Gothic television

"Television today is marked by an unprecedented number of reality shows that focus on the paranormal investigation of spiritual entities, including Ghost Hunters (Syfy 2004- ), Ghost Adventures (Travel 2008- ), and Paranormal State (A & E 2007-). In addition, a number of recent horror films—the Paranormal Activity series, Grave Encounters (2011), Episode 50 (2011), The Apparition (2012), The Awakening (2012), Apartment 143 (2012), to name a few—have made ghost-hunting their central subject. The sheer number of these types of texts suggests a contemporary preoccupation with the ability to speak to the dead and thus marks a new era in the long history of American spiritualism.

Since its beginnings, American spiritualism has had strong female involvement. Most scholars trace the origins of the movement to the Fox sisters who in the 1840s claimed to be in touch with spirits who communicated to the girls by rapping on walls and floors. In the contemporary imagination, too, mediums and psychics are often female. One need only think of Tangina Barrons in Poltergeist (1982) or consider contemporary shows like Medium, starring Patricia Arquette (NBC 2005-2009; CBS 2009-2011) and Ghost Whisperer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt (CBS 2005-2010).

The most popular ghost-hunting reality shows, however, show a marked absence of women. Female psychics are sometimes invited in to consult and other women serve as assistants, but it is men who manage the more serious and involved complexities of paranormal investigation. This gender bias is striking, not only considering the precedent of female influence but also because the “work” of communicating with the dead is so often feminized. The female psychic’s sensitivity to spirits is often treated as a natural outcropping of her gender, and even the channeling of a spirit could be seen as feminine since it requires “penetration” by an often male entity. A further threat to masculinity could be caused by the ghost-hunter’s resemblance to a Gothic heroine: trapped in a vast, maze-like, and simultaneously claustrophobic space, at the mercy of often hostile spirits.

I argue that reality ghost-hunting shows are structured to allow men to appropriate the work of the female medium without threat to their masculinity. Taking as my subject primarily Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Paranormal State, I will show that these programs masculinize a standard Gothic narrative using conventions from science-fiction and the Western. One of the most notable features of these shows—and of contemporary ghost-hunting practices in general—is the reliance on various technological innovations that can supposedly record evidence of paranormal events. While most critics have understood this tendency as a response to technology in general, I argue that it allows the “emotional” work of mediumship to be transferred onto a machine under the ghost-hunter’s control. Furthermore, unlike the female medium whose primary purpose is to listen, the male ghost-hunter casts himself as a sort of paranormal gunslinger who will battle spirits and rescue those who live in haunted spaces."

"This chapter provides one phenomenological interpretation of writer and director Alan Ball’s popular Home Box Office cable-television series, Six Feet Under, which completed its fifth and final season in 2005. The chapter considers how home and at-homeness are portrayed in the series, drawing on two contrasting phenomenological conceptions: First, Edmund Husserl’s homeworld/alienworld as interpreted by Anthony Steinbock in Home and Beyond (Steinbock 1995); and, second, Kristen Jacobson’s being-at-home (Jacobson 2009). The argument is made that an open sense of at-homeness, grounded in family and place, allows for personal and communal transformation partly impelled by unsettling moments when characters suddenly encounter, in their home lifeworld, compelling situations and understandings before out of sight—i.e., the uncanny.

Key words: home, at-homeness, dwelling, homeworld, alienworld, being-at-home, uncanny, place, phenomenology, phenomenology of home, Alan Ball, Six Feet Under
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... From its inception, there has been a kind of critical snobbishness against Gothic, springing from the cultural elitism that decries any form of mass entertainment. In the late twentieth century, however, a critical preoccupation with ...

This article discusses the BBC drama Taboo (2017-present) as a contemporary example of imperial Gothic and places the series in the context of a current trend of ‘imperial nostalgia’ in British culture. It provides a close reading of the series with regard to its use of gothic traits like the exploration of morbid psychology, the function of the ghost as a metaphor for past trauma, the use of locale for gothic effect, and the evocation of body horror. By reading this contemporary narrative against this generic tradition, the paper highlights the ability of the Gothic to reflect on historical transformations and contemporary manifestations of discourses of Empire. The series, the discussion argues, seeks to critique Empire by portraying it as the agent of monstrosity and horror but eventually reproduces stereotypes of colonial otherness that were fundamental to imperialist ideologies. In this sense, Taboo is a text just as ambivalent as earlier imperial Gothic texts.

The development of the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham in NBC’s Hannibal is a seduction. Hannibal desires Will as a companion, and while his love for Will is made known, their relationship is absent of any sexual element. Rather, this desire is often communicated through a third party, likely a woman or a corpse. This dissertation analyses Hannibal’s three seasons through the perspective of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s erotic triangle, and how homosocial desire is expressed through the figure of the woman. Particular close attention is paid to the character of Alana Bloom, her romantic and sexual encounters with both Hannibal and Will, and how Hannibal manipulates Alana to grow closer to Will. Also of interest are the figures of Bedelia du Maurier and Abigail Hobbs, who, despite not engaging romantically or sexually with either character, are also manipulated by Hannibal in his seduction of Will. The research also takes into account how the removal of these women from the triangle allows for a more explicit romance between Hannibal and Will to take place in the third season, and analyses in detail how the final episode, ‘The Wrath of the Lamb’ represents Will’s passionate surrender to Hannibal’s advances. This is significant as Hannibal represents a rare instance where homosocial desire as conducted through a woman falls away to allow for explicit queer readings, responding to cultural shifts in how queer love may be reflected in mainstream media. The use of the body is also significant in this regard, as Hannibal is uniquely able to utilise the gore common in the cannibal narrative to manipulate the corpse into works of art, a visual symbol of Hannibal’s longings. Finally, the research discusses why the shift from homosocial desire to explicitly queer desire took place, with an exploration of the influence the ‘Fannibal’ community had on the show’s development.

