The Boston Oddities Hour: A Victorian Sci-Fi Radio Drama
December 18, 2023 § Leave a comment
Our (Paige, Brynn, and Cameron’s) final group project for this semester was the Boston Oddities Hour, an hourlong audio drama divided into podcast episodes, drawing on the themes and aesthetics of Victorian sci-fi novels from throughout and beyond our course. We welcome you to check out the episodes linked below!
Anna, Emily, and Charlotte share the conclusion to a two decade special investigation and the thrilling encounter of J with his alter-ego… Thanks to Paige, Brynn, Cameron, and Kai for voicing this episode! Music by Kevin Mcleod: SCP-x6x, Evil Plan, accessed with a Creative Commons license.
Creators’ Notes
This project evolved a lot from its conception. We knew from the start that we wanted to do an audio project because of Brynn’s editing experience, but we weren’t initially sure if we even wanted to make a fiction piece. Luckily, we’d just read H.G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine, which brought to mind Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio hoax. We soon got excited about the idea of a radio drama that presents itself as real documentation of extraordinary events, using time travel to explain the anachronism of Victorian radio.
We originally conceived the podcast as a series of five short episodes, putting inventive twists on sci-fi classics. For variety, we built our basic episode concepts around some of the “subgenres” of Victorian sci-if we identified in our books for the semester: time travel (The Time Machine, the neo-Victorian Kindred), monster story (Dracula, Frankenstein, to a lesser degree Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and horrifying medical/biological science (Frankenstein again, War of the Worlds, and again Dr. Jekyll, in a sense). The mothman episode would play with monsters in a different way while also bringing in the invasion narrative (Dracula again, She), and we would of course have to fit in aliens as well. The psychological anxieties of Dr. Jekyll and The Picture of Dorian Gray could be folded into the time travel episodes. Even when we had a decent idea of our topics, however, these were still all isolated ideas; it was only Professor Clayton’s feedback that inspired us to add the narrative throughline provided by J and H’s time-hopping feud.
From there, Paige wrote out the script, we all worked together to cut it down to size, Cameron took the lead in casting and recording voice actors, and Brynn edited the audio from start to finish. The script drafting took around two weeks, and then we managed to fit recording and editing into only about a week, thanks in large part to Brynn’s incredible dedication. Cameron designed the Boston Oddities Hour Spotify page, and we were done! Dear listener…we hope you enjoy. 🙂
-Paige Elliott, Cameron Peloso, and Brynn Jones
Work Cited: “Three (3) Victorian ladies in long dresses on a city street in the 1800s, facing away, looking up at a steampunk time machine, with War of the Worlds Martian pods in the stormy sky beyond” prompt. Stable Diffusion AI Image Generator, Stable Diffusion, 18 Dec. 2023, https://stablediffusionweb.com/.
On Horror’s Favorite Colors: Technicolor Filmmaking & the Colorized Pre-Code Era
December 5, 2023 § 3 Comments
If you were to ask the horror genre what their favorite color is, what would they say?
When meeting someone for the first time, we have a tendency to revert to this redundant, yet classic, question that is seemingly void of any conversational substance. However, there is, in fact, a psychology behind someone’s favorite color, meaning one’s answer may subliminally signal to others aspects of their personality or behavior. Your first favorite color, or at least one of them, was likely determined at a very early age, and you may have felt a bond with, or aversion toward, someone based on theirs.
To understand horror’s favorite color, we’ll start from the beginning: the first horror films were made in black-and-white, which are undeniably essential to horror considering their contrast and symbolism. Foundational films to the genre, black-and-white pre-Code horror movies Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931) were created when sound had just arrived on the scene and contemporary censorship guidelines went unenforced. “Pre-Code” defines horror movies made in the early 1930s before the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, or Hays Code, which prohibited profanity, graphic violence, and suggestive nudity or sexual persuasion. The heyday of ignoring Hays Code coinciding with sound and color not only made horror that much more striking and novel, but the synchronicity of all three elements may also be responsible for giving horror their favorite colors.
Combining all three elements of color, sound, and pre-Code gruesomeness, Doctor X (1931) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932) were two of the first pre-Code movies to be made in color, but two of the last to be made using the technicolor two-color process. The technicolor two-color process layered two filtered film strips, one in red and the other in green, over one another on a single strip of film to produce a complete, colored picture that was often dominated by a distinct red and green hue.
Red has long held strong significance in the horror genre, and may have been what first came to mind when I popped that overused question. Red frequently symbolizes passion, violence, rage, and of course, it is hard to make a slasher film without a little blood. In many ways, this makes sense – out of the color wheel, red has the longest wavelength, meaning it can be seen from the farthest distance and has therefore become the most survival-oriented way to symbolize danger. Green may be another one of horror’s favorite colors, as it is often used to elicit feelings of repulsion or disgust, symbolizing disease, decay, and the grotesque, kind of like that monster that scientist made. Although, you may recall Shelley writing Frankenstein’s monster as a pale yellow creature, so what exactly made him turn green? To combat the light sensitivity of the film being used, makeup artists painted the monster green in order for the actor to show up on camera. As a result, subsequent promotional materials drastically altered our perception of Frankenstein’s monster, monsters in general, and the role of green in the horror genre. While red and green weren’t strangers to the literature many of these movies were animating, the progression of the technicolor film process provides context for their transferring to, and recurring inclusion in, horror media.
Later in the 1930s, the process of creating a technicolor film got a little more complicated, but a lot more colorful: three black and white reels were filtered through a red, green, and blue filter using a split-cube prism, and were then laminated together to produce a wider array of true-to-tone colors. Suspiria (1977) was the very last film to be made using (part of) this process, and is widely recognized as one of the most colorful horror movies ever made. The three most prolific colors? Red, green, and blue.
Like green, blue produces a cool and calming effect – except when it doesn’t. In horror, blue is frequently associated with death, creating a cold, tense, and uneasy atmosphere, and can additionally represent anxiety, depression, and even the supernatural. When we look at horror films made in the last few decades, in addition to some of their most iconic scenes, red, green, and/or blue somehow find their way into the frame. A cool-colored curtain interrupted by an angry red, Carrie at prom plays on the past, and what works, to produce its iconically unsettling scene.
However, these colors may not be the only answer to the question – a popular, recent horror film, Midsommar (2019) is arguably one of the darkest, most colorful representations of violence, folklore, and psychological trauma. While red, blue, and green are absolutely present, the vast variety of adjacent colors, namely yellow, make Midsommar the symbolic and disturbing film that it is. While bright and cheerful hues may be uncharacteristic of the genre, it is their atypicality that adds to the perpetual feeling of wrongness underlying each scene of summer and celebration.
So, what are horror’s favorite colors? Regardless of the answer, the technicolor film process was evidently critical in producing some of the first films we think of when we hear horror, and could very well be responsible for a few of their favorite colors. Just as the technicolor tones – red, green, and blue – served as the basic foundation for color in film due to their ability to produce a full range of color, horror targets primitivity as a means of generating complex and cathartic psychological, physical, and emotional experiences. If our favorite colors come from our past and preferences, then maybe horror’s do too.
