Derek Johnston

Landscape, season and identity in Ghost Story for Christmas

The BBC Ghost Story for Christmas (1971–1978, 2005–2006, 2015) used the English landscape in which it was set to engage with a series of associations of national identity and to enhance the feeling of isolation experienced by the protagonists. This was further enhanced by the representation of the seasons within these productions, which typically emphasized an autumnal landscape. This suggested a liminal period, neither summer nor winter, and one that presented environments of rustling vegetation and trees through which supernatural figures may be glimpsed or heard approaching. While the Ghost Story for Christmas is by no means alone in using these environments and associations, the importance of their presentation of landscape to their identity has been recognized by reviewers, with the presentation itself emphasizing the narratives’ disruption of any sense of naturalness and certainty to narratives of human, English history and thus identity.

Book Review: Tara Moore, Christmas: The Sacred to Santa

tell us of the ways in which they have been the targets of threats and other forms of intimidation from people unhappy with their work on whiteness and what might be loosely defined as the extreme fringes of far-right politics. The internet makes it much easier for people to do ethnographic research on unpleasant ideologies but it also brings the holders of such ideologies closer to researchers. This book is an attempt to navigate websites and social media dedicated to providing white supremacists with a supposedly safe space to explore different cultural activities and leisure forms. The authors lurk around these websites to explore the ways in which the users talk about ‘race’ in sport, in music, in films, in games and other cultural forms. The ethnographic fieldwork involved hundreds of hours reading posts on forums and websites used by white supremacists. At times, this makes the book hard going, as the authors cite post after post of racist ramblings – but this is a necessary task, as it forces us to realize how powerful the myths of ‘race’ and marginalization from the mainstream are among these individuals. The whitesupremacist digital culture seems to shift from paranoia to pride in an instant, forever limited by fixed and erroneous notions of ‘race’, of the gender order, and of Jews and Muslims. King and Leonard want to show us that white supremacists think and talk about ‘race’ in the same way people in the ‘mainstream’ of Western popular culture think and talk about it; that there is a fluid movement of ideas between the clearly extreme margins and the white-dominated cultural spaces in the middle of the global North (or at least the United States). The connections are plain to see, from the debates about films that promote ideologies and narratives that are seen as pro-white or pro-multiculturalism, to the nervous confusion over the dominance of African Americans in the elite levels of certain sports. The empirical data provided here is scary but outstanding, and the analytical fames used by King and Leonard in each chapter show us how the white supremacists interact and feed off controversies and cultural forms happening around them. The authors could have spent more time engaging in depth with critical race theory and those who have used it to develop critical accounts of the whiteness of popular culture. I would have liked to have seen this addressed in a separate chapter right at the beginning of the book, instead of it occurring here and there in each individual chapter. But there is enough ethnographic richness and critical analysis here for the book to be a valuable contribution to a growing field.

Book Review: Christmas: The Sacred to Santa:

tell us of the ways in which they have been the targets of threats and other forms of intimidation from people unhappy with their work on whiteness and what might be loosely defined as the extreme fringes of far-right politics. The internet makes it much easier for people to do ethnographic research on unpleasant ideologies but it also brings the holders of such ideologies closer to researchers. This book is an attempt to navigate websites and social media dedicated to providing white supremacists with a supposedly safe space to explore different cultural activities and leisure forms. The authors lurk around these websites to explore the ways in which the users talk about ‘race’ in sport, in music, in films, in games and other cultural forms. The ethnographic fieldwork involved hundreds of hours reading posts on forums and websites used by white supremacists. At times, this makes the book hard going, as the authors cite post after post of racist ramblings – but this is a necessary task, as it forces us to realize how powerful the myths of ‘race’ and marginalization from the mainstream are among these individuals. The whitesupremacist digital culture seems to shift from paranoia to pride in an instant, forever limited by fixed and erroneous notions of ‘race’, of the gender order, and of Jews and Muslims. King and Leonard want to show us that white supremacists think and talk about ‘race’ in the same way people in the ‘mainstream’ of Western popular culture think and talk about it; that there is a fluid movement of ideas between the clearly extreme margins and the white-dominated cultural spaces in the middle of the global North (or at least the United States). The connections are plain to see, from the debates about films that promote ideologies and narratives that are seen as pro-white or pro-multiculturalism, to the nervous confusion over the dominance of African Americans in the elite levels of certain sports. The empirical data provided here is scary but outstanding, and the analytical fames used by King and Leonard in each chapter show us how the white supremacists interact and feed off controversies and cultural forms happening around them. The authors could have spent more time engaging in depth with critical race theory and those who have used it to develop critical accounts of the whiteness of popular culture. I would have liked to have seen this addressed in a separate chapter right at the beginning of the book, instead of it occurring here and there in each individual chapter. But there is enough ethnographic richness and critical analysis here for the book to be a valuable contribution to a growing field.

The Sound of Civilisation: Music in Terry Nation's "Survivors"

The music for science fiction television programs, like music for science fiction films, is often highly distinctive, introducing cutting-edge electronic music and soundscapes. There is a highly particular role for sound and music in science fiction, because it regularly has to expand the vistas and imagination of the shows and plays a crucial role in setting up the time and place. Notable for its adoption of electronic instruments and integration of music and effects, science fiction programs explore sonic capabilities offered through the evolution of sound technology and design, which has allowed for the precise control and creation of unique and otherworldly sounds. This collection of essays analyzes the style and context of music and sound design in Science Fiction television. It provides a wide range of in-depth analyses of seminal live-action series such as Doctor Who, The Twilight Zone, and Lost, as well as animated series, such as The Jetsons. With thirteen essays from prominent contributors in the field of music and screen media, this anthology will appeal to students of Music and Media, as well as fans of science fiction television.

Genre, Special Effects and Authorship in the Critical Reception of Science Fiction Film and Television during the 1950s

Accounts of science fiction in film and television in the 1950s often present it as dominated by the alien invasion narratives, in which monsters from outer space seek to subjugate or exterminate humanity. Furthermore, these alien invasion narratives are commonly presented as rather simplistic products of Cold War tensions in which the alien is merely a thin disguise for soviet aggression. As Andrew Tudor puts it: In the fifties … our way of life is threatened by alien forces which adversely affect the world around us. In this xenophobic universe we can do nothing but rely on the state, in the form of military, scientific and governmental elites … In this respect, then, fifties SF/horror movies teach us not so much ‘to stop worrying and love the bomb’ as ‘to keep worrying and love the state’, an admonition which accords perfectly with the nuclear-conscious Cold War culture of the period.1