Randy Moore's horror film Escape from Tomorrow (2013) was shot at Disneyland, Epcot, and Disney World, without either the authorization or knowledge of the Disney corporation. The result is a fascinating example of guerrilla filmmaking that makes use of gothic conventions to craft a new narrative of corporate horror. Both the film and its promotional materials narrate the vicissitudes of countering a mass-culture corporation that has become synonymous with American fantasies and imaginaries. And yet, however revolutionary his methods and overall narrative, Moore relies on long-familiar images of monstrous femininity to convey the circumstances of mass-culture seduction. The end result is less an attack on the institution of Disney itself than a gothic account of the parks' co-option by a dangerous female consumerism that nullifies male resistance or escape.
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Summer 2015
Research Article|
June 01 2015
Mickey Horror: Escape from Tomorrow and the Gothic Attack on Disney
Aviva Briefel
Aviva Briefel
Aviva Briefel is Professor of English and Cinema Studies at Bowdoin College. She is the author of The Deceivers: Art Forgery and Identity in the Nineteenth Century (Cornell University Press, 2006), The Racial Hand in the Victorian Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and coeditor of Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror (University of Texas Press, 2011). She is currently at work on a book project titled “Impossible Ghosts: Material Culture at the Limits of Evidence.”
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Film Quarterly (2015) 68 (4): 36–43.
Citation
Aviva Briefel; Mickey Horror: Escape from Tomorrow and the Gothic Attack on Disney. Film Quarterly 1 June 2015; 68 (4): 36–43. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2015.68.4.36
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