www.gothicnaturejournal.com Gothic Nature New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic Issue two Founded by Elizabeth Parker Edited by Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland www.gothicnaturejournal.com Cover credit: Model IV, 2017 Artist: D Rosen Cast Aluminum (Original Objects: Buck Antler and Stomach (Decorative Model), Camel Mask (Theatrical Model), Whip (Didactic Model), Stiletto (Decoy Model), Goose Neck (Decoy Model), Nylons, Bra Underwire, Calvin Klein Dress, Facial Mask, Necklace, Wax 21 x 25 x 12 in. Photo credit: Jordan K. Fuller Fabrication: Chicago Crucible Web Designer: Michael Belcher www.gothicnaturejournal.com Gothic Nature **We are proud to be part of the open access movement, but ask that you credit the journal and its authors in full when using this material.** Gothic Nature issue 2 How to Cite Individual Articles: Surname, Initial. (2021) Title of Essay. Gothic Nature. 2, page numbers. Available from: https://gothicnaturejournal.com/. Published: February 2021 Peer Review: All articles that appear in the Gothic Nature journal have been peer reviewed through a fully anonymised process. Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open-access journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: Gothic Nature is a peer-reviewed open-access journal. www.gothicnaturejournal.com About this Journal Gothic Nature is a new peer-reviewed and open-access academic journal seeking to explore the latest evolutions of thought in the areas of ecohorror and the ecoGothic. It welcomes articles, reviews, interviews, and original creative pieces interrogating the darker sides of our relationship with the nonhuman world. The journal includes research from new and more revered scholars alike, working at the intersections of ecocriticism, Gothic and horror studies, and the wider environmental humanities and sciences. Online and Open Access Gothic Nature is available online at https://gothicnaturejournal.com/, where you can easily access all articles, reviews, blogs, and other materials for free. We are proud to be a part of an international movement making research freely available to the public in the pursuit of a greater global exchange of knowledge. Please visit the Gothic Nature website for more information about the journal, including contact details for the Editors and submission guidelines. Founding Editor Elizabeth Parker Co-Editors Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland Book Review Editor Jennifer Schell TV and Film Review Editor Sara L. Crosby Blog Editor Harriet Stilley Editorial Board: Stacy Alaimo William Hughes Eric G. Anderson Dawn Keetley Scott Brewster Ian Kinane Kevin Corstorphine John Miller Rachele Dini Matthew Wynn Sivils Simon C. Estok Andrew Smith Tom J. Hillard Samantha Walton www.gothicnaturejournal.com Gothic Nature Issue two March 2021 Contents We Live in EcoGothic Times: Gothic Nature in the Current Climate 1 Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland ARTICLES Dislodged Anthropocentrism and Ecological Critique in Folk Horror: 13 From ‘Children of the Corn’ and The Wicker Man to ‘In the Tall Grass’ and Children of the Stones Dawn Keetley The Wicked Witch in the Woods: Puritan Maternalism, Ecofeminism, 37 and Folk Horror in Robert Eggers’ The VVitch: A New-England Folktale Alexandra Hauke Soundtrack to Settler-Colonialism: Tanya Tagaq’s Music as Creative 62 Nonfiction Horror Kateryna Barnes The Ecohorror of Omission: Haunted Suburbs and the Forgotten Trees 84 of A Nightmare on Elm Street Christy Tidwell All You Need Is Love?: Making the Selfish Choice in The Cabin at the 110 End of the World and The Migration Rebecca Gibson The Haunted Seas of British Television: Nation, Environment and Horror 131 Mark Fryers Tentacles from the Depths: The Nautical Horror of D. T. Neal’s Relict 156 Antonio Alcalá González www.gothicnaturejournal.com Real Mermaid vs. Nuclear Power Plant: Ecofeminist Vengeance and 175 Ama Divers in Japanese Horror Timo Thelen BOOK REVIEWS CRITICAL Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson (eds), Gothic Animals: Uncanny 202 Otherness and the Animal With-Out (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) Jimmy Packham Emelia Quinn and Benjamin Westwood (eds.), Thinking Veganism in 207 Literature and Culture: Towards a Vegan Theory (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Noelle Mann Bridgitte Barclay and Christy Tidwell (eds.), Gender and Environment in 210 Science Fiction (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington, 2019) Andrew Todd Giovanni Aloi, Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces 214 and Art in the Anthropocene (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018) Josh Grant-Young Jon Hackett and Seán Harrington (eds.), Beasts of the