American Eco-Gothic Horror: Between Self-Reflexive Ecocriticism and Ecophobia
Natasza Korczarowska
natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.plUniversity of Lodz (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X
Abstract
This article challenges Simon Estok’s claim that ecophobia activates anti-environmental attitudes and incites hostility towards nature. The author argues that in contemporary American eco-gothic horror films, ecophobia works to “re-enchant” nature and restore its agency. Eco-gothic horror films are analysed in the context of Estok’s ecophobia hypothesis, Matthew Wynn Sivils’s vegetal haunting, and Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. The author distinguishes between the concepts of eco-gothic and eco-horror (as well as folk horror). In films belonging to the latter subgenre, nature turns against humanity in revenge for environmental degradation. In the eco-gothic subgenre, the theme of nature’s “revenge” does not appear, and the vegetative world evokes a mood of the uncanny and the Kantian experience of the sublime. According to the author, the Gothic (in its idiomatic “forest” version) is the foundation of American identity.
Disclosure Statement
Keywords:
ecophobia, vegetal haunting, trauma, uncannyReferences
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Authors
Natasza Korczarowskanatasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X
Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media, Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz. She specializes in the history of Polish film, contemporary European cinema, and the problems of historiophoty. She published the books Ojczyzny prywatne [Private Homelands] (2007) and Inne spojrzenie [Another Way] (2013) – the latter devoted to the images of history in the Polish feature film after 1965. Since 2008 she has cooperated with the Polish Film Institute and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute on the educational project Academy of Polish Film.
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