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June 18, 2013 9:02 PM Subscribe
Inseminoid Academic criticism of Inseminoid has concentrated on the film's treatment of the female sex and female sexualities in the context of corruption by an alien source. In addition to its depiction of the abject Sandy, who is rendered a distorted Other in the aftermath of her unnatural impregnation, the film has been seen to incorporate a clash between the patriarchal and the maternal towards its climax, as the would-be-mother eliminates her former friends one by one.
Bonus link: Alien demonology: the Christian roots of the malevolent extraterrestrial in UFO religions and abduction spiritualities (pdf)
Bonus link: Alien demonology: the Christian roots of the malevolent extraterrestrial in UFO religions and abduction spiritualities (pdf)
Okay, wait wait wait, I don't know about this movie and it looks fun and all BUT Run Run Shaw received knighthood in '77? And he's 105?
This movie made my head implode and I haven't got past the credits.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:36 PM on June 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
This movie made my head implode and I haven't got past the credits.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 11:36 PM on June 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
Okay - I am guessing that this was Run Run Shaw's companion piece to Blade Runner?
posted by helmutdog at 12:10 AM on June 19, 2013
posted by helmutdog at 12:10 AM on June 19, 2013
Rocket Surgeon: "Okay, wait wait wait, I don't know about this movie and it looks fun and all BUT Run Run Shaw received knighthood in '77? And he's 105?"
I love that not only was he knighted, but he promptly put "Sir Run Run Shaw Presents" in the opening credits of Inseminoid. I wonder what the queen would think.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:18 AM on June 19, 2013
I love that not only was he knighted, but he promptly put "Sir Run Run Shaw Presents" in the opening credits of Inseminoid. I wonder what the queen would think.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:18 AM on June 19, 2013
It's funny seeing highfalutin theory language applied to Inseminoid, because why not? People do it all the time to Cronenberg's stuff.
This reminds me of the time that I went to a symposium on Cyclonopedia and asked the panel if they had any thoughts on Dean Koontz's Phantoms. They hadn't. The panelists had had plenty of interesting insight into cool pulp, such as by Lovecraft, but apparently nobody had even bothered to read the profoundly uncool Phantoms, despite the fact that Koontz's book was at least as foundational to the text as anything by Deleuze and Guattari.
I blinked. Even if it was unintentional, even within the smart and fun world of Cyclonopedia scholarship, people were still looking down on pulp. Lovecraft's work is barely considered to be pulp any more - he's in the Library of America, fer chrissake. I love Jeff VanderMeer and Thomas Ligotti as much as the next guy, but Koontz's actual mass market horror is the true heir to authors such as Lovecraft.
On that day, I became an even bigger Comic Book Guy than I already am. I regained my virginity, my slacks molted into jorts, and my neck grew a thick, lustrous mane. Heed my Cheeto-dusted words, O villains and strumpets: under this fedora seethes a man with a cause. I will bring Cyclonopedia scholarship back into the realm of Dean Koontz.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:10 AM on June 19, 2013 [10 favorites]
This reminds me of the time that I went to a symposium on Cyclonopedia and asked the panel if they had any thoughts on Dean Koontz's Phantoms. They hadn't. The panelists had had plenty of interesting insight into cool pulp, such as by Lovecraft, but apparently nobody had even bothered to read the profoundly uncool Phantoms, despite the fact that Koontz's book was at least as foundational to the text as anything by Deleuze and Guattari.
I blinked. Even if it was unintentional, even within the smart and fun world of Cyclonopedia scholarship, people were still looking down on pulp. Lovecraft's work is barely considered to be pulp any more - he's in the Library of America, fer chrissake. I love Jeff VanderMeer and Thomas Ligotti as much as the next guy, but Koontz's actual mass market horror is the true heir to authors such as Lovecraft.
On that day, I became an even bigger Comic Book Guy than I already am. I regained my virginity, my slacks molted into jorts, and my neck grew a thick, lustrous mane. Heed my Cheeto-dusted words, O villains and strumpets: under this fedora seethes a man with a cause. I will bring Cyclonopedia scholarship back into the realm of Dean Koontz.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:10 AM on June 19, 2013 [10 favorites]
Sounds like one to add to the movie list! It sounds positively weirdsville and slightly better than Demon Seed.
posted by Calzephyr at 4:51 AM on June 19, 2013
posted by Calzephyr at 4:51 AM on June 19, 2013
I will bring Cyclonopedia scholarship back into the realm of Dean Koontz.
