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A Critical Examination of Violence and Monstrosity in Horror TV Amanda K University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School July 2018 Opening Wounds and Possibilities: A Critical Examination of Violence and Monstrosity in Horror TV Amanda K. Leblanc University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons Scholar Commons Citation Leblanc, Amanda K., "Opening Wounds and Possibilities: A Critical Examination of Violence and Monstrosity in Horror TV" (2018). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7326 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Opening Wounds and Possibilities: A Critical Examination of Violence and Monstrosity in Horror TV by Amanda K. LeBlanc A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Rachel Dubrofsky, Ph.D. Aisha Durham, Ph.D. Chris McRae, Ph.D. Amy Rust, Ph.D. Date of Approval: May 22, 2018 Keywords: horror, gender, performance, prestige TV, race, violence Copyright © 2018, Amanda K. LeBlanc Acknowledgments There are so many people who supported and encouraged my journey; I barely know where to begin. Indeed, this work is the culmination of several different journeys, so I can start by thanking all of those who believed in my goal of combining my dedication to critical philosophy with my enduring love of TV. My parents were the first ones to champion my academic goals, even if they weren’t exactly sure what being feminist media scholar meant. I also thank them for passing on their love of reading to me. As I the introduction to my dissertation notes, I am particularly indebted to my dad for introducing me to Stephen King’s fantastic and weird worlds: turns out, these worlds aren’t all that different than ours. To all the educators who helped me get to this point, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your work is difficult and I value your dedication tremendously. More immediately, I wish to thank my dissertation committee, although there’s little I can say that will convey just how grateful I am for everyone’s time, energy, and constant encouragement. Dr. Amy Rust awakened a facet of my inner-geek in Film History class, teaching me ways to impart on my students the importance of weaving history and theory together so we can make sense of what we (think we) know today. I also thank Amy for letting me sit in on Horror Class – that theory is invaluable to my scholarship and my teaching. Also, it was really fun! I thank Dr. Chris McRae for his enthusiasm and guidance in Performance class. While at times I felt like a fish out of water, Chris’ leadership helped me work through a new set of ideas about performance, power, and resistance. This dissertation would have suffered without it. Dr. Aisha Durham has given me so many tools, both personal and professional, that I have lost count. Aisha nourishes my academic fanaticism for horror, monstrosity, the macabre, and the grotesque while also pushing me to think in complex and nuanced ways about such dark things. Finally, I owe everything on these pages to Dr. Rachel Dubrofsky, the most patient, dedicated, and smart adviser anyone could ask for. Seriously, other people are missing out. There was never a time where Rachel didn’t believe in my work and in my ability to create unique and meaningful scholarly contributions. Rachel, you demand that I aim high and have shown me that I can reach those goals. I am forever grateful. To my hunni, Erin: Thank you for making our home a place where I can read, write, and work-watch TV. I am sorry that our Netflix and Amazon accounts think I am a serial killer for watching horror TV on repeat for two years. Thank you for taking my work seriously, and constantly encouraging me to stay on course when I cry, pout, and whine. I love you. I will take a moment to thank my doggos here too. Shyanne has seen me through every graduate degree I have: she’s truly my best friend. Taking the time to exercise Shyanne and Jack in the forest allowed for me to reset my brain, move my body, and reflect on ideas that had been spinning around my head. Plus, they are super fun, super sweet kids and they remind me not to take things too seriously. Table of Contents Abstract ii Introduction: What can horror TV tell us? 1 Genre and medium 7 Method 8 Coven 10 Freakshow 11 Hannibal 12 Penny Dreadful 14 Feminist critical cultural inquiry 15 Chapters 18 Chapter 1: Where the hideous can be beautiful: The spectacle of violence and monstrosity on the stages of horror TV 22 Grand Guignol and Freakshows: Staging violence 25 All the world’s a stage: Figurative performance spaces 35 The art of the theatrical throat slice 40 Conclusion 44 Chapter 2: A nightmare dressed like a daydream: The horror TV dandy as monstrous consumer and ideal citizen 46 The all-consuming dandy 48 The Gothic, monstrous dandy 54 The bored dandy 63 Conclusion 67 Chapter 3: “There’s nothing I hate more than a racist:” The racial landscape of horror TV 70 Post-racial horror TV 72 The exotic East and the Dark Continent 79 Controlling images and the enduring woman 86 Conclusion 95 Chapter 4: Wounded women: The embodied trauma of prestige horror TV’s women antiheroes 97 The antihero on TV 100 Women antiheroes of prestige TV 103 i Women antiheroes of horror TV 106 Trauma and antihero women 110 Beware the antihero’s reversals 116 Conclusion 120 Concluding thoughts: Monstrous possibilities through the imagined violence of women 123 References 130 ii Abstract This dissertation examines contemporary horror TV, dissecting the ways it works both to subvert and uphold contemporary social standards about race, gender, class, and ability. This work attends to the moments in horror TV where graphic displays of violence and monstrous characters open up possibilities for innovative and progressive representation of historically marginalized people, as well as those instances that foreclose such potential. Horror TV shows blur the definitions of monster and human, suggesting that humans can be monstrous and that monsters can have humanity. Horror TV is a platform through which we see the coming together of a traditional logic about what is and what is supposed to be with a radical suggestion that, perhaps, things could be another way. This dissertation closely examines two seasons of American Horror Story – Coven and Freakshow – along with Hannibal and Penny Dreadful, as symptomatic texts of a dynamic sociopolitical moment in the United States where progressive and conservative worldviews sometimes violently clash. This dissertation examines the role of performance in horror TV, literal and figurative theater spaces that frame action in ways that disrupt hetero-patriarchal epistemologies. Order and chaos, reason and emotion, the natural and the supernatural often “crash” together in violent ways on the stages of horror TV, sometimes inviting something alternative to emerge. These often-violent performances serve as microcosms for the larger set of narratives and images we see in horror TV. iii This dissertation examines the figure of the dandy, who emerges in all the horror TV shows included in this work. The dandy is a contradictory character, at once queering social conventions of white masculinity, while also recuperating a traditional and dominant social position through violence. The dandy’s violent behavior is a kind of consumption: the taking of bodies and lives to satisfy their boredom. The horror TV dandy may be villainous, but is also the embodiment of the contemporary, good, white citizen who puts consuming above all else. This dissertation also attends to the ways that horror TV is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the product of a white imagination. Horror TV masks the ways that it forwards a white worldview by portraying stories about racial difference and racism, while narratively confining the material implications of racism to the past. Some horror TV shows further center whiteness by suggesting that “horror” (the weird, the macabre, and the terrifying) comes from a distant and exotic place – specifically the Dark Continent of Africa or the Exotic East of Japan and India. Contemporary horror TV, however, presents some of the most innovative portrayals of (mostly white) women in lead roles through the figure of the antihero. The women antiheroes of horror TV act via their relationship to cultural and political oppression, often in the form of violence. As a result of the traumas they have experienced, the women of horror TV embody both heroic and villainous qualities. The antihero women speak to contemporary cultural attitudes about women’s changing position in the United States, and that we only see white leading antihero women on horror TV points to the fact that women of color are not afforded the same multifaceted representation. iv Introduction: What can horror TV tell us? I have been a fan of horror for as long as I can remember. My father was my primary caregiver and I was a voracious reader from a young age. Perhaps as a way of bonding and an effort to satiate my requests for new material, my father introduced Stephen King novels to me when I was ten years old. I have never looked back. I watch every horror film I can (including the classics), watch as much horror TV as possible, and still keep up with the latest Stephen King (he’s still going).
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