The introduction introduces the Themed Issue of Penny Dreadful in the Journal Refractory. Six articles explore different characters and questions of identity in the television show Penny Dreadful. "Penny Dreadful explores the darkness that exists not only in the physical world but also in the human mind. In it, monstrosity takes the familiar form of witches, werewolves, vampires, the revived and reconfigured undead—Dr. Frankenstein’s monsters—who kill and maim, but the series also routinely explores other, more mundane, forms of cruelty and depravity, while embracing a range of difference. In Penny Dreadful, the most human characters are revealed to be the most monstrous."

Online June 12, 2017, Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media

Why do the English have ghost stories at Christmas? Why does US television have special Halloween episodes? Is this all down to Dickens, or is it a hangover of an ancient, pagan past? Why does it survive? Haunted Seasons explores these and related questions, examining the history and meaning of seasonal horror. It reaches back through archaeological evidence of ancient beliefs, through Shakespeare, and Victorian ghost stories, and the works of M.R.James, and onwards to radio and television. The broader genre of supernatural television is considered in relation to the irruptions of abnormality into the normal, along with the significance of time and the seasons in these narratives and their telling. Particular focus is placed on the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas strand and the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons to help us interpret the continued use of these seasonal horror stories and their place in society, from fireside to television.

In Season Two of television horror-drama, Penny Dreadful (Showtime/Sky, 2014-16), Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), American sharpshooter and werewolf, asks Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), a British heiress with supernatural powers and a troubled past, what happens when the monsters inside of them are released? She says: “We’re most who we are. Unrestrained. Ourselves.” Summing up a central concern of the series, she confirms the view of its creator John Logan, that the “greatest horror in Penny Dreadful is the horror of people. . . the way we interact with one another.” (Calia 2015) Penny Dreadful explores the darkness that exists not only in the physical world but also in the human mind. In it, monstrosity takes the familiar form of witches, werewolves, vampires, the revived and reconfigured undead—Dr. Frankenstein’s monsters—who kill and maim, but the series also routinely explores other, more mundane, forms of cruelty and depravity, while embracing a range of difference. In Penny Dreadf...

This article discusses the BBC drama Taboo (2017–present) as a contemporary example of imperial Gothic and places the series in the context of a current trend of ‘imperial nostalgia’ in British culture. It provides a close reading of the series with regard to its use of gothic traits like the exploration of morbid psychology, the function of the ghost as a metaphor for past trauma, the use of locale for gothic effect, and the evocation of body horror. By reading this contemporary narrative against this generic tradition, the paper highlights the ability of the Gothic to reflect on historical transformations and contemporary manifestations of discourses of Empire. The series, the discussion argues, seeks to critique Empire by portraying it as the agent of monstrosity and horror but eventually reproduces stereotypes of colonial otherness that were fundamental to imperialist ideologies. In this sense, Taboo is a text just as ambivalent as earlier imperial Gothic texts.

The punning title of Julia M. Wright’s latest book, Men with Stakes, underscores her appreciation for the multiplicity of meaning. The book’s cover, a detail shot from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (‘Lies My Parents Told Me’ 7.17), shows the vampire Spike and Robin Wood, the son of a slayer murdered by Spike when Wood was a boy, grappling over a wooden stake. These two, with their phallic-symbol names, are men with stakes both literal and figurative. They are also men with stakes in the outcome of a life-and-death conflict. The book’s cover thus prefigures the argument Wright makes within its pages: that men with stakes are heavily invested in a struggle (with fathers, father figures, and the culture at large) over masculinity – and that, more broadly, ‘[a]t stake’ is ‘how meaning is produced’ (22).

Drawing upon extensive research into British television listings, and comparative research into other cultures, this paper considers the relationship between the Gothic and the seasons within specific cultural contexts. Various cultures have different associations of horror and Gothic tales with specific times of the year, practices which sometimes have literary or pre-literary roots, but which may also be more modern. For the English, it is the Christmas ghost story, while for the United States horror belongs at Halloween, and in Korea summer is the time for chilling films and television series. The cultural specificity of this seasonal connection with the Gothic is demonstrated by the way that, for example, the inclusion of a supernatural element in a Downton Abbey Christmas special was received with puzzlement by American reviewers, who directly stated that this was a Halloween, not a Christmas element. At the same time, there is an element of cultural influence at play, as the increasing importance of US imports to Britain helped develop Halloween as a more significant festival, while the English dominance of British broadcasting has spread the Christmas ghost story to Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where there was no pre-existing tradition. This paper will present the broad findings of this research, with appropriate specific examples, to suggest why these uses of the Gothic at particular seasons of the year differ, and what this tells us about the cultures. It thus aims to encourage consideration of the hitherto under-studied area of the seasonal in relation to modern cultural production.

... Departments: Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences > English & Creative Writing. ID Code: 39643. Deposited By: Dr Catherine Spooner. Deposited On: 02 Feb 2011 16:18. Refereed?: Yes. Published?: Published. Last Modified: 02 Feb 2011 16:18. Identification Number: ...