Forest: Denizens of 221 the Dark Woods (East Barnet: John Libbey Ltd, 2019) Marc Ricard FICTION Gary Budden and Marian Womack (eds.), An Invite to Eternity: Tales 224 of Nature Disrupted (Madrid: Calque Press, 2019) Michael Wheatley Daisy Butcher (ed.), Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic 228 (London: The British Library, 2019) Teresa Fitzpatrick www.gothicnaturejournal.com Algernon Blackwood, Roarings From Further Out (ed. Xavier Aldana Reyes) 232 (London: The British Library, 2019) Daniel Pietersen Neil Christopher (ed.), Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories 236 (Iqaluit: Inhabit Media, 2019) Nicole Emanuel Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow Kingdom 241 (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2019) Annie Wenstrup TV AND FILM REVIEWS Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Swiss Army Man 244 (San Pedro, California: Tadmor, 2016) Ashley Kniss Black Radical Impulse, Self-Reflexivity, and Gothic Landscapes of Nature 248 and Difference in Jordan Peele’s Us (United States: Universal Pictures, 2019) Kim D. Hester Williams Michael Dougherty, Godzilla, King of the Monsters 253 (Qindao, China: Legendary Pictures, 2019) Carter Soles Folktale Failure: Gretel & Hansel 258 (United States: Orion Pictures, United Artists Releasing, 2020) Shelby Carr Bong Joon-ho, Parasite:A Review Cluster 262 (South Korea: CJ Entertainment, 2019) Sara L. Crosby, Shelby Brewster, and Valeria Meiller INTERVIEWS Blood Quantum: Review and Exclusive Interview with 272 Writer/Director Jeff Barnaby Interview by Tiffany Hearsey www.gothicnaturejournal.com Vivarium: Interview with Director Lorcan Finnegan 278 Interview by Elizabeth Parker, with questions from the Gothic Nature community CREATIVE CORNER HEAVY WEATHER: A Creative Intervention 285 Kevan Manwaring Half-Angry 295 Geralyn Pinto Developing with Death 299 Micaela Edelson Gris-Gris 305 Jack B. Bedell Four Poems 307 Rick Hudson A Story About Animals 310 Michael Wheatley Novel Excerpt: My Side of the Ocean 316 Shelby London Driscoll Salemi Forest Bones 330 Amara George Parker www.gothicnaturejournal.com We Live in EcoGothic Times: Gothic Nature in the Current Climate Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland ‘The story of COVID-19 is a peculiarly ecoGothic one’. In the year or so that has passed since the inaugural issue of Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic a lot has changed. In what seems the blink of an eye, we now find ourselves in increasingly surreal—and Gothic—times in the midst of messily intermeshed social, political, economic, racial, and environmental turbulence. Many of the portents and warnings that have been entrenched from the outset in conversations around ‘ecohorror’ and ‘ecoGothic’ have rapidly taken frightening material form—evoking both disturbance and denial in seemingly equal measure. Consequently, the subject of interrogating and understanding the inextricable relationship between the human and the more-than-human—as well as the ‘Gothicness’ of this relationship—is becoming less niche by the day. The themes, and potentially the tools, of the ecoGothic are pushed ever more centre stage. In Charlie Brooker’s recent Netflix mockumentary Death to 2020, one character muses on the past year: ‘I’d say it was a train wreck and a shitshow, but that would be unfair to trains and shit’. More, certainly, has occurred in terms of ecosocial catastrophe than we can begin to catalogue here, but the global highlight of the year, of course, is COVID-19: a phenomenon that fits all too well within the themes of this journal. The pandemic, as William Hughes persuasively argued at the swiftly organised CoronaGothic conference (hosted by the University of Macau in June 2020) and in a subsequent special issue of Critical Quartley (2020) titled ‘CoronaGothic: Cultures of the Pandemic’, is a matter of dark and global ecology—and one which fits squarely within the remits of the ecoGothic. And indeed, the story of COVID-19 is a peculiarly ecoGothic one. We wish to dwell, therefore, for a moment, on the extraordinary context in which we are publishing issue two of Gothic Nature. 1 www.gothicnaturejournal.com Much has been written on the links between humankind’s treatment of the environment and disease. In the past few decades, there has been a notable increase in the number of disease outbreaks that cross over from nonhuman animals to humans, such as SARS and bird influenza (Kate E. Jones et al, 2008; Katherine F. Smith et al, 2014). A key subject for ecologists in the last decade has been to question why this increase has occurred. Rory Gibb et al (2020) found that deforestation, agricultural expansion, and land conversion—and, importantly, attendant biodiversity loss—increases the pool of pathogens that