Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0177
Tosha R. Taylor
{"title":"Gothic Doubling and Fractured Identity in Shōjo Manga: Yuki Kaori’s Angel Sanctuary","authors":"Tosha R. Taylor","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0177","url":null,"abstract":"Despite enjoying a global fandom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Yuki Kaori’s manga series Angel Sanctuary (1994–2000) has received little consideration in studies of the Gothic. Yet the manga presents Gothic scholars with rich opportunities for locating manga, and particularly shōjo (young girls’) manga, within its own Gothic tradition. Steeped in global religious imagery, Angel Sanctuary uses incest, genderbending, and fractured identities to explore trauma and to critique the cross-cultural hegemonies that produce it. This essay considers the relationship between the Gothic and gendered identity in Japanese girls’ comics and investigates its manifestations in the manga’s depictions of incest, twins, and traumatic formations of the doppelgänger. In doing so, the essay locates Yuki’s work alongside the Female Gothic and argues for the increased inclusion of manga in Gothic scholarship.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":"13 6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139298624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0174
Stuart Lindsay
{"title":"The Transgressive Bodies of Dark Horse Comics’ Aliens Line","authors":"Stuart Lindsay","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0174","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the strategies employed by Dark Horse Comics to develop the Xenomorph creature and its associated universe across the publisher's Aliens line of titles. Through analysis of three Aliens miniseries’ story arcs that are representative of the line's narrative and structural innovation, my contribution explores how this corpus transgresses the parameters of the movie franchise's Science Fiction and action-horror genres in the following three ways. Firstly, I investigate the Aliens comics’ introduction of dreams and psychological trauma associated with the literary Gothic past in Aliens: Sacrifice (March–June 1993). Secondly, in keeping with the Gothic's comic turn, I examine the humorous, parodic, and self-referential elements of comics in Aliens: Stronghold (May–September 1994). Thirdly, I explore Dark Horse Comics’ critical understanding of negative nostalgia in preserving and transgressing the narrative structure and aesthetics of Alien (1979) in Aliens: Dead Orbit (April–December 2017). Ultimately, this article considers these three themes as examples of the paradoxically transgressive and restorative elements of Gothic that are apparent throughout Dark Horse Comics’ Aliens line. It argues that the ways in which the Aliens line innovatively reworks these aesthetic and narrative features of the film franchise's visual and thematic origins provide a critical understanding of the productive interactions between comics and literary Gothic traditions.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139300576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0175
M. Tegan, Matthew J. Costello
{"title":"A Woman is Being Side-Kicked: Gothic Superheroes and the Suppression of Female Autonomy Amid Feminism’s Second Wave","authors":"M. Tegan, Matthew J. Costello","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0175","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the treatment of women in the Gothic superhero comics of the 1970s through the lens of Michelle Massé’s In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism and the Gothic (1992). While superhero texts generally neglected women even at the height of second-wave feminism, the Gothic superhero sub-genre goes even further, drawing on the regressive trope of the suffering woman to ‘side-kick’ female characters and deny their agency and autonomy. Exploring four female characters who share this fate, we examine their different responses to the Freudian beating fantasy enacted in their narrative arcs, delineating the high costs and limited gains of traumatised women who dream of triumph.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139292733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0176
Matthew J. A. Green
{"title":"‘Keep it Gothic, Man’: Gothic and Graphic Medicine in Ian Williams’s The Bad Doctor","authors":"Matthew J. A. Green","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0176","url":null,"abstract":"Exploring the intersection of Gothic Medicine and Graphic Medicine in Ian William’s graphic novel, The Bad Doctor, this article discusses the ways in which gothic aesthetics, particularly representations of the abject encounter, contribute to an understanding of mental illness whilst also interrogating dominant paradigms within medical discourse. Further, this study suggests that the gothic aspects of comics as a medium contribute to the effectiveness of Gothic Medicine as a genre by offering insight into visual and verbal representations of the body. Detailed close readings indicate that Williams’s work draws a parallel between the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder on an individual level and the hostility toward the Gothic that formed a cornerstone in the foundation of modern medicine as a discipline.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139297139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0178
Catherine Spooner
{"title":"My Friend the Devil: Gothic Comics, the Whimsical Macabre and Rewriting William Blake in Vehlmann and Kerascoët’s Satania","authors":"Catherine Spooner","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0178","url":null,"abstract":"This article develops the concept of the ‘whimsical macabre’, introduced in my book Post-millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance and the Rise of Happy Gothic (2017) to refer to texts which deliberately fuse the comic and cute with the sinister, monstrous or grotesque. I propose that Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët’s graphic novel Satania (2016) extends the whimsical macabre in new directions, by drawing on the work of Romantic poet and artist William Blake, whose illustrated books are often cited as forerunners of modern comics. By rewriting Blake’s visionary account of a journey into the infernal regions in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) and alluding to Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789/1794), Satania reveals the serious ethical dimensions that underlie the whimsical macabre. In doing so, it interrogates and complicates the maturational narrative associated with children’s and young adult literature. The article concludes by suggesting that Satania’s heroine Charlie’s relationship with her demon draws on a Blakeian model of friendship in opposition, pointing towards a ‘reparative’ form of Gothic in which otherness is neither erased nor expelled, but embraced and cherished.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139298147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0162
Máiréad Casey
{"title":"‘A Walking Study in Demonology’: Postfeminism and Popular Misogyny in Jennifer’s Body (2009)","authors":"Máiréad Casey","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0162","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the 2009 horror-comedy directed by Karyn Kusama, Jennifer’s Body. I describe how this female-centred horror film critiques the postfeminist or neoliberal feminine subject from an angle that aligns most comfortably with antifeminist sentiments and arguments from the centre-right and right. I discuss how a gendered neoliberal discourse of individualism, and the idea that the individual must be ultimately bear responsibility for their own biography, renders the titular character as an illegible subject of sexualised violence. I argue that the film naturalises threats of sexual violence, attributes blame to the violated female body, and renders her illegible as a victim or as person worthy of sympathy and support. I demonstrate how the film is prescient of secular forms of exclusion, specifically popular misogyny and conforms to some of popular misogyny’s circulated myths and philosophies regarding female sexuality.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48379707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0161
A. Bride
{"title":"‘What if it’s Not a Ship?’: Reading the Monster Octopus in Jordan Peele’s Nope","authors":"A. Bride","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0161","url":null,"abstract":"The article argues that the alien monster of Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022) should be read as part of the long legacy of capitalist monster octopuses, and that identification and recognition of the monster octopus in this context allows for a greater understanding of Peele’s specifically gothic critique of capitalism within the film. The article reviews the history of the monster octopus in literature, art, cinema, and political cartoon, outlines Nope’s relationship to and development of these earlier texts, and then examines how the film uses the monster octopus to highlight capitalism as a monstrous system that we can neither survive nor afford to look away from. Critical perspectives explored in the article include Gothic Studies, Financial History, and Critical Race Theory, and Nope is examined as an example of the Economic Humanities in contemporary horror cinema.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42709286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0168
C. Campbell
{"title":"Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches. By Miranda Corcoran","authors":"C. Campbell","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0168","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49397813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}