Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture 9789463726320, 9789048550630

Citation preview

Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror

Transmedia: Participatory Culture and Media Convergence The book series Transmedia: Participatory Culture and Media Convergence provides a platform for cutting-edge research in the field of media studies, with a strong focus on the impact of digitization, globalization, and fan culture. The series is dedicated to publishing the highest-quality monographs (and exceptional edited collections) on the developing social, cultural, and economic practices surrounding media convergence and audience participation. The term ‘media convergence’ relates to the complex ways in which the production, distribution, and consumption of contemporary media are affected by digitization, while ‘participatory culture’ refers to the changing relationship between media producers and their audiences. Both developments have required substantial (and still ongoing) redefinitions of existing media platforms, as the rapid interactions between technological developments and socio-cultural practices continue to pose challenges as well as offer new opportunities for media scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. Interdisciplinary by its very definition, the series will provide a publishing platform for international scholars doing new and critical research in relevant fields. While the main focus will be on contemporary media culture, the series is also open to research that focuses on the historical forebears of digital convergence culture, including histories of fandom, cross- and transmedia franchises, reception studies and audience ethnographies, and critical approaches to the culture industry and commodity culture. Series editors Dan Hassler-Forest, Utrecht University, the Netherlands Matt Hills, University of Aberystwyth, United Kingdom Editorial Board Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California, United States William Uricchio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States Julia Knight, University of Sunderland, United Kingdom John Storey, University of Sunderland, United Kingdom Simone Murray, Monash University, Australia Eckart Voigts, Braunschweig Institute of Technology, Germany Timothy Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania, United States Roberta Pearson, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom Mark Bould, University of West of England, United Kingdom Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside, United States

Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Cultures

James Rendell

Amsterdam University Press

The publication of this book is made possible by a grant from the University of South Wales.

Cover illustration: Peter Bellingham Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 632 0 e-isbn 978 90 4855 063 0 doi 10.5117/9789463726320 nur 670 © J. Rendell / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

For Gina – easily scared, always brave – and River – ‘I’ll eat you up, I love you so’



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction – TV Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

9 11

Part 1  Post-TV Horror Ecologies 1. Jekyll and Hyde: TV Horror’s Incorporation of Other Genres and Audiences

69

2. Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Texts and Platforms 109 3. Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination a nd Consumption of Post-TV Horror

157

Part 2  Post-TV Horror Audiences 4. Not Just Horrifying: TV Horror Audiences’ Abject Spectrums

191

5. Spreadable Splatter: TV Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Textuality

231

6. Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtracks as Materialities of Transmedia TV Horror

265

Conclusion

307

Index

321

Acknowledgements In his ‘Author’s Note’ to the stunning Salem’s Lot, Stephen King states that ‘[n]o one writes a long novel alone’ (1975). I echo these sentiments in the writing of this book. Indeed, I am forever indebted to those people who helped me along the way and that made Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror such a labour of love. I want to first thank Matt Hills who set me on the path of researching horror. I really would not be here if it wasn’t for his guidance and mentoring, and to that I will always be grateful. I also want to thank Matt and Dan Hassler-Forest as series editors for Amsterdam University Press for accepting my book proposal, and Maryse Elliot, Senior Commissioning Editor for Amsterdam University Press for supporting the writing of this monograph. I would like to thank colleagues past and present who have constantly allowed me to chat their ears off about horror, provided me with opportunities to teach the genre in the classroom, spitballed research ideas with me, and supported the scholarly undertakings of this monograph. This includes Justin Lewis, Paul Bowman, Jenny Kidd, Caitriona Noonan, Joe Cable, Allaina Kilby, Ross Garner, Lucy Bennet, Hannah Hamad, John Jewell, Neil Ewen, Marcus Leaning, Laura Hubner, Niall Thomas, Rebecca Williams, Peter Jachimiak, Steve Johnson, Robert Campbell, Philip Mitchell, Tom Ware, Helen Davies, Bethan Jones, Richard Hurford, Lisa Lewis, and Susan Wood. I would also like to give a special thanks to Ruth McElroy for her endless support and mentoring. Also, a huge thank you to all the students I have had the privilege of teaching, especially those who are complete anti-fans of horror and came to classes anyway. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Fan Studies Network, Fear 2000, and the BAFTSS Horror SIG for allowing me to present and develop my research into horror media and audiences. Similarly, I am deeply thankful to Ian, Chris, and Liam from IJPR, Mike from the Evolution of Horror podcast, Giuseppe from the First Person Scholar podcast, and Mo from the Between the Bannisters podcast for allowing me to present my research to wider audiences. For offering a cornucopia of tales about Hannibal and the television industry, I am hugely grateful to Bryan Fuller and Janice Poon for giving me the best Zoom chat I had during lockdown. Parts of Chapter 4 appear in an earlier version in Transformative Works and Cultures whilst parts of Chapter 5 appear in an earlier version in Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. I offer deep appreciation to those that peer reviewed this work and Martin Barker for preliminary

10 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

feedback. Your astute and constructive comments made these studies markedly better. I would like to thank my friends and family who have fed my love of horror since I was a child. To my nephews and three favourite terrors Adam, Noah, and Zack, I will endeavour to continue this tradition… don’t tell your mum! Finally, to my wife Gina and our son River, nothing is scary with you in my monster squad. This book is for you.



Introduction – TV Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead Abstract This chapter considers the often-overlooked longstanding connections between horror and television, before reading the genre’s graphic shift as emblematic of the new/current golden age of TV horror. Located within a post-TV paradigm, the chapter considers television’s portalization facilitated by internet technologies that alter the production, distribution, curation, and consumption of horror TV. A pertinent feature of posttelevision, the chapter examines the complexity of transmedia: fostering hyperdiegetic depth and commercial opportunities for industry players, and outlets for fan participatory practices. Finally, the chapter develops the abject spectrum model, broadening audiences’ affective engagement with horror beyond being scared. It also considers audiences’ ideological deconstructing and aesthetical evaluation of horror. The chapter ends by providing an overview of the book. Keywords: horror, post-TV, portals, transmedia, audiences, abject spectrums

As we move into the third decade of the twenty-first century, far from dwelling in niche shadows or underground catacombs, horror television is being feasted upon by hordes of ravenous viewers as it takes centre stage on many TV outlets. Stranger Things’ (Netflix 2016–) inaugural season saw it rank among the top three series on Netflix (Holloway, 2016), while season two was the most streamed show in the world before season three, at the time, shattered the record for most viewed series or film in the platform’s history (Katz, 2018; Mumford, 2019). In 2022 season four then became the most viewed English-language series on Netflix and the second series after the South Korean dystopian horror hit Squid Game (Netflix 2021) to total over one billion hours of audience viewing (Hailu, 2022). Other genre fare

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_intro

12 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

has also proven extremely popular. Season five of Black Mirror (Channel 4 2011–2014/Netflix 2016–2019) was the most consumed text on Netflix in the UK (James R, 2019), American Horror Story’s (FX 2011–) third season première was the second most viewed FX episode of all time with 5.54 million viewers (O’Connell, 2014), while The Walking Dead’s (AMC 2010–2022) ‘debut in 2010 […] was the most-watched premiere in AMC history. Its premiere in the fourth season was the most-watched cable programme in history with 16.11 million people tuning in, besting even the Breaking Bad finale’ (Hogan, 2014). Such impressive viewing figures surpass the current most popular drama series in the US, NCIS (CBS 2003–) (Stoll, 2021a, 2021b). It appears, according to Stacey Abbott, we find ourselves in the midst of ‘a new Golden Age of TV horror’ (2018a, p. 120). Abbott writes, ‘[t]his golden age has been fueled in part by the proliferation of cable and pay-per-view channels and streaming services, creating a progressively competitive landscape’ (ibid.). As ‘edgy’ drama that can attract the much-sought-after 18–34 audience demographic, ‘[t]his increasingly competitive and lucrative market has resulted in the gradual relaxation of censorship restrictions across all media outlets and types of programming’ (ibid.). This has fostered a creative freedom, resulting in horror television becoming progressively more violent, graphic, and gruesome akin to cinema. Abbott is not alone in her declaration. Den of Geek writer Ron Hogan asserts, ‘[t]elevision has entered what may be the true golden age of small-screen horror. With the massive proliferation of broadcast channels (five networks up from three in 1984), cable channels (in the hundreds), and internet TV networks like Netflix and Amazon Prime, this is a glorious time to be a horror fan’ (2014). Similar sentiments are offered in Jacob Trussell’s article ‘We’re In A Golden Age of Horror Television’ (2018), Sarah Hughes’ piece ‘A Macabre Makeover: This Is a Golden Age for Horror on the Small Screen’ (2012), and Sesali Bowen exclaiming ‘Horror Fans Are Having The Best TV Season Ever’ (2018). For Chris Tilly (2018) and Jeff Ewing (2018), TV plays an equal role to cinema in the genre’s screen media renaissance in general. For others, television itself is enjoying a (second) golden age at the turn of the century, of which horror is central in elevating the medium (McGrath, 2014; Struthers, 2015; Clarke, 2016; Shackleton, 2017). This is not to say television previously avoided the macabre and monstrous. Quite the opposite, ‘horror and television are longstanding bedfellows, yet this relationship shapeshifts with the ebb and flow of textual, cultural, industrial, technological, and commercial changes’ (Rendell, forthcoming). In the UK, as early as 1936 Bransby Williams played Scrooge (BBC) in Charles Dickens’ ghost story A Christmas Carol (1843). In 1938 the BBC produced a

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

13

version of The Monkey’s Paw (Jacob, 1902). Algernon Blackwood presented his own horror tales in A Ghost Story (BBC 1947); Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) was adapted in the UK (BBC 1947) and US (NBC 1948, 1950; WOR-TV 1952), notably after Alfred Hitchcock’s (1940) cinematic iteration; and The Edgar Allan Poe Centenary (BBC 1949) saw three of the author’s stories retold on the small screen. These illustrations of fledgling horror television highlight several interrelated points still important today which are explored within the pages of this book: firstly, horror has been used to develop brand identity; in this case, BBC’s Reithian ethos to inform, educate, and entertain. Secondly, far from lowly, the genre is bestowed with cultural cachet particularly when adapting from legacy media such as literature and theatre. Thus, the genre can serve ‘quality’ TV production and elevate television as a medium. Thirdly, since TV’s commercial inception, the genre has been pivotal to technological advancement and artistic experimentation often out of necessity due to budget limitations (Wheatley, 2006; Abbott, 2013). Fourthly, rather than a nascent trend, TV has long had a dialogic relationship with cinema (Jancovich, 2018). Furthermore, ITV was introduced to British screens in 1955. The BBC’s competitor focused on the popular, aggregating single teleplays into anthology series like Mystery and Imagination (ITV 1966–70), whose adaptations included The Fall of the House of Usher (Poe, 1839), Carmilla (Le Fanu, 1872), Dracula (Stoker, 1897), and Frankenstein (Shelley, 1818). The latter two episodes, alongside ‘The Curse of the Mummy’, also tapped into iconic monsters of the 1930s–1940s Universal Film horror cycle. This demonstrates again how horror serves channels’ brand identities, but more specifically supporting brand distinction as market competition began to increase, albeit in a highly limited fashion, as channels sought to distinguish themselves from each other via their output. These points have been amplified in an ever-increasing mediascape. These examples also show how British’s TV’s treatment of horror has predominantly employed the Gothic. Helen Wheatley argues that ‘television is the ideal medium for the Gothic […] [since] Gothic television is understood as a domestic form of the genre which is deeply concerned with the domestic’ (2006, p. 1). Tales of supernatural mystery intertwine with the melodrama of human relationships, affairs, double-crossings, wrongdoings, and downfalls. The TV Gothic offers an intimate mode of horror both in terms of the home and domestic spaces as locations of threat and anxiety (ibid., p. 23), and the technological language of close-up camera shots that stress the idiosyncratic emotional turmoil and personal crisis befallen on characters (ibid., pp. 114–115).

14 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Yet such subject matter and imagery was negotiated against the familial connotations of television as a domestic medium. Consequently, Gothic TV’s horror has predominantly sought ‘to create atmosphere, to audio-visually evoke the supernatural in mode and feeling rather than clearly visualise the genre’s associated ghosts or monsters, and therefore […] develop[ed] a restrained, suggestive aesthetic’ (ibid., p. 36). Similarly, when corporeal destruction has taken place on TV horror the verisimilitude of gore is commonly displaced by substitution, where violence takes place off-screen; blood is recoloured or replaced with different coloured fluids; or bodily damage being short, sharp, but sanitized (Hills and Williams, 2005, p. 207; Johnson, 2005, p. 104). This renders TV horror ‘safe’ while often stressing a text’s other generic qualities (Hills, 2010a, pp. 116–118). Indeed, merged with its sister genres science fiction and fantasy under the umbrella term telefantasy (Johnson, 2005), again makes the genre more palatable for domestic viewership where horror is ‘disguised’ in scheduling and marketing (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 2). Labelling TV horror as Gothic television, telefantasy genre hybrids, or other forms of drama (postmodern, teen, etc.), Matt Hills explains, sidesteps negative connotations attached to ‘horror-as-low-cultural-threat’ (2005a, p. 120). Such genre exnomination, resultantly, ‘render[s] horror relatively invisible’ (ibid., p. 112). This has led to television’s denunciation as a lesser medium for displaying the aesthetic spectacle of horror compared to cinema (King, 1981, p. 253; Magistrale, 2003, pp. 182–183), with the genre viewed as incompatible with discourses surrounding the home (Branston and Stafford, 2003, p. 87; Gunter et al., 2003, pp. 1–2); critiques twenty-first century horror TV has since ostensibly quashed in two ways. First, ‘[i]ncreasing advances in technology and effects and more focus on TV aesthetics […] [have enhanced] TV horror as spectacle’ (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 13), pronouncing ‘itself as horror through the more graphic and nihilistic conventions of the genre’ (Abbott, 2016, p. 97). Hence, while the Gothic, suggestive horror, and telefantasy remain mainstays of the twenty-first century TV landscape, we have seen progressively a move towards what Philip Brophy coins ‘horrality’,1 a propensity for the horror genre to privilege ‘the act of showing over the act of telling’ (1986, p. 2), employed as a specific type of TV spectacle (Wheatley, 2016, p. 7). Second, whereas previously horror was downplayed as a genre marker and obscured via generic exnomination, ‘[m]ore recent television shows are specifically categorized and marketed as TV horror’ (Calvert, 1 Brophy (1986) argues horrality is a distinct aesthetic mode of cinematic realism centring on the graphic bodily damage that comes to the fore in the US from the late 1970s inwards.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

15

2014, p. 186), aimed at pre-sold, niche, genre fans and wider viewership (Wells-Lassagne, 2017, p. 23). Within the post-network era, hard-edged horror, referring ‘to horror narratives that spotlight visceral, sanguinary, and grisly images’ (Platts, 2020, p. 3), is no longer considered the market risk by industry players that it once was (ibid., p. 5). Likewise, no longer coded a ‘para-site’; ‘a cultural site that is assumed to be alien to the genre and a space where horror supposedly does not belong’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 111), television has become an auspicious home for horror, sold and marketed to audiences as such. Andrew Lynch concurs, positing that since the 2010s, horror television, alongside its sister genres science fiction and fantasy, ‘have served as prestigious flagship titles for a number of major US cable and subscription video on demand (SVOD) platforms’ (2022, p. 2). Lynch adds this rise on these ‘Quality Telefantasy’ series are ‘[n]ot only […] beloved by die-hard fans and critics, [but] many of them have also become mainstream successes’ (ibid.), a point explored within this book. Following Mittell, the horror genre is a ‘discursive cluster’ of TV texts, ‘with certain definitions, interpretations, and evaluations coming together at any given time to suggest a coherent and clear genre’ (2004, p. 17). However, Mittell highlights that ‘these clusters are contingent and transitory, shifting over time and taking on new definitions, meanings, and values within different contexts’ (ibid.). Such textual clustering locates horror TV within the various ‘historical and production context[s]’ (Peirse, 2013, p. 3), and considers genealogical ‘generic dominance’, recognizing ‘previous incarnations’ (Mittell, 2004, p. 36). Building on the landmark works of Wheatley (2006), Jowett and Abbott (2013), and Belau and Jackson (2018), Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror explores the growth and variety of horror television in the twenty-first century, attesting to Cherry’s understanding of ‘horror as an umbrella term encompassing several different sub-categories’ (2009, p. 3) (see Chapter 1 and 2). Equally, much like horror’s nebula nature where subgenres arise as cycles (Hutchings, 2004, pp. 15–16), ‘[h]orror fans are far from a specific demographic, but there is a broad spectrum of people on whom [TV horror] shows can focus to find an audience’ (Hogan, 2014). As branded goods that support the identity of channels and services, the book analyses how TV horror targets genre fans and wider demographics as part of the genre’s mainstreaming on television. What Machado describes as ‘TV utterances’, ‘presented to spectators in an almost infinite variety […] targeting […] certain segment[s] of the TV audience’ (quoted in Lima et al., 2015, p. 242), I argue as interpellative strategies seeking to attract various audiences by hailing them through a range of textual, marketing, technological, and

16 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

consumer touchpoints. Such an examination considers both the specific developments of twenty-first century TV horror whilst also shedding light on wider industry practices.

Dead Sets?: Post-TV Concurrent to the expansion of horror across television, the medium’s ontology has gone under seismic shifts. Amanda D. Lotz explains that we find ourselves in a post-TV epoch where ‘[n]ew technological and industrial practices have introduced radical changes in technological aspects of television, its use, and its consequent cultural significance’ (2014, p. 35). Most notably, distribution via over-the-top (OTT) internet protocols and subscription video on-demand (SVoD) sidestep broadcasting linearity (Arnold, 2016, p. 50), fostering disparate consumption patterns. Differentiating from legacy broadcast systems, Lotz coins the term ‘portals’ as the intermediary internetdistributed television services whose ‘nonlinear access […] [frees] them from the task of scheduling’ (2017, p. 8). Rather, a portal’s central function is ‘curating a library of content based on the identity, vision, and strategy that drive its business model’ (ibid.). While libraries of branded media have always been essential in developing and maintaining television channels’ distinct identities (Johnson, 2012), post-TV’s curational facilities tailor content in a more specific and customized manner based on individuals’ viewing habits (Pardo, 2015). This allows services such as Netflix to target multiple groups via branding heteroglossia, appealing to different viewers as ‘conglomerated niches’ (Lotz, 2017, p. 26) for different reasons based off varied content within a library. Indeed, genre is one useful clustering device for grouping, and marketing to, audiences (Lima et al., 2015; Tompkins, 2014). This book examines how such heteroglossia as TV utterances interpellates conglomerate niches within horror television, where various textual features and devices hail genre fans and other demographics. Moreover, as highlighted, portals’ distribution strategies shift consumer habits, giving audiences flexibility in how, where, and when they watch television. On the one hand, SVoDs complicate orthodox ‘windowing’ strategies for the sequential extracting of economic value from televisual intellectual property (Doyle, 2016). On the other hand, this simultaneously adds symbolic layering to TV content, the portal it is housed on, TV as a medium, and viewers watching it. Ritualistic habits traditionally understood as cult where fans binge a series watched on home formats such as VHS or DVD have become more quotidian and encouraged by streaming

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

17

services releasing series in their entirety (Jenner, 2017). Consequently, the popularity of horror television blurs cult/mainstream distinctions not only in terms of content (Lynch, 2022), but also via modes of watching. This can be another way that a channel or service brands itself: by producing or curating watercooler ‘bingeable’ quality horror television (Matrix, 2014), which audiences will want to watch and discuss with others such as friends, family members, colleagues, or fellow fans (see Chapter 2 and 3). Yet this is not to conceptualize binge-viewing as a monolithic catch-all term; its widespread application has made it somewhat unwieldly (Turner, 2021). The book is careful to discern between industry enticing bingeing via textual qualities and distribution strategies, and audience-led practices that harness digital/internet technologies to consume TV horror according to customized preferences. Furthermore, to avoid overstating the ubiquity of bingeing television, the volume looks at distribution patterns and viewing habits other than bingeing to provide a more precise and varied account of post-TV ecosystems. Catherine Johnson (2019) explains that from the early 2010s the increased prevalence of internet technologies to deliver and consume television across an array of media devices – including internet-connected televisions and other hardware – contests normative definitions of television as a medium. TV’s technological fragmentation has resulted in the service emerging ‘as the central site that mediates our experience of watching television’ (ibid., p. 35), acting as the primary entry point irrespective of the technology used. For Johnson, ‘the “service” is at the centre of the definition of online TV’ (ibid.). This allows online TV to differ from other forms of internet-connected media, such as live music streams (Rendell, 2020), since these services incorporate central features of broadcast, cable/satellite, and digital television. Thus, while positioning themselves as something other than television (Jenner, 2016, p. 263), online television constructs viewer experiences akin to traditional TV broadcast, gatekeeping highly regulated ‘editorially selected content’, and operating within closed contributory systems (Johnson, 2019, pp. 35–39). For instance, despite not being constrained by broadcast series blocks or schedule flows in the same way legacy television is, we still find online TV content predominantly adhering to conventional temporal units – approximately 30 minute or one-hour episodes (ibid., p. 86). Relatedly, longform post-TV serials still utilize end of episode cliffhangers to encourage audiences to return to the series (Lima et al., 2015, p. 252). As Hendy notes, technological advancements can, in fact, strengthen rather than enfeeble legacy television, whereby ‘new forms of social media sometimes serve old media rather than replace them’ (2013, p. 109).

18 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

As such, Van Esler (2016) and Johnson (2019, pp. 16–17) express wariness towards the post-TV paradigm since online services still provide access to linear television, thus problematizing non-linear/linear binaries asserted by Lotz and others. Certainly, this volume does not ring the death knell of television as others have done (Hardenbergh, 2010; Christian, 2012, pp. 340–341). Television has been, and continues to be, an evolving medium (Uricchio, 2009). While viewing of legacy television has declined over the last ten years concurrent with a rise in subscriptions to online television services (Lotz, 2019, pp. 923–924), audiences still consume content from across the mediascape. Yet, whilst agreeing with these concerns, my work further complicates this relationship since I explore the televisualization of other media technologies’ content, services, and frames (see Chapters 2 and 3). Developing the post-TV model, I address not only how new media technologies have transmogrified existing television ecologies, but also how fundamental televisual attributes are being incorporated into, and therefore altering, other digital media such as YouTube and Twitch.TV (see also Cunningham and Craig, 2017). In turn, this better accounts for the diversity of TV horror in the second millennium, both in terms of content and delivery platforms/portals/services and how technological convergence has nuanced what we might call horror television. This last point alludes to another key aspect of post-TV’s portalization and internet-facilitated delivery of online television: the introduction of new players within the televisual ecosystem, resulting in ‘a complex mix of professional, semi-professional, and amateur content that competes for attention across all screens’ (Strangelove, 2015, p. 164). TV natives not only battle amongst themselves through their existing distribution patterns and accompanying business models, but now extend these services online (Johnson, 2019, pp. 57–58; Van Esler, 2016, p. 132). Moreover, they compete within the internet realm of televisual ecologies with online natives, companies born out of internet-related services (Johnson, 2019, p. 61), independent web series (Day and Christian, 2017), and user-generated content (Enli and Syvertsen, 2016). The book locates television horror within respective channels’, portals’, or services’ business structures. This links content not only to genre, branding, and target demographics, but, relatedly, also how productions serve the financial side of television industries via myriad textual and paratextual strategies. Certainly, horror has continuously been bankable on the big screen (Gomery, 1996; Falvey et al., 2020, pp. 4–6), and with television industries being risk adverse (Warner 2015a) and series’ susceptibility to fail (Lotz, 2019, p. 926), the genre’s lucrativeness serves various post-TV

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

19

economic models given its domestic and transnational appeal. Doyle puts it simply: ‘[t]he wider the audience, the more profitable content will become’ (2016, p. 78). In the UK, seeking to attract viewership has seen ‘[s]trategic investment in content by SVoDs and other competing subscriber services […] significantly […] [boost] demand for one particular genre–high-end drama’ (Doyle et al., 2021, p. 172) with strong international appeal. Positioned as ‘big statement’ programming (Doyle, 2016, p. 86), high-end horror behemoths may reflect gargantuan budgets that seek global mainstream viewership to recuperate production costs and yield profits. Yet not all horror TV costs $12 million per episode to make as is the case of Stranger Things (Stoll, 2021c). Other horror dramas are far smaller in scale indicating more modest budgets. Likewise, TV horror is not solely embalmed within drama. Twenty-f irst century horror television, although dramatic, melds with various other comparatively cheaper televisual genres, reflective of TV’s propensity for genre-hybridization (Turner, 2015; Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. xiii). This includes sitcoms (e.g. What We Do in the Shadows, FX 2019–), gamedocs (e.g. Killer Camp, ITV2 2019–2021), reality competitions (e.g. The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, OutTV/Amazon/Netflix/Shudder 2016–), children’s animation (e.g. Bunnicula, Cartoon Network/Boomerang 2016–19), and genre-focused documentaries (e.g. A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss, BBC4 2010), further attesting to the Frankensteinian configuration of the horror genre as described by Cherry (2009, p. 3). Moreover, it is vital not to essentialize post-TV as globally felt in a universal manner. Post-TV has largely been studied in Western settings and/or via Anglophonic content (Johnson, 2019), such as North America (Lotz, 2017, 2019; Strangelove, 2015; Van Esler, 2016) and the UK (Evans and McDonald, 2014; Doyle, 2016, Grainge and Johnson, 2018). However, online (post-)television is important to other global regions in terms of indigenous media makers and services, multinational corporations’ international expansion, and various national audiences’ engagement with domestic and foreign TV (e.g. Evans et al., 2016; Gonçalves et al., 2021; Harlap, 2017; Lobato, 2019). Consequently, this book analyses international co-productions, Japanese, and Mexican horror television (see Chapter 1 and 3), supporting the examination of TV horror as a global phenomenon (see also Abbott and Jowett, 2021a). However, increased audience fragmentation alongside the introduction of online natives into the post-TV landscape further heightens market competition, particularly since consumers are faced with the financial burden of paying to subscribe for exclusive content housed in various services’ libraries (Hersko, 2019); prompting viewers to acquire horror television via

20 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

alternative, potentially illicit, means (see Chapter 3). Crisp highlights how ‘recent technological changes have increased the ease of media copying […] [and] have […] expanded the opportunities for media piracy’ (2015, p. 76). Much in the way that formal techno-industrial changes have propagated post-TV cultures, various forms of illicit formatting and circulation ‘challenge […] our conception of television as a technology, medium, and a set of social practices’ (Newman, 2012, p. 464). Addressing the various ways televisual media is denied, restricted, or rejected via official routes, the book provides a taxonomy of piracy (Chapter 3), but also considers how informal distribution can instil value in horror television outside of textual qualities (Loh, 2019), supporting both domestic and transnational flows of TV horror. This is particularly pertinent when located within fan communities as it can allow transcultural fans from around the globe to participate in discussions, can provide access to rare or hard-to-find content that translates into subcultural capital and status within a fandom, and may rely on audiences themselves being involved in the remediating process whereby they source and circulate content and/or provide the subtitles – known as fan-subbing – so other fans can understand foreign dialect. In this case, twenty-first century fans are active contributors to national and international flows of TV horror. Consequently, the post-TV paradigm is developed in this volume by exploring its informal aspects alongside official industry qualities and the overlap between the two.

Spreading the Contagion: Transmedia and Television Post-TV’s digitality can be located within ‘broader blurring of media formats’ (Sim, 2016, p. 204), emblematic of convergence cultures where ‘old and new media […] interact in ever more complex ways’ (Jenkins, 2006a, p. 6). Twentyfirst century convergence cultures also support television’s transmediality2 where heightened competition within attention economies for sustained viewership has seen industries develop consumer routes for audiences to engage with content beyond, but linked to, televisual content in various ways (e.g. Gillan, 2011, p. 4; Ross, 2008, p. 228; Mann, 2014, p. 15; Doyle, 2010, p. 432; Blake, 2017, pp. 96–99; Jenkins, 2017). In doing so, TV texts are kept in ‘circulation’ via an array of media outlets.

2 Transmediality existed long before digital convergence cultures but was increasingly supported by multiplatform new media practices (see Freeman, 2017; Richards, 2017).

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

21

Transmedia is usefully characterized by Freeman and Gambarato as, first, ‘multiple media platforms’, second, as ‘content expansion’, and third, as ‘audience engagement’ (2019, p. 3). Echoing this, Elizabeth Evans defines transmedia television ‘by both the text and the technology on which it is accessed, with both helping to shape each other and the experience of the viewer’ (2011, pp. 173–174). Likewise, Henry Jenkins defines transmedia storytelling as ‘stories that unfold across multiple media platforms, with each medium making distinctive contributions to our understanding of the world’ (2006a, p. 334). For Jenkins, television is transmedia par excellence since the medium ‘is increasingly relying on seriality (and back story) to create a particular kind of aesthetic experience’ (2009a). Matthew Freeman develops Jenkins’ definition where ‘expand[ing] established fictional story worlds and extend[ing] the arcs of characters and plots across multiple media’ (2017, p. 9), transmedia storytelling centres on three central traits: ‘character-building’, ‘world-building’, and ‘authorship’ (ibid.). Reifying a text’s ‘hyperdiegesis’, the ‘vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within a text’ (Hills, 2002, p. 137), transmedia storytelling ‘functions to a specific end with drama programming […] [used] to expand the fictional world of a series away from the television episodes’ (Evans, 2011, p. 10). In attempts to reduce financial risk by attracting fan cultures via complexifying hyperdiegetic intricacies (2013, pp. 4–5), M. J. Clarke contends that transmedia’s ‘streamability’ across a range of media platforms is harnessed by producers of franchise/blockbuster television to create ‘tentpole TV’ (ibid., p. 4). Jason Mittell (2015, p. 288) posits such complex television rich in narrative tapestries foster ‘drillability’ where forensically-inclined fans bore down into the storyworlds to reveal details hidden from surface-level media engagement. Mittell adds that ‘[d]rillable media typically engage far fewer people but occupy more of their time and energies in a vertical descent into a text’s complexities’ (ibid., p. 290). Such drillability lends itself to transmedial extension where fans turn to other media to gain deeper understanding of, and to immerse more fully into, the hyperdiegetic universe. Consequently, by offering ‘multiple touch points for audience engagement […] [transmedia engenders] long-term engagement rather than the appointment model of the network and multi-channel era’ (Kohnen, 2018a, p. 338). Alongside a plethora of original TV-only productions, twenty-first century horror television has been especially multimedial. This is not new; horror is a genre that has long retold, remade, reimagined, and remixed tales as they transfer across media (Browning and Picart, 2011; Cutchins and Perry, 2018; Saggini and Soccio, 2018; de Bruin-Molé, 2020; Shail et al., 2019).

22 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

But what is distinct is how television has become a salient destination for hyperdiegetic transmedia extensions of established horror film canons, further problematizing distinctions and hierarchies of value between television and cinema: Chucky (Syfy 2021) serving as a sequel to Cult of Chucky (Mancini 2017), part of the Child’s Play franchise; John Jarrett reprising his role as serial killer Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek (Stan 2016–17); or Damien (A&E 2016) where we follow the eponymous child of Satan from The Omen films into adulthood. Chapter 2 of this monograph explores this transmedia cycle, highlighting what television adds to legacy horror cinema franchises. Indicative of more general convergence cultures, TV horror transmedia also includes ‘motherships’, such as Stranger Things, True Blood (HBO 2008–14), and The Walking Dead, from which subsequent tentpole media texts derive. However, as the latter two examples adapted from existing IP highlight, transmedia storytelling is not as coherent or unifying as Jenkins describes. While for Jenkins a transmedia story ‘unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole’ (2006a, pp. 95–96), some audiences began with the True Blood novels or Walking Dead comics. Others’ first encounters, however, started with the TV iterations, destabilizing what is the primary text and what are secondary paratexts. Additionally, TV horror may both remediate and expand the narrative universe within the same series. For example, From Dusk till Dawn (El Rey 2014–2016) is a televisual remake of the film From Dusk till Dawn (Rodriguez 1996) that also gives backstory to established characters, introduces new characters, and builds on the film’s mythology. Similarly, Bates Motel (A&E 2013–2017) begins as a prequel to Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) before the final season retells and reimagines iconic scenes from the original film. As such, both transmedia TV horrors expand, solidify, and disrupt intratextual and hyperdiegetic franchise memory (Harvey, 2015) (see Chapter 2 and 4). Moreover, Hills critiques Jenkins’ balanced definition of transmedial textuality for neutralizing media hierarchy (Hills, 2019, p. 298). Status is often ascribed to certain storytelling media within transmedia matrixes alongside ‘other media [that] do not add to an overarching textual whole so much as supplement or support this core media textuality’ (ibid.). Transmedia is often unbalanced where peripheral transmedia texts encourage audiences to always return to the privileged core narrative experience embedded within the film or TV mothership; the primary medium from which revenue is derived (Mittell, 2015, pp. 294–295). Furthermore, rather than bolster narrative comprehension premised on a mothership model of transmedia, auratic transmedia strengthens ‘cultural value to the franchise’ (Hills, 2019,

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

23

p. 290). Whereas diegetic transmedia encourages fans to deep dive into storyworlds, auratic transmedia that stress the artistry and artisanship of media production can appeal to established fan communities, but also legitimize a franchise’s cultural significance to more general/lay audiences (ibid., 292). This, in turn, can enhance brand identity of the referent text, the production companies that make them, and/or distributors that circulate them. Furthermore, just as franchise memory can become fragmented as much as it is unified by transmedia, transmedial connections are further complicated by audiences’ memories (Koistinen et al., 2016). Remembering, misremembering, and forgetting textual content within franchise universes alongside experiential voids where someone has not experienced a text, thus it does not enter one’s memory bank, necessitates a post-structuralist underpinning to transmedia. There are viewers of the aforementioned TV horror transmedia that have never watched the antecedent parent texts, and therefore do not wield experiential knowledge in the same manner as cult fans entrenched in franchise lore (see Chapter 4). As such, these viewers’ experiences differ from those well-versed in the seriality of transmedial horror nexuses. Likewise, not all texts within a transmedia franchise are consumed by all audiences. Some fans police textual boundaries, readily enjoying certain media objects whilst discursively avoiding others (Sandvoss, 2005, pp. 131–132). Further, some international audiences are denied transmedia since specific iterations are confined to particular regions or countries (e.g. Catania, 2015; Scott, 2013a). Similarly, source texts from which TV horrors are adapted may not be translated into other languages. For example, ‘Imprint’ (2006), the Japanese/American co-produced Masters of Horror (Showtime 2005–2007) episode, was adapted from the Japanese novella Bokkee Kyoutee (Iwai, 1999) (see Chapter 1). However, the novella has yet to be translated into English, meaning within Japan ‘Imprint’ is a multi-formatted text (book and TV), but not so outside of Japan (TV-only). As such, transmedial potential to enhance viewers’ engagement with TV horror storyworlds operates across a continuum of expansion and restriction contextualized by industrial, technological, social, and global factors. Finally, while much of the work on transmedia addresses institutional multimedia texts, practices, and strategies, Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa offer the term ‘transtexts’ (Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa, 2017) to account for industry-produced transmedia’s augmentation of fans across multiplatform landscapes. This can also allow industry to surreptitiously police audience interpretations and practices that ultimately support companies’ bottom

24 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

lines (Gwenllian-Jones, 2003, p. 173; Scott, 2013b; Kohnen, 2018a, pp. 338–339). Yet transtexts also give saliency to fan-made transmedia that enrich narrative universes, often produced by those very audiences’ official transmedia targets. Such fan-created transtexts ‘are primarily intended to fellow members of the fan communities, the Internet allowing for connections between one another, across the world’ (Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa, 2017, pp. 5–6). Indeed, as noted, some official transmedia may be denied transnational flow. However, a dearth of official multimedia can be remedied by fans’ own transtextual creations (Rendell, 2018). In fact, as Stein explains, ‘[f]or many viewers, fan-created transmedia works […] define their understanding of a storyworld, of characters, and of a narrative landscape, arguably more so than the “official” source text’ (2017, p. 71). Moreover, whereas official tentpole transmedia requires harmonious narrative expansion that supports the TV mothership (Clarke, 2013), fans’ transtexts have licence to be far more contradicting and controversial. Likewise, fans’ transtexts can unmoor meaning from official parent texts, shifting the ideological thrust in their works that serve audiences’ own ends (e.g. Bourdaa, 2017; Hassler-Forest, 2019). This is exemplified in anti-fan criticisms of racial representations in The Walking Dead materialized in meme texts (see Chapter 5). Therefore, by acknowledging that fans as much as industry build transmedia universes (Booth, 2019), the volume understands transmedia as lenticular, changing when viewed from various industry, independent, and fan productions. With this in mind, official transmedia and fan-made transtexts have proliferated thanks to new media technologies and platforms (McCormick, 2018, p. 369; Booth, 2019, p. 282) (e.g. Booth, 2016), as Chapter 5 gives credence to. Yet ‘transmedia does not necessarily imply digital’ (Jenkins, 2017, p. 220). Indeed, in locating post-TV horror within convergence cultures there is a potential danger of the convergence culture maxim ‘where old and new media collide’ (Jenkins, 2006a) blinkering our understanding of the transmedia ecologies that operate around the genre, which neglect the non-digital and its significance in transmediality and in audience engagement. This is not to offer the opposite. Old media colliding with other old media offers us very little. However, by focusing on the offline we can further explore transmedia’s tangible materialities, its real-world spatializations, and the experiential qualities for audiences connecting or participating with a franchise via an array of media touchpoints (Hills, 2017a). Looking beyond the digital expands the possibilities of immersive transmedia experienced through various senses beyond the audiovisual, such as touch, taste, smell, and purely sonic (see also Williams, 2020). Thus, while Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror addresses the significance of new media technologies

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

25

shaping the production, circulation, and formatting of twenty-first century (post-)TV horror and is a pertinent arena for audiences to articulate their responses to televisual media and produce their own media, this is but one part of the convergence culture jigsaw. For a more robust and holistic understanding of transmedial horror television, and transmedia more broadly, it is essential we look at its analogue, offline, and physical features. Moreover, this realm of transtextuality can offer nuanced understandings of audiences’ readings and responses to horror media that are evidenced through the things they make. As such, Chapter 6 of this book addresses two underexplored areas of tactile transmedia: firstly, food as a source of sustenance and horror within TV shows (re)mediated into horror television cookbooks and the central ingredients for fans’ culinary craft that plays with the affective spectacle of foodstuffs by making the abject delectable. Secondly, TV horror soundtracks released on vinyl as sonic transmedia and fans designing mockup vinyl soundtracks that elevate the audio over the visual of their favourite horror television series, asetheticizing the reference text via vinyl’s auratic qualities. Consequently, offline transmedial convergence provides additional economic opportunities and brand visibility for industry players (Dwyer, 2010, p. 9), and active audience participation that strengthens their ‘intellectual and emotional engagement [with TV horror texts]’ (Freeman and Gambarato, 2019, p. 5).

Accounting for the Heterogeneous Audience: Abject Spectrums In stressing the popularity and diversity of twenty-first century television horror, I now turn to developing a concept to account for heterogeneous viewer engagement with the genre on TV that is also applicable to other horror (trans)media. When raising the question of why audiences consume horror, Leeder rightly explains that ‘[n]o single answer emerges as definitive, and nor should it: it may be desirable not to generalize, and there may be as many possible motivations as there are viewers of the horror film’ (2018, p. 136). Indeed, pertinent shortcomings emerge from a number of existing key theories that both standardize audiences’ engagement with horror and evade actual audience research. Instead, such approaches employ textual analysis that infer a monolithic ‘ideal’ viewership. ‘By far the most common accounts of the appeal of horror’ (Tudor, 1997, p. 446), psychoanalytic schools of thought understand horror f ictions as revealing that which is repressed within the deepest recesses of our subconsciouses (see Dumas, 2014). Given its ‘source of horror’ (Miles, 2001,

26 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

p. 49) and ‘aesthetic and cultural dimension[s]’ (Hutchings, 2004, p. 69), Freud’s (2003 [1919]) concept of the uncanny has been widely incorporated into horror theory. Fear is roused by that which is familiar (heimlich) yet repressed, (re)emerging as uncanny (unheimlich) (ibid., pp. 132–134). Freud offers a wide range of objects, instances, and scenarios that produce the uncanny linked to a child’s repressed psychosexual drives and fears, such as womb fantasies, castration anxieties, and Oedipal complexes with the ‘acme of the uncanny […] represented by anything to do with death, dead bodies, revenants, spirits and ghosts’ (ibid., p. 148). Clasen (2017, p. 17) strongly rejects psychoanalytic explanations of horror affect for lacking empirical audience evidence, premised on substitution and allegory that have been found obsolete (ibid., p. 19). Instead, opting for a biocultural approach to horror, he argues the genre ‘successfully target[s] ancient, evolved defensive mechanisms and short-circuit[s] prefrontal mechanisms’ (ibid., p. 29). Yet Clasen’s evolutionary claims are no more speculative since he too talks for an imagined audience, essentialized to a pre-conscious (rather than subconscious) series of responses to audiovisual stimuli. Moreover, Clasen’s assertion that horror fictions develop humans’ coping skills against real-world negative experiences, ‘function[ing] as simulation of and rehearsal for the nastier sides of life’ (ibid., pp. 59–60), is equally as difficult to prove as arguments claiming horror corrupts audiences (Lester, 2021, pp. 6–7); especially since he does not use audience data to corroborate his arguments or empirically study how flesh-and-blood audiences engage with horror. Robin Wood revises Freud’s universal basic repressions, positing that horror dramatizes the return of the repressed ‘in the figure of the monster’ (1986, p. 75). Monsters embody ‘surplus repression’, ‘specific to a particular culture and is the process whereby people are conditioned from earliest infancy to take on predetermined roles within society’ (ibid. p. 71) that perpetuates ‘monogamous heterosexual bourgeois patriarchal capitalists’ (ibid.). Horror’s monsters reflect various Others that threaten hegemonic norms by representing repressed aspects or identities within society. Audiences’ pleasure derives from either seeing the monster vanquished and social order reaffirmed – reactionary pleasure – or the monster’s destruction of society and its prevailing norms – progressive pleasure. Yet Hills evidences that Wood’s discussion of viewer pleasure speaks for an ‘ideal’ reader that fixes semiotic meaning within horror fictions ‘in line with his project to validate and legitimate horror as a deadly serious business’ (2005a, p. 51), challenging views of horror as ‘a devalued or disreputable genre’ (ibid.). This is not to proclaim that audiences do not bring a continuum of

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

27

progressive to reactionary responses to media (Stanfill, 2020), as opposed to a rigid progressive/reactionary duality, but this necessitates looking at actual audiences. Another key psychoanalytic concept applied to horror is abjection developed by Julia Kristeva (1982). Kristeva’s post-Lacanian approach understands that a child’s initial forging of self-identity does not derive from paternal control of the Phallus and instigation of language. Instead, prior to this the child is in a state of chora, locked within the narcissistic gaze that identifies with the maternal body (Kristeva, 1984, p. 27). For self-identity to manifest, the Mother must be repelled and rejected by being made abject (Kristeva, 1982, p. 13). Hence, ‘[a]t this point the mother is not-yet-object and the child is not-yet-subject’ (Oliver, 1993, p. 56). Consequently, abjection is not only that which is Other to me but is part of me, hence abjection ruptures the Self via a ‘narcissistic crisis’ (Kristeva, 1982, p. 14). Since the Mother is abject and abjection is the ‘primer to my culture’ (ibid., p. 2), abjection continues as feminized/feminine/female where the nascent unstable boundaries between Self and Other ‘are repressed in adulthood but continue to haunt the subject through encounters with abject phenomena’ (Chare et al., 2020, pp. 3–4) (I discuss this concept in more detail shortly). Previously, religion was the central pillar for purifying and quelling abject phenomena. In secular cultures, ‘art and literature now have an important role to play in policing and processing contemporary encounters with the abject’ (ibid., p. 4), serving a cathartic release from these ritualistic encounters. Applying this to the horror genre, Barbara Creed argues that: [t]he horror film would appear to be, in at least three ways, an illustration of the work of abjection. First, the horror film abounds in images of abjection […] Second, the concept of the border is central to the construction of the monstrous in the horror film; that which crosses or threatens to cross the ‘border’ is abject […] The third way in which the horror film illustrates the work of abjection is in the construction of the [archaic] maternal figure as abject. (1993, pp. 10–11)

For Creed, watching horror films serves a sort of perverse pleasure as we confront ‘sickening, horrific images, being filled with terror/desire for the undifferentiated’ (1986, p. 48). Further, this perversity offers a cathartic purging of abject repression by allowing us ‘to throw up, throw out, eject the abject (from the safety of the spectator’s seat)’ (ibid.). However, as with Wood, Creed’s horror-as-ritual ignores real audiences’ interactions with the genre; instead effect is derived from the structural

28 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

qualities of horror cinema where a text’s entire narrative arc fosters the cathartic release and restoration of symbolic order (Hills, 2005a, pp. 60–61). Not to suggest that horror media cannot be ritualistic. Far from it, especially when we look at horror fan(dom)s and/or repeat viewing, but this reveals other forms of intra- and intertextual pleasures beyond one’s repressed psyche, not dependent on narrative unity, and can be aimed at non-narrative aspects of the text (ibid., p. 62). Moreover, Wood and Creed’s focus on single story horror cinema that largely confirms to narrative cohesion maintained where abjection is exhibited and ejected within a film’s duration. Whilst the audiovisual narrativity of TV is similar, horror television’s seriality within and across seasons and propensity for multiple storylines means narrative restoration is far more mosaic and uncertain (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, pp. 31–44). Likewise, transmedia storytelling extends, rather than closes, narratives across media – a point psychoanalytic horror theory neglects – further delaying or preventing psychoanalytically-inflected audience pleasures. Further, both Wood and Creed’s theses are premised on completed narrative consumption. While often audiences may consume a horror text from beginning to end, this does not account for those audiences whose viewing experience are fragmented, incomplete, or do not start at the beginning of the narrative. Discussing underage child viewership of The Exorcist (Friedkin 1973), Smith’s adult respondents noted that ‘watching the film was fragmented either due to parental intervention during the viewing or, more frequently, as a result of a secret attempt to skirt around a parental ban […] [thus were] denied the full experience’ (2019, p. 135). One fan ‘spent an entire fortnight watching […] [The Exorcist] in small chunks after bedtime with headphones, watching as much as he could get away with at a time without being caught’ (ibid., p. 151). Part of the thrill of viewing, then, comes not only from the horror text, but the social context of watching ‘banned’ material and possibly being caught doing so. Additionally, contra Creed, horror affect may be more pronounced out of narrative context. For one of Smith’s respondents, catching a glimpse of Regan possessed without the understanding that the child is saved at the end of the movie is what made the viewing experience so terrifying (ibid., p. 136). Moreover, these acts of censorship, attempts to avoid the parental panopticon, partial or decontextualized engagement, and various ‘temporal or spatial “access points”’ of where and when The Exorcist was watched (Egan, 2022, p. 235) by fans in their younger years informed their adult memories and relationships with the horror film. Cognitive philosophy counters psychoanalytic notions that audiences are drawn to horror because it provides a safe space for aesthetically

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

29

rendering repressed aspects of our identities and subconscious fears. Rather, the approach argues emotional responses to horror are engendered via rational cognition imparted by audiences onto the text (see Smuts, 2014). This is exemplified by Noël Carroll who contends that horror media elicits ‘art-horror’ in audiences, ‘emotion that the creators of the genre have perennially sought to instill in their audiences’ (1990, p. 24). Since art-horror’s emotive and somatic responses can be identified by the audience, they are cognitive. Further, for Carroll the locus of art-horror is the fictional monster defined as ‘any being not believed to exist now according to contemporary science’ (ibid., p. 27), and is therefore ‘threatening and impure’ (ibid., p. 28). For Carroll, then, audience pleasure stems from a universal cognitive curiosity to discover the monster that violates scientific categories. Yet many find Carroll’s object-centred emphasis on the monster-assource-of-horror limiting. Firstly, it fails to account for cinematic/textual devices other than the monster that arouse fear and disgust (Hanich, 2010; Aldana Reyes, 2016), and object-less horror films ‘that withhold or imply diegetically monstrous agencies rather than clearly representing them’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 15) (e.g. The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sánchez 1999)). Moreover, this suggestive mode of horror, as noted, has been popular for horror television which Carroll does not address. Secondly, Carroll constructs art-emotion as universally felt by all audiences in the same way premised on ‘the average consumer of art-horror’ (1990, p. 192) that differs from ‘specialized’ fans. This ignores the degree of affect/effect felt by myriad audiences in response to the text. To borrow Hills’ example of a ‘giant spider scuttling towards me’ (2005a, pp. 13–14). Some of us may fear arachnids, whilst others are indifferent of them. Some are even phobic (beyond the cognitive realm) towards the animal (Smith, 2019, p. 62), while others enjoy keeping the mini-beasts as pets. We could not ascertain these audience differences from cognitive textual analyses of filmic spiders. Additionally, as this chapter initially demonstrated, and as I argue throughout the book, a neat and arbitrary distinction between lay and aficionado audiences does not operate for twenty-first century horror television given its variety and popularity. Relatedly, as with psychoanalytic and evolutionary horror theories’ shortcomings, Carroll fails to account for other pleasures beyond textually-determined emotions – fear and disgust – when consuming horror media, ‘where cognitive processes would not be entirely narrative based, nor indeed fear of disgust based’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 17). This might include a text’s special effects, recognizing genre stars, and locating texts within auteurs’ oeuvres (ibid., p. 18).