Ava Zins
Sources
- https://www.domestika.org/en/blog/5342-how-frankenstein-s-monster-turned-green
- https://www.fangoria.com/original/the-color-of-horror-5-horror-films-with-excellent-use-of-color/
- https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-technicolor-definition/#:~:text=Process%204%20(1932%2D1952)%3A,either%20red%2C%20green%20or%20blue.
- https://lwks.com/blog/blood-red-to-morgue-blue-the-role-of-color-in-horror#:~:text=Common%20Colors%20in%20Horror%20Films,associated%20with%20anger%20or%20passion.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood
- https://www.eastman.org/technicolor/technology/two-color-process#:~:text=Technicolor’s%20two%2Dcolor%20subtractive%20camera,and%20the%20other%20half%20green.
Media References
- Color wheel: https://images.app.goo.gl/NzAz4uNAndha8skJA
- Movie poster for Dracula (1931): https://images.app.goo.gl/XfzSzSm6krhT1LoQ6
- [Video] Warner Archive Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLj5qRzafEk
- Movie poster for Frankenstein (1931): https://images.app.goo.gl/jLRTd3fHytjyQ77B8
- [Video] The Beauty of Suspiria (1977): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfZCA0huiI0
- Carrie at prom in Carrie (1976): https://images.app.goo.gl/Nnf59Etuqr6Yri5s8
- Dani as May Queen in Midsommar (2019): https://images.app.goo.gl/ihS3ksB3xibBjaoA8
‘Slaughterhouse-Five’: An Ode to Living in the Present
November 29, 2023 § 3 Comments
Since reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five during my senior year of high school, I have frequently thought about its second opening line. Yes, this novel has two of them — one on the first page, and another that begins the actual narrative a chapter later. This second opening line reads, “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”
Thus begins one of the most emotionally complex stories I have ever read, containing a stoic anti-war critique, comedic character interactions, dark humor, and dry, ironic observations about life and death. However, laced throughout the narrative is an unflinching and sobering reckoning with time — its inevitability, its unpredictability, and, most of all, its tendency to pass unnoticed.
You see, Billy Pilgrim really has come unstuck in time. While fighting as an American soldier in World War II, Billy suddenly finds himself continuously slingshotting between various moments in his past and his future. Worst of all, he has no control over where he goes and when. As a result, the reader must learn about the novel’s events out of order and piece together a cohesive storyline.
This time-shifting style classifies Slaughterhouse-Five within the realm of ‘nonlinear narratives,’ or stories in which the reader does not learn about events in the order in which they actually occur. Additionally, there should be a repeated pattern of time shifts for a narrative to count as nonlinear — a single time jump simply won’t do it.
Through creative and differing uses of time jumps authors often attempt to draw our attention to the past or the future. Whether to predict future society or analyze and examine past issues and events, time travel provides countless opportunities to explore alternate periods. For example, take Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred. The story opens in 1976 in Maryland as an African-American woman named Dana moves into a new house with her boyfriend, Kevin. However, Dana quickly finds herself inexplicably pulled back in time to antebellum Maryland in the early 19th century. By making Dana exist and survive on a plantation in 1800s America for longer and longer periods, Butler forces the reader to confront a terrible history through the experiences of a modern black woman. Dana must quickly adapt to a world that can use a single word or misplaced gaze to justify her killing in any number of horrific ways. Kindred’s blending of present and past makes clear how easily the atrocities of slavery are excused or ignored because they are “in the past.” Our confrontation with antebellum Maryland through Dana’s eyes shows us the inescapable danger enslaved people faced at every single moment — they are not, and never could be, reduced to figures in a history book.
Kindred and many other stories that draw attention to past events or anticipate the future are vital pieces of literature. After all, one of art’s purposes is to educate us about worlds and times we cannot experience ourselves. Yet, that is precisely what makes Slaughterhouse-Five different than other nonlinear narrative stories. The novel partially focuses on horrific historical events from World War II, such as the firebombing of Dresden in 1945, and also includes segments from futuristic alien encounters. However, Vonnegut does not want our attention to linger on these periods — instead, the nonlinear narrative serves to realign our focus on the present. The novel depicts the past and the future as one indiscernible jumble, highlighting the importance of the little sliver of time we experience as the here and now.
It’s easy to feel like we’ve come unstuck in time, just like Billy, being pulled in all directions and never allowed to become comfortable where we are. Luckily, we are grounded in the wonderful ‘right now.’ As Slaughterhouse-Five’s nonlinear narrative attempts to teach us, we always have one constant: the present. Actively and purposefully notice where you are, and it transforms from a little sliver of time into, indeed, the entire world. Vonnegut emphasizes the quiet beauty that exists in the present, in its reliability, that we do not recognize often enough because we are so focused on where we are going next or where we just came from. Noticing a flower sprouting, smelling fresh rain on the pavement, or, as Vonnegut ends the novel, hearing a bird singing, “Poo-tee-weet?” — every second we experience is a second that nobody else ever will. That specialness makes each second worth noticing.
In the novel, Billy Pilgrim interacts with a species of aliens called Tralfamadorians. These clever, green, toilet plunger-shaped creatures see time very differently from humans — they explain to Billy that time occurs all at once, with past, present, and future indistinguishable. Billy, having already bounced around through time, knows this is true. He could interpret the timeline’s predetermination to mean that each moment is meaningless, but he doesn’t. Instead, this reaffirms to him that each moment is uniquely special and deserves to be cherished, predetermined or not. As one of the Tramfalmadorians tells Billy, “Why anything? Because it simply is.” It doesn’t matter when a moment occurs or the outcome — the fact that it is happening right now is reason enough to pay attention.
What does it mean to live in the present? The answer might be different for each of us. Still, it involves a conscious focus on where we are and what we are doing, making it difficult to consistently engage with. However, the rewards are well worth the effort. Whether it brings a greater understanding of ourselves, the world around us, or who we want to be, focusing on the present will unfalteringly effect a heightened sense of how we fit into the world. Billy Pilgrim, bouncing endlessly throughout his life’s moments over and over, can experience an event multiple times, but we cannot. Staying present all the time is impossible and exhausting, but we should try the best we can. It is all we have, after all.
Near the beginning of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy muses on the nature of time and how he fits within it all. “I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
As the reader (and Billy Pilgrim) eventually learn, no matter where we are, the answers to those questions are always up to us.
– Connor
Jagadish Chandra Bose and the Export of Science Fiction from Britain to Colonial India in the 19th Century
November 27, 2023 § 7 Comments
In November of 1947, my grandmother was born. She was the only one of her siblings to be born in free India. Though as a nation we’d acquired our freedom, the condition of the country as a whole couldn’t be worse. Not only had the British established an economic system designed entirely to loot India to the tune of one trillion dollars, they also drew an arbitrary line between India and Pakistan, resulting in the beginning of the war in Kashmir, which continues to stymy the formation of any functional and sustainable relationship between the two nations. Thus, alongside being at war with our former compatriots, we’d fallen from being a country that, prior to colonization, accounted for a quarter of the world GDP, to a shell of a nation in which a staggering 70% of people lived in poverty, and 88% of people were illiterate. This was the country that my grandmother was born into.
