Dreams, Nightmares and Haunted Houses: Televisual Horror as Domestic Imaginary
Abstract
It has been widely proclaimed that U.S.Television is currently experiencing a Golden Age with horror at its vanguard, in part enabled by technological innovations that have seen audiences engage with TV in ever more diverse ways, enabled by the advent of Smart T.V. Meanwhile, television has historically positioned itself as a humble and domesticated medium and yet its increasingly sophisticated channels penetrate into the very heart of the contemporary home.
With this in mind, I view Suburban Gothic TV series such as American Horror Story (2011) and Hemlock Grove (2013) through the lens of psychoanalytic concepts such as The Uncanny, considering the extent to which such dramas invoke the dark side of the domestic imaginary which haunts that most cherished of spaces, the home. Why does Gothic Horror continue to engage the imaginations of the contemporary home’s technologically orientated inhabitants? And how has technology helped to drive the resurgence of a genre so firmly rooted in a historical-literary form? These are just some of the questions that this article explores.
With this in mind, I view Suburban Gothic TV series such as American Horror Story (2011) and Hemlock Grove (2013) through the lens of psychoanalytic concepts such as The Uncanny, considering the extent to which such dramas invoke the dark side of the domestic imaginary which haunts that most cherished of spaces, the home. Why does Gothic Horror continue to engage the imaginations of the contemporary home’s technologically orientated inhabitants? And how has technology helped to drive the resurgence of a genre so firmly rooted in a historical-literary form? These are just some of the questions that this article explores.
Keywords
Domestic imaginary; suburban gothic; television horror; the uncanny
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Ussher, J. M. (2012) Managing the Monstrous Feminine: Regulating the Reproductive Body. London: Routledge.
Armitt, L. (2014) Twentieth Century Gothic. In D. Townshend (ed.) Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination. London: The British Library.
Austen, J. (1992) Northanger Abbey. Herts: Wordsworth.
Baudrillard, J. (1988) Trans. Turner, C. America. London: Verso.
Creed, B. (1993) Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection. Retrieved on 23 August 2015 from http://www.johnmenick.com/wp-content/uploads/creed.pdf
Deary, V. (2015) How We Are: How to Live. London: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1919) The Uncanny. Retrieved on 18 August 2015 from http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf
Graxti, J. (2015) Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction. London: Routledge.
Jervis, J. (2015) Sympathetic Sentiments: Affect, Emotion and Spectacle in the Modern World. London: Bloomsbury.
Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia: Columbia University Press.
Martin, R. K., Savoy, E. (1998) American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.
McGrath, M. (2014) The New Wave of Horror Television. Retrieved on 17 August 2015 from http://www.tn2magazine.ie/the-new-wave-of-horror-television/
Murphy, B. (2009) The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture. London: Palgrave. Murphy, B. (2013) The Rural Gothic in American Popular Literature: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
O’Connell, M. (2014) TV Ratings: ‘The Walking Dead’ Gives Finale Best With 15.7 Million Viewers. Retrieved on 17 August 2015 from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-walking-dead-gives-692262
Perkins Gilman, C. (2013) The Yellow Wallpaper. Madison, WI: Cricket House Books. Retrieved on 2 September 2015 from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ymRGUkUgyPAC&pg=PP2&dq=the+yellow+wallpa per&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=the%20yellow%20wallpaper&f=false Perrault, C. (1697) Little Red Riding Hood. Retrieved on 21 August 2015 from http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LittRed.shtml
Spooner, C. (2014) Twenty-First Century Gothic. In D. Townshend (ed.) Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination. London: The British Library.
Ussher, J. M. (2012) Managing the Monstrous Feminine: Regulating the Reproductive Body. London: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7413/22818138048
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