30 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Finally, the cognitive thesis that emotion is born out of thought means the philosophy ‘cannot encompass all dimensions of spectatorship, and ignores an element that is vital to the experience of cinema: the pre-cognitive, affective power of film in the “lived-body” experience of the spectator’ (Daniel, 2020, p. 17). Addressing this caveat, phenomenological approaches have sought to explain how audiences respond to horror as corporeally-felt lived experiences (Sobchack, 2004a), centring on the genre’s distinctive affective qualities.

Affective Responses Arguing that whilst ‘what we enjoy in horror is […] the emotional immersion of Angst-Lust, i.e. pleasurable fear’ (2010, p. 100), Julian Hanich correctly stresses that immersion is not experientially consistent nor monolithic when one watches a horror film. Rather, pleasurable fear is ‘characterized by a balancing out between the strong intertwinement of immersion and loosened or even cut entanglement of extrication’ (ibid., p. 101). Hanich theorizes that the ‘ontological distance’ between audiences’ worlds and the fictional diegesis forms a safe passivity in the former that fosters their narrative immersion into the latter (ibid., pp. 87–99). Immersion reduces or vanishes our ‘phenomenological distance’ to the text where ‘[t]he viewer experiences the phenomenological distance to the film as vacillating on a continuum from growing to decreasing, depending on the relative position beforehand’ (ibid., p. 94) – in doing so, eliciting emotive responses to horror cinema’s pathic qualities. Engrossment leads to enthralment (Stromberg, 1999), where the shorter the individual audience member’s phenomenological distance correlates to the deeper their immersion, the more their self-consciousness is reduced, the more they are likely to be affected by the text’s generic strategies. Adopting a phenomenological first-person perspective, Hanich usefully differentiates between shifting modes of affective audience fear whereby ‘[h]orror and shock are thoroughly rooted in the present, whereas dread and terror are future orientated’ (2010, p. 22). Horror reactions manifest when audiences come into contact with the monstrous threat or the aftermath of an attack, aesthetically rendered across a continuum of direct horror – the violent monster visually depicted – to suggested horror – the monster evoked and described rather than actualized; the latter traditionally being the dominant mode of expression for TV horror as discussed. Cinematic shock is instantly and automatically felt somatically where the horror bursts onto

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

31

the screen, bringing audiences’ lived-bodies to the fore as phenomenological distance explosively disappears. Comparatively, dread is an ‘anticipatory type of cinematic fear in which we both feel for the endangered character and fearfully expect a threatening outcome that promises to be shocking and/or horrifying to us’ (ibid., p. 156). For Hanich, audiences’ feeling of dread results from deep immersion into the film storyworld as they follow the narrative into the unknown concurrent with the sense of threat to characters, often leading to horror or shock, or dissipating as a misleading false alarm or ‘Lewton Bus’.3 Hanich, somewhat unconvincingly, differentiates terror to dread, arguing that with terror audiences’ anticipatory fear still centres on characters’ endangerment and possible horrifying outcome, yet the threat is known to us. Importantly, across the duration of a horror film, these different aesthetic strategies are employed variously to draw the audience in and jettison them out as they feel different types of fear that are in-and-of-the-body. Building off Hanich’s phenomenological work, Xavier Aldana Reyes’ (2016) affective-corporeal model of viewership engenders negative responses in audiences somatically, emotionally, and cognitively when watching extreme horror cinema. Unlike psychoanalytic and cognitive theories, and Hanich’s explanations of horror affect, Aldana Reyes shifts focus away from monsters as semiotically-laden affective loci. Instead, he contends that ‘in order to affect […] viewers, Horror continuously positions them at a concomitant experiential level to that of the victim’ (ibid., p. 164). Analysing various shot types and scenarios, Aldana Reyes argues cinematic realism presents ‘images of abjection’ (ibid., p. 58) commonly incorporated into the visual generics of horror that display indexical bodily destruction presented with high degrees of verisimilitude. Conceptualizing abjection, for Kristeva, ‘[t]he abject has only the quality of the object – that of being opposed to I’ (1982, p. 1). It is that which threatens identity, structure, and position, whether it be a ‘fall’ from a social, psychological or biological standing (ibid., p. 3), creating anxiety towards abject object(s), people, and situation(s) (Lechte, 2003, p. 10). Fear is generated by that we perceive highlights the fragility of our identity; thus we reject it. Yet paradoxically, since it indicates the self, it is part of I. Markers including refuse, blood, sweat, and vomit indicate that which ‘I permanently thrust aside in order to live’ (Kristeva, 1982, p. 3), with the ultimate abjection being 3 The Lewton Bus – made famous by film producer Val Lewton – is an audiovisual device popular in horror media where tension, suspension, or dread are built up only for the subsequent jump scare to result from something harmless to the characters, such as a cat or bus.

32 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

‘[t]he corpse, seen without God and outside of science’ (ibid., p. 4). This aesthetic corpus finds kinship to the generic elements popular in horror, particularly, as Aldana Reyes evinces, relating to victims’ bodily dangers, damages, and demises. Yet Aldana Reyes disassociates abjection’s psychoanalytic conceptualization as defined by Kristeva (1982), subsequently refined in its application to horror by Creed (1986, 1993, 2022). Instead, he argues audiences’ ‘corporeal intelligibility and the[ir] capacity to understand the intensity and consequences of pain’ (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 37) fosters somatic empathy between their own and intradiegetic characters’ bodies (ibid., p. 97). In this case abjection is a ‘fearful disgust’ when witnessing the disintegration of corporeal boundaries, generating primeval affect in audiences that short-circuits cognitive appraisals of horror by bringing the audiences’ own somatic bodies into consciousness as we witness physical damage inflicted upon characters onscreen. Aldana Reyes offers further nuance to future-orientated fearful affect. Namely, ‘survival suspense’, which ‘is narratively close to dread but experientially different in its use of cinematography, editing, pace and music’ (2016, p. 120). As with dread, survival suspense engenders anxiety and anticipation, but whereas dread centres on the unknown, survival suspense is premised on ‘the fear for one’s survival […] and the threat, now concretised, displays its potentially fatal consequences’ (ibid.). Thus, whereas dread is often experienced when leading up to the diegetic threat, survival suspense is provoked ‘in the aftermath of the encounter with [the] threat or the events that take place after its manifestations’ (ibid., p. 119). Certainly, the intense graphic bodily mutilation prevalent within particular cycles of horror cinema lend themselves to somatic affect (Wilson, 2015), as does the increasingly extreme visuality of twenty-first century TV horror, such as the violent corporeal destruction vividly shown in Slasher: Flesh & Blood (Shudder 2021). Nevertheless, such affective capabilities are also engendered by more suggestive horror. Steven T. Brown explains that ‘the scare effects created by Japanese horror are less about shock and surprise and more about the persistence of dread-filled affect’ (2018, p. 7). Unlike object-centred extreme body horror, Brown adds, Japanese horror’s dread is enhanced by textual visual and sonic diffuseness, producing a ‘cinema of sensations’ (ibid., p. 8). Notably, this mode of dread is actualized, in part, by what Brown conceptualizes as ‘haptic sonority’, ‘a liminal space that blurs the boundaries between the sonic and the tactile’ (ibid., p. 15). In Japanese horror, ‘haptic sonority opens an intensive space where one does not much hear sounds as one feels them

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

33

in one’s body in ways that are by turn bone-rattling, gut-wrenching, and hair-raising’ (ibid.). Affective approaches are salient for highlighting varying responses between audiences watching horror media and how an individual’s responses will ebb and flow over the duration of their engagement with the text. However, as with psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches, employing a neo-formalist methodology that ‘links anticipated effects with film techniques’ (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 8) centres on ‘the way Horror ideally4 affects viewers’ (ibid., p. 98). Certainly, there are particular scenes or instances in a horror text that a number of viewers find affective (e.g. Barker et al., 2016, p. 88), but speaking for an imagined audience through textual readings of horror media fails to address ‘whether flesh-and-blood audiences are able to shake off, or negotiate with, these textual imaginings and interpellations’ (Hills, 2014a, p. 91). Likewise, constructing a priori affect as ‘pre-subjective or impersonal’ (ibid., p. 104)5 via textual analysis fails to account for how biographic phenomenological identity shapes ‘affective-textual encounters’ (ibid.) with horror media. In their conclusion, Lothar Mikos acknowledges that biographical experiences shape audiences’ engagement with aspects of the media text. They write, ‘[t]he way in which specific spectators experience a certain film depends on the makeup of their identity, structure of experience, and social engagement in the web of their lifeworld. Thus, spectators experience specific films differently. Still there are certain common patterns’ (1996, p. 47). This is a highly important point, yet, while considering audiences’ ‘viewing contracts’ with horror premised on varying genre experiences and film literacies that foster differing affective pleasure fear (ibid., pp. 41–42), Mikos’ analysis of formal textual emotive structures neglects the deeper intersectional fabrics of audiences’ identities and how this affects their responses to horror. Equally, Hanich rightly indicates that ‘viewers have very different thresholds in terms of what they consider scary’ (2010, p. 32) – a point neglected in psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches – and that the emotional categories of fear should not lie solely in the intentions of the text but ‘take into account experiential difference as well’ (ibid., p. 204). The existential phenomenology employed by Hanich argues that the ‘lived body […] [is] always informed and qualified by the specific historical and cultural context lived in’ (ibid., p. 40). However, the lived body is ultimately 4 My emphasis. 5 This conceptualization of affect is frequently employed from a Deleuzian understanding of affect (e.g. Powell, 2005; Aldana Reyes, 2016; Daniel, 2020).

34 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

nullified in Hanich’s theorizing since, according to him, the fears aroused can be so powerful that they ‘level social, economic, ethnic, gender, age and religious differences’ (ibid., p. 248). For instance, Robin R. Means Coleman (2011, p. 1) details watching Jurassic Park (Spielberg 1993). The film’s opening sees an unnamed Black guard brutally killed by an unseen velociraptor. While the scene serves as both a hermeneutic – what does this brutal prehistoric beast look like? – and foreshadowing device – these dangerous animals will not remain immured in human caging – the attack is visually suggested in line with its PG (UK)/PG-13 (US) rating and provides no character exposition for our victim. He is disposable as characters of colour in mainstream media all too often are and simply serves the two aforementioned narrative devices. However, Coleman explains they were affected by the horror in this set-piece and mourned the quick death of the unnamed Black man. This response where identity is so central to the spectator–text relationship is not readily accounted for by the previous horror affect models. As Coleman highlights: Blacks have a rather unique relationship with American film’s presentation of Blacks. Some may bring to, and take away from, their film viewing experience culturally specific expectations – what Kozol calls ‘the racial gaze’ – in which they hope to see themselves as whole, full, and realized subjects rather than simply ‘window dressing on the set’ or human meat to up a bloody body count. (2011, pp. 1–2)

Informed by their biographical identity that entwines race as experienced within their genre knowledge, Coleman’s response of mourning and unease raises another shortcoming of the previous affect horror models: they ignore how affect is shaped by a posteriori audience identity. Kinitra D. Brooks highlights how existing horror theories rely on, and thus naturalize, ‘the normativity of whiteness’ (2014, p. 464), particularly when exploring gender and sexuality. Yet race as part of intersectional lived identities is fundamental to audiences’ engagement with media representations (see Chapter 4 and 5). Furthermore, as with others who solely view horror as producing negative emotions of fear and disgust, the aforementioned approaches underplay the gamut of possible affective responses elicited in audiences when engaging with the genre. Turning to early affect theory, Silvan Tomkins’ work on affect can, I argue, enrich these phenomenological understandings of horror responses. Tomkins himself explains that ‘[f]ear or terror is an innate affect, which can be

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

35

triggered by a wide variety of circumstances’ (1984, p. 163).6 Yet he quickly concedes that a circumstance that one individual f inds horrifying can leave another unaffected or even joyful (ibid., p. 164). Thus, fear is not predetermined and, whilst a common affect felt by many, stimuli can produce various affects between individuals. In fact, whilst horror often generically strategizes for fearful responses, Tomkins states, ‘[t]here is literally no kind of object that has not been linked to one or another of the affects’ (ibid., p. 166). Whilst most commonly applied to fear, abjection itself has also been linked to emotive modes such as melancholia and humour (Barrett, 2016, pp. 130–131). Horror media can ‘scare, shock, revolt or otherwise horrify the viewer’ (Cherry, 2009, p. 4), but poignant abject deaths can also move audience to tears, as demonstrated by Douglas Howard’s (2010) experience of watching fantasy-horror film Pan’s Labyrinth (del Toro 2006). Moreover, compared to a horror film’s relative short narrative duration and genre sequels predominantly revelling in increased spectacle over further characterization (Aldana Reyes, 2016, pp. 88–89), longform serial horror television more readily explores characters in-depth. Combined with TV’s longstanding use of melodrama,7 horror television prompts character investment in audiences. Consequently, killing off beloved characters in horror television can trigger pathos as much as fear that results in viewers crying (e.g. Masson, 2010), especially when such scenes are slowed down and/or elongated to elevate their tragedy (Abbott, 2012a). These deaths matter to audiences. We, therefore, need to account for a greater affective f ield than psychoanalytic, cognitive, and phenomenological approaches to horror have previously allowed for, to cater for what I term audiences’ abject spectrums. Incorporating Aldana Reyes’ conceptualization of somatic emotional abjection unbeholden to subconscious archaic psychosexual drives, along the continuum of phenomenological distance as described by Hanich, the abject spectrum model accounts for myriad affective engagement with horror screen media as ongoing and gradational. Not just the various types of fear, but also duration and intensity of affect that can differ between 6 Tomkins describes nine ‘innate affects’: interest or excitement, enjoyment or joy, surprise or startle, distress or anguish, fear or terror¸ shame or humiliation, contempt, disgust, anger or rage (1984, pp. 167–168). 7 Particularly through soap operas, a markedly televisual genre traditionally aimed at female viewership that symbolized the medium’s feminine connotations (see Kuhn, 1984). This has helped form part of the gendered binaries in relation to masculine cinema, informing hierarchies of value that elevate the latter and belittle the former (Caldwell, 2005, pp. 93–94; Nelson, 2015, p. 16; Newman and Levine, 2012, p. 5).

36 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

viewers (Tomkins, 1984, p. 166). As Hills argues, ‘[p]resuming that horror f ilms must predominantly be about one affect – to scare – misses the range of ways in which flesh-and-blood spectators relate to the genre’ (2014a, p. 99). Similarly, Tomkins expounds that ‘[n]ot only may affects be widely invested and variously invested, but they may also be invested in other affects, combined with other affects, to intensify or modulate them and to suppress or reduce them’ (1984, p. 166). Such aggregational potential allows the abject spectrum model to account for negative fear or responses somatically and emotionally felt to affix with other modes of affect, namely fan affect. Paul Booth defines ‘affect as the deep emotional connection fans experience related to the media object […] [which] becomes tied to meaning-making’ (2018, p. 75). Whereas affect models of horror viewing centre on audiences’ responses to texts as a hermetic relationship between viewer and screen, Kohnen argues ‘[f]annish affect is central to transmedia storytelling’ (2018a, p. 339), and that ‘affect connects fans to texts and each other’8 (ibid.). Hills highlights that horror theories have consistently served horror fans poorly, ‘aiming to resolve the “paradox” (why do people enjoy seeing images that they should find repulsive?)’ (2014a, p. 90). Aldana Reyes (2016, p. 98) concedes that they do not account for fan viewing dispositions in their conceptual model or how fan practices such as repeat viewing complicate affect (see Egan, 2022; Smith, 2019). Likewise, Hanich correctly identifies that horror ‘not only fulfil[s] various functions but also generate[s] diverse pleasures’ (2010, p. 6), regularly playing with audiences’ knowledge and expectations (ibid., p. 161). Yet his theory romanticizes the multiplex movie theatre as the only genuine space for affective responses to textual horror (ibid., p. 54). This is emblematic of audience studies’ neglect of home viewing (Smith, 2019, p. 118), failing to consider ‘the important roles played by past technologies, families, domestic spaces and sensory experiences in respondent memories of horror films in the childhood domestic context and, consequently, the continued meanings and significance of these memories in the present day’ (Egan, 2022, p. 223). Accounting for this, the abject spectrum model is contextualized by the various social settings and spaces of media consumption. The model also acknowledges how previous lived experiences of texts and their surrounding memories shape subsequent (re)viewings, and how medium-specific tenets inflect affect (such as weekly scheduling and binge-viewing TV series). This is important since, given the focus of this monograph, the model gives 8

My emphasis.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

37

credence to television, as well as cinema, being an affective horror medium and to domestic sites being impactful viewing environments.9 Furthermore, Hanich does not consider how affective pleasures form fan identities (Hills, 2002), how affect propagates collective fan spaces outside the cinema theatre, such as online fan communities (Busse, 2017), how affective engagement with fan object(s) shifts across the biographic lifecycle of a fan (Booth, 2018; Smith, 2019; Egan, 2022), and how affect prompts fan-made transtexts which offer subsequent affective pleasures (Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa, 2017). Such tenets of fandom undertaken by horror fans highlight how this specific genre audience share many sensibilities with other types of fans (Booth, 2012a), and how fans of horror need not always be studied as distinctive siloed (sub)cultures since audiences are often fans of multiple texts and multiple genres (Hills, 2014b, p. 9; Morimoto, 2018). In this case, ‘affect’ is employed ‘to distinguish the complex layers of experience that often separate the fan from a more casual viewer’ (McCormick, 2018, p. 372). Yet, just as this volume attests to the heterogeneity of audience responses to horror media, horror fans and fandoms are equally myriad (for an overview see Leeder, 2018). It is by looking at fans that we can find an array of pleasures when consuming TV horror that go beyond being scared. Moreover, rather than the affective potential lying solely within the horror text, (sub)cultural habitus can shape fans’ abject spectrums (Aden, 1999, p. 3). Emic social rules in various horror fandoms evidence myriad interpretive communities and value schemas, which authenticate or malign different genre works based on habitual sets of criteria (see Hills, 2014a, pp. 96–99; Jancovich, 2000, 2002a). As such, fan spaces can police affective engagement publicly as social discourse vocalized within communities and privately where fans internalize the habitus that regulate behaviours and practices (Busse, 2013). Equally, the phenomenology of fan identity (Hills, 2014b, p. 9) cannot be disaggregated from other aspects of one’s intersectional makeup. Put another way, Pande (2018, p. xii) explains that racial identity is ‘constitutive’ of fan identity and experiences of fandom. However, much like horror theory, Fan Studies has all too often disregarded race (Wanzo, 2015) in terms of fan identity construction (Johnson, 2015), informing meaning-making (carrington, 2016), galvanizing fan works (Warner, 2015b, 2018), identity performance within social spaces (Steele, 2016, 2018), and negotiating textual 9 It is worth signposting that the psychoanalytic, cognitive, and affect theories of horror audiences previously discussed all focus on cinema only.

38 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

interpretations discussed in fandoms (Brock, 2011). Addressing this, race converging with other aspects of one’s lived identity are key to audiences’ abject spectrums and responses to TV horror. Moreover, I explore how race, particularly for audiences of colour, is articulated, discussed, and positioned within TV horror fan communities (see Chapter 4 and 5). In doing so, the book argues fan identities are just as multifaceted as other types of audience. Despite Aldana Reyes underscoring the limitations of psychoanalytic readings of archaic abjection, he glosses over or neglects other ways Kristeva develops the theory, such as food loathing (see Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 32). While his conceptualization of abjection as fearful disgust acknowledges viewer phenomenology as one, albeit particularly pertinent, aspect of horror’s affective potential, I now revisit Kristeva’s original conceptualization of abjection and its wider application to account for a broader range of audience engagement with horror television. To do so, I begin with Kristeva’s recalling of abject food ingestion: [f]ood loathing is perhaps one of the most elementary and archaic form[s] of abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk […] I experience a gagging sensation and still further down, spasms in the stomach, the belly, and all the organs shrivel up in the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire. Along with sight, clouding dizziness, nausea make me balk and that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. (1982, pp. 3–4)

This often-quoted passage is rarely explored in detail. Firstly, the response is somatic. Reactions are activated in different parts of the body in various ways framed by borders. In this case, Kristeva’s eyes and lips experience the milk, and the surface of the milk itself. Abjection occurs when these borders are disrupted. Further, the bodily reactions caused by ingesting the milk highlight the phenomenological experience of abjection (Tyler, 2009, pp. 79–80), reified by Kristeva’s first-person perspective which differs from her parents. This point is often overlooked, creating one-dimensional generalized abject affects by idealized monolithic imagined audiences (Keltner, 2011, p. 20). Finally, one must consider the temporality of responses. The distinction between child and parents highlights the liminality of abject affect. The child will go on a journey into adulthood and what was previously such vehement abjection may change to elicit different responses, even pleasure. Self-identity is not static nor finished, hence that which is held

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

39

in opposition to I has the potential to transform. As Oliver writes, ‘Kristeva looks to the orders of subjectivity in order to demonstrate that we are all subjects-in-process’ (1993, p. 13). McCabe and Holmes echo this, stating that ‘[s]ubjectivity, as described by Kristeva, is what is contained within an imaginary border drawn around the body: a border that is continuously constructed and reconstructed throughout life’ (2011, p. 78). The subjectin-process is central to this monograph. How we arrive at, or stay with, the genre is worth considering. Likewise, there are a host of reasons why someone will choose to consume horror media (e.g. Hill, 1997, pp. 19–23). Some audiences find horror as illicit media in their younger years (e.g. Kermode, 2001), others initially adverse to the genre’s effective potential and visual schema delight in horror later on (e.g. Egan, 2011, pp. 1–7; Clasen, 2017, p. vii), whilst others who previously enjoyed scenes of horror and brutality subsequently reinterpret or self-censor the genre due to external life events (e.g. Schlesinger et al., 1992; Chronaki and Tsaliki, 2019, p. 210). As such, our abject spectrums’ affective thresholds to horror develop, grow, and shrink in relation to our in-process life trajectories and experiences (Barker et al., 2016, pp. 88–89).

Ideological Readings Continuing my conceptualization of abject spectrums, immersion and varying phenomenological distance encourages somatic and emotional affect that can short-circuit ‘the distinction between thought and body’ (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 12). However, phenomenological distance – both close and extended – fosters other forms of audience response to horror and, in doing so, broadens the abject spectrum model. Ndalianis argues that as audiences, our ‘cognitive engagement with the ideological issues raised by horror films […] [relies] on our sensory responses to horror’ (2012, p. 20). Yet, despite affording interpretive agency as part of audiences’ affective sensorium to horror, Ndalianis provides scant evidence of this. Instead, alongside passing descriptions of her own responses to horror media, ideological understanding of genre vehicles stems from the author’s own textual analysis that speaks for imagined viewers. Audiences’ ideological interpretations of horror media, I argue, chime with Kristeva’s cultural framing of abjection, particularly her focus on ‘anthropological delineation[s] of the logic of exclusion that causes the abject to exist’ (1982, p. 65). Kristeva correctly identifies that ‘abjection assumes specific shapes and different codings according to the various

40 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

“symbolic systems”’ (ibid., p. 68). Consequently, emic semiotic meanings of the abject manifest in the prohibition of taboos recognized as sin mapped onto the body (ibid., p. 14). Kristeva explains that, like evil, sin is not intrinsic. Rather, ‘sin is [culturally-]subjectified abjection’ (ibid., p. 128), informed by Mary Douglas’ (1966) anthropological research. As with the psychoanalytic underpinning of abjection, Kristeva’s cultural locating of abjection is guilty of essentializing gender structures. Using Douglas to reinforce abjection’s feminine codings across cultures, Kristeva states that unlike the abject nature of excrement and menstrual blood (both framed as female), sperm has no ‘polluting value’ (1982, p. 71). While these codings support feminist analyses of art and culture10 (Creed, 1993; Schippers, 2011), this gendered delineation of abjection is contentious since semen is potentially highly abject, particularly when arbitrarily linked to identity discourses (e.g. sexuality, class, race, age, etc.), disease, and/or sexually-transgressive acts (such as rape), which may be literalized or allegorically suggested as monstrous in horror fictions (exemplified in hicksploitation horror Deliverance (Boorman 1972)). In comparison, Douglas states ‘there are beliefs that each sex is a danger to the other through contact with sexual fluids’ (1966, p. 4). Thus, Douglas’ theorization prompts a revising of abjection to account for a more myriad semiotic framework to better serve the array of horrors within the genre (see also Tyler, 2009). For Douglas defines that which subverts social structures and cultural order as ‘matter out of place’ (1966, p. 41), frequently linked to dirt as a symbolically disordering pollutant much as abjection ‘persist[s] as a rite of defilement and pollution’ (Kristeva, 1982, p. 17). Horror is generated by those perceived as in-between frames of identity or outside cultural classificatory borders since they embody disorder and threaten the status quo (Douglas, 1966, p. 118). As such, if abjection serves ideological functions within a culture, audiences’ abject spectrums need to account for such ideological readings of horror media. In revisiting her earlier conceptualizations of the monstrous-feminine to which Kristeva’s work is paramount (Creed, 1993), Creed argues that twenty-f irst century Feminist New Wave horror f ilms focus on female revolt against such ‘aggressive phallicity’, ‘a concept that relates violence specifically to the phallus/penis and its destructive powers’ (2022, p. 52), which support ‘violent patriarchal societies’ (ibid., p. 10). Subsequently, 10 However, Kristeva herself has never identified as a feminist nor located her work within wider feminist frameworks. In fact, ‘she has repeatedly distanced herself from feminism’ (Tyler, 2009, p. 82).

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

41

Creed broadens abject categorization to include anthropocentric abjection that attacks and ‘undermine[s] the laws of the natural order (nature, the planet, and its multi-species)’ (ibid., p. 11). To do so, Creed focuses on male abjection that pertains to the fragility of law; ‘[t]he traitor, the liar, the criminal […] the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior’ (Kristeva, 1982, p. 4). The pref ix of ‘he’ in the above quote and the act of rape as male-centric violence contradicts Kristeva’s (ibid., p. 71) later assertion that sperm is a non-contaminant or that above all abjection is feminine/female. Moreover, whilst Creed’s updating of the monstrous-feminine clearly frames the male-as-abject, other aspects of criminal behaviour that undermine cultural rules and regulations have the potential to be genderless (women are often framed as liars, for instance (Yarbrough and Bennett, 2000)) or become more complex when addressing the intersectional makeup of identities that goes beyond gender alone (Crenshaw, 1989). It is this consideration of intersectionality and its mapping onto cultural contextualized instances of abjection that allows the abject spectrum to move beyond inferred fixed and reductive audience identities (e.g. Ahmed, 2005), further supporting the range of responses to horror media. Indeed, Creed’s analysis of Feminist New Wave horror cinema, where the monstrous-feminine revolts through her abject transformation, is contextualized against a backdrop of wider cultural revolts by ‘contemporary liberation movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, Earth Day, and PETA, whose politics help shape artistic production worldwide’ (2022, p. 4). Yet just in the way political climates, events, and movements can shape media production, so too can they shape audiences’ engagement with horror media. Creed alludes to this, arguing that, ‘[t]o the male spectator […] [the abject female of this horror film cycle] might be a monstrous figure (avenger, lesbian, femme fatale, witch, angry wife) but to the feminist spectator she is a woman – an empowering, inspirational figure who engaged in a life-anddeath struggle with the violence of the patriarchal symbolic order’ (ibid., pp. 17–18). However, this infers affirmational political affective audience readings that neglect counter-ideological interpretations or the intersectional matrices of audiences that impact their responses. For example, some feminist (itself a heterogeneous and contested ideology/movement) viewers may watch these films and feel no such affect and/or political galvanization, read these texts as not feminist, or find them as an exclusionary form of feminism. This is exemplified by discussions surrounding Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller 2015). Creed positions the film’s female warrior Furiosa an instance of the Feminist New Wave monstrous-feminine who ‘uses her

42 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Amazonian powers to horrify her male adversary, this adds to the feminist spectator’s pleasure in viewing’11 (2022, p. 5). However, commentary on websites and online forums questioned the text’s feminist potential given its predominance for hegemonic heteronormative white bodies, its lack of diversity, and plastic representations of non-white characters (Jones, 2015; Khan, 2015; see also Warner, 2017). These responses are no less ideological (see Chapter 4–5). Indeed, horror media habitually taps into the zeitgeist with diegetic representations frequently read against the cultures they are produced in. Moreover, Mann demonstrates that horror’s sociological function changes over time and place (2020, pp. 7–9). As such, contra fixed ahistorical meaning, horror media offers polysemic decodings whereby a text is open to ‘multiple readings in relation to its cultural moment’ (ibid., p. 11). For example, Madden explains that, as a monstrous f igure, ‘[o]wing to her uncanny ability to disrupt patriarchal social constructs, the witch is often portrayed as not only a malevolent, unholy creature, but also paradoxically, a symbol of female liberation’ (2020, p. 135). Consequently, horror is bestowed with radical and reactionary potential (often within the same text (e.g. Hutchings, 2003)). This socio-moral opacity and the malleability of audience’s readings further aligns with Kristeva’s conceptualization of abjection since, unlike Freud’s ascribing of the uncanny with ‘evil intent’ (2003, p. 149), dirt and abjection’s ambiguous state are not morally predetermined (Kristeva, 1982, p. 9; Douglas, 1966, p. 162). Being abject-thus-Other can be politically subversive against oppressive forces (Kristeva, 1982, p. 9). Moreover, although representations can endorse existing cultural order, this is not to suggest that being Other is intrinsically negative. Some audiences may align with such Othered positions/monsters (Haraway, 1991, p. 293), particularly if they themselves are othered within wider society. Indeed, liminal subjectivity manifests in being abject (Maylan, 2017, pp. 278–279). Such textual understandings foster pertinent sources of pleasure or displeasure for audiences as diverse and disparate ‘interpretive communities’ (Bobo, 1995, p. 22; Hills, 2005a, p. 186). Not only have psychoanalytic and cognitive theories conceptualized ‘ideal’ audiences in broad monolithic terms, both approaches pathologize horror fans as ‘lacking’ in some way, perceived as awash with affect compared to knowing analysts (Hills, 2002, pp. 99–104). However, horror af icionados incorporate knowledge schemas into their interpretation of the genre. In fact, the cognitive knowledge/emotional affect dualism 11 My emphasis.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

43

falters when considering how fans applying knowledge to their readings of horror itself can be a source of affective pleasure. For some fans, habitual responses to horror media prioritize ‘knowledge over affect’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 75), employed to authenticate their own fan identities and simultaneously delineate themselves against incorrect responses from non-fans whose reactions to screen abjection are pathologized as too emotive or somatic (ibid., p. 203). This suggests that for this fan segment a critical distance in deconstructing the horror text is mapped along phenomenological distance. An example of this can be seen with transnational Japanese horror cinema fans; supported by transmedial circulation, the transcultural dynamics of cross-cultural audiences (Chin and Hitchcock Morimoto, 2013) engaging with international horror is also neglected by previous horror theories (see also Pett, 2017). Online J-horror fans of Ringu (Nakata 1998) privilege ‘read[ing]-for-cultural-difference’ in the wake of its Hollywood remake and mainstreaming of East Asian horror cinema in the West (Hills, 2005b, p. 161), discussing the film’s depiction of ‘“nensha” (literally, the “thought-writing” displayed by Sadako), and focus on differences between western “rationalism” […] [and] the supernatural in Japanese culture’ (ibid., p. 168). Stressing complexity in reading J-horror’s abjection against Japanese cultural ‘symbolic systems’ that require extratextual-knowledge yields subcultural capital – knowledge lay audiences do not possess – with those understanding and able to communicate the Japanese language positioned highest within the community (ibid., pp. 168–169). On the other hand, detailed textual readings can result from shortening phenomenological distance. As Barker writes, ‘[t]o be absorbed can mean that one is fully engaged in bringing to bear on a f ilm the interpretive frameworks which viewers have built up’ (2016, p. 100). Having established that horror fictions are open to multiple interpretations, audiences may read through a specific prism that illuminates an understanding in favour of other possible navigations of the text (that others may undertake). Hills explains, for instance, that ‘for some fan audiences […] elevating “homoerotic subtext,” or “not-so-subtext,” to the status of narrative focus means selecting out one thread of polysemic textual material for communal and discursive prioritisation’ (2015, p. 153). Chronaki and Tsaliki’s (2019) interviews with female audiences of American Horror Story found participants utilize various interpretative strategies. Notably, several individuals deployed feminist theory to read gender depictions and relationships within the series. Accordingly, it is not only academics who undertake close textual readings. Audiences too frequently apply knowledge schemas

44 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

and specif ic reading strategies to extract deeper semiotic meaning in horror fictions. Interpretative strategies develop out of one’s familiarity with the genre and how they culturally contextualize horror media. Addressing the phenomenological centralizing of the individual audience member, it is paramount to consider how their own identities and lived experiences inform abject spectrums where ‘the cultural is intricately interwoven with other aspects in the lives of cultural readers’ (Bobo, 1995, p. 22). Markers of our identity and their intersectional hybridity, such as class, sexuality, gender, age and race shape our affective engagement with media (hooks, 1996, p. 3). As Jacqueline Bobo highlights: [a] viewer of a film (reader of a text) comes to the moment of engagement with the work with a knowledge of the world and a knowledge of other texts, or media products. What this means is that when a person comes to view a film, she/he does not leave her/his histories, whether social, cultural, economic, racial, or sexual at the door. An audience member from a marginalized group (people of color, women, the poor, and so on) has an oppositional stance as they participate in mainstream media. (2004, p. 181)

Bobo explains that the encounter between viewer and text is an ‘interdiscourse’, ‘the specific moment when subjects bring their histories to bear on meaning production in a text’ (ibid., p. 186). Much like fans’ discursive prioritization, interdiscourse is comprised of particular discursive readings, ‘that a viewer brings to the act of watching a f ilm and creating meaning from a work […] [where] the meanings of a text will be constructed differently depending on the various backgrounds of the viewers’ (ibid.). Consequently, it is not the case that ‘[w]hilst socio-political readings of Horror are necessary, they hardly ever cover the experiential side of Horror’ (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 134). Instead, audiences who undertake such interpretations experience horror filtered through their phenomenological biographies. Indeed, audiences’ abject spectrums often ‘focus on thematic deconstruction of texts, especially when [their] lived identity has also been politicized’ (Rendell, 2019a) and/or during highly politically-charged cultural periods such as the Vietnam War or Black Lives Matter protests in the face of racial oppression. Moreover, ideological readings do not purely consist of allegorical schemas and subtextual discursive prioritization deployed as meaning-making practices. They can also address production cultures behind media creation.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

45

For example, audiences interpreting actors’ intersectional identities as reinforcing or destabilizing dominant media representations (e.g. Rendell, 2021a), and, relatedly, how horror may perpetuate or challenge cultural anxieties towards non-hegemonic bodies through casting choices (Chronaki and Tsaliki, 2019, pp. 206–208). Not only is this a reading of horror texts, but a reading through the diegesis to engage with the artifice of media as aesthetic objects. As such, the abject spectrum model needs to account for engagement with horror’s aesthetic qualities.

Aesthetic Engagement Hanich explains that those individuals attempting to reduce or alleviate affect can physically extend their phenomenological distance by looking away from the screen or covering their eyes or ears (2010, p. 95) or focus on the horror text’s aesthetic qualities such as form, materiality, or fictionality. In doing so, audiences look through, rather than into, the film (ibid. p. 96). Correspondingly, Aldana Reyes argues ‘the depth of cognitive involvement is greater and more removed from the affective purpose of the film when we are admiring it aesthetically than when we are fully immersed in its affective work’ (2016, p. 90). Hence, the author does not consider ‘the contemplative and appreciative aspects of Horror’s spectacles in any more detail’ (ibid.). The abject spectrum model, however, does. As discussed, cognitive philosophy does not account for audiences’ nonnarrative based pleasures (Hills, 2005a, pp. 17–18). This same criticism holds true for affect theories previously addressed. Kristeva (1982, p. 18) posits that it is the ‘aesthetic task’ of modern literary writers to verbalize primal repression within their work. That the second half of The Powers of Horror moves between culture and art when formulating abjection, particularly Kristeva’s analysis of novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline, gives credence to how abjection is constructed and communicated across media. Relatedly, many engaging with Kristeva and abjection theory note the aesthetic qualities of its materialization (Arya and Chare, 2016, pp. 3–4; Wark, 2016, pp. 30–33), with van Alphen positing that abjection ‘is an aesthetic judgement’ (2016, p. 19). Focusing on the persons who undertake such crafting allows us to consider that abject encounters between audience and text do not exist solely in the diegesis. That said, Kristeva focuses on singular creatives, romanticized within artistic discourse. However, film, television, and other types of media production are markedly more collaborative. Therefore, the making of audiovisual abjection can be responded to holistically or

46 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

audiences can concentrate on specific textual aspects, their specialized construction, and the creatives behind them. In the case of abject music and sound (Luko, 2013), it is not just sonic somatic emotional affect as Brown (2018) describes. Nor is it ‘non-diegetic music […] offer[ing] an immersion, a kind of “wrap-around sound” that envelops the audience, bathing it in affect’ (Donnelly, 2005, p. 13). Rather, Donnelly notes that ‘we might notice music more if we become less involved with the film as a whole’ (ibid., p. 7). Using similar terminology to Hanich, Donnelly adds that: those who appreciate film music are able to distance themselves from the screen activities to some degree. Musicians may well be able to focus on (to be aware of) the music more than non-musicians, but people who are less ‘bound up’ with narrative and character may well find themselves more conscious of the music – whereas others deal with music in an unconscious or semi-conscious manner, and are thus in a situation where it is most effective, according to the absolute terms in which it was conceived. (ibid.)

Those musically trained or with a musicologist background (Halfyard, 2016, p. 41) may disaggregate the soundscape from audiovisual unity as an act of distancing discursive prioritization that looks through the text to consider audial technical production and qualities. Non-trained audiences can also engage with music aesthetically, with some fans building sonic catalogues of texts’ music and relational information about tracks that gives them authority and status within fan communities (ibid.) (see Chapter 6). Therefore, the aesthetic region of the abject spectrum can be said to be concerned less with how narratives unfold, the thrill of what will happen, and thematic subtexts that predominate the other two aspects of the abject spectrum. Rather, it engages with 1) ‘operational aesthetics’ where the narrative itself ‘invite[s] viewers to engage at the level of formal analyst, dissecting the techniques used to convey spectacular displays of storytelling craft […] that transcends the traditional focus on diegetic actions’ (Mittell, 2015, p. 47); and 2) ‘pragmatic aesthetics’, technical elements including ‘lighting, acting, script, set décor, [music and sound]’ (Sipos, 2010, p. 29). To this, I would add pragmatic aesthetic choices such as casting decisions (Warner, 2015a) and marketing campaign strategies (e.g. Kattelman, 2011). Leeder offers a pertinent example of pragmatic aesthetics relating to the materiality of special effects, noting ‘[h]orror fans debate the value of CGI, especially decrying […] unconvincing monsters […] though the general viewing public does not always share these compunctions’ (2018, p. 216). In

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

47

comparison ‘horror films that use practical effects are praised by fans for authenticity and fidelity to tradition’ (ibid.). Thus, affective (dis)pleasure lies in the perceived artisanship that goes into the construction of horror which centres on professionals not seen on screen, such as SFX artists (see also Hills, 2005a, pp. 85–90). Likewise, visiting set locations (Hills, 2002; Couldry, 2007) and media-induced tourism (Beeton, 2005) as affective experiences foster audiences’ topographical proximity to fantasy worlds that paradoxically underscores their artificiality within real locales (see Chapter 5), such as those who visit Transylvania as part of Dracula tourism (Light, 2009, 2017). Similarly, whilst ‘[i]mages of horror (especially in the genre cinema) do not tend to fit sociocultural notions of beauty’ (Cherry, 2009, p. 89), a horror text’s distinct visuality can be a source of great pleasure for audiences (Cherry, 2012, p. 26), as can its ‘high production values in art direction, set design […] costumes [, and acting]’ (Cherry, 1999, p. 194). This can result in fans engaging with the creatives behind a production in other ways (e.g. Bobo. 1995, pp. 10–21). To illustrate, queer horror fans’ discursive prioritization reads the character Jesse Walsh as gay in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddie’s Revenge (Sholder 1985), stemming from textual interpretation but also via the public image of Mark Patton (who plays Walsh) who is openly queer, and the parasocial relationship he maintains with fans online (Scales, 2015, pp. 131–140). Again, we see how audience identities shape abject spectrums and how they filter aesthetic engagement with horror media. Moreover, whereas previous theories/concepts focus on audience responses to horror via a single media platform, often cinema (Smuts, 2014, p. 3), the abject spectrum model considers the impact of transmedia networks so integral to twenty-first century horror television, and the media landscape in general. Some transmedia texts may evoke similar affective responses. For example, playing the survival horror videogame Alien: Isolation (Sega 2014) may create similar somatic and emotive reactions of dread and terror as watching the parent films. However, the former requires ludic engagement and logic deployment to navigate the narrative; skills not necessary for watching cinema (see Conclusion). Thus, the ontological materiality of respective mediums effect audience’s abject spectrums. This may shape aesthetic evaluations of textual abjection. For example, as noted, previous arguments have contended that TV is aesthetically a lesser medium for depicting horror than cinema; an axiom this volume denies. Other transmedia can prompt different aspects of the abject spectrum. For example, auratic behind-the scenes materials such as The Making of Alien (Rinzler, 2019) reveal the production process of horror creation that guides the reader

48 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

to look through the diegesis and appreciate the constructed nature of the storyworld. In comparison, video essays or books (e.g. Luckhurst, 2014) analysing the Alien franchise can inform and guide interpretive readings that foster new ways for audiences to read the horror media. Equally, of course, fans’ own transformative transmedia practices can perform similar engagement functions as officially licensed ancillary media (see Chapter 5 and 6). Consequently, alongside an individual’s subject-in-process that allows for varying forms of engagement with horror over time and differences in responses between individuals, transmedia too attests to the phenomenological breadth of audiences’ affective reactions accounted for by the abject spectrum model.

Book Structure Geraghty and Lusted note that, ‘Television Studies has its roots in a mixture of disciplines’ (1998, p. 3), covering ‘production and audience ethnography, policy advocacy, political economy, cultural history and textual analysis’ (Miller, 2002, p. 3). This book follows this mixed method tradition (see also Wheatley, 2016, p. 20). Part 1 of this volume (Chapters 1–3) addresses TV horror texts and the channels, services, portals, and transmedia they are disseminated on. Chapter 1 examines various ways TV horror is mainstreamed in the twenty-first century, arguing that producers interpellate existing genre fans and wider audiences within the same texts. As such, TV horror is simultaneously discursively clustered (Mittell, 2004) as genre vehicles and branded content that hails different audiences by various means. Building on the first chapter, Chapter 2 explores the relationship between horror and post-TV, addressing how SVoDs and OTT portals shape media production and distribution. In doing so, television becomes both ontologically disrupted and reaffirmed as it moves across new media technologies. Moving away from formal media ecologies, Chapter 3 analyses informal online circulation of TV horror via what I term Only-Click TV that supports the popularizing of TV horror in regions where content is inaccessible and cultifying preexisting rare TV horror from around the world. The chapter then looks at how media industries are engaging with Only-Click TV practices either by incorporating or trying to better informal digital media. Part 1 combines analyses of textual form, industry production models, and technological environments that locate TV horror within the wider twenty-f irst century post-television landscape. Yet this section avoids speaking for imagined or essentialized viewers. Likewise, ‘[a]n account of

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

49

the appeal of horror should probably be able to tell us what is particularly appealing about the genre […] [and] should tell us why some love it and why others hate it’ (Smuts, 2014, p. 10). To do this, Part 2 (Chapters 4–6) furthers the abject spectrum model by analysing audiences’ engagement with horror television using a range of data sets. Comprised of data sets from Reddit, Twitter, Amazon reviews, the now defunct Snowblood Apple forum, blogs, Facebook groups, the TellTale community forum, Chapter 4 analyses online audiences watching TV horror texts and investigates the emotive, somatic, ideological, and aesthetic aspects of viewers’ abject spectrums. Resultantly, the chapter demonstrates how abject spectrums are polysemic, intratextual, and intertextual. Having developed the abject spectrum concept via the logos of the written word typed by audiences, Chapter 5 expands the textuality of responses to TV horror by analysing online audiences’ image transtexts that pictorially evidence meaning-making (Newman, 2014), using data sets from Facebook groups, Twitter, Google images, blogs, Knowyourmemes.com, Reddit, and Tumblr. Combining image, aesthetic, and form, audiences’ visual texts posted online affirm TV texts’ key qualities but also foster playful expression. As previously discussed, in order to have a more rounded understanding of post-TV transmedia and transtexts, there is a need to go beyond the digital. As such, the playfulness of participatory cultures continues into Chapter 6 but sees the book turn to offline/real-world transmedia expressions where the tangible materiality and harnessing of multiple senses are key to audience engagement. Examining TV horror cookbooks and vinyl soundtracks, both as formal cross-media extensions and fan-made transtexts, the chapter highlights the popularity and shifting aestheticization of twenty-first century horror television. It also expands conceptualizations of transmedia beyond digital convergence cultures and into the realm of material culture. Additionally, the chapter considers how audiences’ abject spectrums can be demonstrated not just in affirmational responses in written form or pictorial signposting (Chapter 4 and 5), but performed in craft practices and how the materiality of transmedia can guide various forms of affective engagement with TV horror – the somatic, emotional, ideological and aesthetic. Audience data sets for this chapter come from independent publications, food blogs, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram. While audience responses are performative (Hills, 2002), shaped by technological and subcultural contexts from which they reside, online data is an excellent source for examining the variety of ways audiences engage with horror (Hills, 2014a), as viewers post in real time as a form of second screen engagement (Blake, 2017), reflect on past viewing experience, and

50 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

use sites’ technological affordances to add media content that prompts further discussions (Anstead and O’Loughlin, 2011). Finally, the book’s conclusion suggests that (post-)TV horror is more fluid than ever. In doing so, the Conclusion suggests other content to be considered within the multimedia milieu, including portal horror films, internet horror monsters, YouTube horror, and fan-made horror, episodic mobile phone horror, smartphone augmented reality horror, and horror webisodes. The Conclusion then addresses how the abject spectrums model can explore audience experiences of non-horror screen media and how other viewing contexts shape audiences’ experience of horror media. A f inal note on my methodology. Given that I am using audienceproduced data, ethical considerations are raised. Online ethics relate to issues of consent, transparency, privacy, and anonymity (Ess and AoIR, 2002; Salmons, 2014), and are context-dependent rather than standardized (McGee, 2008). Since I analyse data from a range of online and offline sources, this produces an extremely large sample pool over an expansive period of space and time. Some of these sites were open, public, and free to access (blogs, forums, Twitter, Reddit), others private and required me to join specialist groups (Facebook). Furthermore, the spreadability and recirculation of online content can obfuscate the original author of creation (Jenkins et al., 2013). Likewise, one site – the forum Snowblood Apple – is no longer active, meaning obtaining consent from posters was impossible. Incorporating mixed-data sets from a range of media-technological platforms, users, and content meant employing various ethical stances. Where websites are considered open, consent was not required due to the public nature of the content and the pragmatic issues of gaining consent from every individual over such an extensive time period. In the closed Facebook groups, consent was granted from users, with debriefing, the right to withdraw, and the option to see the research. While I quote audiences, all users’ details are anonymized in order to minimize ‘intrusion into the fan community’ (Bore and Hickman, 2013).