Given the staggering levels of poverty and even higher levels of illiteracy, it intuitively carries that it was the Indian elite who, particularly during colonial rule, but even during independence, were mouthpieces for sustenance of our culture and at the forefront of advancement in academia. These elites were almost exclusively educated in the United Kingdom and were active in English society. No Indian is a better example of the role of the Indian elite, as well as of the influence that the British had on cultivating the Indian elite and associated Colonial Indian culture, than Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858 – 1937). Bose was educated at Cambridge and the University College of London, and did much of his research at the Royal Institution in London. Bose was among the dying breed of polymaths at the forefront of several academic subjects. He studied Physics, Biology, and Botany. Notably, Bose studied radio microwave optics; his research was critical in developing radio communication technology, and is among the fathers of radio communication. Moreover, in 1917, he established the Bose Institute in India, Asia’s first interdisciplinary research institute. In short, Bose is an embodiment of the role that Indian elites during Colonial rule had in exporting Western advances and academic institutions. Relevant to our discussion, however, and connected to the previous point, Bose is regarded as the first Indian Science Fiction author. It is true, the Science Fiction genre was introduced to India by a man assimilated into British society. Stated another way, Indian science fiction in its infancy is a colonial artifact.
Bose published The Story of the Missing One in 1896. This is widely acknowledged as the first significant work of Indian science fiction. The story came less than eighty years after Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published, thus characterizing the inheritance of literary culture that came with British Colonial rule over India. The Story of the Missing One is an exceptional one. It’s a short story that Bose wrote as part of a competition sponsored by a hair oil company that was pursuing a creative marketing ploy. Specifically, to participate in the competition, the sole criteria was that the name of the brand, Kuntol Keshori, be included in the story. With regard to plot, The Story of the Missing One follows the tale of a massive incoming cyclone in the state of Bengal, and is a metaphor for nationalistic sentiment against the national havoc wreaked by colonialism. The protagonist, a man in failing health who lives in the Bay of Bengal, is panicked when word spreads that a massive cyclone is to destroy Bengal in a matter of days. The protagonist remembers that his daughter had left him with a bottle of hair oil, telling him that oil separates from water and can calm the water surface. He empties the bottle, and the cyclone never hits. With regard to the plot, the cyclone hitting Bengal is analogous to the British arrival in Bengal, while the oil can be seen as a metaphor for the evil eye, a pendant commonly used in Middle Eastern and Indian culture to ward off evil spirits. It also incorporates elements of science; namely, the simple principle of the way oil and water interact.
Under the surface, the story is now also considered to be among the body of late 19th century works that anticipated Chaos Theory’s “ Butterfly Effect” (Scottish Physicist James Clerk Maxwell and French Polymath Henri Poincaré being two other notable early proponents of the theory), in which the accumulation of consequences of an initially trivial catalyst results in a large effect, well before it was formally established in science in the mid to late 20th century, and over half a century before it was widely accepted as having first been captured in literature. The manner in which the Butterfly Effect is incorporated into the story is as follows: the story explores ideas of weather control, and the manner in which the cyclone is controlled is by a small bottle of hair oil.
Despite Bose’s academic and literary prowess, much of his work has been downplayed in history. For instance, the Butterfly Effect is still widely and incorrectly considered to have first been documented in fictional literature in Ray Bradbury’s 1952 science fiction short story entitled A Sound of Thunder. Moreover, his contributions to the field of biophysics, in particular toward Radio technology, have only received due recognition in recent history. Bose’s case is interesting in that it gives a window into the role of elite Indians under colonial rule as it relates to the export and adaptation of literary trends (science fiction) and institutions (Bose Research Institute) from Britain to India. Bose’s story also gives insight into the contributions of elite minority groups in 19th Century England, and how despite extreme academic and literary prowess, these contributions have long been downplayed and are only beginning to receive due credit.
Sanat Malik
Sources
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021989420966772
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/introduction-to-runaway-cyclone-and-sheesha-ghat/
https://www.theweek.in/theweek/leisure/2020/12/17/fantastic-worlds-and-where-to-find-them.html
Image sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28115776
https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/economics/the-butterfly-effect
Wretched, Rotten Little Beasts!: Five Nights at Freddy’s and Machines with Souls
November 15, 2023 § 4 Comments
Spoiler Warning: Major spoilers for the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie ahead!
A typical senior year Halloweekend generally consists of partying, maybe jumping from one frat to another, and a whole lot of mischief. Mine consisted of sitting my friends down in front of my TV as I delivered a powerpoint presentation on the full and complete lore for Five Nights at Freddy’s before we went to see it on opening day, October 27. Dressed as Michael Afton, the security guard and the film’s protagonist with my purple shirt and security guard hat, I meticulously explained the difference between the Bite of ‘83 and the Bite of ‘87, each and every mini game, and the Afton family tree in time for the film’s premiere.
Five Nights At Freddy’s is a video game franchise created by Scott Cawthon in 2014 which ballooned into an international phenomenon, with thirteen games, twenty eight books, and now, finally, a movie. In the games, you play as a security guard tasked with watching over the animatronics of a pizzeria on the night shift. In the first game, you go by the name Mike Schmidt, though your true identity is Michael Afton. During the game, the animatronics seem to come to life and attempt to hunt you down in your office, and it’s your job to keep them at bay until the clock strikes 6:00. The truth behind these animatronics, however, is that they’re possessed by the souls of murdered children seeking vengeance on their killer, the owner of the restaurant and Michael Afton’s father, William Afton. What’s worse is that it’s not just their souls which are trapped in the animatronic suits, but their bodies as well, which tether them to this world and force them to live out their days as singing animals performing to other children, some of whom will meet the very same fate.
The film and the games are very different in some critical ways, which garnered criticism from both longtime fans of the games and newcomers alike. For one, a critical element of the games is that Michael is William Afton’s son, while in the movie, it’s Vanessa, a police officer who in the games is the main antagonist of the later generation games, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted and Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach. In my opinion, one thing which the movie improves upon is the humanity of the animatronics. While in the games they appear more mindless, the movie emphasizes how the bloodthirsty robots are really just children whose lives were cut short, and they act accordingly in the movie, with silly scenes like building forts with Mike’s younger sister, Abby, and playing music for their guests some of the most fun scenes in the film.
The most pivotal scene in the movie is when it’s revealed that the childrens’ killer is none other than “Steve Raglan,” whose true name is William Afton, (Matthew Lillard) the hiring manager who suggested Mike start his job at Freddy’s in the first place. At the end of the movie, William attempts to get the four animatronics to attack Mike, Abby and Vanessa, but once Abby reveals to the dead children that William is not their friend, but the cause of their death, the animatronics side with Mike and the crew, and William is killed by the Golden Bonnie suit he dons to control the animatronics. This is reminiscent of a cut scene from the third game, where William Afton, also known as “Purple Guy,” hides in one of his animatronic suits and is killed when the springlocks fail due to rain and snap shut, killing him.
