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Contemporaries Essays, Get in the Cage

The Call of Cage-thulu: On the Unspeakable Frenzies of Nicolas Cage

What opposes Lovecraft to the representatives of good taste is more than a question of details. HPL would probably have considered a story a failure, if in writing it he…

Contemporaries Essays, Get in the Cage

The Iron Cage

Heroes, as far as I could then see, were white, and not merely because of the movies but because of the land in which I lived, of which movies were…

Contemporaries Essays, Get in the Cage

Between The Rock and a Hard Face: On First Encounters of the Cage Kind

Even if you’re a true film buff, there’s always that one classic movie that you haven’t seen. Admitting it at parties is a reliable form of self-deprecating small talk: I…

Contemporaries Essays, Get in the Cage

On the Brink of Breakdown

1 “Brandy was her name.”1 The pig’s, that is. The one that acted across from Nicolas Cage in Michael Sarnoski’s directorial debut Pig. The titular sow. She was untrained, and…

Contemporaries Essays, Get in the Cage

Cage Register

In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.’ But fate…

Contemporaries Essays, Get in the Cage

Introduction to the Cage

Who is Nicolas Cage? The name itself is enough to conjure a whole host of associations not easily reconciled. There’s the star of beloved indies like Raising Arizona (1987) and…

Contemporaries Essays, New Literary Television

Literary, but Not Prestigious: Lupin and the Serious Pleasures of Amorality

Chapter 4 of Jason Mittell’s 2015 book Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television, on “Characters,” begins: “Nearly every successful television writer will point to character as the focal point…

Contemporaries Essays, New Literary Television

The History of True Crime in the Midwest:Writing and Intertextuality in Fargo

Why should we pay attention to the “literary” or “cinematic” dimension of a TV series? For some critics, approaches that focus on media and artistic convergence are likely to distinguish…

Contemporaries Essays, New Literary Television

Un-noveling Lovecraft Country

1. Lovecraft Country’s first season (2020) exemplifies recent prestige television’s changed relationship to “the literary” in that it rejects the authority of “the novel,” as a form entangled within centrist…

Contemporaries Essays, New Literary Television

Learning How to Read: Lovecraft Country’s Literary and Historical Interventions

Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country (2020) is a significant moderation of literature and literary forms beyond even its adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel or its explicit references to H.P. Lovecraft. While…