References Abbott, Stacey. 2012a. ‘The Horror of Grief.’ CST Online. 14th December. http:// cstonline.net/the-horror-of-grief-by-stacey-abbott/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Abbott, Stacey. 2013. ‘TV Special Effects.’ Critical Studies in Television. 8(3). pp. vii–xii. Abbott, Stacey. 2016. Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

51

Abbott, Stacey. 2018a. ‘Masters of Mise-En-Scène: The Stylistic Excess of Hannibal.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 120–134. Abbott, Stacey and Jowett, Lorna (eds). 2021a. Global TV Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales. Aden, Roger C. 1999. Popular Stories and Promised Lands: Fan Cultures and Symbolic Practices. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Ahmed, Sara. 2005. ‘The Skin of the Community: Affect and Boundary Formation.’ In Chanter, Tina and Ziarek, Ewa Płonowska (eds). Revolt, Affect, Collectivity: The Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva’s Polis. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 95–111. Aldana Reyes, Xavier. 2016. Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership. London: Routledge. Anstead, Nick and O’Loughlin, Ben. 2011. ‘The Emerging Viewertariat and BBC Question Time: Television Debate and Real-Time Commenting Online.’ The International Journal of Press/Publics. 16(4). pp. 440–462. Arnold, Sarah. 2016. ‘Netflix and the Myth of Choice/Participation/Autonomy.’ In McDonald, Kevin and Smith-Rowsey, Daniel (eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 49–62. Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas. 2016. ‘Introduction: Approaching Abjection.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 1–13. Barker, Martin. 2016. ‘“Legolas, He’s Cool… and He’s Hot!”: The Meaning and Implications of Audiences’ Favorite Characters.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D. and Olson, Christopher J. (eds). Making Sense of Cinema: Empirical Studies Into Film Spectators and Spectatorship. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 97–117. Barker, Martin, Egan, Kate, Phillips, Tom, and Ralph, Sarah. 2016. Alien Audiences: Remembering and Evaluating a Classic Movie. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Barrett, Estelle. 2016. ‘Abjection, Melancholia and Ambiguity in the Works of Catherine Bell.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 130–143. Beeton, Sue. 2005. Film-Induced Tourism. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). 2018. Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. Blake, James. 2017. Television and the Second Screen: Interactive TV in the Age of Social Participation. London: Routledge. Bobo, Jacqueline. 1995. Black Women as Cultural Readers. New York: Columbia University Press.

52 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Bobo, Jacqueline. 2004. ‘The Colour Purple: Black Women as Cultural Readers.’ In Bobo, Jacqueline, Hudley, Cynthia, and Michel, Claudine (eds). The Black Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. pp. 177–192. Booth, Paul. 2012a. ‘Saw Fandom and the Transgression of Fan Excess.’ In Gournelos, Ted and Gunkel, David J. (eds). Transgression 2.0.: Media, Culture, and the Politics of a Digital Age. New York: Continuum. pp. 69–83. Booth, Paul. 2016. Digital Fandom 2.0. New Media Studies: Second Edition. Oxford: Peter Lang. Booth, Paul. 2018. ‘Fan Euthanasia: A Thin Line Between Love and Hate.’ In Williams, Rebecca (ed). Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fan Cultures. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. pp. 75–86. Booth, Paul. 2019. ‘Transmedia Fandom and Participation: The Nuances and Contours of Fannish Participation.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 279–288. Bore, Inger-Lise Kalviknes and Hickman, Jonathan. 2013. ‘Studying Fan Activities on Twitter: Reflections on Methodological Issues Emerging From a Case Study on The West Wing Fandom.’ First Monday. 18(9). https://doi.org/10.5210/ fm.v18i9.4268 Bourdaa, Mélanie. 2017. ‘“I Am Not a Tribute”: The Transmedia Strategy of the Hunger Games versus Fan Activism.’ In Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie (eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge. pp. 90–103. Bowen, Sesali. 2018. ‘Horror Fans Are Having The Best TV Season Ever.’ Refinery29. 9th October. https://www.ref inery29.com/en-us/2018/10/213421/horror-tvshows-2018 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Branston, Gill and Stafford, Roy. 2003. The Media Student’s Book: 3rd Edition. London: Routledge. Brock, André. 2011. ‘“When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong”: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers.’ Games and Culture. 6(5). pp. 429–452. Brooks, Kinitra D. 2014. ‘The Importance of Neglected Intersections: Race and Gender in Contemporary Zombie Texts and Theories.’ African American Review. 47(4). pp. 461–475. Brophy, Philip. 1986. ‘Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films.’ Screen. 27(1). pp. 2–13. Brown, Steven T. 2018. Japanese Horror and the Transnational Cinema of Sensations. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Browning, John Edgar and Picart, Caroline Joan (eds). 2011. Dracula in Visual Media. Jefferson: McFarland.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

53

Busse, Kristina. 2013. ‘Geek Hierarchies, Boundary Policing, and the Gendering of the Good Fan.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 10(1). pp. 73–91. Busse, Kristina. 2017. Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Caldwell, John T. 2005. ‘Welcome to the Viral Future of Cinema (Television).’ Cinema Journal. 45(1). pp. 90–97. Calvert, Bronwen. 2014. ‘“This Means Bodies”: Body Horror and the Influence of David Cronenberg.’ In Cochran, Tanya, Ginn, Sherry, and Zinder, Paul (eds.). The Multiple Worlds of Fringe: Essays on the J.J. Abrams Science Fiction Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 186–200. carrington, andré m. 2016. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Carroll, Noël. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror: Or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge. Catania, Alessandro. 2015. ‘Serial Narrative Exports: US Television Drama in Europe.’ In Pearson, Roberta and Smith, Anthony N. (eds). Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 205–220. Chare, Nicholas, Hoorn, Jeanette, and Yue, Audrey. 2020. ‘Re-reading The MonstrousFeminine: New Approaches to Psychoanalytic Theory, Affect, Film, and Art.’ In Chare, Nicholas, Hoorn, Jeanette, and Yue, Audrey (eds). Re-reading The MonstrousFeminine: Art, Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. pp. 1–34. Cherry, Brigid. 1999. ‘Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film.’ In Stokes, Melvyn and Maltby, Richard (eds). Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies. London: BFI. pp. 187–203. Cherry, Brigid. 2009. Horror. London: Routledge. Cherry, Brigid. 2012. ‘Beyond Suspiria? The Place of European Horror Cinema in the Fan Canon.’ In Allmer, Patricia, Brick, Emily, and Huxley, David (eds). European Nightmare: Horror Cinema in Europe Since 1945. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 25–34. Chin, Bertha. and Hitchcock Morimoto, Lori. 2013. ‘Towards a Theory of Transcultural Fandom.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 10(1). pp. 92–108. Christian, Aymar Jean. 2012. ‘The Web as Television Reimagined? Online Networks and the Pursuit of Legacy Media.’ Journal of Communication Inquiry. 36(4) pp. 340–356. Chronaki, Despina and Tsaliki, Liza. 2019. ‘Female Audiences’ Reception of American Horror Story in Greece.’ In Gerrard, Steve, Holland, Samantha, and Shail,

54 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Robert (eds). Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television. Bingley: Emerald. pp. 201–213. Clarke, M. J. 2013. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. London: Bloomsbury. Clarke, Rowena. 2016. ‘Consuming Television’s Golden Age with Hannibal Lecter.’ Alluvium. 31st May. https://www.alluvium-journal.org/2016/05/31/consumingtelevisions-golden-age-with-hannibal-lecter/ [Accessed 18 December 2021] Clasen, Mathias. 2017. Why Horror Seduces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coleman, Robin R. Means. 2011. Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. New York: Routledge. Couldry, Nick. 2007. ‘On the Set of The Sopranos: “Inside” a Fan’s Construction of Nearness.’ In Gray, Jonathan, Sandvoss, Cornell, and Harrington, C. L. (eds). Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press. pp. 139–148. Creed, Barbara. 1986. ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection.’ Screen. 27(1). pp. 44–71. Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Creed, Barbara. 2022. Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema. London: Routledge. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.’ University of Chicago Legal Forum. pp. 139–167. Crisp, Virginia. 2015. Film Distribution in the Digital Age: Pirates and Professionals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cunningham, Stuart and Craig, David. 2017. ‘Being ‘Really Real’ on YouTube: Authenticity, Community and Brand Culture in Social Media Entertainment.’ Media International Australia. 164(1). pp. 71–81. Cutchins, Dennis R. and Perry, Dennis R. (eds). 2018. Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster’s Eternal Lives in Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Daniel, Adam. 2020. Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms: From Found Footage to Virtual Reality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Day, Faithe, and Christian, Aymar Jean. 2017. ‘Locating Black Queer TV: Fans, Producers, and Networked Publics on YouTube.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.867 de Bruin-Molé, Megen. 2020. Gothic Remixed: Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions in 21st-Century Culture. London: Bloomsbury. Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie. 2017. ‘The World is Changing… and Transtexts are Rising.’ In Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

55

(eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge. pp. 1–11. Donnelly, K. J. 2005. The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television. London: BFI. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. New York: Routledge. Doyle, Gillian. 2010. ‘From Television to Multi-Platform.’ Convergence. 16(4). pp. 431–449. Doyle, Gillian. 2016. ‘Television Production, Funding Models and Exploitation of Content.’ Icono. 14(2). pp. 76–96. Doyle, Gillian, Paterson, Richard, and Barr, Kenny. 2021. Television Production in Transition: Independence, Scale, Sustainability and the Digital Challenge. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Dumas, Chris. 2014. ‘Horror and Psychoanalysis: An Introductory Primer.’ In Benshoff, Harry M. (ed). A Companion to the Horror Film. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 21–37. Dwyer, Tim. 2010. Media Convergence. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Egan, Kate. 2011. The Evil Dead. Chichester: Wallflower. Egan, Kate. 2022. ‘Childhood Memories of Horror Films in the Home: Questions, Patterns and Context.’ In Egan, Kate, Smith, Martin Ian, and Terrill, Jamie (eds). Researching Historical Screen Audiences. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 223–238. Enli, Gunn and Syvertsen, Trine. 2016. ‘The End of Television – Again! How TV Is Still Influenced by Cultural Factors in the Age of Digital Intermediaries.’ Media and Communication. 4(3). pp. 142–153. Ess, Charles and AoIR. 2002. ‘Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research. Recommendations From the AoIR Ethics Working Committee.’ AoIR Association of Internet Researchers. http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf [Accessed 4 April 2023] Evans, Elizabeth. 2011. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life. New York: Routledge. Evans, Elizabeth and McDonald, Paul. 2014. ‘Online Distribution of Film and Television in the UK.’ In Holt, Jennifer and Sanson, Kevin (eds). Connected Viewing: Selling, Sharing and Streaming Media in the Digital Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 158–179. Evans, Elizabeth, McDonald, Paul, Bae, Juyeon, Ray, Sriparna, and Santos, Emanuelle. 2016. ‘Universal Ideals in Local Realities: Online Viewing in South Korea, Brazil and India.’ Convergence. 22(4). pp. 408–425. Ewing, Jeff. 2018. ‘Streams in the Witch-House? The Golden Age of TV and the Future of Cosmic Horror.’ Forbes. 15th October. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ jeffewing/2018/10/15/streams-in-the-witch-house-the-golden-age-of-tv-and-thefuture-of-cosmic-horror/?sh=48af6a476cd9 ([Accessed 4 April 2023]

56 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Falvey, Eddie, Hickinbottom, Joe, and Wroot, Jonathan. 2020. ‘Horror 2020: Introducing New Blood.’ In Falvey, Eddie, Hickinbottom, Joe, and Wroot, Jonathan (eds). New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 1–11. Freeman, Matthew. 2017. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early TwentiethCentury Transmedia Story Worlds. New York: Routledge. Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo. 2019. ‘Introduction: Transmedia Studies – Where Now?’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 1–12. Freud, Sigmund. 2003. The Uncanny. London: Penguin Books. Geraghty, Christine and Lusted, David. 1998. ‘General Introduction.’ In Geraghty, Christine and Lusted, David (eds). The Television Studies Book. London: Arnold. pp. 1–6. Gillan, Jennifer. 2011. Television and New Media: Must-Click TV. New York: Routledge. Gomery, Douglas. 1996. ‘The Economics of the Horror Film.’ In Weaver III, James B. and Tamborini, Ron (eds). Horror Films: Current Research on Audience Preferences and Reactions. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 49–62. Gonçalves, João, Navio, Catarina, and Moura, Pedro. 2021. ‘The Occidental Otaku: Portuguese Audience Motivations for Viewing Anime.’ Convergence. 27(1). pp. 247–265. Grainge, Paul and Johnson, Catherine. 2018. ‘From Catch-up TV to Online TV: Digital Broadcasting and the Case of BBC iPlayer.’ Screen. 59(1). pp. 21–40. Gunter, Barrie, Harrison, Jackie, and Wykes, Maggie. 2003. Violence on Television: Distribution, Form, Context, and Themes. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gwenllian-Jones, Sara. 2003. ‘Web Wars: Resistance, Online Fandom and Studio Censorship.’ In Jancovich, Mark and Lyons, James (eds). Quality Popular Television. London: BFI. pp. 163–177. Hailu, Selome. 2022. ‘Netflix Top 10: ‘Stranger Things 4’ Becomes Second Title Ever to Cross 1 Billion Hours Viewed.’ Variety. 5th July. https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/ netflix-top-10-stranger-things-season-4-volume-2-billion-hours-1235309293/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Halfyard, Janet K. 2016. Sounds of Fear and Wonder: Music in Cult TV. London: I.B. Tauris. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. London: Routledge. Haraway, Donna J. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Hardenbergh, Margot. 2010. ‘The Death of Television.’ ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 67(2). pp. 170–176.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

57

Harlap, Itay. 2017. Television Drama in Israel: Identities in Post-TV Culture. London Bloomsbury. Harvey, Colin. E. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2019. ‘Transmedia Politics: Star Wars and the Ideological Battlegrounds of Popular Franchises.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 297–305. Hendy, David. 2013. Public Service Broadcasting. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hersko, Tyler. 2019. ‘Nearly Half of U.S. Consumers Are Frustrated With a Bloated Streaming Market.’ Indiewire. 13th June. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/ too-many-streaming-services-television-decentralization-1202149596/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Hill, Annette. 1997. Shocking Entertainment: Viewer Response to Violent Movies. Luton: University of Luton Press. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hills, Matt. 2005b. ‘Ringing the Changes: Cult Distinctions and Cultural Differences in US Fans’ Readings of Japanese Horror Cinema.’ In McRoy, Jay (ed). Japanese Horror Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 161–174. Hills, Matt. 2010a. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty First Century. London: I.B. Tauris. Hills, Matt. 2014a. ‘Horror Reception/Audiences.’ In Benshoff, Harry M. (ed). A Companion to the Horror Film. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 90–108. Hills, Matt. 2014b. ‘Returning to ‘Becoming-a-Fan’ Stories: Theorising Transformational Objects and the Emergence/Extension of Fandom.’ In Duits, Linda, Zwaan, Koos, and Reijnders, Stijn (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 9–21. Hills, Matt. 2015. ‘Storytelling and Storykilling: Affirmational/Transformational Discourses of Television Narrative.’ In Pearson, Roberta and Smith, Anthony N. (eds). Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 151–173. Hills, Matt. 2017a. ‘From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars Celebration as a Crossover/Hierarchical Space.’ In Guyness, Sean and Hassler-Forest, Dan (eds). Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 213–224. Hills, Matt. 2019. ‘Transmedia Paratexts: Information, Commercial, Diegetic, and Auratic Circulation.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 289–296.

58 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Hills, Matt and Williams, Rebecca. 2005. ‘Angels’ Monstrous Mothers and Vampires With Souls: Investigating the Abject in “Television Horror”.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). Reading Angel: The TV Spin-Off with a Soul. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 203–217. Hogan, Ron. 2014. ‘Is This the Golden Age of TV Horror?’ Den of Geek. 7th July. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/is-this-the-golden-age-of-tv-horror/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Holloway, Daniel. 2016. ‘“Stranger Things” Ratings: Where Series Ranks Among Netflix’s Most Watched.’ Variety. 25th August. https://variety.com/2016/tv/ news/stranger-things-tv-ratings-netflix-most-watched-1201844081/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] hooks, bell. 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge. Howard, Douglas L. 2010. ‘A Tale of Two Labyrinths: The Emotional Experience of Pan’s Labyrinth.’ In Byers, Michael and Lavery, David (eds). On the Verge of Tears: Why the Movies, Television, Music, Art, Popular Culture, Literature, and the Real World Makes Us Cry. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. pp. 77–92. Hughes, Sarah. 2012. ‘A Macabre Makeover: This Is a Golden Age For Horror on the Small Screen.’ Independent. 25th October. https://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/tv/features/macabre-makeover-golden-age-horror-smallscreen-8226882.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Hutchings, Peter. 2003, Dracula. London: I.B. Tauris. Hutchings, Peter. 2004. The Horror Film. London: Routledge. James R. 2019. ‘Black Mirror the Most Popular TV Series on Netflix UK.’ Vodzilla. 13th June. https://vodzilla.co/blog/vod-news/black-mirror-the-most-populartv-series-on-netflix-uk/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Jancovich, Mark. 2000. ‘“A Real Shocker”: Authenticity, Genre and the Struggle for Distinction.’ Continuum. 14(1). pp. 23–35. Jancovich, Mark. 2002a. ‘Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions.’ Cultural Studies. 16(2). pp. 306–322. Jancovich, Mark. 2018. “‘Where It Belongs”: Television Horror, Domesticity, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 29–44. Jenkins, Henry. 2006a. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2009a. ‘The Aesthetics of Transmedia: In Response to David Bordwell (Part Three).’ Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 10th September. http://henryjenkins. org/blog/2009/09/the_aesthetics_of_transmedia_i.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Jenkins, Henry. 2017. ‘Transmedia Logics and Locations.’ In Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie (eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge. pp. 220–240.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

59

Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Jenner, Mareike. 2016. ‘Is This TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and Binge-Watching.’ New Media and Society. 18(2). pp. 257–273. Jenner, Mareike. 2017. ‘Binge-watching: Video-on-Demand, Quality TV and Mainstreaming Fandom.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies. 20(3). pp. 304–320. Johnson, Catherine. 2005. Telefantasy. London: BFI. Johnson, Catherine. 2012. Branding Television. London: Routledge. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. London: Routledge. Johnson, Dominique Deirdre. 2015. ‘Misogynoir and Antiblack Racism: What The Walking Dead Teaches Us About the Limits of Speculative Fiction Fandom.’ Journal of Fandom Studies. 3(3). pp. 259–275. Jones, Eileen. 2015. ‘Actually, Mad Max: Fury Road Isn’t That Feminist; And It Isn’t That Good, Either.’ In These Times. 18th May. https://inthesetimes.com/article/ actually-mad-max-fury-road-isnt-that-feminist [Accessed 4 April 2023] Jowett, Lorna. and Abbott, Stacey. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London: I.B. Tauris. Kattelman, Beth. 2011. ‘“We Dare You to See This!”: Ballyhoo and the 1970s Horror Film.’ Horror Studies. 2(1). pp. 61–74. Katz, Brandon. 2018. ‘“Stranger Things” Is the Most Popular Streaming Show in the World.’ Observer. 27th February. https://observer.com/2018/02/stranger-thingsratings-netflix-amazon-video-hulu-details/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Keltner. S. K. 2011. Kristeva. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kermode, Mark. 2001. ‘I was a Teenage Horror Fan Or, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Linda Blair”.’ In Barker, Martin and Petley, Julian (eds). Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate. Second Edition. London: Routledge. pp. 126–134. Khan, Nashwa. 2015. ‘Mad Max: Fury Road and the Glaring Whiteness of PostApocalyptic Films.’ In These Times. 23rd May. https://inthesetimes.com/article/ mad-max-fury-road-and-the-glaring-whiteness-of-post-apocalyptic-f ilms [Accessed 4 April 2023] King, Stephen. 1981. Danse Macabre. London: Hodder. Kohnen, Melanie E. S. 2018a. ‘Fannish Affect, ”Quality” Fandom, and Transmedia Storytelling Campaigns.’ In Click, Melissa A. and Scott, Suzanne (eds). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. London: Routledge. pp. 337–346. Koistinen, Aino-Kaisa, Ruotsalainen, Maria, and Välisalo, Tanja. 2016. ‘The World Hobbit Project in Finland: Audience Responses and Transmedial User Practices.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 13(2). pp. 356–379. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

60 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Kristeva, Julia. 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press. Kuhn, Annette. 1984. ‘Women’s Genres.’ Screen. 25(1). pp. 18–29. Lechte. John. 2003. Key Contemporary Concepts: From Abjection to Zeno’s Paradox. London: Sage. Leeder, Murray. 2018. Horror Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury. Lester, Catherine. 2021. Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema. London: Bloomsbury. Light, Duncan. 2009. ‘Performing Transylvania: Tourism, Fantasy and Play in a Liminal Place.’ Tourist Studies. 9(3). pp. 240–258. Light, Duncan. 2017. ‘The Undead and Dark Tourism: Dracula Tourism in Romania.’ In Hooper, Glen and Lennon, John J. (eds). Dark Tourism: Practice and Interpretation. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 121–133. Lima, Cecília Almedia, Moreira, Diego Gouveia, and Calazans, Janaina Costa. 2015. ‘Netflix and the Maintenance of Television Genres Out of the Flow.’ Matrizes. 9(2). pp. 237–255. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: New York University Press. Loh, Benjamin Yew Hoong. 2019. ‘“Do You Have a Link?”: The Effects of Piracy and Online Streaming Services on the Sharing Practices of Television Content.’ SEARCH. 11(2). pp. 41–55. Lotz, Amanda D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized: Second Edition. New York: New York University Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Michigan: Maize Books. Lotz, Amanda D. 2019. ‘Teasing Apart Television Industry Disruption: Consequences of Meso-Level Financing Practices Before and After the US Multiplatform Era.’ Media, Culture & Society. 41(7). pp. 923–938. Luckhurst, Roger 2014. Alien. London: BFI. Luko, Alexis. 2013. ‘Listening to Ingmar Bergman’s Monsters: Horror Music, Mutes, and Acoustical Beings in Persona and Hour of the Wolf.’ Journal of Film Music. 6(1). pp. 5–30. Lynch, Andrew. 2022. Quality Telefantasy: How US Quality TV Brought Zombies, Dragons and Androids into the Mainstream. London: Routledge. Madden, Victoria. 2020. ‘“Wouldst Thou Like to Live Deliciously?”: Gothic Feminism and the Final Girl in Robert Eggers’ The Witch.’ In Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna and Rusnak, Stacy (eds). Final Girls, Feminism and Popular Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 135–151. Magistrale, Tony. 2003. Hollywood’s Stephen King. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

61

Mann, Craig Ian. 2020. Phases of the Moon: A Cultural History of the Werewolf Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mann, Daniel. 2014. ‘Introduction: When Television and New Media Work Worlds Collide.’ In Mann, Daniel (ed). Wired TV: Laboring Over an Interactive Future. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 1–31. Masson, Cynthea. 2010. ‘“It’s a Thing We Do’: Crying with Buffy and Angel.’ In Byers, Michael and Lavery, David (eds). On the Verge of Tears: Why the Movies, Television, Music, Art, Popular Culture, Literature, and the Real World Makes Us Cry. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. pp. 114–124. Matrix, Sidneyeve. 2014. ‘The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and OnDemand Digital Media Trends.’ Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. 6(1). pp. 119–138. Maylan, Katie. 2017. ‘Uncanny TV: Estranged Space and Subjectivity in Les Revenants and Top of the Lake.’ Television & New Media. 18(3). pp. 269–282. McCabe, Janet L. and Holmes, Dave. 2011. ‘Reversing Kristeva’s First Instance of Abjection: the Formation of Self Reconsidered.’ Nursing Inquiry. 18(1). pp. 77–83. McCormick, Casey J. 2018. ‘Active Fandom: Labor and Love in The Whedonverse.’ In Booth, Paul (ed). A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 369–384. McGee, Paula. 2008. ‘Ethical Issues in Using the Internet in Research: Commentary.’ Research Ethics Review. 4(3). pp. 117–119. McGrath, Meadhbh. 2014. ‘The New Wave of Horror Television.’ TN2 Magazine. 12th August. https://www.tn2magazine.ie/the-new-wave-of-horror-television/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Mikos, Lothar. 1996. ‘The Experience of Suspense: Between Fear and Pleasure.’ In Vorderer, Peter, Wulff, Hans J., and Friedrichsen, Mike (eds). Suspense: Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations. New York: Routledge. pp. 37–49. Miles, Robert. 2001. ‘Abjection, Nationalism and the Gothic.’ In Botting, Fred (ed). The Gothic. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. pp. 47–70. Miller, Toby. 2002. ‘Introduction.’ In Miller, Toby (ed). Television Studies. London: BFI. pp. 1–3. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Morimoto, Lori. 2018. ‘The “Totoro Meme” and the Politics of Transfandom Pleasure.’ East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. 4(1). pp. 77–92.

62 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Mumford, Gwilym. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3 Smashes Viewing Figure Record for Netflix.’ The Guardian. 9th July. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-andradio/2019/jul/09/stranger-things-3-record-viewing-figures-for-netflix [Accessed 4 April 2023] Ndalianis, Angela. 2012. The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses. Jefferson: McFarland. Nelson, Robin. 2015. ‘Studying Television Drama.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book: Third Edition. London. BFI. pp. 16–17. Newman, Michael Z. 2012. ‘Free TV: File-Sharing and the Value of Television.’ Television & New Media. 13(6). pp. 463–479. Newman, Michael Z. 2014. ‘Say “Pulp Fiction” One More Goddamn Time: Quotation Culture and an Internet-Age Classic.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 12(2). pp. 125–142. Newman, Michael Z. and Levine, Elana. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge. O’Connell, Mikey. 2014. ‘TV Ratings: “American Horror Story: Coven” Wraps With Series’ Biggest Finale.” The Hollywood Reporter. 30th January. https://www. hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-american-horror-story-675853/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Oliver, Kelly. 1993. Reading Kristeva: Unravelling the Double-Bind. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Pande, Rukmini. 2018. Squee From the Margins: Fandom and Race. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Pardo, Alejandro. 2015. ‘From the Big Screen to the Small Ones: How Digitization is Transforming the Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption of Movies.’ In Crisp, Virginia and Gonring, Gabriel Menotti (eds). Besides the Screen: Moving Images Through Distribution, Promotion and Curation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 23–45. Peirse, Alison. 2013. After Dracula: The 1930s Horror Film. London: I.B. Tauris. Pett, Emma. 2017. ‘Transnational Cult Paratexts: Exploring Audience Readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme Brand.’ Transnational Cinemas. 8(1). pp. 35–48. Platts, Todd K. 2020. ‘Producing Zombie Television: AMC, The Walking Dead, and the Institutional Dynamics of Green-Lighting Hard-Edged Horror on Cable.’ Critical Studies in Television. pp. 1–17. Powell, Anna. 2005. Deleuze and Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rendell, James. 2018. ‘Bridge Builders, World Makers: Transcultural Studio Ghibli Fan Crafting.’ East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. 4(1). pp. 93–109. Rendell, James. 2019a. ‘Black (Anti)Fandom’s Intersectional Politicization of The Walking Dead as a Transmedia Franchise.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1477

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

63

Rendell, James. 2020. ‘Staying In, Rocking Out: Online Live Music Portal Shows During the Coronavirus Pandemic.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. pp. 1–20. Rendell, James. 2021a. ‘“I Am (Not) Major”: Anti-Fan Memes of Paramount Pictures’ Ghost in the Shell Marketing Campaign.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 19(2). pp. 173–199. Rendell, James. Forthcoming. ‘Horror TV.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book. Fourth Edition. London: BFI. Richards, Denzell. 2017. ‘Historicizing Transtexts and Transmedia.’ In Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie (eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge. pp. 15–32. Rinzler, J. W. 2019. The Making of Alien. London: Titan. Ross, Sharon Marie. 2008. Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet. Malden: Blackwell. Saggini, Francesca and Soccio, Anna Enrichetta (eds). 2018. Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein’s Afterlives. Lewisburg: Brucknell University Press. Salmons, Janet. 2014. ‘Online Research Ethics: Questions Researchers Ask, Answers Guidelines Provide.’ In Woodfield, Kandy (ed). Social Media in Social Research: Blogs on Blurring the Boundaries. [Kindle Version.] NatCen Social Research. Chapter 11. Sandvoss, Cornell. 2005. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. Cambridge: Polity. Scales, Adam Christopher. 2015. Logging into Horror’s Closet: Gay Fans, the Horror Film and Online Culture. PhD diss., University of East Anglia. Schippers, Birgit. 2011. Julia Kristeva and Feminist Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Schlesinger, Philip, Dobash, R. Emerson, Dobash, Russell P. and Weaver, C. Kay. 1992. Women Viewing Violence. London: BFI. Scott, Suzanne. 2013a. ‘Battlestar Galactica: Fans and Ancillary Content.’ In Thompson, Ethan and Mittell, Jason (eds). How to Watch Television. New York: New York University. pp. 320–329. Scott, Suzanne. 2013b. ‘Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling.’ In Delwiche, Aaron and Henderson, Jennifer Jacobs (eds). The Participatory Cultures Handbook. New York: Routledge. pp. 43–52. Shackleton, Liz. 2017. ‘“Golden Age of Television” Reaches Asia.’ Screen Daily. 1st June. https://www.screendaily.com/features/golden-age-of-television-reachesasia/5117767.article [Accessed 4 April 2023] Shail, Robert, Holland, Samantha, and Gerrard, Steven (eds). 2019. Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics, Games and Transmedia. Bingley: Emerald. Sim, Gerald. 2016. ‘Individual Disruptors and Economic Game Changers: Netflix, New Media, and Neoliberalism.’ In McDonald, Kevin and Smith-Rowsey, Daniel

64 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

(eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 185–201. Sipos, Thomas M. 2010. Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. Jefferson: McFarland. Smith, Martin Ian. 2019. Remembering “the Scariest Movie of All Time”: A Grounded Audience Study of The Exorcist. PhD diss., Northumbria University. Smuts, Aaron. 2014. ‘Cognitive and Philosophical Approaches to Horror.’ In Benshoff, Harry M. (ed). A Companion to the Horror Film. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 3–20. Sobchack, Vivian. 2004a. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkley: University of California Press. Stanfill, Mel. 2020. ‘Introduction: The Reactionary in the Fan and the Fan in the Reactionary.’ Television & New Media. 21(2). pp. 123–134. Steele, Catherine Knight. 2016. ‘The Digital Barbershop: Blogs and Online Oral Culture within the African American Community.’ Social Media and Society. 2(4). pp. 1–10. Steele, Catherine Knight. 2018. ‘Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online.’ Television and New Media. 19(2). pp. 112–127. Stein, Louisa, Ellen. 2017. ‘Fandom and the Transtext.’ In Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie (eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge. pp. 71–89. Stoll, Julia. 2021a. ‘Most Viewed TV Shows in the United States in 2020.’ Statista. 13th July. https://www.statista.com/statistics/321390/most-viewed-tv-shows-usa/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Stoll, Julia. 2021b. ‘Total Number of Viewers of the Most Watched Television Shows in the United States in the 2020/2021 Season.’ Statista. 2nd August. https://www. statista.com/statistics/804812/top-tv-series-usa-2015/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Stoll, Julia. 2021c. ‘Most Expensive Netflix Original Series as of March 2021, by Production Cost Per Episode.’ Statista. 16th July. https://www.statista.com/ statistics/1249573/most-expensive-netflix-original-series-production-cost-perepisode/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Strangelove, Michael. 2015. Post-TV: Piracy, Cord-Cutting, and the Future of Television. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Stromberg, Peter G. 1999. ‘The “I” of Enthrallment.’ Ethos. 27(4). pp. 490–504. Struthers, D. 2015. ‘Long Live the (Second) Golden Age.’ Concrete. 28th April. https://www.concrete-online.co.uk/long-live-the-second-golden-age/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Tilly, Chris. 2018. ‘The State of Horror: Why We’re in the Midst of a Golden Age.’ Fandom.Com. 29th October. https://www.fandom.com/articles​/the​-state-ofhorror-why-were-in-the-midst-of-a-golden-age [Accessed 4 April 2023] Tomkins, Silvan S. 1984. ‘Affect Theory.’ In Scherer, Klaus R. and Ekman, Paul (eds). Approaches to Emotion. New York: Psychology Press. pp. 163–195.

Introduc tion – T V Horror: What a Time to Be Alive… and Undead

65

Tompkins, Joe. 2014. ‘Horror 2.0 (On Demand): The Digital Convergence of Horror Film Culture.’ Television and New Media. 15(5). pp. 413–432. Trussell, Jacob. 2018. ‘We’re In A Golden Age of Horror Television.’ Ghastly Grinning. https://www.ghastlygrinning.com/home/2018/3/1/were-in-a-golden-age-o [Accessed 18 December 2021] Tudor, Andrew. 1997. ‘Why Horror? The Peculiar Pleasures of a Popular Genre.’ Cultural Studies. 11(3). pp. 443–463. Turner, Graeme. 2015. ‘Genre, Hybridity and Mutation.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book: Third Edition. London: BFI. p. 9. Turner, Graeme. 2021. ‘Television Studies, We Need to Talk About “Binge-Viewing”.’ Television & New Media. 22(3). pp. 228–240. Tyler, Imogen. 2009. ‘Against Abjection.’ Feminist Theory. 10(1). pp. 77–98. Uricchio, William. 2009. ‘Contextualizing the Broadcast Era: Nation, Commerce, and Constraint.’ The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 625(1). pp. 60–73. van Alphen, Ernst. 2016. ‘Skin, Body, Self: The Question of the Abject in the Works of Francis Bacon.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 119–130. Van Esler, Mike. 2016. ‘Not Yet the Post-TV Era: Network and MVPD Adaptation to Emergent Distribution Technologies.’ Media and Communication. 4(3). pp. 131–141. Wanzo, Rebecca. 2015. ‘African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 20. https://doi. org/10.3983/twc.2015.0699. Wark, Jayne. 2016. ‘Queering Abjection: A Lesbian, Feminist, and Canadian Perspective.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 30–50. Warner, Kristen J. 2015a. The Cultural Politics of Colourblind Casting. New York: Routledge. Warner, Kristen J. 2015b. ‘ABC’s Scandal and Black Women’s Fandom.’ In Levine, Elana (ed). Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. pp. 32–50. Warner, Kristen J. 2017. ‘In the Time of Plastic Representation.’ Film Quarterly. 71(2). https://filmquarterly.org/2017/12/04/in-the-time-of-plastic-representation/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Warner, Kristen J. 2018. ‘The Emergence of the Iris West Defense Squad.’ In Click, Melissa A. and Scott, Suzanne (eds). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. London: Routledge. pp. 253–261. Wells-Lassagne, Shannon. 2017. Television and Serial Adaptation. New York: Routledge.

66 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Wheatley, Helen. 2006. Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wheatley, Helen. 2016. Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure. London: I.B. Tauris. Williams, Rebecca. 2020. Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Wilson, Laura. 2015. Spectatorship, Embodiment and Physicality in the Contemporary Mutilation Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, Robin. 1986. Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press. Yarbrough, Marylin and Bennett, Crystal. 2000. ‘Cassandra and the “Sistahs”: The Peculiar Treatment of African American Women in the Myth of Women as Liars.’ The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice. 24. pp. 626–657.

Part 1 Post-TV Horror Ecologies

1.

Jekyll and Hyde: TV Horror’s Incorporation of Other Genres and Audiences Abstract Employing interpellation as a reading strategy, the chapter analyses how TV horror hails genre fans and wider audiences, supporting brand identities and horror’s mainstreaming on television: US premium subscription channels HBO’s Carnivále and Showtime’s Masters of Horror episode ‘Imprint’ incorporate the cinematic to appeal to quality audiences. British teen digital channels E4 and BBC3 hybridize zombies with reality TV as multigeneric interpellation in Dead Set and I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse respectively. Casting Lady Gaga in American Horror Story hails wider music fans. The chapter also offers the original term ‘flexi-serial’ as a distinct form of storytelling that facilitates cult and mainstream consumption habits. Finally, Stranger Things supports Netflix’s transgenerational audience remit via nostalgia and gradational intertextuality that engenders transmediality. Keywords: interpellation, paratexts, cult, mainstream, quality TV, ordinary television

Digital technologies have facilitated increased tailoring and targeting of particular taste cultures and narrowcast viewership. Notably, the British free-to-air Horror Channel and subscription-based streaming platform Shudder both specifically aim to appeal to cult genre fans. However, horror television has been increasingly produced on non-genre specific channels/ portals yet does not exnominate nor restrain its horror qualities. As Bowen points out, ‘[b]roadcast, cable, and streaming networks have all embraced horror in their lineups’ (2018). Consequently, texts can be clustered not just by their genre traits, but also within producers’ branded catalogues (see also

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_ch01

70 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Platts, 2020, pp. 8–10). Moreover, horror movies – particularly notably underground, extremely violent, strikingly realistic, explicitly sexualized, highly reflexive, and/or culturally transgressive horror movies – are synonymous with cult cinema (Mathijs and Sexton, 2011, pp. 194–202), unsurprisingly ‘geared [less] towards a mass public that is not automatically associated with this kind of movie going and consumption’ (ibid., p. 30). Whilst such outsiderdom has informed how cult TV has been traditionally theorized (e.g. Jancovich and Hunt, 2004), dialogic niche/mainstream binaries frequently fall short when examining twenty-first century cult blockbuster tele-fictions that garner both impassioned devotees and are hugely popular (Pearson, 2010; Hills, 2010b), in turn attesting to quality TV status (Abbott, 2010, p. 91; Newman and Levine, 2012, p. 29). Thus, whilst producers may use the ‘transgressive aesthetics’ (Wilcox, 2010) of body horror or the genre’s ‘transgressive subject matter’ (Abbott, 2010, p. 93), both traditionally reserved for cinema, to inscribe quality/ value into their TV horror, said producers can attract genre fans and more expansive viewership reflective of channels’ target demographics that mirror established brand identities via incorporating various textual, genre, and/or media features. This mainstreaming gambit is not entirely new (e.g. Altman, 1999, pp. 128–132). Waves of horror cinema have frequently sought widespread consumption. As Leeder highlights, 1930s–40s prestige horror film adaptations were a way to ‘court mainstream audiences’ (2018, p. 33). Nowell (2011, pp. 46–54) examines 1970s–80s teen slashers’ commercial logic. Beginning with trailblazer hits evincing economic viability, their textual blueprints are subsequently harnessed by others attempting to cash-in on the trend’s growing popularity. With emulation reaching saturation point, trite carpetbagging of (sub)genre vehicles floods the market often coinciding with waning audience interest, leading to a decline in productions. With the hugely successful Twilight franchise, Halfyard (2016, p. 97) argues the films’ use of popular chart music sought to appeal to a primarily female teen audience. Evidently, ‘[h]orror media’s political economy is equally as important as its political commentary’ (Rendell, 2021b). However, whilst evidencing overlap and borrowings with cinema, it is important to consider television as a specific medium with its own technological, industrial, and cultural histories and developments. As such, this chapter undertakes ‘close analysis of televisual – form, aesthetic, tone, and representation – with a charting of larger industrial frameworks’ (Woods, 2016, p. 5) to explore ways industry speaks to and interpellates horror and wider audiences (see also Ross, 2008; Williams, 2013, p. 95; Balanzategui and Lynch, 2022). This begins by looking at where the ‘cinematic’ horror

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

71

so common on our small screens today first emerges: US premium cable channels HBO and Showtime. Such genre employment at textual and paratextual levels fits with the channels’ branded positions that situates them oppositionally to conventional television. Moving across the Atlantic Ocean, the chapter then addresses how, in the face of increased market competition brought about by digitization, British teen/young adult channels E4 and BBC3 combine the globally popular zombie with reality television. Such hybridization contests what is meant by ‘cinematic’ (Mills, 2013, p. 60; Wheatley, 2016, pp. 6–7), and, therefore, what is ‘quality’ (Hodkinson, 2017, p. 46). The chapter then explores how FX’s American Horror Story uses what I term flexi-serial narrative structuring that fosters multiple entry sites into the franchise and the use of A-list celebrity Lady Gaga to attract an array of audiences. Finally, the chapter looks at how Netflix (post-)TV cult blockbuster Stranger Things incorporates many of these textual qualities but does so in a way that maps onto the service’s targeting of transgenerational co-viewing pleasures that maintains its large subscription base. This considers not only the series’ televisual form but also how the show’s storyworld spills over into a range of transmedia objects and offshoots, further attesting to the show’s cult qualities. In doing so, the chapter begins to show how horror’s televisual popularization is multifaceted and context specific.

Premium Scares: Quality/Cult TV Horror While horror and television’s relationship is longstanding, the medium’s implementation of the genre’s graphic depiction of corporal trauma and monstrous entities and forces at the turn of the second millennium was initially and exclusively cultivated by those channels with the financial and artistic freedom to do so. Importantly, unlike commercial television that relies on advertising revenue, US premium subscription channels such as HBO and Showtime’s main source of income stems from audiences’ monthly subscriptions (Cherry, 2010, p. 7). As such, they sit outside the jurisdiction of the FCC, providing freedom to depict violent and sexual scenes (Abbott, 2012b, p. 26); representations traditionally deemed ill-fitting for television as a domestic familial platform (Gauntlett and Hill, 1999, p. 248). Turning to HBO, who applied ‘the moniker of “quality” to its programming […] attempted to distinguish what types of programs can be found on the pay network versus is broadcast counterparts as well as what type of audience HBO programming attracts’ (Santo, 2008, p. 31). Narrowcasting targets an ‘upscale demographic willing to pay extra for more specialised and more

72 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

highbrow fare’ (Feuer, 2007, p. 147). The channel’s claims of superiority over other television is mapped onto their audience, ‘a specific “demographic of quality” – urban, educated adults from 18 to 35, who profess a love for and interest in quality cinematic storytelling’ (Aloi and Johnston, 2015, p. 10). It is this quality cinematic storytelling that horrality traditionally reserved for film allows TV horror Carnivále (HBO 2003–2005) to be produced within the realms of quality TV output that interpellates ‘quality’ audiences. Set during the Great Depression and dustbowl of 1934, Carnivále depicts the spiritual battle between Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crow, the former supported by a carnival troupe whilst the latter forms the Knights of Jericho. The show utilizes horror film imagery, tropes, and themes concordant with HBO’s brand identity since part of the channel’s cinematic aesthetic comes from adopting, and frequently subverting, ‘classic US [film] genres’ (McCabe, 2013, p. 190). The series’ dramatization of the carnival freak show chimes with the teratological body’s prominent position within American history (Burkhead, 2015, p. 142) and horror cinema’s past (Weiner, 2015, pp. 133–134), exemplified in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932). The troupe consists of conjoined twins, a strong man, a Scorpion Lady with fused fingers, psychics, a lizard man, and a boss with dwarfism. However, whilst the series stresses the outsider Otherness of the carnival, it undermines its monstrosity. Rather, normate bodies (Garland-Thompson, 1996) are frequently dangerous, such as miners who murder and disfigure one of the carnival’s young female dancers (S1, E5), and Varlyn Stroud, Justin’s right-hand man who relishes violence and kills without mercy. Furthermore, while Carnivále’s depictions of poverty take from Grapes of Wrath (Ford 1940), the series also adopts ‘cultural poetics of white trash’ (Hartigan Jr, 2005, p. 135), negative stereotypes ‘as much fantasy as reality’ (ibid., p. 136) perpetuated by the poor white monstrous figure’s longstanding cinematic history: in early films such as Child Bride (Revier 1938), 1960s–70s exploitation and horror cinema, and post-9/11 hillbilly horror (McDonough and Landis, 1985; Blake, 2008). When searching for an elderly woman who can provide information about the tattooed man, Ben is attacked by three rural men (S2, E3). Taking him back to the group, a heavily pregnant woman embodies abject hypersexual and sexually transgressive stereotypes. The clan take Ben to their grandmother, a blind woman who dug out her own eyes. She is both highly aggressive – sewing a grandson’s mouth shut – and racist – possessing a confederate flag and her deceased husband a member of the Ku Klux Klan. However, again Carnivále subverts this horror (sub)genre when the matriarch informs Ben that he is actually part of the family and provides him with the knife needed to vanquish Justin (S2, E4).