The tragedy of Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t necessarily that William Afton is using his restaurant to kill children. The real tragedy is that the souls of his victims are forced to remain tethered to this world, desperately searching for William, their creator, and being unable to find justice until it’s already too late. Much like Frankenstein’s Monster in the novel Frankenstein, the children are doomed to a cruel existence by a creator who wants nothing to do with them. Even in the most dire situations, however, like the Monster, who seeks knowledge and understanding in the way of art and literature, the dead children still seek what every child wants — companionship, understanding, and love. They didn’t choose their fates of possessing animatronic suits, but unable to change their situations, they seek vengeance on a world which has abandoned them, leading them to do horrible things. Although it’s easy to write off Frankenstein’s Monster as a mindless amalgam of discarded body parts who’s bloodthirsty for human flesh, it’s the rejection by Frankenstein which spurs his killing spree. Similarly, Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica don’t intend to kill Mike simply because he works at their restaurant, they try to kill him (at least in the games) because they believe he is William Afton, their killer and tormentor.
Robots attacking their creator is nothing new, but the connection Scott Cawthon draws between childhood, innocence, vengeance, and hatred creates a fascinating thread of motive when it comes to the animatronics. Watching the same story I’ve studied religiously since Markiplier’s first playthrough of Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 when I was twelve years old was an emotional experience for me, being able to see the movie after nine years at the ripe age of twenty one. The movie does a fantastic job at portraying the animatronics as they’re meant to be seen: children whose innocence was taken from them at the hands of a man they thought they could trust. Grossing now over $250 million with a budget of $25 million, it’s safe to say that Five Nights at Freddy’s is in line for a sequel, and I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s in store for Freddy Fazbear.
– Sawyer
“Us”: The Hidden Self and Duality
November 13, 2023 § 6 Comments
“There’s a family in our driveway.”
This line, and the scene it comes from in “Us” (2019) by Jordan Peele, does a few things. It’s terrifying – that’s an important one for any horror film. It’s the image of a family inside a home, holding each other in fear of what’s outside, and another family outside, holding hands, looking in. The home invasion, the blurring of the lines between what is outside and inside, and the complications of meeting our inner selves all bubble up in one unsettling moment. But it, along with the movie itself, operates on much more than just the surface level.
Jordan Peele is an ardent student of horror. But he also is intentionally operating in a genre that tends only to include Black characters to kill them off early and grotesquely. For example, the tagline of the 2023 black comedy slasher “The Blackening” is literally “We Can’t All Die First,” in an homage to the frequent and problematic nature of the use of tokenized Black characters in horror. Jordan Peele works against this, first through his relatively novel act in the horror genre of… having Black protagonists … (the genre clearly has a long way to go), but also through his integration of aspects of the experience of Blackness and racism as central components of the plot lines his characters have to navigate. His integration of racism with horror is a combination that we’ve also seen occur in science fiction, with Black science fiction writers multiplying since the 1990s, drawing on their own experiences and racism throughout American history to create Afrofuturist reimaginings, neo-victorian stories, and neo-slave narratives.
Part of what Peele does so well is integrating disturbing elements of racism into the explicit horror of his films. “Us” most explicitly operates on the level of duality, where every character has a double that demonstrates their “evil twins.” Although the idea of this evil twin, or hidden self, would likely conjure to most minds Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and often in white literature doubles operate only on the level of “evil twin,” it tends to have a different role in Black works. Duality’s prevalence in Black literature, both from the early 20th century and in Neo-Victorian works, sheds more light on the dual self, or the ‘hidden-self’ as a means of self-preservation for a marginalized group, especially in the act of code-switching, and the insidious ways that hidden duality lives on today in our culture.
An early 20th-century piece, Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins, first published between 1902-1903, directly takes on the hidden self in one of the first examples of Afro-futurism. Hopkins challenged conceptions of race and segregation in her time by demonstrating how three characters, all siblings, but one raised white and the others Black, had to mediate their own experiences with race and present themselves racially to fully participate in society. The work’s main character, Reuel, passes as white to become a successful doctor while hiding his heritage. For Reuel, this extreme form of the hidden self, a semi-permanent code-switch necessitated by segregation & racism, separated him from not just his culture but also his destiny as the ruler of an Afro-futurist empire. When he eventually accepted his fate, he accepted his Black heritage publicly when he briefly journeyed back to America. He was no longer tied to the hegemonic forces that forced him to hide.
The dual self is also prevalent in more modern works, like Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Dana, a Black woman from the 1970s, is repeatedly pulled through time to the 1810s in Maryland, where she has to help her plantation-owning white ancestor to ensure her own existence. Dana occupies a marginalized and vulnerable position: she is both a Black woman in early 19th century America, and is an outsider, literally existing between time periods, and immediately seen as different. She scares her white ancestors because of her education & knowledge of the future. At the same time, the enslaved people on the plantation also see her as different, noting how differently she talks and how odd her clothes are (jeans! Can you imagine?!). As Dana stays longer on the plantation, she’s shocked by how much she adapts to enslavement. Dana increasingly finds herself changing how she acts because her race and gender make her a target in a time that she knew of, but could not know, because she had not experienced it. Dana uses code-switching to keep herself safe and constantly hides parts of herself or adapts to survive.
“Us” is by far the most literal example of such duality. The evil twins, aka “the tethered,” are the physical manifestation of what we choose to hide and the sides of ourselves we wish not to see. Peele himself referred to how the tethered can be understood as manifestations of our luck. We are not owed anything by where we are born or the color of our skin, and we often too easily forget who pays for our luck. Those in dominant hegemonic systems quickly forget those who are not. In “Us,” the tethered existence is explained as abandoned government experiments originally designed to control us, but they also operate as the selves we push down and the sides that we hide from even ourselves.
The tethered live in hidden tunnels that crisscross around America: pathways, passageways, freedom and prison residing below the surface, like the literal Underground Railroad in Colson Whitehead’s novel. This duality, the hiding, is a through line throughout all these works because of its centrality to a marginalized group still pushed to the hegemonic outskirts and forced to hide aspects of themselves through strategies like code-switching. Through code-switching, hidden selves, and secret truths, “Us” is the latest in a long line of works by Black creators designed to interrogate the question of ourselves and the other ourselves.
