Workplace bullying never seems far from the headlines. The Maskell Bill before Parliament could be a landmark development here. It would define workplace bullying in UK law for the first time, enable workers to pursue bullying claims in law, establish a Respect at Work Code with minimum behaviour standards, give the Equalities and Human Rights Commission workplace investigation powers, and provide for enforcement actions.[2]

This article examines the Bill’s potential impact by comparing the UK position with France’s 2002 law criminalising bullying. It also explores its social impact — particularly through the subsequent flood of fiction that has contributed to a profound debate and public understanding of the genesis, root causes and characteristics of workplace bullying.[3] The article concludes by suggesting how the Bill might be rendered more effective by learning from the French experience.

Context

Leading French organisational psychotherapist, Marie-France Hirigoyen, argues bullies are:

‘ narcissistic perverts [who] do harm because they don’t know any other way to exist. They were themselves harmed as children and tried to keep themselves alive. This transfer of pain allows them to value themselves at the expense of others.’ [4]

It is difficult to judge how extensive workplace bullying really is because survey evidence is based largely on workers’ perceptions. However, it exists across all modern economies.[5] It is more psychological than physical , and reflects potentially stress-inducing organisational practices i.e.:

· Complex digital monitoring and control systems with senior management based far from workers who are unaware when they are actually under surveillance.

· Performance management processes where either workers’ influence over quantifiable targets may be limited, or performance is assessed using qualitative criteria in behavioural competencies.

· Increase in temporary work contract use.[6]

· Encouraging competition between workers through team incentives that put peer pressure on weaker performers.

UK situation

Research shows UK employment tribunal claims of bullying allegations increased 44% from 581 to a record high of 835 in the 12 months to June 2023.[7] There is currently no UK legislation that specifically defines and prohibits workplace bullying. However, this does not mean that employers have no legal responsibilities here, nor that protections for bullying targets don’t exist.

In general conversation the words ‘bullying’ and ‘harassment’ are used interchangeably. However, in UK law ‘harassment’ is specifically:

‘unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, with the purpose of violating someone’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment’. (Equality Act 2010)

It is discriminatory bullying against an individual within a defined ‘protected characteristic’ including age, disability, race, religion, and sex. It generally gives rise to a civil claim before an employment tribunal. It may also constitute a criminal offence where, for instance, data protection and privacy laws are breached. Where not discriminatory, there is no legal defence against bullying based on ‘protected characteristics’. Yet, it can still take place and needs to be addressed.

French situation

French legislation originates from an study by Marie-France Hirigoyen who has spent many years counselling individuals traumatised by psychological intimidation.[8] The 2002 law on ‘le harcèlement moral’ makes bullying a criminal offence with potential fines for organisations and individuals and imprisonment of perpetrators. [9] It states:

‘No worker shall be subjected to repeated acts of psychological bullying whose purpose or effect is to degrade their working conditions and which are likely to infringe their rights and dignity, to alter their physical or mental health or to compromise their career future.’

This definition includes any behaviour that seeks to intimidate an individual by damaging them physically and/or mentally. The law encompasses behaviour detrimental to an individual’s sense of self-respect. It applies where the behaviour complained of is:

· Part of a pattern, not a single act.

· Intended to, or have the effect of, causing damage which violates individual rights and dignity.

· Likely to harm the target’s physical or mental health, or compromise future employment prospects.

Claimants are protected from dismissal and unfavourable treatment.

Appeal Court decisions have shaped application of this legislation by examining both bullying behaviour and the context of each case. For instance, since 2016, employers have been able to absolve themselves of responsibility for bullying where they can demonstrate all preventive measures have been taken. [10]

Research suggests that courts have been cautious in decision-making here. For instance, in 2011, of 4000 cases submitted to the Appeal Court in the Aquitaine region only 38 were considered bullying in law. [11].Most targets were private sector white-collar women aged 44 plus. In 76% of cases, the negative impact on social relationships was cited as a factor in bullying.

The courts have appeared reluctant to impose the ultimate sanction of incarceration. My research has only uncovered three such cases. The leading case involving sentencing remains ‘institutional bullying’ at France Telecom (now Orange) where in 2008–2009 some 30 workers were alleged to have committed suicide for work-related reasons. On 20/12/2019 the Criminal Court fined the company €75,000 (£65,000) and sentenced its three most senior executives each to 12 months’ imprisonment and imposed fines of €15,000 (£13,000) for creating a ‘draconian programme of workforce reduction’ leading to these suicides. However, in 2020 the Court of Appeal converted all periods of imprisonment to suspended sentences. it remains unclear what extreme behaviour would lead a court to apply imprisonment under the law, given the harrowing nature of this case that illustrates a culture of systemic bullying and psychological violence. [12]

In September 2018, I interviewed Marie-France Hirigoyen about her work and the effectiveness of the law. She said that, for all the media attention, she felt it had only had a marginal impact. She cited the case of a ‘well-known journalist,’ marginalised at work, who took their employer to court for bullying and won just €9,000 (£7,800) in damages. She said she was helping this individual handle the ‘psychological fallout’ of this decision.

This assessment highlights the challenges of legislating here i.e.:

· The persistent power imbalance between perpetrator and target.

· Bullying itself is the start of a process. Many years of psychological suffering can follow for the worker and their family.

· Legislation needs to specify unacceptable behaviours and prohibit employers from sidestepping responsibility to protect workers by arguing they were powerless to stop bullying.

The power of fiction

The proposed Respect at Work Code could incorporate specific prohibited bullying behaviours. These might be drawn initially from those lived experiences of workers described in modern French fiction. This is not fanciful. My research lists more than 20 concrete behaviours. They represent the most comprehensive list I have encountered anywhere in my research. They include:

· Deliberately failing to invite a worker to an important meeting

· Prohibiting casual conversation between workers

· Deliberately using vague statements about job security

· Mocking personal taste and physical traits

· Deliberately employing vague statements about performance expectations

· Deliberately failing to copy in on an important email

Enforcement

Given French experience and current overcrowding in English and Welsh prisons, incarceration for bullies under UK law seems unlikely. French courts view prison as an extreme penalty, and, even in the dire case of France Télécom, preferred to order suspended sentences along with fines. Of course, this ruling was also a corporate public relations disaster and probably rendered unemployable the senior managers involved.[13]

Concluding comments

A new UK law could set minimum standards and enforce compliance after the event. However, the most effective way of managing workplace bullying is to stop it from happening in the first place through measures like positive role modelling by senior management and staff awareness training. Let’s also remember, bullying costs organisations money, including through increased labour turnover, reduced staff morale and higher sickness absenteeism.

All this means that, in the final analysis, whatever the Maskell Bill seeks to achieve, it can only contribute to controlling workplace bullying. It is unlikely to eradicate it.

____________________

[1] Martin is a retired HR director, management consultant and interim with some 40 years’ practical experience, working in the UK and overseas. He holds a PhD in Modern Languages (Leeds). And two Masters’ degrees. His PhD thesis is published as Bastards at Work: Universal Lessons on Workplace Bullying from Contemporary French Storytelling. Peter Lang, 2021. He is a member of the International Association on Workplace Bullying, a global network of researchers, and a former Chartered Fellow of the CIPD.

[2] Rachael Maskell MP (York Central) (Lab/Co-op), Bullying and Respect at Work Bill, tabled 11/ 07/2023, Hansard, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-07-11/debates/7435C28E-7F68-4747-BD9C-EDCA0824B2AD/BullyingAndRespectAtWork

• Commons: 11 July 2023
• Commons Chamber
• Bullying and Respect at Work

[3] Since the year 2000 there have been at least 80 novels on workplace bullying, published in France along with around a dozen films and a similar number of stage plays.

