Thank you for visiting my blog. I’m a scholar of television, film, and digital media, and the author of CINEMA OF CONFINEMENT (Northwestern University Press) and CAPTURING DIGITAL MEDIA (Bloomsbury Academic). I’ve published a variety of articles on film and television in journals published by Taylor & Francis. I am also a writer of fiction. All of my books can be viewed on www.tomconnellyfiction.com
My new short story will be available to purchase as an eBook on April 26. This is another story of mine that takes place in Burghville and is connected to my first novel THE POSTCARD.
Stacking and chopping firewood is nothing new for the Ferguson brothers.
It’s a routine they have to endure every fall before winter comes
barreling through the Hudson Valley. But on this day, after slicing a
short log, they discover something mysterious inside it that will haunt
them forever. . . .
Writing this story reminded me of stacking cords of wood for our wood-burning stove, growing up in upstate New York. Unsure why, but I thought . . . what would happen if a character chopped a log in half and found something weird inside it?
I went with that thought and wrote KILL PARK. I hope you enjoy the story. There will be no paperback version since it is only 40 pages.
Happy chopping....
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Coming soon! Suburban TalesLast year, I wrote a bunch of short stories that focus on the supernatural, fantasy and horror. I picked three stories and thought
it would be fun to independently publish them as a book series. The stories are entitled, "The Rock Star," The Piano," and "The Decorator." All three stories focus on Eden Gardens, a fictional neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.
I was surprised to see a number of well-known authors like Joe Hill and Paul Tremblay were publishing short reads and short stories under the Kindle Short Reads category. I wonder how this has impacted print journals that publish short stories. As always with digital technology, there are pluses and minuses.
I also wrote the third book in my Hudson Valley trilogy called The Mansion. I hope to have it ready later in the year. The other two books in the trilogy are The Postcard and The Bells - both available through Amazon.
My academic books, Capturing Digital Media (Bloomsbury Academic) and Cinema of Confinement (Northwestern University Press), are also available for purchase.
The Lacanian gaze is one of the hardest concepts I teach for my Film Theory course. The way we commonly think of the gaze (to look) is not what Jacques Lacan argues. Rather, he argues that when we encounter the gaze, we encounter an impasse, a blind spot within the field of vision. But more importantly, in order to encounter the gaze, you must be invested in the film. When we encounter the gaze in cinema it demonstrates the activity of our unconscious desire. So what does that mean? And why is the gaze is not defined as the look?
One of the best examples of the gaze (from Slavoj Zizek and Todd McGowan) can be found in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). After Marion (Janet Leigh) has been murdered by "mother" in the shower, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cleans up the mess. Notice how long it takes for Norman to clean the bathroom. This is important because Hitchcock is a laying a trap for our encounter with the gaze.
After Norman cleans the bathroom, he place Marion's body in the trunk of her car and drives out to the swamp near his motel. Norman pushes Marion's car into the swamp. Norman anxiously watches the car as it begins to sink. Suddenly, for a brief moment the car stop sinking. I always ask my students what their reaction was when the car stops sinking. Their response: they want the car to sink.How does this happen? Why are we suddenly complicit in Norman's cover up of the murder?
This is the moment when we encounter the gaze. The gaze demonstrates your unconscious desire at work in the film. This is why film form is so important to understand in studying the gaze in cinema. In my book Cinema of Confinement, I explain how directors set up these types of cinematic moments such as the swamp scene in Psycho. They are designed so that we encounter the shocking impact of the gaze.
An example I use is the final sequence in Alien (1979) when Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) learns that the alien sneaked aboard the escape shuttle. The way in which director Ridley Scott films this scene sets up the viewer for an encounter with the gaze--namely, when Ripley shockingly discovers the alien. We think Ripley has defeated the alien, which is emphasized when she says: "I got you, you son of a bitch." Even the soothing musical score suggests that Ripley is safe. But as we know, she is far from safe. Alien's final scene is so scary because of the way Scott lays a trap for us to encounter the gaze. This
is why it is important that Hitchcock show us all the details of Norman
cleaning up the murder in Psycho. He is a laying a trap for the gaze: when
the car stops sinking in the swamp. That's when we all go "Oh shit!" You're now siding with Norman's cover up of Marion's death.
