It used to be that Americans were obsessed with slasher films and the Japanese were obsessed with ghost films. With recent developments in the American cinema and the arrival of the Blair Witch Project style "shaky cam" films all that has changed. Ghost hunting too has become more scientific with the invention of high-tech ghost hunting devices such as Electromagnetic field readers et al. Recent films such as the Haunting of Whaley Place and Paranormal Activity have taken the reality television scenarios of shows like the SyFy Channel's Ghost Hunters and fictionalized them.
How does a dialectical materialist examine this phenomenon? The telephone psychic phenomenon is not new, but it indicates our obsession of the idea that death is not the end. Most hauntings are explained by the idea that once one has crossed over into death they remain in limbo due to the traumatic natures of their death or else because they had unfinished business in the world of the living. The paranormal-capitalists opportunize these paranoid delusions by claiming that some (psychics) have access to the supernatural world that others don't and for a price their special skill can be shared with those who can afford to pay for them. This is supernatural class antagonism and it stinks very much of the old orthodoxy of the clergy vs. laity dialectic which reached their most obvious epitome in the middle ages when all the bibles were written in Latin; a dead language other than the vernacular. This conspiracy is made even more transparent when the fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic, not even Latin (the language of Constantine and the Roman oppressors), is examined. It is also not surprising that during this time hallucinogen-fueled witch hunts were prevalent. The misogyny of this practice is also apparent. Any woman was suspect for dealing with the devil, also a male. I will return to this concept in chapter six. For now I would like to examine some of the common tropes of paranormal horror films and their ideological significance.
First, there is a paradox of power involved with the ghost concept. Ghosts are both powerless and powerful. The apparition has the power to kill someone, but not the power to effectively communicate with someone. Marx calls this alienation. Marx is also full of ghost analogies. He talks about 'the specter of communism' in the introduction to the Communist Manifesto. He also appears to offer the commodity a spiritual character when he talks about commodity fetishism. It's as though the value we place upon an item, within which the history and provenance of a commodity is encoded, has an apparition-like quality.
[this chapter is unfinished]
How does a dialectical materialist examine this phenomenon? The telephone psychic phenomenon is not new, but it indicates our obsession of the idea that death is not the end. Most hauntings are explained by the idea that once one has crossed over into death they remain in limbo due to the traumatic natures of their death or else because they had unfinished business in the world of the living. The paranormal-capitalists opportunize these paranoid delusions by claiming that some (psychics) have access to the supernatural world that others don't and for a price their special skill can be shared with those who can afford to pay for them. This is supernatural class antagonism and it stinks very much of the old orthodoxy of the clergy vs. laity dialectic which reached their most obvious epitome in the middle ages when all the bibles were written in Latin; a dead language other than the vernacular. This conspiracy is made even more transparent when the fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic, not even Latin (the language of Constantine and the Roman oppressors), is examined. It is also not surprising that during this time hallucinogen-fueled witch hunts were prevalent. The misogyny of this practice is also apparent. Any woman was suspect for dealing with the devil, also a male. I will return to this concept in chapter six. For now I would like to examine some of the common tropes of paranormal horror films and their ideological significance.
First, there is a paradox of power involved with the ghost concept. Ghosts are both powerless and powerful. The apparition has the power to kill someone, but not the power to effectively communicate with someone. Marx calls this alienation. Marx is also full of ghost analogies. He talks about 'the specter of communism' in the introduction to the Communist Manifesto. He also appears to offer the commodity a spiritual character when he talks about commodity fetishism. It's as though the value we place upon an item, within which the history and provenance of a commodity is encoded, has an apparition-like quality.
[this chapter is unfinished]
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