[4] Le harcèlement moral ( La Découverte, 1998), p. 127.

[5] Workplace Bullying and Harassment: New developments in international law, Elen Pinkos Cobb, Routledge, 2017

[6] The Rise of Temporary Work in Europe, Bas ter Weel, Springer Science+Business Media, 22/10/2018 LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10645-018-9329-8

[7] Workplace bullying claims hit record high, data shows, Yoana Cholteeva, People Management, 11/07/2022

[8] Le Harcèlement moral: la violence perverse du quotidien, Marie-France Hirigoyen, La Découverte, 1998

[9] La loi de modernisation sociale of 17/01/2002, incorporated into Penal and Labour Codes, as well as public service legislation.

[10] Cass. soc. 08/06/2016, n° 14–14.418

[11] Qualification juridique du harcèlement moral en France. An Empirical Study of 2011 Rulings by the Court of Appeal for the Aquitaine Region, Gaëlle Encrenaz and Loïc Lerouge 21/1/2019. https://doi.org/10.4000/pistes.6348

[12] La raison des plus forts : Chroniques du procès France Télécom, Eric Beynel and Claire Rober, Atelier 2020

[13] Prison places in England and Wales are ‘bust’, says governors’ union chief, Haroon Siddique, The Guardian,09/10/2023

There are many theories that study the development of human society. But looking back at the more successful sociological theories in history, we can find that they all have a very important feature, that is, they basically emphasize the relationship between humans. From individual psychology to social psychology to macroscopic sociology, it is said that the composition and development of the entire society is based on the relationship and conflict between humans. To study the survival and development of human society from such a macroscopic perspective from the relationship between human and nature, human and the environment, or between human and the entire earth and even the solar system, the Milky Way, and even the universe, a more systematic theory is required.

For example, the Paris Agreement in 2015, although it emphasized that climate change will have a very serious impact on human society and set goals that countries around the world need to achieve in the next few years, how does such a climate change affect the structure of human society? This requires more theoretical support. So much so that some even think that perhaps rising global temperatures may be more beneficial to human society. This has led some countries to adopt a hands-on approach when formulating climate policies. Some people think that even if the climate changes drastically, they believe that humans can always automatically adapt to this new climate change when global temperatures rise in the future.

However, if we look at the problem from the perspective of a global climate environment where changes in the climate and environment have a decisive impact on the structure and type of human society, we will find that the rise in global temperature is not as simple as a figure of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The rise in global temperature will inevitably affect the structure and type of human society as a whole, which in turn will drag down the development of the entire society. When a very stable human social structure with a long history is destroyed, and the new social structure that replaces it cannot adapt to such changes in the climatic environment, then it may bring a series of humanitarian problems. For example, in the seventies of the last century, some leaders in some parts of Southeast Asia made wrong decisions to forcibly transform the traditional family-oriented society into a social-oriented society in Southeast Asian countries, resulting in the destruction of existing production relations and a sharp decline in food production, which in turn caused a famine in which millions of people died in the entire country.

5,000 years ago

Older than that, there is now some evidence that 5,000 years ago, the entire planet caused a huge flood due to a sharp rise in temperature. The flood led to the disappearance of many civilizations around the world. The most typical of these is the Liangzhu 良渚 culture in the late Neolithic period of China. More than 5,000 years ago, the ancient city of Liangzhu was a very prosperous Neolithic society. Since more than 10,000 years ago, this society has been continuously born and developed in the area of Hangzhou Bay. From the existing archaeological excavations, it can be seen that Liangzhu Ancient City is a prehistoric civilization whose overall development of society has reached a very high level. About 5,000 years ago, however, there was a rapid warming process on the entire planet. In addition to causing sea level rise, this rise in global temperatures is more serious in addition to inundating land at low coastal altitudes, but also leading to global climate instability. This climate instability may manifest itself in localized high temperatures, high heat, and extremely cold weather. These extreme weather events could cause the complete melting of snow-capped mountain glaciers in the Arctic, Antarctica, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau on the Asian continent, leaving no continuous water to replenish the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, causing seasonal droughts. This uneven distribution of temperature on Earth leads to unpredictable flows in the movement of the global atmosphere. When very powerful typhoons and violent tectonic movements of the Earth’s plates occur, they can cause huge tsunamis. The emergence of such planetary-scale tsunamis, like the Great Red Spot storm on Jupiter, could last for decades or even longer. In the past few decades, a large amount of seawater has poured into the mainland area, causing a reverse flow of the Yangtze River. Coupled with the disappearance of glaciers upstream, this kind of water backflow can even reach the relatively low altitude of Wuhan and even the Three Gorges area, eventually causing huge floods. The Liangzhu culture in Zhejiang suffered as a result. The remnants of the surviving Liangzhu culture were forced to move south or west into the Chengdu Plain, which is relatively high.

During the period of relative stability of the global climate, the fluctuation of global temperature will be relatively small, but even such a small fluctuation can still make the entire earth enter a relatively cold ice age in a certain period of time. This ice age, which can be ignored from the perspective of the movement of the earth, has a huge impact on human society. During this colder ice age, temperatures are most affected by those near the northern hemisphere. When global temperatures are warmer, population growth pressures will lead to some human migration to the north of the planet. And when the Earth’s temperature fluctuates over a small ice period, the temperature in these northern regions can drop dramatically, leaving people who live in nomadic ways unable to obtain enough food. This caused a portion of northern humans to migrate south. When these human beings are hindered in their southward migration, it will cause conflicts between human cultures and thus wars. From the history after the Qin Dynasty in China, it can be seen that whenever the global temperature drops, the entire eastern Asian region will produce more serious disasters and wars. When the climate is warmer, the entire eastern part of Asia will prosper rapidly. This also reflects the impact of global climate change on the structure of human society. Using the knowledge of social thermodynamics, we can predict the impact of global climate change on these social thermodynamics parameters of human society, thereby providing a theoretical basis for human society to formulate effective policies to cope with climate change.

Industrial Revolution

After the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, human society faced another problem. Due to the rapid increase in the social temperature of the thermodynamic system of the entire human society, compared with the global temperature, it means that more energy will flow from human society to the earth’s environment, resulting in an increase in the global temperature. Of course, this is the inevitable result of the industrialization and informationization of human society.

Historically, in response to rising or falling global temperatures, ancient human societies were mainly done through large-scale population migration. But after the Industrial Revolution, this rise in global temperatures was largely caused by human activity itself. In this case, human beings may not be able to avoid various natural and man-made disasters through large-scale population migration as ancient societies did. This means that more mutual cooperation between human societies is needed to achieve the goal of global harmony. Human society must find a path of green peace development to promote the comprehensive economic, political and cultural development of human society. The past approach of relying on a clash of civilizations to promote the development of human society must be abandoned.

From the history of human industrialization and informatization development in the past 200 years, it can also be seen that although the clash of various civilizations and wars have indeed promoted the emergence of many new technologies, these technologies are likely to be harmful to human society. It is likely that these technologies are the root cause of the rise in global temperatures. For example, the emergence of two world wars has led to different countries and cultures having to strengthen their scientific and technological strength. And this extensive scientific and technological development is entirely aimed at how to confront other civilizations. For this purpose, very inefficient diesel engines that release large amounts of greenhouse gases and heat are developed and installed in tanks. Kerosene engines with increased efficiency were installed in the aircraft. Although this gave humans greater power to conquer other civilizations and even the earth’s ecosystem, it was clear that it also brought a very large amount of greenhouse gas and heat emissions, laying the foundation for the rapid rise in global temperatures in the following decades.

