Halloween

��ο'Horror Film' course keeps students on the edge of their seats

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 15:20:29 +0000

��ο'Horror Film' course keeps students on the edge of their seats

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 10/31/2023 - 11:20

Cutline

The "Horror Film" class offered through U of T’s Cinema Studies Institute examines movies spanning several decades, including early horror pictures (photos by LMPC via Getty Images, Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Our Community

Academics

Cinema Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Film

Halloween

Trinity College

Woodsworth College

Subheadline

“Horror provides a structured, formal space to explore experiences like death, decay and monstrosity that may otherwise be dangerous, hidden or off-limits"

When Carrie Reese turned 10, she invited friends to her house for a sleep-over birthday party and chose a special film to mark the occasion.

Equipped with plenty of pillows to clutch and hide behind, she and her friends nervously pressed play and began watching Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic 1963 horror film, The Birds.

Carrie Reese (supplied image)

It was the beginning of a lifelong interest in scary movies that she is now sharing through her course, Horror Film, at the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Cinema Studies Institute (See a list of Reese’s picks for Halloween viewing below).

The course examines horror films through a critical thinking lens, exploring key elements such as gender and genre as well as notions of space, the home and ownership. That extends to discussing ways that horror connects to emotion and experience, and how emotions like fear and dread can be visualized.

“It's about getting students to learn through images and to understand the value in studying images,” says Reese, a sessional instructor who holds a PhD in cinema studies from U of T. “Rather than talking about whether a film is good or bad, we’re critically investigating it and seeing how it helps us to understand different modes of being.”

The class studies movies spanning several decades including modern films such as Us (2019) and Candyman (1992), to classics such as Jaws (1975), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and early horror pictures such at Cat People (1942) and the original Frankenstein (1931).

(Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

Reese says she loves the fact that every student’s approach, interest and reaction to horror movies is unique, and she feeds off this wide spectrum of experiences and perspectives.

“I encourage students to come to horror movies in different ways and through their own interests,” she says. “It's been rewarding to see students who maybe have never taken a cinema studies class before and are able to have their first experience with the discipline through horror.”

Part of the course requires a deep dive into the films’ stories, and the techniques and methods used to evoke a fearful response.

“One of my favorite things to look at in horror is editing,” says Reese. “If there's something that's edited in like a jump scare, why are we responding to that? Because it's put in at a time that’s not expected. So we’re breaking those things down and talking about our reactions, but also examining how this is created on screen – how there are patterns in horror that we come to expect, but nevertheless continually surprise us.”

When it comes to fearful responses, Reese sees them first-hand during her in-class screenings of the course’s movies as the crowd of students hold their breath together or sigh in relief.

“It’s absolutely delightful to engage in screenings as a community and I think it's such an important experience,” says Reese, adding that the screenings are paired with reflective discussions that follow.

“We’re looking at how these things are presented visually and stylistically, and I’m seeing firsthand the way these images have shifted ways of critically thinking about media, about emotion, and about politics.”

But why do we subject ourselves to being frightened?

(Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

“This paradox, enjoying horror, has been studied in some of the canonical horror literature and it’s one of the things I had students explore in the first few weeks of the course,” says Reese.

“Horror provides a structured, formal space to explore experiences like death, decay and monstrosity that may otherwise be dangerous, hidden or off-limits. Part of the thrill is in seeing things we’re typically not supposed to see or experience. This is articulated in the ‘paradox of horror,’ or why we seek out and derive pleasure from frightening, horrific experiences, as articulated through the cinematic medium.”

Eric Kim, a second-year student and member of Woodsworth College with a double major in cinema studies and East Asian studies, says he is enjoying the class but admits he isn't a fan of horror films.

“I never really liked them growing up,” he says. “But over the past few years, I've really appreciated what directors like Jordan Peele (Nope, Us, Get Out) were doing with horror, and it made me realize what a strange blind spot it was in my understanding.

“What is it about a film that makes you want to scream in fear? I just wanted to dive into that question and confront that. And it's led to how I can start discussing my own anxieties through what I want to research in my other courses or what I create with my own stories and comics. Unknotting these emotions and finding a new creative perspective inside has been a delightful discovery.”

Addisa O’Brien Thompson, a member of Trinity College and a second-year student with a double major in cinema studies and international relations, says she adores horror films and being scared.

“I’m a fan of scary things,” she says. “Through this course, I’ve gained the ability to better analyze the variety of methods in which terror and disquiet are portrayed through film and instilled into the spectator. What I enjoy most about this course is how I have opportunities to explore the horror genre through these practical means.”

All of this analysis has inspired O’Brien Thompson to make a short film of her own for the course’s final assignment.

Similarly, Kim says he's inspired to create his own story. “It's forced me to reconsider everything I thought I understood about horror and encouraged me to start think about making one."

