Transnational Folklore, Politics, and Horror Film

The academic study of horror cinema has become increasingly established in recent years (with the Horror Studies journal launched in 2010, the Horror Studies book series from University of Wales Press launched in 2015, and the SCMS Horror Studies SIG launched in 2016), yet the study of the transnationalism of horror cinema has still been relatively limited. While the approach was discussed in the two anthologies on international horror co-edited by Stephen Jay Schneider in the early 2000s (Fear Without Frontiers, 2002; Horror International, 2005), and a handful of later collections devoted to particular national horror traditions (Korean Horror Cinema, 2013; Italian Horror Cinema, 2016; Hong Kong Horror Cinema, 2019), there is still much to be said about the specifically transnational dynamics of horror film production and reception. By investigating case studies of contemporary horror films produced in Sweden, Turkey, India and Southeast Asia, and tracing how they draw upon local folkloric and mythological traditions, this panel (proposed by Professor Chris Holmlund, Professor Rosalind Galt, Dr Cüneyt Çakırlar and Dr Iain Smith for SCMS2021 Virtual Conference) grappled with the cultural politics underpinning these complex interactions of the local and the global.

Chris Holmlund discussed the representation of the troll in Gräns (Border, 2018) and how Iranian/Swedish director Ali Abbasi presents an outsider’s perspective on Nordic folklore and Scandinavian values. Rosalind Galt followed with an analysis of the Malay folkloric spirit penanggalan and how the films Tamnan Krasue (Thailand, 2002) and Penanggal (Malaysia, 2013) deploy the figure in strikingly different political contexts. Cüneyt Çakırlar presented an analysis of the post-millennial emergence of horror films in Turkish cinema and how the djinn figure of Islamic mythology relates to the politicization of Islam in contemporary Turkey. Finally, Iain Smith investigated the invented mythology of the Goddess of Prosperity in the Indian folk-horror film Tumbbad (2018) and demonstrated how its specific combination of global/local characteristics has helped it overcome the traditional exclusion of Indian films from the international horror canon. Building on recent interventions in the field of transnational horror studies (Choi and Wada- Marciano, 2009; Och & Strayer, 2014; Siddique & Raphael, 2016), this panel therefore meet the pressing need for scholars to address exactly what the transnational turn in film studies scholarship means for the study of contemporary horror cinema.

Çakırlar's paper, titled "Djinns of Post-millennial Turkish Horror Film: Gender Politics and Toxic Kinship in D@bbe (2006-15) and Siccin (2014-19)", argues that the popularisation of the traditional and religious imagery in Turkish visual culture is symptomatic of the post-millennial politicization of Islam in Turkey following the electoral victory of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in 2002. The shift from militarist secularism to neoliberal Islam in Turkish politics unsettled the Kemalist foundations of Turkishness, and provoked anxiety and polarisation. Reflecting on this anxiety, this paper focuses on the post-millennial emergence of horror films in popular Turkish cinema to locate them within Turkish political culture and its restoration of Muslimness. These films authenticate their horror by exploiting an image of Turkey as a new autocracy that has antagonized the state’s secularist republican legacy. Investing in the figure of the djinn of Anatolian folklore, Turkic shamanism and Islamic mythology, the films tell paranormal stories of witchcraft, black magic, demonic possession and exorcism. Hasan Karacadag’s D@bbe and Alper Mestçi’s Siccin have been the most popular horror series. Inspired by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (2001), Karacadag’s D@bbe films refer to the Quranic verses on the summoning of all djinns (to lead the judgment day) by the creature Dabbe’t-ül Arz, which these films seem to depict as an evil force haunting people through digital media. While Karacadag’s transnational style appropriates a Japanese and American supernatural horror aesthetic, his use of the djinns of Turkish folklore and Islamic mythology narrates stories that represent toxic relations of family, kinship, class, and property in contemporary Turkey. In these films, demonic femininity, especially via vengeful mothers, mobilises djinns and demons across generations. Thematically resonating with the D@bbe series, Mestçi’s Siccin movies move from the found-footage “techno-horror” to hybrid “horror dramas” of familial grief, revenge, jealousy and class conflict, i.e. amorous and familial relations cursed by djinns and demons. Çakırlar's study discusses the ways in which the two most popular auteurs of this new genre cite folklore and religion to entertain, if not confront, their audiences with the contemporary horrors of gender politics and kinship relations in post-millennial, post-secular Turkey and its Islamic liberal-conservative project of rebuilding the nation.