Endnotes

1. “Fourth of July” by Sufjan Stevens is taken from his album, Carrie and Lowell (2015). The album is an intimate portrait of his relationship with his mother and stepfather. The album was conceived following the death of his mother, Carrie, as a means to reflect on his memories of their fraught relationship. 

2. On Death and Dying (1969) by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is still often touted as the definitive handbook on grief, but has since been largely discredited following much research into grief by practitioners such as Pauline Boss in her book, Ambiguous Loss (1999), as well as George A. Bonanno’s, The Other Side of Sadness (2009). 

3. Wes Craven’s film, The Last House the Left (1972) was marketed as being so horrific that audiences ought to keep repeating to themselves that what they are viewing is “..only a movie.”

4. Halloween Unmasked (2018) was a limited-series podcast that explored the Halloween movie franchise, with an emphasis on the first film in the series in relation to the 2021 film, Halloween Kills. In the episode, “The Joy of Fear” Margee Kerr, a sociologist, is interviewed about the joy that can be had in watching horror films in movie theatres.

5. Craven, The Last House on the Left (1972).

6. “Episode 184: Stage Fright” (2021) of the Imaginary Worlds podcast provides listeners with an overview of the Parisian theatre, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, that opened its doors in 1897, before closing in 1962. They are remembered for their heavy use of gore, horror, and shock in their short plays.

8. “House of Horrors” (1996), was an article by Agnes Pierron (translated from French by Deborah Treisman, and originally published in GRAND STREET magazine). The article provides readers an introductory history to the Grand Guignol theatre.

9. Art critic Thomas McEvilley provided the introduction to Brian O'Doherty’s collected essays, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1986), which examines the importance of the white cube gallery, and the influence it has had on the artist’s output.

10. Ibid.

11. Haidee Wasson’s “Introduction: Entering the Movie Theater” in Film History 28, no. 3 (2016) provides readers a preface to a series of essays that discuss the structure of the movie theatre. Wasson places emphasis on how the writers of the subsequent essays link much of the movie theatre experience to various objects, such as ladies’ hats or cigarettes.

12. Ibid.

13. This is a speech by the character Brian O’Blivion in David Cronenberg’s, Videodrome (1983). In the film, a TV executive goes on a surreal, hallucinogenic adventure rife with fleshy televisions, erotica, and snuff films.

14. “Oh No!” from Marina and the Diamonds’ debut album, The Family Jewels (2010), conveys Marina’s insecurities around achieving success, including not pursuing a relationship with friends or romantic partners to ensure having time and drive to achieve success.

15. Where the Wild Things Are (1963) by Maurice Sendak is a children’s book that tells the tale of a young boy named Max.  Max is sent to his room, where he then dreamily travels to the land of the Wild Things, where he is pronounced their king, before sailing home in time for dinner. 

16. Nam June Paik is quoted in Alexander Wolf’s article, “Life and Technology: The Binary of Nam June Paik,” in which Wolf examines how the pioneering video artist, Paik, married technology with the natural in extremely human ways.

17. Catching the Big Fish (2006) is an autobiography by David Lynch that is told through shorts vignettes and essays. Lynch speaks about his fabled metaphysical approach to creativity, his thoughts on digital media, and reminiscing on the making of his various films.

18. “The Art of Slowing Down in a Museum” (2014), is an article by Stephanie Rosenbloom from the New York Times that discusses the merits of spending time with art in museums.  In the article, the author speaks with a range of professionals from across disciplines to consider the benefits of looking at art for longer durations, with the primary example being James O. Pawelski instructing his students to choose a piece of art to look at for twenty minutes.

19. Ibid.

20. “Spending Time on Art” was a pioneering study conducted in 2001 by Jeffrey K. Smith and Lisa F. Smith at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During the study, 150 visitors were observed as they looked at six different paintings from the museum’s collections in an effort to determine the average viewing time of a piece of art in a museum. The resulting data showed that the median viewing time was 27.2 seconds per painting.