Six films Carrie Reese recommends for Halloween:

Ringu (dir. Hideo Nakata, 1998)

“A notorious Japanese horror film that I love for its take on the monstrosity of media. You may have seen the American remake, but the original provides a texture to its treatment of video and technology that I think is lost in the Hollywood version.”

Rec (dir. Paco Plaza, Jaume Balagueró, 2007)

“A scary, fun found-footage horror film that is a gruesome and increasingly relevant commentary on illness and quarantine.”

Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau, 2016)

“This film is known for its audience response to gore, but I promise it’s not as bad as the press makes it out to be. A coming-of-age cannibal story.”

Goodnight Mommy (dir. Veronika Franz, 2014)

“This is a film that has stuck with me for both its style and unique treatment of themes in the horror genre, including doubles, imposters, and cosmetic surgery. Worth a watch for the opening alone.”

Blood Quantum (dir. Jeff Barnaby, 2019)

“Another brilliant take on the zombie film that uses the genre to explore Indigenous heritage. The title refers to laws used to determine indigeneity. Shot in Quebec and New Brunswick.”

Nanny (dir. Nikyatu Jusu, 2022)

“This is a surrealist horror take that I have been thinking about because of the ways it so seriously and beautifully grapples with migration, work and care.”

Spooky subjects: ��ο'Monsters' course explores our fascination with the frightful

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:33:54 +0000

Spooky subjects: ��ο'Monsters' course explores our fascination with the frightful

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 10/30/2020 - 10:33

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Mythological monsters like Medusa are among the many frightening subjects studied by students in Professor Erik Gunderson's first-year foundations seminar (photo by Araldo De Luca/Corbis via Getty Images)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Our Community

Classics

Faculty of Art & Science

Halloween

St. Michael's College

Undergraduate Students

University College

Victoria College

As Halloween approaches, with its eerie collection of ghosts, goblins and beasts, University of Toronto Professor Erik Gunderson remains fearless as he explores frightening creatures both real and imagined in his course aptly called “Monsters.”

In the course, Gunderson compares ancient and mythological monsters with what is considered monstrosity in the modern world.

He also examines the concept of human “monsters.”

“I want students to have a sense of the ways that monsters are deployed,” says Gunderson, who is in the department of classics in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “What kind of thinking is facilitated when one starts talking about monsters and the problems they pose to normal society?”

The course is one of the faculty’s many first-year foundations seminars, which are available to first-year students and focus on issues, questions and controversies surrounding a particular topic or theme.

Althea Draghici, a first-year student and a member of St. Michael’s College who is planning to double major in psychology and criminology, says she’s a fan of the course’s class discussions and the way they have encouraged her to think critically.

“The concept of monstrosity is very subjective,” she says. “The things labelled as ‘monstrous’ depend greatly on the cultural context of society, and yet there are many common themes in monstrosity that occur again and again. As an aspiring psychology major, I've been especially excited to explore how classical monsters can reflect the so-called hidden monsters within a society.

“Overall, every aspect of the class has expanded my knowledge and perspectives on monstrosity, and has given me a new lens through which I can view literature outside of this course.”

Ancient monsters include monsters from the Greco-Roman world, as well as the exotic and often inhuman monsters that are woven into tales of mythology like Medusa or the Minotaur.

“The classic ancient monster has lots of heads, their physical morphology is distorted – whether it's half man and half something else – or a mix of different animals,” says Gunderson. “This is something the ancient world was very interested in – that kind of bodily chaos.”

In turn, Gunderson is interested in what the monsters represent and what is achieved by defeating them.

“The point of monsters does seem to be the idea of bringing order to chaos – that there's something about the world that needs to be dominated or mastered,” he says.

“And there's a kind of politics to this ridding the world of monsters. So that's what we're trying to focus on: What does the monster seem to be doing in any given story? What kind of society does it enable?”

Gunderson’s course moves between studying ancient monsters and more modern monsters. It explores a variety of different genres: epic, tragedy, history, biography and even contemporary film. It is also interested in places where one entertains the idea that there are real monsters like witches, werewolves and vampires lurking within our world.

And the course extends to human “monsters” throughout history – tyrants or leaders whose shocking acts go well beyond acceptable human behaviour.

“Emperors like Caligula and Domitian, they really lived and they really killed people,” says Gunderson. “They were described as monsters. But what do we really mean by that? Why do we invoke the word ‘monster’ instead of just saying, ‘murderer’?”

It’s questions like this that students say make the course so engaging.

“What I love most about this course is that we’re able to discuss the monsters from the readings in a modern context by comparing them to contemporary material,” says Janna Abbas, a first-year student pursuing a double major in English and German, and a member of Victoria College.

“In one of our classes, we compared Euripides’s The Bachae to the movie Mean Girls. These comparisons make the readings much more interesting because I’m able to relate them to something I’m more familiar with, which in turn helps me understand the texts on a deeper level.”

