Semiotics and Popular Culture

Semiotics and Popular Culture Series Editor Marcel Danesi University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada Semiotics and Popular Culture aims to show the contemporary relevance of cultural theory and present diffi cult concepts in a clear, jargon-free style. Written by leading fi gures in the three interconnected fi elds of media, popular culture, and semiotic studies, this series is an exercise in unravel- ing the socio-psychological reasons why certain cultural trends become popular. It intends to engage theory and technology and expose its subject matter in a clear, open, and meaningful way. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14487 Michael Arntfi eld Gothic Forensics Criminal Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery Michael Arntfi eld Western University London , Ontario , Canada Semiotics and Popular Culture ISBN 978-1-137-56793-2 ISBN 978-1-137-56580-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56580-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943310 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York For Sabrina Victoria, a great detective mind in the making. SEMIOTICS AND POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES Popular forms of entertainment have always existed. As he traveled the world, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about earthy, amusing performances and songs that seemed odd to him, but which were certainly very popular with common folk. He saw these, however, as the exception to the rule of true culture. One wonders what Herodotus would think in today’s media culture, where his “exception” has become the rule. Why is popular culture so “popular”? What is psychologically behind it? What is it? Why do we hate to love it and love to hate it? What has happened to so-called high culture? What are the “meanings” and “social functions” of current pop culture forms such as sitcoms, reality TV programs, YouTube sites, and the like? These are the kinds of questions that this series of books, written by experts and researchers in both popular culture studies and semiotics, will broach and discuss critically. Overall, they will attempt to decode the meanings inherent in spectacles, popular songs, coffee, video games, cars, fads, and other “objects” of contemporary pop culture. They will also take comprehensive glances at the relationship between culture and the human condition. Although written by scholars and intellectuals, each book will look beyond the many abstruse theories that have been put for- ward to explain popular culture, so as to penetrate its origins, evolution, and overall raison d’être human life, exploring the psychic structures that it expresses and which make it so profoundly appealing, even to those who claim to hate it. Pop culture has been the driving force in guiding, or at leashing shaping, social evolution since the Roaring Twenties, triggering a broad debate about art, sex, and “true culture” that is still ongoing. This vii viii SEMIOTICS AND POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES debate is a crucial one in today’s global village where traditional canons of art and esthetics are being challenged as never before in human history. The books are written in clear language and style so that readers of all backgrounds can understand what is going in pop culture theory and semiotics, and, thus refl ect upon current cultural trends. They have the dual function of introducing various disciplinary attitudes and research fi ndings in a user-friendly fashion so that they can be used as texts in col- leges and universities, while still appeal to the interested general reader. Ultimately, the goal of each book is to provide a part of a generic semiotic framework for understanding the world we live in and probably will live in for the foreseeable future. Marcel Danesi University of Toronto , Toronto , Ontario, Canada HOW TO USE THIS BOOK This book marks a newly practical and incisive approach to a burgeoning area of scholarship. A number of academic titles have previously examined the link between expanded Western interest in the forensic sciences during the nineteenth century and the concomitant rise of detective fi ction as a literary genre born of the Victorian novel. Many of these same titles— some cited here—have proven to be penetrating, others less so. None, however, have before now substantively referenced actual investigative techniques or relied on fi eld experience in the police sciences, criminalis- tics, and criminal investigative analysis in proffering their respective theses. Many of these texts have actually gone to great lengths to avoid practical engagement with these same subjects, including the confl uence between nineteenth-century Gothic literature and what are now contemporary applications of forensic expertise. It is the objective of this book to do the opposite. The intent in the chapters ahead is to breathe new life into the study of the interconnection between literature, investigative procedure, and criminology, not to further obfuscate the important work being done in these expanding and mutually reinforcing areas of scholarship and public interest. By using the Victorian Gothic novel as both a point of departure and narrative locus for the critical study of not only forensics but also the current adequacy standards and best practices used in actual criminal investigations and the interpretation of evidence, this book is part of a larger area of study, now in its adolescence, I call literary criminology . I begin then with a note on nomenclature and the classifi cation of those literary traditions employed in this book—the fi rst known treatise on literary criminology, at least by name. I should stress that the title “Victorian,” ix x HOW TO USE THIS BOOK for our purposes here, describes both British and American literary traditions, specifi cally those espousing Gothic themes published between 1837 and 1900 inclusive—the period, as the name commonly denotes, corre- sponding with the reign of Queen Victoria. There has, however, been a conscious effort to avoid references to the Victorian Era by name during those chapters or sections which explicitly discuss American contributions to the Gothic during this same period, simply referring to the period in question in those cases as “the nineteenth century.” In the interest of simplicity and for the purposes of discussing the various iterations of the Gothic tradition during the nineteenth century, I shall follow the some- times popular practice of citing this period as simply the Victorian Gothic as a unifi ed Anglo-American tradition, doing so without further differ- entiating between competing national interpretations of the genre. The term “Victorian” as an alloy of both the British and American versions of the Gothic—and by extension Victorian horror and mystery as a lay description of the motifs associated with the Gothic—is chiefl y a temporal distinction. The term connects the shared English language and common law legal traditions of two sovereign nations where the Gothic genre was being resuscitated under similar socioeconomic and industrial conditions. It is an editing decision, however contentious, which at the same time per- mits me to coalesce these two streams into a single Western classifi cation without drawing on assumptions about Victorianism per se. An additional distinction is made between those titles fi tting cleanly within the Victorian Gothic and the contemporaneous and the oft- compared Victorian sensation novels. Much like the Gothic texts discussed here, Victorian sensation novels in many circumstances also concern acts of criminal violence and deviance. Many of the sensation novels produced during this era would therefore arguably also provide effective discussion points for the purposes of examining criminal behavior and the struc- turalist push–pull effect between literature and investigative procedure of the nineteenth century and beyond. The prime distinction between the Gothic novel and the nineteenth-century sensation novel, however, is that the sensation novel, argued by Cvetkovich (1992) as being “not really a distinct genre” (14), is concerned chiefl y with crime and scandal while the approach to crime in the Gothic tends to be more circuitous— more insidious. Crime in the Victorian Gothic is instead interwoven or introduced through a kaleidoscope of the genre’s dominant themes such as the uncanny, the grotesque, paranoia, isolation, inherited curses, and dark romanticism. Some infl uential titles might also be classifi ed as hybrid HOW TO USE THIS BOOK xi in nature, at once imparting elements of the Gothic and the sensation novel, such as Wilkie Collins’s (1859) The Woman in White —the inaugu- ral text for which the term “sensation novel” was coined (Hughes 2002, 260).

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