Stalking

FOCI

by Bran Nicol

It scares—and titillates—in such movies as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Basic Instinct . It violently ended the lives of legendary artists such as Selena and John Lennon, and thousands of people endure it daily in anonymity from ex-lovers and strangers. Stalking has been a fact of human society for a surprisingly long time, yet it is only in the last two decades that the term “stalking” came into wide use throughout mass culture. Bran Nicol traces here the history of stalking and chronicles how acts of extreme obsession have created a public fixation of their own. 

This unprecedented study draws on a wealth of sources—including forensic psychology, films, literature, news reports, and cultural theory—to examine stalking as a behavior and a social phenomenon. Moving from Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa to Fatal Attraction and from Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend to Taxi Driver and One Hour Photo , Nicol skillfully probes how stalking has pervaded our civilizatoin for over two hundred years. He then turns his focus to the role that stalking plays in the context of our contemporary media-saturated culture, posing provocative questions about the state of modern Have interpersonal relations become increasingly intense or more perverse today? Are we dealing with something truly new, or is stalking simply the latest name for an age-old form of social interaction? Stalking also examines cases of deadly obsession with celebrities, such as Jodie Foster, and explores how such fixations are fueled by mass media and the Internet.

A wholly fascinating and groundbreaking investigation into one of the extreme consequences of our hyper-connected age, Stalking provides a thorough understanding of this disturbingly compelling abnormality.

146 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2006

Reviews

[Katy Goodall · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a foundational text for any sociology students studying stalking, I would definitely say this is worth a read. The author explains the phenomenon with ease, using helpful analogies and celebrity cases along the way. I found the section on love particularly useful. I do, however, think too many celebrity and film cases were used, where space could’ve been used to explain other useful aspects of stalking or typologies. Still, worth a read

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting points that becomes repetitive at times, towards the end felt as if the author was attempting to fill a page quota, at other times felt as if it were a psychiatric textbook for medical students. he liked to quote Zizek.

[Thomas Edmund · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am mildly obsessed (no irony intended) with slightly old-timey non-fiction. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, I think its the slightly unfocused, broad strokes approach. Modern non-fiction is a lot about clout and gimmick and ensuring a safe existence in a much more interconnected world, which isn't to dismiss authors or their material, just to try and capture that work in modern times is so much more self-conscious.

And Nicol's Stalking is exactly the opposite of that, this probably sounds harsher than it needs, if this book were released today (and known about) it would have been absolutely torn to shreds for bad psychology, odd movie takes and the rest. But I continue to stand by my stance that its good to have 'bad' books in existence (as long as not actively harmful) to remind us what good material is.

So what is this book actually like? As mentioned the psychology is pretty terrible, bordering on misinformation, but more accurately just outdated and poorly explained, thankfully the book isn't strongly focused on this, instead its a really strange thematic analysis of media (mostly movies) and their relation to the concept of stalking. Despite the shakey foundation Nicol does do a good job of breaking down strange perceptions of stalking discussing the oscillation between favourable and unfavourable takes and how in some cases fiction can straddle both.

It's not a long read, and I wouldn't recommend this an introductory book, or a serious text but as someone with quite a few 'toxic' books in their "read" pile its a welcome addition, there is also something strangely prophetic about this book, having been written before social medial the author somehow captures concerns that have become all too real in the modern era, the sort of assumed and all-day everyday access that people have to celebrities and sometimes just friends through social media.