What
does the gaze tells about how we watch movies? First, it demonstrates
how our unconscious desire is at work when we watch a movie. And we can locate the activity of desire through cinematic form. Second, you must be invested to look in the movie, otherwise you are less likely to encounter
the emotional impact of the gaze. Lacan's example of Hans Holbein's painting The Ambassadorsexplains this point.
As you observed the painting, you see the riches that surround the men. But when looking toward the bottom of the painting, there is a stain. When looking awry, you see that the stain is a skull that looks back at you.
The skull embodies the gaze. But you have to be invested in looking at the painting in order to discover the skull. When we encounter the skull, it takes our desire into consideration. Likewise, when Marion's car stops sinking in the swamp in Psycho, we have a visceral reaction, demonstrating that we are complicit in Norman covering up the murder. It illustrates how our desire is at work in the film.
The
gaze is the moment when our seeing falls apart. Yet it is these moments
in cinema, such as Ripley seeing the alien aboard the ship and Marion's
car that temporarily stop sinking in the swamp, that draws us to the
movies.
A recurring theme of the horror/sci-fi film genre is the figure of the old and wise character who is often performed by the aging star actor. This character is typically a doctor or scientist, and holds knowledge of the monster, alien, and/or of character's superpowers. These characters are often highly educated, speak very intelligently, dress professionally, and have a calming presence for spectators. They often arrive in the narrative with pivotal information that motivates and drives the plot forward. Consider the movie Them!(1954) one of the first atomic-age monster films, which casts aging star Edmund Gwenn as Doctor Harold Medford, an entomologist, who discovers that the mutant ants are powerless without their antennae. Even though the scientific discourse in the film seems be a bit obvious, the knowledge of the mutant has to pass through Medford as the figure of knowledge to legitimatize it's narrative exposition.
In the 1970s and 1980s, there seemed to be a plethora of horror/sci-fi films with the aging star as the figure of knowledge and reason. For example, John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) starred Donald Pleasence as Dr. Samuel Loomis, Michael Myers' psychiatrist. It is Dr. Loomis who knows Michael's condition and intentions that he will kill his sister and believes he is the only one knows how to stop him.
In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), it is the Overlook Hotel's chef, Dick Hallorann (played by Scatman Crothers), who discloses to Danny's that they both have the gift of "shining," the power to telepathically read each others thoughts as well as seeing premonitions. In this case, Hallorann is not a scientist or doctor, but the figure who has a direct pipeline to the Overlook hotel's past.
In David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983), Herbert Lomplays neurologist Dr. Sam Weizak as the figure of the older erudite man who provides knowledge to viewers about Johnny Smith's (Christopher Walken) power of seeing a person's future through physical contact.
As a side note: The Dead Zone has a fantastic and creepy opening credit sequence where the lettering of the title's typography slowly appears on the screen over images of the town of Castle Rock, Maine. Here the title sequence emphasize the letters' negative space, which reflects the concept of "the dead zone," a void in the future that Johnny cannot predict-such as the ending of the film. We also find the casting of the aging actor as the conveyer of knowledge in fantasy/science fiction films. Most famous is the casting of Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). Ben plays the figure of the aging Jedi Knight who explains to young Luke about Darth Vader and the Clone Wars.
Even the political sci-fi thriller Children of Men (2006) casts Michael Caineas an aging hippie cartoonist, Jasper Palmer. Palmer as the conveyer of knowledge and comic relief helps propose the plan for Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) and Theo Faron's (Clive Barker) escape.
As such, the icon of the aging star plays an important function in the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres as the communicator of knowledge, wisdom and reason.
The role of the aging star actor also raises the question of science fiction and horror films as occupying a B-film status. Certainly many sci-fi, superhero and horror films are produced with high quality, especially given the power of today's special effects. And many of these fables and story worlds are well written, and inform us about our own experiences of everyday life on planet earth.
But given that the overall body of work of these older actors is not often associated with fantasy and horror films suggests how the presence of an aging star can help legitimize a film's exploration of topics such as mutant bugs, telepathy, monsters, and other forces beyond the everyday world.