And the emergence of war not only led to the development of a large number of inefficient technologies. As a result of the short-term decline in population caused by the war, in turn to compensate for these declines after the war, countries around the world began to strive to increase fertility. This is the emergence of the baby boom in the sixties and seventies after World War II. Rapid population growth in turn means that this inefficient technology supports the need to obtain more energy, release more greenhouse gases and heat, and exacerbate the rise in global temperatures.

The World Today

Unfortunately, there are still a few countries in our world that hold this very bad idea of using war to promote their own development. This will only undermine global efforts to collectively resist rapidly changes in the Earth’s climate. The limited scientific, technological and cultural resources of the development of human society are consumed in a meaningless war.

These are only a small aspect of the challenges facing human society, but they have shown that climate change has a huge impact on the development of human society and civilization. However, the existing sociological theories are still limited to the microscopic interaction between people at the research level, and less consideration is given to the impact of global climate and environmental changes on human society.

The book “Social Thermodynamics” was written in the hope of exploring the laws of social development from a more macroscopic perspective of global change. By introducing the quantitative calculation method of thermodynamics, some important social thermodynamic parameters, such as social temperature, social pressure, social space, etc., can be quantified. This allows conclusions to be drawn with the help of rigorous mathematical derivation. The advantage of using this mathematical derivation is that we can focus mainly on simple axiomatic assumptions, and as long as these axiomatic assumptions are correct, then the conclusions obtained are also correct. Otherwise, we can revise the hypothesis in order to finally reach the correct conclusion in line with the laws of social development.

Zhi Cheng, Author of Social Thermodynamics. An Interdisciplinary View
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1326006

Why should we talk about a book written in English at an Italian Language Festival (Biblioteca delle Oblate, Firenze, 1 Aprile 2023)? Because the Italian author, Massimo Arcangeli an Italian-speaking linguist and organiser of the Festival, has chosen to write in English in order to publish with international academic publisher, Peter Lang Group. This book is the first of a new format, called Vectors, which is aimed at an interdisciplinary intra- and extra-academic as well as international readership. In fact, it can be said that the first ‘inclusive’ operation of this book is to speak of the Italian language (as a metonymy of all languages) to an audience that is not necessarily Italian.

Arcangeli does this with a technical and specialised language and style but with the necessary clarifications for the non-expert. It is therefore a cultured disclosure (made by a cultured person for the cultured) that does not simplify but makes it accessible to curious readers who are not familiar with the discipline in question, in this case linguistics. Another common feature of the Vectors format is in fact the ‘compact’ paratextual apparatus, a short index, i.e. with only a few chapters (4 in this case), minimal footnotes (none in this case) to facilitate reading, and a reference bibliography for those who wish to delve deeper.

But let us come to the topic which, like many things Arcangeli does, is trendy, ultra-contemporary (to use a category used in literary studies), very topical (in the last five years there has been increased conversation about it) and also militant. Militancy is one of the characteristics required of the authors of the Vectors format, that they write on topics that provoke a discussion, that constitute as books, pamphlets, a provocation on a subject on which public opinion may be divided. Therefore, militant linguistics. Title and subtitle constitute an oxymoron in themselves: ‘Grammar without gender. How to promote inclusion without destroying languages’. The title could have been in interrogative form, but the author’s position is neither doubtful nor equivocal, it is clear-cut for the reader. Moreover, the subtitle clarifies the message, which is political (in a broad sense) and linguistic (in a narrow sense). The author, the book, are in favour of inclusion but against the destruction, demolition, and impoverishment of languages. The last word, LANGUAGES, is in the plural not only because it is a book by an Italian author addressing a non-Italian audience, but also and above all because it speaks of all languages.

The Book

The book is a linguistic manifesto that on the one hand embraces the needs of today’s evolving society, and on the other listens to the concerns of the Accademia della Crusca and language historians by placing some necessary curbs on the arbitrary and sometimes senseless frequent drifts. In short, it imposes a rule for the form while being in favour of the content it is meant to convey. These are discussions that involve all languages that have masculine and feminine and which, I can testify, even Editors take care not to overlook.

Chapter I and II

Moving to the contents, in this sense the English language helps, an index is called Table of Contents. The first chapter is on the dictatorship of political correctness as if to say that public opinion dictates (or tries to) the rules of language, the use of language: whoever does not conform to the genderless code, to schwa, to asterisks, etc. is considered politically (or rather ethically) incorrect, receiving pressure even at an institutional level (Arcangeli recalls the first speech codes in American universities, 1988 Michigan). And it is here that the linguist Arcangeli brings his erudition and authority to bear. In particular, he does so with his decisive and gentle manner in the final chapter (chapter IV) where he proposes solutions to problems and requests in favour of inclusion in various languages, a sort of handbook. Chapter II, dedicated to gender equality and inequality from the over-extended masculine (the use and rule of putting plurals that semantically include sets of men and women into the masculine) to contemporary feminism (whereby the feminine is declined as soon as possible or even when it would not be), has a historical-diachronic slant on the history of language. In this sense, the position of the moderate but attentive is to always address the feminine first and then the masculine to an audience of readers or listeners when until today, the day before yesterday, or a few years ago, the masculine included the feminine.

Chapter III

The third chapter is more technical and provides examples and data with a militant and provocative title: In the name of the neuter (and therefore in favour? the reader wonders): The schwa and other transgender graphic symbols. Transgender is a bold term, linked to topical social issues (he could have chosen UNISEX, born and used in the fashion industry in the 1980s). The schwa was originally supposed to be in the title of the book but a more cosmopolitan, inclusive slant was chosen, since schwa is purely Italian. The reading (without notes, as already mentioned) is facilitated by a rich set of tables, graphs.

I leave it to the reader to discover: is this a book in favour of linguistic inclusion? In what way can the Italian language take the lead in this small translinguistic revolution? Is it a book on the History of language, Historical linguistics or Socio-linguistics? On balance, it would also have done well in another Peter Lang Group series, one directed by Arcangeli himself ‘Storia linguistica e storia sociale. Social History of the Italian language.’

Receive more information about Massimo Arcanbgeli’s title “Genderless Grammar. How to Promote Inclusivity without Destroying Languages” here https://www.peterlang.com/document/1297221

By Adam F.C. Fletcher

Around the world today, there is a challenge to the most common organizing structure for society today. Never easily rested upon, democracy has required constant invention, reinvention and transformation since the earliest peoples practiced it, whether among the Greeks 2,700 years ago, the Indians 3,100 years ago, or Native American nations in the last 2,000 years. Right now, there is a lot being done to damage, harm, and wreck democracy worldwide, even after decades of active attempts to encourage, proselytize and even force democracy worldwide.

Why a “disorder”?

The World Health Organization defines a disorder as “a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour.” The democracy deficit disorder is a significant disturbance in individual’s, communities’, and nations’ cognition, feelings about, and behaviors related to democracy.

Our cognition is the way we think about things. The ways our society has thought about democracy have expanded greatly since the American experiment began in 1776. Obviously government is the greatest function of democracy — which is majority rule — in our society. Today though, we apply democracy to many institutions, elements, factors and components like education, neighborhoods, and even families.

Feelings about democracy require balance with thinking things through. There are many sentimental ideas about democracy, including the feelings of passion, empathy and solidarity that lead to inclusivity, equity and empowerment. However, there are also other feelings about democracy, including cynicism, intransigence and even antipathy. Feelings are used to capture attention, divert resources, undermine paradigms and transform cultures.

Finally, there are our democratic behaviors. This can look like many things, including active listening, deliberate teamwork, obvious flexibility, and intellectual humility. These are particularly democratic because they focus on reciprocity, inclusion and belonging, and by using them as actions we see them as outcomes because each behavior is what democracy looks like in process.

