What starts as a routine stop for a firefighters and a puff piece for some TV journalists descends into one of the most chilling and prescient film franchises in contemporary horror. To kick off the Summer of Plague series, Andrea and Alex delve into the nooks and crannies of Spanish history and a Barcelona apartment complex to read between the frames.
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REQUIRED READING
Rec. Dir Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007.
Rec 2. Dir Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2009.
Rec 2. Dir Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2009.
EXTRA CREDIT
The Power of Art, Picasso. Simon Schama’s episode about Picasso and the events that led to the painting of Guernica.
Timeout. Interview with Jaume Balagueró.
European Nightmares: Horror Cinema in Europe Since 1945. A look at the collective and individual European horror cinemas.
What is a Parergon? A look at the framing concept.
The 22 Key Turning Points In The History Of YouTube – a history of the megasite and its impact on popular culture.
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I absolutely loved the way you seamlessly (with much preparation I know) discussed the relations of history, art, and these films. The dialogue toward the end about “disease” and its congruence with deformity in popular thought was also so important (in relation to the film and in relation to human psychology). I hope Alex writes that book you both mentioned.
I’m very late in getting to this, but Franco was NOT the original leader of the Spanish Nationalists. The original leaders died during the Civil War, he was just the most prominent survivor on that side, which is how he wound up in charge. This complicated the aftermath, because he was not a dedicated Falangist like many of those dead leaders, and instead proclaimed himself to be a monarchist… but held off on actually naming any monarch to the throne because he found it more advantageous not to explicitly choose sides among competing claimants. Hitler found him infuriating to deal with, although part of that was that the head of the Abwehr told Franco Germany was going to lose WW2 and that Franco should thus avoid joining that losing side.
That Civil War was long enough away that I’m skeptical of drawing a connection between it & the REC movies. There has been a lot of Spanish history since then, most of which the typical Anglophone would know little about, although much of that would admittedly have been in the Franco era.
Coffin Joe is a character from Brazilian cinema. As such, he speaks Portuguese rather than Spanish.