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    Goblins
    Goblins
    Goblins
    Ebook43 pages58 minutes

    Goblins

    By Jen Calleja and Rachel Louise Hodgson

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Goblins explores the beasts we've loved, hated, and longed to be. In a searing exploration of her personal obsessions and preoccupations—from disturbing 80s fantasy films and uncanny puppets in modern art, to sexual predators in music scenes and her longing to 'become a goblin' like her icons and fellow performers in DIY punk—Jen Calleja shows us the ways she has lived in relation to these base, hungry, selfish and carefree creatures.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRough Trade Books
    Release dateNov 12, 2020
    ISBN9781912722860
    Goblins
    Author

    Jen Calleja

    Jen Calleja is a writer, musician, and literary translator. She has translated works by Wim Wenders, Gregor Hens, Kerstin Hensel, and Michelle Steinbeck, and her translations have been featured in The New Yorker and The White Review, among others. She was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library, and her reviews, articles, interviews, and essays have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Modern Poetry in Translation, Brixton Review of Books, New Books in German, and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection, Serious Justice, was published by Test Centre in 2016. She currently lives in London. 

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      Book preview

      Goblins - Jen Calleja

      CONTENTS

      TITLE PAGE

      PROLOGUE: DEFINE GOBLIN

      PART ONE:GOBLINHOOD

      PART TWO:ART GOBLINS

      PART THREE:GOBLINCORE

      POSTSCRIPT: GOODBYE GOBLINS

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      COPYRIGHT

      PROLOGUE

      DEFINE GOBLIN

      For me, anything that behaves mischievously and in its own best interest, that is bold and all body, could be a goblin, though this does not necessarily mean they are evil or cruel. Above all, a goblin is shameless. A goblin has no shame. This is my personal history of goblinry.

      PART ONE

      GOBLINHOOD

      GOBLIN MATINEE

      A lot of people are scared of puppets. There’s something about their uncanniness that disturbs us. But I feel like I was brought up by them. I learned the alphabet from Sesame Street (I still say ‘zee’ and ‘haitch’). I thought the Psammead—the small, hairy, grumpy sand-fairy from the nineties programme Five Children and It (1991)—looked exactly like my grandad when he had his shirt off. All my favourite TV programmes and films as a kid born in ’86 had them in: soft, furry, fleshy, wet-looking, dead-eyed, blinking, toothy, gummy creatures that moved of their own volition. Even when I could see the strings or the wires, or surmised a hand out of shot, or couldn’t see them breathe, they still felt very real to me, these mischievous creatures that always had the potential to be either malicious or benign.

      There was some contention around what was appropriate viewing for children back in the 80s, and much of what my parents let me watch was actually terrifying and arguably traumatised me and thousands of other kids. Whether or not this is actually the case, I feel like the stories and messages and morals that these films and programmes gave me, as I watched them over and over again until the video warped, became the foundation of my existence in part due to their puppet eeriness.

      At the Kino Museum-Lichtspiele in Munich they have shown The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) every Friday and Saturday night since 1977. My fantasy forever-screening in a cinema would be the things I watched that have left the biggest impression on me, the big cult puppet fantasies: Labyrinth (1986) every Friday and as part of a Saturday matinee double bill with Return to Oz (1985). The Dark Crystal (1982) would show one Sunday a month, and before every screening there would be one of the fourteen episodes of The Storyteller (1987) instead of trailers. There’d also be books for sale where you get your popcorn and pick ‘n’ mix: Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) and a dozen other books I would have specially selected.

      I’ve been re-watching the above almost constantly over the last couple of years. Even now as a thirty-three-year old I find them comforting, and they still give me

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