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

73

Yet, despite its tautological heritage derived from lowly horror cinema exploiting teratological and white rural bodies, Robin Nelson locates Carnivále within a growing corpus of twenty-first century ‘high-end’ TV drama (2007, p. 77). Such television employs cinematic aesthetics and distinct visual styles, frequent use of graphic language and violence, sophisticated narratization, and hybridized genres and forms. This is evident in the show’s frequent use of wide and long shots that establish setting, alongside tonal and artistic flare. For example, as the carnival pack up to move onto the next town, panoramic shots bathed in ‘beautiful light’ (Lury, 2005, p. 38), supported by non-diegetic music, romanticize the American landscape (S2, E2). Comparatively, the show’s horror moments frequently use chiaroscuro lighting and heavily drenched red colours as part of its atmospheric visuality. Both highly filmic, the show’s verisimilitude of 1930s America ‘actually makes the unreal elements more real, helps realize the magic of the carnies and the Avatars […] [and] the ongoing confrontation between good and evil’ (Folk, 2015, p. 48). Likewise, ‘[v]ariations in tonal range, image quality and contrast are frequently used to enhance the story’ (Kinsey, 2015, p. 18), as one sees a ‘visual contrast (both literally and f iguratively) between the carnival imagery and that of Brother Justin’s world’ (ibid., p. 26). Moreover, within Carnivále’s ‘tonal range’ a surreal aesthetic ‘develops distinctive “art” strategies for representing the mystical, but within a framework that heightens the fantastic by contrasting realism, hyperrealism and surrealism’ (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 177). This is exemplified in the frequent use of visions that employ a montage of imagery, where ‘some prefigure events to come or show past events that characters find out about’ (ibid., p. 175). The use of surreal visuals, sound, and lighting is juxtaposed to realistic depictions of the North American landscape. As such, Carnivále’s aesthetic reflects HBO’s wider adoption of European art cinema (Feuer, 2007, p. 148). The show shifts the ‘“low” associations’ of the horror (Jowett, 2017, p. 9) to a premium status by entrenching the genre within the high associations of art media. In doing so, hailing quality audiences abound with economic and cultural capital. However, to read Carnivále solely as cinematic TV horror neglects its important televisual qualities. The series harnesses a multinarrative long arc structure that television far more than cinema affords (Creeber, 2004, pp. 4–6), producing detailed character development and plot complexity. Additionally, intertextual ties to cult television activated via actors’ previous roles can attract existing fans and further advances the show’s surreal horror underpinning (Jowett, 2017, p. 11). Most notably Michael J. Anderson’s,

74 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

who plays Samson, iconic role in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s cult classic Twin Peaks (ABC 1990–1991) as the Man from Another Place. Anderson’s subcultural celebrity status is brought to the fore literally as he opens both series of Carnivále via a close-up directly talking to the audience. Moreover, throughout the series his close relationship with the carnival’s management links him to the spiritual world, much like Anderson’s otherworldly character in Twin Peaks. Whilst Carnivále was unusual for its construction of horror television, the show came out during what others have labelled ‘the golden age of HBO drama’ (Marc, 2008, p. 101). Depictions of violence and sex are emblematic of an epoch where HBO used these as institutionalized quality markers in series such as Oz (1997–2003), The Sopranos (1999–2007), Deadwood (2004–2006), and The Wire (2002–2008) (McCabe and Akass, 2007). The show’s risky adoption of horror as generically distinct was during a period when many of the other risks the channel was taking were paying off. Carnivále, therefore, adopts the nomenclature of quality TV partly because it can be temporally located within HBO’s pre-existing brand identity that is tonally and stylistically harmonious with its premium television catalogue. That said, despite utilization of f ilmic horror qualities, art cinema sensibilities, and cult media actors, Carnivále was cancelled after two seasons. While not at the mercy of popularity, due to the show’s expensive production and decreasing viewing figures the high-end longform horror was deemed unsustainable by HBO (Branco, 2015, p. 59). Certainly, despite being a lucrative genre, many TV horror texts have been cancelled after just one season (e.g. Damien, The Mist (Spike 2017), Lovecraft Country (HBO 2020), The Midnight Club (Netflix 2022)). Turning to HBO’s premium competitor Showtime, we find alternative strategies of cinematic quality, particularly the amplification of graphic horror television in its series Masters of Horror (MOH). Both HBO and Showtime exploit their premium cable position to produce ‘“edgy” programming’ (Kelso, 2008, p. 54). However, ‘HBO has a much larger financial base on which to operate […] [and] has the resources to dedicate to expansive marketing campaigns’ (ibid.). Given its inferior pecuniary position, Showtime often ‘fine-tune[s] to target specific viewers more directly’ (Backstein, 2001, p. 305), as was the case of MOH hailing specific cult horror fandoms. Within the anthology series, different directors, most of whom are canonical within cult horror cinema, direct different episodes using extreme graphic imagery that brings ‘some of the most outrageously intense, violent, sexual, controversial, and political, horror images to television screens’ (Totaro, 2010, p. 87).

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

75

Significantly, MOH’s producer Mick Garris professed having no creative input, acting merely as a conduit to bring horror directors together. Garris’ emphasis on creative freedom, supported by Showtime’s industry position, propagates auteur status towards the series’ contributors in attempts to target pre-existing niche horror fans. Yet this claim of relinquishing production power is open to scrutiny. As its title declares, MOH’s emphasis on masters and its collation of cult horror film directors lay claims to quality status through auteur discourse. However, both auteur theory and labelling materialize from/with overt masculine codings (Holmes, 2007), which have extended to, and play a large part in, the gendering of horror cinema production (see Peirse, 2020). Likewise, cult discourse has relied heavily on masculinized symbolism (Thornton, 1995; Hollows, 2003). All of which misconceives how horror has been made by, aimed at, and enjoyed by women (Nowell, 2011; Cherry, 1999). Yet, beyond symbolic value, ‘the commerce of the auteur [status]’ (Corrigan, 1998, pp. 41–42) also bestows certain directors’ economic value. Harrington suggests that anthology and omnibus horror, ‘despite their self-professed eclecticism, offer an inconvenient cultural barometer that exposes the limits of a frustrating, male-dominated status quo’ (2020, p. 157). Harrington astutely points out, MOH ‘featured twenty-six stand-alone episodes directed by predominantly American horror film directors. None of these titles featured the work of a female director’ (ibid., p. 158). The same is true for all bar one of the thirteen episodes of anthology series Fear Itself (NBC 2008). Thus, alongside filtration through generic and industrial discourse, imbuing quality accreditation with (sub)cultural connotations further shapes value schemas. This perpetuates positions of privilege and marginalization that cut across intersectional identities – gender, race, sexuality, age, class, normative/disabled bodies – both in the production and reception of horror screen media. Furthermore, addressing contemporary cult TV, Hills argues that ‘producers can use storytelling techniques and genre [to hail existing] fans […] [a]ppealing to built-in, loyal audiences’ (2013, pp. 290–291). Hills terms this ‘neo-cult’ television’ (ibid.), which self-consciously attempts to ‘appeal to historical, established audiences […] [and] various, “mainstream” audience[s]’ (ibid., p. 291) in bids to ‘produce “event” TV (i.e. “quality,” “cinematic” television)’ (ibid., p. 297). Neo-cult TV is novel to new viewers whilst seeking to entice established fandoms, the latter of whom can act as bastions of authenticity should they champion the production. Garris’ choice of Japanese director Miike Takashi and his episode ‘Imprint’ discursively sought to piggyback the transcultural popularity of Japanese horror (J-horror) and East Asian extreme cinema, the subgenres/cycles’ mainstream success as

76 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Hollywood remakes, and the international notoriety and author functionality of Miike himself 1 (see Foucault, 1979). The episode follows Christopher, a US journalist searching for his lost Japanese lover, Komono, tracing her steps back to an otherworldly brothel where a disfigured concubine retells in Rashomon-like fashion her own past and that of the missing woman, revealing herself to be a malevolent futakuchi-onna (a two-mouthed yōkai/monster). Employing tropes from Kaidan ghost stories of revenging spectral women and kabuki’s ‘aesthetic of cruelty’ (Wee, 2014, p. 31), ‘Imprint’ is extreme in both its visuality and subject matter, using stark colours, bold silhouettes, and graphic visualizations of bodily violence, concurrent with its taboo subject matter of rape, incest, torture, and murder. Indeed, as a US/Japanese co-production, ‘Imprint’ was Miike’s first English-speaking vehicle that saw the director deliberately creating content that was ‘right up to the limit of what American television would tolerate’ (Miike cited in Schilling, 2006). However, in this case, neocult TV horror generics not only operate textually but also paratextually. Building off Genette’s term (1997), Jonathan Gray (2010) conceptualizes paratexts as satellite texts oscillating around the parent text that shape its meaning, such as adverts, promotional material, and merchandise. Importantly, paratexts ‘condition our entrance to texts, telling what to expect, and setting the terms of our “faith” in subsequent transubstantiation’ (ibid., p. 4). Showtime’s paratextual framing of ‘Imprint’ and Miike incorporated pre-existing symbolic value surrounding the director, J-horror, and East Asian extreme cinema popularized by Western distributors such as Tartan’s ‘Asia Extreme’ subsidiary. The distributor’s banner, promotional content, and DVD covers textually clustered together specific East Asian cinema as daring, dangerous, and 1 If post-structuralist dictum declares the death of the author that opens up the text to polysemy, Foucault explores ‘the empty space left by the author’s disappearance’ (1979, p. 121). The author as rhetorical device functions to load text with semiotic meaning, and therefore, is itself polysemic, employed in various manners as a contextualizer of meaning. As Foucault writes, [the author’s name] is functional in that it serves as a means of classification. A name can group together a number of texts and thus differentiate them from others. A name also establishes different forms of relationships among texts […] Finally, the author’s name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse. Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary, fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates. (ibid., p. 123) Consequently, ‘the name of the author remains at the contours of texts – separating one from the other, defining their form, and characterizing their mode of existence’ (ibid.).

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

77

distinctly non-Western (Dew, 2007, pp. 53–54), with Miike its figurehead. Subsequently, Western critics focused on the extreme sexual violence of his films (Martin, 2015, p. 42), often deploying the ‘term auteur in relation to Miike, promoting the authorial interpretation of the work, rather than a generic one’ (Rawle, 2014, p. 226). Yet, in Japan, Miike’s work is far more elastic, spanning an array of genres, aesthetics, and themes. Moreover, auteur status is not readily attached to Miike. Rather, he is often framed as a director-for-hire (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 103) or a creator of ‘schlock’ (Frey, 2016, p. 7). Hence, Miike’s ‘transnational commerce and practices of auteurism’ are ‘embedded in the material conditions and commercial strategies of international institutions and networks of circulation’ (Lee, 2008, p. 204). With such dynamics, symbolic/cultural value ascribed to ‘“foreign” […] directors is habitually reconstituted in transnational processes and thus contingent upon local configurations’ (ibid., p. 205). Miike has been presented as the face of ‘Asia Extreme’ cinema, supported by Western hype and evidencing transnational commercial value as an auteur. This transnational (re) configuration of Miike as an auteur provides a ‘signifier of cultural difference’ (Rawle, 2014, p. 213), hermeneutically sealing his work as ‘Japanese’ even if said work was co-produced, as was ‘Imprint’. Consequently, Miike’s hype shapes the ‘genre, gender, theme, style and relevant intertexts [of ‘Imprint’]’ (Gray, 2010, p. 18), whereby Showtime used the existing Western framework surrounding the director to position ‘Imprint’ not only as ‘not TV’, but also ‘not American TV’ that is attractive to pre-existing transnational Asia Extreme fans. Notably, the US, European, and British DVD covers underscore key abject spectacle that takes place in ‘Imprint’, such as the graphic torture scene involving concubines sticking needles in Komono’s fingernails and mouth, or the monstrous conjoined twins, the product of incest. The episode is, therefore, marketed on its shocking horror visuals that aesthetically match other ‘extreme’ Miike texts. Indeed, these DVD iterations give sole credit to Miike, placing his name alongside his most transculturally authenticated and infamous works, Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001). Thus, Western DVD formatting paratextually locates ‘Imprint’ with Miike’s particularly violent and sexualized works, whilst masking his eclectic output that potentially undermines his horror auteur status. Likewise, there is no mention of ‘Imprint’ being an adaptation of the Japanese novella Bokkee Kyoutee penned by feminist author Shimako Iwai. Shimako herself features as an extra in ‘Imprint’ and is interviewed in the DVD extras, providing additional ‘filters of meaning’ (Kompare, 2006, p. 349). Consequently, anything that

78 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

complicates generic, authorial, or gendered meanings surrounding ‘Imprint’ is paratextually silenced in favour of distilling a clear knowledge framework that supports MOH’s neo-cult TV horror image. Finally, the American producers deemed the episode ‘too graphic to be aired’ (Brown, 2006), pulling ‘Imprint’ from broadcast. Nevertheless, while Showtime self-censored ‘Imprint’, its DVD packaging claims the episode ‘was so violent and controversial that it was banned from cable broadcast in the United States’. Whilst semantically analogous, the latter pushes connotations of danger and exoticism by claiming an enforced removal leading to textual exclusivity. Accordingly, ‘by virtue of the fact that it makes certain media texts scarce, hard to find, and thus subculturally desirable and distinctive’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 103), these paratextual frameworks reinforce pre-existing branding around Miike, Asia Extreme cinema, and Showtime itself, furthering the episode’s neo-cult sensibilities. HBO and Showtime used various facets of TV horror that have become commonplace over the last two decades such as high-end aesthetics, graphic imagery, playing with horror film subgenres/cycles, and the use of cinema personnel with (sub)cultural cachet, all of which add symbolic and economic value to television productions. Both channels would go on create other quality/cult TV horror series including True Blood, Lovecraft Country, Penny Dreadful (Showtime 2014–2016), Dexter (Showtime 2006–2013), Yellowjackets (Showtime 2021–), and Let the Right One In (Showtime (2022) (an adaptation of the novel (Lindqvist 2004) and film (Alfredson 2008), see Chapter 2) that continue to embrace horrality and push the boundaries of horror on television. I turn now to the UK to begin considering digital media’s impact on national televisual ecologies that has supported the popularization of modern TV horror.

The Digital and the Undead: British Young Adult/Teen Horror TV Digital television in the UK was bolstered by the subscription service Sky’s introduction in 1994. Along with providing audiences more choice and channels, Sky’s heavy focus on North American media saw Britain’s broadcast ecology becoming increasingly transnational (Born, 2003). Consequently, channels with a public service broadcast ethos and remit now reside in digital media markets and, therefore, must compete within a more commercial paradigm both nationally and internationally (Bignell, 2013, pp. 70–71). Dealing with heightened diversification of content and audiences, a number of youth-orientated digital channels aimed at 16–34-year-olds (Woods, 2016,

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

79

p. 30) have mixed horror into their brand identity and televisual repertoire. For example, many have credited the TV iteration of The Walking Dead (TWD) for popularizing the zombie and galvanizing the global ‘zombie renaissance’ (Bishop, 2015, p. 5), being a ‘trailblazer hit’ that prompted the boom in graphic horror television (Gaynor, 2022, p. 35), and exemplifying Quality Telefantasy with concurrent cult and mainstream appeal (Lynch, 2022, pp. 50–52). However, two years prior to TWD’s pilot first broadcast (31st October 2010), British teen digital channel E4 aired the five-part mini-series Dead Set2 (2008). Considering the show’s industrial placement on E4, its intertextual boundness to reality TV (RTV) show Big Brother (Channel 4 2000–2010), and subsequent dissemination on parent channel C4 and abroad, allows us to complicate narratives surrounding the rise of the zombie within twenty-first century popular culture by examining earlier instances of mainstreaming of horror television within a British context. Moreover, it avoids conflating cinematic quality TV horror with US media production (Mills, 2013, p. 62). To do this, I first consider E4 as a digital commercial British channel. E4 was first introduced in 2001, whose brand identity and narrowcasting strategies negotiated British TV’s international commercialization. This was done firstly by importing a plethora of US television series to directly compete with Sky (Born, 2003, p. 787). Secondly, the huge success of C4’s Big Brother spilled over onto E4 as the latter provided cheap content via ‘[a] live feed from the house and daily companion show Big Brother’s Little Brother […] [helping] the channel double its audience’ (Woods, 2016, p. 40). Finally, E4 built a ‘reputation for edgy British drama and comedy’ (Woods, 2014, p. 200), which sought to create a ‘youthful, slightly subversive channel identity’ (ibid.). Dead Set compounds these three variables to interpellate bipartite audiences traditionally held in symbolic binary to one another: cult horror fans and mainstream RTV viewers. Dead Set is TV horror that ‘uses the reality effect of popular television to provide a new twist on familiar horror tropes’ (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 183). Unlike Carnivále and MOH’s elaborate aesthetic and genresignposting opening titles (Abbott, 2015), Dead Set begins by using the end of Big Brother’s title sequence. The text then establishes Big Brother’s ‘real world’ diegesis via a sequence of shots commonly used by the programme documenting the contestants and their interactions with one another, 2 The Walking Dead TV series would in fact not get green-lit until half a decade after initial pitching with the television industry unwilling to take a risk on such high-end hard-edged horror (see Platts, 2020).

80 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

accompanied by the show’s narrating voiceover. Pontificating the show’s artificiality, one of the participants Joplin berates another, Pippa, arguing that RTV distracts from real world problems – like ‘the lead in the water that sent the Romans mad’ – thus commentating on RTV audiences and projecting the mass psychosis that zombiedom later brings. Pippa then thinks aloud ‘Do fish have bones?’ The contestants thus serve as caricatures of Big Brother where Dead Set satirizes the ‘celetoid’; void of any talent they are a ‘form of compressed, concentrated, attributed celebrity […] accessories of cultures organized around mass communications and staged authenticity’ (Rojek, 2011, pp. 20–21). RTV has been widely chastised for promoting ‘voyeurism, schadenfreude, mockery, lack of sympathy, and expectation of salacious or mean behaviour […] It encourages status-oriented consumption, narcissistic self-promotion, and […] elevates shallow personalities’ (Deery, 2015, p. 10). This is also evident in the grotesque behaviour of the show’s foul-mouthed producer Patrick who only cares about ratings, yet ridicules Big Brother’s audience. Shifting from RTV’s ‘non-fictional’ surveillance camerawork to fictionalized aesthetics, Dead Set’s cinematic qualities are established via three interconnected tropes: firstly, use of graphic gore: throats are ripped out, a lamp pole penetrates a skull and exits through the eye, and a character is disembowelled by the undead horde. Secondly, frequent intertextual references to cult zombie cinema such as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Grau 1974), Night of the Living Dead (Romero 1968), and Dawn of the Dead (Romero 1978), foster symbiotic subcultural capital to both the show and audience members who spot these citations. Thirdly, the fast zombie common in the twenty-f irst century, combined with fast cuts, shaky cameras, and motion blur, provides linkage to British horror f ilm 28 Days Later (Boyle 2002). That those bitten immediately turn into the rapid undead also provides a modal parallel to the ‘immediacy of the “real event”’ (Biressi and Nunn, 2005, p. 5) produced by the RTV format. Dead Set thus nods to both old and new zombie cinema in its f ilmic attributes. The cinematic aesthetic, cult references, and graphic gore provide quality rhetoric commonly positioned in opposition to ‘ordinary’ RTV (Bonner, 2003, p. 42). Akin to Dawn of the Dead allegorizing US mall culture (Hunt et al., 2014, p. 2), Dead Set’s satirical subtext, at first glance, chastises the mass consumption of RTV by mainstream audiences by literalizing them as the zombie mass. This critique echoes longstanding rudimental gendered distinctions of masculine quality/cult/cinematic/horror binary to feminine ordinary/ mass/consumerist/TV (Bonner, 2003, pp. 13–14; Santo, 2008, pp. 33–34).

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

81

Dead Set provides cult audiences the potential to self-consciously watch ‘feminine’ TV, thus distancing themselves from its symbolic gender(ing). Yet despite Dead Set aligning itself with cult/quality zombie film fans, using the monster to satirize RTV and its viewers, the mini-series also serves C4, E4, and Big Brother’s audience via utilization of the flagship programme’s iconography. The text uses the actual Big Brother house and diary room, the show’s voiceover, intro music, character archetypes, presenter Davina McCall, real ex-contestants, and a real eviction crowd. The show thus interpellates the RTV audience it mocks via detailed intertextual referencing. For example, given the fleeting window of celetoid fame, Dead Set’s use of ex-contestants Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace, Brian Belo, and Kinga Karolczak is unlikely to garner recognition by audiences who do not watch Big Brother. Yet, for knowing audiences, these characters are (in)famous. Moreover, initially broadcast six weeks after Big Brother series nine had finished, Dead Set was scheduled within short temporal proximity of the mainstream parodied vehicle. Thus, the show discursively hails horror and non-horror audiences. Additionally, heteroglossic interpellation is furthered when considering socio-temporal contextualization of the show’s broadcast. Dead Set first aired in the UK between 27th October and 31st October 2008, Halloween. E4 subsequently broadcast the mini-series in its entirety on Halloween the following year. This scheduling is salient to the framing of the text and its audiences, further serving E4’s brand identity (Ellis, 2000, pp. 35–36), and highlights ‘the significance of the broader calendar to national culture’ (Johnston, 2017, p. 3). Johnston explains that Halloween is ‘the time of the year that dominates US [and British] culture when it comes to the supernatural’ (2015, p. 3). Given horror TV’s relatively ‘low frequency of occurrence’ (Johnston, 2017, p. 5) on yearly schedules, increased genre content over Halloween elevates its cultural significance during this period since it disrupts the normative media broadcast ecology. Not only with horror content such as films, but special non-horror television Halloween episodes that link ‘the diegetic season of the programme with the contextual season of its first broadcast’ (Johnston, 2015, p. 89). Halloween provides a brief temporal window for non-horror TV to engage with horror tropes (Steenberg, 2017, pp. 84–85). This in-and-of-itself can foster a degree of ‘edginess’ for channels since they can produce content uncommon with their, and their rivals’, output. A form of seasonal event ‘not-TV’. As such, Dead Set’s Halloween airing and its satirizing of RTV can be read as form of genre play conventional for the season. Furthermore, the increased volume of horror provides a bounty of novel and classic content for genre fans (Mathijs, 2009). Yet Halloween

82 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

can also expand horror media to ‘reach […] wider, new audiences, possibly encouraging new, or different, forms of participation’ (Johnston, 2015, p. 5). Consequently, this is a period when non-fans of the genre may be more inclined to consume it. Thus, not only does the show’s intertextuality to Big Brother hail RTV audiences, its opportunistic scheduling during a period that elevates horror can be read as another discursive mainstreaming strategy. This is supported by impressive viewing f igures: on the f irst episode’s original airing Dead Set gave E4 ‘its best performance […] since June 2002 […] Gaining a multichannel audience of 1.4 million viewers/8.5% […] [it] was the fourth most popular channel outperforming both Five and its terrestrial older sibling Channel 4’ (Rogers, 2008, p. 4). That includes the ‘220,000 viewers who watched’ the programme on at the later time of 11pm on E4+1 (ibid.). Despite evidencing crossover popularity in the UK, a BAFTA nomination and being sold ‘to four international territories’3 (Broadcast, 2009, p. 12), Dead Set was not initially picked up in the US. However, two years later North American pay channel IFC aired Dead Set over five continuous nights starting on 25th October and showed the series in its entirety on Halloween (Garron, 2010); the same night TWD was broadcast on IFC’s sister channel AMC. This reinforces Halloween as a cultural event that hails horror aficionados and wider lay audiences, but also highlights how the TV zombie text began its global migration to certain regions prior to TWD, and how Dead Set’s introduction in the US alongside the premiering of TWD heightened the visibility of the graphic zombie on television (Hale, 2010). Furthermore, with the zombie proving ever more popular and financially lucrative, the twenty-first century has seen a diverse range of texts offering variations on this monstrous body (Tudor, 1989, p. 23), evident with the next example. The previous case studies establish some common features of twenty-first century TV horror that link it to cinematic discourse: high production values, graphic violence and gore, and film personnel’s cachet. Jaramillo posits that, ‘those who assign the “cinematic air of distinction” to certain TV programmes would easily exclude reality TV from their canon’ (2013, p. 70). This is largely true in reinforcing the opulent, quality, filmic (not) TV versus the cheap, every day, ordinary TV binary. However, BBC3’s I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse (2015) (ISAZA) problematizes such distinction by hybridizing horror with RTV. As with E4, the introduction of BBC3 in 2003 was aimed at youth demographics (Crisell, 2002, p. 265), negotiating its public service broadcast remit against a ‘risk-taking’ brand identity (Woods, 2016, p. 46). 3

Spain, Australia, Africa, and Sweden.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

83

To do this, in part, BBC3 combined horror with British social realism with the production of The Fades (2011) and In the Flesh (2013–2014). Yet, whilst drama and comedy have been the channel’s mainstays (Woods, 2016, p. 36), BBC3 also regularly broadcasts RTV such as: Don’t Tell the Bride (2007–2015), Snog Marry Avoid? (2008–2013), and Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum (2009–2011). Hugely popular in the UK, RTV has mass appeal (Hill, 2005, pp. 2–3), frequently aimed ‘younger adults’ (ibid., p. 5). Yet RTV series are also aimed at niche audiences (Deery, 2015, p. 18). Much like zombies, this comes from RTV ‘cannablis[ing] itself, feeding off successful genres and formats in order to create new hybrid programmes’ (Hill, 2005, pp. 41–42). Given BBC3’s budgetary limitations (Cooke, 2015, p. 244), RTV ‘provides a cheap alternative drama’ (Hill, 2005, p. 6). Thus, ISAZA is produced within a competitive broadcast ecology that also sees the zombie garnering mainstream appeal yet operating under stringent financial restrictions. ISAZA’s showing of visceral zombie bodies differs from its horror-RTV predecessors (e.g. Most Haunted (Living TV/Really, 2002–2010, 2014–2019); Ghost Hunters (Syfy/A&E, 2004–2009, 2019–)) whose Gothic suggestion focuses on unseeable malevolent spectres (Heholt, 2012; Leeder, 2013)). Furthermore, previous examples tap into Western spiritual beliefs of the paranormal and wider Gothic industries, such as ghost tours (Hill, 2011; Hanks, 2015), whereas ISAZA’s horror takes wholly from fictional screen media. Employing gamedoc RTV formatting where contestants strive to last as long as possible on or win the show whilst participating in individual and/ or group tasks (Hill, 2007, p. 52), ISAZA is premised on a ‘highly contrived situation’ (Deery, 2015, p. 28): the introduction of 5G smartphone technology in the UK has caused the zombie outbreak. Contestants must survive in Monroe Shopping Village, an abandoned and dishevelled safehouse much like the Big Brother house, for five days when the military will rescue them. As such, the show’s plot, as with RTV programming in general, engages with wider social tensions around personal communication, performance, and surveillance (ibid., p. 2). The latter provides the show’s ‘documentation’ via the Shopping Village’s CCTV. ISAZA utilizes common RTV tenets, including: ‘non-professionalised actors, unscripted dialogue, surveillance footage, hand-held cameras, [and] seeing events unfold as they are happening in front of the camera’ (Hill, 2005, p. 41). The show combines RTV’s ‘subject-in-crisis’ (Biressi and Nunn, 2005, p. 5), who frequently display ‘trauma, personal pain, injury and loss’ (ibid., p. 6), with the subject-in-crisis who traverses the chaotic post-apocalyptic zombie landscape (Keetley, 2014). This informs daily tasks contestants must undertake, including scavenging for food, water, and bedding; restoring

84 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

electricity; acquiring medical supplies; and rescuing new contestants; all whilst under constant zombie attacks. The show frequently combines RTV’s dramaturgical devices that ‘signify an immediacy of filming and capturing the real’ (Biressi and Nunn, 2005, p. 16) with the zombie’s cinematic qualities. To illustrate, during tasks CCTV provides a ‘non-interventionist’ vérité aesthetic (Roscoe and Hight, 2001, p. 19), whereby camerawork records contestants’ actions and reactions. The framing is largely static cutting between different CCTV cameras to provide shot diversity, pace, and action. Conversely, prior to and subsequently after tasks, CCTV footage is intercut with more cinematic shots of the zombie monsters. Close-ups highlight the gross disfigurement of the undead and abject imagery of them eating human flesh. This frequently occurs when survivors make it back to the safe house with close-ups of zombies banging on the windows underscoring the danger of the undead threatening the contestants when they leave to embark on tasks. The series is hosted by DJ Greg James, whose mainstream daytime visibility on BBC Radio 1 (Hendy, 2000) further popularizes ISAZA. James provides comedic relief from the text’s zombie gore and viscera, signposting forthcoming events and recapping past scenes. The show also utilizes a high degree of diversity common for RTV’s appeal to myriad audiences (Deery, 2015, p. 104), including heteronormative, aged, queer, racial, transnational, transgender, and disabled contestants/survivors. Yet, whilst evidencing genre linkages to popular gamedoc RTV such as Big Brother and Survivor (CBS 2000–), ISAZA is also highly self-reflexive of zombie media providing references that horror fans will recognize. This includes: the shopping centre reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead (1978); the videogame Plants and Zombies (PopCap 2009) when a task involves several survivors entering a greenhouse; multiple TWD references with contestants covering themselves in rotten human remains to mask their smell to marauding zombies, a shot of a young undead girl holding a teddy, and ‘Walking Ed’s Camping Store’; and the Abomination, a boss-like super zombie echoing the Resident Evil franchise. Whilst utilizing the elimination format common for gamedoc RTV (Deery, 2015, p. 12), ISAZA sidesteps audience participation by forgoing viewers voting off contestants. Instead, survivors are ‘killed’ when touched by a zombie during tasks. Upon contact with the undead, a cinematic shot sequence depicts the contestant being graphically eaten. As this happens, the scene switches to monochrome. This dually serves stylistic historical linkage to the modern zombie film urtext Romero’s Night of the Living Dead shot on 35mm black-and-white film and provides an aesthetic layer detracting from the text’s overriding verisimilitude, whereby the lack of colour offers

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

85

muted censorship as it reduces onscreen gore (Hills, 2010a, p. 117). In this instance, ISAZA is both specifically cinematic, but also caters to non-horror audiences by displacing graphic screen abjection akin to TV’s traditional treatment of horror. Furthermore, whilst ISAZA clearly takes from zombie fiction that would diminish RTV vérité by ‘paradoxically drawing attention to […] [its] own artifice’ (Bisressi and Nunn, 2005, p. 23), the ‘real’ is simultaneously produced via the contestants’ display of experiences and emotions towards the challenges. Like much RTV, ISAZA borrows ‘standard dramatic plots, such as […] conflict – disorder – resolution, and cast members […] perform roles to further this plot’ (Deery, 2015, p. 34). Yet rather than emphasizing complex narrative storytelling common to zombie serial dramas, ISAZA’s RTV interplays with ‘structure and spontaneity’ to produce drama (ibid., p. 29). Contestants ‘perform’ the role of survivors (Ellis, 2012, pp. 45–46) through their interaction with the constructed space, zombie extras, and one another. Not only do they talk about the threatening zombies as though they are real and self-reflecting on the fear felt undertaking tasks, but physical emotive markers such as tears provide dramatic authenticity. Moreover, the Comms Room where contestants talk to the military acts like Big Brother’s diary room, where not only do they receive tasks but can divulge their ‘real’ feelings towards other group members. Addressing the technological formatting of TV horror, the previous case studies and other horror-RTV examples listed have all had DVD releases. However, ISAZA has not been formatted as such. Hills argues that DVDs, with playback options and extra-textual features, are ‘especially suitable for audiences’ and fans’ ‘acquisitive repetition’ of TV series’ (2007, p. 42) that encourage fan-like modes of consumption in lay audiences (see Chapter 2). Importantly, ‘ordinary’ TV low in cultural value, such as RTV and game shows, is not ‘linked to discourses of the symbolically bounded and discrete text – which in turn resonates with cultural histories and discourses of the bounded and framed “artwork”’ (ibid., p. 46). Thus, such television largely remains in the ephemeral flow of broadcast schedules. While available by digital illicit means (see Chapter 3), ISAZA, despite its horror textual qualities, is in this sense still very much televisual, centralized via the fixity of traditional formatting, in the same way much RTV is. Nevertheless, gamedoc horror RTV such as ISAZA and Killer Camp highlight how dialectic quality/ordinary and cult/mainstream binaries are not fixed nor universal within TV horror, further complicating quality status equated to cinematic ‘not TV’ discourse. Moreover, the popularization of horror on television is multifaceted. Building on this, I now consider the genre’s further migration

86 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

across television industries whilst examining other ‘mainstreaming’ techniques, namely, the role of celebrities.

Gaga for Bloodshed: TV Horror’s Elevation of Basic Cable Although traditionally seen or positioned as a genre apt for cult sensibilities, certain cycles and subgenres of horror media have enjoyed commercial success by attracting wider audiences (Leeder, 2018, p. 72). With television, horror has bled into the mainstream by industry employing the genre within existing media ecologies, channel/portal demographics, brand identities, and political economies. Relatedly, as a genre that has been consistently profitable (Falvey et al., 2020, pp. 4–7), it is unsurprising commercially driven channels turn to horror to add value to their brand and make impressive financial returns. FX hit, American Horror Story (AHS) is an example of the trickle-down effect of premium cable’s artistic licence where the once-exclusive use of graphic cinematic horror is now adopted by basic cable outlets. Pushing ‘the boundaries of television horror, and the nature of bodily transformation and disfigurement’ (Subramanian, 2013, p. 109), the show offers ample gore, sex, and violence. Aimed at men between the ages 18–49, like HBO, FX does not have to adhere to FCC regulations. However, as a basic cable channel it does rely on advertising revenue. Yet in battling for viewership with over five hundred cable channels (Virino, 2011, p. 116), part of FX’s distinctive brand identity centres on risk-taking and explicit content, evident in series such as The Shield (2002–2008), Nip/ Tuck (2003–2010), and Rescue Me (2004–2011). As such, AHS is an on-brand text, whose graphic horror elevates the channel from its traditional lowly position into alignment with higher prestige forms of TV, namely premium cable. Part of this stems from innovative storytelling techniques. With AHS, ‘[e]ach season revolves around a trope or theme common to the horror genre, with a cast of characters taken from both stock figures and historical personages’ (Earle and Clark, 2019, p. 7). Specific seasons centre on specific times and places in US folklore, ‘reworking […] established Gothic and horror tropes surrounding the haunted house, abandoned asylum, freak show, haunted hotel, or other Gothic locations’ (Abbott, 2017, p. 31). Thus, unlike serial television that uses multiple seasons to develop detailed storylines and ongoing character development, AHS ‘offers stand-alone seasons that refuse such narrative progression in its […] closed miniseries format’ (Geller and Banker, 2017, p. 36). This allows the spectacle of horror to match respective seasons’ themes and aesthetics whilst fostering tonal

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

87

diversity within the franchise. For example, season four Freak Show set in 1952 makes frequent use of the teratological body. Comparatively, set in 2016, season seven Cult satirizes the US presidential election from the same year. Additionally, AHS’s distinct ‘recycling of actors’ (Janicker, 2017, p. 1) sees them play new characters in subsequent seasons. For example, Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange, Denis O’Hare, and Evan Peters all play multiple persons within the franchise. This nurtures character complexity (Mittell, 2015, p. 223), produced by an intratextual matrix of the series’ ensemble roster. Actors and characters can function as Easter eggs, such as the remediation of Freak Show’s Twisty the Clown in Cult as the book series Twisty: The Clown Chronicles. Similarly, subsequent series can add character backstory. For example, we learn about Pepper, a patient framed for murdering her nephew in series two Asylum, and her past as part of Fräulein Elsa’s Cabinet of Curiosities in Freak Show. Combining anthology stand-alone seasons with intratextual connections of cast members across the franchise offers shifting degrees of complexity for ongoing fans and new audiences. To examine this, I consider Robin Nelson’s surveying of shifting narratization in television drama. Nelson argues that ‘flexi-narrative has […] become the TV drama format most popular […] with audiences, the most serviceable to producers and schedulers, and therefore increasingly the most common in series and serials’ (1997, p. 32). Blurring soaps’ ongoing narratives with serials’ closed single narratives, flexi-narratives combine new characters and new narrative strands that ‘are usually brought to closure within the episode’ (ibid., p. 34), with ongoing characters whose ‘unresolved narratives […] give continuity across episodes’ (ibid.). Flexi-narrative harnesses the developed series-long narrative arc, but ‘avoids deterring those potential viewers who may not watch a seral if they sense they might have lost out on something crucial to understanding by missing the previous episode’ (ibid.). Moreover, with the use of both single episode and ongoing stories, flexi-narratives garner high levels of interest from a range of audiences given the plurality of plotlines (ibid., pp. 38–39). Extrapolating Nelson’s model, AHS functions under a similar structure at a serial/seasonal, rather than episodic, level. AHS’s co-creator Ryan Murphy explains that the show is akin to a ‘Rubik’s Cube’ (Bell, 2016), whereby ‘fragmented connections […] are slowly […] drawn together between each of the seasons’ (ibid.). The show rewards fans who stick with the show and/ or have watched from day one. However, new audiences are not punished or marginalized for not watching previous series since each iteration serves as a standalone story. As such, AHS is a flexi-series that offers various levels of engagement and entry points into the franchise. Much like flexi-narrative

88 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

conventions, the flexi-serial can provide ‘a range of stories with different content’ (Nelson, 1997, p. 39). Yet the closed structure of each season means self-contained narratives make sense within a single season. Lisa Schmidt highlights that ‘serialized shows demand an investment from the viewer beyond a single, one-hour block of time, but with this investment comes the possibility of greater emotional impact’ (2013, p. 166). AHS’s flexi-serial structure can fragment audience devotion. Viewers can follow the franchise right from the beginning or pick any particular season. However, investment is required since one would need to watch from the outset to follow the respective season’s narrative. As such, flexi-series have stand-alone potential. Their episodes do not. Adding to flexi-serials’ elasticity, one does not need to watch seasons in chronological order. Such non-lineal openness welcomes lay and/or late engagement whilst still fostering complexity for fan immersion, providing a novel way of world-building. Texts such as Haunting of Hill House/Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix 2018–2020), Slasher (Chiller/Netflix/Shudder 2016–2021), Fargo (FX 2014–) and True Detective (HBO 2014–2019) have also adopted the flexi-serial model showing its ability to cut across genres. Returning to how AHS’s flexi-serial compartmental seasons stress specific horror themes, stories, and styles, I now focus on season five Hotel, and how its lead actor Lady Gaga’s star image informed the show and served a specific interpellation strategy indicative of ‘the commodification of cult for mainstream TV telefantasy brands’ (Haslop, 2019, p. 3). Jowett explains that ‘[t]he casting hype reached a peak when it was confirmed that Lange would not be appearing in Hotel, but Lady Gaga would be joining the cast [playing the Countess]’ (2017, pp. 13–14). This casting choice built on the show’s legacy of strong female characters, but also used Gaga’s star quality as part of AHS’s mainstream legitimization. Here, Gaga/Countess ‘exist as part actor, part character; building a sense of audience familiarity with the new character’ (Haslop, 2019, p. 11). Brabon argues Gaga’s ‘exploitation of the Other in her carnivalesque Gothic performances attracts a loyal fan base that connects with her expression of différance’ (2012, p. 163). The artist overtly champions Otherness, the ‘monster’, and the ‘freak’ (Corona, 2013, p. 726). Such horror vernacular feeds into the visual lexicon of Gaga’s celebrity identity vis-à-vis her fashion, music videos, and parasocial relationships with fans; her ‘little monsters’ (Geczy and Karaminas, 2017; Bennett, 2014). Moreover, Gaga’s expressive différance is frequently ‘cultrepeneurial’; artistic branding fashioned on ‘social transgression and the strategic use of shock and outrageous identities and innovations’ (O’Reilly, 2005, p. 583). This conflation of horror and romance

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

89

as paradigmatically postfeminist Gothic (Brabon, 2012, p. 163), where the ‘postfeminist monster is sexy, pretty, utterly confident in her display of and relentless in her quest for femininity’ (Genz, 2007, p. 69) maps onto AHS’s gender politics (Subramanian, 2013, p. 114). In line with its flexi-serial structuring, reoccurring AHS actors return to Hotel, such as Finn Wittrock, Chloë Sevigny, Matt Bomer, and Kathy Bates. Likewise, characters including Marcy, Billie Dean Howard, and Dr Charles Montgomery from season one Murder House (2011), and Queenie from season three Coven (2013) make appearances. Marketed and credited as Lady Gaga rather than her birth name Stefani Germanotta, AHS places onus on existing star image. This is stressed in the season’s title sequence, which alongside establishing genre, central thematics of sexualized violence, monstrous entities, core hotel locations, and Hotel’s 1920s art deco aesthetic, gives Gaga the final ‘and’ actor credit that headlines her status within the ensemble roster. Whilst such A-list star cachet potentially undermines AHS’s horror subcultural distinctions (Jancovich, 2002a), since Gaga fosters ‘mass appeal’ (Corona, 2013, p. 728), the Gothic calibrates text-star synergy that negotiates the mainstreaming of the horror flexi-series. Yet, whilst paratextually her character’s name was part of journalistic and marketing narratives surrounding Hotel (e.g. Stack, 2015; Stedman, 2015), the Countess is not diegetically named as such until episode five. Textual anonymity not only serves the narrative enigma of who the Countess is, but also reifies Gaga’s extra-textual non-diegetic celebrity identity that is sutured into the tapestry of the show’s narrative and aesthetic (Jowett, 2017, p. 12). As both Gaga and the Countess, the onscreen soma is Janus faced, exemplified when Gaga/Countess is first introduced via detailed montage (S5, E1). This shot sequence offers visual, sonic, and thematic consistency between AHS and Gaga whilst compartmentalizing Gaga’s/Countess’s body as desirable. In doing so, ‘The postfeminist femme […] is “subjectivated” through her body, simultaneously submitted to extensive rituals of normalization as well as “activated” or formed by them’ (Kinder, 1984, p. 73). Beginning with an extreme close-up of a needle touching a record – She Wants Revenge’s ‘Tear You Apart’ (2006) – establishes the connection between music, Gaga, and AHS. As does the high speed and frequency of cuts resonating with music video form and MTV-style editing (Calavita, 2007), further connecting music, imagery, and performance (Longhurst, 2007, p. 164). The sexualized post-punk Gothic style of the song provides tonal synaesthesia with onscreen visuals (Goodwin, 1992). A montage sees a neon sign exclaiming ‘Why aren’t we having sex right now?’; Gaga putting on red lipstick; her lover Donovan in the bath; an extreme close-up of her

90 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

jewellery and lingerie; Donovan exiting the bath highlighting his naked chiselled physique and putting on eyeliner, a skull ring on his wedding finger, and shining his black shoes; Donovan violently tightening Gaga’s corset; Gaga putting on her black bejewelled glove; Gaga snorting cocaine; and then a wide-angled shot following the couple walking the hotel corridors and entering the lift to leave the hotel. The montage conflates sex, violence, and hedonism that is continued in the subsequent shots where the couple join an open-air cinema screening of Nosferatu (Murnau 1922) held in a graveyard. Part of German expressionist horror cinema that utilized the Gothic to explore homosexual identity and monstrosity (Benshoff, 1997, p. 21), Nosferatu’s monster Count Orlok’s indifference to his victims’ gender is markedly queer. That this film plays when Gaga/Countess lures a heterosexual couple, non-verbally signposting her queerness to them by licking her fingers, adds intertextual Gothic thematics of Otherness as the Countess is equally non-discriminate in her victims. However, if Nosferatu’s animalistic Orlok seems wholly Other (Auerbach, 1995, p. 113), Gaga’s normate Countess melds bi-sexual allure with vampiric danger to heighten postfeminist Gothic sexuality.4 Openly bi-sexual herself (Corona, 2013, p. 738), Gaga has a strong LGBTQ+ following (Adney, 2012, p. 205), further conflating celebrity identity and diegetic characterization. This is heightened in the final shots where both couples return to the hotel. Partaking in polyamorous sex, Gaga/Countess and Donovan slit the couple’s throats as blood violently sprays out. Consequently, Gaga’s/Countess’s postfeminist Gothic body ‘gains darker, monstrous connotations by shedding its associations with modesty, chastity and innocence (held up in the Female Gothic) and instead becoming linked to unnatural and devilish pursuits and desires’ (Genz, 2007, p. 74). Likewise, Gaga’s/Countess’s costume changes throughout the scenes coincide with postfeminism’s ties to consumerism as fashion serves part of corporeal reformulation (Botting, 2008, p. 156), and Gaga’s shocking fashion statements linked to her cultrepeneurial identity (Geczy and Karaminas, 2017). As the song ends, Donovan lays on the bed smoking as Gaga/Countess is surrounded by the deceased corpses marking the climax of sex and violence. Despite the Countess being slayed in the penultimate episode, Gaga’s star identity that hails myriad audiences and entwines with the show’s 4 We learn that the film’s director Murnau, an openly gay man, is himself a vampire who turns the Countess’s first love Rudolph Valentino into the undead. After turning his wife Natasha Rambova, the couple in a form of corporeal activation both turn the Countess into a vampire as a markedly form of queer becoming.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

91

Gothic nature has become part of AHS’s flexi-serial structure. Playing the immortal Scáthach, the supreme witch in season six Roanoke (2016), Gaga herself is now part of the franchise’s intratextual nexus to those who have watched both seasons, whilst not punishing those who have only seen one or the other. Moreover, rather than scare off companies buying commercial spaces bookending and between episodes, horror is a bankable genre for profit-driven basic cable and network television – regulated by the FCC – with shows such as The Walking Dead (AMC), Scream (MTV/VH1 2015–2019), Teen Wolf (MTV 2011–2017), Z Nation (Syfy 2014–2019), Channel Zero (Syfy 2016–2018), iZombie (The CW 2015–2019), The Purge (USA Network 2018–2019), Hannibal (NBC 2013–2015), Rosemary’s Baby (NBC 2014), Fear Itself, Evil (CBS 2019–), Clarice (CBS 2021), The Exorcist (FOX 2016–2017), Scream Queens (FOX 2015–2016), and Bates Motel to name but a few. With horror firmly housed in linear broadcast schedules in its many guises seeking to attract a range of audience types, post-television would also take advantage of the genre’s growing popularity, further mainstreaming it via its own industry practices in the process.