The democracy deficit disorder exists because each of these elements is being actively and passively, overtly and subversively challenged by dominant powers in society. These powers are motivated by power and driven by violence, whether they are economic, cultural, social, political or otherwise.

There is hope!

There is hope though, and it is young people. Throughout the history of the American experiment, children and youth have continuously kept the flame of potential shining brightly for democracy. Working with adults as partners, young people have been addressing countless issues at the core of democracy, taking direct actions to keep democracy alive, and driven structural, elemental and powerful strategies to keep the democracy alive.

By dedicating, concentrating and sustaining action by young people focused on saving democracy, we can ensure leadership by the people, for the people continues. Political misdirection, environmental calamities, wars, social unrest, economic upheaval and more challenges have rocked the foundations of the United States since its foundation, and other democracies worldwide have faced these realities, too. Their innate belief in freedom and dedication to justice have ensured children and youth the standard bearers of a better society worldwide. They are the hope we need right now.

In May 2023, Peter Lang Group published a new book by Adam F.C. Fletcher and J. Cynthia McDermott called Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People. Exploring everything in this blog post and much more, the book is going to become an essential read for youth workers, community organizers, government workers, educators, and others.

All industry must go through evolution. Education and politics seem to change on a daily basis, and even the long-standing career of academia itself is forced to evolve to keep up with technology and digital media. But what does it mean when careers and roles seem to die out? Do they die out, or do they evolve and what is the impact of this on society as a whole?

Professor Edd Applegate opens up discussion around this issue, considering how journalism and investigative journalism have undergone significant change.

So, in the author’s own words…

Disclaimer: The views and opinions below are the authors own and are not representative of the Peter Lang Group.

________________

According to the current Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment for reporters and other journalists is negative for the next 10 years. In fact, it is predicted that employment for these individuals will decline 3 percent. This means almost 2,000 jobs will be lost.

As if this is not grave enough, newspapers and magazines have been cutting editorial positions for the past several years. For instance, in 2021, according to the Pew Research Center, employment in media newsrooms in the United States fell 26 percent between 2008 and 2020. Unfortunately, during this period, investigative journalists were some of the first individuals in newsrooms to lose their jobs.

Fortunately, several media outlets have been founded for investigative journalists and writers who spend hours, days, weeks, or months investigating one or more stories. Unfortunately, fewer individuals read or view what these journalists uncover primarily because fewer individuals actually subscribe to or watch the media in which the stories appear.

Yet, this form of journalism is essential if individuals expect a democratic society to function properly. Without question, investigative journalists, especially those who report what they have uncovered without including their opinions, play an important role in a democratic society, particularly when they uncover unethical and/or illegal activity by businesses, state, or federal employees. Such reporting generally results in one or more individuals being charged with a crime and/or a new law addressing the issue being written and passed.

The book, Investigative Journalism in the United States: A History, with Profiles of Journalists and Writers Who Practiced the Form not only presents a history of the subject, but includes biographies of numerous journalists and writers who devoted their professional careers to uncovering wrongdoing by businesses, state, and/or federal employees, as well as others.

The book should be added to every college and university library’s reference section. Students who are emphasizing some area of journalism or mass communications more than likely will find it a valuable resource.

Professor Edd Applegate

Much like the libraries they reside in, academic books have a very classic image. To talk of academic libraries most people conjure up mental images of rows of books with slightly dusty covers, wooden panelling and a hushed atmosphere. Academic books are expected to be dry, serious tomes filled with long words and complicated ideas with pictures restricted to technical diagrams. And let’s not forget the stereotypical librarian and academic — both serious creatures who speak quietly and dress classically.

Yes, there are some academic libraries with wooden panelling and a hushed atmosphere holding beautiful stacks of books, large worn wooden tables and a distinct smell that brings a smile to any bibliophile’s face. And there are certainly dry academic titles with incredibly complex ideas held within their pages, best suited only to the avid reader. And yes, there will also be academics who by their nature are serious and quiet and well-dressed. Beyond that though, is an academic world of more variety and innovation and colour.

Anyone who has visited an academic library in recent times, particularly one that has been revamped and invested in, will know that an academic library is not just a place for quiet study anymore. No more librarians shushing students for coughing or breathing too loudly as the old stereotype suggests. Just as learning has evolved the library is now a multi-functional space for learners to collaborate and explore new ideas and concepts. Modern libraries are designed with learning at their heart with colour, light, and technology all playing their part. Librarians reflect these changes with their focus not just on crafting the perfect book and journal collections for their users but on how they can best support collaboration, learning, and technological advances in the space.

So what about academic books? What does a modern academic title look like?

Well, one thing we know is that they aren’t serious, text-heavy books. The academic world is diverse these days with academics studying everything from sexuality to vampires, from democracy to video games and titles reflect this. Images are increasingly important across many academic subjects.

Graphic Medicine

Graphic novels have bridged the gap between ‘comic’ and ‘academic’ and now serve as a format in their own right for graphic medicine. In this instance the pairing of academic research with a graphic novel format offers a softened narrative, weaving in the emotions and personal experiences that underlie all medical research. It brings the research to a more accessible place. This can be especially important for research in areas where there is expected to be a broad readership made up of medical professionals, researchers, patients themselves, and family members affected.

One such title is ‘Moving along — A co-produced graphic novel about Parkinson’s dance’ by Lisbeth Frølunde, Louise Phillips and Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø. This beautiful book is a graphic novel based on personal experiences of living with Parkinson’s Disease. More specifically it is around the value that movement and dance have for those with the disease. Written for use across the fields of arts and health, medical humanities, graphic medicine and narrative medicine, the format makes it an accessible title for the layperson as well where other medical texts may seem intimidating. Most importantly though the graphic images help to convey the movement and joy the book itself explores. It is hard to imagine words alone being able to capture the impact freedom in dance has on someone living with the restrictions Parkinson’s places on the body.

“Dancing brings joy, energy, and community, and thereby strengthens the will to live, all important when a chronic illness turns your world upside down.”
Moving along — A co-produced graphic novel about Parkinson’s dance

Film Studies

Another genre in which images hold value is film studies. In the past film studies may have been focused on classic films that students and researchers were expected to have already watched. These days though the sheer quantity of films produced around the world makes this implausible. In the US and Canada alone, the average is 600 films a year, and with streaming services and the increased use of language dubbing and captions more and more people are choosing to watch films that originate outside of their country and language. With such a vast repository of source material for academic study it is no surprise that genre studies are increasingly diverse.

One series ‘Genre Fiction and Film Companions’ seeks to provide accessible introductions to key texts within the most popular genres of our time. The latest title ‘The Deep’, edited by Marko Teodorski and Simon Bacon, explores the myths and legends of merfolk and sea monsters and our fascination with the sea, from mythological representations through to present-day visions. Consider how many films explore a relationship with the sea or the creatures that reside in it. From disaster films with a vicious, untamed sea, to the romance genre where the sea offers an escape, to fantasy films that offer up entirely new worlds to explore underwater. To expect a reader to have seen every film up for discussion would be unreasonable and yet to explore the nuances of a scene they need to have seen it, to have the same sense of panic or escape or wonder that the author has recognized. This is why images are so important. Even if a reader has never seen the film, a single image can share details with them about lighting, colour, and costume design, all of which play a part in the analysis of a film regardless of theme.

In addition, for the exploration of film and fiction genres such as ‘The Deep’ which crosses borders of both time and space, it is of the utmost importance to ground the analysis in the culture in which the film and story was created. The understanding of one mythological creature might differ between countries, and perhaps only by illustration can the reader truly understand the same and connect with it.

