Karen J. Renner

Changelings, ferals, monstrous births—the evil child appears in a variety of forms and haunts a range of popular works, from novels to music videos, photography to video games. Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, The Evil Child in Popular Culture argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. Each subtype offers a particular explanation for the problem of the evil child, shifting over time and space to adapt to changing historical circumstances and ideologies.

Chapter 1: Monstrous Births
Throughout history, monstrous births have been interpreted as signs of specific parental (and especially maternal) sins or general communal failings. Maternal impression theory in particular linked a mother’s emotions and experiences to her child’s malformations. Monstrous birth narratives from the 1960s-1980s continued the tradition of maternal impression but also indicted fatherhood and social problems. Later texts, however, have returned to a form of maternal impression that sees monstrous children as the fitting offspring of equally monstrous mothers afflicted by “baby hunger.” The challenges posed by second-wave feminism and advancements in reproductive technologies led to the creation of father-focused monstrous birth stories as well. Antichrist narratives and tales about mad scientists and their brainchildren brought attention back to the power of paternity.

Chapter 2: Gifted Children
Narratives about psychically gifted children examine principles of child development and childrearing as well as the effects of abuse. Ray Bradbury’s “The Small Assassin” (1946) and “The Veldt” (1950) imagine the dangers children would pose if they had power before they learned moral restraint whereas Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life” (1953) examines the dangers of permissive parenting. Later texts, like the multiple versions of Carrie (1974, 1976, 2013) and the films Chronicle (2012) and Dark Touch (2013), examine the effects abuse, the children symbolizing school shooters, their “gifts” standing in for guns. Another branch of gifted child narratives, which includes Firestarter (1980, 1984) and a series of video games by M83 (2011-2012), is also interested in the effects of abuse but of the kind inflicted by institutions rather than parents or schoolmates.

Chapter 3: Ghost Children and Not-So-Imaginary Playmates
The folklore of many countries provides names for specific types of ghost children, who behave in generally consistent ways. However, in contemporary stories generated in the UK and the US, ghost children are as psychologically unique as their living counterparts—and often in the same stage of development as they were when they passed. While some ghost children have benign or even benevolent purposes, others, as in were victims of abuse who demand vengeance. Because ghost children often haunt the living in ways that resemble their crimes, they function as symbols of the so-called cycle of violence—the idea that abused children become abusers. Stories about ghost children who haunt living kids as not-so-imaginary playmates perform similar ideological work but simply divide the symbolism across both figures.

Chapter 4: Possessed Children
Once linked to prophecy and spirituality, possessed children are now evidence of The Child’s vulnerability to corruption. The devil that possesses the child symbolizes the negative effects of “bad” influences, like violent media or a sexualized consumer culture, that take over the children of failed families. The possessions in Turn of the Screw (1898) and The Exorcist (1971, 1973), for example, occurs because the children lack vigilant parents. In contemporary films, like The Last Exorcism (2010), The Possession (2012), and Sinister (2012), it is absent fathers  who most adversely affect their children. Though possessed child narratives typically involve girls, the novels A Wrinkle in Time (1962), Chocky (1968), Del-Del (1992), and A Good and Happy Child, focus on the possession of boys, but follow some significant gender differences.

Chapter 5: Ferals
Growing up outside of society, ferals emblematize human nature at its purest. Freed from the cloying conformity of society, the feral can be an icon; the feral feminist of recent YA literature, for example, is liberated from sexist gender expectations. On the other side, The Lord of the Flies (1954)—like other stories about ferocious ferals—seems to deliver a most damning evaluation of human nature. However, the children were corrupted by society and its penchant for war long before they were stranded. Dystopian science fiction and horror stories like Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) and Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” (1977) deploy a similar strategy. Child criminals are also often discussed using feral imagery, as in the recent hoodie horror subgenre.

This essay examines the nexus of cultural factors—for example, rising juvenile crime rates, adoption practices, and a punitive approach to crime—that led to a proliferation of the figure of the “child psychopath” in such films as Mikey (1992), Child of Rage (1992) The Good Son (1993), The Paper Boy (1994), Relative Fear (1994), and Daddy’s Girl (1996), and the relationship between these portrayals and the subsequent moral panic over “superpredators,” ultraviolent juvenile criminals who operated without remorse or conscience. The conclusion briefly considers the implications of the “rebirth” of the child psychopath in the 2010s and the way the figure has transformed in response to a different sociopolitical climate.

