Activity

The eeriness of the relationship between body and mind was the subject of Andy de Emmony’s 2010 BBC adaptation of M.R. James’ “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” , which was discussed in an earlier chapter. In this radically reworked version of the story, Parkin is tormented by the dementia…

not any mystery whatsoever will be eerie; there must be a sense of alterity

a requiem for the Sixties: a dark parable about the thanatropic drives which youth messianism could nurture.

The story’s unsettling power depends on two levels of threat: the first, of course, is the brute physical terror of the birds’ attack. But it is the second level that takes us into the eerie. As the story develops, we see residual wartime certainties and authority structures disintegrate. What the …

We are now in a position to answer the question of why it is important to think about the eerie. Since the eerie turns crucially on the problem of agency, it is about the forces that govern our lives and the world. It should be especially clear to those of us in a globally tele-connected capitalist…