“The idea of ‘The Deep’ is as culturally specific as it is transcultural”
The Deep — A Companion

Art & Architecture

Similar needs can be found in art and architectural history titles. Excluding the most obvious reason — because art is a visual study — images are often essential for architecture titles. This importance is not just limited to, for example, needing an image of a building to accompany an exploration of the Baroque style. Much like with graphic medicine, images can make architectural history accessible to all. One example would be ‘Denmark in Britain — Architecture, Design and Lifestyle, 1945−1970’ by Bruce Peter. This title explores how Denmark’s national image in Britain was changed by the admiration of its modern architecture and design. Images help to tell the story of this design and clearly show what it was that the British critics and consumers desired. Without images, it would be hard to fully explore the sense of interest in Danish creativity that was felt in Britain at the time and indeed, make the reader feel that same interest.

“This is a splendidly lucid and readable book, a distinctive and a distinguished contribution to Nordic Studies.”
Colin Roth, Centre for Nordic Studies, University of Sheffield

For art history, there are also titles which explore art that is no longer valid or accessible. With a medium such as painting, perhaps with enough words a reader can paint their own picture in their mind of a piece of art. But what about mediums that are confined to history? What about something like ivory, which is now in modern-day considered to be untouchable as a piece of art? ‘Or blanc. Sculpture en ivoire, Congo et discours colonial sous le règne de Léopold II (1885–1909)’ by Sébastien Clerbois is a fantastic example. The book offers a global history of ivory as an art form but unlike other mediums, that many people have experience of seeing and touching, ivory is no longer accepted. Without images to support it, the discourse around such a medium could feel too grounded in the modern understanding of it. Providing images helps the reader to remove their modern mindset and fully embrace art as understood in the context and timeframe the book explores.

History

Bringing the reader back to the appropriate timeframe and setting the context for a title is hugely important for academic titles. Much like historical fiction needs to fully set the scene for the reader, academic titles need to connect their reader to the world they explore. This is never more true than when considering archival history. Peter Raina has recently published two titles under ‘Devolution of Power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: The Inner History’. Both volumes, ‘Tony Blair’s Cabinet Papers, 1997 Volume One, Devolution in Scotland and Wales’ and ‘Tony Blair’s Cabinet Papers, 1997 Volume Two, The Representative Government in Northern Ireland’ present the cabinet papers with commentary. It would be truly impossible to provide such a commentary without offering the Crown documents (reproduced under open license) for the reader to consider. More specifically though, the documents and the illustrations in the text connect the reader to the time they were created. They bring history to life and make understanding and critiquing the decisions made at the time more accessible to the reader.

“It is perhaps the most signal achievement of the era and this expertly curated collection on its genesis and evolution is unquestionably of permanent value.”
Professor Marc Mulholland, Professor of Modern History, Oxford

The Power of the Image

Perhaps it is an academic title itself that can summarize what imagery means in academic research? The Power of the Image in the Work of Lídia Jorge, edited by Nazaré Torrão and José Cândido de Oliveira Martins is a study of the image in the work of Lídia Jorge. Jorge herself has asserted several times that her writing takes a powerful and inspiring image as its starting point and this image concentrates the reflections and ideas explored through her texts. It can be considered that it is not just the images in the final text, for the reader, that hold importance, but also the images that inspire the author and drive them to explore ideas and share them with the world.

“Scholars point out that whenever language opens to universal images and mythologies capable of conveying visions of clarity, the subversive power of beauty is re-asserted”
The Power of the Image in the Work of Lídia Jorge

It is clear that the academic book, like the library and the librarian, has and continues to evolve. Words will forever remain the main tool of the academic but perhaps there is room for another set of tools, the illustrations, images, and photographs that support those words. Words might tell the story of the academic research but an image can tell the story of the world that built that research.

At this point in the 21st century, it is difficult to talk about the oceans without immediately thinking of what mankind has done to them — micro-fibers, raw sewage, oil and chemical pollution, over-fishing, rising temperatures and sea levels — threatening and destroying not just the lives and habitats of sea creatures, but also our own. Yet films like Meg 2: The Trench (Wheatley: 2023) want to make us forget that through the deflection of scale. For who can think about the overwhelming size of the environmental crisis when confronted by a 60+-ft prehistoric shark? Failing that, it makes us want to believe that nature can somehow protect itself — not from us, of course, but those greedy billionaires and corporations (the mega-sharks of the capitalist world) that seek to exploit the planet for their personal gain rather than ours.

Much of the above is achieved through the attribution of blame and the identification of who or what is good and bad in the film. Obviously its star, Jason Statham, is necessarily good and in a manly, but sensitive way. Nature, of course, should also be good, although this is complicated by being an area beyond human knowledge or control. The film takes this further, showing it not just as a place beyond our reach, but beyond our time, as well: it literally symbolises an ecological Eden where knowledge of value and exploitation has never reached … until now. It is worth looking at this underwater idyl more closely because it is represented as a kind of “magical kingdom”, a world so far removed from our own that it could be a completely different planet — indeed, the echoes of films like Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water (Cameron: 2009 & 2022) and its “nature spirit” are explicitly there.

Of course, Meg 2 reminds us it is our planet by the conceit of prehistoric creatures still living there, as the trench has not only been protected from us but from the passing of time itself. In many senses,this is the environment that time forgot and where nature has been left to take care of itself.

But now, humans have arrived and brought capitalism with them and punctured the temporal bubble around this idyllic landscape of the past so that time can flood in … while they suck the mineral wealth out of it. Nature, if we go with its connections to Avatar, is not happy about this and so releases the megalodons, and assorted other beasts, to both protect it and seek revenge on those who have dared to enter its domain.

This mirrors the scenarios from both Avatar films, where human exploitation causes the planetary spirit to instruct its creatures to actively attack and kill the human interlopers. As such, the megalodons, or Megs, should be the good guys, as they are acting on behalf of the earth — not unlike the common cold in H. G. Welles’ The War of the Worlds (1898). Yet two things work against them: first is their size, which oddly translates to making all the oceans of the world instantly dangerous. This is established at the start of the film when we see a Tyrannosaurus Rex being eaten by a Meg in a few feet of water, suggesting all seawater is now deadly. This can also be read as the Meg itself representing pollution, not least in its scale and voracity, making the entirety of the oceans a source of deadly danger to humanity. Second, the Megs have a connection to the past and symbolise a world before (without) humans. This deadly temporal anomaly is at the heart of the Jurassic Park franchise, but the Meg instantly situates itself as far more dangerous when we saw the Tyrannosaurus Rex being eaten at the start of the film[1]. This clash of the past and the present gets more interesting since the director of Meg 2, Ben Wheatley, is arguably best known for his Folk Horror films Kill List (2011) and A Field in England (2013), and transposing the characteristics of such films onto this film yields some curious results.

If we read Meg 2 as a Folk Horror film, many of the plot points work surprisingly well. To begin, we have an isolated landscape/environment — the trench — that is separate from the modern world. It has its own skewed belief system, where nature rules over itself and is made manifest in its “rulers”, the megaladons. We then have the intrusion of the modern world into this isolated place, in the shape of the mining company, which becomes a catalyst for the events that follow. Usually in Folk Horror this involves some form of ritual or “summoning” of the old gods, and in many ways this can be seen to be fulfilled by the megalodons and the other Eldritch horrors released: like the devilish beast brought forth from nature in Blood on Satan’s Claw (Haggard: 1971) or the one being called upon at the end of The Wicker Man (Hardy: 1973). What also happens in Folk Horror is often the sacrifice of a hero of sorts, the one who tries to defend the modern world and its belief systems — Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man, for example — but is inevitably sacrificed and “consumed” to power the continued presence of the ancient (natural) past in the present. Of course, our “Sergent Howie” in Meg 2 can only be our hero Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), though there is no way that he can be sacrificed to the “gods” of the past at the film’s end with the possibility of another sequel in the works. That leaves our Folk Horror reading at a bit of an unfulfilled impasse.

