession I believe are the overall stars of these Paranormal Activity films, although there are demons and occult things happening and spirits the two subgenres that most relate to all 6 of the films are these two.

To conclude I want to add in this quote from Freud’s The Uncanny: “There is no longer any question of ’intellectual uncertainty”: we know now that what we are presented with are not figments of a madman’s imagination, behind which we, with our superior rationality, can recognize the sober truth – yet this clear knowledge in no way diminishes the impression of the uncanny. The notion of intellectual uncertainty in no way helps us to understand this uncanny effect.” Here I believe this quote wraps up what I’ve been talking about, what we see and what we watch in films are not figments of our imagination, when we are frightened it is not for no reason at all. All of these horror stories originated from somewhere in time, by someone who thought they saw something and imagined a character or being out if it. Whether the beings in horror movies are real or not, we will never know for sure and we will always have that fear of the uncanny and unknown in the back of our minds.

http://popcornhorror.com/genres/

http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms4.html

Freud, The Uncanny

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 18

Throughout the film I noticed a few different things that were a little strange and kind of funny. One of the first things I noticed was the fact that they use a little girl as their “star” for the movie and the mom as kind of the other main character. So I noticed that normally in these kinds of movies that the more concerned or worries ones are the mother, obviously. I’m not sure if this is because this is how they want to portray woman, as the sensitive more concerned and worried type in the house. Also I noticed that when they were trying to call to the little girl the psychic lady made her father call to her in an aggressive tone, she says make her answer! Tell her you’ll give her a spanking if she doesn’t answer! And when they are talking about it they say that the father normally does the disciplining so he was the one that needed to yell at her, while the mom was just calling to her softly. The other thing I thought was funny was in the beginning of the film the little girl is watching the fuzzy screen in the kitchen, and her mother comes in and says something like “oh hunny that’s not good for your eyes” and she changes the channel to like a war scene where soldiers are shooting each other and men are dying. Like oh the fuzzy screen is bad for her eyes but the war scene for a five year old isn’t? That was just something that stood out to me that kind of made me laugh. As far as the native burial grounds thing, the only part that I remember seeing is when the father’s boss is talking to him about new house developments and he says that the company will get rid of the cemetery, and it wasn’t a big issue because it wasn’t native lands? But then later in the film when the house starts going crazy, all of the bodies and coffins were coming to the surface from underground and into the house. I think that was a sign of pretty much karma that they destroyed this cemetery just to build all of these houses that are so simple and look all of the same, so the bodies were showing them what they had done.

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 17

Today’s film was very interesting, I had personally never seen that movie before I have only ever seen the remake and even then I never fully finished the entire thing. It is funny though that both of the movies were pretty much exactly the same, except the film from today was probably more adult rated than the remake. But the story was the same. I thought that the overall message for this movie kind of related back to the time when it was made and how we talked about in class that you know a single income for a house just wasn’t enough anymore, and how everything was just starting to or had already changed for what the people were used to. I think that the same thing was happening for Carrie White in the sense that she had gone all this time thinking she was fine and everything was normal for her, aside from the bullying. Then one day everything changes for her, she gets her period, she starts to realize she is telekinetic, and then all of a sudden she’s talking back to her mom everything was just happening so fast and all at once. Like I am sure that everyone watching this film was thinking the same thing, that they in a weird way could connect with this character because the same thing was happening to them. They were used to the man working and coming home and providing for his family and the mother staying home and cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids. Then one day it’s not enough anymore and the woman is allowed to vote, and work, and now who will clean the house and take care of the kids? Now the woman needs some sort of transportation to get to work, who will take the children to school and have dinner ready when everyone gets home? This film, although a horror film was a very relatable film to watch back in the 70s.

