Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire

Poole (Wasteland), a history professor at the College of Charleston, delivers a mostly solid account of how horror films have “provided the legitimacy, the justifications, and the bread and circuses of American empire.” Since the genre’s beginnings as a “cry of anger and despair” after WWI, Poole writes, “there’s always been something deeply political” about these films. White Zombie (1932) “probed Americans’ fears about Haiti and legitimated them.” The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) drew on “the myth of the American frontier,” he posits, while Jaws (1975) was a “hopeful message about a can-do America.” And after 9/11, horror films began to “question American exceptionalism,” as in The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Throughout, the author offers fascinating tidbits of film history—readers will learn that in 1944, actor Bela Lugosi pleaded with the Roosevelt administration to end immigration restrictions on Hungarian Jews and was subsequently investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. At times, Poole’s prose can be overwrought (“So, what if the American dream is a nightmare? What if, at the bottom of an ill-smelling barrel brimming with secrets coiled like snakes, we find a terrible truth?”), which can undercut the shrewd commentary. Even so, this is an insightful view of the genre through the lens of critical theory. (Oct.)