Perhaps a better reference point is the 1970s and the “animal revenge” films that evolved from Jaws (Spielberg: 1975). Movies like Jaws, Grizzly (Girdler: 1976), Tentacles (Assonitis: 1977), and Nightwing (Hiller: 1979), etc. all feature a human hero (inevitably a man) that saves the day, even in the face of corrupt officials and money-grabbing corporations. Yet, they tend to be Everyman-type figures, often thrown into the situation and doing their job or the best they can to save family, friends, or those they feel responsible for. Statham is slightly different in that he is far more of a professional “hero”. For all the pretense in the film of him being down-to-earth he is not only a specialist, and built like he is from a special forces unit, his cinematic pedigree positions him as superhuman. If Sergeant Howie was unlikable and clueless in the face of his “enemy”, we already believe that Statham can beat a 70-ton shark with his bare hands.

Statham can save us from the dark forces of nature — even while it embodies a world before pollution — and even from the “jaws” of the corporate sharks that look to consume both us and the environment we depend on. Of more concern, though, is that Statham is not “one of us”, as the heroes of the 1970s natural horror often were. Instead, he is a savior who saves the world for us, so that we do not need to do anything and can carry on partying at the beach — coincidently, beach scenes appear in both Meg films. This is perhaps the most worrying aspect of a film that, through size and scale, purposely tries to deflect us away from its core message that, in the face of the world’s oceans becoming deadly places to be in, or even near, we do not need to do anything but can relax on our beach chairs and watch the show of a single hero saving us all. In the face of the mega-shark of impending environmental catastrophe, this is possibly the most dangerous thing we can do.

[1] The importance of size in the Meg (Turtletaub: 2018) is explored in Craig Ian Mann’s essay in The Deep: A Companion (2023).

The Deep: A Companion is now available here: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1339843

Series co-editors Patrícia Vieira and Susan McHugh share their vision

With our new book series Plants and Animals: Interdisciplinary Approaches, we aim to grow connections between the emerging fields of critical plant studies and animal studies. Our editorial partnership represents a rare convergence of strengths in both areas, so we bring to the book series a keen sense of potentials for bridging them. In tandem with related fields like posthumanism and ecocriticism, the series is geared to enrich scientific knowledge by shining a spotlight on the connections across vegetal and animal life through studies grounded in the humanities. What can animal studies scholars learn from current plant research and vice versa? How do studies that encompass both plants and animals (and, potentially, other living and non-living forms of existence) enrich our understanding of our planet in all its diversity? Recognizing that a need for more equitable and harmonious forms of coexistence cuts across the most pressing social and environmental issues, Plants and Animals embraces both imaginative critique as well as creative problem solving in order to overcome obstacles to growing relations.

Until recently, plants and animals alike were studiously avoided as serious subjects for academic humanists. Worse, efforts to correct this mistake sometimes contributed to the further misperceptions of them as two mutually exclusive areas of interest for non-scientists. Critical plant studies, which has accelerated in the last decade, was initially posited as having been developed in opposition to the exponential growth in animal-centered research in the humanities since the end of the last century. Perceptions of the neglect of the vegetal in favour of the animate gained traction, particularly in studies that emphasized the western tradition. What is more, those seeking to define critical plant studies against animal studies scholarship characterized animal studies scholars as actively undermining interests in vegetal life. The heterogeneity of animal studies — a field variously known as human-animal studies, critical animal studies, or anthrozoology, and home to such diverse offshoots as vegan studies, literary animal studies, and cryptozoology — makes room for such criticisms. But the ever-growing multiplicity of voices espousing interests that bridge animal and plant studies also helps to erode claims that the barriers between them are insurmountable.

Intriguingly, few critical plant studies or animal studies researchers today appear to perceive each other as threats. If anything, the numbers of established animal studies scholars now also publishing in critical plant studies and vice versa are on the rise, meaning that any old sense of rivalry simply rings untrue. Instead, the disproportionately slow development of institutional support for humanistic studies of nonhuman life has emerged as one among many common causes, and a pressing reason for thinking that moves across academic silos, not to mention what/ why/ how different species converge in their literal referents. The stakes have never been higher.

Pushing traditional humanist thought beyond anthropocentrism, animal together with plant thinking is vital to solving the global problems of climate change and anthropogenic extinction. To support and develop the mutual growth of critical plant and animal studies, we want the series to publish scholarship that connects them more immediately, and ultimately to provide a framework that guides these nascent fields toward more purposeful interactions for years to come. The genuinely new knowledges that can emerge from crossover conversations need to be nurtured. Doing so entails not only dispelling the specters of schisms that may be holding back students and junior faculty from owning allegiances in both fields, but also providing them with encouragement to develop new pathways of research.

To be clear, we seek to learn from past mistakes, especially in order to create a robustly welcoming environment for equitable, inclusive, and diverse scholarship across plant and animal studies. It cannot be said often enough that the success of the “animal turn” in humanities and social sciences research can be credited to scholars reaching across disciplinary divides, particularly in the early days when nonhumans were considered scientific (again vs. humanistic) subjects. The strong feminist and queer-theoretical orientations of many early animal studies scholars had the significant benefit of rendering self-reflexive critique along the lines of feminist ecocriticism unnecessary. That said, the emergence only within the past few years of a robust body of animal studies scholarship that directly addresses the concerns of critical race and decolonial studies indicates how the field has been hampered in its inception by inattention to a broader range of social justice issues and contexts.

The over-representation of Anglophone and Euro-American scholars and projects is an ongoing issue in the academy, though one that the persistence of plants and animals across places and times can enable us to overcome. As editors, the global reach of our own different research networks — and those of our international editorial board — empowers our search for greater representation. The goal is a robust future for plant and animal studies research that will inspire action, ideally leading to meaningful socio-environmental changes for the benefit of all.

Critics should take note that the material history of writing alone makes the series a no-brainer. From ancient times, bark, bast, and vellum have been used as writing surfaces, inked in with ingredients like tree resin or gallnuts, animal bone or hide glue. Before the twentieth-century invention of synthetic adhesives, even books promoting animal rights contained remains of the proverbial horse sent to the glue factory. The detail in Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) that enslaved protagonist Sethe is tasked with making the gallnut ink used by her white tormentor Schoolteacher likewise serves as a subtle reminder that the modern proliferation of writing materials has deep roots in the plantations of settler colonialism. That such details are not — or not yet — common knowledge, however, gives pause to consider how justice for those written out of the human fold can be advanced only by taking plants and animals seriously.

Non-human beings, including plants and animals, exist, like humans, in tight communities, where mutual exchanges are ongoing. Humanistic knowledge should embrace these complexities and avoid artificial compartmentalizations of different forms of life. With Plants and Animals, we want to encourage the creation of scholarship that overcomes such boundaries, which exist nowhere but as relics of hackneyed thought. Among many other vital connections, plants need animals, such as insects, to reproduce, and animals need plants to breathe. What better example is there than symbiotic relationships to illustrate the kinds of scholarly exchanges we wish to foster with our series?