A Companion to American Gothic Charles L. Crow, Editor. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2014.Gothic studies has been booming since the turn of the twenty-first century. In 2013 alone, over fifteen academic studies were published with the word "gothic" in the title. The University of Chicago Press, in collaboration with the University of Wales Press, began releasing books in a Gothic Literary Series in 2009; the series already boasts over twenty volumes. The market also offers books devoted to Gothic subtypes, including Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper's essay collections Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies, and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier (2012), Undead in the West II: They Just Keep Coming Back (2013), Bernice M. Murphy's The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture (2009), and The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture (2013). In addition, texts have emerged that focus on nations with plentiful gothic production which have been l...

Changelings, ferals, monstrous births—the evil child appears in a variety of forms and haunts a range of popular works, from novels to music videos, photography to video games. Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, The Evil Child in Popular Culture argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. Each subtype offers a particular explanation for the problem of the evil child, shifting over time and space to adapt to changing historical circumstances and ideologies. Chapter 1: Monstrous Births Throughout history, monstrous births have been interpreted as signs of specific parental (and especially maternal) sins or general communal failings. Maternal impression theory in particular linked a mother’s emotions and experiences to her child’s malformations. Monstrous birth narratives from the 1960s-1980s continued the tradition of maternal impression but also indicted fatherhood and social problems. Later texts, however, have returned to a form of maternal impression that sees monstrous children as the fitting offspring of equally monstrous mothers afflicted by “baby hunger.” The challenges posed by second-wave feminism and advancements in reproductive technologies led to the creation of father-focused monstrous birth stories as well. Antichrist narratives and tales about mad scientists and their brainchildren brought attention back to the power of paternity. Chapter 2: Gifted Children Narratives about psychically gifted children examine principles of child development and childrearing as well as the effects of abuse. Ray Bradbury’s “The Small Assassin” (1946) and “The Veldt” (1950) imagine the dangers children would pose if they had power before they learned moral restraint whereas Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life” (1953) examines the dangers of permissive parenting. Later texts, like the multiple versions of Carrie (1974, 1976, 2013) and the films Chronicle (2012) and Dark Touch (2013), examine the effects abuse, the children symbolizing school shooters, their “gifts” standing in for guns. Another branch of gifted child narratives, which includes Firestarter (1980, 1984) and a series of video games by M83 (2011-2012), is also interested in the effects of abuse but of the kind inflicted by institutions rather than parents or schoolmates. Chapter 3: Ghost Children and Not-So-Imaginary Playmates The folklore of many countries provides names for specific types of ghost children, who behave in generally consistent ways. However, in contemporary stories generated in the UK and the US, ghost children are as psychologically unique as their living counterparts—and often in the same stage of development as they were when they passed. While some ghost children have benign or even benevolent purposes, others, as in were victims of abuse who demand vengeance. Because ghost children often haunt the living in ways that resemble their crimes, they function as symbols of the so-called cycle of violence—the idea that abused children become abusers. Stories about ghost children who haunt living kids as not-so-imaginary playmates perform similar ideological work but simply divide the symbolism across both figures. Chapter 4: Possessed Children Once linked to prophecy and spirituality, possessed children are now evidence of The Child’s vulnerability to corruption. The devil that possesses the child symbolizes the negative effects of “bad” influences, like violent media or a sexualized consumer culture, that take over the children of failed families. The possessions in Turn of the Screw (1898) and The Exorcist (1971, 1973), for example, occurs because the children lack vigilant parents. In contemporary films, like The Last Exorcism (2010), The Possession (2012), and Sinister (2012), it is absent fathers who most adversely affect their children. Though possessed child narratives typically involve girls, the novels A Wrinkle in Time (1962), Chocky (1968), Del-Del (1992), and A Good and Happy Child, focus on the possession of boys, but follow some significant gender differences. Chapter 5: Ferals Growing up outside of society, ferals emblematize human nature at its purest. Freed from the cloying conformity of society, the feral can be an icon; the feral feminist of recent YA literature, for example, is liberated from sexist gender expectations. On the other side, The Lord of the Flies (1954)—like other stories about ferocious ferals—seems to deliver a most damning evaluation of human nature. However, the children were corrupted by society and its penchant for war long before they were stranded. Dystopian science fiction and horror stories like Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) and Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” (1977) deploy a similar strategy. Child criminals are also often discussed using feral imagery, as in the recent hoodie horror subgenre.

