Table Of ContentFear and Nature
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Lucinda Cole and Robert Markley, General Editors Published in collaboration with the Society for
Literature, Science, and the Arts, AnthropoScene
Advisory Board:
presents books that examine relationships
Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at Arlington)
and points of intersection among the natural,
Ron Broglio (Arizona State University)
biological, and applied sciences and the literary,
Carol Colatrella (Georgia Institute of Technology)
visual, and performing arts. Books in the series
Heidi Hutner (Stony Brook University)
promote new kinds of cross-disciplinary thinking
Stephanie LeMenager (University of Oregon)
arising from the idea that humans are changing
Christopher Morris (University of Texas at Arlington)
the planet and its environments in radical and
Laura Otis (Emory University)
irreversible ways.
Will Potter (Washington, DC)
Ronald Schleifer (University of Oklahoma)
Susan Squier (Pennsylvania State University)
Rajani Sudan (Southern Methodist University)
Kari Weil (Wesleyan University)
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Fear and Nature
Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene
Edited by The Pennsylvania
Christy Tidwell State University Press
University Park,
and Carter Soles
Pennsylvania
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Library of Congress Cataloging- Copyright © 2021 Th e Pennsylvania State
in-Publication Data University
All rights reserved
Names: Tidwell, Christy, editor. | Soles, Carter, Printed in the United States of America
1971– editor. Published by Th e Pennsylvania State
Title: Fear and nature : ecohorror in the University Press,
Anthropocene / edited by Christy Tidwell University Park, PA 16802-1003
and Carter Soles.
Other titles: AnthropoScene. Th e Pennsylvania State University Press is
Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : a member of the Association of University
Th e Pennsylvania State University Press, Presses.
[2021] | Series: AnthropoScene : the SLSA
book series | Includes bibliographical It is the policy of Th e Pennsylvania State
references and index. University Press to use acid-free paper.
Summary: “A collection of essays analyzing Publications on uncoated stock satisfy
ecohorror motifs in literature, manga, fi lm, the minimum requirements of American
and television, illuminating ambiguities National Standard for Information Sciences—
that arise from human encounters with Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
nonhuman nature and examining the Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
scale and eff ect of ecohorror in, and of, the
Anthropocene”—Provided by publisher.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2021006871 |
ISBN 9780271090214 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Horror tales—History and
criticism. | Horror fi lms—History and
criticism. | Horror in literature. | Human
ecology in literature. | Human ecology in
motion pictures. | Nature in literature. |
Nature in motion pictures. | Ecocriticism.
Classifi cation: LCC PN3435 .F434 2021 |
DDC 791.43/6164—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov
/2021006871
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Contents
Acknowledgments | vii
Introduction: Ecohorror in
the Anthropocene | 1
Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles
Part 1 | Expanding Ecohorror
1 Tentacular Ecohorror and the Agency of Trees
in Algernon Blackwood’s “The Man Whom
the Trees Loved” and Lorcan Finnegan’s
Without Name | 23
Dawn Keetley
2 Spiraling Inward and Outward: Junji Ito’s
Uzumaki and the Scope of Ecohorror | 42
Christy Tidwell
3 “The Hand of Deadly Decay”:
The Rotting Corpse, America’s Religious
Tradition, and the Ethics of Green Burial in
Poe’s “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” | 68
Ashley Kniss
Part 2 | Haunted and Unhaunted Landscapes
4 The Death of Birdsong, the Birdsong of Death:
Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Horror
of Erosion | 91
Keri Stevenson
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5 An Unhaunted Landscape:
The Anti-Gothic Impulse in
Ambrose Bierce’s “A Tough Tussle” | 110
Chelsea Davis
6 The Extinction-Haunted Salton Sea in
The Monster That Challenged the World | 133
Bridgitte Barclay
Part 3 | The Ecohorror of Intimacy
7 From the Bedroom to the Bathroom:
Stephen King’s Scatology and the Emergence
of an Urban Environmental Gothic | 153
Marisol Cortez
8 “This Bird Made an Art of Being
Vile”: Ontological Difference and
Uncomfortable Intimacies in
Stephen Gregory’s The Cormorant | 174
Brittany R. Roberts
9 The Shape of Water and
Post-pastoral Ecohorror | 195
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann
Part 4 | Being Prey, Being Food
10 Superpig Blues: Agribusiness Ecohorror
in Bong Joon-ho’s Okja | 217
Kristen Angierski
11 Zoo: Television Ecohorror
On and Off the Screen | 237
Sharon Sharp
12 Naturalizing White Supremacy
in The Shallows | 257
Carter Soles
Contributors | 281
Index | 285
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Acknowledgments
Th is book refl ects an ongoing and vibrant conversation about ecohorror that
we are happy to have been a part of. Many of those who have helped shape
our ideas about the topic and prompted the creation of this book are fea-
tured in its pages—either as contributors or as frequently cited sources. We
are grateful for the generosity and support of the scholars we have worked
with in this collection; those we have presented with, presented to, and con-
versed with at conferences; and those whose work we have engaged with and
built upon. In particular, conversations at multiple ASLE (Association for the
Study of Literature and Environment) meetings and connections made via
the ASLE Ecomedia Interest Group have been formative, challenging, and
encouraging.
