Introduction: Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture

Troubled Boundaries: Corporeal and Territorial Transgression in Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008) and ’71 (Yann Demange, 2015)

“…Within these texts the Gothic, 'the perfect anonymous language for the peculiar unwillingness of the past to go away', is utilised as the ideal mode for exploring this unresolved, traumatic regional history. 12 The fear, unease, and precarity experienced by the characters in both texts establish in equal measure the lived reality of regional terror as well as empathy for those on all sides. The Gothic positions these texts within an ongoing trauma process, striving for clarity in response to an exceedingly murky and complex colonial conflict.…”

The contemporary Gothic: Literacy and childhood in unsettled times

“…As befitting a discourse on the uncanny and (im)mortality, the Gothic is forever reanimating and redefining itself (Spooner, 2006; Spooner and McEvoy, 2007). Warwick (2007) argues that the Gothic “is a mode rather than a genre, that it is a loose tradition and even that its defining characteristics are its mobility and continued capacity for reinvention” (p. 6).…”

“…In both cases, ‘ineffable and potent violent and cruel forces haunt and terrorise the civilised, human world’ (Devetak, 2005: 621). While Spooner (2007) warns of positioning the Gothic as a clichéd explanation for millennial anxiety and/or ‘desensitization to the everyday horrors of the modern world’, she is also clear that its continual reanimation reflects the capacity of the Gothic to mirror contemporary tensions, noting that the ‘Gothic has become so pervasive precisely because it is so apposite to the representation of contemporary concerns’ (Spooner 2007: 8–9).…”

“…In terms of size, cost, design and packaging, the 12” dolls are very similar to the iconic Barbie, so often examined by researchers and social commentators. While there are many other Gothic dolls on the market (see for instance the truly creepy 10” Living Dead Dolls manufactured by Mezco Toyz; see also Spooner & McEvoy 2007), the Bleeding Edge range is the only one that can be directly compared with the generic 12” fashion doll genre exemplified by Barbie. Although not central to this paper, the comparison with Barbie is informative.…”

“…For more than 300 years and through a series of revivals and reanimations, Gothic literature and popular culture have regularly emerged from the grave to give voice to the tensions emerging across a rapidly shifting scientific, economic and social landscape. The Gothic's engagement with the past, the provisional and slippery notion of the self and, with constructions of the ‘other’, its fascination with the grotesque, with decay and disintegration has provided a ‘language and a lexicon through which anxieties both personal and collective can be narrativized’ (Spooner, 2007: 9). The ways in which Gothic literature and other Gothic popular culture forms are used to speak to these tensions have shifted across time and place; however, they have proved an enduring forum for the articulation of uncomfortable issues and anxieties.…”