Learn more here. For further information, please contact Dr. Laurel Plapp, Senior Acquisitions Editor, at Peter Lang at l.plapp@peterlang.com

A (S)Mothering Inheritance in an Age of Precarity, or, We’re Too Removed from the World to Ever Be in It

This blog post will look at two films, Hereditary (2018) by Ari Aster and Incantation (2022) by Kevin Ko. On the surface they seem very different from each other, with Aster’s film being labelled as “elevated” horror, with a very thoughtful and aestheticized approach to set design, camera work and pacing, while Ko’s relies heavily on a found-footage aesthetic, frenetic action and continual jump scares. In many senses, they serve as examples of the opposing poles of recent horror, one concentrating on a more intellectual and artistic approach (Hereditary) and the other being very referential to the wider genre and often dependent on many sudden shocks and scares (Incantation).

However, while both share elements often attributed to the Folk Horror subgenre — plots involving non-majority religious cults and rural settings — this article will argue they share a far deeper connection through what we might call an “undead heritage” that is focused around a maternal figure. This can seen to be linked to the more well-known ideas of a family curse or “the sins of the fathers/mothers”, although strong male figures are largely absent in both films. This theme has very specific connotations in the twenty-first century that are strongly indicative of the “age of precarity” we are currently experiencing in the 2020s and our inability to protect our futures.

“Undead”, here, as more fully explored in The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion, signifies an entity that is neither dead nor alive — even beyond life and death, in some way — and driven by an insatiable desire to consume, or find sustenance in, humanity. In both these films, this “undeadness” is manifested in a god-like, supernatural entity that is outside human conceptions of life and death — effectively immortal in most senses of the word — and which is compelled to draw the life from humanity,[1] and, more specifically, humans linked by family bonds, using a ritual of some kind (this often requires the recitation of a text that “invites” the undead entity “in” and consequently “curses” the recitee). Curses or undead language is of note in each film as the person being cursed does not need to know what they’re saying, but the performative nature of the recitation acts as an invitation to the undead entity.

This idea of unknowing is important for the undead heritage theme, as it often belies an inability of the present — as embodied in the victim — to understand the meaning of the past that is often in plain sight. The victims inevitably only understand the meaning of the “clues” of the past when it is too late and they are about to be consumed by their undead heritage (a common theme in Folk Horror). Indeed, unknowingness plays a large part in many forms of precarity, particularly in relation to contemporary ecological and political environments.

Before looking at the films more closely, it should be mentioned that the two narratives look at undead heritage slightly differently and, cultural specificity aside, also point to a slightly different view of the world in 2022 than in pre-pandemic 2018.

Hereditary features Annie (Toni Collette), who is grieving the recent death of her mother. Their relationship in life was extremely problematic, even abusive, and although Annie is surrounded by both physical and psychological memories of her mother’s past, she prefers to reconstruct the present to try to understand her increasing sense of foreboding. On top of this, her daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro) is decapitated in a freak accident involving Peter (Alex Wolff), her son and Charlie’s brother. Annie meets Joan (Ann Dowd) at a bereavement group and she admits to her she had “given” Charlie to her mother as a placatory measure, but it had left her even more excluded from both of their lives. Indeed, Annie appears deeply removed both from the feminine heritage of her own family (her mother and her daughter) and the world around her, and the lifelike models she makes are attempts to control and place herself in her environment.

Joan gets increasingly close to her and reveals that she has managed to contact the dead and can show Annie how to do it, too. Annie then performs the ritual as described to her by Joan, importantly reciting a verse of a language she doesn’t understand, and forcing her husband and son to do so with her. This effectively invites the demon king Paimon into the human world, allowing him to possess the body of her son and kill all those that are not supplicants to his power. It seems that Annie’s mother was a high priestess who had linked Paimon to the “soul” of Charlie, who should have been born a boy, and now wants to inhabit Peter. It is only at this point, once her undead heritage has overtaken her, that Annie realizes what is occurring and that the clues were all around her in her mother’s belongings: Joan is in her mother’s photos of occult rituals, and highlighted passages in her copies of esoteric books all point toward worship of Paimon and inviting him into the world through the body of a boy.[2]

It also gives further meaning to the distance from her own children and her subconscious attempts to kill them — in not killing them, she has effectively ended the world as we know it. Overwhelmed by her undead heritage and her inability to protect her family or herself, Annie loses her grip on reality, her identity and literally, her head, as Paimon possesses the body of Peter and becomes manifest. Exactly what Paimon intends is not made clear, though one suspects it will add to the precarity of a world already out of balance, though one that neither Annie or her family will be part of.

Incantation focuses on Ruo-nan (Hsuan-yen Tsai), whose life is a frantic pastiche of flashbacks and ragged camera footage as she tries to hold on to the present and envision a future for her young daughter. The curse she now carries is not her own but one that she stumbled upon, bringing the undead heritage of others into her own familial lineage. Some time ago, Ruo-nan and a group of “Ghostbuster” friends went to the ancestral village in rural Taiwan of one of their number. The villagers and the friend’s relations told them to leave as a special and potentially dangerous ritual was being performed, but the rebellious friends stayed, interrupting the ceremony and breaking into the shrine, despite all the warnings they were repeatedly given.

Not all the friends escape, as some unseen power overtakes them and Ruo-nan, who unbeknownst to herself was pregnant, was forced to recite a “blessing” while placing her hands in a special configuration. Deeply affected by the events, Ruo-nan gives up her child and only many years later feels strong enough to reclaim her from those caring for her. It is only at this point that her undead heritage begins to catch up with her and she soon realizes that it’s been passed on to her daughter. Now that the curse is starting to affect her life, she decides to investigate further to understand what she and her friends had done and pieces together what the past actually means for her daughter’s future.

The curse seems to take the form of ever-increasing precarity as Ruo-Nan’s actions become progressively frantic and her life spins out of her control.

It transpires that the village worshiped a malevolent deity and that the “blessing” — which takes the form of a multi-syllabic phrase — is in fact a curse, that when repeated invites it into your life and slowly kills you. Ruo-nan’s daughter, Dodo (Sin-ting Huang), even after following the advice of local religious healers, is getting increasingly worse, so she goes back to the village, the past, to undo the present. However, once there, she goes into the depths of the underground shrine to confront the image of the deity and realizes that once the curse, the undead heritage, has been invited in, it cannot be revoked but only lessened through sharing.

Ruo-nan then ends the film as it started, as she has done at various points throughout the narrative, inviting us the audience to recite the inverted blessing so that we might share the curse and lessen its affects on her daughter. Here, then, Ruo-nan’s gradual understanding of the undead heritage she has released mirrors our own, as we realize that the phrase we have been asked to recite has cursed us: Ruo-Nan’s daughter might live, but we could be forgoing our own futures to make that happen.

Both films show maternal figures that discover too late that they have unknowingly become imbricated into an undead heritage that will cost them their children and, by implication, any kind of future. In Hereditary, ignoring of the signs of the past is almost wilful in Annie’s pursuit of an understanding of a world that she feels she is central to, when in fact she constantly contrives to remove herself from it and, consequently, any meaningful possibility of intervention. This can be read, in a pre-Covid world, as a humanity too involved in itself to understand the true meaning of its past or of its place within it, and that understanding will only occur when it is too late to do anything about it. Ruo-nan from Incantation, was similarly too self-absorbed to realize what she and her friends were getting themselves into or the nature of the undead heritage they were inviting into their lives. However, the curse here is far more virulent in nature and, once invited into the environment beyond the village, spreads its curse without restraint — as also seen in films like The Ring franchise (1995–2022), and the Ju On franchise (2000–20), which also often feature maternal protagonists. Equally, then, Ruo-nan, like Annie before her, has lost her children/child and a possible future through not understanding the past or the nature of the undead heritage she has become part of. What is slightly different in Incantation and, I would argue makes it more of a “pandemic” film, is her willingness to “spread” the curse to others in an attempt to save her child. There is no sense of acceptance that one has transgressed the past and a price must be paid, rather it moves the focus on alleviating one’s own problems regardless of the costs to others.

