Alex Svensson

@alsven.bsky.social

1417 Followers 377 Following

Emerson College Affiliated Faculty, Lecturer @ MIT / Film & Media Studies PhD / Researching: Horror, Found Footage, Experimental Film & Video, Promotional Paratexts, Moral Panics Recent at New Review of Film & TV: https://nrftsjournal.org/flash-fright

2006 Time Magazine “person of the year” cover featuring “you” (the word “you” on a computer screen inside a YouTube video)
Video of The Last Dinner Party performing their unreleased track “Big Dog” on 4/18/26 at Roadrunner in Allston/Boston
“Language Professors Hate Him!” Classic Internet pop up ad with Jacoby Shadix from Papa Roach (specifically the “Last Resort” video) poorly edited in.
Still from Evil Dead II, featuring Rick Domeier as Ed Getley
Still of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) smiling and wearing sunglasses from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.
Poorly edited image of Bugs Bunny (taken from the end of “Duck Amuck” which reveals he has been in control of the animated film and tormenting Daffy Duck) atop a screenshot of the red and white “Rate Limit Exceeded” warning many users have seen on Bluesky today.
Image from Boston Globe’s Instagram, published 4/16/26; picture of dirty sedan next to massive pile of filthy snow; headline reads: That big snow pile in Somerville? The cars buried in it are emerging.
Still from Duracell Batteries commercial (The Puttermans), 1995
Bloody Disgusting promo image of new Godzilla film with headline: Godzilla Minus Zero Brings Godzilla to New York City?!
Still of Arnold as Mr Freeze in Batman & Robin (1997)
Shot from Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981)
Bob Newhart on phone
“Monster Tales” / “Nosferatu Bites”! (David “The Rock” Nelson, 2002)
Still from Beware! The Blob (1972): a man in a bowling alley trying to ward off The Blob with a crucifix like its a vampire
Still from Beware! The Blob (1972): kitten in a field
X-Files promotional still, Mulder playfully pretending to punch Skinner, with Scully looking serious in the foreground.
Passage from Hofstadter’s Anti Intellectualism in America Life (1962/63): The kind of anti-intellectualism expressed in official circles during the 1950s was mainly the traditional businessman’s suspicion of experts working in any area outside his control, whether in scientific laboratories, universities, or diplomatic corps. Far more acute and sweeping was the hostility to intellectuals expressed on the far-right wing, a categorical folkish dislike of the educated classes and of any¬ thing respectable, established, pedigreed, or cultivated. The right-wing crusade of the 1950s was full of heated rhetoric about “Harvard professors, twisted-thinking intellectuals ... in the State Department”; those who are “burdened with Phi Beta Kappa keys and academic honors” but not “equally loaded with honesty and common sense”; “the American respectables, the socially pedigreed, the culturally acceptable, the certified gentlemen and scholars of the day, dripping with college degrees . . . the ‘best people who were for Alger Hiss”; “the pompous diplomat in striped pants with phony British accent”; those who try to fight Communism “with kid gloves in perfumed draw¬ ing rooms”; Easterners who “insult the people of the great Midwest and West, the heart of America”; those who can “trace their ancestry back to the eighteenth century—or even further” but whose loyalty is still not above suspicion; those who understand “the Groton vocabulary of the Hiss-Acheson group.”
Book cover for Richard Hofstadter’s Anti Intellectualism jn American Life
Promo for January 6 screening of Idiocracy at the Coolidge Corner Theatre
Letterboxd year in review, featuring 71 films logged, 38 reviewed, and 119 hours watched for 2025, along with “Most Watched Actor” and Most Watched Director
Kelsey Grammer (Frasier Crane) pictured with chilled cans of his “Faith American Beer” brand
You wouldn’t watch Lawrence of Arabia in a cinema (meme based on You wouldn’t steal a car - Hollywood anti piracy ad)
“YOU WOULDN’T WATCH LAWRENCE OF ARABIA ON A PHONE” meme based on “you wouldn’t steal a phone” Hollywood anti-piracy ad
Jimmy Fallon and the robot Baxter pictured in bed, from a 2012 Wired magazine article.
Walking outside the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts / Harvard Film Archive; a grey walkway and steps lead to and ascend up to the main road, cutting through the green campus lawn. Fall foliage and blue-grey skies make-up the top of the image - all very autumnal and scholarly.
Justin and Hailey Bieber at a Maple Leafs nhl game, exhibiting syrupy swagger
Image from 10/18 No Kings peaceful protest in Boston, member of the crowd holding a sign reading “in boston we dump tyranny in the harbor”
Quote from T2 - Sarah Connor: [voiceover] Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.
Snippet of Adam Nayman’s review of One Battle After Another (2025) for The Ringer
Sean Pean as Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Lobby promotion for One Battle After Another at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (Brookline, MA)
Sloppy AI slop on Instagram
DVD cover of American Pie: Girls’ Rules
Still from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, featuring The Shape in a bad mask performing his cultish duties.
Image of a moving truck labelled “Chucky Moving & Storage Company” (with a cartoon image of the slasher horror icon next to moving boxes) driving around Allston, MA
Excerpt from Immortal Films: “Casablanca" and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic (Klinger, 2022)
Excerpt from Immortal Films: “Casablanca" and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic (Klinger, 2022)
Excerpt from Immortal Films: “Casablanca" and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic (Klinger, 2022)
Excerpt from Immortal Films: "Casablanca" and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic (Klinger, 2022)
Image of Johnny Sack from The Sopranos
Image of the new album Trash Mountain (2025) by Lily Seabird (on Apple Music)
Image of SCMS panel info taken from PDF conference program - detailing info about the “Monstrous Platforms, or the Digitality of Horror” panel from 4:15-6pm on Thurs. 4/3
Image of a screen displaying the showtime for The Brutalist (in 70mm) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA
An unhinged promotional image of Mark Wahlberg in Flight Risk
Image of recent Letterboxd activity, showing the posters for (left to right): Trancers 3, Trancers II, Trancers, and Mulholland Drive
Image of the book Coventry: Essays (Rachel Cusk, 2019) on a coffee shop counter next to a cup of Flour coffee (Boston, MA)
Title image of the film Hard to Kill
Screenshot of Beck’s 2005 album Guero on Apple Music
Picture of the book The Vulnerables (Sigrid Nunez, 2023) on a wooden dining room table next to a (requisite/ubiquitous) cup of Lady Grey tea in a black “Indiana University Cinema” mug.
Picture of Laura Van Den Berg’s book of short stories (I Hold a Wolf By the Ears) on a living room side table)