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 16

The House on Haunted Hill from 1958 was an entertaining film, there was a couple parts that actually had me spooked that I wasn’t expecting. I am not too sure what exactly was going on during the 1950s however I think this kind of movie during that time could have had people thinking about it on a subconscious level. I thought the story line was pretty good I wasn’t expecting the wife to be planning her husband’s murder with the doctor, it makes me wonder then how they got the husband to invite the doctor without knowing that his wife was with him. Anyway, I think that the house kind of represents like our mind in a weird way, and the people inside of the house represent our different feelings and emotions. And perhaps that when this movie came out, the people in the 50s related this film and the overall meaning of it to what was happening in the world. So I think that Nora obviously is the scared kind of hysterical part of our minds, Lance is the more heroic trying to be the calm and rational part, Ruth or whatever that other lady’s name was is the kind of really doesn’t care and is trying to ignore what’s happening, and then Pritchard is the one that is understanding everything that is going on around him and really analyzing things based on what he knows. And then of course we have the three “main” characters I think, Mr. and Mrs. Loren, and Dr. Trent. I say main characters because these three pretty much represent the rule makers of this entire night, they are the ones in charge even though no one else knows that they are. But overall, Mr. Loren I think is the overall master or creator because at the end of the day or night, he knew all along what was happening and how to make sure that no one knew what he was planning but to still get his revenge on the two backstabbers. So yea, that’s kind of how I took the film, but overall I think it was a great film it really had me on my toes and when the old lady caretaker popped up behind Nora that really got me!

[ayymartinez]

Freaks Analysis

This movie was definitely interesting, although I still don’t see how it is considered a horror film I thought it was more funny than disturbing. However, for the time period that the film was made in I think that it makes sense that this kind of movie would freak some people out. Especially if they are not used to seeing people that don’t look normal on an everyday basis. Even today I think that people are not used to seeing people that are deformed or have birth defects, we know that they are out there but those kinds of people usually stay inside because they are afraid of what the world will think of them. So although we know that they do exist, we do not see them often enough for it to not phase us. I think that circuses were so popular at this time because just as shown in the film, it gave people that were different a place to live and also have a job even though it might have been for the wrong reasons. It gave these people kind of like their own world where they could be themselves and the other circus people would accept them and understand where they come from, and at the end of the day they would continue to put on a show for the “normal” people. I briefly read an article saying that this film was banned in many countries due to the graphic display of the humans with deformations or missing limbs. However, I also read that Browning has run away and dropped out of school and joined the circus people, and the reason for his movie and using these kinds of people was to show that they are just like anyone else and not to exploit them. He wanted people to see that even with missing limbs that someone could still figure out how to feed themselves without any help.

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 14

I chose to write about “Intro to the Black Arts” chapter or section 4, ‘The Modern Magicians’. I chose to write about this section because the title kind of caught my attention, any information on the modern magician would be beneficial for me. The first part of this section that caught my attention was on the second page of the reading where it talks about the pentagram “The sign of the pentagram (a five-pointed star) was carved in the white marble top of the altar, around which was a magical circle- a chain of magnetized iron- as a barrier against evil forces” In this part of the reading it is talking about Levi doing a sort of magical ceremony which he was told to do so by a mysterious woman in black. I thought the part about the pentagram was interesting because I only learned about the true meaning of it last week in class! Like we discussed, I am one of those people that always thought that the pentagram had to do with devil worshipping or summoning demons or something evil really. So it was really interesting to read about this man using this pentagram as it was meant to be used, I mean granted he was trying to summon a ghost BUT I think that he knew what he was doing and since he had a magical barrier around him he was not intending to bring in a negative entity or ghost. I also found it interesting that this ceremony being performed by Levi was considered “magic”, for me this isn’t the first kind of action I think of when I hear the word magic. I think of Harry Potter and Hogwarts, not connecting with the afterlife.