21. In 2017, Lisa F. Smith and Jeffrey K. Smith published, “Time Spent Viewing Art and Reading Labels,” in which they revisited their previous 2001 study, this time working with The Art Institute of Chicago to reassess their previous findings on how long viewers look at a piece of art. In this study, they broadened their scope to include two three-dimensional works and seven paintings and surveyed 456 visitors. Their findings resulted in a median viewing time of 21.00 seconds per work.

22. There have been various other studies conducted into viewing habits of museum and gallery attendees within different scenarios, with the majority of studies being conducted with paintings only, such as Susan M. Heidenreich and Kathleen A. Turano’s 2010 study, “Where Does One Look When Viewing Artwork in a Museum?,” which equipped four viewers with portable eye trackers and had them look at fourteen different paintings. Another study, “Effects of Time and Information on Perception of Art,” conducted by Lisa F. Smith, Suzanne G. Bousquet, George Chang, and Jeffrey K. Smith had 152 participants look at four paintings, and studied how long viewers looked at these paintings if there was a label present beneath each painting or not.

23. The Tate provides an overview of installation art, giving examples including Cornelia Parker’s, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), Kurt Schwitters’, Merzbau (1933), and Allan Kaprow’s various “environments.” The overview includes a quote from artist Ilya Kabakov on his views about installation art.

24. Les Fleurs du mal (1857) is a comprehensive collection of the majority of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry. “Haunted” (2021) is a single by Laura Les that uses allusions to traditional monster tropes, like vampires not being visible in mirrors, to evoke a vague emotional feeling.

25. “Grist for the Malady Mill” is the second track on mewithoutYou’s, Ten Stories (2012). The album is a concept album that tells the story of a crashed circus train in Montana in the late 1800s. The stories are told from the point of view of the surviving animals, as they attempt to figure out what to do with their newfound freedom.

26. In the fifth episode, “Illusions,” of the HBO miniseries, Mare of Easttown (2021), the main character, Mare, is talking to her counsellor about her concerns surrounding possible hereditary ties that could link suicidal predispositions throughout her family, as both her father and son committed suicide, and she is worried for her grandson’s wellbeing as a result.

27. “Risk of Mental Illness in Offspring of Parents With Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder: A Meta-Analysis of Family High-Risk Studies” (2014) is a study conducted by Daniel Rasic, Tomas Hajek, Martin Alda, and Rudolf Udher, in the Department of Psychology at Dalhousie University.  In the study they determined that children of parents that have been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and/or Major Depressive Disorder, are, in fact, at a higher risk of being diagnosed themselves.

28. “Children Who Lose a Parent to Suicide More Likely to Die the Same Way” (2010) from John Hopkins Medicine states that children under the age of 18 that have a parent die by suicide are more likely to also commit suicide themselves, whereas, over the age of 18, there is little to no change in a child’s chance of suicide. 

29. “Suicide Deaths in BC 2008-2018” (2020), is a report published by the BC Coroner’s Service that gives unequivocal data on suicide statistics in British Columbia between 2008-2018.

30. Ibid.

31. “Suicide in Canada: Key Statistics” (2019) is an infographic outlining various suicide statistics across Canada published by Canada Public Health.

32. “I Have a Love” (2021) is the opening track from the debut, self-titled album, For Those I Love. For Those I Love is the solo project of Irish musician David Balfe. The project and album stemmed from Balfe’s grief following the suicide of his best friend, poet, Paul Curran in 2018.

33. “Resilience in the Face of Potential Trauma” (2005) is an article by George A. Bonanno published in Current Directions in Psychological Science. In the article, Bonanno presents his research into trauma and grief responses, claiming that the long-held clinical understanding of recovery as the predominant response is actually incorrect, with Bonanno stating that the majority of people, when faced with trauma, show a resilience response instead.

34. Trauma Recovery is a website that was developed by the Manitoba Trauma Information and Education Centre that presents visitors with information on how individuals may be able to work to recover from their traumatic experiences. Outlined is a three-phased approach to trauma recovery that claims the phases as being: Safety and Stabilization, Remembrance and Mourning, and Reconnection and Integration. It’s worth noting that trauma-recovery.ca does have a section titled, “Resiliency,” which provides insight into how individuals overcome adversity, which in turn shows an individual’s ability to build resilience when faced with trauma.