Netflix and Chills: Post-TV and Blockbuster Horror Television Noted in the book’s Introduction, season three of Stranger Things was Netflix’s most streamed series ever. Compared to previous examples serving brand identity targeting specific audiences – both horror fans and loyal channel viewers – Netflix’s blockbuster television eschews demographic disaggregation, seeking ‘a larger volume and broader range of viewers since its profitability is reliant […] on the size of its subscriber base’ (Dunleavy, 2018, p. 159). Johnson notes that post-TV streaming portals like Netflix and Amazon Prime stress transgenerational ‘co-viewing’ pleasures to foster wider viewership appeal (2019, p. 24), as their catalogues attract audiences ‘seek[ing] out nostalgic content that takes them back in time, as well as new audiences who discover “old” and reimagined content’ (ibid., p. 3). Additionally, as a global non-linear streaming service, Netflix frequently sits outside of national media regulatory bodies’ remit (Wayne and Castro, 2021); although this is subject to change in the UK (Chilton, 2021). Stranger Things internalizes Netflix’s expansive audience remit and artistic freedom by constructing multi-layered coming-of-age horror nostalgia. Set in Hawkins, a 1980s US town ‘where nothing interesting ever happens’, Stranger Things follows Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and Eleven (El for short). Upon Will’s disappearance, the group along with Will’s mother Joyce,

92 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

town sheriff Jim Hopper, Will’s older brother Jonathan, and Mike’s older sister Nancy attempt to rescue him. Series two adds Max and gives further characterization to series one character, Steve. Series three introduces Robin, the first openly gay character and develops Lucas’s younger sister Erica. Significantly, this ensemble ‘multicast’ markets itself to transgenerational coviewership (Johnson, 2019, p. 16), reflecting an age range including children, teens, young adults, and adults that also offers more progressive representations than the media it recycles (McDaniel, 2019, p. 211). Centring on teenage trials and tribulations, Stranger Things ‘depicts the adolescent characters as liminal individuals, constantly “betwixt and between” categories of identity’ (ibid.). It incorporates Steven Spielberg and Stephen King’s 1980s work5 that depicts the annexation of suburban middle-class America by Other (worldly) forces and the threat to adolescence (Butler, 2018). Similarly, the series’ high-end horrality takes from 1970s and 1980s high-concept genre vehicles’ filmic spectacle (Wyatt, 1994). Season one establishes mixing horror and science fiction. Will is abducted into the Upside Down, an uncanny Gothic alternative dimension of flower and fauna. When El, a test subject at the mysterious Hawkins National Laboratory, uses her telekinetic powers (much like in Carrie (De Palma 1976)) to create an entrance to the Upside Down, the anthropomorphic Demogorgon threatens the group. This predatory monster strongly chimes with Jaws (Spielberg 1975) and Alien (Scott 1979). The stalking of teens within residential geography also evokes the 1980s slasher cycle. Such pastiche is furthered sonically through non-diegetic electronic music reminiscent of John Carpenter’s early synth scores (Sirianni, 2019, p. 185) (see Chapter 6). In season two, the Shadow Monster/Mind Flayer possesses Will in its attempt to take over Hawkins akin to The Exorcist. Concurrently, the lab tries to confine the growing Upside Down whilst an underground labyrinth runs underneath the town where the canid Demodogs dwell, reminiscent of Gremlins (Dante 1984), Critters (Herek 1986), The Thing (Carpenter 1982), and An American Werewolf in London (Landis 1981). Season three sees the Mind Flayer take on material form by consuming citizens, echoing 1950s remakes Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman 1978) and The Blob (Russell 1988), while the more mature season four pays homage to A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven 1984) and its sequels6 and the Hellraiser (1987–2022) film franchise with its 5 This relationship went full-circle with Finn Wolfhard’s (Mike) casting in the film remakes (Muschietti 2017, 2019) of King’s novel IT (1986). 6 Robert Englund, who plays Freddie Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, was cast as Victor Creel in season four of Stranger Things.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

93

central monster Vecna. Consequently, Stranger Things utilizes ongoing ‘genre memory’ that ‘depends less on the explicit remembering of events, characters and experiences, than on the use and appropriation of previous cinematic modes and conventions. This can involve the recreation and re-situation of motifs, music, atmosphere and feel in cinematic forms that draw from a repertoire of past styles and generic traits’ (Grainge, 2003, pp. 9–10). In doing so, it aids in the metonymic re-remembering and construction of 1980s aesthetic premised on media from the period (Drake, 2003, pp. 183–184). Importantly, the boys’ love of legacy-cum-retro technology and media, and horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres provide intertextual signposting. For example, sharing comics, discussing Star Wars, and dressing as characters from Ghostbusters for Halloween. Whilst outsider status is confirmed with the group verbally and physically bullied in season one, Stranger Things champions geekdom over banal hegemonic society and ‘the Regan-era military industrial complex’ (Mollet, 2019a). As Jonathan asserts to Will: ‘Being a freak is the best’ (S2, E1). Through characters’ consumer practices and media engagement the series uses retro film rhetoric that ‘mobilises particular codes that […] connote a past sensibility metonymically re-remembered in the present’ (Grainge, 2003, p. 17). Consequently, Stranger Things’ retro metafictionality is a form of ‘consumed nostalgia’: ‘longing for goods of the past that came from a personal experience of growing up in the stressful world of fast capitalism […] often rooted in the formative years of consumers – childhood and youth’ (Cross, 2015, pp. 10–11). This heavily mediated mode of nostalgia knowingly speaks to ‘Gen-X fans who grew up watching the[se] blockbuster films [and] would be well aware of all the hidden eggs in the series’ (McCarthy, 2019, p. 673). The young gang are epochal nodes for older audiences, yet simultaneously are temporally aligned to younger audiences of a similar age, further evoking transgenerational co-viewing. Similarly, Stranger Things’ intertextuality operates concentrically, providing gradation in the ‘mediation of nostalgia’ (Mollet, 2019b, p. 59) that speaks to various audiences. First, certain references require detailed subcultural capital of horror and science fiction cinema evident in scenes that re-enact antecedent genre texts. For example, the series cites Aliens (Cameron 1986) when Will, possessed by the Mind Flayer, gives false information resulting in military personnel moving into the Demodog lair (S2, E6). Notably, the squad leader warns others to ‘stay frosty’, a quote from the film. Likewise, the soldiers’ filming of the action lifts from a sequence in Aliens, as does the use of radar to indicate the mass horde swiftly moving in on them. Moreover, Paul Reiser plays Dr Sam Owens who oversees the laboratory

94 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

and Will’s health. Reiser also plays Carter Burke, a corporate representative much like Owens, in Aliens. Yet the former’s selflessness subverts the latter’s self-centred characterization that plays on required subcultural knowledge. Widening out, Stranger Things uses cult blockbuster citations that, whilst having strong fan followings, lay audiences will likely recognize due to these texts’ commercial prominence (see Hills, 2003, 2006). For example, in showing El his bedroom and toys, Mike plays with his Yoda figure and quotes lines from The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner 1980) (S1, E2), explaining that the Star Wars character can ‘move things with his mind’, foreshadowing El’s own telekinesis. To evade Russian security personnel, Mike, Erica, Steve, and Robin hide in a packed multiplex screening of Back to the Future (Zemeckis 1985) (S3, E7); the film is referenced frequently throughout season three (Chaney, 2019). Thus, much like the franchise’s retro horror tonality, Stranger Things is both subculturally-particularized and embedded into wider ‘genre memory’ of high-concept Hollywood cinema. Finally, retro film discourse overlaps into wider romanticized codes of 1980s American popular culture that represent the decade in its totality (Drake, 2003, p. 188), exemplified when Max takes El shopping at the mall (S3, E2). Here, ‘fashion, music and visual images are memorialised, and […] [reinterpreted] in the present’ (ibid., p. 183). Much like the group’s media fandom and geek practices, consumed nostalgia is premised on the materiality of past ‘ephemeral commercial goods’ (Cross, 2015, pp. 11–12). The scene begins with the girls entering the building, as a 360-degree panning shot highlights the plethora of shops and goods available. The distinctly neon colour palette of the mise-en-scène espouses 1980s style (Grainge, 2003, p. 17). In a state of wonder, they run to The Gap clothes store where a montage of shots shows El trying several outfits before going to Flash Store to dress up for a series of headshots. The non-diegetic track Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ (1985) produces ‘a relationship between sound and image that is layered’ (Drake, 2003, p. 194), simultaneously signifying the girls’ agency in partaking in materialistic practices, the 1980s temporal period, and the decade’s consumerist culture at large. Thus, even if not getting the subcultural Easter eggs and/or diegetic references to blockbuster media, audiences can still engage with the series’ general metonymic retro style. Comparable to AHS’s use of stars, Winona Ryder’s cinematic celebrity persona serves well ‘the programme’s cultish objectives but could still appeal to wider audiences, otherwise deterred by the series’ title and its cultish associations’ (Haslop, 2019, p. 10). Ryder’s Joyce mirrors her role as Veronica in 1980s cult teen comedy Heathers (Lehmann 1989) who rebels against Reagan’s political environment and high-school clique culture only

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

95

to extricate it from the larger threat. Moreover, Ryder’s roles in horror and science-fiction films offer generic heritage, including Beetlejuice (Burton 1988), Edward Scissorhands (Burton 1990), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola 1992), and Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet 1997). Beyond cult and/or genre vehicles akin to Stranger Things’ intertextual tapestry, Ryder is also a well-known Hollywood A-list star. Thus, her oeuvre and star image serve a multitude of audiences that foster co-viewing potential, including transgenerational and various taste culture demographics. Moreover, the show’s use of geek goods, genre memory, and consumed nostalgia lends itself to transmedia extension, appealing to cult, mainstream, and transgenerational audiences. A deluge of ancillary texts and merchandise shift between expanding the series’ hyperdiegesis to engaging with the show’s genre memory and retro aesthetic. Certain transmedial components pertain to the franchise’s ‘drillability’, which ‘encourages forensic fans to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a story and its telling’ (Mittell, 2015, p. 288). Tie-in novels unpack ‘unexplored gems’ that draw on ‘elements implied in the on-air series, but not directly addressed’ (Clarke, 2009, p. 447). The prequel Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds (Bond, 2019), for instance, explains how El’s mother Terry ends at Hawkins Laboratory and the relationship she forms with Eight; both of whom are secondary characters in season two. Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down (McIntyre, 2018) provides extra-textual material including: staff interviews, production stills, development art, cultural references that influenced the show, and behind-the-scenes information. Rather than storyworld expansion, Stranger Things: The Game (2017) and Stranger Things 3: The Game (2019) let audiences play as franchise characters that offer a ludic mode of engagement with the hyperdiegesis. Simultaneously, these videogames utilize the show’s geek culture metatextual retro aesthetic via neo-retro videogame rhetoric: current texts emulating earlier 8bit and 16bit videogames (Sloan, 2016, p. 36). A range of Stranger Things ‘transmedial props’ (Tosca and Klastrup, 2020, p. 28) position ‘audiences past the barrier of spectatorship into the […] [diegetic] universe […] [offering] the chance to perform in and explore both on-screen spaces and those pockets of space just off screen’ (Gray, 2010, p. 176). McFarlane Toys produced character and monster figurines while Funko Pop! have created Stranger Things vinyl dolls, ‘a series of cute [characters] […] based on a variety of characters from popular culture […] that attracts a transgenerational audience’ (Heljakka, 2018, p. 103). Likewise, official Stranger Things ‘transmedial artefacts’ (Tosca and Klastrup, 2020, p. 29) such as clothing, accessories, and costumes allow fans to perform their

96 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

identity over consumption practices that develop the franchise’s storyworld. Moreover, merchandise is not limited to the subcultural realms of fan conventions or specialist sites. Instead, Stranger Things merchandise is available in various high-street stores and retail outlets, including HMV, Forbidden Planet, Target, Walmart, and Hot Topic. As such, access to transmedial objects that foster narrative extension and fan identity performance are readily available to both cult and mainstream consumers (Geraghty, 2014, pp. 153–154). Finally, Secret Cinema created a Stranger Things experiential event. Normally reserved for cult classic cinema with highly established fandoms (Atkinson and Kennedy, 2015, p. 8), this immersive participatory event ‘includes some element of audience direct engagement in elements of the originary text’ (Atkinson and Kennedy, 2016, p. 142). Extending this experience to a TV series for the first time attests to Stranger Things’ cult qualities and commercial popularity. Likewise, matinée shows tailored for younger audiences reiterate the series’ transgenerational appeal. Set in Starcourt Mall, through space, props, actors and audience participation the event re-enacts aspects of the first three series (see also Pett, 2016). In doing so, this liminal transmedia event melds media immersion, storyworld extension, playful engagement, and fan performance. This diversity of Stranger Things’ transmedia nexus allows audiences ‘to shift between various (inter)active and interpretative modes of world consumption, world commentary and world (co-)production’ (Tosca and Klastrup, 2020, p. 6), whilst also evincing how horror ‘transmedial worlds are no longer a niche entertainment product enjoyed only by a very dedicated group of hardcore fans. [Instead, many] […] have become mainstream entertainment’ (ibid., p. 1).

Conclusion Rather than being ‘regarded as completely “other”’ (Cherry, 1999, p. 187), horror fans are a lucrative audience segment whose loyalty to genre texts and paratexts is a valued asset to industry in the face of an ever-fragmenting TV milieu. Equally, with the rise of social media, horror fans can act as bastions of TV horror with their vocal championing attracting wider viewership. Concurrently, as is often the case, the once-rare qualities of premium ‘Quality’ TV drama have become more mainstream since other players adopt such markers in bids to add value to their output (Dunleavy, 2018, p. 55). These schemas have been combined with other textual qualities that allow TV horror texts to be both genre vehicles and recognizably branded

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

97

television that fit channels’/portals’ identities, business structures, and shifting media ecologies. Consequently, the exclusionary discourse of cinematic quality TV as ‘not TV’ has become increasingly problematized as free-to-air, basic cable, network, and subscription video on demand platforms use graphic horror in their TV output to demonstrate premium quality that interpellates their respective target demographics, where their TV horrors are also branded goods. Of course, any act of interpellation requires the audience to acknowledge being hailed to. Part 2 of the book will address this by looking at audiences’ meaning-making practices of horror television. Hogan states that ‘[t]he wide variety of horror options – with something for every taste and scare level – is the reason horror programming has taken off in the fractured television landscape’ (2014). This chapter has begun to chart some of this variety. The following chapter continues such exploration alongside examining digital media and the internet’s forming of a post-TV paradigm.

References Abbott, Stacey. 2010. ‘Innovative TV.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B Tauris. pp. 91–99. Abbott, Stacey. 2012b. ‘TV Love Fangs: The Televisuality of HBO Horror.’ In Cherry, Brigid (ed). True Blood: Investigating Vampires and Southern Gothic. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 25–38. Abbott, Stacey. 2015. ‘“I Want to Do Bad Things With You”: The Television Horror Title Sequence.’ In Geraghty, Lincoln (ed). Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.110–126. Abbott, Stacey. 2017. ‘Haunted History: American Horror Story as Gothic Tourism.’ In Janicker, Rebecca (ed). Reading American Horror Story: Essays on the Television Franchise. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 27–44. Adney, Kate. 2012. ‘“I Hope When I’m Dead I’ll Be Considered an Icon”: Shock Performance and Human Rights.’ In Ray II, Richard J. (ed). The Performance Identities of Lady Gaga. Jefferson. McFarland. pp. 203–217. Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. 2015. ‘Introduction.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 7–16. Altman, Rick. 1999. Film/Genre. London: BFI. Atkinson, Sarah and Kennedy, Helen W. 2015. ‘“Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need an Effective Online Audience Engagement Strategy”: The Case of the Secret Cinema Viral Backlash.’ Frames Cinema Journal. 8. pp. 1–24.

98 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Atkinson, Sarah and Kennedy, Helen W. 2016. ‘Introduction – Inside-the-scenes: The Rise of Experiential Cinema.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 13(1). pp. 139–151. Auerbach, Nina. 1995. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Backstein, Karen. 2001. ‘Soft Love: The Romantic Vision of Sex on the Showtime Network.’ Television and New Media. 2(4). pp. 303–317. Balanzategui, Jessica and Lynch, Andrew. 2022. ‘“Shudder” and the Aesthetics and Platform Logics of Genre-Specific SVOD services.’ Television & New Media. pp. 1–17. Bell, Amanda June. 2016. ‘Easter eggs That Connect All of American Horror Story Together.’ Looper. https://www.looper.com/31229/easter-eggs-connect-americanhorror-story-seasons-together/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Bennett, Lucy. 2014. ‘“If We Stick Together We Can Do Anything”: Lady Gaga Fandom, Philanthropy and Activism Through Social Media.’ Celebrity Studies. 5(1–2). pp. 138–152. Benshoff, Harry M. 1997. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bignell, Jonathan. 2013. An Introduction to Television Studies. Third Edition. London. Routledge. Biressi, Anita and Nunn, Heather. 2005. Reality TV: Realism and Revelation. London. Wallflower Press. Bishop, Kyle William. 2015. How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century. Jefferson: McFarland. Blake, Linnie. 2008. The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bond, Gwenda. 2019. Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds. London: Century. Bonner, Frances. 2003. Ordinary Television. London: Sage. Born, Georgina. 2003. ‘Strategy, Positioning and Projection in Digital Television: Channel Four and the Commercialization of Public Service Broadcasting in the UK.’ Media, Culture and Society. 25(6). pp. 773–799. Botting, Fred. 2008. Gothic Romanced: Consumption, Gender and Technology in Contemporary Fictions. London: Routledge. Bowen, Sesali. 2018. ‘Horror Fans Are Having The Best TV Season Ever.’ Refinery29. 9th October. https://www.ref inery29.com/en-us/2018/10/213421/horror-tvshows-2018 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Brabon, Benjamin A. 2012. ‘Gaga Gothic.’ Textus. 3. pp. 161–174. Branco, Sérgio Dias. 2015. ‘Magic and Loss: Style, Progression and the ‘Ending’ of Carnivàle.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 57–72.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

99

Broadcast. 2009. ‘Dead Set Sold Abroad.’ Broadcast. 20th March. p. 12. Brown, Todd. 2006. ‘It’s Confirmed: Takashi Miike’s Imprint Will Not Be Screened As Part of The Masters of Horror.’ Screen Anarchy. 20th January. http://screen­ anarchy.com/2006/01/its-conf irmed-takashi-miikes-imprint-will-not-bescreened-as-part-of-the-ma.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Burkhead, Cynthia. 2015. ‘An American Freak Show, an American Grotesque.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 142–151. Butler, Rose. 2018. ‘“Welcome to the Upside Down”: Nostalgia and Cultural Fears in Stranger Things.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 187–201. Calavita, Marco. 2007. ‘“MTV Aesthetics” at the Movies: Interrogating a Film Criticism Fallacy.’ Journal of Film and Video. 59(3). pp. 15–31. Chaney, Jen. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3 is Basically One Big Back to the Future Homage.’ Vulture. 19th July. https://www.vulture.com/2019/07/stranger-things-back-tothe-future-homage-easter-eggs-time-travel.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Cherry, Brigid. 1999. ‘Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film.’ In Stokes, Melvyn and Maltby, Richard (eds). Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies. London: BFI. pp. 187–203. Cherry, Brigid. 2010. ‘Before the Night is Through: True Blood as Cult TV.’ In Cherry, Brigid (ed). True Blood: Investigating Vampires and Southern Gothic. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 1–21. Chilton, Louis. 2021. ‘Netflix and Other Streaming Services To Be Regulated by Ofcom as Part of Reported UK Government Plans.’ Independent. 21st June. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/netflix-ofcombbc-uk-government-b1869617.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Clarke, M. J. 2009. ‘The Strict Maze of Media Tie-In Novels.’ Communicating, Culture & Critique. 2(4). pp. 434–456. Cooke, Lez. 2015. British Television Drama: A History. Second Edition. London: Palgrave. Corona, Victoria P. 2013. ‘Memory, Monsters, and Lady Gaga.’ The Journal of Popular Culture. 46(4). pp. 725–744. Corrigan, Timothy. 1998. ‘Auteurs and the New Hollywood.’ In Lewis, Jon (ed). The New American Cinema. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 38–63. Creeber, Glen. 2004. Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen. London: BFI. Crisell, Andrew. 2002. An Introduction History of British Broadcasting: Second Edition. London: Routledge. Cross, Gary. 2015. Consumed Nostalgia: Memory in the Age of Fast Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Deery, June. 2015. Reality TV. Cambridge: Polity.

100 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Dew, Oliver. 2007. ‘“Asia Extreme”: Japanese Cinema and British Hype.’ New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. 5(1). pp. 53–73. Drake, Philip. 2003. ‘“Mortgaged to Music!”: New Retro Movies in 1990s Hollywood Cinema.’ In Grainge. Paul (ed). Memory and Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 183–201. Dunleavy, Trisha. 2018. Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. New York: Routledge. Earle, Harriot and Clark, Jessica. 2019. ‘Introduction: Telling National Stories in American Horror Story.’ European Journal of American Culture. 38(1). pp. 5–13. Ellis, John. 2000. ‘Scheduling: The Last Creative Act in Television?’ Media, Culture and Society. 22(1). pp. 25–38. Ellis, John. 2012. Documentary: Witness and Self-Reflection. Abingdon: Routledge. Falvey, Eddie, Hickinbottom, Joe, and Wroot, Jonathan. 2020. ‘Horror 2020: Introducing New Blood.’ In Falvey, Eddie, Hickinbottom, Joe, and Wroot, Jonathan (eds). New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 1–11. Feuer, Jane. 2007. ‘HBO and the Concept of Quality TV.’ In McCabe, Janet and Akass, Kim (eds). Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 145–157. Folk, Moe. 2015. ‘The Visual Rhetoric and Multimodal Style of Carnivàle.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 41–56. Foucault, Michel. 1979. ‘What is an Author?’ Screen. 20(1). pp. 13–33. Frey, Mattias. 2016. Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie. 1996. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Garron, Barry. 2010. ‘Dead Set – TV Review.’ The Hollywood Reporter. 22nd October. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/dead-set-tv-review-32200 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Gauntlett, David and Hill, Annette. 1999. TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Gaynor, Stella Marie. 2022. Rethinking Horror in the New Economies of Television. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Geczy, Adam and Karaminas, Vicki. 2017. ‘Lady Gaga: American Horror Story, Fashion, Monstrosity and the Grotesque.’ Fashion Theory. 21(6). pp. 709–731. Geller, Theresa L. and Banker, Anna Marie. 2017. ‘“That Magic Box Lies”: Queer Theory, Seriality, and American Horror Story.’ The Velvet Light Trap. 79. pp. 36–49. Genette, Grard. 1997 Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

101

Genz, Stéphanie. 2007. ‘(Re)Making the Body Beautiful: Postfeminist Cinderellas and Gothic Tales of Transformation.’ In Brabon, Benjamin A. and Genz, Stéphanie (eds). Postfeminist Gothic: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 68–84. Geraghty, Lincoln. 2014. Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture. London: Routledge. Goodwin, Andrew. 1992. Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Grainge, Paul. 2003. ‘Introduction: Memory and Popular Film.’ In Grainge, Paul (ed). Memory and Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 1–20. Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Hale, Mike. 2010. ‘A Zombie Invasion From Across the Atlantic.’ The New York Times. 24th October. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/arts/television/25dead.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Halfyard, Janet K. 2016. Sounds of Fear and Wonder: Music in Cult TV. London: I.B. Tauris. Hanks, Michael. 2015. Haunted Heritages: The Cultural Politics of Ghost Tourism, Populism, and the Past. London: Routledge. Harrington, Erin. 2020. ‘Slicing Up the Boys’ Club: The Female-Led Horror Anthology Film.’ In Peirse, Alison (ed). Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 156–169. Hartigan Jr, John. 2005. Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People. Durham: Duke University Press. Haslop, Craig. 2019. ‘“Do You Wanna Come With Me?”: The Role of the Star Image as Brand for the Commodification of Cult in Mainstream Telefantasy.’ Celebrity Studies. pp. 1–15. Heholt, Ruth. 2012. ‘Subversive Ghost Hunting: A-Technology, the Imagination and the Gothic Spaces of Most Haunted.’ Textus. 25(3). pp. 37–48. Heljakka, Katriina. 2018. ‘Re-playing Legends’ Worlds: Toying with Star Wars’ Expanded Universe in Adult Play.’ Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture. 8(1). pp. 98–119. Hendy, David. 2000. ‘Pop Music Radio in the Public Service: BBC Radio 1 and New Music in the 1990s.’ Media, Culture and Society. 22(6). pp. 743–761. Hill, Annette. 2005. Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London: Routledge. Hill, Annette. 2007. Restyling Factual TV: Audiences and News, Documentary and Reality Genres. London: Routledge. Hill, Annette. 2011. Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture. London: Routledge.

102 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Hills, Matt. 2003. ‘Star Wars in Fandom, Film Theory, and the Museum: The Cultural Status of the Cult Blockbuster.’ In Stringer, Julian (ed). Movie Blockbusters. London: Routledge. pp. 178–189. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hills, Matt. 2006. ‘Realising the Blockbuster: The Lord of the Rings Fandom and Residual/Emergent Cult Status in “the Mainstream”.’ In Mathijs, Ernest (ed). The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in a Global Context. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 160–171. Hills, Matt. 2007. ‘FROM THE BOX IN THE CORNER TO THE BOX SET ON THE SHELF: “TVIII” and the cultural/textual valorisations of DVD.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 5(1). pp. 41–60. Hills, Matt. 2010a. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty First Century. London: I.B Tauris. Hills, Matt. 2010b. ‘Mainstream Cult.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 67–73. Hills, Matt. 2013. ‘The Prisoner: Cult TV Remakes.’ In Thompson, Ethan and Mittell, Jason (eds). How to Watch Television. New York: New York University Press. pp. 290–298. Hodkinson, Paul. 2017. Media, Culture and Society: An Introduction. Second Edition. London: Sage. Hogan, Ron. 2014. ‘Is This the Golden Age of TV Horror?’ Den of Geek. 7th July. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/is-this-the-golden-age-of-tv-horror/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Hollows, Joanne. 2003. ‘The Masculinity of Cult.’ In Jancovich, Mark, Reboll, Antonio Lázaro, Stringer, Julian, and Willis, Andy (eds). Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 35–53. Holmes, Diana. 2007. ‘Sex, Gender and Auteurism: The French New Wave and Hollywood.’ In Cooke, Paul (ed). World Cinema’s “Dialogues” with Hollywood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 154–171. Hunt, Leon, Lockyer, Sharon, and Williamson, Milly. 2014. ‘Introduction: Sometimes They Come Back – The Vampire and Zombie on Screen.’ In Hunt, Leon, Lockyer, Sharon, and Williamson, Milly (eds). Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 1–16. Jancovich, Mark. 2002a. ‘Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions.’ Cultural Studies. 16(2). pp. 306–322. Jancovich, Mark and Hunt, Nathan. 2004. ‘The Mainstream, Distinction, and Cult TV.’ In Gwenllian-Jones, Sara and Pearson, Roberta E. (eds). Cult Television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 27–44.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

103

Janicker, Rebecca. 2017. ‘Introduction.’ In Janicker, Rebecca (ed). Reading American Horror Story: Essays on the Television Franchise. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 1–5. Jaramillo, Deborah L. 2013. ‘Rescuing Television From “the Cinematic”: The Perils of Dismissing Television Style.’ In Jacobs, Jason and Peacock, Steven (eds). Television Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 67–75. Johnson, Derek. 2019. Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children and the Reproduction of Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Johnston, Derek. 2015. Haunted Seasons: Television Ghost Stories for Christmas and Horror for Halloween. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Johnston, Derek. 2017. ‘Special Issue: Television Seasonality.’ Journal of Popular Television. 5(1). pp. 3–10. Jowett, Lorna. 2017. ‘American Horror Story, Repertory Horror and Intertextuality.’ In Janicker, Rebecca (ed). Reading American Horror Story: Essays on the Television Franchise. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 8–26. Jowett, Lorna. and Abbott, Stacey. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London: I.B. Tauris. Keetley, Dawn. 2014. ‘Human Choice and Zombie Consciousness.’ In Keetley, Dawn (ed). “We’re All Infected.” Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 156–172. Kelso, Tony. 2008. ‘And Now No Word From Our Sponsor: How HBO Puts the Risk Back Into Television.’ In Leverette, Marc, Ott, Brian L., and Buckley, Cara Louise (eds). It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 46–64. Kinder, Marsha. 1984. ‘Music Video and the Spectator: Television, Ideology and Dream.’ Film Quarterly. 38(1). pp. 2–15. Kinsey, Tammy A. 2015. ‘The Sensuous Cinematics of Carnivàle.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 17–28. Kompare, Derek. 2006. ‘Publishing Flow. DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Television.’ Television and New Media. 7(4). pp. 335–360. Lee, Nikki J. Y. 2008. ‘Salute to Mr. Vengeance! The Making of a Transnational Auteur Park Chan-Wook.’ In Hunt, Leon and Wing-Fai, Leung (eds). East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 203–219. Leeder, Murray. 2013. ‘Ghostwatch and the Haunting of Media.’ Horror Studies. 4(2). pp. 173–186. Leeder, Murray. 2018. Horror Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury. Longhurst, Brian. 2007. Popular Music and Society: Second Edition. Cambridge: Polity. Lury, Karen. 2005. Interpreting Television. London: Hodder Arnold. Lynch, Andrew. 2022. Quality Telefantasy: How US Quality TV Brought Zombies, Dragons and Androids into the Mainstream. London: Routledge.

104 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Marc, David. 2008. ‘Carnivále: TV Drama Without TV Genre.’ In Leverette, Marc, Ott, Brian L., and Buckley, Cara Louise (eds). It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 101–107. Martin, Daniel. 2015. Extreme Asia: The Rise of Cult Cinema From the Far East. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mathijs, Ernest. 2009. ‘Threat or Treat: Film, Television, and the Ritual of Halloween.’ Flow 30th October. http://flowtv.org [Accessed 4 April 2023] Mathijs, Ernest and Sexton, Jamie. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. McCabe, Janet. 2013. ‘HBO Aesthetics, Quality Television and Boardwalk Empire.’ In Jacobs, Jason and Peacock, Steven (eds). Television Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 185–197. McCabe, Janet and Akass, Kim. 2007. ‘Sex, Swearing and Respectability: Courting Controversy, HBO’s Original Programming and Producing Quality TV.’ In McCabe, Janet and Akass, Kim (eds). Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 62–76. McCarthy, Kayla. 2019. ‘Remember Things: Consumerism, Nostalgia, and Geek Culture in Stranger Things.’ The Journal of Popular Culture. 52(3). pp. 663–677. McDaniel, Jamie. 2019. ‘Growing Up in the Upside Down: Youth Horror and Diversity in Stranger Things.’ In Hermansson, Casie and Zepernick, Janet (eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 205–222. McDonough, Jimmy and Landis, Bill. 1985. ‘Hillbilly Heaven.’ Film Comment. 21(6). pp. 55–59. McIntyre, Gina. 2018. Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down. London: Century. Mills, Brett. 2013. ‘What Does It Mean to Call Television “Cinematic”?’ In Jacobs, Jason and Peacock, Steven (eds). Television Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 57–66. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Mollet, Tracey. 2019a. ‘Demogorgons, Death Stars and Difference: Masculinity and Geek Culture in Stranger Things.’ Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media. 13. Mollet, Tracey. 2019b. ‘Looking Through the Upside Down: Hyper-postmodernism and Trans-mediality in the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things.’ Journal of Popular Television. 7(1). pp. 57–77. Nelson, Robin. 1997. TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values and Cultural Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nelson, Robin. 2007. State of Play: Contemporary “High-End” TV Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

105

Newman, Michael Z. and Levine, Elana. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge. Nowell, Richard. 2011. Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Cycle. New York: Continuum. O’Reilly, Daragh. 2005. ‘Cultural Brands/Branding Cultures.’ Journal of Marketing Management. 21(5–6). pp. 573–588. Pearson, Roberta E. 2010. ‘Observations on Cult Television.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B Tauris. pp. 7–17. Peirse, Alison (ed). 2020. Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Pett, Emma. 2016 ‘“Stay Disconnected”: Eventising Star Wars for Transmedia Audiences.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 13(1). pp. 152–169. Platts, Todd K. 2020. ‘Producing Zombie Television: AMC, The Walking Dead, and the Institutional Dynamics of Green-lighting Hard-edged Horror on Cable.’ Critical Studies in Television. pp. 1–17. Rawle, Steve. 2014. ‘The Ultimate Super-Happy-Zombie-Romance-Murder-MysteryFamily-Comedy-Karaoke-Diaster-Movie-Part-Animated-Remake-All-SingingAll-Dancing-Musical-Spectacular-Extravaganza. Miike Takashi’s The Happiness of the Katakuris as “Cult” Hybrid.’ In Hunt, Leon, Lockyer, Sharon, and Williamson, Milly (eds). Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 208–232. Rendell, James. 2021b. ‘“Now Is the Time of Monsters”: A Roundtable on Contemporary Horror.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. https://nrftsjournal. org/now-is-the-time-of-monsters/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Rogers, Jon. 2008. ‘Rating Focus. Dead Set Breathes Life into E4 With 1.4m.’ Broadcast. 31st October. p. 4. Rojek, Chris. 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books. Roscoe, Jane and Hight, Craig. 2001. Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ross, Sharon Marie. 2008. Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet. Malden: Blackwell. Santo, Avi. 2008. ‘Para-Television and Discourse of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO.’ In Leverette, Marc, Ott, Brian L., and Buckley, Cara Louise (eds). It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 19–45. Schilling, Mark. 2006. ‘Takashi Miike Makes His Mark.’ The Japan Times Online. 23rd June. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2006/06/23/culture/takashimiike-makes-his-mark/#.UUo4fRyeNcg [Accessed 20 March 2013] Schmidt, Lisa. 2013. ‘Television: Horror “Original” Home.’ Horror Studies. 4(2). pp. 159–171.

106 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Sirianni, Joseph M. 2019. ‘Nostalgic Things: Stranger Things and the Pervasiveness of Nostalgic Television.’ In Pallister, Kathryn (ed). Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand. London: Lexington Books. pp. 185–202. Sloan, Robin J. S. 2016. ‘Nostalgia Video Games as Playable Game Criticism.’ Game: The Italian Journal of Game Studies. 5(1). pp. 35–45. Stack, Tim. 2015. ‘Lady Gaga Checks Into American Horror Story: Hotel in EW’s New Cover.’ Entertainment Weekly. 26th August. https://ew.com/article/2015/08/26/ lady-gaga-american-horror-story-hotel-ew-cover/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Stedman, Alex. 2015. ‘Lady Gaga on Transforming Into the Countess for “AHS: Hotel”.’ Variety. 12th November. https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/lady-gagaamerican-horror-story-hotel-the-countess-1201639387/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Steenberg, Lindsay. 2017. ‘Crime TV’s Undercover Halloween.’ Journal of Popular Television. 5(3). pp. 83–99. Subramanian, Janani. 2013. ‘The Monstrous Makeover: American Horror Story, Femininity and Special Effects.’ Critical Studies in Television. 8(3). pp. 108–123. Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Tosca, Susana and Klastrup, Lisabeth. 2020. Transmedia Worlds in Everyday Life: Networked Receptions, Social Media and Fictional Worlds. London: Routledge. Totaro, Donato. 2010. ‘Masters of Horror.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 87–90. Tudor, Andrew. 1989. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Virino, Concepciόn Cascajosa. 2011. ‘Quality Exploitation: Nip/Tuck and the Politics of Provocation in FX Dramas.’ In Kaveny, Roz and Stoy, Jennifer (eds). Nip/Tuck: Television That Gets Under the Skin. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 114–127. Wayne, Michael L. and Castro, Deborah. 2021. ‘SVOD Global Expansion in CrossNational Comparative Perspective: Netflix in Israel and Spain.’ Television and New Media. 22(8). pp. 896–913. Wee, Valerie. 2014. Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes: Translating Fear, Adapting Culture. London: Routledge. Weiner, Robert G. 2015. ‘“I Don’t Appreciate Getting Shanghaied by a Pack of Freaks”: Teratological Humanity in Carnivàle.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 128–141. Wheatley, Helen. 2016. Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure. London: I.B Tauris. Wilcox, Rhonda V. 2010. ‘The Aesthetics of Cult Television.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 31–39.

Jek yll and Hyde: T V Horror’s Incorpor ation of Other Genres and Audiences

107

Williams, Rebecca. 2013. ‘Unlocking the Vampire Diaries: Genre, Authorship, and Quality in Teen TV Horror.’ Gothic Studies. 15(1). pp. 88–99. Woods, Faye. 2014. ‘Classed Femininity, Performativity, and Camp in British Structured Reality Programming.’ Television & New Media. 15(3). pp. 197–214. Woods, Faye. 2016. British Youth Television: Transnational Teens, Industry, Genre. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wyatt, Justin. 1994. High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press.

2.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Texts and Platforms Abstract This chapter advances what is post-TV horror. This begins with Netflix releasing its f irst original TV horror series Hemlock Grove in full that encourages binge-viewing, bluring cult and mainstream viewership. The chapter explores horror f ilm-to-TV transmedia using three case studies – Ash vs Evil Dead, The Purge, and Scream – evidencing myriad transmedia memories. The chapter analyses online streaming and portal interfaces employing televisual discourse: YouTube Premium’s Fight of the Living Dead combines micro-celebrity influencers with reality TV generics. Twitch.TV allows audiences to watch others play horror videogames, evoking traditional TV liveness and ephemerality. Shudder documentaries interpellate cult fans, creating what I term ‘emic authenticity’, however, the portal loses its broadcast feature when reconfigured into a ‘channel’ on Amazon Prime’s aggregational app. Keywords: SVoD, binge-viewing, transmedia, social media, live streaming, apps

Charting the spread of types of horror previously conf ined to cinema, Chapter 1 argued that the genre’s employment and location within existing channels and portals’ branded catalogues sought quality status, cult appeal, and/or mainstream popularity through various textual and paratextual attributes. Chapter 2 continues examining horror television content that is industrially contextualized but does so by analysing how portals’ technological designs and delivery systems shape twenty-first century horror television and expands what is considered post-TV horror. Technological advancements in the delivery have long impacted on televisual form. In the US, for example, a switch from mass appeal least-objectionable network TV to diverse content targeting specific quality/niche demographics was brought

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_ch02

110 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

about with the introduction of cable television and VCR technology (Reeves et al., 1996); a move from a TVI (approximately 1950s–1970s) to TVII epoch (approximately 1980s–1990s). The introduction of digital delivery at the turn of the millennium gave further choice to an increasingly fragmented viewership as industry tailored content to target audiences, taste cultures, and fanbases. Additionally, this TVIII era saw a ‘move towards multi-platform forms of distribution and storytelling, but […] always [keeping] […] some […] link with the technology, branding and programming strategies, and social connotations television traditionally carries’ (Jenner, 2016, p. 259). Continued digital advancements have resulted in television and other audiovisual media being streamed on-demand to TV sets and other media hardware. Such subscription video on demand (SVoD) ‘signals a significant shift in a new media landscape and problematises known terminologies’ (ibid., p. 258), supporting the growth of a post-TV paradigm. Post-TV has seen a number of new players enter the industry (see Johnson, 2019), in doing so reconfiguring the ontological parameters of television. Lindsey states that Netflix ‘stands as the biggest success story in this transition away from traditional television media’ (2016, p. 173). The chapter begins by addressing Lindsey’s assertion by analysing one of Netflix’s first original productions, TV horror Hemlock Grove (2013–2015). Whilst the portal is now a behemoth within the post-TV marketplace, at the time Netflix was a fledgling content producer. To reduce risk, the series was released for streaming in its entirety, a move markedly different from conventional broadcasting. The chapter thus illustrates how, beyond textual qualities, consumptive practices of binge-viewing of original and secondary content have popularized traditionally cult viewing practices. The chapter then sheds light on a 2010s cycle of horror TV series that build on film franchises. Jancovich and Hunt assert that for many ‘horror fans, television, the home of safe, sanitized programming, is opposed to “real” horror – low budget, dangerous, and distinguished by its handling of taboo material’ (2004, p. 33). Whilst the last chapter questions this distinction, this chapter focuses on how this particular TV cycle expands horror film texts. Horror movie sequels frequently focus on ‘the use of special effects and the extremity of violence (as the films try to outdo themselves in that department)’ (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 88). Consequently, film sequels as a form of serialization are often less focused on character development or storyworld building, instead propagating visual displays of gore (ibid., pp. 88–89). In contrast, using Harvey’s (2015) conceptualization of transmedia storytelling that utilizes cultural memory to expand and conf igure

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

111

cross-media nexuses, the chapter analyses how Ash vs Evil Dead (Starz 2015–2018), The Purge (TV), and Scream (TV) remember, misremember, and forget antecedent horror f ilms in their respective franchises. The chapter also considers how despite being distributed on SVoD portals in the UK, episodes of The Purge (TV) and Scream (TV) were released weekly. Consequently, while portals are understood as subverting TV ontology (Lotz, 2014, p. 35), newer online native post-TV players still incorporate key televisual aspects into textual content, delivery methods, and financial structuring. This argument is extended to the subsequent three case studies. First, rather than positioning itself as an ‘alternative’ to television, YouTube has increasingly aligned itself with TV (van Dijck, 2013, p. 110). The YouTube Red original production Fight of the Living Dead (2016–2017) does this by combining social media entertainment, reality television, and the zombie subgenre with hugely popular online micro-celebrities. Second, the user-generated content on Twitch.TV melds ‘two distinct mediums: broadcast media and games’ (Sjöblom and Hamari, 2016, p. 1), by implementing TV attributes previously subverted by digital media, namely: liveness, linearity, and ephemerality. The nascent study of Twitch.TV has yet to consider the platform’s relationship with horror, which I argue offers a mode of post-TV markedly distinct from the rest of the book’s case studies where audiences watch others play horror videogames. Finally, Shudder interpellates horror audiences as genre connoisseurs via its original content and portal platforming (Goggin, 2021, p. 117), incorporating televisuality into brand distinction oppositional to mainstream media and services. Constructed as for fans by (professional-)fans, what I call emic authenticity, Shudder’s original horror docuseries support its fictional output, as does its portal app interface. Moving from second screens that support and supplement the primacy of the TV screen (Tussey, 2014), apps (short for software applications (see Light et al., 2018)) have become a central delivery method for disseminating television. Indeed, every channel/ portal discussed in this and the preceding chapter, as well as a host of others, are all available in app form. Thus, as Johnson highlights, ‘focusing attention on the appisation of television – that is, the emergence of apps as a mainstream means of delivering television services and content – is essential if we are to understand both the transformation of television by the internet and the wider industrial, economic, social and cultural impact of apps’ (2020, p. 166). With this, the chapter explores Shudder’s branded televisuality and how at an interfacial and functional level this is altered as it moves from being a standalone portal to an aggregated ‘channel’ on Amazon Prime.

112 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Feeding Monstrous Appetites: Post-TV Distribution and BingeViewing Centring on the titular town and its human and monstrous inhabitants – particularly werewolves and vampires – the three seasons of Gothic series Netflix’s Hemlock Grove have amassed a strong cult following (Lindsey, 2016, p. 177; Lotz, 2017, p. 27). Contextualizing season one, Netflix was in the precarious position of shifting from content distribution-only to a content production and distribution portal, with Hemlock Grove being only its third original series. As indicated in the previous chapter, a way to mitigate risk is interpellating established horror fans. Alongside adopting a transgenerational approach to attracting audiences, genre is also a ‘core aspect of Netflix’s business model and projected appeal to consumers, as indicated by the search-field suggestions on its homepage’ (Smith-Rowsey, 2016, p. 64); of which, ‘TV Horror’ is a searchable sub-category. Adapted from Brian McGreevy’s novel of the same name (2012), existing fans of the source text may take interest with the adaptation from page to screen and create buzz about the show online, prompting wider viewership. More overtly, Hemlock Grove was strongly marketed through its executive producer Eli Roth (see also Kerrigan, 2010, pp. 131–132), which discursively underscored the series’ niche horror qualities that genre fans would enjoy. Publicized as a horror auteur (Bernard, 2014, pp. 13–14) and self-cultivated provocateur (ibid., pp. 97–99), Roth was a key member of the ‘splat pack’, a mid-noughties group of directors that popularized ‘increasingly visual gore […] [with] a more intensified and hyperkinetic visual approach that favors visceral thrills over contemplative interiority’ (Kendrick, 2010, p. 156). The public notoriety and genre cachet that Roth brings from his films such as Cabin Fever (2002), Hostel (2005), and Hostel: Part II (2007) form part of the semiotic framework used to market Hemlock Grove and instil value. For example, series one’s poster paratextually spotlights that the series is ‘from director Eli Roth’, combining author-functionality with authorial above-the-line positioning as a f ilm director.1 The poster’s visual lexicon further emphasizes this with a hand extending out of a wolf’s mouth, stressing both the corporeal transformation that lycanthropy entails, and the attack of human victims by the monstrous werewolf. Resultantly, the marketing of Hemlock Grove prior to its release stresses body horror content linked to a distinct visual horror film style, echoing the neo-cult paratextual framing of premium cable TV horror and ‘named’ auteurism or showrunner status (see Chapter 1). 1

See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2309295/mediaviewer/rm1202495488

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

113

Turning to the show’s imagery, customarily, Gothic TV is premised on ‘historical tradition, and “restrained” suggestion or implication’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 120). Yet Roth’s auteur branding stresses extreme and/or sexualized violence over cerebral horror. Therefore, notwithstanding ‘the transformation from human to (were)wolf guise that cinema dwells on as the most visually horrifying, generating the most expensive special effects [that fosters high-end filmic visuality]’ (Hubner, 2018, p. 117), the series utilizes Gothic suspense as a core narrative trope (Punter, 1996, p. 14). Each episode generally offers one or two graphic set pieces that bring to the fore ‘images of abjection’ and corporeal vulnerability/defilement (Aldana Reyes, 2016, pp. 58–60). For example, matriarch vamp Olivia attacks monster hunter, Clementine, eating the flesh off her torso, breaking her neck, and leaving her paralysed bloodied flayed body exposing muscle, tendons, and sinew in graphic detail (S1, E12). Yet by not witnessing the attack the aftermath aids in developing enigma surrounding Olivia and her vampirism. Cinematic gore also serves as narrative hooks to entice viewers. This is evident in pre-title sequences. For example, the series begins with a teenage girl being brutally teared open and disembowelled; however, it is unknown who or what is attacking her (S1, E1). Equally, episodes’ ending visual crescendos can draw audiences to continue watching the next instalment. For instance, at the end of episode two (S1, E2) Roman watches Peter’s transmogrification into a werewolf. The scene is particularly gory as Peter’s skin, eyes, and teeth fall off his body as he violently turns into beast form. Therefore, whilst horror visuals link TV content to film aesthetic value, it also serves and stresses the serialized nature of televisual drama. Returning to the poster, the paratext stresses the non-linear full season distribution of Hemlock Grove. This point has become one of the principal ways that video-on-demand has distinguished itself from traditional broadcast television (Jenner, 2017, p. 304). Whilst broadcasting a series in its entirety is not new – as noted in Chapter 1, Dead Set was re-broadcast in full on Halloween 2009 – not being confined to linear television’s scheduling allows SVoD producers to release series whenever and however they want. In doing so, the posters evoke Hemlock Grove’s ‘binge-worthiness’ (ibid., p. 312), elevating the value of the series in the process. As Jenner notes, the ‘highly “bingeable” text with its extraordinarily complex narrative structure’ is ‘not constructed as low-brow television, but akin to high-brow literature’ (ibid.). Binge-watching is thus linked to quality and/or cult TV previously ascribed to premium cable companies (Sim, 2016, p. 188), which Netflix has adopted to build its brand identity (McCormick, 2016, p. 104). Such (para)textual qualities also manifest within the series itself.