The Immersive Value of Experimental Epistolary Fiction in Horror
November 8, 2023 § 4 Comments
There is a sequence in the original Resident Evil that stands out with a recurring prominence in my mind for its unsettling and entrancing nature. While creeping from room to room within the second floor of the menacing Spencer Mansion, the player character will eventually encounter a small, dreary bedroom and more importantly, a personal diary. Upon inspection, the diary appears to have been written by some kind of maintenance staff in charge of feeding animals housed within the mansion’s basement prior to the location becoming overrun by hordes of the undead. The personal accounts of events at the mansion are both ominous and troubling, setting the stage for the narrative to come. The worker recounts feeding a horrifying, sadistic creature that resembles “a gorilla without any skin,” and goes on to document a period of intense hysteria as some kind of horrible accident has taken place within the laboratory below. As the entries go on, it is clear that the narrator has been affected by a contagion from the facilities below and he undergoes both physical and mental transformation. The accounts become shorter and eventually almost childlike as he describes both his failing body as well as the killing of a coworker.
I bring up this uncomfortable moment in an otherwise campy piece of late 90’s gaming media because I found it shockingly immersive for its simplicity, so immersive in fact that I distinctly remember being badly startled when I closed the journal and the reanimated corpse of the maintenance worker limped forwards out of the closet behind my avatar. There’s something special about literature existing inside of an already fictional world. It’s a complete dedication to the setting down to the tiniest facets. This connection is made all the more potent in a horror format where information on the protagonist’s situation is all the more scarce and confused, and an unnerving diary can often raise more questions than it answers. This methodology of story-telling through series of writings is referred to as epistolary fiction and acts as an incredibly unique way to convey a narrative. I really love epistolary fiction, and particularly experimental epistolary fiction in mediums like video games, because it offers a narrative experience to the observer that isn’t tied down by a need for convention or compromise. It is a methodology that invokes the spirit of the fictional world and impresses it upon the reader by a full immersion of perspective. This greater level of detail and immersion lends a credibility to the text that makes it feel vibrant and life-like.
The first instance of notable horror-centric epistolary fiction came in the form of Frankenstein and Dracula within the 19th century. Both of these works incorporate an epistolary style and in-universe storytelling methodology to draw the reader into their worlds. Frankenstein begins and ends with the letters of captain Robert Walton to his sister, roughly framing the story as a verbal transcription of Victor’s autobiography within his dying days. Similarly, Dracula is largely centered on the journal entries and letters of Jonathan Harker and Dr. Seward among others. These works laid the groundwork for works to come by establishing a wider world through the use of perspectives external from what we can roughly consider the main protagonists to communicate the externality of the respective threats. In Frankenstein, it is not just Victor who was threatened by the existence of the creature, but society at large. Robert Walton is almost an everyman despite his seafaring exploits, so seeing his reactions to the monster both validates Victor’s emotional responses in his own narrative, as well as grants us a greater level of intimacy in the form of observing the creature as a person existing outside of the sequence of events that define the novel. The events are now tangible. The creature poses a danger that Walton, now as someone who has personally taken in Victor’s story, can appreciate. Similarly, Dracula also utilizes this multi-character, epistolary style with a greater level of meticulous detail to capture events in a way that makes them build upon each other. This interconnected web of tangible, transcribed events builds a similar level of narrative intimacy, and so the threat has a greater impact.
As time has gone on, the incorporation of epistolary fiction has been repeatedly innovated upon. The strongest element of this transition in my mind is the greater reliance on the technique to flesh out the world by presenting an object that simply exists within it, rather than a traditional narrative reshaped into a journal format. This stylistic choice can make the setting feel expansive and lacking in the constraints that a traditional narrative has when it comes to world building. Without a doubt, my favorite modern iteration of this epistolary horror fiction is Max Brooks’s World War Z. If you’re unfamiliar with the work or have only encountered the Brad Pitt film that diverges from the source material to an unfathomable degree, World War Z is an in-universe set of journalistic interviews that chronicle the life stories of a globally diverse group of survivors in a society reeling from a post-apocalyptic, viral outbreak. Zombies are somewhat of a predictable genre convention at this point, but the very human element and distinct perspective of Brooks’s work gives it a uniquely immersive character. The accounts build on each other as they continue. Early on in the novel a narrator who worked in a pharmaceutical company explains how his branch pushed a rabies vaccine to market as a likely faulty product simply to capitalize on media hype. A few stories later and a mother makes reference to inoculating her children with the same faulty vaccine.
I think that this is a fantastic use of the epistolary technique because it uses these interviews to formulate a world that wouldn’t be possible in a traditional first-person or third person omniscient perspective. The manipulation of time and the variety of speakers in this format makes possible the inclusion of incredibly niche, but believable details such as a mass extinction of whale species in the midst of this horrific natural catastrophe, the perspective of astronauts on the ISS, and an exploration of the reformed world governments. There’s something magical about those little details. They feel like a news headline you would glance out of the corner of your eye on a Monday morning, and therefore further the illusion of a living breathing world. Because this feels like a feasible world, the effect of the horror elements is magnified. The threat is now believable. The reader has drawn a connection from the text to their own life.
Video games present a unique challenge and opportunity for the epistolary narrative as the experience will always be player driven. The world is already immersive and shaped by the observer, therefore it doesn’t make sense to force the central narrative to revolve around a series of letters. This has resulted in the mass adoption of the audio log or a multitude of variants of it. Audio logs are traditionally some kind of setting appropriate tape recording and traditionally act as a diary for a minor or even unnamed character, likely prior to their eventual fate in a horror context. This is an evolution of the aforementioned Resident Evil journal.
Bioshock in particular stands out in my mind for its excellent use of audio logs. The primary narrative involves an amnesiac discovering the crumbling remains of a once great underwater metropolis called Rapture. What was an objectivist utopia for a population of artists and entrepreneurs has devolved into a crumbling industrial disaster populated by deranged mutants addicted to genetic modification following a period of civil strife. You as the player get to explore the decaying carcass of a once vibrant art deco urban center. To effect many of the audio logs focus on both politics from before the collapse of organized society, as well as the maddened writings of those who have lost themselves to Adam, the drug that allows genetic modification at the cost of one’s sanity.
Within Bioshock, you as the player have effectively arrived late to the party. Society has collapsed and anarchy reigns. It would be unnatural and awkward to sit the player down and force exposition upon them. Therefore these audio logs act as an excellent storytelling device within the environment. They do not require a breaking of immersion as they exist and have been created by characters within the universe. Rapture has a history, politics, and people. This diversity and depth of thought makes its environment feel like a real place where people have lived and now subsequently died, rather than just a level created solely for you to explore. This treatment of the setting as almost a character in itself creates an intense feeling of unease. Bioshock tends not to rely on moment to moment jumpscares, but the deranged ramblings of artists who’ve lost sight of any kind of moral sensibility and their lingering presence on the environment instills a more insidious feeling of uncomfortability. The audio logs capture this characterization in a way that feels natural, and does not require these horrific characters to continue existing within the scene. Through this methodology, narrative immersion can flourish naturally outside of the constraints of the traditional story-telling conceits.
