Spooky (or Spoopy) Season – C1 Advanced
1.- Describe and discuss (5
min):
2.- Listening (Part 2) (15
min) VIDEO – The Messed Up Origins™ of Jack-o’-Lanterns
Listening Online Exercise:
https://forms.office.com/r/uVEvGV465q
3.- Reading and Use of English (Part 7) (20 min)
Read the text and choose the correct paragraph from [A]-[G] to fill in the gaps [1]-[6]. There is one extra paragraph, which you do not need to use.
ADAPTED FROM CULTURE DESK – San Francisco Chronicle
What is
spoopy? Your guide to the Internet's favorite Halloween aesthetic
For the past few years,
October has not only heralded the return of Halloween and pumpkin spice
lattes, it has also marked the dawning of spoopy season. For a small group of
people who belong in the center of a Venn diagram of mellowed-out goths and the
“extremely online,” the spoopy aesthetic has become a source of joy and
comfort in turbulent times.
[1]____
“Spookiness is campy, but
spoopiness is campy in a very specific way,” says John Paul Brammer, a New
York City writer and advice columnist whose popular memes about the demonic
goat from the movie “The Witch” are more of the former. “Spoopy’s whole
thing is that it is not frightening. It's not threatening, not arcane, but uses
the trappings of the threatening and the arcane to make the joke: OoOoOooOo!!!
SpoooOOoooOOooky!!”
[2]
Its origin is much more
straightforward than its meaning. In 2009, the word was spotted on a skeleton-theme sign
displayed at a Ross Dress For Less store. Though its ascent took some
time, the term gained popularity on niche social media communities like Tumblr until
it finally reached escape velocity to spread even further.
[3]
Though it might seem random,
the delight of this sort of banal creepiness stems from the desire to
look an object of fear in the eye — and laugh.
[4]
In political discourse, Prevas points to
anti-transgender activists using the image of Frankenstein’s monster to
demonize transgender people. Historically, monsters have often stood in for
types of people who were undesirable: racial minorities, immigrants, queer
people, anyone outside the “normal.” “I love the unsettling part of (spoopiness),” Prevas says, “that disconnect
between seeing the creatures which we expect to see in a horror scenario in
a perfectly quotidian scene.”
[5]
I don’t think it’s a
coincidence that it resonates so well right now, at a time when marginalized
people’s status feels extremely fraught and political rhetoric insists on
estranging us from polite society. This aesthetic defies the imperative to
be afraid: Instead, we
embrace the monsters as part of ourselves, as
neighbours. To let the monster out is, in
a sense, letting oneself out.
[6]_____
When we look at the skeleton
riding a bike, it almost feels aspirational: This is what life could look like
if our cloistered selves were set free. As it turns out, spoopiness might be
just what we need right now.
[A] Because I’m a restaurant critic, my gauge of whether or not something has hit the mainstream is
“The Great British Bake-Off.” In the 10th season, currently airing on the
British Channel 4 and Netflix, Spanish contestant Helena Garcia has emerged as
a fan favourite thanks to her memorably macabre but cute creations like a
chocolate orange tarantula flanked by macadamia nut spider eggs, eldritch
horror pies and bloody green “witch finger” biscuits.
[B] What is “spoopy”? It’s the coupling of wildly absurdist humour
with terror — an aesthetic unto itself that, like camp, can be hard to
articulate.
[C] Spoopy is a reclamation and reframing of these monsters, a
mind-set that boasts, “You say I should be scared of this? Hilarious!”
[D] In fables and literary fiction, monsters are the embodiments of everything that society
represses: a “warning system” of sorts, says Christine Prevas, a
Columbia University Ph.D. candidate whose research focuses on applying queer
theory to contemporary horror. The monster is a taboo made flesh: A
prepubescent girl turned foul-mouthed, vomiting demon in “The Exorcist”; a bad
sexual encounter run amok in “It Follows.”
[E] When I look at this stuff, it reminds me of how I like to
“watch” horror movies by reading their plot summaries on Wikipedia: a digital
version of peeking at Medusa’s face by holding up a mirror.
[F] This disruption of the narrative of otherness mirrors the way people actually want to
be seen. For instance, queer people can be queer outside of designated contexts
like gay bars and the privacy of one’s bedroom, Prevas says. “We're also queer
in the grocery store. We’re also queer on a bicycle.”
[G] Much easier than defining it is sorting through what is
and isn’t spoopy. As a start, think of it as friendly and somewhat sarcastic horror: A skeleton
isn’t, but a skeleton riding a bike? Definitely spoopy. The
Babadook isn’t, but the memes that claim that the monster is a proud
gay man? Super spoopy.
4.- Language focus (15 min)
a.
Vocabulary
Look at the words in bold in the text and discuss the
meaning with a partner:
|
Former |
|
|
Somewhat | |
|
Spotted |
|
|
Gauge |
|
|
Embodiment |
|
|
Unsettling |
|
|
Mirror |
|
https://wordwall.net/es/resource/62979785
Next, fill in the gaps with
the vocabulary words in the correct form to fit the context, so some of them will require to be modified.
https://wordwall.net/es/resource/62980351
· Jack saw a mutilated corpse with a(n)
____________ look on its face.
· His mood ___________ the gloomy
weather on that Halloween night.
· Between risking being tricked and facing Jack’s
grumbling stomach for the rest of the trip, the devil chose the _________.
· Some consider him the very _____________ of evil.
· The devil was ____________ confused
by Jack’s request to pay the bill at the bar.
· Jack ___________ a mutilated corpse on the ground on his way home from the bar.
After Jack __________ the level of danger he was in, he decided to trap the devil by using crosses.
Individual Gapped Text Activity
5.- Speaking Follow-up Activity
1.- Had you heard the word 'spoopy' before?
2.- Did you know the story about Jack-o’-Lanterns before?
3.- Do you have similar folk tales in your culture?4.- Would you say that the Legend of the Jack-o’-Lantern is spooky or spoopy?
5.- Can you think of any examples of spoopy things that you’ve seen online or irl?
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