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 13

I chose to write about Women, Feminism, and the Craft. I wanted to briefly talk about feminism really fast before I get into the article and the relationship between witches and feminism. I am not particularly a huge feminist but I’m all for equality, but we need to earn it! Don’t go to work and be complaining about how Jimmy is making more hours than you are, yet every time you get your period you’re asking to go home early or calling off because you’re “sick”. I understand that we didn’t choose to get our periods or have children or whatever, but that’s what we were dealt and we need to deal with it and work just as long and hard as a man does. So, now that my opinion on that is out of the way, back to the article. My favorite quote from this article is on page 181 second paragraph, “Linking feminist politics with spirituality and, in particular, with Witchcraft is not a new idea…” I liked this because it is absolutely true about a lot more things than just witchcraft. I think that we as humans are afraid, we are afraid of the things that we are not familiar with so the fact that this group of women, whose name by the way stands for ‘Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell’. Would you not be extremely afraid if you heard that there was a group of women out there with that kind of name!? no wonder the fear of witches grew into a huge thing, it was because of names like this that were scaring the pants off of people. Relating back to discussion in class, Rebecca asked ‘did anyone ever ask them why they were doing the things they were doing?’ Did they?? Did anyone know what this group was all about or why they were doing the things they were doing, I doubt it. I think a lot of assumptions were made that affected the outlook on witches to this day.

[ayymartinez]

Blog 12: Paganism & Witches

I liked reading this story because it gave some interesting points about both sides. However, they seem to be very similar in definition from what i gathered. From what I read, neo-paganists want to live ”...in harmony with nature and they tend to view humanity’s ‘advancement’ and separation from nature as the prime source of alienation.” So I see them as a group of people that are kind of like hippies in a weird way, however I also think that “witches” are closely the same kinds of people so I am still trying to figure out the big difference. Witches however, seem to be the kind of people that believe in “magic” but not Harry Potter kind of magic, but a more natural kind of spiritual kind of magic. Adler talks about how after visiting a farm in Colorado with a couple of witches, that only one time the male witch ever said the word magic. And I liked the way that Adler described the word because it fits the type of natural/ spiritual magic that I am thinking it is. “Magic is a convenient word for a whole collection of techniques, all of which involve the mind. In this case we might conceive of these techniques as including the mobilization of confidence, will, and emotion brought about by the recognition of necessity; the use of imaginative faculties, particularly the ability to visualize, in order to begin to understand how other beings function in nature so we can use this knowledge to achieve necessary ends.” It mostly the beginning part of that quote from the story that I agree with more, talking about the mobilization of confidence, will and emotion. Just like when we were talking about haunting, this kind of reminds me of like an exorcism for some reason? like how priests believe that with good hard prayer that the demons in someones body will go away back to where they came from.  In this case I am thinking that if witches believe hard enough about what they are trying to achieve, the outcome they want to happen will come true as some sort of “magical” thing.

[ayymartinez]

Extra Credit Post

I chose to write about Guess Who’s Going to Be Dinner by Barbara S Bruce. I thought the first part of this story was interesting when she was talking about Sidney Poitier. I’ve never heard of him but it seems he was the “first black superstar” from the 1950s-1960s. What immediately caught my attention while reading this was how much he shined as an African American actor, people were so inviting and welcoming to him because him and his characters didn’t act like other African Americans did. “Embodying middle-classness, Poitier also appealed to a ‘Black America [...] still trying to meet white standards and ape white manners, ‘ since ‘he did not carry any ghetto cultural baggage with him. No dialect. No shuffling. No African culture past. ... In short, he was the complete antithesis of all the black buffoons who had appeared before in American movies.’” (Bruce, 61) i want to relate this to a video I recently watched on Facebook, I will attach the long below. An African American student was recently accepted into 20 Ivy League colleges and this DC news station completely bashed on his amazing achievement. Everyone always wants to say that we no longer live in a racist country and we all live equally but I believe that’s the most false statement I’ve heard in a while, especially with the events happening for the past few years. I think the contrast from this college student and Sidney Poitier’s story is funny because what are the odds that back in the 1950s, white America is accepting and seeing this man as a superstar and today in 2018 an African American student is being looked down upon from white America for overachieving. I realize this has nothing to do with zombies, but relating back to the story Bruce is talking about the Living Dead and says “...Bens aggresive entrance evokes the racist stereotype of the black man as (sexual) threat and the more contemporary image of the black militant, but his clean-cut good looks evokes the non-violent, non-threatening icons of the Civil Rights Movement and integrationism...” (Bruce, 65) again not really related to zombies at all, but this kind of thing caught my attention and reminded me of what is going on today. Why now even though he’s the “superstar” is his character being referenced back to a “sexual” threat, because of some lightening ? And music change? now all of a sudden we’re afraid of the black man? why can’t we just watch a film and enjoy it without having racist thoughts or being afraid and having that affect how we think about real people ?