Robin Bernstein's Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York: New York University Press, 2011.Courtney Weikle-Milis's Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.C. Dallett Hemphill's Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.Childhood studies frequently exhibits dueling interests regarding child agency: while some scholars critique the ways in which childrens rights are limited, others champion the means by which children still exercise control. Recent books by Robin Bernstein, Courtney Weikle-Mills, and C. Dallett Hemphill demonstrate just how much assessments of childrens agency can vary. While Bernstein focuses on how childrens culture can be appropriated for political agendas, Weikle-Mills looks at how literature for and about children often affirms changes in their status as citizens. Finally, via an archival analysis of family culture, Hemphill reconstructs the experience of actual historical children to demonstrate the significance of sibling relationships to one's ability to adapt to a rapidly changing cultural landscape.In a world filled with DVD collections and streaming media, many of us find ourselves returning to the television shows and films that delighted us as children, only to discover how thickly they are layered with the prejudices of the period in which they were created. Believing we are escaping to a world free of a political agenda, we instead find ourselves bumping up against the same problematic ideologies we ask students to identify and resenting the "education" we received without realizing it. Bernstein's Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights focuses on this tendency of children's culture to give the appearance of existing outside a political context.Bernstein's concept of "racial innocence" refers to the ways that the child can be used to "make political projects appear innocuous, natural, and therefore justified" (33). Bernstein illustrates this process in her first chapter, in which she compares the cover image of the book-a Cottolene advertisement from the 1890s featuring a young, smiling black girl hugging a soft cloud of cotton-with a photograph of a young white child in a cotton field. While the photograph of the white child is clearly meant to protest child labor, the Cottolene advertisement nefariously presents the black child as happily embracing the product she helps to produce and, by extension, the labor she had to perform to produce it. Such images, Bernstein argues, were responsible for perpetuating the idea that black children were insensate, immune to pain, a belief that culminated in the figure of the invulnerable pickaninny.Bernsteins second chapter then demonstrates her methodology for examining material culture, explaining that the primary question to ask about a material object is what practices it both invites and discourages. Bernstein shows that a wide variety of material objects historically scripted affirmations and approval of black insensateness: from black rubber dolls whose very composition encouraged rough treatment, to E. W. Kemble's 1898 A Coon Alphabet, a collection of rhymes about black children that frequently end in violence and that invite the reader to participate in that violence by turning the page to reveal it. In subsequent chapters, Bernstein examines how illustrations and theatrical adaptions altered the ideologies of Uncle Tom's Cabin-, analyzes the forms of play "scripted" by the popular cuddly doll Raggedy Ann and the books sold with it; and questions whether Kenneth and Mamie Clark were correct to assume, as they did in the 1940s, that black childrens preference for white dolls bespoke their internalized racism rather than attitudes about play.Weikle-Mills s Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868 also presents a concept with far-ranging applications for childhood studies: that of "imaginary citizens," individuals who could not exercise civic rights but who were, in Bernsteins terms, scripted to see themselves as citizens. …

