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Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Robert Guffey, "Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos" (Headpress, 2026)
Description: In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful taboos of the twentieth century (and the initial decades of the twenty-first century) by analyzing how disturbing and transgressive ideas involving Theosophy, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, Darwinian Evolution, Surrealism, Freudian and Jungian psychology, race relations, paranoia, UFOs, xenophobia, political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, virtual reality, and alternate dimensions have been reflected in films — both American and foreign — throughout the past one hundred years.
Popular films and TV shows that fall under cutting-edge scrutiny include Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, La...