114 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Alongside graphic images punctuating episodes, Hemlock Grove frequently employs cliffhangers that raise questions and aggregate storylines in dramatic ways. These are often employed at the end of an episode to encourage viewers to return to the show next week, or in the case of DVD and SVoD full series releases swiftly move onto the next episode. They are also pertinent at the end of a series, leaving audiences guessing, pontificating with each other while the text is on intra-series hiatus, and enticing them to return. As Lima et al. indicate, ‘[a]s a closing act, the final moment of the season is usually marked by an overly elaborate cliffhanger, leaving the resolution for the next season’ (2015, p. 252). For example, season one’s finale sees Dr Pryce looking into the mysterious box revealing a sleeping humanoid figure which suddenly opens its eyes before the end credits roll (S1, E13). Therefore, although releasing a season in its entirety ‘changes the stakes of narrative engagement by reframing the temporality of viewing experiences to optimize emotional intensity and story immersion’ (McCormick, 2016, p. 101), it is important to note key narratological structures of longform serial television are not removed alongside the traditional broadcast schedule flows they are mapped onto and form part of. Furthermore, though Roth’s name, graphic visuality, and facilitating close consumption practices interpellate narrowcasting viewership, ‘bingewatching equally encourages non-fans to be “temporarily moved” by a text’ (Jenner, 2017, p. 314), consuming in a more cult-like manner. Bingeing television was traditionally associated with fans watching and re-watching championed media on VHS and later DVD. Further, the latter’s material culture frames television ‘as symbolically bounded and isolatable “objects” of value […] a machinery of valorization stressing “total system” of TV serials and series’ (Hills, 2007, p. 49). However, rather than DVD’s compartmentalization of episodes via menu navigation and/or over a number of discs, SVoD offers what McCormick terms ‘smooth binging’ via the continuous autoplay of the service (2016, p. 103). This is done by removing the opening title sequence and end credits (see also Chapter 6), allowing episodes to seamlessly continue one after the other. In doing so, bingeing fosters ongoing active abject spectrums as audiences remain immersed with the text. But whereas VHS and DVD home formatting affordances would require financial expenditure from fans who would buy series and boxsets after initial broadcast, bingeing is in-built into Netflix’s technological interface which comes as part of the subscription that allows all audiences to consume in such a manner of television upon release. Thus, whereas the cultification of TV was often seen as something fans did to television through distinctive consumption practices such as close readings and marathon viewings

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

115

(Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson, 2004, p. xvi), said practices are hard-wired into Netflix and other post-TV portals’ general viewing schema as episodes automatically start upon previous ones finishing and audiences can freely pause, rewind, skip, and repeat watched content. Thus, the mainstreaming of horror television in the twenty-first century develops not only from hailing multiple audience segments and encouraging binge-viewing via ‘certain aesthetic and narrative developments in the television series market’ (Mikos, 2016, p. 157), but also becomes ‘possible with certain technological and commercial developments in the media market’ (ibid.), which in turn are subsumed into Netflix and others’ brand identities. Furthermore, the mainstream inflection of previously cult consumption practices is not solely reserved for primary markets. While SVoD ‘originals’ such as Hemlock Grove, Stranger Things, and The Haunting of Hill House foster exclusivity via artificial scarcity that ties customers’ subscriptions to specific portals (Johnson, 2019, p. 96), online natives such as Netflix and Amazon also rely on a ‘secondary market for television content [from TV natives]’ (ibid., p. 101). Consequently, redistributing other channels’ series/ seasons in their entirety can affix binge-worthiness – both textual and consumptive – as an additive layer of quality to previously broadcast TV horror that supports portals’ brand identities by re-clustering aggregated TV horror content from various other industry producers. For example, alongside original series such as Lore (2017–2018) and Tokyo Vampire Hotel (2018), the Amazon British portal offers full seasons of The Walking Dead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB/UPN 1997–2003), The X-Files (FOX 1993–2002), The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu 2017–), and The Exorcist. As Johnson discusses with the increased importing of HBO series by C4 and its digital sister channel E4 at the turn of the millennium, ‘[t]he removal of […] programmes from their original broadcast environment complicates their function as part of HBO’s brand equity’ (2007, pp. 11–12). Concurrent with original productions, ‘imported HBO (and other US) series such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under contribute significantly to the brand equity of E4 and Channel 4’ (ibid., p. 14). Similarly, whilst imbuing texts with binge-potential via release patterns is read as markedly post-televisual, broadcast natives have adopted such strategies to add value to their digital services as a way of competing with online native competitors. For instance, as of 2021 all five seasons of US series Bates Motel can be streamed on BBC’s iPlayer alongside BBC1 broadcasting episodes weekly (Carr, 2021). Again, both (imported) content and distribution patterns serve brand identity. Additionally, The Purge was released in the US by USA Network; however, its UK distribution was undertaken by Amazon. Consequently, in the latter

116 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

context the series is branded as a ‘Prime Original’ but not in the former. Secondary market content is also temporally-bound, removed from catalogues and/or switching portals when licensing contracts expire and are not renewed. Case in point, in the UK Hannibal was streamed on Netflix between 2016 and 2020 (Moore, 2020), but now is available on Amazon. Shows might also be on multiple portals simultaneously, such as The Handmaid’s Tale being on C4’s streaming platform All4 and Amazon, whilst E4’s Misfits (2009–2013) and Crazyhead (2016) are available on All4 and Netflix.2 This highlights that branding, whilst paradoxically a stabilizing strategy and device for change, is still paramount to post-TV. Both for ongoing brand identity of channels/portals and poly-branding potential, horror television is semiotically-slippery as cultural value is reconfigured when texts are attached to shifting industry stakeholders and textually (re-)clustered in various companies’ catalogues. Moreover, branding is a structuring device, yet audiences’ post-structuralist meaning-making around brand value is also dependent on their consumer practices of media. For instance, data shows that in the UK 16–34-year-olds (an age demographic frequently associated with horror) ‘are more likely to watch BBC content on SVoD services rather than through BBC iPlayer’ (OFCOM, 2019). Younger viewers in Britain are ‘twice as likely to watch BBC programmes on Netflix than on the BBC’s own iPlayer service […] [and audiences] in their early teens […] more likely to recognise the YouTube and Netflix brands than the BBC’ (Waterson, 2019). Even with idents indicating shows’ producers (discussed later), audiences may perceive secondary market content as original primary output based on their existing brand relationships and preferred digital media services. What this means is that when analysing post-TV, textual content should not be divorced from wider media ecologies and how they impact audience–text relationships. Having explored an important distribution trend, I turn now to a significant twenty-first century TV horror transmedia cycle that further complicates its relationship with cinema.

Feeding Monstrous Memories: Film-to-TV Horror Transmedia Hemlock Grove falls within the long heritage of screen media adapting horror literature (see Hand and McRoy, 2007), yet a number of studies have noted the growing cycle of televisual iterations that stem from horror films (Belau, 2018; Christensen, 2018; Conrich, 2018). Abbott observes that, ‘Hannibal offered 2

All portal catalogues correct at the time of writing.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

117

an attractive opportunity to target […] [loyal horror fans], as it was a presold production with high recognition factor and built-in audience due to the iconic books and films’ (2018a, p. 122). She adds that there is a ‘trend towards this type of adapted prestige horror television’ (ibid., p. 123). These are often horror films that have produced cult followings and/or proved financially successful in terms of box-office returns (see Cherry, 2009, pp. 8–9; Platts and Clasen, 2017), suggesting crossover appeal (Leeder, 2018, p. 154). Abbott’s quote is useful in highlighting an industry trend in both textual form and interpellative audience targeting that also extends beyond horror film-toTV adaptations, such as Lethal Weapon (FOX 2016–19), She’s Gotta Have It (Netflix 2017–2019), and Taken (NBC 2017–2018). The quote and Abbott’s case study also usefully signpost some theoretical difficulties surrounding transmedia storytelling. As discussed in the book’s Introduction, for Jenkins, transmedia storytelling ‘elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and co-ordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it[s] own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story’ (2011). Through television’s long-from serial structuring, Hannibal’s first two seasons are transmedia prequels to the first three novels/films, giving backstory to our eponymous cannibal and his captor Will Graham and offering a number of original characters – most of whom are also serial killers – and events that develop Hannibal’s mythos (Balanzategui et al., 2019). Yet Hannibal also calls back and transformatively adapts storylines, proses, characters, and scenes from the novels/films, changing characters’ gender, race, and sexuality, for example – what Taylor argues is a ‘paratextual reconfiguration’ rather than prequel proper (2018, p. 210). However, moving from loose fidelity in the first two seasons, Hannibal’s third season is a more derivative adaptation of both the literary and cinematic permutations of Hannibal (Harris 1999/ Scott 2001) then Red Dragon (Harris 1981/Mann 1986/Ratner 2002), as well as developing backstory extending from prequel Hannibal Rising (Harris 2006/Webber 2007). This was due to the producers only having the rights for Red Dragon, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising; not Silence of the Lambs (Harris 1988/Demme 1991). As Colin Harvey indicates, transmedial potential often falls back onto the legal ownership and licensing of intellectual property (2015, pp. 32–33). Far from Jenkins’ unified and co-ordinated cross-media experience, this is a far more convoluted and contradictory understanding of transmedia world-building and (para)textual adaptation that feeds into complex television rhetoric (see Abbott, 2018b). Exploring the overlap and differences between adaptation and transmedia storytelling, Harvey employs theories of cultural and communicative

118 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

memory to the dialogics between media objects, where the former ‘can be understood as a form of vertical memory which travels only one way, from the source material to the destination text. In what we might term its archetypal version, adaptation doesn’t just remember elements of an origin story, but rather most or all of the narrative structure’ (2015, p. 91). However, adaptation’s primary purpose ‘is to forget that the story has been told before and present itself as the first telling. The point at which it stops doing this […] is arguably the point at which the story starts to spread horizontally and spatially, and to become transmedia storytelling’ (ibid.). By contrast, the latter ‘relies on horizontal memory between elements of a transmedia network’ (ibid.), such as characters, locations, plots, events, mythologies, and themes to expand the hyperdiegesis. With this, subsequent permutations select what to remember, forget, and misremember/non-remember. Importantly, Harvey’s conceptualization attests to texts not always clearly employing vertical adaptation or horizontal transmedia expansion, instead utilizing aspects of both. Likewise, franchises may comprise both media forms, in sometimes messy fashion. It is this notion of transmedial storytelling that I want to use to now analyse various film-to-TV horror series, exploring how texts harness and depict franchise memory between the two audiovisual media platforms to better account for this TV horror cycle. From a temporal perspective, Harvey argues whereas ‘adaptation displaces times, transmedia storytelling adds time’ (ibid., p. 90). Ash vs Evil Dead is a good example of this: a sequel set thirty years after Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead film trilogy. Notably, the Evil Dead franchise is already cross-medial with several videogames (some adaptations, others transmedia) and comic books, including crossover series with characters such as Bruce Campbell’s Bubba Ho-Tep, Xena Warrior Princess, Freddie Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Marvel Zombies, 1980s glam rock band Kiss, and even Barack Obama. However, these transmedial texts are not remembered within the TV series, instead expanding on the films only. The original Evil Dead (1981) garnered cult appeal when it became embroiled in the 1980s video nasties saga that saw it, along with a number of other horror titles, banned in cinemas and on VHS in the UK due to its violent imagery (see Egan, 2011). In comparison, Arnzen reads Evil Dead II (1987) and Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness (1992) as splatter films; a ‘self-conscious and anti-illusionistic approach to what could truly be a horrific and frightening scene is postmodern because it destroys the effect-via effects-of terror and calls attention simply to itself as a work of art’ (1994, p. 180). However, echoing Aldana Reyes (2016, p. 88), if ‘[i]n splatter films sequels, story is substituted with what could be termed “formula” […] and the icons associated with the film’ (Arnzen, 1994, p. 180),

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

119

Ash vs Evil Dead uses Ash as a converging node to develop both character and narrative within the transmedial franchise (Bertetti, 2014). Consequently, Ash vs Evil Dead is what Conrich terms ‘nostalgic-horror, television that resurrects popular and cult horror film narratives and characters from the golden age of postclassical horror’ (2018, p. 176). It centres on Ash Williams, played by cult star Bruce Campbell, whose ‘over-the-top, comic style’ (Mathijs and Sexton, 2011, p. 84) helps position the series’ comedic tone more in line with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness than the original film. Part of the show’s humour stems from Ash’s ageing body, whereby the nostalgic turn emphasizes the temporal lag between the films and the TV series. As Feasey writes, ‘hegemonic masculinity has associations with physical prowess, sexual virility, social dominance and aggression, which are potentially at odds with the image of the ageing male’ (2011, p. 507). Ash’s bravado and overt sexualization in line with existing characterization is juxtaposed with his now overweight body and greying hair dyed black with pungent boot polish. That he was trying to seduce a woman by reading poetry from the Necronomicon book whilst high, inadvertently bringing demons into this realm, further elevates Ash’s misdirected sexual instincts. The demonic ‘Little Lori’ dolls chips his tooth that later turns out to be part of his dentures (S1, E1), and his girdle and wooden hand signify his antediluvian figure (even his ‘updated’ electronic hand constructed out of a Nintendo ‘Power Glove’ and Erector Set offers retro connotations that stress Ash’s aged body). When Ash fights his doppelganger (a reference to ‘Evil Ash’ from Army of Darkness), both attack weakened aspects of their identical bodies accrued via ageing (S1, E8). Lastly, Ash reveals his goal to vacate in Jacksonville, Florida (one of the most popular US states to retire to (Folger, 2019)) (S1, E4), and essentially retires by calling a truce with main antagonist Ruby that gives her control over the demons (S1, E10). Driving to Jacksonville sinkholes appear up all around Ash, suggesting that nostalgichorror remembers and (re)activates the return of the repressed rather than providing narrative closure. In turn, this furthers serialization that also attests to splatter horror’s instability (Arnzen, 1994, p. 179) (Campbell himself ‘retired’ Ash when he stepped down from the show after season three, further conflating character with actor (Miller, 2018)). Not only does the series ask fans to remember through bringing back the films’ totems such as Ash’s chainsaw, the boomstick, and his catchphrase ‘groovy!’, but nostalgic-horror also materializes in Ash vs Evil Dead’s miseen-scène. After Pablo defeats the demon doll, Ash recounts Evil Dead II’s past events. Clips from the film, including Ash reading the Necronomicon,

120 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

chopping his own possessed hand off with a chainsaw, and his friends’ demonic transformations, literalize Ash’s memories and inform the diegetic horror of the series. Similarly, after consuming Ayahuasca, Ash’s drug trip is visualized through a montage sequence of various dated film and TV including scenes from Evil Dead II where his girlfriend becomes possessed and he decapitates her (S1, E4). The hallucinations inform his return to the cabin, where the first two films took place, to face his past. Such intratextuality signposts audiences to iconic nostalgic points from the films whilst concurrently providing character and narrative exposition within the series. Moreover, including imagery from the films within the very fabric of the television series helps the latter’s rendering of the former’s splatter filmic qualities into its aesthetic. As Conrich explains, ‘[h]ighly aware of the fan base and the horror values that gave the Evil Dead films a cult following, the makers of Ash vs Evil Dead revisited not only the locations, props, and characters, but also the style and craft of the original movies’ (2018, p. 182). The TV series thus has an ‘old school style’ (ibid.). The series frequently employs swooping point-of-view tracking shots that take the perspective of the maleficent forces made iconic in the films, and makes full use of the franchise’s legacy of ‘[g]ory special effects’ (Leeder, 2018, pp. 69–70). This is most pronounced when Ash, despite his ageing masculinity, battles the demonic deadites. Bodies are broken in graphic fashion, such as stabbing a monster repeatedly in their neck with a broken beer bottle only for the blood to drench Ash (S1, E2). These scenes are frequently bookended and/or intercut with one-liners from Ash that reinforce the comedic nature of the TV horror. Other TV texts move away from character development, instead building on events that take place within films. For instance, flexi-series The Purge (TV) expands the highly lucrative dystopian horror movie franchise (Platts and Clasen, 2017, p. 13). Each film follows the same structure: created by the political party the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA), for twelve hours over one annual night the masses can commit crimes including rape, torture, and murder. The texts’ allegorical engagement with surrounding social events renders ‘subtext as text’ (Abbott, forthcoming, p. 3; see also Phillips, 2021), where each iteration focuses on specific politics, beneficiaries, and victims of corporatized legal criminality. Thus, cumulatively the franchise ‘presents a dystopian picture of the United States that conceptualises and challenges the intersections of structural economic inequality and racism in the neoliberal state, and […] [warns] about the dangers inherent in the rise of reactionary politics in times of perceived crisis’ (Armstrong, 2019, pp. 377–378).

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

121

Similarly, The Purge (TV) explores and critiques the horrors of intersecting neoconservative ‘moral-political rationality’ and neoliberal ‘market-political rationality’ (Brown, 2006, p. 691), contextualized against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency. Set over one Purge night, season one follows four interconnected narrative threads: Upon receiving a suicide note from his sister Penelope, Miguel Guerrero rushes to save her before a cult sacrifice her to the Purge. Miguel rescues Penelope from the ‘Carnival of the Flesh’, where she was taken by ‘traders’ to be auctioned to Purgers (S1, E4). Encaging captives offers pertinent subtext surrounding the detaining of immigrants by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement as part of Trump’s hard-line immigration laws that has seen a number of people die in custody (Rappleye and Riordan Seville, 2019) and the privatization of detention centres producing revenue for businesses (Urbi, 2018). Jane Barbour pays to have her boss David Ryker assassinated due to him quashing her career because she refuses his sexual propositions (S1, E2), indicative of past barriers Jane faced as a Black woman (S1, E7). At his Purge party Ryker espouses sexism and racism, before tying Jane up for his attendees’ white male gaze. Ryker reflects the falsehood of neoliberal post-racial inclusivity (Bhopal, 2018), with his hypermasculine rhetoric evoking the backlash towards the #MeToo movement perpetuated by Trump himself (Sharoni, 2018, p. 150). Wanting to build ethically-constructed homes for low-income families in poor districts, Rick and Jenna Betancourt attend a NFFA party seeking investment in their project (S1, E3). The storyline illustrates the franchise’s ‘recessionary narratives’ surrounding economic anxieties and the plight of impoverished communities after the fallout of 2008 financial crisis caused by mortgage loans (Mann, 2018). Yet the political economy behind the project forces them to do business with those who are morally bankrupt and financially corrupt, reflecting Trump’s business practices (Gould et al., 2017). These storylines coalesce through Joe Owens. Representative of white working-class heterosexual masculinity – average Joes – flashbacks depict Joe’s radicalization (S1, E6). With factory closure and work outsourced abroad, Joe and his ill father become unemployed and unable to receive adequate medical support. Growing disenfranchised, Joe finds the political radio voice of Bobby Sheridan who spouts the plight of the hardworking American male cheated by society and encourages listeners to violently purge as cathartic retribution. Joe catches those he believes wronged him: his ex-boss, an insurance company employee who refused his father, Rick and Jenna who exploited his subcontract security work, Jane for leaving him on a date due to his racist and sexist comments, and Penelope for

122 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

simply ignoring him when he held open a door for her. Thus, supporting franchise themes surrounding ‘economically challenged and disenfranchised underclasses’ (Abbott, forthcoming, p. 14), the series’ subtextual revision and recontextualization comments on right-wing populist politics’ weaponization of white victimhood (Bloch et al., 2020; Taş, 2022). The season remembers and amalgamates core franchise supra thematics by embedding heteroglossic subtexts into the diegesis, materialized via an ensemble cast, multiple narratives, and episodic structuring. By contrast, season two develops ‘the hollowness of […] “return[ing] to normality”’ (Abbott, forthcoming, p. 12) by following new characters predominately outside of Purge night and exploring previously unaddressed socio-political issues. Presenting an Orwellian society, the NFFA monitor citizens and gain access to their media devices/data, purge an academic whose research provides evidence that violence is addictive not cathartic thus countering core Purge ideology, and kill participants outside of Purge night. Assassination bounties are posted on the dark web, and the growing economic gulf between rich and poor forces law-abiding citizens into crime. Concurrently, the judicial system readily incarcerates people to execute on Purge night, whilst a serial killer whose murderous yearnings stem from surviving the Purge kills outside of the annual event. Season two explores ‘the twin forces of corporate capitalism and neoliberal governance [that] can be seen to participate both in the wide-scale, and frequently covert, surveillance of the citizenry’ (Blake and Aldana Reyes, 2015, p. 1), alongside the toxic masculinity of online movements such as the alt-right and ‘incel’ communities (Kelly, 2017; Scaptura and Boyle, 2019). Focusing on the act of purging and the NFFA as the organization that gave rise to the cultural event, The Purge (TV) employs the f ilms’ core socio-political framework. Yet, as with previous iterations, the TV series’ subtext-as-text overtly engages with public consciousness and collective memories of highly charged current social events, ills, and injustices. Hence, The Purge (TV) is comprised of, and communicates back, multimemory – hyperdiegetic and cultural – shifting and changing over seasons. Further, whilst there is extensive temporal lag between Ash vs Evil Dead and the antecedent films, The Purge franchise is still active at the time of writing. With the eroding of memory that comes with the passing of time being less pronounced, there is less need to (re)articulate the past in The Purge (TV); season one came out the same year as The First Purge (McMurray 2018). Intramedial memory is also forgone as flexi-serial structuring disconnects the two seasons’ storylines. Likewise, the film sequels are connected by the yearly Purge, with each iteration set in different spatio-temporal settings

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

123

with most characters confined to a respective film3 (placing less onus on character intramediality or transmediality). Television’s serialized nature lends itself to the annuality of the event. Therefore, despite transmedial expansion utilizing respective media’s narratological infrastructure, The Purge (TV) harmonizes with the franchise’s storytelling modality that fans will recognize (Scolari, 2009), but does not punish new audiences yet to consume any existing Purge texts since the series does not require detailed remembering (see also Delwiche, 2017). If Ash vs Evil Dead develops the films’ core protagonist in nostalgic fashion and The Purge (TV) advances the franchise’s ideological tapestry, Scream (TV) as a transmedial expansion of Wes Craven’s Scream films is less clear.4 Part of the popular 1990s neo-slasher cycle with ‘high production values, largely female casts, and associations with teen television hits’ (Jancovich, 2002b, p. 7), the Scream movies intertextually draw ‘on “insider knowledge” and “a fan’s familiarity” with the genre’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 182), particularly 1970s and 1980s slasher cinema. Much like its film predecessors, Scream (TV) endeavours ‘to faithfully adhere to the slasher horror formula (usually involving a maniacal killer who hunts down a group of mostly teenage victims one by one) and re-tailor it for the small screen’ (Christensen, 2018, p. 161). Notably, the pilot episode’s (S1, E1) pre-title sequence vertically adapts Scream’s infamous opening to draw knowing audiences in. After Nina uploads a video online outing a classmate as queer that instantly goes viral, an unknown assailant torments the teen in her smart digital home. Rather than the original film’s killer calling the landline, Nina receives a range of media communications, including Snapchat-like videos filming her from inside the house, several taunting text messages from her boyfriend Tyler’s phone, and her laptop camera clandestinely watching the scantily clad girl. 3 Dante Bishop is in the first three films, whilst Leo Barnes is in Purge: Anarchy (DeMonaco 2014) and Purge: Election Year (DeMonaco 2016). James Sandin from The Purge (DeMonaco 2013) makes a cameo in season two. 4 Although direct transmedia authorship (Freeman, 2017, p. 9) extends between Ash vs Evil Dead and The Purge (TV) and their antecedent horror films via above-the-line creatives, Scream (TV) as transmedia is not afforded such production connections: Sam Raimi was an executive producer on Ash vs Evil Dead, writing and directing the pilot episode with Renaissance Pictures (Raimi’s production company) producing the series. The Purge franchise creator James DeMonaco wrote and was an executive producer of The Purge (TV) made by Blumhouse Television; a subsidiary of Blumhouse Productions who produce The Purge films. In comparison, despite Scream (TV) being distributed by various Weinstein-owned companies who distributed the Scream films, franchise creator Wes Craven had minimal input to the TV series and even levelled criticisms at some of the changes the TV series made (McDermott, 2015).

124 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Trying to relax, Nina gets into the hot tub when Tyler’s decapitated head is suddenly hurled into the water. As she flees, the killer slashes Nina’s back before slitting her throat, revealing their disguise, a white mask akin to the films’ ‘Ghostface’ but markedly different (Murphy, 2015). Consequently, the scene establishes central themes surrounding trolling, surveillance, catfishing, and the pressures of social media. It also provides a degree of cultural verisimilitude in relation to Scream’s (TV) target audience and their media practices much like the franchise’s fans at the end of the twentieth century (Hutchings, 2004, p. 215). However, the adapted scene does not want us to forget any previous iteration in presenting itself as ‘the first telling of the story’ (Harvey, 2015, p. 73). Rather, keeping with the franchise’s postmodern modus operandi, it asks precisely to remember antecedent events in order to understand its intratextual/intertextual genre play. Indeed, concurrent with horizontal memory, Harvey argues that ‘[m]emory emerges as a central aspect of genre within the transmedia sphere. When we engage with a cultural artefact in a particular genre, our expectations are conditioned by previous experience of that genre’ (2019, p. 162). Yet, Harvey adds, ‘form and content discussions characteristic of genre theory become more complex in a transmedia context, in which the participant is asked to “configure” their engagement with the transmedia network, and by the specif ic material and energetic conditions of the network’ (ibid.). Thus, Scream’s (TV) genre play derives from its mimesis of the franchise’s postmodern form, but also its televisual (re)configuration of a film text and the slasher as cinematic subgenre. Relatedly, whereas ‘Scream is full of characters who know about horror movies’ (Leeder, 2018, p. 73), Scream (TV) is full of characters well-versed in horror media including film, TV, podcasts, videogames, comics, and ‘dark fandom’ (see Broll, 2020). Much like horror film geek Randy Meeks, the Scream films’ mouthpiece through which intertextuality is vocalized, Scream’s (TV) Noah Foster articulates horror’s rules to his friends. In an English class, the students discuss the overlap between Gothic literature and screen media (S1, E1). Self-referentially highlighting TV horror’s boom that the series itself is part of, their teacher argues that the ‘Gothic genre is all over TV right now. You have American Horror Story. You have Bates Motel, Hannibal.’ When a student suggests The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper 1974) and Halloween (Carpenter 1978), Noah counters that ‘those are slasher movies […] you can’t do a slasher movie as a TV series.’ He reasons that, ‘Slasher movies burn bright and fast. TV needs to stretch things out.’ As he highlights salient differences between film and TV that prove the slasher’s unsuitability for television, intercuts of Nina’s mother finding her

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

125

murdered daughter ironically frame the scene as meta-textual, subverting Noah’s assertion of genre and media platform rules. Thus, like the films, the television series’ ‘teenage characters are overly familiar with horror and popular culture in general, and continually comment on generic qualities of the narrative within which they are located’ (Jancovich, 2002b, p. 7), whilst simultaneously drawing attention to Scream’s (TV) transmedial artifice. The text does not want us to forget it is television, nor that it is playing with intratextual and intertextual knowledge of horror cinema and other genre media. Yet Scream (TV) does not remember any characters, events, or places from its film counterparts. Therefore, its transmedial expansion is markedly aesthetic. Hills notes that the Scream sequels are ‘more concerned with taking the franchise itself as the point of reference’ (2005a, p. 188). Resultantly, ‘textual knowledge […] is more intratextual and “proprietary” than intertextual/generic’ (ibid.). In a similar vein, the television series highlights and subverts the Scream films’ textuality: firstly, the Ghostface mask’s re-design and new backstory surrounding Brandon James, a teen with Proteus syndrome Othered by the town.5 Secondly, the meta-textual commentary by which characters refer to horror media at large, rather than a narrow focus on the slasher film subgenre, as the prism through which they understand mysteries, events, and actions taking place within the diegesis. Thirdly, the ensemble cast allows for misdirection of who the killer(s) might be and the systematic killing of characters through a variety of means, but does so in a more elongated fashion as it plays out over two seasons. Finally, the self-referential updating of the films’ communication technologies as characters download voice-changing apps on their phones to sound like Scream’s iconic killer. Similarly, when one survivor informs the group to call the police via her landline (S1, E10) another member is shocked at the archaic technology, remarking ‘what is this, 1996?’ (the year the first Scream (Craven) film was released). Accordingly, Scream’s (TV) ‘insider knowledge’ not only plays with the rules of horror media, but concurrently the rules of the franchise itself as the series offers transmedial ‘transposition’ (Ryan, 2013, p. 366), whereby form, design, and aesthetics of the extant text are (re)configured onto a new media platform. Despite the binge-viewing potential of releasing a complete series en bloc, in the UK episodes of The Purge (TV) and Scream (TV) were released weekly on Amazon and Netflix respectively, adhering to traditional linear 5 The Ghostface mask makes a return in season three (VH1 2019), completely removed from the previous two seasons, but again differs slightly from the films.

126 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

broadcast scheduling (Stiegler, 2016, p. 243). If binge-viewing offers one dietary mode of consumption for audiences, then weekly-viewing fosters a savouring of narrative development for fans whereby a series can ‘build and sustain buzz over time’ (Johnson, 2019, p. 86). Given that these film-to-TV horror texts have established fanbases, they provide producers in-built audiences for these transmedia extensions who are likely to be loyal to shows even before their release. Moreover, by adhering to a traditional scheduling model, ‘[a]ficionados can watch weekly, eagerly awaiting new episodes’ (ibid.), where the regular intermittences between episodes provide space for fans to reflect on the narrative (Houwen, 2015, p. 29), talk to others about the series, and/or build hype for subsequent episodes due to TV’s narrative devices such as open-ended narratives and cliffhangers. This also provides cult potential, allowing space and time for audiences to dig deeper into the TV horror text. That said, the ongoing housing of these series on their respective portals allows latecomers to binge the shows in their entirety, marking the series as binge-worthy much like Hemlock Grove and other original TV horror texts commonly released in full on their initial release. As Johnson explains, ‘[a]s the buzz filters down to other viewers, they can engage in binge viewing by accessing the back catalogue of episodes within the online services’ (2019, p. 86). In doing so, the platforms can form temporally distinctive multi-layered quality markers within the same text via shifting broadcast strategies that interpellates existing fans of the films and lay audiences consuming in a fan-like fashion. Further, it is important to consider that, whilst serving existing horror franchise fans rich in (intra)textual knowledge, we need to factor other audiences’ consumption patterns. Some may watch the TV series before watching one or all of the iterations within a horror film franchise, with others eschewing the movie cycle altogether, purely watching TV horror series. This is not to suggest any particular viewership pathway is better than another, instead attesting to myriad ways audiences can traverse transmedia landscapes, the meaning they build out of this, and challenge notions of primary and secondary text relations (Hills, 2012, p. 38). If the first two sections of this chapter have looked at the textual, aesthetic, thematic, and ontological complexities between TV horror and film, the remaining case studies explore how the ongoing digitization of television as both a form and content within a post-TV context impacts twenty-first century TV horror. In doing so, this highlights how the televisuality of TV is equally as salient as the cinematic rubric that much of twenty-first century horror television has adopted. This is evident with other online TV portals such as YouTube.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

127

Feeding Monstrous Micro-celebritydom: YouTube Premium’s Post-TV Horror YouTube is commonly understood as a somewhat open streaming portal (Johnson, 2019, p. 39), with uploaded content aggregated from both grassroots amateurs and mainstream media. Such capabilities foster the (often illicit) circulation of television horror (see Chapter 3). However, the site now offers YouTube Premium.6 This premium subscription service, among other things, offers exclusive access to ‘YouTube Red Originals which are full-length programs or movies made with professional production studios featuring the leading YouTubers’ (Ha, 2018, p. 163). Johnson argues (2019, pp. 43–44) that since this service is closed to paying audiences and editorially controlled by YouTube itself, YouTube Premium offers a form of online TV. One example pertinent to this book is the flexi-serial reality show Fight of the Living Dead (FOTLD). Comprised of two seasons,7 Experiment 88 (2016) and Paradise Calls (2017), both series follow similar narrative trajectories: over eight episodes a collection of YouTube stars undertake a 72-hour experiment where they try to survive zombie-filled scenarios and find out about the organization CONOP and its secrets. YouTube has been conceptualized as serving ‘multiple roles as a highvolume website, a broadcast platform, a media archive and a social network’ (Burgess and Green, 2009, p. 5). This differs from other post-TV portals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime due to amateur quotidian content providing the majority of YouTube’s housed catalogue (Cunningham and Craig, 2017, p. 72). Subsequently, a number of individuals have been elevated above the echelon of everyday users to what Senft terms ‘micro-celebrities’, ‘[an] online performance that involves people “amping up” […] [one’s] popularity over the Web using technologies like video, blogs and social networking sites’ (2008, p. 25). Able to commodify and monetize their output, microcelebrities perceive their peers and imagined audience as their fanbase, employing ‘a collection of self-presentation practices endemic in social media […] [to] strategically formulate a profile, reach out to followers, and reveal personal information to increase attention and thus improve their online status’ (Marwick, 2015a, p. 138). Ergo, micro-celebrity ‘is something 6 Previously launched as YouTube Red in 2014, the service was renamed YouTube Premium in 2018. 7 A prior season of FOTLD (2015) establishes core textual qualities seen in subsequent seasons. However, this is freely available on YouTube, employs a smaller budget, with episodes shorter in length (six–ten minutes). Therefore, this season falls outside of YouTube Premium’s catalogue and brand identity.

128 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

one does, rather than something one is’ (Marwick, 2015b, p. 331), retaining a degree of ordinariness as a marker of their star quality. Importantly, since YouTube Premium is not advertised across any other media outside of YouTube (Ha, 2018, p. 166), YouTube Red Originals interpellate fans of social media celebrities who have gained popularity on the site but only within YouTube as a portal, rather than trying to gain wider viewership by promoting original content via traditional legacy media. Moreover, utilizing YouTube micro-celebrities who are both ‘everyday’ and elevated users, FOTLD mimics and hybridizes popular formats of reality TV: ordinary people grouped in novel settings (e.g. Big Brother), celebrities put in challenging environments (e.g. I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (ITV 2002–)), and the staging of events and situations (e.g. The Hills (MTV 2006–10)). Yet FOTLD does so with YouTube audiences in mind with each standalone season comprising of ten different well-known YouTube stars – many of whom have over several million subscribers – tackling a zombie onslaught. Furthermore, the array of micro-celebrities from some of the most popular YouTube video genres suggest the show’s interpellation of a wide range of viewers. This includes comedy and pranks – Jake Paul, Jc Caylen, Tré Melvin – beauty and lifestyle – Brittani Louise Taylor, Wengie, Karina Garcia, Miles Jai – and videogames – Raya Carmona. The show’s use of reality TV ensemble casting also means FOTLD includes a range of identity markers including gender, race, nationality, and sexuality. Interviews and vlogs signpost contestants’ names and YouTube usernames. Including usernames reiterates star monikers tied to micro-celebrity brands that also mutually brands the YouTube Red content as premium quality indicative of the social capital FOTLD has collated. It also provides audiences the tag to direct them to the respective micro-celebrity’s non-premium subscription content; especially useful for viewers previously unaware of any of the contestants. Thus, while FOTLD narrowcasts to YouTube audiences alone, its breadth of micro-celebrities broadcasts to myriad site-specific viewers/demographics. This is also apparent in FOTLD’s use of micro-celebrities’ key production vernacular and affective address that marries with the show’s reality television framework. Cunningham and Craig argue that micro-celebrities’ appeal stems from YouTube’s governing ‘norms that put the highest value on authenticity and community’ (2017, p. 72). Sharply def ined against professional legacy media, ‘authentic’ YouTube content centres on vlogs’ personal revelations, existential reflections and corporeal transformations, responses to fans, and the relative low production values that blend content with aesthetics (ibid.). Tantamount to authenticity is intimacy as an affective realm between micro-celebrities and their fans. Berryman

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

129

and Kavka explain this is fostered through the aggregation ‘of resonances from at least four registers: the spatial (evoking closeness), the temporal (evoking immediacy), the social (produced by patterns of direct address and closeness) and the medial (evidenced by small-screen techniques such as mise-en-scène, editing, rhythms, etc.)’ (2017, p. 310). Therefore, whilst YouTube generally has shied away from violent content in comparison to other screen media (Weaver et al., 2012), FOTLD’s horror feeds through YouTube micro-celebrities’ production and performance qualities. This is most evident through the harmonizing of personal vlog aesthetics with surveillance-like camera shots. Vlogs provide a particular converging point between a micro-celebrity generic for conveying intimate insight into their physical, emotional, and mental states (Raun, 2018, p. 102), and reality TV’s ‘direct-to-camera “diary room[s]”’ (Arthurs et al., 2018, p. 9) that provide ‘private’ self-reflections on public situations and social interactions they have on the show. Given their ‘authentic’ construction, they also serve as ‘negative’ affective verifiers of the zombie horror in the show (Berryman and Kavka, 2018, p. 87). Even though the zombies are actors and the threats staged, the celebs frequently use vlogs to explain how frightening attacks were and some show visible signs of distress such as shaking and crying over the ‘death’ of comrades. Such low production value textual tropes also meld SME and reality TV with found footage horror cinema, for example, the emotional to-camera confessionals in The Blair Witch Project. A similar connection can be made through the show’s use of GoPro cameras attached to the celebrities’ suits that provide point-of-view shots of action unfolding. These P.O.V. angles align the audience with the microcelebrity’s subjectivity, furthering intimacy via proximity whilst also being a useful device during moments of horror. This is evident when, under attack, the group runs away from the zombie(s) with the chaos and speed causing motion blur and action falling inside and outside of the frame. This trope is also common in found footage horror film, for instance REC (Balagueró and Plaza 2007) and Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008). Lastly, a camera crew documents missions in voyeuristic fashion, using medium to extreme close-up shots to further constrict the mise-en-scène, adding to the sense of dread and fear the micro-celebrities feel/perform, and supporting the tension of scenes (Hutchings, 2004, pp. 149–150). Importantly, during mission set pieces and scenes, FOTLD frequently switches between different forms of intermit camerawork. Therefore, melding a range of authentic SME registers – spatial, temporal, social, medial – with horror genre vernacular.

130 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

While such a documentarian repertoire of camera shots firmly marks FOTLD as social media entertainment and reality TV, the show punctuates moments of horror with more cinematic visuality. This is most noticeable during death scenes where the aspect ratios switch from full screen to letterbox framing. Such shaping of screen space has its heritage in cinema’s wide screen (Cossar, 2009). Therefore, this ‘cinematic technique’ is utilized to endow the text ‘with filmic significance and activate notions of highbrow experiences’ (ibid., p. 10). Some scenes are extremely quick where a zombie or zombies swarm a body, e.g. Brittani Louise Taylor’s killing does not have the camera linger on the attack (S1, E1). Others are more elongated and mimic common horror film visual/narrative tropes, e.g. Raya Carmona hides from a zombie behind a door bathed in red low-key lighting. Thinking she has escaped, the monster suddenly attacks her, causing Carmona to scream, pulling her to the ground and biting into her throat (S1, E7). Similarly, when Karina Garcia meets her demise, she is dragged along the ground into the night, screaming and stretching her arms out (S2, E5). Yet FOTLD promptly returns to its reality TV/SME form both in terms of camera shots and content, such as undertaking tasks, meaning graphic cinematic horror are flashbulb instances rather than the show’s overarching aesthetic. Such ongoing manoeuvring of form further negotiates the convergence of television, film, and social media entertainment within a post-TV paradigm. However, whereas YouTube has been championed for its interactive affordances between users that are markedly lacking in television (Berryman and Kavka, 2017, p. 316), FOTLD positions its audience as somewhat passive compared to YouTube’s common social qualities. This is evident in two interconnected ways: first, episodes are generally released weekly at a much slower rate akin to traditional scheduling on TV rather than the hyper-frantic constant dissemination by micro-celebrities. This is supported by common televisual tropes such as end-of-episode cliffhangers, next episode teasers, and ‘previously on’ episode recaps. This does not allow micro-celebrities to spontaneously respond to users in a timely manner in subsequent videos. Second, because of this, even though FOTLD employs vlog vernacular that supports authentic and intimate aesthetics, the participants are not really interacting with their fanbase. Rather, much like traditional reality TV, vlogs serve as video diaries where the micro-celebrities provide exposition and/ or emotive reflection about in situ actions. Moreover, beyond FOTLD’s post-televisuality triangulation between different stylistic modes of converging media, the show’s premium position on YouTube attempts to make it stand out from the crowd via its YouTube Red branding tied to its subscription-based model. Johnson explains that,

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

131

‘[o]ne of the primary ways in which brands are made visible and the values of the brand are communicated to consumers is through the use of logos and idents’ (2007, p. 9). Idents can be employed prior to an episode. For example, Netflix’s 2019 ident for original programming is a logo animation of the ‘N’ ribboning from the bottom-left to top-right of the letter accompanied by the sound of a drum being hit twice. The camera then zooms in and a spectrum of light disperses into the foreground. Idents can evoke ‘the impression of an appointment to view with each programme, creating a separate and special place in which its programmes are encountered’ (ibid.), tied to the brand identity of the channel/service. Before each episode of FOTLD, YouTube Red employs an ident in similar fashion. This begins with the YouTube logo presented centrally on a white background, the ‘You’ in black typeface, and ‘Tube’ in white typeface boxed in a red rectangle that evokes a TV and/or computer screen. ‘Red’ appears out of the right-hand side of the box in black lettering before the sound of a click/switch turns the background red. With this, both the ‘You’ and ‘Red’ turn to a white typeface, whilst ‘Red’ becomes red lettering and its boxing turns white. Concurrently, ‘ORIGINAL SERIES’ appears underneath the logo. This reinforces YouTube as the distribution platform but also clearly signifies a change in content: switching from aggregated videos to exclusive portal-produced quality content. That both seasons are also available in 4K high-definition also elevates FOTLD, where HD quality further positions the text with high-end television and film and further situates it above ‘regular’ YouTube content as part of its legitimization strategies (Newman and Levine, 2012, pp. 106–108). Yet importantly, the first episode of each season is free. A distribution strategy markedly different from existing subscription-based post-TV services/channels, YouTube Premium gives access to all users to introduce them to the micro-celebrities, the seasons’ plots, and their horror reality TV narrative tropes including deaths of participants. Alongside teasers of the next non-free episode, these hooks seek to retain audience immersion, encouraging users to subscribe to watch the rest of FOTLD as well as consume other exclusive YouTube Premium content. This approach is more aligned with videogame distribution/marketing strategies, what Osathanunkul terms ‘shareware’, ‘a free trial version […] [that] usually allows customers to try the product or service with a limited of time and/or functionality’ (2015, p. 40), with the aim of users subsequently purchasing the fully-functional game. Given that FOTLD centres on micro-celebrities with strong fanbases eager to gain access to exclusive, authentic, and intimate content, such ‘demoing’ is a useful tantalizer to get audiences buying into YouTube Premium. Thus, not only does FOTLD textually converge SME, television, and cinema,

132 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

it also brings together and complicates various media industry/distribution models (Jenkins, 2006a, p. 6). This model of gamedoc reality TV, horror, and micro-celebrities as premium subscription YouTube-created content is proving popular. YouTube Red have also produced four seasons of Escape the Night (2016–19), a murder mystery horror reality show that sees YouTube stars take the roles of fictional characters whilst speaking to camera as themselves. Likewise, in considering the growth of post-TV horror, the televisualization of other online media services and content is also apparent. Most notably Twitch.TV.

Feeding Monstrous Streams: Twitch.TV as Live Post-TV Horror Johnson argues that a key distinction between online TV and other forms of new media services is that the former’s content ‘is actively, rather than passively, acquired’ (2019, p. 37). Furthermore, ‘online TV services are […] constructed as closed spaces that limit the contributions of users and are designed primarily to facilitate viewing’ (ibid., p. 38). However, Twitch. TV complicates Johnson’s conceptualization since the wealth of output ‘is the product of user-generated content’ (Payne, 2018, p. 288). A spin-off of Justin.TV (2007–2014), Twitch.TV came into existence in 2011 primarily streaming and archiving videogame footage. As a form of what Bruns labels ‘DIY broadcasting’ (2009), Twitch.TV sidesteps traditional television gatekeepers by providing a space for anyone to broadcast content live to ‘better fit the interests of [its] users’ (Smith et al., 2013, p. 131). Yet to deem this a niche narrowcasting platform underserves its popularity. As Diwanji et al. write, ‘Twitch.tv has over fifteen million daily active users, which includes gamers, also known as “twitchers,” and their viewers’ (2020, p. 2). Viewers can watch an array of stream types, such as professional e-sport tournaments, speed-runs where players try to complete games as quickly as possible, casual play, and tutorials. All of which include horror videogames streamed by aficionados and those ‘curious about horror games but are afraid of playing them’ (Sun et al., 2019, p. 1). Concurrent with TV horror’s adoption of filmic gore, the twenty-first century has also seen videogames become increasingly cinematic in terms of improved photorealism in-game and during cut-scenes, as many games remediate ‘cinematic devices, tropes and associations in a more diffuse manner’ (King and Krzywinska, 2002, p. 2). Furthermore, much like markers of quality TV, cinematic adjectives are often used by industry and journalistic voices to elevate certain videogames over others (ibid., p. 6). However,

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

133

videogame genres are markedly distinct from literary, film, or television genres ‘due to the direct and active participation of the audience in the form of the surrogate player-character, who acts within the game’s diegetic world, taking part in the central conflict of the game’s narrative’ (Wolf, 2001, p. 114). Consequently, horror is suffixed to the mode of play that often defines videogame genres based on their ludic qualities – e.g. survival horror, first-person-shooter horror, RPG horror – that seek to evoke horror and neighbouring emotions in players. Likewise, horror film and television seek to immerse audiences into diegeses and foster emotive responses through textual devices that oscillate between forewarning dread/suspense and crescendos of shocking monstrous revelation (see Hanich, 2010). Similarly, ‘[s]cary video games are constantly modulating the fear motivators’ (Perron, 2018, p. 92), yet unlike cinema and TV, immersion is also generated via interactive qualities (Brown, 2014). Krzywinska argues it is shifts ‘between doing [playing] and not doing [cut-scenes] […] [the] dynamic rhythm between self-determination and pre-determination’ (2002, p. 207) that create suspense, tension, shock, and fear in horror videogames. Consequently, ‘fear becomes much more intense’ (Rouse III, 2009, p. 20) as affect is founded on ‘the dual domain of the semiotic and the procedural’ (Sicart, 2013, p. 47). Yet such dynamics become nuanced on Twitch.TV where viewers watch others play horror videogames, evoking what McCrea describes as a ‘dual horror pleasure’ (2019, p. 63). This, I argue, is decidedly post-televisual. Part of the main conceptualization of post-TV has been the shift from ‘flow’ to ‘files’ (Kompare, 2002). Digital media’s on-demand affordances are seen to have quashed three of television’s principal ontological markers: ephemerality as content can now be saved and (re)watched anytime and anywhere. Concurrently, television’s linearity is subverted as viewers are no longer beholden to the flow of scheduling (Grainge, 2011, p. 6), both of which destroy TV’s fleeting liveness that ‘implies temporal simultaneity [and intimacy] with the audience’ (Lury, 2005, p. 98). However, Twitch.TV re-instils these qualities into its post-TV portal. Yet this ‘is a new, more active, and selective form of liveness’ (Spilker et al., 2020, p. 616), where audiences actively jump into linear streamed content that is not scheduled in a traditional television manner, chosen from the rhizomatic flow of available streams. Such liveness also produces ephemerality based on each stream being different, gamers’ individual play, and that streams are not permanently archived on Twitch.TV. The transient nature of streams heightens audience’s emotional response to the screen media and encourages communal ties through a shared viewership of something unique (Hamilton et al., 2014, pp. 1320–1321).

