American Horror, Placelessness, and Globalization
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2017 Dead places : American horror, placelessness, and globalization. Katherine Ashley Wagner University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the American Popular Culture Commons Recommended Citation Wagner, Katherine Ashley, "Dead places : American horror, placelessness, and globalization." (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2704. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2704 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. 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DEAD PLACES: AMERICAN HORROR, PLACELESSNESS, AND GLOBALIZATION By Katherine Ashley Wagner B.A., La Sierra University, 2007 M.A., La Sierra University, 2009 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities Department of Comparative Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, KY May 2017 DEAD PLACES: AMERICAN HORROR, PLACELESSNESS, AND GLOBALIZATION By Katherine Ashley Wagner B.A., La Sierra University, 2007 M.A., La Sierra University, 2009 A Dissertation Approved on April 18, 2017 by the following Dissertation Committee: ___________________________________________ Dr. John Gibson ___________________________________________ Dr. Simona Bertacco ___________________________________________ Dr. Michael Williams ___________________________________________ Dr. Adam Lowenstein ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to those who reminded me that I was never truly alone. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation chair, Dr. John Gibson, for providing the support I needed to overcome my original, unfortunate circumstances and for offering much-appreciated wisdom and guidance. I would also like to thank my other primary dissertation committee members, Dr. Simona Bertacco and Dr. Michael Williams, for their invaluable feedback over the past several years and their continued demand for my best work. I am very appreciative to my outsider reader, Dr. Adam Lowenstein, for agreeing to work with me—sight (and project) unseen. I am also indebted to Dr. Tom Byers for his assistance on my comprehensive examination committee. I did not know what I was originally requesting when I asked each of you to serve on my committees; I am thankful that you, knowing exactly what was required, nevertheless agreed. I am very grateful to Robert Kurtzman, Marcia Mattern, and Wes Keltner for their parts in this dissertation’s first-hand, exclusive interviews. Not only was my research the richer for these opportunities, but I also am so thankful for the once-in-a-lifetime experiences to work with these individuals in the places where horror comes to life. I am grateful to all of my former teachers throughout the years who taught me to love learning; who provided me with a strong scholarly foundation; and who showed me, through word and deed, the fortitude and integrity needed for academic and personal success. I would especially like to thank Dr. Michael Williams and Dr. Benjamin Hufbauer for being two of the finest teachers at UofL; Dr. Alan Leider for being my original advisor; Dr. Mary Anne Stenger and Professor Elaine Wise for their advice and assistance; the iv Comparative Humanities faculty, both current and former, for their various roles in my life and research; Shari Gater and Lisa Schonburg for holding the world together; Dr. Winona Howe and Dr. Andrew Howe for proving that the connection between student and teacher is incredibly precious and can last long after school is over; Dr. Lora Gerguis and the rest of the La Sierra University English department faculty (former and current) for teaching me to be a scholar; Bobbie Painter for being exceptionally kind, my PhD cohorts for offering veteran support, and Gabrielle Billings for her instrumental and life-changing counseling. Thank you to all of these people, and so many more in my academic worlds, who knew when to offer advice, encouragement, or even vaguely menacing ultimatums. Finally, I especially want to thank those individuals who witnessed the darkness of the past several years, who knew that I was broken and tired, and who loved me anyway. Thank you to Britney Broyles and Josh Caudill, Kendra Kravig, Tiffany Hutabarat, Tommy Pfeiffer, and Manuel Valdivieso, and my many other friends for both support and, when needed, distraction. Thank you to Megan McDonough for being with me on this journey and for helping me to discover that the only way to eat a hippopotamus is bite by bite. Thank you to my family, particularly my Mom and Larry, Papa and Grammy, Dad and Brenda, Ricky and Jessie, Nancy and Don. They were there for me when I needed them, understood what I needed even when I did not, and loved me always. Most importantly, I want to thank my partner Steph Troyer, who deserves a dissertation-long acknowledgement and message of love. She listened to me, set up interviews for me, and believed in me every step of the way. This was the hardest task I have ever completed and these past few years have been some of the most challenging, but I was able to succeed with the knowledge that I had her—and everyone else’s—unwavering love and support. v ABSTRACT DEAD PLACES: AMERICAN HORROR, PLACELESSNESS, AND GLOBALIZATION Katherine A. Wagner April 18, 2017 This dissertation investigates particular American anxieties concerning cultural identity and place, particularly fears about America’s place (or lack thereof) within the global world, that can be seen throughout much of post-WWII American horror literature and film. More specifically, this project explores how an existent pattern of visual and narrative depictions of destroyed bodies and places illustrates larger tensions and fears about placelessness—the affect and effect of incomplete, partial, or inauthentic relationships with the places that provide cultural and individual identity and meaning. I argue that representations of placelessness within American horror texts become vehicles for addressing and signifying American fears about globalization and America’s place(lessness) within the global landscape. This dissertation begins with a discussion of how the methodologies of literary and cinematic theory, humanist geography, and cultural studies work together to produce an interdisciplinary examination of the intersections between American horror, placelessness, and globalization. The introduction sets up the primary concepts and key definitions central to this project’s understanding of horror, place, and identity. vi The overall structure of the dissertation then spirals out from the most localized of places to the most globalized of places that appear within American horror. The four main chapters of this dissertation each focus on a specific place or type of interaction with places: the home, everyday places, the American landscape/wilderness, and global tourism. Each chapter uses a particular theoretical framework that, in addition to the overarching ideas of placelessness and globalization, serves as a foundation for in-depth, close-readings of specific key horror texts. The dissertation concludes with a brief examination of adaptation theory in horror and a return to the project’s original premise: that post-WWII American horror presents specific and particular American anxieties tied to the fear that our cultural and individual identities are as fabricated and fraudulent as are our cultural and individual understandings of our places. I maintain that the ultimate source of horror in these texts is the insidious suggestion that such fears are warranted and the consequences of this horrific placelessness will be the terrible destruction and inevitable untethering of cultural and individual identities, bodies, and places. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATION…………………………………………………..………………………iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………..……………………………………………iv ABSTRACT…………………………………..………………………………………...vi LIST OF FIGURES……………………..………………………………………………ix PLACING HORROR: AN INTROUCTION…………………………...………………1 CHAPTER ONE.…………………………………..…………………………………...35 THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME: CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE HOME IN AMERICAN HORROR CHAPTER TWO…………………………………….…………………………………79 ALL AROUND ME ARE FAMILIAR PLACES: EVERYDAY PLACES IN AMERICAN HORROR CHAPTER THREE…………………………………………………………………….124 DYING TO GET AWAY: TRAVELS ACROSS THE LOCAL LANDSCAPES OF AMERICAN HORROR CHAPTER FOUR…………………………..…………………………………………..172 SEND ME A POST(MORTEM) CARD: CULTURAL TOURISM IN POST-9/11 AMERICAN HORROR THE HORROR, THE PLACELESS HORROR: A CONCLUSION…………………..218 REFERENCES..……………………………………….……………………………….228 APPENDIX A: PUBLISHER APPROVAL FOR INCLUSION…………………..…..263 CURRICULUM VITAE……………………………….………………………………265 viii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE 1.1 SCREENSHOT FROM THE STRANGERS .……………………………………….45 1.2 SCREENSHOT FROM THE STRANGERS .……………………………………….50 1.3 SCREENSHOT FROM A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET……………….……...69 1.4 SCREENSHOT FROM A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET……………….……...74 2.1A SCREENSHOT FROM THE FACULTY………………………………….……...98 2.1B SCREENSHOT