Thursday, November 29, 2018

JEWISH HORROR MOVIES: AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)

I had planned to write about the way Jewish filmmakers sometimes code their characters as being Jewish, sometimes in subterranean ways. However, upon a recent rewatching John Landis' "An American Werewolf in London," I realized there's nothing coded, nothing subterranean. No, Landis' two doomed American leads are unambiguously Jewish. They hail...

JEWISH HORROR MOVIES: FORBIDDEN ZONE (1980)

We're at a strange moment in history, just now, where a vast amount of the popular culture of the past is accessible to us, instantly, on demand. This is a utopian future for those of us who, when young, obsessively and frantically sought out the debris and forgotten oddball masterworks of earlier years: comic books, science fiction films, obscuro...

JEWISH HORROR MOVIES: THE WOLF MAN (1941)

“The Wolf Man” came out in the first year of the Holocaust and was written by a German Jew, Curt Siodmak, who fled after hearing an antisemitic speech by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. These few details alone make the film inevitably feel like the it must be addressing itself to the rise of Naziism in some way. It is, after all, set in...

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BAD POETRY: HEINRICH HOFFMANN

Heinrich Hoffmann terrified children. And it wasn't his gloomy countenance that struck his patients with fear. Children were frightened of him because he was a doctor, and doctors always terrify children, even back in the mid-19th century in Germany. But Hoffmann discovered an easy way to calm them, displaying a facile grasp of psychology that...

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BAD POETRY: EPITAPHS

Humor is a great salve, an unction against despair; it is why somebody like Dorothy Parker, who suffered a notoriously bleak and agonized psyche, was, on the surface of things, relentlessly witty. It is easy to dismiss her wit as a neurotic tic, a shallow defense against depression. I find it neither neurotic nor shallow -- were it either, she...

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BAD POETRY: ELSA LANCHESTER

I have been wanting to write about the subject of the English music hall for quite some time, but I am buffaloed as to how to approach it. It is, after all, a rather obscure subject for most Americans, dating back to the end of the 19th century and experiencing a rapid decline after World War I, similar to that of its American cousin, vaudeville. But...

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BAD POETRY: EDWARD GOREY

Edward Gorey, whose strange, crabbed, finely detailed illustrations and blackly humorous accompanying text seems perpetually to hang on the walls of college dorm rooms, died in April of 2000, leaving behind a puzzling body of work. There is, as an example, the strangely popular The Gashlycrumb Tinies, his little abecedarian poem about 26 hapless...

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BAD POETRY: CHASTUSHKA

Charles Ludlam, the founder of the Ridiculous Theatre company, included in his mission statement his intentions to create a theater that was "without the stink of art," and this phrase of his has stuck with me. It goes a long way toward explaining why I tend to avoid the poetry section of most bookstores, where, alphabetized among the works of...

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO BAD POETRY: WILLIAM MCGONAGALL

There is some competition for the title of worst poet of all time. Two poet laureates of wretched verse are in steep competition. I speak of Julia A. Moore, otherwise known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan, and William McGonagall, otherwise known as the fellow who walked 50 miles to Balmoral to read a poem to Queen Victoria, was turned away unheard,...

JEWISH HORROR MOVIES: IT! (1967)

Let me say at the start that even though this odd, apocalyptic British film is a golem movie, it’s not an especially Jewish movie. Although they share a title, 1967’s “It!” is unrelated to the Stephen King novel of the same name, or the films adapted from them, which also feature a Jewish character and will be addressed later in this book. Despite...
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