https://youtu.be/-woT8OBNOyQ

[ayymartinez]

Blog post 9

I chose to write about “Dracula: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman” and the relationship between gender and the vampire, and what a ‘New Woman’ actually is. I liked reading this paper because I think there were a lot of good facts about Dracula and how they portrayed women and even how they portrayed Dracula. On the very top of page 34 the writer says “…women may wonder why Dracula is the single male vampire in the novel while four of the five women characters are portrayed as vampires- aggressive, inhuman, wildly erotic, and motivated only by an insatiable thirst for blood.” I thought this was a good quote because although it focuses more on the women vampires, it also points out how Dracula is the “single male vampire”. From what I gathered from this article the “New Woman” is a woman of the 1890s that was well educated, and basically a woman that “…chose to explore many of the avenues recently opened to her: education. Careers, and other alternatives to women’s traditional roles.” (Senf 35) So this new woman would be looking to or at least interested in new things that a traditional woman in the 1890s wouldn’t do, like starting sexual relations, and being open to new things. I have never actually read the story of Dracula but I have seen Van Helsing! And in that movie the three vampire wives, were gorgeous, they had big boobs, there was a brunette, a blonde, and red head, and they were the ones that were invading the village and killing people and drinking blood, it was never Dracula. Dracula was always in his castle alone and seeming so sad. The only reason I can think of as being a reason for this gender separation is fantasy? Maybe the writer wrote the story this way because that’s what they would like to happen? Or that is what they think will sell well, I don’t really have a good answer for why.

[ayymartinez]

Blog 8

I chose to write about “Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore” by Jeffrey S Hampl and William S Hampl. So from what I got from this story is that the origin of this vampire myth came from an illness called pellagra, that first came about around 1935. “Although our interest is not to ‘medicalize a myth’, pellagra, a dietary deficiency pf niacin and tryptophan, makes intriguing arguments for being the originator of the vampire myth.” The first part of this story goes into how this illness shows symptoms that closely resemble the appearance of a “vampire”. I thought it was interesting that the middle part of this story goes more into detail about each of the different symptoms and then at the end explains how it relates to a vampire. For example, in the dermatitis section in the last paragraph it is talking about the black tongue and the tongue of a pellagrin, “Because of tongue oedema, tooth imprints are often left on the tongue, suggesting to an observer that a pellagrin has protuberant teeth or fangs.” Then it goes on to talk about how pellagrins also get inflamed lips that are red and cracked, “…reflective of Stoker’s description of Dracula’s lips which showed ‘remarkable ruddiness’…” Although this article in my opinion is mostly saying that the origin of the vampire story came from the symptoms of an early illness, that closely resembles a vampire there is also other speculations that it could have been something or someone else. “For example, pellagra does not account for the use of the Crucifix, the Eucharist wafer, or holy water…” which as we all know from the many stories and movies, is said to get rid of or ward off vampires. This part is said to come from people of the church and others that thought the people who became ill were being punished for their sins. “Because all legends change with time, one cannot reconcile all aspects of the vampire myth with the evidence from pellagra.”

