Description:
-- IU Press is becoming well-known for our titles on gender and media and this is a strong contribution to this growing area of our lists. -- An accessibly written and carefully researched project by an up-and-coming scholar that demonstrates how vampirism, witchcraft, and other manifestations of magick (a term used to differentiate the occult from performance magic) in media have arisen in response to and reflected cultural crises surrounding sexuality and gender roles in the past 60 years. -- The manuscript covers media from the horror genre from the 1960s to the present, including both well-known fan favorites and more obscure but none-the-less important television shows and films. -- Owens combines close readings of various forms of media, including popular novels, television, film, and pornography, with detailed historiography to read each piece of media in its cultural context.
Review Quotes:
"This is work that insightfully links queer theory and genre theory, and that never sidesteps crucial questions of production, distribution, and reception, all while offering capsule biographies of important players and economical accounts of key historical contexts."--Noah Tsika, author of Pink 2.0: Encoding Queer Cinema on the Internet
"Over the last several decades, the production of queer-themed horror has boomed, as has queer horror scholarship. This new study begins in the psychedelic (and sometimes Satanic) sixties and ends with an examination of queer horror in 21st-century niche TV. Author Andrew J. Owens deftly weaves contexts of culture, history, and industry in his analyses of texts both canonical (Dark Shadows, The Vampire Lovers) and lesser known (The Craft, Dante's Cove, and the films of Jean Rollin). Highly recommended."--Harry M. Benshoff, author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film
"Without diluting the core, revolutionary powers of queer world making, Andrew J. Owens's Desire After Dark expands the horizons of LGBTQ analysis in exciting and unexpected directions. The author aptly incorporates Expressionism and Euro-trash, Satanism and soap opera, Hammer horror and Hear TV into what amounts to a new queer history of western popular culture after World War II. Owens' practice of contextualizing what he calls 'occultly marvelous media' through both cultural history and film analysis is exemplary. Highly recommended."--Daniel Humphrey, author of Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema and Archaic Modernism: Queer Poetics in the Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini
"Owens's Desire after Dark makes clear and important contributions to existing literature on queer theory, media studies, and the horror genre. His insightful, focused study will interest both fans of the TV programs and films examined and scholars in various disciplines who will appreciate how adeptly Owens incorporates well-balanced discussions of culture, industry, genre, reception, and representation in compelling reads of the media re-viewed."--Richard Wolff, The Journal of Religion, Film, and Media