Snuff Real Death and Screen Media

The phenomenon of so-called 'snuff movies' (films that allegedly document real acts of murder, specifically designed to 'entertain' and sexually arouse the spectator) represents a fascinating socio-cultural paradox. At once unproven, yet accepted by many, as emblematic of the very worst extremes of pornography and horror, moral detractors have argued that the mere idea of snuff constitutes the logical (and terminal) extension of generic forms that are dependent primarily upon the excitement, stimulation and, ultimately, corruption of the senses. Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media brings together scholars from film and media studies to assess the longevity of one of screen media's most enduring cultural myths. Thorough, provocative, and well argued, the contributions to this volume address areas ranging from exploitation movies, the video industry, trends in contemporary horror cinema, pornography and Web 2.0.

Johnny Walker is Lecturer in Media at Northumbria University, UK. His scholarship on horror cinema has appeared in journals such as Horror Studies and the Journal of British Cinema and Television. His monograph, Contemporary British Horror Cinema: Industry, Genre and Society, will be published in 2015

Neil Jackson teaches at the University of Lincoln, UK. He is a chief contributor to the Wallflower Critical Guides to Contemporary North American Directors and British Directors, and has had essays published in various books, journals and magazines, including Post Script, Kino Eye and Video Watchdog.

Shaun Kimber is a Senior Lecturer in Media Theory in the Media School at Bournemouth University, UK. He has published widely on horror and censorship, and is the author of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (2011).

Thomas Joseph Watson is Associate Lecturer in Media at Northumbria University, UK. He has forthcoming articles appearing in both the edited collection Rethinking Cinema and Television History (2014), and the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance (2014).

Foreword
David Kerekes (owner of Headpress and author of Killing For Culture)

Introduction: The Cultural Mythology of the Snuff Movie, Past and Present
Neil Jackson (University of Lincoln, UK), Shaun Kimber (Bournemouth University, UK), Johnny Walker (Northumbria University, UK), and Thomas Joseph Watson (Northumbria University, UK)

Part I – The Genesis and Persistence of Snuff: Cross Cultural Contexts and Critical Reactions
Chapter 1: Unfound Footage and Unfounded Rumours: The Manson Murders and the Persistence of Snuff
Mark Jones & Gerry Carlin (University of Wolverhampton, UK)

Chapter 2: A Murder Mystery in Black and Blue: Astra Video and the Marketing of Snuff in the UK
Mark McKenna (University of Sunderland, UK)

Chapter 3: From Snuff to the South: Transcultural Receptions of the Italian Cannibal Cycle
Xavier Mendik (University of Brighton, UK)and Nicolo Gallio (University of Bologna, Italy)

Chapter 4: Animal Snuff: The Critical Reception of Weekend and Cannibal Holocaust
Simon Hobbs (University of Portsmouth, UK)

Part II – Reel to Real? : Myths of Snuff in Production and Performance
Chapter 5: The Snuff Filmmaker in Realist Horror
Neil Jackson (University of Lincoln, UK)

Chapter 6: Home Made: Faces of Death and Traces of Nostalgia in Recent Amateur Horror
Johnny Walker (Northumbria University, UK)

Chapter 7: It Was All Real, All of It: Reflectionist Horror and the ‘Snuffumentary’
Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Chapter 8: Why Did They Film It? : Faux Snuff in Contemporary US Cinema
Shaun Kimber (Bournemouth University, UK)

Chpater 9: Cinema as Snuff: Auteurist Meta-snuff and the Murderous Gaze from German Expressionism to Shadow of the Vampire
Linda Badley (Middle Tennessee State University, USA)

Chapter 10: The Bunny Game: Live Art and Film Genre
Karolina Grushka (Aberystwyth University, UK)

Part III – Snuff, Affect and Selfhood
Chapter 11: The Affective Reality of Snuff
Misha Kavka (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Chapter 12: Affect and the Ethics of Snuff in the Films of the New Extremism
Tina Kendall (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)

Chapter 13: A View to a Kill: Perspectives on Pseudo-Snuff and Self
Steve Jones (Northumbria University, UK)

Part IV – Snuff in the Twenty-first Century: Circulation, Consumption and Regulation
Chapter 14: Watching Snuff: Online Reactions to the ‘3 Guys 1 Hammer’ Internet Shock Video
Iain Robert Smith (Roehampton University of London, UK)

Chapter 15: Extreme Pornography and the Wider Politics of Snuff
Clarissa Smith (University of Sunderland, UK)

Chapter 16: The Threat of Snuff
Julian Petley (Brunel University, UK)

Bibliography

Select filmography

Index