The epistolary narrative is excellent because it utilizes in-universe texts to convey the narrative, offering a greater level of immersion through a deeper intimacy with the setting and a wider perspective through the use of multiple points of view. This greater level of detail and immersion lends a credibility to the text that makes it feel vibrant and life-like. When applied to horror, this life-like quality can be used to great effect to entrance the reader into a believable situation with a credible threat. This is only compounded by experimental fiction like World War Z in which a vast number of perspectives are used to fully capture a global perspective, and going so far as to have the book exist as an in-universe document, as well as through the use of interactive media like horror video games where player immersion is uniquely powerful. One can only imagine where the format will evolve from here, and I for one strongly hope to see more examples of the boundaries of traditional storytelling pushed further outwards in favor of bold, entrancing ideas.
-Patrick
Video credits (In order of appearance)
“Resident Evil Keeper’s Diary.” YouTube, uploaded by Itchy. Tasty. July 22nd, 2013. https://youtu.be/8_BuiCuyi_w?si=mX0bDzbzVzs0kAqH
“Dracula – FF Coppola – 1992.” YouTube, uploaded by Arthur Giguelay. November 30th, 2016. https://youtu.be/2QRjw1l3xXI?feature=shared
“Bioshock Remastered – Andrew Ryan’s Introductory Speech.” YouTube, uploaded by JPulowski. January 31st, 2020. https://youtu.be/hyur9r0ekZY?si=a1Bmo0kt2G3DCKir
”Sander Cohen – The Doubters (Bioshock Audio Diary) [HD].” YouTube, uploaded by MrTeaNTeaEntertain. November 2nd, 2013. https://youtu.be/-vX0h5Yh9iA?si=DmM-JqSLxIFo4SPt
The Others: Black Exclusion and Creation within the Science Fiction Genre
November 6, 2023 § 8 Comments
My father is a science fiction fanatic. Due to this, I’ve seen bits and pieces of some of the most iconic sci-fi media in Hollywood, such as Star Trek and The Fifth Element, while growing on my own to love films like Back to the Future and Galaxy Quest. Because of him, I even have dabbled in Star Wars content, though the main films I have seen v. have not is a list that often offends true Star Wars fans. While my father continues to this day to turn on these films and shows anytime he’s bored or they’re on cable, I’ve rarely seen him jump at the chance to watch anything as much as he rewatched Black Panther and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Seeing one of his favorite genres with characters that looked like him was something groundbreaking for my dad that he only noticed subconsciously. However, as someone who has spent years studying representation in film and television, I recognize it as the joy one can only feel when seeing oneself on screen as the hero after years of loving sidekicks. I felt similarly when Disney released The Princess and the Frog and Jasmine was no longer the princess that looked most like me. This issue of representation in general, but specifically in science fiction, has led me to wonder why it has taken all these years for my father to be able to have this moment.
My dad at Disney World on two separate occasions showcasing his love for Star Wars
It is first important to note the relevance of science fiction and why representation within the genre is so important. Since its conception, science fiction has provided writers with outlets to either guess at a future possibility of humanity or to critique our present with a dystopian future. This has aided in a push not just of imagination, but recognition of some of our real life issues, such as The Hunger Games’ exploration of how a capitalist class system is ultimately harmful and rooted in keeping the rich on top. Because of this impact, it seems obvious that other political issues such as racism and homophobia would also be dealt with through the use of the genre, but that continued to not be the case. It is also important to note that many of the allegorical issues presented by white authors through science fiction already (unintentionally) reference the issues of people of color. In order to have their own confrontations with issues of acceptance, prejudice, etc. they have to write themselves within an allegorical context, whereas readers of color might recognize the issues as their own day to day lives. I believe this is why so much Black science fiction today, for example, deals overtly with racial issues while utilizing allegories and metaphors to aid in these ideas, because to just use allegory to talk about race would not help to advance the conversation.
Frankenstein’s monster, who is often recognized as an allegory for racial othering
It is also important to note how differently white characters have been presented from “others” since the beginning of the genre. Science fiction has never shied away from the idea of dealing with the “other,” or a figure that stands out from the general population of humanity. Sometimes this has been done through the villainous figures within the stories, with aliens being one of the most common threats to humanity in classic science fiction. This idea of the other being evil, while the hero (who is almost every single time, white) represents good, is a staple in sci-fi, as these others often sub in for people of color. For example, the Klingons in the original Star Trek series were known for brutalizing others, a common stereotype of Black people, and not only did they serve as a racialized other, but the actors themselves appeared in blackface.
Beyond this othering of the opposers, there is also an othering of the main characters themselves. The reason for a main character’s impact on the system they operate within is because they are somehow different from everyone else. In an older example, Marty McFly sticks out due to him being from the future, whereas, in a more recent example, Jonas in The Giver sticks out because of the position he holds in society that is only presented to one person every few decades. A character has to have a differing viewpoint to find issues with the system they live in, so it seems obvious that they should be an other. However, characters of color are less often placed into this role, despite the set-up making it an easy and obvious route to take in aiding the genre while continuing to make a social commentary. At least, until now.
Over the past few decades, efforts have been made to increase Black science fiction in both literature and film/television media. While the nineteenth century provided some examples of Black sci-fi and Afrofuturism such as Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood, it really began to pick up speed when authors like Octavia Butler and Charles Saunders began creating work. Their work focused on connecting ideas of Blackness and the history of Black people in America to the genre of sci-fi, such as in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred in which a Black woman time travels between the slavery period and the 1970s. Their work also has continued to influence Black sci-fi today, with modern writers like Colson Whitehead using the genre to tackle similar issues. This has continued in film and television media as well, with Jordan Peele’s Nope, Black Panther, the Spiderverse films, and, most recently, They Cloned Tyrone having Black characters finally getting to take center stage and claim a genre practically built for telling our stories.
Miles Morales, the first onscreen Black Spider-Man
While there is still a small selection of Black science fiction, the recent surge in content from Black creatives within the sci-fi space prove that we are only in for more. The box-office successes of these films and best-seller lists earned by these authors prove that there is merit in Black storytelling within this medium and if Marty Mcfly can time travel, then a Black woman like Dana can too. And I’ll be at each new screening with my father ready to watch his world change all over again.
-Sarah Beth
Sources:
https://whs-windsorct.libguides.com/specfic/blacksf
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/arts/cloned-tyrone-juel-taylor.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/06/entertainment/black-horror-sci-fi-television-movies-cec/index.html
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/16/7223107/science-fiction-matters
The Potential of Purgatory in “After Life”
November 2, 2023 § 5 Comments
In the second verse of “Dream Song”, alternative pop artist Samia croons, “There are six minutes of brain activity after the body’s dead / ‘cause you get your dreams for free / you get your dreams for free”.
Soundtrack to the post, naturally. Listen!
The question of what happens after death continues to hang like a specter over pop culture, something I was reminded of last night when conducting a Tuesday-Halloween appropriate watch of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and often think of when listening to “Dream Song”. Although Samia has alluded to the well-known scientific belief that freshly dead individuals can have up to ten minutes of post mortem electrical activity, beyond that, we come up empty. Instead, we’re left to guess, hoping that even if not correct, an explanation will reveal something poignant or true about living and what we carry with us when we die.
