This talk will situate two Austrian horror movies within the context of Anthropocene horrors: Blood Glacier (2013) and Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2015). Both films struggle with global warming’s effects on alpine regions, but in different ways. Lederhosen Zombies’ titular monsters emerge in response to trying to counter global warming’s expected effects on winter tourism. In the process, the always-hungry undead come to embody capitalism’s insatiable hunger, which ultimately destroys that which nourishes it. Blood Glacier, on the other hand, revolves around the idea that global warming will set free microorganisms that have lain dormant in permafrost for hundreds of thousands of years. While much of the film’s runtime focuses on how humans fight the monstrous hybrids that the prehistoric microorganisms create, a humanoid hybrid emerges as humankind’s hope for future existence (in altered form) on a human-altered planet.
Contact
Department of American Studies
University of Innsbruck
Humanities building, 3rd floor
Innrain 52
6020 Innsbruck
Department Chair
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Christian Quendler
Deputy Department Chair
Mag. Mag. Dr. Cornelia Klecker
Secretary's office
Anna Wabnigg
Humanities building, 3rd floor, room 40311
T +43 512 507-4171
E-Mail: amerikastudien@uibk.ac.at
Opening hours
Monday to Thursday: 9.00 am – 2.00 pm
News/Events
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News
"Haunted Media: Remediating Videogames in Horror Movies"
From Friedrich Kittler to John Durham Peters and from Roland Barthes to Siegbert Solomon Prawer, scholars have frequently associated media with ghosts. Horror, Adam Daniel has remarked, “has historically infected both emerging forms and the technologies which deliver them, parasitically preying upon the fears that emerge from these developments.” Accordingly, it is not surprising that horror has engaged with digital media and technologies in various ways. This talk will focus on the depiction of videogames in horror movies such as Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare(1991), Stay Alive (2006), Livescream (2018), and Choose or Die (2022). All of these films grapple with various fears and anxieties connected to digital technologies (and videogames, in particular), but some of them also acknowledge the values of digital technologies for community-building and marginalized communities.
October 10, 2023 | HS5 | 12:00 noon–1.30pm | Lecture Series “Comparative Perspectives on New Media: Game Studies”
"The Alps and the Horrors of the Anthropocene" by Michael Fuchs
November 9, 2023| FSP-Tag: Imaginarien des Alpinen | Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (Weiherburggasse 13, Innsbruck) | 15:00-16:30 pm
ZIAS-Lecture Series - Inside Mountains: Material Extractions & Mythical Exploits in the Americas
April 20, 6 pm, HS 2 | April 27, 6 pm, HS 2 | May 11, 6 pm, HS 2 | May 22, 10:15 am, 50109/3 SR | June 5, 6 pm, HS 2