Ireland Egan, a first-year humanities student and a member of University College who plans on majoring in English and cinema studies and minoring in philosophy, was hooked immediately after reading the course description.

“The horror film buff and gothic literature nerd in me completely took over,” says Egan. “Looking at the complexities and motivation of monsters in film and literature is what makes them so interesting.

“It’s given me an opportunity to develop a unique perspective on the definition of monstrosity that I’ve since used in other classes. I even find myself considering it when watching films and reading books in my own time.”

Are there ghosts at U of T? Maybe...

lavende4 — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:29:20 +0000

Are there ghosts at U of T? Maybe...

lavende4 Mon, 10/31/2016 - 11:29

Cutline

University College at night: just one of six buildings at ��οthat might be haunted (Photo by Christopher Dew)

Topic

It's Halloween, and ghosts, ghouls, zombies and other supernatural creatures will be roaming through the streets of Toronto – and, legend has it – some of the buildings at the University of Toronto.

Are there ghosts at U of T? Read on and judge for yourself.

And, if you're really brave, you can take a walking tour of haunted places at U of T through Muddy York walking tours.

The Ghost of UC Quad

Legend has it that two of the stonemasons that worked on the construction of University College – Ivan Reznikoff and Paul Diablos – got into a murderous fight over a woman, which ended with Diablos stabbing Reznikoff and then hiding his body somewhere on site. Two years later, much of University College burned in the Great Fire, but workers digging through the rubble discovered something strange: inside a ventilation shaft a skeleton wearing a belt with a buckle stamped with the stonemason’s emblem. It’s said the ghost of Reznikoff still roams the UC quad at night.

The spirit that saved a life at Hart House

Working late one winter night, Hart House Theatre manager Paul Templin decided to sleep in his office and asked the security guards not to wake him. Sometime during the night, the door swung open and hit his cot. The door was glass-paned, so he could see there was someone standing behind it. The room was filling with smoke – the result of an electrical fire – so Templin quickly left and gathered with Hart House’s overnight staff on the sidewalk outside. He asked if anyone had been to his office; no one had. Templin credits the ghostly apparition for saving his life.

The mad woman of Christie Mansion

The large house at the northeast corner of Wellesley Street and Queen’s Park Circle that belongs to Regis College is said to have been home to a man who trapped a woman in a windowless room there. Eventually the woman went mad from the solitude and hanged herself. Decades later, rumours persist that a woman entering the room alone late at night will find that the door suddenly swings shut behind her and refuses to open. To escape, she must pound on the heavy door until her rescuer is able to easily open it from the other side.

Things that go bump in the night at Massey College

For the 18 years he was master at Massey College, Robertson Davies captivated the crowd at the annual Christmas party with spectral stories of his own invention. He sometimes told his fellow faculty members that, given his druthers, he’d haunt the college himself one day. Davies may have gotten his wish. Students past and present whisper of inexplicable phenomena within Massey’s walls that began the day that Davies did (or didn’t) leave us – wraithlike figures that disappear into thin air, objects that mysteriously move or show up in unlikely locations, and thuds and crashes coming from empty rooms.

The mysterious electrical engineer

As a first-year engineering student, Leo Comitale was working with a peer on an electronics assignment in an old lab in the Wallberg Building. They were stumped when they noticed a man standing nearby they didn’t recognize. “He asked us what was wrong, and we told him we didn’t know. We had built the circuit exactly as described but it was not behaving as expected,” says Comitale. The mysterious man told the students to double-check their wires. When they did, they found one was broken. They replaced it and completed the assignment. When they turned to thank the man, he was no longer there. “No one else could remember seeing anyone who matched his description. Neither of us saw this man again during our time at the university,” says Comitale.

Eerie lights at Laidlaw Library

In the 1980s, students held a regular pub night on Saturdays in the basement of Laidlaw Library. One evening at about 1:30 a.m., the overnight watchman, Barry Breen, noticed that the library was in complete darkness; the pub night had ended. At 4 a.m., he looked up from a book, and was alarmed to see that all three floors of the library were lit-up. He called ��οpolice and advised them that a break-in was in progress. Two officers arrived within minutes and searched the library for half an hour. Neither of the library’s two entrances showed any signs of forced entry. Breen wondered if the librarian had set the light-timer incorrectly. The officers agreed that it was a plausible theory, except that the library was not equipped with a light-timer.

This story originally appeared in ��οMagazine

Halloween

��������ο'Horror Film' course keeps students on the edge of their seats

Six films Carrie Reese recommends for Halloween:

Spooky subjects: ��������ο'Monsters' course explores our fascination with the frightful

Are there ghosts at U of T? Maybe...

��ο'Horror Film' course keeps students on the edge of their seats

Spooky subjects: ��ο'Monsters' course explores our fascination with the frightful