The Weird and the Eerie

3.5

i really liked the analysis of particular films and literary texts but still not quite sure why it is justified to strictly distinguish the weird from the eerie (and both of them from the freudian unheimlich)

Two of my favourite things. This was an odd one. It started off well with an engaging examination of the weird and the eerie and the differences between the two but quickly slid into being little more than a collection of blurbs of albums, films, television shows, and stories that fit into those niches. The writing was repetitive and a bit mind-numbing, though I did come away from it with a long list of new things to read and watch, so swings and roundabouts I guess?

A wonderful set of essays, anyone who enjoys weird fiction and mindf*ck sci-fi movies and wants to think deeper thoughts about them should read this book. His thoughts on the collapse/confusion of ontologies was especially interesting to me. Bringing Freud and Lacan, among many other thinkers, to the discussion, Fisher demonstrates again and again how the weird and the eerie found in fiction is a mirror to weirdness and eeriness present in the human condition. Here in the postmodern age, I believe we have all experienced the “Zenonian condition” of the inability to feel a true progression in any process, and that strange lack of realness to our reality.