Ruo-nan’s selfish act seems to resonate with much in the present predicament of humanity, which seems to wilfully ignore the clues from the past that tell of modes of damage and exploitation that have blighted our environment and our intercultural relations, continuing to deny any responsibility and, consequently, inviting the curse of an undead heritage that will inevitably consume us. Of particular note is the growing sense that we are no longer in this together and that individual actors are increasingly focused on saving themselves or their own. Annie’s self-absorption might have exacerbated her predicament and allowed for an undead heritage to be visited upon the world, but Ruo-nan, even though she won’t be there herself, is willing to risk the world for her daughter’s future. A seemingly noble endeavour, but one that purposely endangers humanity itself.

Simon Bacon, author of The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion and series editor, Genre Fiction and Film Companions

[1] There is much here that confirms to fantasy author Terry Pratchett’s idea that gods of any kind require human belief to remain alive, though in horror texts this has been extended to supplication, dreams and fear amongst other human emotions.

[2]Films like the Paranormal Activity franchise (2007–21) work on similar themes. I would like to thank the members of the SCMS Scholarly Horror Group on FB for their help and thoughts regarding the possible implications of the ending of Hereditary.

Toxic environments would seem to be a given in horror films, and the creation and representation of spaces from which terror and violence can suddenly emerge are an inherent part of the genre. However, the nature and texture — or, what we might call, context and characteristics — of that environment are necessarily linked to the specific cultural moment from which they emerge. One of our current greatest anxieties — spawned most recently by images of the fleeing refugees from Ukraine — is immigration or, more particularly, the experience of being an outsider. This brief blog post looks at three recent horror, or horror-adjacent, films that can be seen to explore this very particular 21st-century anxiety, though one that is arguably as old as the creation of human societies.

The idea of “home” and the tensions between “not home” and “unhome” are central to the texture of the toxic environments under discussion here. The immigrant experience as seen in horror films is one that often focuses on the intersection between “home” and “toxic”, where what is considered as home becomes toxic in some way — domestic violence, extreme poverty, or war — and so then becomes “not-home,” forcing them to leave and try to find a new home, or as is often the case a new “not-home”, but one that is less toxic — physically or psychologically dangerous — than their original home. Horror film, which is often the perfect medium for effectively representing the anxiety around the sudden changing of safe environments into extremely threatening ones, is well suited for narratives describing the alienation or out-of-placeness that immigrants feel in a new country. This in itself is a characteristic of more recent films on the topic and, unlike popular or populist discourse, does not solely focus on the dangers of outsiders but rather the danger faced by those deemed as outsiders.

In the case of the three films discussed here, the outsiders/immigrants depicted are themselves very contextual, in that the nationality of the immigrants carries a very weighted meaning in their host country (a very similar weightedness is seen more recently when contrasting Syrian immigrants arriving in Europe with those from Ukraine, for instance). In this sense, the immigrants depicted in each film are those that are less welcome than others and are arriving into an environment that is already made toxic by pre-existing nationalist cultural narratives that do not recognise them as individuals in need of help but instead as a xenophobic threat. Horror films take a particular approach to representing these tensions and anxieties, as opposed to more realist or documentary style narratives, as they are inherently expected to manifest psychological monstrosity in physical form, and this is clearly seen in the examples chosen below.

The three films chosen — Mum & Dad (Sheil: 2008), His House (Weekes: 2020), and No One Gets Out Alive (Minghini: 2021) — feature immigrants from Poland, Africa and Mexico, respectively, entering the UK and/or the US at times when a very particular stigma surrounded such moves. Each film takes great pains to speak to the cultural context and the specific texture of the toxic environment the protagonists find themselves in and how they might survive it.

Mum & Dad focuses on Lena (Olga Fedori), who has just arrived at Heathrow Airport in the hope of finding work and a better life than she had in Poland. The airport itself becomes symbolic of an environment she has no connection to, and she herself is depicted as a commodity (baggage) moving through it and prey to anyone that might claim her. A worker at the airport offers to help, finding a bond in their shared exploitation, but she turns out to be a decoy who takes the girl to her “parents”, who turn out be brutal captors who thrust her into a toxic world. The “traditional” British home shown is one so extreme as to be the equivalent of a house of horrors: the television continually plays porn, they brutalise and handicap their “children”, and they celebrate Christmas with a real crucified man with a tinsel crown. Here, the alienness of other cultures becomes the stuff of nightmares, creating a toxic environment that leaves Natalia changed forever, even though she manages to escape. With no recourse to the authorities, or money to return home, she is left the victim of a culture that violently insists on changing her and seeing her solely as a commodity to be used and disposed off once it no longer has any need for her.

His House sees Bol (Sopi Dirisu) and his wife Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) arrive in the UK from South Sudan, a nation in conflict and consequently wracked with poverty, drought and starvation. They enter into an immigration system that only begrudgingly helps them, moving them to a house in an area that does not welcome them. The toxicity of the system and environment around them seems to concentrate in their new “home,” which seems alive with malevolence against them. Here, though, the nature of Bol’s relationship to his former home, which seems to have decidedly become not-home, is seen to link directly to the toxicity of the environment where they now live. They had pretended someone else’s child was their own to escape and now the child is dead. The guilt of their actions in South Sudan and the ghost, or “apeth”, they brought with them resonates with the dilapidated nature of the house such that it seems the structure itself is marking it out as not-their-home, just like the government immigration system. This toxicity, though, is eventually diffused through a level of acceptance of their guilt for their actions in their former home — the resolution tying Bol and his wife more closely together — so that their current one, whilst not exactly becoming “homely”, is less not-home than it was before. Here as a family in a toxic environment they find a form of home within themselves, if not with the environment around them.

No One Gets Out Alive focuses on Ambar (Christina Rodlo), a Mexican immigrant illegally living in the US. Her mother has died and the poverty of her home drives her to find a new life in America. However, her relations that already live there want little to do with her, leaving her to struggle to find underpaid work and cheap lodgings to stay in — even one of her workmates swindles her out of what money she has. The toxicity of the city-scape she finds herself in translates poverty, hunger and job precarity into a gothic-laden lodging house run by middle-aged brothers that cater solely for immigrants. Ambar is quickly assailed by anxiety, apparitions and threats of physical violence. This escalates into actual violence as it transpires the brothers are feeding the untraceable and uncared for lodgers to an entity in the basement.

The denouement here, as with Mum & Dad, reveals the extreme violence of the immigrant experience in the face of the unknown traditions of a different culture yet, as with His House, for Ambar some of this is tempered by a reckoning with previous guilt related to her former “home” and an equally violent reaction against the alien culture to retain her own sense of self. Within this there is also a sense that she finds some points of connection to the alien culture via the entity in the basement, which is also an immigrant of sorts. Here then she establishes a different kind of “home”, where its toxicity becomes her own, or at least one that she understands more clearly now. As the film ends, Ambar has become reconciled with this new “not-home,” and not unlike Lena and Bol has been forced to readjust both her sense of self and what she considers “home” in light of her experiences.

The three films point to the inherent nature of a world moving ever more towards large-scale displacements for reasons of poverty, war or environmental disaster and where “not home” will become increasingly common for ever greater numbers of people. Horror might be able to show us how scary the sometimes toxic environment of “not-home” is for others and also highlight the importance of finding points of commonality between ours and others’ ideas of “home.”

Simon Bacon is the editor of the forthcoming collection Toxic Cultures: A Companion in the Genre Fiction and Film Companions series, for which he is also the series editor.

Note: Many thanks to the members of the SCMS Horror Studies Scholarly Interest Group on Facebook for their suggestions for similarly themed films and in helping to define the term “not-home”.