Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Steven Gerrard|Samantha Holland|Robert Shail

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9781787691049

13 March 2019

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13 March 2019

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13 March 2019

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The successful return of horror to our television screens in the post-millennial years, and across a multi-media range of platforms, demonstrates that this previously moribund genre is once again vibrant, challenging and long-lasting. The traditional TV audience of the past would have watched very few horror TV shows, because not many were made. But that has changed. Programme makers have tapped into their public's insatiable need - in these days of terrorism, violence and mayhem - to provide programmes that have high production values, engaging storylines, and plenty of frights and gore.

Horror TV offers a safety-valve for its audience, one that enables them to enter into it from the safety of their armchairs. The era of instant access, streaming, downloading and binge-watching whole seasons over a weekend, where fandom has blossomed into a cultural force, clearly shows horror as a vital part of today's TV scheduling.

This edited collection investigates the rising popularity of horror-television through deconstructing the gender roles within them via series of case studies including such programmes as Hannibal, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful, Supernatural, The Exorcist and Bates Motel. By using a series of case studies and employing theoretical modes of close analysis, each chapter demonstrates how and why these TV shows are important in reflecting the changing gender roles within modern society.

Introduction; Steven Gerrard Part One: The Monstrous Feminine 1. 'She's that kind of a woman': Tracing the gender and sexual politics of the female vampire via The Hunger and American Horror Story: Hotel; Chloe Benson 2. 'Is this a chick thing now?': The feminism of Z NATION between Quality and Trash TV; Nadine Dannenberg 3. Weeping Angels: Doctor Who's (De)Monstrous Feminine; Khara Lukancic 4. The Representation of Older Women in Twenty-First Century Horror: An Analysis of Characters Played by Jessica Lange in American Horror Story; Natasha Parcei 5. 'She was not like I thought': The Woman as a Strange Being in Masters of Horror; Erika Moreno Tiburcio 6. The Monster Within: Lily in Penny Dreadful; Kylie Boon 7. Final Girls and Female Serial Killers: A Review of the Slasher Television Series from a Gender Perspective; Víctor Hernández-Santaolalla Part Two: The Monstrous Masculine 8. 'Is Hannibal in love with me?' Gender changes in the Television series Hannibal; Clare Smith 9. 'I'm pissed off, and I'm angry, and we need your permission to kill someone': Frustrated Masculinities in Charlie Brooker's Dead Set; Lauren Stephenson 10. The Problematic Relationship with Sympathetic Vampires in the TV series The Vampire Diaries; Fernando Canet 11. So Many Chick Flick Moments: Dean Winchester's Centrifugal Evolution; Susan Cosby Ronnenberg Part Three: The Monstrous Other 12. Depictions of Gender, Homes and Families in the TV version of The Exorcist; Samantha Holland 13. How iZombie Rethinks the Zombie Paradigm; Dahlia Schweitzer 14. Damaged Survivors in the Walking Dead. Gender and the Narrative Arcs of Carol and Daryl as Protectors and Nurturers; Marta F. Suarez 15. 'Some normal apple-pie life': Gendering Home in Supernatural; Jessica George 16. Female Audiences' Reception of American Horror Story in Greece; Despina Chronaki and Liza Tsaliki 17. 'Mother, I've really had enough of this! You can't just leave me alone in this abyss where I can't find you!' Norman/Norma and Bates Motel; Steven Gerrard Conclusion; Steven Gerrard

Contributed by film and media studies and other scholars from Europe, Australia, and the US, the 17 essays in this volume examine gender roles in horror television through the idea of the monstrous. They consider how female characters have been presented in various ways, such as the gendering and sexualization of female "monsters," how older actresses are represented through their characters, and how women are seen as heroine, victim, and "monster," in The Hunger, American Horror Story, Z Nation, Doctor Who, Masters of Horror, Penny Dreadful, and slasher television series; masculinity and the traditional hero in Hannibal, Dead Set, The Vampire Diaries, and Supernatural; and monsters as Other, with discussion of how American Horror Story was received by female audiences in Greece, the role of the house and the home in Supernatural and iZombie, gender and the narrative arcs of characters in The Walking Dead, and gender in Bates Motel.
- Annotation ©2019

Steven Gerrard is Reader of Film at Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University, UK. He has written two monographs: one celebrating all things naughty but nice in the Carry On films, and another investigating the Modern British Horror Film.

Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her publications include Pole Dancing, Empowerment & Embodiment and Modern Vintage Homes & Leisure Lives: Ghosts & Glamour. She is currently writing a book about Wonder Woman.

Robert Shail is Professor of Film and Director of Research in the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is widely published on postwar British cinema, masculinity in film, and more recently on children's media. In 2016, he was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for his study of the Children's Film Foundation.