June Pulliam: Horror Maven

Most afternoons June Pulliam strolls through the streets of Baton Rouge’s Spanish Town neighborhood wearing colorful skirts and light sandals that show off her carefully pedicured toes. She chats with neighbors while she feeds the community cats that wait for her to deliver their evening meal of Meow Mix to the sidewalks and porches of the neighborhood. She is a small-framed, pretty woman whose physique has been molded by years of yoga and vegetarianism.  At first glance, she looks like the kind of English professor who would gush over Keats and would champion Jane Austen to students. Almost no one would guess that she is LSU’s resident horror expert. 

Pulliam’s love of horror started at a very young age when her family was living in Hammond, Indiana. “We got [the network] WGN before it was a superstation,” she said. “They played all the old horror films from Universal and Hammer Studios on Friday and Saturday nights.” When she was ten, her parents let her stay up and watch George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Unfortunately, the movie proved to be too much for a pre-teen. “It scared the hell out of me,” Pulliam laughed. “I couldn’t watch it again until I was thirty.” 

In her late teens, the family relocated to Baton Rouge where Pulliam would cut her teeth on more serious works of horror. “I saw Halloween, Freaks,and Psycho at the old Varsity Theatre near campus,” she said. As she earned English degrees from LSU, she was able to combine her passions for literature and things that go bump in the night. 

This fall she is teaching an English class entitled The Horror Film, and her other offerings at the university include classes focused on zombies, Harry Potter, gender and horror, and vampire fiction. When asked how she managed to sneak a Harry Potter class past the powers that be, she said, “I told them I could fill this class up in an hour. It is worth studying.” 

After spending years educating students on the virtues of ghosts, vampires, and zombies, Pulliam understands that many people don’t enjoy the horror genre and sometimes even judge the good taste of horror fans. “As a culture, we are afraid of things we can’t explain,” she said, “but the supernatural can be a good thing.”

Pulliam believes that the popularity of different types of monsters as represented in film and fiction are a reflection of the current sociopolitical climate. Pulliam’s monster-centric fiction classes delve into these issues. “The ‘90s had the vampire,” she said. “They are rich, sexy, and glamorous. Everyone wants to be one.” 

The current darling of the supernatural world is the zombie. “The zombie is the ninety-nine percent. He lacks free will,” said Pulliam. “Times are tough now, and many people see free will as an illusion.” The book she co-edited with Anthony Fonseca, The Encyclopedia of the Zombie: The Walking Dead in Popular Culture and Myth, chronicles the evolution of the zombie as a pop-culture phenomenon over the past decade. 

The recent explosion of teen horror centered on dystopian societies also finds its roots in recent world events. “These are kids who saw the Twin Towers come down. They saw Katrina. There is no Sweet Valley High for them,” Pulliam said. “They are used to living in an unstable world. I love teen horror fiction because it addresses the fears teens have and allows them to deal with things they can’t necessarily describe.” 

 Pulliam believes the next great monster trend will be ghosts; she bases this conclusion on a surge in ghost movies and fiction over the past few years. She is currently at work writing and editingan encyclopedic work entitled Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend. “I think ghosts are our way of describing a different reality we can’t understand,” she said. “The ghost always points to what is hidden by an individual, a group, a government, or culture.” 

With all of the legends and voodoo traditions in South Louisiana, there are plenty of specters that warrant consideration. Pulliam’s favorite is the infamous Axeman of New Orleans, a serial killer from the early 1910s who fashioned himself as a jazz-loving spirit rather than a creature of flesh and blood. “Not a lot is written about him,” she said, “but American Horror Story Season 3 did a great job of filling out his character.” 

Although Pulliam enjoys a good haunting, she would love to see her favorite monster, the oft-neglected werewolf, receive some attention. “Most werewolves are portrayed as male, but a female werewolf is awesome,” she said. “The most frightening thing about a woman is her anger—something lycanthropes are known for.” 

Gender in Horroris the class that is nearest and dearest to Pulliam’s heart.  The evolution of the female character is the key to the course. “Nineteen-seventies horror was mostly men, women, and chainsaws,” Pulliam said. “Before that women were just doomed in horror films. They were victims.”  

Slasher films gave birth to a new heroine, known as The Final Girl. “She has to save herself. She knows when to stay and fight, but can also run and hide, and she can scream,” Pulliam said. The Final Girl has transformed through the years, from an androgynous virgin in her twenties to a character, usually portrayed as a teen, who is much more sophisticated than her peers. “She takes one look at her friends’ troubled relationships with boys and thinks, If this is the best adulthood has to offer, I will wait it out in my room,” Pulliam said. 

Not afraid to go against the flow, someone who thinks for herself, Pulliam is The Final Girl—just all grown up. 



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