4/13/2010 GEOG 420 – Lecture 11 Outline • supernatural spaces: meet the sasquatch • Coast to Coast AM paranormal cultural geographies • hysterical materialism • Supernatual adjective adjective(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature : a supernatural being.• unnaturally or extraordinarily great : a woman of supernatural beauty. Supernatural spaces Poetry enlarges the circumference of • Supernatualnoun the imagination by replenishing it with manifestations or events considered to be of thoughts of ever new delight, which supernatural origin, such as ghosts. have the power of attracting and assimilating to their nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void ever craves fresh food. – Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819) 1 4/13/2010 Globalizing “Big Foot” Globalizing “Big Foot” Fouke Monster - Fouke, Arkansas Fear liath - Scotland Lake Worth monster - Lake Worth, Texas Hibagon – Japan Momo the Monster - Missouri Mono Grande - South America Nuk-luk - Northwest Territories Người Rừng - Vietnam Old Yellow Top - Ontario Orang Mawas - Malaysia Skunk Ape - Florida Orang Pendek - Sumatra, Indonesia Yowie - Australia Woodwose, medieval Europe America Almas - Mongolia Yeren - Hubei, China Amomongo - Negros, Philippines Yeti - Tibet Barmanou - Afghanistan and Pakistan Yowie - Australia Chuchunaa - Siberia 2 4/13/2010 Frame 352, Patterson/Gimlin Film, October 20, 1967 Bluff Creek, California The objet petit a designates nothing but the absence, the lack of an object, the void around which desire turns...“That’s not it” means that, in thdhe des ire o f every deman dhd, there is but the request for objet petit a” – Alenka Zupancic (2000,18) 3 4/13/2010 Coast to Coast AM 4 4/13/2010 Coast to Coast AM • Most popular late night radio talk show in North America • Estimated 4.5 million listeners each night • Guests range from PhDs in theoretical physics to the “Horse-Man” • Open lines include people who declare: “I’m in the year 2069” – advanced degrees in wacko! Coast to Coast AM Loch Ness • Topics include: alien sightings, bases, abductions; cryptozoology; global conspiracies; alien-human hybrids; spiritualism; 2012 and prophesies • Vancouver:CKNW-AM 980, nightly 1-5am UFOs c.1945… Reported 7-Dec-2009 5-Dec-2009, New Westminster, BC: (10:30 PM)I was sitting in my friends backyard having a hookah sesh with a couple other ppl and I'm sitting facing towards the mountains and the Fraser River, at around 10-10:30 pm I don't remember exactly when I saw this little blue pulsing light, at first I thought it was a plane but then I realized it was not moving and planes don't pulse they flash, 5 4/13/2010 but after about 30 seconds from its appearance it started to get brighter until it was about one quarter the size of the moon, it was glowing bright orange and still pulsing. It did this for about fifteen seconds, then it went back to the small blue pulsing light, but it started to move to the left very slowly for about 5 seconds then just disappeared. 6 4/13/2010 Shadow people Project Moonshaft: A SUBTERRANEAN ARTIFACT IN SLOVAKIA Coast to Coast AM • “The Frantic Caller “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee3bld4lTG0 “Area 51 caller” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ASP3aKVj4&fea ture=related Hysterical materialism 7 4/13/2010 Science fiction cinema oscillates between the metaphysics of presence(Jacques Derrida) and the pataphysicsof absence (Alfred Jarry)to create hysterical materalism(Kingsbury) Hysterical materialism • Alien (1979) lunch scene…alien bursts from stomach • Close Encoun ters (1982) hea dlamps in rear view mirror …. spaceship headlamps • Rattling of food in refrigerator; humanoid flies; spaceships; giant blobs etc. etc. 8 4/13/2010 Final paper due Noon Friday April 23 9.