""Television today is marked by an unprecedented number of reality shows that focus on the paranormal investigation of spiritual entities, including Ghost Hunters (Syfy 2004- ), Ghost Adventures (Travel 2008- ), and Paranormal State (A & E 2007-). In addition, a number of recent horror films—the Paranormal Activity series, Grave Encounters (2011), Episode 50 (2011), The Apparition (2012), The Awakening (2012), Apartment 143 (2012), to name a few—have made ghost-hunting their central subject. The sheer number of these types of texts suggests a contemporary preoccupation with the ability to speak to the dead and thus marks a new era in the long history of American spiritualism. Since its beginnings, American spiritualism has had strong female involvement. Most scholars trace the origins of the movement to the Fox sisters who in the 1840s claimed to be in touch with spirits who communicated to the girls by rapping on walls and floors. In the contemporary imagination, too, mediums and psychics are often female. One need only think of Tangina Barrons in Poltergeist (1982) or consider contemporary shows like Medium, starring Patricia Arquette (NBC 2005-2009; CBS 2009-2011) and Ghost Whisperer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (CBS 2005-2010). The most popular ghost-hunting reality shows, however, show a marked absence of women. Female psychics are sometimes invited in to consult and other women serve as assistants, but it is men who manage the more serious and involved complexities of paranormal investigation. This gender bias is striking, not only considering the precedent of female influence but also because the “work” of communicating with the dead is so often feminized. The female psychic’s sensitivity to spirits is often treated as a natural outcropping of her gender, and even the channeling of a spirit could be seen as feminine since it requires “penetration” by an often male entity. A further threat to masculinity could be caused by the ghost-hunter’s resemblance to a Gothic heroine: trapped in a vast, maze-like, and simultaneously claustrophobic space, at the mercy of often hostile spirits. I argue that reality ghost-hunting shows are structured to allow men to appropriate the work of the female medium without threat to their masculinity. Taking as my subject primarily Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Paranormal State, I will show that these programs masculinize a standard Gothic narrative using conventions from science-fiction and the Western. One of the most notable features of these shows—and of contemporary ghost-hunting practices in general—is the reliance on various technological innovations that can supposedly record evidence of paranormal events. While most critics have understood this tendency as a response to technology in general, I argue that it allows the “emotional” work of mediumship to be transferred onto a machine under the ghost-hunter’s control. Furthermore, unlike the female medium whose primary purpose is to listen, the male ghost-hunter casts himself as a sort of paranormal gunslinger who will battle spirits and rescue those who live in haunted spaces.""

The Politics of Childhood in Cold War America Ann Marie Kordas. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013.In The Politics of Childhood in Cold War America, Ann Marie Kordas argues that childhood was a unique prominent political vehicle during America's contest with its communist rivals. Divided into five chapters focused on parenting practices, educational reform, children's consumer culture, gender roles, and juvenile delinquency, The Politics of Childhood distils the predominant ideologies of the time from an impressive range of texts, including child-rearing and educational works, etiquette manuals, magazine and newspaper articles, government studies, essays written by children for school assignments, and-most prominently-educational films. It is unfortunate that the book could not supplement this fascinating material with illustrations, but the variety of texts addressed speaks to Kordas's extensive knowledge of the era.In the first chapter, "Father No Longer Knows Best: Parenting and Parent-Child Relationships," she focuses on the shift in parenting ideals that took place after World War II: whereas previous decades had stressed a need for "inner-directed" citizens, self-regulating individuals "designed to meet the requirements of a production-oriented society" (18), postwar American society was "other-directed" and therefore "feared conflict, worshipped conformity, and discouraged citizens from doing anything to differentiate themselves from other members of the group" (27). Chapter Two, "Lessons for Liberty: Schooling," reveals how educational reforms responded directly to perceived Soviet threats. Kordas shows, for example, an increased emphasis on science, a subject at which Americans would need to be adept in order to remain competitive. Educational materials also took on a propagandistic tone, emphasizing the superiority of American values and the pitfalls of communism. As the author points out, it was in 1954, after all, that the Pledge of Allegiance became a mandated classroom ritual.Chapter Three, "All American: The Child CitizenSoldier," ventures outside of the classroom to examine the consumer culture of children. From spy kits to chemistry sets, the message sent to children, particularly boys, was that they needed to be properly trained for inevitable conflict. Children could also serve their country by preparing to take on families of their own. Chapter Four, "The Dating Game: Gender Roles," shows how children's culture stressed the inculcation of traditional gender norms. …

... Evil Children in Film and Literature: Notes Toward a Genealogy. View full textDownload full text Full access. DOI: 10.1080/10436928.2011.572330 Karen J. Renner pages 79-95. ... For discussion of British child murderers, see Loretta Loach's The Devil's Children. ...

