ALTOONA, Pa. — Penn State Altoona faculty members Brian Onishi, associate professor of philosophy, and Jeff Stoyanoff, associate professor of English and of women's, gender and sexuality studies, have released a new episode of their "Horror Joy" podcast.
In the latest episode, the hosts begin a spooky-season series on witches by discussing Robert Eggers’s 2015 film “The Witch,” outlining its colonial New England setup in which an exiled Puritan family suffers escalating losses and turns toward suspicions of witchcraft and the devil, culminating in the character Black Phillip’s invitation to “live deliciously.” Onishi and Stoyanoff trace Western and Christian obsessions with witches to the Middle Ages, emphasizing Malleus Maleficarum’s patriarchal fixation on female sexuality, and connect witch-labeling to control, scapegoating and contemporary Christian nationalism.
The conversation links the film to Milton’s “Paradise Lost” via a “temptation narrative” reading, highlights dualisms (inside/outside, conceal/reveal, body/soul, girl/woman) and considers how Eggers’s period accuracy creates “prosthetic memory” while the horror largely arises from isolation, religious literalism and family projection rather than constant supernatural spectacle.
You can access the full episodes of "Horror Joy" on podcast providers or on Red Circle.