After Life, or ‘ワンダフルライフ’ (Wonderful Life) is a Japanese movie from 1998 that takes place over the course of a week. The film opens on Monday, during which a group of deceased check in to a processing center and are told they have a few days to choose one memory which they will live in forever. The rest, they will forget. Once chosen, case workers will help them recreate this memory in the form of a short clip; upon viewing their clips on Saturday, the lost souls will move on. It’s a solemn reflection on one’s own life, presented to viewers through a variety of standout characters: an older woman, Kiyo Nishimura, who spends the whole week silently collecting acorns and leaves; a man obsessed with vaulting his sexual conquests who eventually chooses a memory from his daughter’s wedding; a surly, spiky-haired teenager who refuses to pick.
One could watch this movie solely to enjoy these characters, how they fit around the moments of stillness that director Hirokazu Kore-eda is renowned for. I am (on principle) obsessed with a movie that scores so sparingly, if only because it reveals the way that we incessantly soundtrack our own lives through a variety of small noises: the sniffle of a nose, the sound of hair brushing against a shirt, the click of a door. In the dead space of a movie’s soundscape, each of these noises is amplified and becomes its own form of song. It’s this meditative quiet that allows one to absorb the stories of the dead, the long-form and interview style prompting introspection.
But I’m more interested in the attendants at this halfway point, the individuals who mediate the transition between life and the afterlife yet have never been able to choose a memory and move on themselves. What does it mean to exist in a permanent state of limbo? The film toys at a romantic tension between Shiori and Takashi, the two youngest attendants; however, Takashi eventually chooses a memory after learning that his past lover had selected a moment with him to live in when she passed through. While Takashi’s journey is the central narrative of the film, I am much more interested in Shiori. I’m captivated by this idea of her ‘life’: of dying, yet living essentially an eternal second life in a space that doesn’t exist, creating memories that everyone is required to forget. On top of that, falling in love, only to experience the fresh newness of heartbreak, tasked with finishing Takashi’s mystery novel for him when he’s gone. Infinite, but at what cost?
There’s this breathtaking moment near the end where Shiori knows for certain that Takashi is leaving and she goes to the roof to grieve by kicking at the snow. Never screaming, not even really crying. Just breathing, wet.
And then she runs herself a steaming bath. Ugh- this image. But even as we witness her hurt, there’s an underlying notion that already she’s healing.
Her character is teeming with potential, when viewers think Takashi and Shiori might get together, but even more so when he’s gone. Thus, the movie closes on a Monday, as she welcomes a new group and begins again.
I was hesitant to center my blog post around this movie because there’s nothing that explicitly defines it as science fiction. Science fiction is extraordinary when at its biggest and brightest: exploring solar systems, revealing creatures beyond our world, describing technology that allows for time travel. Instead, as far as technology goes, this movie’s relatively simple: the memories are shot on film, the sets are far from lifelike, and as viewers we never get an explanation for how the mechanisms of this benevolent purgatory work. People show up through a mysterious doorway filled with smoke, and disappear in the blink of an eye. But that’s because this movie doesn’t feel bothered with answering the How question; in fact, by purposefully avoiding the How, it demonstrates how irrelevant the How is to what really matters. Oftentimes, fantastical elements are just vessels through which to consider the minuscule, beautiful specks of humanity, reminding us of our place in things. That’s exactly what After Life features: the mundanity of life, both in its first and alternate forms, but more importantly, the imagination and opportunity that each moment holds for reincarnation.
I’m still not sure what memory I would choose. Maybe I wouldn’t. But it’s worth thinking about.
Cameron
Sources:
ワンダフルライフ / After Life, written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. 1998.
All screenshots captured from the original film by me, streamed online.
“Dream Song” by Samia Finnerty from her album Honey released in 2023. Version linked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VpVLju8jXQ.
“Hirokazu Koreeda – Biography.” IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0466153/bio/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.
Reardon, Sara. Burst of Brain Activity during Dying Could Explain Life Passing before Your Eyes. https://www.science.org/content/article/burst-brain-activity-during-dying-could-explain-life-passing-your-eyes.
The Theremin: Theatrical, Threatening, and Therapeutic Star of the Sci-Fi Soundtrack
October 30, 2023 § 6 Comments
Have you ever heard of the theremin? Even if you haven’t, you’ve probably heard it. With its odd, wavering tone, evocative of a near-human moan or an alien contralto, the theremin is one of the most iconic instruments in the sci-fi repertoire—and, as I hope to convince my readers, tragically underutilized outside of it. Invented by a Soviet spy and played by conducting electricity through the player’s own body, the theremin deserves more notice not simply because of the beauty and versatility of its sound, but also because of the sheer drama that pervades every aspect of this one-of-a-kind instrument.
THE SCIENCE
The theremin doesn’t just sound like the engine of a flying saucer; the device itself is also like something out of a sci-fi novel. Going by the technical name “aetherphone,” the theremin is the only instrument played entirely without physical contact. One article describes a classic theremin as “a wooden box, mounted on four legs, with a straight antenna rising up from its top and a P-shaped loop antenna extending horizontally from its left side. Inside the box, the antennas [a]re connected to very high frequency oscillators made with vacuum tubes” (“Leon Theremin”). The two antennae create an electromagnetic field, which the musician interrupts by “form[ing] a capacitor between his hands and the antennas” (Eyck). In other words, the player’s body becomes a conduit for an electrical current.
By waving one hand near the upright antenna, the player controls pitch, while the other hand’s distance from the horizontal, looped antenna modulates volume. Partly because of the lack of keys, frets, or virtually any visual reference for the player, the theremin is notoriously difficult to play, requiring perfect pitch as well as years of painstaking practice. It’s punishing and unwieldy; innovative new instruments have disappeared from history for less. So where did the theremin originate, and how has it managed to cling to relevance until today?
THE FACTS
As a fantastical instrument, the theremin has a fittingly fantastical history. It was invented by accident in October of 1918 by Lev Sergeyevich Termen, a Russian physicist and engineer. At the time, he was trying to develop soundwave-based proximity sensors, or possibly measure the density of gasses (sources differ). He was surprised to discover that the proximity of his hands to the his prototype changed the device’s responses in testing, modulating an odd sound reminiscent of a human voice. Termen, who was also a trained cellist, pursued this unusual angle to develop the theremin’s first functional model, which he immediately began publicizing.
Nora McGreevy, writing for Smithsonian Magazine, reports, “Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin was so impressed by a 1922 demonstration [of the theremin]…that he sent the inventor on a tour of Russia, Europe and the United States to share his modern, Soviet sound with the world (and surreptitiously engage in industrial espionage)” (McGreevy). Termen toured major US cities from 1927 to 1938, going by the name León Theremin while delighting audiences in numerous concert halls. In this time, he gathered a dedicated following, further cultivated in this and subsequent decades by Clara Rockmore, a Russian émigré who became the theremin’s best-known and, in the opinion of many online fans, best-ever virtuosa.