Christy Tidwell: I would also like to thank Bridgitte Barclay for thought-
ful feedback at every stage (critical when necessary but also always support-
ive!); Laura Kremmel and Kayla Pritchard for innumerable meetings at coff ee
shops and bars to work together and talk through both ideas and frustra-
tions; and Neil Robinson, Elliott Robinson, and Djuna Tidwell for their pa-
tience and love.
Carter Soles: I would also like to thank Kom Kunyosying, Stephen A.
Rust, Bridgitte Barclay, Sara Crosby, and especially my brilliant, hardwork-
ing collaborator Christy Tidwell, without whose eff orts and guidance this
collection would not be remotely as interesting or clear. I additionally ac-
knowledge Alicia Kerfoot, Peggy Kerfoot-Soles, and our menagerie of cats—
Charlie, Roscoe, Dorian, and Rosy—for making everything I do worthwhile
and joyful. And for letting me monopolize the TV when I need to watch hor-
ror movies.
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Introduction
Ecohorror in the Anthropocene
Christy Tidwell
and Carter Soles
We live in ecohorrifi c times.
Wildfi res are spreading across the US West, burning more land every
year and endangering the lives of millions—human and nonhuman, both in
the present and into the future.1 Record-breaking heat waves are dramati-
cally aff ecting Europe, disrupting transportation and agriculture and threat-
ening people’s lives.2 India is suff ering from both droughts and fl oods;3
hundreds of people died in 2019 and tens to hundreds of millions of peo-
ple have been aff ected. Greenland is melting, losing 12.5 billion tons of ice
in one day in August 2019 and breaking the record for a one-day melt.4 Th e
planet’s sixth mass extinction of species is ongoing—25 percent of species are
currently threatened with extinction, while the current rate of extinction is
tens to hundreds of times higher than the normal background rate of extinc-
tion and accelerating.5 Meanwhile, the US government has taken action to
weaken environmental protections, including the Endangered Species Act.6
As this planetary ecohorror has become more visible, it is unsurprising that
ecohorror narratives have become more widespread as well.
Contemporary ecohorror narratives can be read as a response to real-
world environmental fears, but this connection is not new; horror and the
Anthropocene share a longer history.7 John Clute places the start of fantastic
literature—including horror—between 1750 and 1800, “a span of time during
which the inhabitants of the West begin to understand that the world is
in fact a planet and begin almost immediately to develop the planet they
have grasped.”8 Th is is, as Sarah Dillon observes, approximately the same
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2 period proposed as the start of the Anthropocene, “in which case, fantastic
literature would be, by defi nition, the Literature of the Anthropocene.”9
Th is connection becomes more explicit in contemporary horror, which,
Dillon argues, “is moving from a literature of cosmic fear to a literature of
planetary fear.”10 In the early twenty-fi rst century, she writes, we have a “self-
consciousness that we are living in the Anthropocene” that was not present
before.11
Th is self-consciousness builds upon long-established anxieties about
science and scientifi c development in both horror in general and ecohorror
specifi cally. As Jason Colavito writes, “Horror cannot survive without the
anxieties created by the changing role of human knowledge and science in
our society.”12 In the past, these anxieties have been refl ected in mad science
narratives or stories of scientifi c experimentation gone awry. Th is trend can
be traced as at least as far back as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which Co-
lavito calls “the godfather to the overreaching mad scientist plot,” a Gothic
novel whose focus on science, the role of the scientist, and matters of physical
life and death set it apart from other Gothic works.13 Th ese anxieties about
science and scientists are also present in early ecohorror fi lms like Godzilla
(1954) and Night of the Lepus (1972), which look beyond mere scientifi c over-
reach to the specifi cally environmental consequences of such overreach. Th e
monstrous bunnies of Night of the Lepus, for instance, are created as a result
of scientifi c experimentation (and poor lab safety practices), and the problem
is contained only through the removal of the bunnies and restoration of eco-
logical balance.
Ecohorror in the Anthropocene—and ecohorror of the Anthropocene—
is not solely concerned with scientifi c knowledge or overreach on a small
scale, however. More and more, the problems and anxieties of ecohorror texts
are the result of broader forces, represented not only as mad scientists, crea-
tures, or animal attacks but also as far-reaching events or processes such as
pollution, species extinction, or extreme weather. Many twenty-fi rst-century
ecohorror narratives involving animal attacks illustrate this by placing such
attacks in the context of larger climate change–related issues. Crawl (2019),
for instance, is ostensibly a movie about gigantic alligators attacking people,
but these attacks are enabled by the larger event, a climate change–induced
hurricane. Th is echoes Matt Hills’s argument that “a surprising range of hor-
ror fi lms fail to present us with defi nite ‘monsters’ as entities,” and in many
cases “a monstrous agency cannot be reduced to any given ‘entity.’”14 Crawl
Fear and Nature
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