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Once upon a Time the Horror Genre—a Quest to Give...
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Once upon a Time the Horror Genre—a Quest to Give the “Nonsense” a Meaning

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (8 September 2023) | Viewed by 13817

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Carolina Scaglioso

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Guest Editor
Humanities Department, University for Foreigners of Siena, P.le Carlo Rosselli n. 27/28, 53100 Siena, Italy
Interests: pedagogy (the uncanny as a formativeness tool; individuality and its shaping process through community relations); intercultural pedagogy (Existential, cultural, narrative, and linguistic in-betweenness among translingual writers)
Dr. Elena Casalini

E-Mail
Guest Editor
SAGAS Department (History, Archaeology, Geography, Arts and Social Sciences), University of Florence, Via San Gallo n.10, 50126 Florence, Italy
Interests: cultural heritage; social history; arts and archaeology; anthropology

Special Issue Information

The study of the horror genre has stemmed from some of the most significant movies and tv series classified as belonging to the horror genre over the last twenty years. Since the actual Ukrainian war frame condition and the building tensions in the middle/far east (the Taiwan-Chinese situation, for example) have shaped our contemporary public consciousness and fears, a reflection on how humanity has coped in several contexts with personal and community trauma looks quite urgent. The horror genre calls into question the concept of the ‘uncanny’ in its characteristics of a repressed revelation process alongside a moment of acknowledgment of limits and finitude. The elaboration of the ‘uncanny’ allows us to accept the human limit as a condition of every chance: hence how the educational commitment assumption within ethics of responsibility and care has declined. Instead, a commitment focused on the self and an individual’s sense of time has emerged alongside an awareness that the world and other beings are a condition of our life itself.

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to interdisciplinary frame the ‘horror’ category as a fictional place in which both the unexplainable and the explainable may coexist. This study should show that pedagogic, artistic, literary, and psychoanalytic production makes horror the expression of system collapse and the desire to rebuild it, between an impulse for growth and an awareness of one's own fragility. The interventions will range from horror in different places and across different eras to horror in contrasting expressions such as cinema, comics, manga, and literature. This broad chronological and thematic approach is pivotal to prove how horror as a concept, creation, and production can stand as the private and community trauma re-elaboration, allowing growth and healing through different times, cultural contexts, and tools.

Dr. Carolina Scaglioso
Dr. Elena Casalini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information 

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 8082 KiB  
Article
Horror Manga: Themes and Stylistics of Japanese Horror Comics
by Paolo La Marca
Humanities 2024, 13(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13010008 - 28 Dec 2023
Viewed by 5762
Abstract
The objective of this contribution is to create a first, ideal mapping of a “category” of manga that has experienced and is still experiencing a very successful season. Although they are generically identified with the term “horror manga” or “horror comics,” these manga [...] Read more.
The objective of this contribution is to create a first, ideal mapping of a “category” of manga that has experienced and is still experiencing a very successful season. Although they are generically identified with the term “horror manga” or “horror comics,” these manga should be placed within a narrative universe so magmatic as to escape, however, any univocal representation. When we speak of Japanese horror, in fact, we tend to imagine well-defined scenarios and stereotypes, often conveyed by some novels, manga and, perhaps even more so, some films that have bewitched the West, such as The Ring (1998) and Ju-on (2000). Despite the success in Italy, too, of authors such as Umezu Kazuo (楳図かずお, b. 1936), Hino Hideshi (日野日出志, b. 1946) and Itō Junji (伊藤潤二, b. 1963), knowledge of horror manga is limited to a number of works and authors who represent, however, only a small percentage of a far more polychrome and multifaceted narrative universe. In other words, the tip of an iceberg just waiting to be brought to light. This preliminary contribution is intended to trace a path, thematic/narrative in nature, from which the route of “horror” manga can emerge in a diachronic, dynamic and evolutionary perspective. It goes without saying that, dealing with nearly seventy years of horror comic book publications, it will be impossible to make an exhaustive examination that takes into account all publishing realities, large and small. That is why the field of investigation will be narrowed down and focus exclusively on a specific historical period, from its beginnings in 1958 to the boom of the 1980s, examining the most recurrent themes and stylistic features of this time segment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Once upon a Time the Horror Genre—a Quest to Give the “Nonsense” a Meaning)
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11 pages, 789 KiB  
Article
Modern Anxieties and Traditional Influence in Horror Anime
by Anik Sarkar
Humanities 2023, 12(5), 118; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050118 - 13 Oct 2023
Viewed by 3132
Abstract
Japan has a longstanding tradition of horror narratives that feature a variety of macabre embodiments. They draw upon ancient folklore, thereby providing a unique perspective on spirits specific to Japanese culture. The influence of these countless supernatural beings from Japanese mythology and folklore [...] Read more.
Japan has a longstanding tradition of horror narratives that feature a variety of macabre embodiments. They draw upon ancient folklore, thereby providing a unique perspective on spirits specific to Japanese culture. The influence of these countless supernatural beings from Japanese mythology and folklore has molded many incarnations seen in popular culture, which have been commonly deemed “strange” and “weird”. This study seeks to demystify the ambiguity and “strangeness” surrounding three Japanese anime series, Another, Yamishibai, and Mononoke. It attempts to analyze how each of these anime employs folklore and traditional art-styles to portray a modern society plagued with sociocultural complications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Once upon a Time the Horror Genre—a Quest to Give the “Nonsense” a Meaning)
9 pages, 229 KiB  
Article
Role of Cinema and Psychoanalysis in Affective Experience
by Elisabetta Bellagamba
Humanities 2023, 12(5), 115; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050115 - 10 Oct 2023
Viewed by 2423
Abstract
This paper focuses on a peculiar aspect of film viewing, specifically the way in which—interacting with the viewer and their own story—visual images create identifications that can make the viewing a more or less disturbing affective experience. Psychoanalysis and cinema have an indissoluble [...] Read more.
This paper focuses on a peculiar aspect of film viewing, specifically the way in which—interacting with the viewer and their own story—visual images create identifications that can make the viewing a more or less disturbing affective experience. Psychoanalysis and cinema have an indissoluble connection. In particular, the language of cinema comes very close to that of psychoanalysis, given that movies are made according to our psychism. On the basis of this relationship, filmic narration often becomes part of patients’ session, especially teenagers, allowing us to explore areas of the mind hitherto silent. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Once upon a Time the Horror Genre—a Quest to Give the “Nonsense” a Meaning)
13 pages, 731 KiB  
Article
Narrations on Digital Unconsciousness: A Psychoanalytical Perspective on SCPs
by Francesca De Marino
Humanities 2023, 12(5), 108; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12050108 - 28 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1666
Abstract
With a psychoanalytic lens, this article will examine some forms of contemporary narration, which develop in the virtual world and appear as phenomena related to mythopoiesis in preadolescence. Such forms put the body at the heart of the identity transformation. The body becomes [...] Read more.
With a psychoanalytic lens, this article will examine some forms of contemporary narration, which develop in the virtual world and appear as phenomena related to mythopoiesis in preadolescence. Such forms put the body at the heart of the identity transformation. The body becomes a staple of the metamorphosis of suffering and drives the elaboration of pain. While always on the edge of ambiguity, these stories nurture persecution, fear, a state of permanent and ruleless alert, and a flood of primordial affects questioning the boundaries between the organic and the inorganic, which is a problem that the common sense of our time seems to feel with greater urgency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Once upon a Time the Horror Genre—a Quest to Give the “Nonsense” a Meaning)
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