134 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Given the sheer volume of streamed content, frequently of the same videogame, and that Twitch.TV audiences can readily switch channels akin to traditional television ‘channel-surfing’ (Spilker et al., 2020, p. 613), the onus is on the streamer to set themselves apart from the crowd through their personality (Anderson, 2017). Indeed, playing videogames can be a performative practice (Crawford and Rutter, 2007). Yet, while it has been argued, therefore, that the gamer and stream type attract audiences over videogame genres (Sjöblom et al., 2017, pp. 163–164; Spilker et al., 2020, p. 607), horror games’ emphasis on players’ fearful responses raises an interesting point of analysis when considering gamers’ live stream performances. Twitch.TV’s duality of horror means audiences watch horror videogames played live and the gamers themselves embedded within the frame. With ‘streamers broadcast[in]g as “themselves,” or as a “character”’ (Woodcock and Johnson, 2019, p. 814), their vlog-like filming captures their responses as a corporeal performance to gameplay action. As such, ‘the player’s movements, facial expressions, body positions, gestures, expression of emotion, gender, race and clothing are all on display as fundamental aspects of the stream’s content’ (Anderson, 2017). Similarly, Tseng notes that, ‘characters’ actions and interactions are of immense importance in […] narrative comprehension’ (2013, p. 587). Watching others play turns them into characters embedded within the mise-en-scène of Twitch.TV as they perform for the camera whilst interacting with horror videogames through their controlling of in-game avatars. The performance of emotions, as previously discussed, is also central to SME discursive construction of authenticity and intimacy as viewers witness the gamer’s immersion. Such performances demonstrate what Perron terms ‘gameplay emotions’, ‘emotions arising from our actions in the game-world and the consequent reactions of the game(-world)’ (2005). This includes myriad emotive registers evinced by verbal and non-verbal cues, such as dread for what is coming up in the game, suspense from engaging with unknown mysteries, and screaming and shouting when fighting or fleeing monstrous threats. Players also frequently talk to themselves and viewers, discuss the best way to traverse a level, laugh, and/or signpost how they might react to in-game horror. Such performance markers simultaneously use humour as a common performative device to attract viewers (Woodcock and Johnson, 2019, p. 816), allow the player to defuse the threat by emotively viewing the horror from a distance (Eitzen, 1999, p. 85; Pinedo, 1997, p. 48), and signpost viewers to anticipate how the player may react to the unknown dangers awaiting them. Players might also incorporate their constructed character identity and ludic capital into such performances – for example,

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

135

drag queens who play in full drag as part of the Stream Queens group (Nightingale, 2019), a seasoned horror videogame player such as South Korean gamer ‘Michael Myers’8 who wears the Halloween killer’s mask whilst playing Dead by Daylight (Behaviour Interactive 2016), or a gamer who does not normally play such frightening texts and is, therefore, naïve to the common game mechanics and/or horror milieu. Thus, Twitch.TV fosters affective registers for non-playing audiences through the allure of spontaneity and immediacy of in-situ gamer reactions to ludic horror. This may align with players’ gameplay emotions or provide alternative gratifications and pleasures (Sjöblom et al., 2017, p. 168). Moreover, non-playing audiences demonstrate other forms of interaction with onscreen gameplay content through Twitch.TV’s chat functions. Compared to traditional broadcast, YouTube, and other online television modes of interactivity where audiences comment on pre-recorded content, Twitch.TV’s liveness allows audiences a far greater degree of co-presence within the interface as they post in real time, talk to gamers as they play, and converse with other viewers (Spilker et al., 2020, p. 616; Diwanji et al., 2020, p. 2). The chat box itself is textually substantial, ‘taking up approximately 25 percent of the screen when not in full screen video mode’ (Anderson, 2017). As noted, Twitch.TV fosters audience affect as they watch others play horror videogames live. Audiences can explain how they feel watching gameplay and/or the gamer through literary means and emoji vernacular common to the site. Resultantly, as Anderson explains, ‘chat comments align with the human-focused elements of the website’s design, allowing yet another avenue for the people involved in the entire process, from streamers to viewers, to manifest both their presence and their identity’ (ibid.). It is also common for viewers to offer tips on how to traverse space and complete missions to progress through the text – for example, when watching someone play survival horror videogames that involve finding clues and solving tasks, such as the Resident Evil franchise (1996–). Aid is often met with thanks by the gamer and provides in-situ social and subcultural capital to the poster. This bottom-up participation also helps shape gameplay and thus gameplay emotion of the player, which also effects players’ performative response to textual horror. Within this instance of post-TV horror, the audience themselves help construct ongoing textual materiality onscreen via their affective labour. Yet it is also important to consider that the social dimensions of a stream change with the volume of audience members, where ‘[e]ven though […] 8 https://www.twitch.tv/maxpayne5023/

136 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

streamed content might be similar in terms of what type of game, level of play and even type of broadcaster, small and large channels provided vastly different experiences’ (Spilker et al., 2020, p. 611). Sjöblom and Hamari explain that during popular streams ‘the chat activity may become chaotic, and thus eliminate any chance for civilized discourse’ (2016, p. 8). Popularity is thus a double-edged sword that, on the one hand, encourages emotional engagement and communality, yet, on the other hand, means intimacy and one’s voice being lost in the throng. The overwhelming cacophony of voices may prove a distraction that removes part of the immersive and interactive engagement for those wishing to watch horror videogame streams. As a result, viewers may switch to smaller attended broadcasts where ‘they experience […] more meaningful interaction’ (Hamilton et al., 2014, p. 1316), and chat is ‘more personal and responsive’ (Spilker et al., 2020, p. 611). Audience participation also allows for intermediation. Gamers usually make money streaming via advertising revenue based on viewership volume as invited ‘partners’ with Twitch.TV. However, fans may subscribe to streamers for a fee, of which half goes to Twitch.TV, that removes adverts from the stream and provides them with exclusive content and access to converse with streamers inaccessible to non-subscribing audiences. Given horror videogames aim to instil fear in players, such gameplay emotion lends itself to humorous and hyperbolic performances that attract audiences to subscribe to see more of the same (Fägersten, 2017). Similarly, if a viewer has an Amazon Prime subscription9 they get monthly exclusive in-game content and videogames they can download, encouraging financial investment in both portals. Such premium content attests to stratified engagement within the same post-TV portal much like YouTube Red. Twitch.TV offers a novel way of engaging with horror videogames and that produces affective registers and audience co-presence not readily seen in other post-TV services, horror film viewers, or solo horror game players (Sun et al., 2019, p. 1). However, this also depends on audiences’ level of engagement with the live screen media (Spilker et al., 2020, pp. 613–614). Moreover, some have found the duality of watching gameplay and others play as diminishing the emotive quality of horror videogames elucidated when one plays the game by oneself (Epp, 2019). Thus, while it is true that Twitch.TV ‘attracts engaged audiences with a strong connection to digital entertainment staging a new setting in which one may experience the medium’ (Gandolfi, 2016, p. 77), much like extant horror media, audiences do not respond to its post-TV horror in a monolithic or universal manner. 9

Amazon owns Twitch.TV.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

137

Nevertheless, the ontology of legacy television still serves as a hallmark for interpellation, consumption, and branding practices. This is also significant with the next case study, Shudder.

Feeding Cult Connoisseurs: Shudder as Emic Authentic Post-TV Horror Launched fully in 2016,10 Shudder is a SVoD portal owned by AMC available in US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Whereas other channels, outlets, and portals have actively invited various viewing demographics beyond genre-bound demographics that have helped the mainstreaming of post-TV horror in the second millennium, Shudder specifically hails cult horror fans via its media catalogue and portal app. In doing so, it eschews broad appeal by discursively positioning its viewer base as those equipped with subcultural capital and longtail sensibilities, ‘interpellat[ing] users as horror connoisseurs, already literate with the genre’s history, various subgenres, and icons’ (Balanzategui and Lynch, 2022, p. 7). As such, in order for Shudder’s brand to appeal and gain approval from established horror aficionados (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 164), Gaynor argues the platform constructs discourses of authenticity and exclusivity ‘in and around horror […] by putting certain authentic horror markers in place across the service: practical effects; cult films; reworking overlooked or forgotten texts; libraries of can’t-get-anywhere-else horror films’ (2022, p. 141). While this predominantly centres on its diverse and ever-changing film collection, many of its watermarks of authenticity are markedly televisual. Gaynor notes that Shudder’s original content frequently harks back to horror from yesteryear. Notably, subcultural celebrity TV hosts Joe Bob Briggs (The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs (Shudder 2018–)) and Elvira (Elvira’s 40th Anniversary, Very Scary, Very Special, Special (Shudder 2021)) nostalgically recreate ‘older means of accessing horror films on broadcast and cable TV’ (Balanzategui and Lynch, 2022, p. 12). Although each episode shows a film, this cinematic fare is encased in televisuality as these comedic personalities interject ‘sardonic humor during the program’s introduction, conclusion, and commercial breaks’ (Hutchison, 2018, p. 96). Genre authenticity reflected in a pre-digital epoch is also evident in the reboot TV serialization of Creepshow (Shudder 2019), whose revered practical effect spectacles clearly distinguish it against ‘inauthentic [mainstream horror] with its big 10 Shudder launched in beta form in 2015.

138 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

budgets and frequent use of post-production digital visual effects’ (Gaynor, 2022, p. 149). I would add Shudder’s anti-mainstream connoisseurship is also reflected in its original or exclusive international horror television (e.g. Missions (2017–2021) (France), The Dead Lands (2020) (New Zealand), Aftermath (2014) (South Korea), and Supermax (2016) (Brazil)) that engender a pop-cosmopolitanism sensibility, as transnational fans ‘embrace […] global popular media [that] represents an escape route out of the parochialism of [their] local community’ (Jenkins, 2006b, p. 152). Alongside TV f ictions, Shudder’s catalogue includes non-f ictional documentaries. John Corner states that one of the defining generics of documentary is its ‘directness of address to something outside of the “text”, this special level of referentiality, is one of the things that distinguishes documentary from fiction’ (2015, p. 147). Unlike horror documentaries that depict real world indexical abjection (Kawin, 2012; Middleton, 2015), Shudder horror documentaries reference art-horror from an extra-textual standpoint.11 These somewhat understudied horror non-fictions repeatedly hybridize various subgenres: educational documentary (Donnelly, 2015), behind-the scenes making-of (Egan, 2015), and ‘reality history’ with ‘its focus on the desire to experience history at a personal and affective level’ (Holdsworth, 2011, p. 66).12 Shudder documentaries frequently present a multitude of interviewees who discuss their own personal relationships with the reference genre vehicles, the industries producing them, and the subcultures formed around them. As Cullen notes of Shudder’s Horror Noire (Burgin 2019), the documentary explores ‘the history of Black horror in cinema, [as] Black directors, actors, and film scholars discuss their own experiences as both participants and purveyors of the genre, discussing the shift in the representation of Black characters from spectacles of fear to hero protagonists’ (2020, p. 245). 11 This type of extra-textual horror documentary is not new, both as feature films (e.g. The American Nightmare (Simon 2004), Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (McQueen 2006), Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide (West 2010)) and TV productions (e.g. The World of Hammer (Channel 4 1994), A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss, Hell on Earth: The Desecration and Resurrection of ‘The Devils’ (Channel 4 2002)). The difference is, I would argue, Shudder’s documentaries serve its specific brand identity. 12 This may be for similar reasons as sport documentaries. McDonald argues that unlike traditional documentaries that perpetuate a discourse of sobriety, sport documentaries’ subject matter centres on ‘affect, expressive of the irrational within popular culture to provide a means of escape and fantasy for its followers’ (2007, pp. 210–211). Comparably, distinguished from the sobriety of horror documentaries that reference real world horrors and atrocities, documentaries about art-horror gleefully delight in the affective power of horror media as popular culture. Yet, like horror fictions, these documentaries, such as Horror Noire and Queer for Fear, can also address wider socio-political topics (ibid., pp. 217–218).

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

139

The professional-creative-as-fan liminal identity has commonly been utilized to elevate and authorize media, whether that be in a text’s production (Hunt, 2008a), its marketing (Scott, 2013c), to unify and navigate transmedia (Scott, 2013b), or forge parasocial relationships between creatives and audiences (Scott, 2017). Notably, Scott explains, such an identity is articulated via a ‘carefully constructed bilingualism […] [a] perceived ability to speak the promotional language of both visionary auteur and faithful fanboy’ (2013c, p. 440). The ‘fanboy auteur’ appears to sing from the same hymn sheet as the fan community (Gray, 2010, pp. 112–113), but also is an industry apparatus to sanction and police particular fan practices that affirm, rather than subvert, authorial intent (Scott, 2013c, pp. 441–442). Shudder’s horror documentaries incorporate similar bilingual vernacular that melds professional and fan identities. However, whereas fanboy auteur bilingualism invests ‘in authors’ singularity and originality’ (ibid., p. 441), Shudder documentaries’ use of the polyglottic is a polyphonic textual device. Various talking heads discuss the referent horror fictions that bestow them with ‘affective value’ (Scott, 2013b, p. 45) and their own affective relationships with said f ictions hail and/or position interviewees alongside the fans watching these documentaries. In doing so, authenticity that is central to Shudder’s brand identity is articulated by the interviewees’ emic positions within the genre as revered creatives, commentators steeped in subcultural knowledge, and as horror fans. In Shudder Guides (Shudder 2019), Shudder curator Samuel Zimmerman presents a series of short histories to significant horror subgenres, signposting key textual traits, artists, and films, while also discussing lesser-known examples. In ‘Giallo’ (S1, E1), for instance, Zimmerman explicates that the cycle’s ‘real […] origins are pretty specific: Robert Siodmark’s 1946 movie The Spiral Staircase is an amazing unsung pioneer’. Talking directly to camera, Zimmerman combines authorial historical accuracy with cult cachet given the film’s lack of notoriety that is framed by his own passionate love for the movie. Thus, while horror fans are likely to be familiar with the subgenre, this significant underground giallo precursor, and in turn Shudder itself, offer viewers subcultural capital as ‘hunter-gatherer’ cinephiles (de Valck and Hagener, 2005, p. 22) eager to consume genre material. Status comes from breadth and depth, being completist and knowledgeable of rarities. Zimmerman concludes the episode by highlighting that several of these canonical works are available on Shudder, drawing the audience back to the portal’s authentic genre catalogue. Such discourse is furthered in the series The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time (Shudder 2022) (101), whose list of films affirm the

140 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

affective value of these genre texts’ ability to horrify audiences. As Morris and Murray write, ‘the process of categorizing reproduces normative articulations of certain objects, texts, and practices to certain identities’ (2018, p. 13), where ‘[l]ists both recognize connections between the listed objects and generate them’ (ibid., p. 18). Moreover, such cataloguing plays into one of the most prominent fan practices: list-making. As Booth explains, ‘the creation of lists seems to be a universal activity across a range of fans and within multiple fan communities’ (2015a, p. 86). As with Horror Noire, this is achieved by intercutting scenes from referent horror films with multiple talking heads, including creatives (e.g. Tom Savini, Mike Flanagan, Andy Muschietti, Ernest Dickerson, Jennifer Reeder, Kate Siegel), scholars (e.g. Amanda Reyes, Tananarive Due, John Jennings), and journalists/critics (e.g. Justina Bonilla, Lea Anderson). Commentary explains films’ material production, their (sub)cultural significance, and how their scariest scenes made interviewees feel. Consequently, authenticity is reified between the productive, deconstructive, and phenomenological. Yet, whereas Shudder Guides episodically covers specific genres, 101 is mosaic in structure. A curation and compendium of abject snapshots, each episode jumps between subgenres, nations, and eras that, again, play on fans’ connoisseur collecting by serving as a horror checklist whilst simultaneously positioning these films as difficult watches. The series delights in macabre spectacle, where, even if some of the movies included had popular appeal, niche authenticity is framed by audiences daring to view (Hoxter, 2000, p. 178) and the ‘hardness’ of this type of viewership (Hollows, 2003, p. 43), which ‘soft’ lay or mainstream audiences cannot handle. 101 is noteworthy for its diversity of professional-fans appearing onscreen. Whilst fanboy auteur status is overwhelmingly reserved for ‘white men creators’ (Salter and Stanfill, 2020, p. x), 101’s variety of talking heads – in terms of gender, age, sexuality, race, nationality, and professions – is markedly more inclusive. Consequently, 101 and Shudder dually interpellate myriad horror fans via their eclectic genre tastes and their intersectional identities, allowing them to see themselves represented in the docuseries’ (professional-)fans. As with Horror Noire’s focus on the Black experience of horror, Queer for Fear (Shudder 2022) explores the history of horror through a queer lens and as an affective experience for LGBTQ+ audiences, reflected by those who talk on the docuseries. In this instance, emic authenticity stems from interviewees’ horror professional-fans and queer identities, engendering a lived connection to the series’ referent material. Talking heads include creatives (e.g. Bryan Fuller (also the series’ executive producer), Lachlan Watson, Mark Gatiss, Kimberly Peirce, Carmen Maria Machado, Tawny

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

141

Cypress), scholars (e.g. Harry M. Benshoff, Jack Halberstam), and critics (e.g. Emily St. James, Angel Melanson). Moreover, queerness within the series is markedly diverse in its intersectionality. Alongside explaining the life and work of gay director James Whale (S1 E2), writer/director/producer Justin Simien discusses his affective bond with The Invisible Man (Whale 1933) as a queer Black man. Simien says: I was very aware that other people were aware that I was Black immediately in every situation, but queer not so much, and even in the Black community that I came up in […] to be a man and to be gay were not two things that you could be at the same time. I think that’s where probably the invisibility thing comes in because having to hide was just part of the fabric of my understanding of how to live.

The series frequently makes connections between the marginalization and Othering of queer people and how horror sits outside of society often through the image of the monster. This speaks to the terror of homophobia and transphobia directed at queer people but, equally, the series celebrates queer horror media and culture. As with much film-to-TV horror transmedia with established fanbases, Shudder released episodes of Queer for Fear weekly, meaning horror fans, queer or otherwise, adhered to a more traditional method of TV consumption; other series (e.g. Deadhouse Dark (Shudder 2021)) were dropped in their entirety. Such televisuality also feeds into other aspects of Shudder’s portalization. Alongside Shudder’s ‘boutique’ curation of horror media (Gaynor, 2022, p. 130), a key portal feature is ‘“Shudder TV” (the icon for which is a shattered analog TV screen), which delivers content in the manner of a scheduled broadcast’ (Balanzategui and Lynch, 2022, p. 9). Consequently, while Shudder’s digital catalogue supports repeat and/or binge-viewing – it has a subsection titled ‘Binge This’ suggesting series to watch – its weekly releases and Shudder TV’s ‘live’ function ‘emphasize the platform’s attempt to construct a sense of “phenomenal” shared experience with the content’ (ibid., p. 11). Further, exclusivity as a marker of quality is also ascribed to Shudder TV, where live streaming certain output is framed as ‘event TV’ (Grainge, 2009). Whereas Shudder’s ‘broadcast’ TV’s liveness nostalgically mimics ‘the phenomenon oft-reported by horror fans of stumbling across terrifying horror content on analog TV as a child’ (Balanzategui and Lynch, 2022, p. 9), its event TV is marketed as must-see television symbolically elevated by liveness serving as a temporal and ephemeral marker of authenticity. On Saturday 1st October 2022, 10pm Eastern Time, Shudder TV live streamed

142 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

a secret screening of Dario Argento’s Dark Glasses (2022). However, whilst Shudder heavily promoted the event on social media, the screening was only broadcast to subscribers based in the US and Canada.13 Thus, while the portal is transnational, aspects of its software do not travel. This alters subscribers’ experiences of Shudder based on their location and undermines the international remit of TV anywhere/everywhere discourse (Goggin, 2018, pp. 243–244). Likewise, the secret screening was available through Shudder’s app and website; however, it was inaccessible to those viewing Shudder as an à la carte extension on other portals such as AMC+ in the US. Thus, it is worth considering that the ‘affordances of TV apps can vary widely’ (Goggin, 2021, p. 103), which, in turn, shape Shudder’s televisuality. Shudder is ‘self-reflexively oppositional to the top tier SVOD market [and its glut of content]’ (Balanzategui and Lynch. 2022, p. 2) as a ‘second tier’ boutique portal (Smits and Nikdel, 2019). Yet, like Twitch.TV, the service has also been sutured into Amazon’s top tier platform. Forming part of ‘add-ons [watched] on an a la carte basis’ (Wayne, 2018, p. 733), Shudder is (re)configured as a ‘channel’ available via an additional subscription fee. Johnson defines channels as effectively the content apps of third-party streaming services which can be subscribed to through the Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV apps. Content within channels can be viewed directly within the [Amazon Prime] aggregator app and can also appear in the aggregator app’s recommendations and search results. (2020, p. 175)

From an economic standpoint, the ‘Amazon Prime Video Shudder channel operates independently of […] [the] Shudder App’ (Shudder, 2020). Likewise, the ‘Shudder Amazon Prime Video channel is a completely separate subscription and is not managed through […] [Shudder’s own] system’ (ibid.), nor can an ‘Amazon-managed account […] be combined, carried over, switched back and forth, or used on the Shudder website’ (ibid.). Importantly, the aggregation of Shudder and its catalogue into Amazon is framed within televisual lexicon, where as a ‘channel’ it speaks to non-digital television’s broadcast flow ecology. Yet while linearity is mostly removed with SVoDs – Amazon does offer some live sports coverage that relies on fixed scheduling – flow across database catalogues presents comparability ‘in the sense that both index the range of content available through a particular distribution system, 13 The f ilm was made available for general international Shudder viewership on 13th October 2022.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

143

and thus delimit – without determining – the likely range of textual experiences available to audiences through that system’ (Lobato, 2018, p. 243). A compass and/or port within the sea of endless content, in both instances, the channel serves as a navigational locus an individual can turn to for content that speaks to them. Yet, as Johnson’s quote demonstrates, the aggregation and repositioning of Shudder into Amazon’s catalogue effects other aspects of Shudder’s televisuality. Notably, Amazon does not offer Shudder TV or its live function. This de-televising at an interactional level, consequently, removes a key innovative feature of Shudder’s authentic branding (Sanson and Steirer, 2019, p. 1222). Shudder’s aggregation into Amazon also impacts other parts of the former’s cult identity. As part of its strategy to define itself against mainstream portals like Netflix and Amazon, Shudder ‘does not feature “recommended for you” or “watch next” suggestions: its distributive logics instead prioritize a highly curated construction of genre which intersects with the user’s identification with horror fan cultures and communities’ (Balanzategui and Lynch, 2022, p. 5). However, as an Amazon channel, Shudder is subsumed into the parent portal’s distribution rhetoric where its catalogue is part of the suggesting feature, viewings offer ‘up next’ screenings, and series automatically play the next episode that supports Amazon’s ‘endless’ streams of content. Likewise, Shudder’s subgeneric ‘collections’ curated by ‘[t]he horror-buffs here at Shudder [who] have put them together specifically for you’ (Shudder, ND) are not included on Amazon, nor are Shudder’s more specific filters (e.g. ‘Scariest on Shudder’, ‘Trapped’, ‘Cult’, ‘Shorts’). Likewise, fan performance is foregrounded on Shudder’s portal as audiences can leave reviews of texts alongside ratings (out of five skulls) as their commentary shapes the very ontology of official catalogue pages (see also Booth, 2016). This, however, is removed as a feature on Amazon. Moreover, Shudder’s inventory is no longer hermetically sealed within the conf ines of its signature portal. Instead, it forms part of Amazon’s supra-catalogue as do other channels that offer horror media. This means the genre longtail available/presented/ recommended at an interface level sees Shudder content clustered with Amazon material alongside a host of other aggregated horror, some of which is free (e.g. Freevee), some of which requires further subscriptions (e.g. Full Moon, Arrow Video, Mubi, BFI, Paramount+). As such, while its catalogue of ‘authentic’ content is carried over to Amazon, Shudder’s emic brand distinction, portal identity, and subcultural voice – its own and fans’ – operating at an interface level, are deadened in this process. Hence, much like the TV horror secondary markets’ additive brand potential when rehoused in importing portals’ catalogues, apps as textual, operational, and

144 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

interactive digital media are also semiotically malleable as they spread across the post-TV landscape. This may be a result of internal evolution such as software updates and new features or external reconfiguration, such as being aggregated into wider software systems such as Amazon, or positioned on app store, Smart TV, next generation videogame console, and smartphone interfaces (Hesmondhalgh and Lotz, 2020; Flew and Park, 2022).

Conclusion This chapter’s consideration of horror haunting professional, semi-professional, and amateur content over a range of portals attests to post-TV’s Frankensteinian makeup (Strangelove, 2015, p. 164). As Johnson states, ‘the increased availability of content has led to experiments with more serialised and complex narratives that reward binge viewing’ (2019, p. 100). Certainly, bingeing is a principal post-TV act inbuilt into portals’ distribution infrastructure enacted by cult fans and lay audiences alike. Even texts initially released episodically rather than in their entirety – such as The Purge (TV), Scream (TV), FOTLD, and Queer for Fear – have binge-potential since said texts are often archived within portals’ catalogues, allowing secondary audiences to devour a series as quickly as they please. As such, platforms’ streaming facilities, digital interfaces, and financial structuring impact on TV horror content creation and modes of delivery. With this, whilst still acknowledging horror film’s strong influence over twenty-first century TV horror, the chapter’s case studies evidence how televisuality is shaping other media’s horror output, including cinema. Horror film-to-TV transmedia extensions employ horizontal memory where ‘stories are created and negotiated by key players within a transmedia network, including transmedia creators, audiences and the wider commentariat’ (Harvey, 2015, p. 37). Far from being the lesser media technology for producing quality genre material, these transmedia texts extend, revise, and nuance horror franchises by harnessing the strengths of TV’s longform serialization that cinema sequels do not readily afford. Likewise, televisual language has been incorporated into SME content; YouTube Premium has sought to brand itself using strategies and devices commonly developed within TV; and the core televisual principles of flow, liveness, linearity and ephemerality are all central to Twitch.TV. For Shudder, part of its anti-mainstream branding stems from its incorporation of pre-digital televisuality in both its content and portal technology, further supported by its emic authenticity. Evidently, digital media has not buried television in a shallow media grave. Instead,

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

145

television and televisual vernacular still hold cardinal positions within the post-TV paradigm. It is also salient to note that whilst Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Twitch.TV, and Shudder are all website portals, their horror can be watched on online TV sets. Likewise, conventional broadcast television can be consumed over a host of media hardware. This convergence of old and new media is post-televisual. Such affordances allow these portals’ catalogues and streams to form part of wider meta-flows between content, services, apps, and traditional broadcast as viewers watch and interact with a plethora of post-TV horror. Furthermore, this is available through the same hardware and screen and divergent media technologies that audiences switch between (Strangelove, 2015, p. 165), and formal and informal media ecologies (see Chapter 3), which makes for a highly heterogenous and shapeshifting media landscape. It is also worth highlighting that while horror’s spread into the post-TV milieu has proven to be effective in producing a range of TV horror content – both original and transmedial – that appears to be going from strength to strength, horror SVoD is not without casualties. Launched in 2006, FEARnet, a joint venture portal owned by Comcast, Lionsgate, and Sony specializing in microcasting to niche horror audiences original and secondary genre content (Tompkins, 2014, pp. 421–424), closed in 2014 (Juvinall, 2014). Furthermore, TV horror may be available across a plethora of channels, services, and portals. Yet this does not mean all audiences readily have access to all of these options. The following chapter will examine how and why TV horror is unavailable to viewers – both national and global – and how they turn to illicit digital media ecologies to acquire content, and the meaning-making that imbues piracy practices.

References Abbott, Stacey. 2018a. ‘Masters of Mise-En-Scène: The Stylistic Excess of Hannibal.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 120–134. Abbott, Stacey. 2018b. ‘Not Just Another Serial Killer Show: Hannibal, Complexity, and the Televisual Palimpsest.’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 35(6). pp. 552–567. Abbott, Stacey. Forthcoming. ‘When the Subtext Becomes Texts: The Purge Takes on the American Nightmare.’ In McKenna, Mark and Proctor, William (eds). Horror Franchise Cinema. London: Routledge. pp. 1–26.

146 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Aldana Reyes, Xavier. 2016. Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership. London: Routledge. Anderson, Sky LaRell. 2017. ‘Watching People Is Not a Game: Interactive Online Corporeality, Twitch.tv and Videogame Streams.’ Game Studies, 17(1). Armstrong, Megan A. 2019. ‘“A Nation Reborn”: Right to Law and Right to Life in The Purge Franchise.’ Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. 13(3). pp. 377–392. Arnzen, Michael A. 1994. ‘Who’s Laughing Now? The Postmodern Splatter Film.’ Journal of Popular Film and Television. 21(4). pp. 176–184. Arthurs, Jane, Drakopoulou, Sophia, and Gandini, Alessandro. 2018. ‘Researching YouTube.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 24(1). pp. 3–15. Balanzategui, Jessica, Later, Naja, and Lomax, Tara. 2019. ‘Hannibal Lecter’s Monstrous Return: The Horror of Seriality in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal.’ In Finn, Kavita Mudan and Nielsen, E. J. (eds). Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. pp. 27–53. Balanzategui, Jessica and Lynch, Andrew. 2022. ‘“Shudder” and the Aesthetics and Platform Logics of Genre-Specific SVOD services.’ Television & New Media. pp. 1–17. Belau, Linda. 2018. ‘Family Ties and Maternal Things: Bates Motel as Family Romance for the Post-Oedipal Era.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 104–119. Bernard, Mark. 2014. Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Berryman, Rachel and Kavka, Misha. 2017. ‘“I Guess A Lot of People See Me as a Big Sister or a Friend”: The Role of Intimacy in the Celebrification of Beauty Vloggers.’ Journal of Gender Studies. 26(3). pp. 307–320. Berryman, Rachel and Kavka, Misha. 2018. ‘Crying on YouTube: Vlogs, Self-exposure and the Productivity of Negative Effect.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 24(1). pp. 85–98. Bertetti, Paolo. 2014. ‘Toward s a Typology of Transmedia Characters.’ International Journal of Communication. 8. pp. 2344–2361. Bhopal, Kalwant. 2018. White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society. Bristol: Polity. Blake, Linnie and Aldana Reyes, Xavier. 2015. ‘Introduction: Horror in the Digital Age.’ In Blake, Linnie and Aldana Reyes, Xavier (eds). Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 1–13. Bloch, Katrina Rebecca, Taylor, Tiffany, and Martinez, Karen. 2020. ‘Playing the Race Card: White Injury, White Victimhood and the Paradox of Colour-blind Ideology in Anti-immigrant Discourse.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies. 43(7). pp. 1130–1148.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

147

Booth, Paul. 2015a. ‘Fans’ list-making: memory, influence, and argument in the “event” of fandom.’ MATRIZes. 9(2). pp. 85–107. Booth, Paul. 2016. Digital Fandom 2.0. New Media Studies: Second Edition. Oxford: Peter Lang. Broll, Ryan. 2020. ‘Dark Fandoms: An Introduction and Case Study.” Deviant Behavior. 41(6). pp. 792–804. Brown, Alistair. 2014. “The Sense of an Ending. The Computer Game Fallout 3 as a Serial Fiction.’ In Allen, Rob and van den Berg, Thijs (eds). Serialization in Popular Culture. London: Routledge. pp. 157–169. Brown, Wendy. 2006. ‘American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-democratization.’ Political Theory. 34(6). pp. 690–714. Bruns, Axel. 2009. ‘The User-led Disruption: Self-(Re) Broadcasting at Justin.tv and Elsewhere.’ Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on European Interactive Television Conference. pp. 87–90. Burgess, Jean and Green, Joshua. 2009. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge: Polity. Carr, Flora. 2021. ‘How to Watch Bates Motel in the UK.’ Radio Times. 19th February. https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/bates-motel-uk-iplayer-bbc-two/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Cherry, Brigid. 2009. Horror. London: Routledge. Christensen, Kyle. 2018. ‘Slashing Through the Bonds of Blood: Queer Family and Scream: The TV Series.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 161–175. Conrich, Ian. 2018. ‘Resurrection: Ash vs Evil Dead, Network Television, and the Cult Horror Film Revival.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 176–186. Corner, John. 2015. ‘Form and Content in Documentary Study.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book: Third Edition. London. BFI. pp. 147–148. Cossar, Harper. 2009. ‘The Shape of New Media: Screen Space, Aspect Ratios, and Digitextuality.’ Journal of Film and Video. 61(4). pp. 3–16. Crawford, Garry and Rutter, Jason. 2007. ‘Playing the Game: Performance in Digital Game Audiences.’ In Gray, Jonathan, Sandvoss, Cornell, and Harrington, C.L. (eds). Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press. pp. 271–281. Cullen, Sarah. 2020. ‘Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, dir. by Xavier Burgin (Shudder, 2019).’ Irish Gothic Journal. 18. pp. 245–248. Cunningham, Stuart and Craig, David. 2017. ‘“Being ‘Really Real” on YouTube: Authenticity, Community and Brand Culture in Social Media Entertainment.’ Media International Australia. 164(1). pp. 71–81.

148 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Delwiche, Aaron. 2017. ‘Still Searching for the Unicorn: Transmedia Storytelling and the Audience Question.’ In Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. and Bourdaa, Mélanie (eds). The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge. pp. 33–48. de Valck, Marijke and Hagener, Malte. 2005. ‘Down with Cinephilia? Long Live Cinephilia? And Other Videosyncratic Pleasures.’ In de Valck, Marijke and Hagener, Malte (eds). Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 1–24. Diwanji, Vaibhav, Reed, Abigail, Ferchaud, Arienne, Seibert, Jonmichael, Weinbrecht, Victoria, and Sellers, Nicholas. 2020. ‘Don’t Just Watch, Join In: Exploring Information Behavior and Copresence on Twitch.’ Computers in Human Behavior. 105. pp. 1–11. Donnelly, K. J. 2015. ‘Educational Programming.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book: Third Edition. London. BFI. pp. 152–153. Egan, Kate. 2011. The Evil Dead. Chichester: Wallflower. Egan, Kate. 2015. ‘Precious Footage of the Auteur at Work: Framing, Accessing, Using, and Cultifying Vivian Kubrick’s Making the Shining.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 13(1). pp. 63–82. Eitzen, Dirk. 1999. ‘The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy.’ In Plantinga, Carl and Smith, Greg M. (eds). Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 84–99. Epp, Ryan. 2019. ‘Streamers Killed Horror Gaming.’ The Gamer. 20th September. https://www.thegamer.com/streamers-killed-horror-gaming/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Fägersten, Kristy Beers. 2017. ‘The Role of Swearing in Creating an Online Persona: The Case of YouTuber PewDiePie.’ Discourse, Context & Media. 18. pp. 1–10. Feasey, Rebecca. 2011. ‘Mature Masculinity and the Ageing Action Hero.’ Groniek. 190. pp. 507–520. Flew, Terry, and Park, Sonja. 2022. ‘Willingness to Pay: The Future of Screen Entertainment.’ Intermedia. 50(1). pp. 26–29. Folger, Jean. 2019. ‘The Most Popular States to Retire to in the U.S.’ Investopedia. 4th August. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/020117/mostpopular-states-retire-us.asp [Accessed 4 April 2023] Freeman, Matthew. 2017. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early TwentiethCentury Transmedia Story Worlds. New York: Routledge. Gandolfi, Enrico. 2016. ‘To Watch or to Play, It Is in the Game: The Game Culture on Twitch.tv Among Performers, Plays And Audiences.’ Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds. 8(1). pp. 63–82. Gaynor, Stella Marie. 2022. Rethinking Horror in the New Economies of Television. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

149

Goggin, Gerard. 2018. ‘Tubi TV: Free, Mobile, Moving Images: TV Everywhere.’ In Morris, Jeremy Wade and Murray, Sarah (eds). 2018. Appified: Culture in the Ages of Apps. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 237–246. Goggin, Gerard. 2021. Apps. Cambridge: Polity. Gould, Anthony M., Bourk, Michael J., and Joullié, Jean-Etienne. 2017. ‘From the Industrial Revolution to Trump: Six Periods of Changing Perceptions of American Business Managers.’ Journal of Management History. 23(4). pp. 471–488. Grainge, Paul. 2009. ‘Lost Logos: Channel 4 and the Branding of American Event Television.’ In Pearson, Roberta (ed). Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 95–118. Grainge, Paul. 2011. ‘Introduction: Ephemeral Media.’ In Grainge, Paul (ed). Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture From Television to YouTube. London: BFI. pp. 1–19. Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Gwenllian-Jones, Sara and Pearson E. Roberta. 2004. ‘Introduction.’ In GwenllianJones, Sara and Pearson E. Roberta (eds). Cult Television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. ix–xx. Ha, Louisa. 2018. ‘Is YouTube Red the Ultimate Viewing Experience and What is the Future of Online Video Audience Research.’ In Ha, Louisa (ed). The Audience and Business of YouTube and Online Videos. Lanham: Lexington Books. pp. 161–176. Hamilton, William A., Garretson, Oliver, and Kerne, Andruid. 2014. ‘Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play Within Live Mixed Media.’ Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 1315–1324. Hand, Richard J. and McRoy, Jay (eds). 2007. Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. London: Routledge. Harvey, Colin. E. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Harvey, Colin. E. 2019. ‘Transmedia Genres: Form, Content, and the Centrality of Memory.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 157–164. Hesmondhalgh, David and Lotz, Amanda D. 2020. ‘Video Screen Interfaces as New Sites of Media Circulation Power.’ International Journal of Communication. 14. pp. 386–409. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hills, Matt. 2007. ‘FROM THE BOX IN THE CORNER TO THE BOX SET ON THE SHELF: “TVIII” and the cultural/textual valorisations of DVD.” New Review of Film and Television Studies. 5(1). pp. 41–60.

150 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Hills, Matt. 2012. ‘Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy and the Value of “Fan” Knowledge: How Producer-Fans Play the (Great) Game of Fandom.’ In Stein, Louisa Ellen and Busse, Kristina (eds). Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 27–40. Holdsworth, Amy. 2011. Television, Memory and Nostalgia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hollows, Joanne. 2003. ‘The Masculinity of Cult.’ In Jancovich, Mark, Reboll, Antonio Lázaro, Stringer, Julian, and Willis, Andy (eds). Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 35–53. Houwen, Janna. 2015. ‘Identifying with Dexter.’ American, British and Canadian Studies. 1. pp. 24–43. Hoxter, Julian. 2000. ‘Taking Possession: Cult Learning in The Exorcist.’ In Mendik, Xavier and Harper, Graeme (eds). Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics. Guildford: FAB Press. pp. 171–186. Hubner, Laura. 2018. Fairy Tale and Gothic Horror: Uncanny Transformations in Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hunt, Leon. 2008a. ‘Asiaphilia, Asianisation and the Gatekeeper Auteur: Quentin Taratino and Luc Besson.’ In Hunt, Leon and Wing-Fai, Leung (eds). East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 220–236. Hutchings, Peter. 2004. The Horror Film. London: Routledge. Hutchison, Phillip J. 2018. ‘When TV Became a Target: Ritual and Burlesque in Television Creature Features.’ Journal of Popular Film and Television. 46(2). pp. 95–107. Jancovich, Mark. 2002b. ‘General Introduction.’ In Jancovich, Mark (ed). Horror, The Film Reader. London: Routledge. pp. 1–19. Jancovich, Mark and Hunt, Nathan. 2004. ‘The Mainstream, Distinction, and Cult TV.’ In Gwenllian-Jones, Sara and Pearson, Roberta E. (eds). Cult Television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 27–44. Jenkins, Henry. 2006a. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006b. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2011. ‘Transmedia 202: Further Reflections.’ Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 1st August. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press.

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

151

Jenner, Mareike. 2016. ‘Is This TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and Binge-Watching.’ New Media and Society. 18(2). pp. 257–273. Jenner, Mareike. 2017. ‘Binge-watching: Video-on-Demand, Quality TV and Mainstreaming Fandom.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies. 20(3). pp. 304–320. Johnson, Catherine. 2007. ‘Tele-branding in TVIII: The Network as Brand and the Programme as Brand.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 5(1). pp. 5–24. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. London: Routledge. Johnson, Catherine. 2020. ‘The Appisation of Television: TV Apps, Discoverability and the Software, Device and Platform Ecologies of the Internet Era.’ Critical Studies in Television. 15(2). pp. 165–182. Juvinall. Michael. 2014. ‘FEARnet To Close Its Doors; Acquired By Comcast!’ Horror Society. 14th April. https://www.horrorsociety.com/2014/04/14/fearnet-closedoors-acquired-comcast/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Kawin, Bruce F. 2012. Horror and the Horror Film. London: Anthem Press. Kelly, Annie. 2017. ‘The Alt-Right: Reactionary Rehabilitation For White Masculinity.’ Soundings. 66. pp. 68–78. Kendrick, James. 2010. ‘A Return to the Graveyard: Notes on the Spiritual Horror Film.’ In Hantke, Steffen (ed). American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. pp. 142–158. Kerrigan, Finola. 2010. Film Marketing. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. King, Geoff and Krzywinska, Tanya. 2002. ‘Introduction: Cinema/Videogames/ Interfaces.’ In King, Geoff and Krzywinska, Tanya (eds). ScreenPlay: Cinema/ Videogames/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 1–32. Kompare, Derek. 2002. ‘Flow to Files: Conceiving 21st Century Media.’ Media In Transition 2 Conference, Cambridge. 11th May. Krzywinska, Tanya. 2002. ‘Hands-On Horror.’ In King, Geoff and Krzywinska, Tanya (eds). ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 206–223. Leeder, Murray. 2018. Horror Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury. Light, Ben, Burgess, Jean, and Duguay, Stefanie. 2018. ‘The Walkthrough Method: An Approach to the Study of Apps.’ New Media & Society. 20(3). pp. 881–900. Lima, Cecília Almedia, Moreira, Diego Gouveia, and Calazans, Janaina Costa. 2015. ‘Netflix and the Maintenance of Television Genres Out of the Flow.’ Matrizes. 9(2). pp. 237–255. Lindsey, Cameron. 2016. ‘Questioning Netflix’s Revolutionary Impact: Changes in the Business and Consumption of Television.’ In McDonald, Kevin and SmithRowsey, Daniel (eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 173–187. Lobato, Ramon. 2018. ‘Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix.’ Television & New Media. 19(3). pp. 241–256.

152 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Lotz, Amanda D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized: Second Edition. New York: New York University Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Michigan: Maize Books. Lury, Karen. 2005. Interpreting Television. London: Hodder Arnold. Mann, Craig Ian. 2018. ‘We’re All Rates Now: Mulberry Street and the Modern Economic Horror Cycle.’ Journal of Popular Film and Television. 46(4). pp. 186–194. Marwick, Alice. 2015a. ‘Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy.’ Public Culture. 27(1). pp. 137–160. Marwick, Alice. 2015b. ‘You May Know Me from YouTube: (Micro-) Celebrity in Social Media.’ In Marshall, P. David and Redmond, Sean (eds). A Companion to Celebrity. Chichester: Wiley. pp. 333–350. Mathijs, Ernest and Sexton, Jamie. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. McCormick, Casey J. 2016. ‘“Forward is the Battle Cry”: Binge-Viewing Netflix’s Houses of Cards.’ In McDonald, Kevin and Smith-Rowsey, Daniel (eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 101–116. McCrea, Christian. 2019. ‘Kojima Production’s P.T. (2014).’ In Bacon, Simon (ed). Horror: A Companion. Oxford: Peter Lang: pp. 61–66. McDermott, Emmet. 2015. ‘MTV’s Terrifying Mistake? Wes Craven Explains Why the Original “Scream” Mask Is Too “Perfect” to Scrap.’ The Hollywood Reporter. 17th April. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/wescravens-last-interview-horror-788393/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] McDonald, Ian. 2007. ‘Situating the Sport Documentary.’ Journal of Sport & Social Issues. 31(3). pp. 208–225. Middleton, Jason. 2015. ‘Documentary Horror: The Transmodal Power of Indexical Violence.’ Journal of Visual Culture. 14(3). pp. 285–292. Mikos, Lothar. 2016. ‘Digital Media Platforms and the Use of TV Content: Binge Watching and Video-on-Demand in Germany.’ Media and Communication. 4(3). pp. 154–161. Miller, Liz Shannon. 2018. ‘Bruce Campbell Officially Retires as Ash of “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” Following “Evil Dead” Spin-Off’s Cancellation.’ IndieWire. 23rd April. https://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/bruce-campbell-ash-evil-deadcancelled-1201956348/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Moore, Kasey. 2020. ‘“Hannibal” Scheduled to Leave Netflix UK in September 2020.’ What’s on Netflix. 6th September. https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/leavingsoon/hannibal-scheduled-to-leave-netflix-uk-in-september-2020/ [Accessed 4 April 2023]

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

153

Morris, Jeremy Wade and Murray, Sarah. 2018. ‘Introduction.’ In Morris, Jeremy Wade and Murray, Sarah (eds). 2018. Appified: Culture in the Ages of Apps. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 1–19. Murphy, Shauna. 2015. ‘“Scream” Producers Explain Why the Original Ghostface Mask Had to Go.’ MTV. 6th September. http://www.mtv.com/news/2180259/ scream-tv-mask/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Newman, Michael Z. and Levine, Elana. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge. Nightingale, Ed. 2019. ‘Streamers and Screamers: Why Horror Games Are So Popular on Twitch.’ Gayming. 27th October. https://gaymingmag.com/2019/10/ streamers-and-screamers-why-horror-games-are-so-popular-on-twitch/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] OFCOM. 2019. Ofcom’s Annual Report on the BBC. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/ assets/pdf_file/0026/173735/second-bbc-annual-report.pdf [Accessed 4 April 2023] Osathanunkul, Chin. 2015. ‘A Classification of Business Models in Video Game Industry.’ International Journal of Management Cases. 17(1). pp. 35–44. Payne, Matthew Thomas. 2018. ‘Twitch.tv: Tele-visualizing the Arcade.’ In Johnson, Derek (ed). From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels. New York: Routledge. pp. 287–296. Perron, Bernard. 2005. ‘Coming to Play at Frightening Yourself : Welcome to the World of Horror Games.’ Aesthetics of Play: A Conference on Computer Game Aesthetics. University of Bergen: Bergen. Perron, Bernard. 2018. The World of Scary Video Games: A Study of Videoludic Horror. New York: Bloomsbury. Phillips, Kendall R. 2021. A Cinema of Hopelessness: The Rhetoric of Rage in 21st Century Popular Rhetoric. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Pinedo, Isabel C. 1997. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. Albany: State University of New York Press. Platts, Todd K. and Clasen, Mathias. 2017. ‘Scary Business: Horror at the North American Box Office, 2006–2016.’ Frames Cinema Journal. 11. pp. 1–28. Punter, David. 1996. The Literature of Terror Volume 1: The Gothic Tradition. Second Edition. London: Longman. Rappleye, Hannah and Riordan Seville, Lisa. 2019. ‘24 Immigrants Have Died in ICE Custody During the Trump Administration.’ NBC. 9th June. https://www. nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-have-died-ice-custodyduring-trump-administration-n1015291 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Raun, Tobias. 2018. ‘Capitalizing Intimacy: New Subcultural Forms of MicroCelebrity Strategies and Affective Labour on YouTube.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 24(1). pp. 99–113.

154 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Reeves, Jimmie L., Rodgers, Mark C., and Epstein, Michael. 1996. ‘Rewriting Popularity. The Cult File.’ In Lavery, David, Hague, Angela, and Cartwright, Maria (eds). Deny All Knowledge: Reading the X-Files. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 22–35. Rouse III, Richard. 2009. ‘Match Made in Hell: The Inevitable Success of the Horror Genre in Video Games.’ In Perron, Bernard (ed). Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 15–25. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2013. ‘Transmedial Storytelling and Transfictionality.’ Poetics Today. 34(3). pp. 361–388. Salter, Anastasia and Stanfill, Mel. 2020. A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Sanson, Kevin and Steirer, Gregory. 2019. ‘Hulu, Streaming, and the Contemporary Television Ecosystem.’ Media, Culture & Society. 41(8). pp. 1210–1227. Scaptura, Maria N. and Boyle, Kaitlin M. 2019. ‘Masculinity Threat, “Incel” Traits, and Violent Fantasies Among Heterosexual Men in the United States.’ Feminist Criminology. pp. 1–21. Scolari, Carlos Alberto. 2009. ‘Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary Media Production.’ International Journal of Communication. 3. pp. 586–606. Scott, Suzanne. 2013b. ‘Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling.’ In Delwiche, Aaron and Henderson, Jennifer Jacobs (eds). The Participatory Cultures Handbook. New York: Routledge. pp. 43–52. Scott, Suzanne. 2013c. ‘Dawn of the Undead Author. Fanboy Auteurism and Zack Snyder’s “Vision”.’ In Gray, Jonathan and Johnson, Derek (eds). A Companion to Media Authorship. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 440–462. Scott, Suzanne. 2017. ‘The Powers That Squee: Orlando Jones and Intersectional Fan Studies.’ In Gray, Jonathan, Sandvoss, Cornel and Harrington, C. Lee (eds). Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Second Edition. New York: New York University Press. pp. 387–401. Senft, Theresa M. 2008. Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks. New York: Peter Lang. Sharoni, Simona. 2018. ‘Speaking Up in the Age of #MeToo and Persistent Patriarchy or What Can We Learn from an Elevator Incident about Anti-Feminist Backlash.’ Feminist Review. 120(1). pp. 143–151. Shudder. 2020. ‘Why Can’t I Access Shudder on Both Amazon and Your Website Using the Same Account?’ Shudder. 9th April. https://support.shudder.com/en/ support/solutions/articles/11000072967-why-can-t-i-access-shudder-on-bothamazon-and-your-website-using-the-same-account- [Accessed 4 April 2023]

Streaming Screaming: Post-Television Horror Tex ts and Pl atforms

155

Sicart, Miguel. 2013. Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay. Cambridge: MIT Press. Sim, Gerald. 2016. ‘Individual Disruptors and Economic Game Changers: Netflix, New Media, and Neoliberalism.’ In McDonald, Kevin and Smith-Rowsey, Daniel (eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 185–201. Sjöblom, Max and Hamari, Juho. 2016. ‘Why Do People Watch Others Play Video Games? An Empirical Study on the Motivations of Twitch Users.’ Computers in Human Behavior. pp. 1–12. Sjöblom, Max, Törhönen, Maria, Hamari, Juho, and Macey, Jospeh. 2017. ‘Content Structure is King: An Empirical Study on Gratif ications, Game Genres and Content Type on Twitch.’ Computers in Human Behavior. 73. pp. 161–171. Smith, Thomas, Obrist, Marianna, and Wright, Peter. 2013. ‘Live-streaming Changes the (Video) Game.’ EuroITV 2013: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Interactive TV and Video. New York: ACM Press. pp. 131–138. Smith-Rowsey, Daniel. 2016. ‘Imaginative Indices and Deceptive Domains: How Netflix’s Categories and Genres Redefine the Long Tail.’ In McDonald, Kevin and Smith-Rowsey, Daniel (eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 63–79. Smits, Roderik. and Nikdel, E. W. 2019. ‘Beyond Netflix and Amazon: MUBI and the Curation of On-demand Film.’ Studies in European Cinema. 16(1). pp. 22–37. Spilker, Hendrik Storstein, Ask, Kristine, and Hansen, Martin. 2020. ‘The New Practices and Infrastructures of Participation: How the Popularity of Twitch. tv Challenges Old and New Ideas About Television Viewing.’ Information, Communication & Society. 23(4). pp. 605–620. Stiegler, Christian. 2016. ‘Invading Europe: Netflix’s Expansion to the European Market and the Example of Germany.’ In McDonald, Kevin and Smith-Rowsey, Daniel (eds). The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 235–246. Strangelove, Michael. 2015. Post-TV: Piracy, Cord-Cutting, and the Future of Television. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sun, Chuen-Tsai, Lin, Holin, and Lu, Hsueh-Yu. 2019. ‘Using Physiological Response Data to Examine Horror Video Game Enjoyment.’ Proceedings of DiGRA 2019. pp. 1–2. Taş, Hakkı. 2022. ‘The Chronopolitics of National Populism.’ Identities. 29(2). pp. 127–145. Taylor, Ryan. 2018. Policing Paratexts: Hegemonic Masculinity and the U.S. Transmedia Cop Drama. PhD diss., University of Portsmouth. Tompkins, Joe. 2014. ‘Horror 2.0 (On Demand): The Digital Convergence of Horror Film Culture.’ Television and New Media. 15(5). pp. 413–432.