[ayymartinez]

Essay 1: Amityville Horror

I chose to write my essay on the Amityville Horror story. Since we watched the film and read briefly about the story I have been so curious about the entire thing and I have had so many questions that have gone unanswered. We have heard this story many times and we’ve seen the film and the many different versions of it over and over again, but if I were to ask someone what the Amityville Horror story is about, would they know the entire story? What exactly is the entire story? What is the true story? I still have no idea. In Ghostland Dickey says “In the 1970s this idea reappeared in the country’s imagination, turning malevolent and becoming the foundation for a series of horror movies and stories of haunted houses. Its popularity stems almost entirely from Jay Anson’s 1977 massive best seller, The Amityville Horror, and the genre defining horror film based on it.” (41)

This “idea” that he is talking about in the first sentence is the fascination with Indian burial lands. In the newer version of Amityvile Horror, there is a brief section of the movie that kind of explains why Ronald DeFeo and George Lutz were being “possessed” or told to murder their families and it’s because of a priest that was killing Indians, on that same land where the house was. Very briefly Kathleen Lutz uncovers some articles in the library and reads about these murders happening as well. However, in Ghostland when Dickey is talking about this story, he brings up that there was proof or at least someone else had said that there was proof that none of the Shinnecock had used that part of the land where the house was, to do anything. “the Shinnecock lived some fifty miles away from Amityville, and according to Ric Osuna (who spent years unearthing the facts about Amityville), the nearest human remains that have been found to date are more than a mile from the house.” (42) So my confusion is this, is the priest killing the Indians part of this story true at all? or is it just something that was thrown into it to make it seem like these men were really hearing things and being told to murder their families? Are these men really just insane and it was an extremely rare coincidence that they happened to go mad in the same house? Because if we really think about it George Lutz never killed anyone, so he could have just been getting a little cabin fever and nothing really haunted or paranormal was going on. On the very first page of Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny, Freud says “One such is the ‘uncanny.’ There is no doubt that this belongs to the realm of the frightening.” Who’s to say that George Lutz didn’t just simply have an eerie feeling about living in the same house that 6 people dies in just over a year before? He wasn’t sure about the house in the beginning, he only did it to please his wife right? Another note to be brought up with this story is the problematic gender hierarchy, how in this time the man always seemed to be more dominant and the woman so fragile and homey. Was it just this time period that made the gender role so specific and strict or was the Lutz’s relationship hiding a darker secret? There is no real facts or stories about the Lutz family other than what we have already read in the stories, so we do not know much about their relationship or their lives other than they were experiencing paranormal activity in a supposedly haunted house. There is a possibility that George Lutz could have just been abusive and crazy enough to want to hurt these three kids, were the children actually his? I would get annoyed too if some snotty kids were disrespecting me when I am their parent. Maybe not enough to want to kill them, but it’s certainly an idea (creepy smile).

  So, is the idea of being haunted just a topic that gets everyone wound up and on their toes? No one thought it was necessary to find out real background information on either the DeFeo or Lutz family, the only thing that we know is that both families had to do with this “haunting”. How do we know Ronald DeFeo Jr wasn’t schizophrenic? Maybe he was crazy and it wasn’t the house telling him to murder his family, but maybe it was just the voices in his head that told him to do so. Why was that possibility not considered by the police? Who in the justice system, listened to Defeo’s confession and completely believed that “yes it was the house that told him to do these things” because that’s what he said. I think that Amityville must have been the kind of small town where everyone is religious and goes to church on Sundays and everyone knows each other. So as soon as this big gruesome murder happened, everyone in the town was afraid that these murders could actually have been the result of a haunting and paranormal activity. So this gets me thinking about the jury and the judge and the process of convicting Ronald DeFeo Jr, was their decision affected by their religious beliefs? Granted he still murdered these 6 people so he was going to jail either way, BUT was this decision made from religious beliefs or based on the facts and the most logical explanation? I wish I could sit down and talk to the Lutz family and Ronald Defeo Jr, I want to know the real real story and not just what is online or in books. All of my questions are still unanswered, I am a really big scaredy cat but I would like to visit this house and see if there is actually paranormal activity going on. However, according to David Ian McKendry’s article The REAL Life Story of the Amityville Horror! , the house was bought again in 2010 and the new owners have not complained of any sort of paranormal activity.

