Dark Carnivals

August 1, 2022
Poole (Wasteland), a history professor at the College of Charleston, delivers a mostly solid account of how horror films have “provided the legitimacy, the justifications, and the bread and circuses of American empire.” Since the genre’s beginnings as a “cry of anger and despair” after WWI, Poole writes, “there’s always been something deeply political” about these films. White Zombie (1932) “probed Americans’ fears about Haiti and legitimated them.” The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) drew on “the myth of the American frontier,” he posits, while Jaws (1975) was a “hopeful message about a can-do America.” And after 9/11, horror films began to “question American exceptionalism,” as in The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Throughout, the author offers fascinating tidbits of film history—readers will learn that in 1944, actor Bela Lugosi pleaded with the Roosevelt administration to end immigration restrictions on Hungarian Jews and was subsequently investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. At times, Poole’s prose can be overwrought (“So, what if the American dream is a nightmare? What if, at the bottom of an ill-smelling barrel brimming with secrets coiled like snakes, we find a terrible truth?”), which can undercut the shrewd commentary. Even so, this is an insightful view of the genre through the lens of critical theory.

September 1, 2022
How terrifying narratives reflect the grisly realities of the American past and present. In this follow-up to Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, history professor Poole surveys imaginative connections between the horror genre and the most brutal aspects of modern American history. The author argues that the appeal of these narratives can tell us a great deal about how the nation has struggled to make sense of its implication in imperial violence. "So much of the truth of the last one hundred years survives not in museum exhibitions or patriotic celebrations or lengthy documentary treatments but in horror films," he writes. Focusing on a broad selection of representative films, TV shows, and fiction, Poole links particular works with events such as the Vietnam and Iraq wars, drawing out the allegorical significance of monstrous antagonists and their gory misadventures. The author ably demonstrates that horror narratives commonly serve two coexisting yet opposing functions: promoting fantasies about the nation's ultimate innocence by displacing responsibility for domestic injustices or military aggression abroad onto some other party and insinuating, in often subtle but always unsettling ways, that one cannot evade guilt for misdeeds done in one's name. The author makes it clear that paying close attention to works routinely dismissed as mere mindless escapism can be uncannily revealing about how unpleasant truths are publicly and privately repressed. Poole's style shares a spirit with the sensationalism of the works he explores, and his emphasis on blunt (and sometimes reductive) assessments of complex historical phenomena and their representation in horror narratives can prove distracting. Nevertheless, the author provides persuasive commentary on the political inflections and emotional appeal of both well-known and obscure works. He is particularly insightful in probing such cultural touchstones as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Jaws, and The Twilight Zone. A lurid overview of some of the darkest dimensions of American history through the lens of the horror genre.

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Starred review from September 1, 2022
Poole, professor of American politics and popular culture, is known for critical examinations of how the culture of contemporary horror was created. The horror genre has tried to shake people from their inertia, to help them discover that something wicked isn't coming, but is already here. With in-depth and granular analyses of horror films during both world wars and their aftermaths, Poole writes in an engaging style that makes this book accessible to lay readers as well as academics. The onset of the global pandemic is also discussed, as well as the history of governments downplaying previous mass events. Poole traces the origins of the American Empire to settler colonialism and transatlantic slavery, born from blood and annihilation of indigenous populations. It is not easy material to take in, and film buffs may not want the history lessons, but they are crucial to understanding the success of everything from Dracula (1931) to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Get Out (2017), and more. Comprehensive and with a wide scope that covers so much of American history and horror cinema, this is a text that will find a home in both academic and public libraries.

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Starred review from May 1, 2022

A history professor at the College of Charleston and Bram Stoker nominee for his biography of H.P. Lovecraft, Poole pools his talents to show how the horror genre, both fiction and film, has reflected U.S. dominance in the world even as it seems to deflect readers/viewers from its consequences.

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