#seminartasks

The theme of this C&CS project first came to me a year ago, when I developed a project that I loved for Foundation Part Three, Fear of Ghosts. It was a very emotional work, but as I had less experience, I regretted not taking enough out of it. I then decided I wanted to go deeper, into the meaning of the ghost motif and why I chose to talk about it in the first place. I feel I needed to further my investigation since it’s a theme that continues as one of my biggest and most genuine interests. I had wanted to explore more, but I hadn’t had the right ideas about where to look until a couple of months into this semester. I felt every research I made about this subject lead me into a dead end, such as the one I made about Goya’s Black Paintings. I no longer knew how I could relate to that or how to relate it to my inquiry.

It was by the time I first started reading The Uncanny that things started getting clear. In the book Freud mentions the fact that there were few people in his time talking about the weird, the uncanny. And that made me think about how I was already familiar with the concept even before knowing of that text; there are now a lot of people discussing and producing content about the uncanny. It drew me back to one of my main art references and interests: horror manga by Junji Ito, who uses the element of the unfamiliar brilliantly, and whose work I’ve been reading for over five years.

Strange locations and space

Conflict between times: past comes to derange the present/modern (THE GHOST)

Juxtaposition between powerful and vulnerable beings/characters (sexual)

The uncanny – what looks human, but is not quite human, like dolls, ghosts.

Sublime – overwhelming and overpowering beauty

Supernatural/real

BOWEN, J.

Gothic motifs

Gothic novels are full of such uncanny effects – simultaneously frightening, unfamiliar, and also strangely familiar.

Bowen, J., 2014. Gothic motifs. [online] The British Library. Available at: <https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gothic-motifs#> [Accessed 16 June 2021].

Gothic literature has always been a theme of my interest, and I feel the uncanny is one of the most important reasons why that is. It doesn’t rely solely on the terrors of the unknown, but also in warping what is, in fact, familiar. It is able to create scenarios that subvert the things we know and turn them into something else, something to be feared.

WOLF, S. E.

How Media Scares Us: The Work of Junji Ito

It's rare that any pre-established horror convention appears in his work […], rather, Ito’s illustrations are primarily centered around the disorientation of the natural world.

Wolf, S., 2016. How Media Scares Us: The Work of Junji Ito. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIIA6QDgl2M> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

The same concept appears in the manga by Junji Ito. The author/artist subverts and corrupts elements of the day to day and the natural world so they appear as a fright. With this he creates horror much more tangible and dreadful than any conventional trope; making what we take as safe and familiar into a terrible monster or phenomenon.

FREUD, S.

The Uncanny

[...] everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.

Freud, S., 2021. The Uncanny. [ebook] Penguin Books. Available at: <https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Uncanny.pdf> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Goya’s Black paintings caught my attention because of their name and because of their reputation for being disturbing. He is already an artist known for his dark subject matters and in this series, they became much bleaker. The article focuses a lot on telling us how little is actually known about the Black Paintings. They were first painted on Goya’s house walls and never meant to be seen by the public. That’s why it puzzles historians so much; there is no one “correct’’ interpretation or explanation for them since they were first created in isolation and for only Goya himself to see.