 McKendry, David Ian. “The REAL Life Story of the Amityville Horror!” The 13th Floor, 19 May 2017, www.the13thfloor.tv/2016/03/31/the-real-life-story-of-the-amityville-horror/.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works.

Dickey, Colin. Ghostland an American History in Haunted Places. Penguin Books, 2017.

[ayymartinez]

Blog 6

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to visit any locations this weekend, and by the time I checked my homework when I got home from work it was too late for me to go anywhere. However, I have chosen to write about my only one and experience at a cemetery. About 7 or 8 years ago my great grandmother passed away and that was the first time I had ever seen anyone be placed into a casket and into the ground. I remember visiting her once after the funeral, I’m not super religious but I do remember trying to talk to her thinking maybe she or God would hear me. Anyway, what I am trying to really get at is how weird and awkward I felt that day that I visited her. I never felt scared or like there was spirits around me or anything like that, I just felt terrible for walking around this cemetery trying to find her spot and thinking “I’m walking on top of other people right now” what a terrible person I am for stepping on people. Is it just me or does anyone else have that feeling? It was never an eerie feeling, but just more of a disrespectful kind of feeling. On a different note, I was intrigued about the prompt for this blog, and the “bonus points if we catch an orb” in our photos. In 2012 my grandpa passed away and a few times since then my mother has taken photos or been in photos that she says the flash or circular light in the photos is my grandpa. I’m not positive that I believe that but if it is true then cool, I wonder what other people’s thoughts are on the whole orb thing? Like in the many episodes of Ghost Adventures that I’ve seen, I can never tell if those things are real or just little fuzzies the camera can’t make out.    

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 5: Asylums

Foucault’s The Birth of the Asylum was hard to read for me, it was really wordy and there was no general story behind it at least not that I could see. It was mostly about asylums in general and the many different reasons that people go insane or the different reactions of people inside of an asylum. I could be wrong but that’s what I got out of it, however I think it was a good contrast from the stories in Ghostland because those actually are stories, so there are some differences between the two. From Ghostland I chose to write about the first story, Melancholy Contemplation. I liked this story because it was about the nasty background of asylums that only the prisoners themselves would know about. I read another students blog and I absolutely agreed with what they were talking about. In Ghostland Dickey says “In a 1986 opinion the West Virginia Supreme Court found a list of deplorable conditions so voluminous that they had difficulty accurately summarizing them. Back-flowing toilets…”” The state’s failure to remedy these problems in the ensuing years led finally to the facility’s closure almost ten years later, in 1995.”(162) Ten years later !? the supreme court found out about all of the nasty and unsanitary things that were happening at this facility and it took them ten years to finally do something about it? Probably longer because these things were still happening long before the supreme court found out about it. On the other hand, in Foucault’s version of asylums, on page 251-252 talking about Tuke’s experience at the asylum “The keeper intervenes, without weapons, without instruments of constraint, with observation and language only; he advances upon madness, deprived of all that could protect him or make him seem threatening, risking an immediate confrontation without recourse. In fact, though, it is not as a concrete person that he confronts madness, but as a reasonable being, invested by that very fact, and before any combat takes place, with the authority that is his for not being mad.” Why is Foucault’s version more reasonable and understanding when Dickey’s version is more gruesome and disturbing?? The contrast between the two stories was enlightening.