I eagerly await your exegesis of the following, uh, remarkable sentence from Darkfall, burned into my brain twenty years ago and still inexpungible:
posted by DaDaDaDave at 6:19 AM on June 19, 2013 [3 favorites]
I eagerly await your exegesis of the following, uh, remarkable sentence from Darkfall, burned into my brain twenty years ago and still inexpungible:
And when, at last, Jack spurted deep within her velvet recesses, he felt as if he were fusing with her, melting into her, becoming one with her, and he sensed that she felt the same thing. (my emphasis)Just copying out that sentence, though, I notice that here Koontz is drawing on the stock horror conceit of people losing their identity and merging into transindividual collectivities (a topos that drives many of his plots--cf. of course Phantoms but in particular Midnight), and even that hideous word "spurted" reminds me of the moment in Midnight where the mad scientist villain is so excited by the thought of a world without individuality that he jizzes right in his sensory deprivation tank, and now I'm thinking of Lyotard and the idea of orgasm as a sublime erasure of subjectivity and thus of ethical categories so that it almost makes sense that this hilariously sappy love scene in Darkfall should deploy the same themes that elsewhere in Koontz's oeuvre seem definitively, generically "horrifying," and GODDAMMIT STICHERBEAST NOW YOU'VE GOT ME DOING IT TOO.
posted by DaDaDaDave at 6:19 AM on June 19, 2013 [3 favorites]
It's funny seeing highfalutin theory language applied to Inseminoid, because why not? People do it all the time to Cronenberg's stuff.
Must see cronenberg's "The Brood". Sort of a Inseminoid meets Demon Seed wearing pajamas.
posted by Gungho at 6:54 AM on June 19, 2013 [2 favorites]
Must see cronenberg's "The Brood". Sort of a Inseminoid meets Demon Seed wearing pajamas.
posted by Gungho at 6:54 AM on June 19, 2013 [2 favorites]
What academic first decided to capitalize the word "other"?
posted by Halogenhat at 9:08 AM on June 19, 2013
posted by Halogenhat at 9:08 AM on June 19, 2013
Horse ebooks is the true heir to Lovecraft
posted by benzenedream at 9:20 AM on June 19, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by benzenedream at 9:20 AM on June 19, 2013 [1 favorite]
"...and slightly better than Demon Seed."
Unpossible! Demon Seed is so bad it is truly a classic god-awful movie.
posted by marienbad at 9:40 AM on June 19, 2013 [1 favorite]
Unpossible! Demon Seed is so bad it is truly a classic god-awful movie.
posted by marienbad at 9:40 AM on June 19, 2013 [1 favorite]
What academic first decided to capitalize the word "other"?
I don't know if he was the "first," but Lacan liked to expound upon the difference between "autre" and "Autre" in his writings.
posted by Room 101 at 9:52 AM on June 19, 2013
I don't know if he was the "first," but Lacan liked to expound upon the difference between "autre" and "Autre" in his writings.
posted by Room 101 at 9:52 AM on June 19, 2013
Prince is like the anti-Bill Murray. Every encounter with him ends in him whispering "everyone will find this entirely plausible".
posted by dr_dank at 9:57 AM on June 19, 2013
posted by dr_dank at 9:57 AM on June 19, 2013
Sticherbeast- really? The Koontz thing? I only ever read one book of his and it was pretty standard psycho stuff iirc...
posted by Mister_A at 10:42 AM on June 19, 2013
posted by Mister_A at 10:42 AM on June 19, 2013
slightly better than Demon Seed
That's a mighty low bar.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:09 AM on June 19, 2013
That's a mighty low bar.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:09 AM on June 19, 2013
There are hundreds of horrible schlocky misogynistic monster pregnancy movies, what makes this one special?
I thought it was cool that this was a full movie you can watch "for free" on YouTube. It proves you can cut cable and still watch your favourite shows while engaging in cultural criticism at the same time.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:26 PM on June 19, 2013
I thought it was cool that this was a full movie you can watch "for free" on YouTube. It proves you can cut cable and still watch your favourite shows while engaging in cultural criticism at the same time.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:26 PM on June 19, 2013
Sticherbeast- really? The Koontz thing? I only ever read one book of his and it was pretty standard psycho stuff iirc...
Very possibly, but Phantoms itself is specifically referenced several times in Cyclonopedia. There really is something neato about the idea of a subterranean, amoeboid Ancient Evil whose identity comes from the gestalt.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:46 PM on June 19, 2013
Very possibly, but Phantoms itself is specifically referenced several times in Cyclonopedia. There really is something neato about the idea of a subterranean, amoeboid Ancient Evil whose identity comes from the gestalt.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:46 PM on June 19, 2013
I will bring Cyclonopedia scholarship back into the realm of Dean Koontz.
Believe it or not, but Dean R. Koontz taught English where I went to high school (although quite a bit before my time). Evidently, my high school convinced Koontz to stop teaching and become a full-time writer, because he got so sick of being required to enforce the school's dress code by measuring all the girls' miniskirts.
posted by jonp72 at 5:09 PM on June 19, 2013
Believe it or not, but Dean R. Koontz taught English where I went to high school (although quite a bit before my time). Evidently, my high school convinced Koontz to stop teaching and become a full-time writer, because he got so sick of being required to enforce the school's dress code by measuring all the girls' miniskirts.
posted by jonp72 at 5:09 PM on June 19, 2013
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posted by benzenedream at 10:22 PM on June 18, 2013 [1 favorite]