As my co-editor Joshua J. Masters made clear in his introduction to the first of LIT’s two special issues on Representations of the Apocalypse in Literature and Film, genre greatly influences the function of apocalyptic tropes and motifs. In ‘‘Metalinguistic Discourse in the Contemporary Apocalyptic Novel,’’ Josh argued that the very fact that apocalyptic novels are written leads many of them to dwell upon the linguistic consequences of the apocalypse: how the end of the world would also mean the end of language. Rather than focusing upon typographic narratives, the essays in this second part primarily examine non-literary texts or juxtapose such works with written ones. Together, they reveal that texts that include a non-verbal iconography encourage us to reckon with our relationship to the world and its people. Of course, a novel can direct our attention in similar fashion, but a thematic interest in the Other seems to be a particular concern of works that communicate in means other than or in addition to the verbal. Specifically, the texts examined by the contributors to this volume use apocalyptic motifs to highlight the shortcomings of our present society and envision an improved community. The twenty-first century certainly has given us good reason to contemplate the apocalypse. In addition to worldwide financial crisis, a series of large-scale disasters—such as 9=11, the 2004 tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina—caused many to feel the end is nigh. In addition, the new century has brought with it a series of seemingly ominous calendar anomalies, including the simultaneous turn of both century and millennium, portentous dates like last year’s 11=11=11 (also the title of a film about the antichrist), and the supposed end of the Mayan long count calendar in 2012. These events, among others, have prompted an interest in the apocalypse, evidenced in a variety of ways, not least of which is the recent spate of blockbusters that have as their central premise the end of days. One can, in fact, come up with a recognizable film title from every year of our century that delves into apocalyptic matters in one way or another: Titan A.E. (2000),

Drunks, prostitutes, gamblers, and murderers were more than just fodder for the prurient curiosities of antebellum readers. They were "perverse subjects" against which the ideals of proper citizenship were defined. A careful study of a wide range of literary and non-literary antebellum texts, ...

Using the particular example of Memento (2001), this essay investigates the capacity for films to maintain emotional potency upon repeat viewings. Subtle emotion markers in the film - such as facial expressions and its score - collaborate with the plot to create a mood of sadness that may escalate into more powerful emotion. Because these same markers consistently appear during scenes of high emotion, the cues themselves become associated with sadness, leading the viewer to experience grief each time they are encountered more as an unconscious, learned response rather than a direct reaction to the film. As a result, though the film may have become familiar, it may retain its emotional potential on subsequent viewings.

In a teaser trailer for Scream 4 (2011), the latest installment in a franchise famous for parodying the conventions of horror films, a character lists some of the new rules of twenty-first-century incarnations of the genre, one of which is “virgins can die now.” Though the line did not appear in the final cut, fans have seized it as an unofficial tagline for the film. With such a statement, Scream 4 obviously means to mock the tendency in the previous generation of slasher films to kill off any teenager who had sex and reserve survival for a virginal Final Girl, a convention first examined in detail by Carol Clover in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992). The irony is, of course, that almost immediately after the publication of Clover’s seminal text, the first Scream film came along in 1996 and broke the rule by allowing its Final Girl, Sidney, to have sex and survive not only that movie but all of its installments so far. Since the very first of its f...

... into the camera at the film's conclusion, reminiscent of Damien's smirk at the end of The Omen, lets us know that Rohan remains a ... Hysteria, and the Oedipal Psychodrama in The Exorcist.” Her focus is not on the infamous Friedkin film that overtly attributes Regan's possession to ...

This essay examines the nexus of cultural factors—for example, rising juvenile crime rates, adoption practices, and a punitive approach to crime—that led to a proliferation of the figure of the “child psychopath” in such films as Mikey (1992), Child of Rage (1992) The Good Son (1993), The Paper Boy (1994), Relative Fear (1994), and Daddy’s Girl (1996), and the relationship between these portrayals and the subsequent moral panic over “superpredators,” ultraviolent juvenile criminals who operated without remorse or conscience. The conclusion briefly considers the implications of the “rebirth” of the child psychopath in the 2010s and the way the figure has transformed in response to a different sociopolitical climate.

During the antebellum era, increased attention to the prostitute coincided with a prevalent conception of women as, in Nancy Cott's words, essentially "passionless" unless aroused by sincere romantic love. Yet it seems paradoxical that this ideology existed alongside an increasing awareness of women whose livelihood depended upon manufacturing and marketing sexual desire. In this essay I argue that the prostitute became an object of antebellum fascination and concern less because of her defiance of the ideology of passionlessness and more because of the extent to which she could be made to reinforce this ideology. Casting the prostitute as a victim of seduction preserved predominant beliefs about the dependency of female desire on male impetus. The popular novels of George Thompson and Osgood Bradbury elide the sexual autonomy of the prostitute by making her a victim of men, but they do so in different ways. Thompson employs two variants of the seduction narrative that differ according to class, but both result in the subjection of female desire to male control. His indigent females are chaste victims of violent forms of sexual exploitation, while his licentious rich women reveal an inherent tendency toward monogamy or an inability to command their own aberrant desires. Bradbury, in contrast, is remarkable for his willingness to allow fallen women and prostitutes the chance to reform. As refreshingly progressive as Bradbury's novels seem, however, his adherence to the seduction narrative ultimately suggests that female desire is doomed to dissatisfaction unless properly channeled toward working-class men.