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 4 :After Hours

I chose to write about chapter six, A Devilish Place. I chose this chapter because I honestly didn’t really understand what was going on so I was hoping to get some clarification on it. I understand that we are now talking about hotels and after hour hauntings and stuff like that however, when I was reading this chapter it just seemed to jump around a lot to different subjects or different haunting so it just really confused me. The history around this chapter though, is slavery and hauntings that were being talked about in the 1800s. But in the beginning of this section of the book there is a brief summary about a Toys R Us in California. I thought this story was pretty interesting because the book talks about how things change in buildings after hours, so my thoughts are then how do we know that the random things that fall or toys going off are really caused by a haunting or if they’re just things that happen by accident after hours?? A psychic went in and apparently talked to the spirit of Johnson and she was saying that Johnson was angry because he didn’t believe that he was dead and that the reason some of the things were moving in the night were because Johnson was trying to “work” and the children in the toy store were disturbing his work. I don’t believe this at all, mostly because this information came from this “psychic” lady that was “speaking to the dead” who later became known as a fraud because she was basically telling lies and had no credibility. So how do we really know that these spirits are really haunting these areas that these so called psychics are saying to be haunted? Unless people are actually experiencing these hauntings themselves and can provide some kind of proof, I find it hard to believe things are moving by themselves and pianos are playing in the dead of night.

[ayymartinez]

Amityville Horror Analysis

I had previously seen this film just to watch it as a scary movie however, I really enjoyed watching this film again from a different point of view. There were things in the film that I would not normally be looking for or would not normally have noticed. I think that Freud’s “uncanny” relates to this film because throughout the film there are kind of two different views of the house and I think that this is what Freud talks about when he’s saying that this kind of paranormal activity is being brought to the light or being seen. From George’s perspective the house is talking to him and he’s seeing things and feeling cold all of the time, but from the perspective of Kathy she sees nothing wrong with the house and only the change in behavior of George. Considering gender roles, I think that most of the things that were said in class were spot on George is being portrayed as this manly man that chops wood all day long and takes charge of disciplining the children when whatever Kathy is doing “isn’t working”. On the other side Kathy is always in the kitchen or doing laundry or whatever else that women would normally be doing around this time. I also think that the original story was changed in order to get more people to want to watch the movie, because of all of the different renditions of the film I think that they had to add or change some things in order to entice people to watch it. I think some of the adult scenes were added in to appeal to the audience, and also some of the scary parts because it is supposed to be a scary movie, so the person in the bathroom with the little boy with the bloody face and the little girl sticking the babysitters finger into her gunshot wound, stuff like that I think is milked in order to attract the audience and get a reaction.

[ayymartinez]

Blog Post 2

I chose to write my analysis on chapter four, The Rathole revelation because it really interested me to really find out about how Spiritualism came about and why it’s such a big thing now. I liked reading that it’s actually not been around for that long and that it wasn’t some big crazy thing that brought the idea into people’s heads.  A couple of girls were “rapping” with a spirit in their house and that’s where this fascination of communicating with ghosts or spirits came from. I honestly didn’t know what rapping was in this context so I had to look it up and it means basically to strike a surface usually to attract attention. From then people started to believe that they too could and they did try to communicate with the spirit world and started to label themselves as “mediums.” Mediumship is the practice of someone who allegedly can communicate from the living world with the spirit world. I also think that in this chapter it was interesting that it says The Stickney House, and the Winchester house have no evidence of any kind of ghost activity or any reason for there to be accusations of ghostly things happening, yet they are labeled or seen as haunted houses. My question is where do people come up with the ideas that houses are haunted without even knowing the facts or anything about the houses themselves? Why out of the blue, are these kinds of extravagant houses seen and then automatically people are assuming there are some kind of ghostly things happening? Also, I thought it was curious that Spiritualism is more commonly practiced by women than men, why is that? Now that I am thinking about it, whether they are based on true stories or not, most scary movies deal with hauntings of women or women being possessed. It’s not really men that are being possessed, I feel like maybe the demons or spirits that are haunting are mostly male but the ones to be haunted are women and children. Is that just for show or does that somehow relate back to Spiritualism being predominately women?...