Imaginaires

Rethinking the Gothic stereotype with Baudelaire's Orphans by Lemony Snicket (1999-2006; 2017-2019)

Caroline Starzecki — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

The thirteen-book series A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999-2006) by the American author Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) has been adapted on the streaming platform Netflix between 2017 and 2019, more than ten years after the last volume was published. Both on paper and on screen, A Series mainly targets children aged 9 to 12 and testifies the popularity of the genre for young readerships and audiences – even crossover ones. It further questions the stereotypes of the Gothic genre, especially in the 21^st century which seems to put more emphasis on the notion of aesthetics than on that of content. A new relationship between form and substance in visual media for the young is thus created. This study has a dual purpose: although not a comparative analysis, the article shall analyse the themes and the structure of A Series on paper and in the TV adaptation from the perspective of ‘gothicity’. A few aspects of the reasons why A Series is a Gothic work shall be discussed here, as for instance its use of intertextuality and intermediality, but also the use of visual and sound aesthetics. We shall see how contemporary Gothic fictions for young audiences are to be understood nowadays through the spectrum of ‘aesthetics’.

Introduction

Yannick Bellenger-Morvan, Marine Galiné — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

This publication is part of a wider project that aims to further Chloe Buckley and Catherine Spooner’s work on the Gothic in respectively children’s fiction (Buckley, 2019) and the “teen-marketing machine” of the post-millennial Gothic (Spooner, 2017: 84) by exploring the multifaceted connections between children and teenagers and contemporary Gothic productions. In that respect, young adults and children are to be understood as either the primary targets of those literary, television and film productions or as the fictional constructs around which the Gothic plot is articulated. Our project is therefore located at the crossroads of fan culture studies and generic studies, between reception and production, just like the contemporary Gothic productions we are interested in jeopardise the commonly assumed superiority of content (the Gothic story) over form (the Gothic look). Since recent Goth pop productions blur the lines between rewriting and ‘cashing in’ on over-used motifs, while relentlessly advocating for cultural and generic hybridity, one may wonder to what extent the child and teenage figure is both the herald and the consumer of this rebranding of Gothic popular culture.

The Physiology of Thresholds in Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

Marine Galiné — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

The present article focuses on Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, a ten-episode series released on Netflix in 2019 and which the writers claimed was partly inspired by Shirley Jackson’s acclaimed novel of the same name. Both narratives are articulated around the towering and bleak presence of Hill House and its crippling influence on a variety of characters. However, questions pertaining to the notion of adaptation or faithfulness will not be tackled here. Instead, we wish to examine the concept of adolescence through the study of boundaries, thresholds and, more generally, liminality. Our discussion will be informed by concepts aligning space and body with a view to shedding new light on the gothic paraphernalia of the show. It will first deal with the bleak and labyrinthine setting of Hill House as a porous and crumbling structure whose cinematic transcription challenges the traditional understanding of space. This contribution will then study the different members of the Crain family and how their characterisation borrows from gothic readings of the ailing and failing body. Finally, we wish to go beyond familiar (albeit fascinating) analyses of liminality (with, for instance, the heterotopic space and the liminal neophyte, our focal points in parts one and two respectively) and apprehend formal and stylistic playfulness through the study of thresholds and transitions in the very fabric of the television narrative.

Injustice, Discrimination and The Structuring Of Sensitivity: Some Insights from Shadowhunters

Valeria Emi Sgueglia, Camilla Stortini — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

As part of a broader reflection on the role that television series are playing in everyday life, in education and cultural debates, on how they support democratic values and polyphonic identities, this paper will explore the way in which the television series Shadowhunters deals with identity concerns and confronts prejudice and exclusion. It will analyse the patterns this series and the books behind it have elaborated to talk about the configuring of the self and, more specifically, the structuring of sensitivity. The Mortal Instruments (2007-2014) is a series of six young adult fantasy novels written by Cassandra Clare. It follows a group of Nephilim, humans with angelic qualities known as Shadowhunters, who fight demons and live in a world invisible to human eyes. In 2014 the decision was made that The Mortal Instruments would become a television series. The main character is Clary Fairchild, a seemingly ordinary human adolescent aged sixteen, who is led to discover her heritage as a Shadowhunter. The Shadowhunters’ society is not exempt from perpetrating injustice and discrimination towards other beings, such as vampires, werewolves, fairies, warlocks (who are the Downworlders, a metaphor for despised minorities), and reinforces a climate of prejudice and distrust. Clary, however, starts questioning and addressing values and behaviour from a different perspective.

Reconstructing and/or Deconstructing the 1980s. Gothic and Horror Tropes in Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016-)

Yannick Bellenger-Morvan — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0800

This article focuses on the gothic and horror tropes utilised in the Netflix series Stranger Things to offer a critical discourse on 1980s cultural, economic and social norms. To do so, the emphasis has been laid on the construction of tween and teen characters as “Gothicised” heroes, whose relations to borders, thresholds and in-between places enable them to define themselves as marginal(ised) if not altogether “othered” creatures. Relying on Deleuze’s nomadism and Foucault’s heterotopy, this essay wishes to demonstrate that Gothic does not merely provide an aesthetic to give Netflix viewers thrilling and horrific entertainment but also, and above all, a rhetoric that helps the Duffer Brothers to counter any nostalgic view on a decade marked by Republican President Reagan’s conservatism.