"Television today is marked by an unprecedented number of reality shows that focus on the paranormal investigation of spiritual entities, including Ghost Hunters (Syfy 2004- ), Ghost Adventures (Travel 2008- ), and Paranormal State (A & E 2007-). In addition, a number of recent horror films—the Paranormal Activity series, Grave Encounters (2011), Episode 50 (2011), The Apparition (2012), The Awakening (2012), Apartment 143 (2012), to name a few—have made ghost-hunting their central subject. The sheer number of these types of texts suggests a contemporary preoccupation with the ability to speak to the dead and thus marks a new era in the long history of American spiritualism.

Since its beginnings, American spiritualism has had strong female involvement. Most scholars trace the origins of the movement to the Fox sisters who in the 1840s claimed to be in touch with spirits who communicated to the girls by rapping on walls and floors. In the contemporary imagination, too, mediums and psychics are often female. One need only think of Tangina Barrons in Poltergeist (1982) or consider contemporary shows like Medium, starring Patricia Arquette (NBC 2005-2009; CBS 2009-2011) and Ghost Whisperer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (CBS 2005-2010).

The most popular ghost-hunting reality shows, however, show a marked absence of women. Female psychics are sometimes invited in to consult and other women serve as assistants, but it is men who manage the more serious and involved complexities of paranormal investigation. This gender bias is striking, not only considering the precedent of female influence but also because the “work” of communicating with the dead is so often feminized. The female psychic’s sensitivity to spirits is often treated as a natural outcropping of her gender, and even the channeling of a spirit could be seen as feminine since it requires “penetration” by an often male entity. A further threat to masculinity could be caused by the ghost-hunter’s resemblance to a Gothic heroine: trapped in a vast, maze-like, and simultaneously claustrophobic space, at the mercy of often hostile spirits.

I argue that reality ghost-hunting shows are structured to allow men to appropriate the work of the female medium without threat to their masculinity. Taking as my subject primarily Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Paranormal State, I will show that these programs masculinize a standard Gothic narrative using conventions from science-fiction and the Western. One of the most notable features of these shows—and of contemporary ghost-hunting practices in general—is the reliance on various technological innovations that can supposedly record evidence of paranormal events. While most critics have understood this tendency as a response to technology in general, I argue that it allows the “emotional” work of mediumship to be transferred onto a machine under the ghost-hunter’s control. Furthermore, unlike the female medium whose primary purpose is to listen, the male ghost-hunter casts himself as a sort of paranormal gunslinger who will battle spirits and rescue those who live in haunted spaces."

Evil children are a staple of horror films and fiction, but to discuss them as a singular trope would be to disregard the subtle variations in their form and function. Evil children come in all shapes and sizes, from the possessed child featured in The Exorcist, to the feral packs depicted in Lord of the Flies or Children of the Corn, to the serial-killer-in-the-making who saw perhaps its earliest incarnation in The Bad Seed’s Rhoda Penmark. This presentation will focus on one particular type of evil child: the killer infant.

Two recent films have featured cannibalistic newborns: the 2008 remake of Larry Cohen’s 1974 film It’s Alive! and Paul Solet’s Grace (2009). While their depictions of babies who prefer blood over milk is grotesque enough, even more disturbing are the portrayals of the mothers who help their offspring quench their unnatural thirst. I examine these two films in light of the recently documented rise in pro-life sentiment. We might expect that horror—so often cited as a conservative genre—would have a vested interest in defending mother love as an irresistible instinct, thereby implying that abortion is an unnatural choice. However, these films present maternal affection as monstrous, leading mothers to dispose of the corpses their children leave behind and to allow their babies to feed off their own flesh. This presentation will examine the conflicting representations of maternal love embodied in these films.