Theremin himself gifted Rockmore her first theremin after seeing her affinity for the instrument (and later proposed to her—he was shot down). Rockmore then developed her own finger technique, allowing for far greater pitch control, and later convinced Theremin to design a new, more responsive model with a five-octave range, rather than the original three. Over the next few decades, several lines of theremins were produced for sale, selling for the equivalent of $2,600 today. Jayson Dobney, a Metropolitan Museum of Art musical instruments curator, asserts that the theremin was “the first successful electronic instrument” (McGreevey). It would go on to inspire the most famous electronic instrument, the commercial synthesizer, in 1964.
Unfortunately, Theremin’s grand tour would not end as well for him as it did for his instrument. By some accounts, Theremin’s travels were abruptly cut short when he was kidnapped by the KGB and forcefully returned to the USSR. Other sources maintain that he traveled home voluntarily, but either way, it’s certain that he was no longer trusted by the Soviet government upon his return. He was sent to a work camp upon his return in 1938, where he was forced to develop covert listening devices.
THE FICTION
The first movie to use the theremin in its soundtrack was the 1931 Soviet film Odna, or Alone, directed by Leonid Trauberg and Grigori Kozintsev. There were no aliens to be found in this feature; instead, the theremin was used to evoke the whirling winds of a treacherous snowstorm. The theremin debuted in Hollywood through Mitchell Leisen’s 1944 musical Lady in the Dark, after which it became associated with the eerie psychological thrillers of the late ’40s due to its prominence in Miklós Rózsa’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). In all of these films, it served to amplify the audience’s sense of a character’s mental and emotional distress through the constant, dissonant wavering of its tones. It would thereafter be used in The Spiral Staircase (1945), The Red House (1947), and Impact (1949).
The theremin warbled its way into sci-fi through Ferde Grofé’s score for 1950’s Rocketship X-M, in which its eerie tones accent the moment when the protagonists’ spaceship first lands on alien terrain. However, the film that cemented its associations with sci-fi and sci-fi horror with its iconic theremin riffs was unquestionably 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. Bernard Herrmann’s score fully foregrounded and explored the theremin’s musical possibilities in a new way, igniting interest that led to its inclusion in a slew of ’50s sci-fi classics including Phantom From Space (1953), It Came From Outer Space (1953), Project Moonbase (1953), The Bride of Frankenstein (1955), and The Day The World Ended (1955).
Dr. Samuel Hoffman was the thereminist for many of these scores. Originally a violin prodigy and podiatrist curious about the intersection of music and medicine, he learned about the theremin through its inventor himself, when León Theremin was living in New York in the ’30s. Having acquired an unusual, oversized model early in that decade, he studied it extensively and, beginning in 1936, formed or participated in a series of small orchestras and bands incorporating the instrument. His 1947 orchestral album Music Out of the Moon was a favorite of Neil Armstrong, so much so that he brought a recording to play on the Apollo 11 mission—yes, Music Out of the Moon was actually played on the moon. This album was probably the original inspiration for the composer for Rocketship X-M and the enduring link thereafter between the theremin and sci-fi. Hoffman’s movie music career ended on a slightly embarrassing note: a 1966 horror western titled Billy The Kid Vs. Dracula, whose Dracula famously said of his career “I only regret Billy The Kid Vs. Dracula. Otherwise, I regret nothing” (Brend). Still, there is no denying that his movie work and orchestral recordings were essential to the theremin’s survival as a little-known but, for all that, much-beloved instrument.
THE FUTURE
The cult classics of the ’50s fueled the theremin’s heyday. Between then and the ’90s, it was used only sporadically until a 1993 biopic on León Theremin reignited interest in the instrument. Since then, the theremin has featured in films such as Tim Burton’s retro ’90s homages Ed Wood and Mars Attacks, the original Ghostbusters, the second season of Hannibal, and American Horror Story. As a theremin lover myself, I was especially excited to recognize it taking center stage in Marvel’s Loki series, backing up the series’ retro sci-fi aesthetics while also perfectly capturing the protagonist’s awe when faced with the existential implications of the Time Variance Authority.
However, due as much to its association with pulpy sci-fi monsters as to its unique sound, the theremin has struggled to gain recognition outside of the sci-fi and horror genres. Will Bates, composer for the documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, spoke to interviewers about the problems that the theremin’s sound (and reputation) posed for his soundtrack: “The other thing that was really important for Alex [the director] was that at no time should there be any kind of poking fun [at Scientologists]. We’re not here to judge anyone or anything….[and] the Theremin, midi sax, and harpsichord can sound cheesy, so that was something I was really aware of. Everything had to be played in a certain way and treated very seriously” (Tiedemann “Interview”).
Could the theremin ever be truly respected and incorporated into mainstream orchestral music? Following in the footsteps of Rockmore and Hoffman, contemporary thereminists like Dorit Chrysler and Grégoire Blanc have made some inroads in this direction. The theremin will likely never be more than a novelty outside of its home genres, but it could certainly afford to be a better-known novelty, as it provides composers with a unique resource for creating fresh and interesting orchestral pieces. If we don’t want the theremin to disappear into history, we need to popularize it, to create more space for the musicians who invest so much time and effort into learning to play it. Perhaps NASA’s Artemis II space mission in 2024 could provide a good opportunity. After all, who could pass up the poetry and, most of all, drama of sending Music Out of the Moon to the moon once more?
-Paige Elliott
SOURCES
Adapted from Gray, Anne K. “Clara Rockmore Biography.” Nadia Reisenberg/Clara Rockmore Foundation, https://nadiareisenberg-clararockmore.org/clara-rockmore-biography/.
“Block diagram Theremin.” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Block_diagram_Theremin.png.
Brend, Mark. “The Sound of Early Sci-Fi: Samuel Hoffman’s Theremin.” Reverb, https://reverb.com/news/the-sound-of-early-sci-fi-samuel-hoffmans-theremin.
Eyck, Carolina. “Theremin.” Carolina Eyck, https://www.carolinaeyck.com/theremin#:~:text=How%20does%20the%20theremin%20work,his%20hands%20and%20the%20antennas.
“Leon Theremin.” Lemelson-MIT, https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/leon-theremin.
McGreevey, Nora. “The Soviet Spy Who Invented the First Major Electronic Instrument.” Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/theremin-100-years-anniversary-instrument-music-history-180976437/.
Norelli, Clare N. “5 Gripping Examples of the Theremin in Cinema.” TheScriptLab, https://thescriptlab.com/features/main/8788-the-sound-of-the-theremin-in-cinema/.
“RCA Theremin Service Notes.” RCATheremin.com, https://rcatheremin.com/servicenotes.php.
“Scientist of the Day: Leon Theremin.” Linda Hall Library, https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/leon-theremin/.
Tiedemann, Garrett. “A History of the Theremin in Movie Music.” YourClassical, https://www.yourclassical.org/story/2016/07/15/theremin-movie-music.
—. “Interview: ‘Going Clear’ Composer Will Bates.” YourClassical, https://www.yourclassical.org/story/2015/04/06/will-bates-going-clear-interview.
Science/Fiction 