156 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Tseng, Chiao-I. 2013. ‘Analysing Characters’ Interactions in Filmic Text: A Functional Semiotic Approach.’ Social Semiotics. 23(5). pp. 587–605. Tussey, Ethan. 2014. ‘Connected Viewing on the Second Screen: The Limitations of the Living Room.’ In Holt, Jennifer and Sanson, Kevin (eds). Connected Viewing: Selling, Sharing and Streaming Media in the Digital Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 202–215. Urbi, Jaden. 2018. ‘This Is How Much It Costs to Detain an Immigrant in the US.’ CNBC. 20th June. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/20/cost-us-immigrantdetention-trump-zero-tolerance-tents-cages.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] van Dijck, Jan. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waterson, Jim. 2019. ‘BBC at Risk of Losing Young Audiences, According to Ofcom.’ The Guardian. 24th October. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/ oct/24/bbc-at-risk-of-losing-young-audiences-according-to-ofcom [Accessed 4 April 2023] Wayne, Michael L. 2018. ‘Netflix, Amazon, and Branded Television Content in Subscription Video On-demand Portals.’ Media, Culture & Society. 40(5). pp. 725–741. Weaver, Andrew J., Zelenkauskaite, Asta, and Samson, Lelia. 2012. ‘The (Non)Violent World of YouTube: Content Trends in Web Video.’ Journal of Communication. 62(6). pp. 1065–1083. Wolf, Mark. J. P. 2001. ‘Genre and the Video Game.’ In Wolf, Mark. J. P. (ed). The Medium of the Video Game. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 113–134. Woodcock, Jamie and Johnson, Mark R. 2019. ‘The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv.’ Television & New Media. 20(8). pp. 813–823.

3.

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination and Consumption of Post-TV Horror Abstract The chapter focuses on informal circulation and consumption as a fundamental component of post-TV horror, offering the original concept ‘Only-Click TV’. Exploring Only-Click TV’s transcultural and temporal dynamics, the chapter analyses global audiences downloading The Walking Dead during broadcast as just-in-time fandom. The chapter then considers how Only-Click TV is important for mining horror television from yesteryear, looking at Japanese horror series Rasen and Mexican horror anthology Hora Marcada. Accounting for what Only-Click TV lacks as a format, the chapter argues DVD/Blu-ray’s symbolic value can elevate horror television. Finally, the chapter explores industry’s incorporation of Only-Click TV discourse: BBC3 adopted Only-Click TV functionality when becoming online-only whilst Masters of Horror uses discourses of censorship in paratextual marketing of ‘Imprint’. Keywords: piracy, transnational, digital media, DVD, Blu-ray, paratext

The book has thus far looked at textual content and its distribution through channels, services, and portals as part of the formal post-TV horror media ecology. However, access through such official means is not readily available to all. Whilst the global COVID-19 pandemic has seen subscriptions to subscription video on demand (SVoD) services such as Netflix drastically increase (Hazelton, 2020), others are unable to consume twenty-first century TV horror through official routes for a host of reasons. Unsurprisingly, then, during the same period the pirating of media has also greatly increased (Cuthbertson, 2020). Questioning and revising the TVIII ‘TV everywhere’ doctrine (Faltesek, 2011), this chapter addresses

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_ch03

158 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

how and why some audiences cannot or will not use legitimate official distribution channels for media consumption and how this is remedied by delving into the shadows of informal media circulation that also form part of the post-TV landscape. TVIII and DVD/Blu-ray formats have aided in the transnational flow of content moving beyond national borders (Shimpach, 2010, pp. 51–52; Gillan, 2011, p. 87). However, informal digital distribution routes evidence nuanced cross-border media flows (Lobato and Thomas, 2015, p. 4), fitting within the milieu of convergence culture (Hjort, 2010, pp. 13–14). Informal media distribution circumnavigates formal media systems, operates ‘in unregulated spaces’ (Lobato and Thomas, 2015, p. 1), and relies on ‘informal agents acting outside the already established […] industry’ (Pardo, 2015, p. 31). Indeed, transcultural fans play salient roles in the process of informal distribution (Dhaenens and Van Bauwel, 2014, p. 184), operating in online communities that by their very nature are transnational (Lee, 2014, pp. 195–197; Kustritz, 2015; Athique, 2016, pp. 8–9). Thus, the chapter begins by adumbrating the barriers that impede audiences from consuming television before conceptualizing Only-Click TV as post-TV informal distribution and consumption practice that fosters meaning-making and value around ‘prized content’1 (Lotz, 2014, pp. 12–13). Located within a transcultural paradigm, the chapter then explores how Only-Click can be temporally-oriented, allowing fans from different territories to consume and discuss TV horror at the same time. Using The Walking Dead (TWD) as a case study, during the broadcast of seasons Only-Click supports the show’s complex serialization (Abbott, 2016, p. 113), whilst also providing transcultural experiential homology by allowing fans from different cultures to consume TV episodes at the same time; what Matt Hills terms ‘just-in-time fandom’ (2002). Only-Click television can expedite and temporally-order fan participation surrounding active media. It is also a pertinent archaeological device for accessing TV from the past, particularly rare content from other parts of the world with limited or no formal transnational circulation. Analysing Japanese and Mexican horror television uploaded to YouTube, Only-Click facilitates subcultural capital by coalescing the underground with the informal, where transnational cult fans can access illusive content outside the purview of mainstream media ecologies (Hills and Sexton, 2017). 1 Amanda D. Lotz refers to ‘prized content’ as ‘programming that people seek out and specifically desire. It is not a matter of “watching what is on”; prized content is deliberately pursued’ (2014, p. 12).

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

159

But whilst Only-Click facilitates the acquisition of TV horror unavailable via traditional means, aiding in transcultural communication between fans, and allowing them to perform subcultural capital, the model is not without limitations. Therefore, the chapter considers what Only-Click cannot offer audiences compared to traditional forms of textual distribution such as DVD. With post-TV streaming becoming a cornerstone of media consumption in the twenty-first century, a knock-on effect of increasing SVoD subscriptions has been the decline in DVD and Blu-ray sales, with Whitten (2019) reporting DVD sales declining more than 86% since 2008. For some, the COVID-19 global pandemic has exacerbated this decline (GlobalData Retail, 2020). Yet, others have seen an increase in sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs and hardware in the UK and US as many stayed indoors under lockdown during the global pandemic (Brew, 2020; Mediatel, 2020). Similarly, when content is removed from SVoD catalogues this may see audiences turn to DVD to continue enjoying championed shows (Chilton, 2020). Therefore, whilst the once-lucrative DVD format (Lotz, 2014, pp. 140–144) may be waning against the surge of formal and informal streaming portals, disc technology still plays a salient role in the post-TV landscape that cannot be wholly separated from digitized formatting. Moreover, markets for TV distribution and international sales are a highly regulated formal system (Quail, 2012, p. 5; Lobato and Thomas, 2015, p. 17) that Only-Click methods undermine. However, Only-Click has also been incorporated into off icial dissemination systems. The chapter f irst examines how BBC3 went online-only as a form of technological mimesis to aid the BBC’s brand reconf iguration within the post-TV climate. The chapter then considers how Showtime pulled the Masters of Horror (MOH) episode ‘Imprint’ from broadcast, only to subsequently use Only-Click discourse in the paratextual framing of the text on DVD, further reinforcing its ‘extreme’ coding. However, in both cases audiences were unhappy about industry employment of Only-Click rhetoric, highlighting viewers’ dialogical relationships with formal and informal distributions systems. Indeed, audience–text relationships are frequently at the fore of academic analysis. Yet distribution and consumption practices are also significant in this relationship (Cunningham and Silver, 2013, p. 10; Faltesek, 2011, p. 405). As Lobato writes, ‘[t]he circuits through which texts move are of paramount importance to the processes of reception’ (2007, p. 114). Moreover, ‘[d]istribution determines who gets to watch […] [TV texts], under what circumstances, and why’ (ibid., p. 115). With this in mind, the chapter now conceptualizes Only-Click TV.

160 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

What is Only-Click TV? Post-TV has become ever more global, yet there are a host of reasons as to why certain audiences do not have access to media via formal avenues. As Lobato remarks, ‘[t]elevision is still bounded and “located” in all kinds of ways’ (2019, p. 11). Most notably, many SVoD services are not available internationally wholesale. For example, Netflix has made great strides in its international expansion of services (Lobato, 2019), often by localized branding strategies (Havens, 2018). This includes the commissioning and acquisition of TV horror outside of the US, such as Germany (Dark (2017–2019)), Brazil (Reality Z (2020)), South Korea (Kingdom (2019–2020); Sweet Home (2020); Goedam (2020); All of  Us Are Dead (2021); Squid Game)), Japan (Re: Mind (2017)), Netherlands (Ares (2020)), France (Le Chalet (2018); Marianne (2019)), Spain (Feria: The Darkest Light (2022)), and India (Typewriter (2019); Betaal (2020)). Beyond Netflix’s interpellation of transgenerational audiences in blockbuster productions with mass appeal, producing international horror not only appeals to various indigenous audiences but also provides transcultural ‘horror audiences access to a broader selection of programmes, with the enticement of maintaining and enhancing subcultural capital by being a discerning genre consumer willing to venture beyond English-language television’ (Abbott and Jowett, 2021b, p. 6). However, Netflix is still not available in all countries. The same holds true for Amazon Prime. YouTube has been recognized for its open access and thus transnational potential (Thornton, 2010), yet YouTube Premium is limited to certain nations. Similarly, Twitch.TV is an international phenomenon but has been banned at one time or another in Russia, China, and Vietnam. Other SVoD portals are even more limited in their global scope, such as Hulu which is only available in the US and Japan, and national streaming/ catch-up services even more so, such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub both of which are confined to Great Britain’s borders. Zhang explains that, ‘[d]ue to rather strict government policy and censorship, foreign television series are presently only legally distributed and circulated on licensed Chinese online streaming services, since foreign streaming services, such as Netflix, have not penetrated the Chinese market’ (2019, p. 221). Thus, while the content may be transnational, certain distribution gatekeepers and formal access points are markedly national. Similarly, different TV channels and services cost different prices across various national markets. Moreover, given the digital nature of post-TV, the cost of internet services that facilitate the entry to portals and the circulation of content must also be factored into the equation. This means

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

161

access to media is tied to audiences’ disposable income. Indeed, as noted in Chapter 1, HBO’s ‘quality TV’ discourse that horror television has sought to tap into is tied to its premium subscription price tag in the US. In turn, this seeks to interpellate and attract ‘quality’ audiences linked to their economic capital. Consequently, there are domestic audiences who cannot afford HBO television or who deem it too overpriced to be willing to subscribe to it. In the UK, the TV licence that all households must pay if they wish to watch traditional broadcast or BBC’s iPlayer is not means-tested, meaning everyone must pay the same for access irrespective of income.2 Lobato evidences how Netflix’s subscriptions differ between national markets that can shape the value of the service. For example, in India, Netflix is an expensive and, therefore, exclusive premium service ‘unaffordable for all but the most affluent Indians’ (2019, p. 126). Comparatively, in Japan, Netflix is very cheap (ibid.), but located in a region where there is a strong extant streaming media ecology and, therefore, is not bestowed with such distinctive value. It may therefore be the case that an Indian Netflix horror production such as Ghoul (2018) or a Japanese horror show such as JU-ON: Origins (2020) are more readily accessed and/or popular outside of their domestic regions. A parallel can be drawn when TV content travels. HBO’s quality cachet has been incorporated into non-subscription channels’ brand identities when imported into other countries, such as Channel 4 in the UK (Johnson, 2012) (see also Chapter 2). Channel 4 bought the second-run rights to broadcast season one-to-three of True Blood with the show also being aired on subscription channel FX in the UK (despite not being produced by FOX). With BSkyB’s launch of Sky Atlantic in the UK in 2011, the company made a deal with HBO for first-run exclusive rights of broadcasting its content in the UK (Sweney, 2010). Sky Atlantic is available as part of Sky’s basic subscription plan and is also available on Now TV,3 a no contract budget variant OTT subscription service. Not only does this evidence how textual interpellation tied to brand identity is fluid as content moves between channels and portals, but from a global economic standpoint, HBO’s content shifts between premium and low-cost, meaning that said content is more exclusive in some territories than others. Similarly, even if a portal such as Netflix is available in various regions, content is not monolithic between countries. Elkins explains that, ‘[t]his is because television distribution 2 The TV licence is free to those over the age of 75 and at a discount fee for those who are registered disabled or in residential care. 3 Owned by Sky.

162 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

licensing agreements are still often arranged territory by territory’ (2018, p. 337). This means television can be regionally locked, or indeed locked out of specific territories, by what is termed geoblocking, ‘the practice of using technological means to restrict access to content to specific geographic regions’ (Stewart, 2016, p. 693). This can account for differing libraries on the same service. For example, someone watching Netflix in Germany will have a different catalogue of choices compared to those watching in New Zealand. Or it can be the demarcated access to particular services in particular territories. For instance, audiences outside of the US and Japan are geoblocked to access Hulu. Therefore, it is rarely as simple as Jenkins states: ‘once you distribute via the web, television instantly becomes global’ (2006a, p. 254). Finally, despite the horror genre evidencing export potential thanks to its spectacle and focus on the body, not all TV texts travel beyond their national borders. As noted in Chapter 1, ISAZA was not reformatted onto DVD. Nor was it exported to/imported by other countries. This is also the case for BBC3 hospital horror pilot Pulse (2010). As such, both British examples are only available by informal means at home and abroad. Furthermore, the horror texts examined in the book thus far have focused on UK and US case studies. But TV horror is a global phenomenon (Abbott and Jowett, 2021a). Yet television outside of the UK and US may suffer from a lack of international clout, thus is often confined to national broadcast or given reduced transnational movement to neighbouring countries. Similarly, even when texts are reformatted to DVD/Blu-ray these may be limited by region-specific encoding, meaning hardware outside of the prescribed region(s) is unable to play the content. For example, Stranger Things is restricted to region one DVD formatting, meaning only North American coded hardware can be used to watch this format. In comparison, What We Do in the Shadows (Clement and Waititi 2014) spinoff TV series Wellington Paranormal (TVNZ 2 2018–) is only available on region four DVD format, thus can only be watched on hardware coded for Oceania, the Caribbean, and parts of South America. Relatedly, Evans notes that ‘[u]noff icial distribution networks have become the most prominent example of digital transmediality’s impact on the reception of televisual material’ (2011, p. 44). Whereas Must-Click TV ‘utilizes standard notions of televisual flow between its broadcast network’s programs and across its scheduling grid and [online platforms]’ (Gillan, 2011, p. 1), I conceptualize Only-Click TV as television that has been at some point formally broadcast or streamed, but has subsequently been spatially and temporally shifted via internet/digital media means, becoming available to

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

163

viewers via informal means. A text will not be Only-Click TV to all viewers, highlighting shifting symbolic materiality (Lobato and Thomas, 2015, p. 18), yet Only-Click TV facilitates informal textual consumption when other forms of acquisition are arrested. This formatting allows audiences to bypass formal gatekeepers and paywalls within domestic spaces (Vonderau, 2013, p. 112), but is particularly salient to transcultural audiences for the barriers I have previously discussed. Only-Click TV comes from a range of sources, over a number of portals, and in various formats. This is most notable through users downloading episodes of television as digital files from pirate websites, peer-to-peer technology, and BitTorrent services and software, storing it externally on offline hardware. Alternatively, users in geoblocked regions can bypass borders by utilizing virtual private networks (VPNs). Rather than providing audiences with external files as with downloading, VPNs trick the products into believing that the user is in a different country that has access to the locked content. Others have turned to hacking hardware to provide illicit media consumption. This is not an entirely new strategy as previously audiences could decode region-locked DVD players that would result in the hardware playing all DVDs irrespective of their region coding. In terms of Only-Click formatting, users can ‘jailbreak’ Amazon Fire TV Sticks, where hacking it allows them to install Kodi, a free and open-source software, to the device, which as a result gives the user a plethora of pirated media. This Only-Click method combines an external hardware – the Stick – with digital streaming capabilities, through its use of VPN and online operating software. Similarly, users can hack or buy hacked unlocked TV boxes that provide the same services. Finally, Lobato discusses ‘the rise of what is known as IPTV [internet protocol television] piracy, or low-cost internet-distributed subscription services offering hundreds of live satellite channels – a new and distinctive “global television” experience’ (2019, p. 187). This Only-Click form differs from the previous examples in two principal ways: firstly, unlike the other examples which are free, or have an initial one-off cost for purchasing the hardware, pirate IPTV requires ongoing subscription to access illicit content. As such, this mode of Only-Click TV operates in a ‘shadow economy’, a non-official arena of content acquisition that occurs ‘within capitalist economies but outside the purview of the state’ (Lobato, 2012, pp. 39–40). Secondly, unlike the asynchronicity and/or non-linear form of downloading, VPN access to formal SVoD services, and large parts of Kodi’s third-party system, pirate IPTV is premised on live and linear broadcast, by aggregating channels from around the globe, yet still available via digital means.

164 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

This produces new transnationally-inflected forms of flow specific to this form of digital broadcast television. Such variety attests to the complexity of informal regions of the post-TV milieu as much as the formal aspects explored in the previous chapters. But whilst digital media, both formal and informal, aids in non-linear TV distribution (Evans and McDonald, 2014, pp. 162–163; Lotz, 2017, p. 2), Only-Click can re-instil synchronicity with episodes’ TV transmission. As a ‘just-in-time’ fan practice (Hills, 2002, p. 178), Only-Click acquisition allows audiences ‘to demonstrate the “timeliness” and responsiveness of their devotion’ (ibid.), as will be explored in the following section.

Only-Click TV and ‘Just-in-Time’ Fandom Gray notes, ‘[d]ownloading […] allows viewers to transcend their local broadcasters’ delivery schedules’ (2008, p. 90). As observed, fans may illegally download current active television because they simply cannot wait for slower or delayed scheduling, are unwilling to pay for access to such content, or because a text is not readily available in their territories. As such, Only-Click practices have proven globally popular with TV dramas from North America, the UK, and Europe (Marshall, 2009, p. 41; Evans, 2011, p. 147). One TV horror example of this is The Walking Dead (TWD). TWD is considered a transmedia commercial success (Bishop, 2015, p. 1); however, reports of extremely high global download rates during broadcast evidence prominent Only-Click engagement (Wallenstein, 2014; Spangler, 2015). Mittell writes that ‘serial […] [television] is a temporal system with story instalments parcelled out over time with gaps in between entries through a strictly regimented time’ (2015, p. 27). ‘Quality’ TV horror serialization (Evans, 2015, p. 114) is used in the structuring of TWD that allows ‘the zombie narrative to offer complex social commentary that shifts and develops with the series as the zombie apocalypse slowly unfolds over time’ (Abbott, 2016, p. 113). Moreover, the narrative twists, emotive cliffhangers, and killing-off of core characters provide ample talking points for audiences to discuss after episodes have aired. Therefore, systematic gaps allow for continued engagement with a serial by fans who will discuss it with others, develop textual criticism and theorization, and consume other TWD transmedia (Mittell, 2015), with ‘everyone at the same point of the story’ (ibid., p. 40). This fixed scheduling encourages habitual Only-Click practices for transnational audiences, who must partake in informal media consumption in order to keep up to date with fellow fans so as to engage with online

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

165

community discussions. Matt Hills terms this ‘just-in-time fandom’ (2002, p. 178), explaining that practices of fandom have become increasingly enmeshed within the rhythms and temporalities of broadcasting so that fans now go online to discuss new episodes immediately after the episode’s transmission time […] in order to demonstrate the “timeliness” and responsiveness of their devotion. (ibid.)

Just-in-time fandom is a ‘community of imagination’ that ‘constitutes itself precisely through a common affective engagement, and thereby though a common respect for a specific potential space’ (ibid., p. 180). Hills evidences value in the liminality of fan engagement because ‘rather than using […] the web merely to confirm academic hypotheses (of audience “activity”, of subcultural “identity” etc.), it may be more significant to address online spatiotemporal transformations in what it means to be part of a “cult” audience as a commodity-based community’4 (ibid., pp. 179–180). Contrasted to delayed formal broadcast, Only-Click practices foster temporal-affective intensity for fans, also supporting online transcultural fan engagement as audiences from around the world deconstruct, dissect, and discuss the TV they have just viewed (Evans, 2011, p. 162), who would otherwise be unable to partake in such rhythmic fan talk. Moreover, Only-Click affords transcultural fans material never broadcast in their indigenous homes (Evans, 2011, p. 164). TWD’s first season was shown on basic cable channel AMC in the US. The show was, therefore, largely available to most domestic audiences. This season was shown in a further twenty-six territories, some via DVD or the internet, with premières varying between 2010 and 2019 (IMDB, ND). Thus, anyone outside of those twenty-seven countries, and even some of those included countries whose premières were considerably later than 2010, would need to turn to informal media ecologies to partake in just-in-time fandom. Indeed, Only-Click distribution creates secondary audiences who turn to informal networks to acquire prized content as close as possible as to the formal release of episodes. Marshall explains that ‘[t]he distinctive quality of this secondary audience is the level of commitment of its members, which has driven them to download and watch programmes in a more user- and time-intensive way’ (2009, pp. 41–42). Consuming texts via Only-Click bestows subcultural capital attached to expedited textual acquisition. 4

Original emphasis.

166 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

While Only-Click lends itself to the reformatting of traditional broadcast to digital files that weaves around the temporal flows of formal television scheduling, we can also examine Only-Click in relation to post-TV portals. In this case, the reformatting of formal digital to informal digital media. The twenty-first century has seen a drastic increase in the volume of available streaming services to consumers, all of which seek brand distinction via their media catalogues and quality exclusive material. The Vice President of Global Marketing at Sandvine, Cam Cullen argues that, ‘[t]o get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest’ (quoted in Alexander, 2018). Market competition creates economic imperatives for companies and economic decisions for customers. Consequently, similar to an individual switching between different post-TV portals on the same viewing device as discussed in the previous chapter, this can result in an individual formally acquiring some media services and informally circumnavigating others to consume their content. Furthermore, as previously discussed, because of different market contracts in different territories and shifting forms of geoblocking, audiences from various parts of the world will have access to differing media libraries. Additionally, compared to traditional broadcast weekly schedules, SVoDs are frequently releasing series in their entirety, which encourages binge-viewing (see Chapter 2). For example, season three of Stranger Things was available to download on pirate sites in 4K resolution (Arif, 2019). This not only fosters just-in-time potential where informal audiences can view shows at the same time as their formal counterparts, but furthermore allows the former to gourmandize the prized content in full in accordance with Netflix’s release strategy and technovisual specifications aimed at the latter. Only-Click TV, therefore, can also bestow texts with binge-potential much like DVD and SVoD. Both examples provide what Holt and Sanson term ‘connected viewing’ (2013, p. 1) or ‘the broader ecosystem in which digital distribution is rendered possible and new forms of user engagement take shape’ (ibid.). However, while Only-Click TV allows new forms of second audience user engagement with television via informal digital distribution, such illicit content and the portals/formats they materialize on are very much shaped by the formal services, schedules, and syntax that they are pirating from. As such, Only-Click TV is televisual in more than content alone as the next section expounds. Only-Click enables audiences – national or international – to consume and engage with content as it is being disseminated, shaping meaning-making in the process. As a result, Only-Click TV has proven to be an invaluable grassroots tool for fans seeking texts unavailable by traditional means and

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

167

can be seen as part of the mainstreaming of TV horror as wider secondary audiences can come into contact with these screen texts. But this also includes the informal circulation of bygone television that is no longer being actively broadcast. Only-Click, therefore, also serves as a useful archival tool for genre fans to collect old and rare horror television from around the world (Crisp, 2015, p. 172; Pardo, 2015, p. 26; Lobato and Thomas, 2015, p. 41). With such texts proving hard to find, Only-Click fosters subcultural capital for cult fans within their communities. As Geraghty remarks, ‘[o]nce collected, these objects become the talking points and allow for social exchange between individuals as they become highly valued and desirable within the wider fan community’ (2014, p. 4). With this, I turn to two case studies to illuminate how Only-Click TV is used in the excavation of TV horror from yesteryear.

Finding Hidden Tombs of Global TV Horror Only-Click TV allows audiences access to content that others readily watch allowing for temporal synchronicity or thereabouts between informal and formal media ecologies that form part of the post-TV landscape. Only-Click TV can also provide access to bygone TV horror. If the TV text is no longer being broadcast, Only-Click, in this instance, offers a different affective register than just-in-time fan discourse whereby informal circulation contributes to the rarefying of media content, thus imbuing it with subcultural value. For instance, elsewhere I have discussed Fuji Television’s J-horror TV Ring: Saishusho (1999) and its Only-Click circulation (Rendell, 2021c). Adapted from Koji Suzuki’s novel Ringu (1991) and its sequel Rasen (1995), the series combined horror with drama (J-dorama), a popular Japanese TV genre. But whilst following on from the global success of Ringu’s film iteration, Saishusho was not sold abroad. This is somewhat indicative of the Japanese television industry. As Kim writes, there ‘was little interest on the part of Japanese producers in marketing their dramas throughout Asia because the domestic market was so profitable and because in many areas in the region there was insufficient protection of intellectual property’ (2014, p. 11). This meant ‘others took it upon themselves to distribute dramas, motivated either by profit […] or fandom’ (ibid.). In turn, even though knowledgeable fans agreed that J-horror TV was of a lower calibre to its film counterparts, collecting Saishusho along with other J-horror TV rarities was still valuable as they provided status within online forums since many members were not aware of the existence of J-horror TV, let alone how to ascertain such

168 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

rare gems (Rendell, 2021c, pp. 222–225). Interestingly, whilst I have noted an array of Only-Click formats and services, another source of informal extant TV horror circulation can be found on YouTube. Chapter 2 noted the increased professionalization of YouTube that has not only seen the platform house formal TV content but also producing its only original post-TV available via its YouTube Premium subscription service. Concurrently, YouTube has taken a much firmer stance on the informal circulation of IP on the service (van Dijck, 2013, p. 123). Yet this does not equate to a blanket removal of pirated content. In fact, the site has been a useful archive for old TV horror from other parts of the world. Alongside Saishusho, two other examples of this can be seen with the sequel to Saishusho, Rasen (Spiral) (Fuji 1999) and the Mexican horror anthology series Hora Marcada (Hour Marked) (El Canal de las Estrellas/Televisa 1988–1990). While taking its name from the sequel of the source novel, Rasen offers a fully original thirteen-episode story that follows directly on from Saishusho. Through reincarnation the malevolent spectral Sadako continues her murderous revenge, with Mai Takano as the only intramedial character returning from the previous series to provide background exposition on Sadako and her curse. Yet, rather than the infamous video cassette being the horror media source, those who watch the ‘RING’ file from a cursed disc on their computer are killed after thirteen days. In doing so, Rasen adds to the narrative complexity of the Ringu transmedia franchise by offering original characters and switching the central technological threat. This is similar to TWD franchise where overlapping and diverging themes, storylines, characters, and events take place within the same transmedia storyworld (Hassler-Forest, 2016, p. 162). But despite Fuji TV producing Rasen off the back of the success of the film versions of Ringu and its sequel Ringu 2 (Nakata 1999) (Meikle, 2005, p. 139), much like Saishusho it was not sold abroad. Yet users in 2015 and 2016 uploaded Rasen to YouTube for viewers outside of Japan to watch through English hard subtitles,5 serving the markedly transnational fandom of East Asian horror media (Pett, 2017), at a time when J-horror cinema’s underground cult status has diminished thanks to the slew of Western Hollywood mainstream remakes (Xu, 2008, p. 191). Turning to Mexico, alongside other Latin American territories, the country has become renowned for its telenovelas: formulaic soap operas emphasizing ongoing narratives, romance, and melodrama (Lopez, 1995). Offering 5 Hard subtitles are part of the screen visuals compared to soft subtitles that are independent of the visuals and can therefore be switched on or off.

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

169

something quite different, Hora Marcada is a Gothic horror anthology series comprised of standalone episodes with only the ‘Lady in Black’, a marker of death, a returning character. Shot on video, much like Saishusho and Rasen, Hora Marcada is markedly televisual in its aesthetic. But despite evidencing low budget constraints – a potential reason why Gothic restraint and suggestion were employed – the series gave artistic freedom to directors and encouraged experimentation (Vargas, 2016). Moreover, Hora Marcada has been recognized for giving breaks to now-renowned Mexican cinema creatives, including Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Emmanuel Lubezki, and Guillermo Del Toro (Raymundo, 2016). The uploading of episodes to YouTube – that began around 2007 and continues to this day – provides a temporal portal that allows present-day audiences to go back and watch early horror TV from these esteemed film personnel, and in the case of horror fandom particularly Del Toro whose auteur labelling is linked to the genre (see Davies et al., 2014). However, whilst access is freely available to Hora Marcada, this Only-Click content is unaccompanied by subtitles. Whilst this means non-Spanishspeaking audiences are unable to understand dialogue, it is important to note the Spanish language’s expansive ‘geolinguistic’ region (Sinclair, 2005). Consequently, the majority of Latin America, large parts of the US, and Spain itself can readily engage with this TV horror. As such, whilst Only-Click can bypass traditional gatekeepers of media content that allows large international viewership to watch bygone television, existing barriers can still exclude certain audiences unless further extra-textual qualities are part of the informal reformatting, namely subtitles. As such, Only-Click TV often relies on user labour as part of the reformatting process, through what is referred to as fan-subbing. This is when active audience members create subtitles to international texts, often because official subtitles are not readily available, the material takes too long to be imported into the country, or the (official/unofficial) subtitles available are not of a high enough standard (Denison, 2017). Such bottom-up user labour can be located within wider acts of ‘digi-gratis’ central to Only-Click TV. Paul Booth conceptualizes digi-gratis as ‘an economic structure where money is not […] exchanged but which retains elements of a market structure’ (2016, p. 35). Operating within a gift economy, fan-produced content circulated within fandoms not only provides subcultural capital for the individual but is a necessity for maintaining and growing social cohesion within the community that motivates subsequent communal sharing and collaboration. Booth also argues that digi-gratis serves the industry since fan content acts as marketing material for extant media (ibid., p. 118). Elsewhere

170 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

I have argued that the informal circulation of bygone television horror relies on digi-gratis of user-led distribution and in some cases user-created extra-textual features such as subtitles (Rendell, 2021c, pp. 224–225). Yet in this instance the concept is nuanced since the temporal lag between initial broadcast and subsequent informal circulation does not readily benefit industry stakeholders and their market economies (ibid.). Therefore, Only-Click TV as historical archiving serves users and horror communities far greater than the industry that produces the cult television. For example, Only-Click can provide a locus of textual clustering (Mittell, 2004), where these TV horrors can form part of wider collections that evoke subcultural capital linked to different modes of completist discourse. In doing so, they evidence how Only-Click TV can cultify media content via informal formatting and circulation attached to wider horror discourses. With Rasen, along with other J-horror TV, ‘finding and discussing rare J-horror (trans)media allows fans to (re)activate a degree of autonomy both materially (many lay audiences do not know this content exists) and culturally (this content is read as overtly East Asian)’ (Rendell, 2021c, p. 223). Consequently, as with Saishusho, not only does Rasen’s obscurity foster ‘subcultural distinction, but by looking back to older “untouched” material creates a temporal legitimization of such content in the face of the contemporary Western remakes’ undermining of the fandom’s cult parameters’ (ibid.). Comparatively, the archiving of Hora Marcada reactivates and rearticulates screen media content by historicizing extant TV horror in relation to film creatives and the cultural discourses that envelop them in the present day. Furthermore, cinema creatives moving into television is one strategy for evoking quality TV discourse (Totaro, 2010). In this instance, we see a reversal of this relationship where the locating of early formative work that has yet to be widely received provides fans cult material that can build on their knowledge of said creatives’ oeuvres. Moreover, such work’s aggregation with other highly regarded cinematic practitioners through Hora Marcada’s anthologizing adds further novelty since their artistic sensibilities are taking shape not on film but television. Likewise, YouTube users’ archiving of the anthology broadens national television ecologies framed by genre by providing material distinct from the telenovela, which is frequently seen as the blanket form of Mexican TV fiction given its volume and popularity. Consequently, Only-Click practices can aid in collecting rare content from around the world that facilitates subcultural status due to the obscurity and exclusivity of specific texts (Smith, 2017, p. 27). This also highlights how Only-Click distribution has imbued certain TV texts with value. Thus, beyond formal, textual bids for quality status (explored

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

171

in Chapter 1), Only-Click can also act as a marker for quality TV, especially from a bottom-up and audience-driven vantage point. Moreover, these Only-Click instances retain key televisual ontological markers. As an ongoing series, users who upload Rasen demarcate episodes by naming videos by their episode number that allows for clear chronological sequencing. Moreover, while adverts are not included between commercial breaks, the episodes include the Fuji Television ident, episode recaps, opening title sequence, and end credits. In comparison, chronological structure is not required for series comprehension of Hora Marcada since each episode is a standalone narrative. Videos are labelled either by their episode title which often adds to their narrative enigma, or where a video shows multiple episodes is denoted by the show’s title. This puts onus on the anthology as a compendium that can be watched in any order. Both video types utilized the opening title sequence and end credits, whilst the former also, like Rasen, signpost narrative breaks with cutting but do not show adverts. The inclusion of such facets allows for the retainment of principal televisual markers that brand the series and provide extra-textual/paratextual features that guide audiences around textual content structurally, emotionally, and thematically. Both broadcast-active and archival cataloguing of Only-Click television allows for ‘user-led transnationalism’ (Athique, 2016), that circumnavigates global blockages of formal media flow. In some instances, as discussed with bygone TV horror, industry players do little to try and stop the informal circulation of their intellectual property. However, other strategies to tackle piracy go beyond trying to shut down illicit sites/services: by offering extra-textual qualities that Only-Click television does not readily provide, appropriating similar informal modes of circulation into their formal structuring, or incorporating informal illicitness into paratextual branding of content.

Slaying the Only-Click Beast: Formal Media Strategies As discussed, TWD has been widely circulated via Only-Click means. One way that AMC tackles this is by offering more formal distribution strategies playing on the hindrances and difficulties of informal distribution. Not only being transmedia-rich, TWD is also home media format-rich accessed through formal broadcast via AMC in the US and FOX UK in the UK, online streaming via Amazon Prime, plus multiple DVD editions (Kompare, 2010, p. 80). As highlighted in Chapter 2, SVoD takes from DVD technology whose ‘bound volumes […] drastically change[s] the serial experience, as screen

172 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

time becomes far more controllable and variable for viewers’ (Mittell, 2015, p. 35). In doing so, both formats can instil in lay audiences cult-modes of media consumption tied to binge-viewing. Yet, in terms of multiple DVD/ Blu-ray sets being marketed to fan audiences, such multi-formatting supports AMC’s basic cable political economy that attempts to reduce financial risk and maximize profit by selling to the widest audience possible and propagating a collectors’ market (Dawson, 2011, p. 39). This is something informal and formal formatting/portals cannot do. Unlike Only-Click’s digital files, DVD provides ‘commodity fetishism’ (Kompare, 2006, p. 338) through the aesthetics of cases and sleeves (ibid., p. 345) and by engaging with rituals of collecting (Crisp, 2015, p. 174). Not only is TWD reformatted to DVD after initial broadcast, but multiple cycles of boxsets have also been commercially released across the franchise’s duration, all of which with differing front cover artwork. There are ‘limited edition’ statuettecasing versions of boxsets, depicting iconic zombies from the series and an ‘Exclusive Steelbook Edition’ of each series on Blu-ray with exclusive artwork drawn by cult cartoonist Jock (e.g. Shaw, 2014; Harp, 2021). The ‘exclusive’ label attached to these iterations also generates subcultural capital via the (artificial) scarcity of these ‘limited’ releases (Schauer, 2012, p. 36), positioning TWD as a work of art (Hills, 2007, p. 45). Consequently, the aesthetic value of horror discussed in Chapter 1 can materialize via TV horror’s paratextual packaging that taps into fans’ collecting sensibilities (Geraghty, 2014, pp. 1–2). Furthermore, Hills suggests that ‘[c]ontra downloads, which viewers may watch while a show is actively in production, DVD releases tend to offer a “completeness” which makes them worthy of fan attention’ (2007, p. 57). As such, DVD ‘offers a more “trustable” or “ontologically secure” re-versioning of broadcast TV’ (ibid., p. 58). Unlike Only-Click TV, ‘additional features included on most DVDs amplify various elements of their central text, thus producing new media experiences’ (Kompare, 2006, p. 346). DVD/Blu-ray, therefore, can provide a different form of textual engagement for audiences whereby paratextual knowledge is linked to forensic fandom: ‘a mode of television engagement encouraging research, collaboration, analysis, and interpretation’ (Mittell, 2009), symptomatic of complex TV. With TWD, DVDs provide extra scenes that give additional transmedial information and further enrich the storyworld – for example, showing what happened to the Hispanic group from season one who stayed in Atlanta. Extras also provide interviews with the cast, crew, and creators, and further detailed information about certain diegetic objects such as Dale’s RV. Thus, these extra-textual features reinforce TWD’s complex narrative by offering further layers of meaning.

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

173

Additionally, DVD and Blu-ray allow for narrative and/or aesthetic alteration by adding or changing scenes (Mittell, 2015, pp. 38–39). This can (re)shape audiences’ relationships to events and characters, offering nuanced considerations of seriality via different versions of a text. TWD’s sixth series’ finale (S6, E16) illustrates this. Noting the central human antagonist’s propensity for swearing in the comic, ‘fans […] were disappointed by the relatively sanitized language used by Negan during the season finale’ (Casey, 2016). However, two versions of the scene were filmed – one for broadcast, one for home release. Not restrained by FCC regulations, the latter offered an uncensored ending more ‘authentically’ aligned with the comic book series (Mathews, 2016). Not only does this allow producers to react to and counter fans’ criticism that the televisual depiction of Negan was not faithful enough to the comic, it also provides a strategy to ensure that dedicated fans consume both the initial broadcast/Only-Click episodes and subsequent boxset versions (Caldwell, 2008, p. 162). Moreover, audiences were made aware of these textual alterations prior to season six’s home release, meaning fans wishing to be the first to compare and discuss these different versions would need to pre-order or buy the DVD/Blu-ray on the day of its release to engage in just-in-time fandom. Thus, fans’ affective intensities can result in just-in-time engagements with informal and formal economies, considering that ‘[t]he transmedia/non-transmedia nature of a text is determined not only by its narrative design but by distribution [and packaging] as well’ (Catania, 2015, p. 218). Thus, despite the rise in (in) formal streaming and downloading that has come to dominate the post-TV paradigm (Cunningham and Silver, 2013, p. 79) and regional coding that geographically bounds DVDs/Blu-rays, DVD/Blu-ray still holds salience for twenty-first century TV horror’s fan consumption and genre collections. In doing so, such industry formatting adds semiotic layers to television content and audiences’ relationship with screen media. If DVD allows companies to offer something that Only-Click TV cannot, other industry players have taken to adopting informal media practices. Indeed, locating media economies on a spectrum of formality and informality (Lobato et al., 2011, p. 902), considering both top-down and bottom-up players (Lobato and Thomas, 2015, pp. 5–7), acknowledges how ‘the formal and the informal are connected in complex ways: developments in one part of the economy typically have knock-on effects elsewhere’ (ibid., p. 11). Acknowledging audiences’ textual engagement and digital consumption, media companies are incorporating informal practices into their formal structuring of packaging, distribution, and business models (Holt and Sanson, 2013, p. 4; Pardo, 2015, pp. 23, 36).

174 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

For example, Lobato and Thomas explain that ‘[l]ike most other media organizations, the BBC is engaged in a series of complex interactions with the informal realm’ (2015, p. 37). They argue that the continued development of the BBC’s streaming and catch-up service iPlayer, based on viewer consumption control, is ‘an attempt to incorporate previously informal practices within a formal, regulated architecture’ (ibid., p. 38). However, it is pertinent to consider that, ‘because the BBC cannot monetise content on the iPlayer in the way that commercial broadcasters can by selling advertising or subscriptions, the extra cost of owning those on-demand rights can be justified only with long-term strategies such as brand-building’ (RTS, 2018). Part of this attempt to realign the BBC’s brand identity in accordance with post-TV discourse can also be seen in its digital channel BBC3 becoming online-only. Reportedly as part of a bid to cut costs (BBC, 2014) and to make BBC3 more in-tune with online services such as Netflix and Amazon (Hendy, 2013, pp. 114–117; Popple, 2015, p. 136), the channel ceased broadcast on 31st March 2016. Thereafter it was solely available via the BBC iPlayer. BBC’s iPlayer provides an archive that houses existing broadcast BBC3 teen and young adult TV horror, including In the Flesh and The Fades, as well as subsequent BBC3 online-only horror productions such as Don’t Scream (2020). Consequently, coalescing the commissioning of youth drama/TV horror (discussed in Chapter 1) with digital consumption habits/rituals in bids to attract younger audiences (Woods, 2016, p. 7; Just et al., 2017, p. 994), this two-pronged approach seeks to strengthens BBC3’s brand identity and align the channel with its market competition. However, despite shows’ pages providing links to BBC3’s website, when streaming the content, brand markers such as idents are notably absent. Additionally, not all BBC3 horror television has been reformatted onto the service, or if it has, is available on iPlayer for a finite duration before being removed. This includes ISAZA, Being Human (BBC3 2008–13), and The Fear (BBC3 2015). Furthermore, the iPlayer also allows the BBC to aggregate TV horror from its other channels, including BBC1’s Dracula (2020) and BBC2’s The League of Gentlemen (1999–2002, 2017), as well as its catch-up service temporarily showing horror films that have been broadcast on any of the BBC channels. Thus, while BBC3 has transmogrified to adopt informal online streaming qualities, it has potentially lost its distinct brand voice within the umbrella brand identity of the BBC corporation; a brand identity that is firmly broad in its audience remit compared to BBC3’s niche positioning. Indeed, subsequent BBC3 online-only telefantasy has not proven popular, appearing to suffer from a lack of viewer awareness (Woods, 2016, p. 55), as demonstrated by the poor performance of the Doctor Who spin-off,

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

175

Class (BBC3 2016). Despite offering a transmedia extension of the BBC’s flagship telefantasy series that has successfully united cult and mainstream audiences and has a longstanding and diverse fandom (Hills, 2010a, p. 203), Class was a commercial failure with low viewing figures (Baugher, 2016), resulting in its cancellation after just one series (Baldock, 2017). The text was further marginalized when subsequently broadcast on BBC1, scheduled for a late-night slot reportedly because of its occasional violent content (Dowell, 2016). Thus, while horror has become a popular and lucrative TV genre in the twenty-first century, commercial failures are still common (see also Lee, 2020). Nor does adopting informal digitization guarantee industry success. Despite implementing part of a popular grassroots ritual (of informal digital distribution), many audiences rejected the BBC3’s online turn and used digital activist strategies to make their voices heard. Users took to social media to start Facebook groups,6 use the hashtag #saveBBC3, and create the now defunct website www.savebbc3.com. This allowed them to orchestrate online protests, build a collective voice, and try to gain new members. These strategies were also mobilized through an online petition housed on www.change.org,7 a site to ‘host or directly link to many implementations of protest tactics that are often independent of particular causes or social movements’ (Earl and Kimport, 2009, p. 229). Amassing 302,132 signatures at the point of closure, the petition was then delivered to the BBC Trust by fifty protesters to put pressure on blocking ‘the proposals from Director-General Tony Hall and the BBC executive’ (Dowell, 2015). The protest eventually proved unsuccessful, but such vocal activism does indicate that despite the growth of informal media consumption (Cunningham and Silver, 2013, p. 3; Jenner, 2017, p. 308), traditional TV viewing practices still hold prevalence for audiences in some instances (Kompare, 2010, p. 79). Moreover, this also relates to the brand identity of the broadcaster concerned. While the BBC’s status as a public service broadcaster has involved innovation in distribution to citizens in an ever-changing technological landscape, e.g. the introduction and development of its catch-up service iPlayer (Evans and McDonald, 2014, p. 167; Evans, 2015, p. 112), its brand echoes with traditional formal viewing practices (Quail, 2012, p. 2). Coming full circle, BBC3 is no longer Only-Click, with the BBC bringing it back to broadcast in February 2022 ‘in an attempt to woo back younger audiences who have turned away from its output’ (Bland, 2021). Consequently, brand legacy ultimately still bleeds into any subsequent 6 For example www.facebook.com/savebbc3 7 See www.change.org/p/to-the-bbc-trust-savebbc3

176 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

developments, such as the introduction of new channels – BBC3 – and new modes of delivering content – the iPlayer. Finally, whilst trying to compete with informal circulation either by assimilation or one-upmanship, contemporary TV industry may also try to encode Only-Click’s symbolic value into its own branding. For instance, MOH’s ‘Imprint’ makes discursive reference to the episode being ‘banned’ from US TV on its DVD cover. As noted, DVD formatting allows for further fetishization through the bounded materiality of the casing, inlay, and any other additional textual materials. Here, informal discourse is used to reinforce the neo-cult sensibilities of the text and Showtime’s branding. As argued in Chapter 1, Showtime sought to frame ‘Imprint’ under the pre-existing Western rubric constructed by Tartan’s ‘Asia Extreme’ label, i.e. as markers of quality twenty-f irst century TV horror oscillating around cinematic discourse (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 11). Such paratextual ‘discourse established layers of relevancy and hierarchies of meaning about the show, in their turn, influencing audience’s expectations’ (Picarelli, 2015, p. 134). However, Miike’s episode pushed graphic visuals and subject matter to the limit and was deemed unsuitable for broadcast by Showtime (Kehr, 2006), resulting in it being solely disseminated on DVD in the US.8 With ‘the producers feeling that Miike’s piece is too graphic to be aired’ (Brown, 2006), complaints could have damaged Showtime’s brand image. Consequently, the episode’s controversial subject matter and shocking visuals (see Chapter 1) could potentially harm the overarching branding of the channel, even leading to cancelled subscriptions – the channel’s main revenue source. Thus, cult/quality horror does not always marry well with other discourses of quality TV. However, while pulling ‘Imprint’ serves, in part, to protect Showtime’s brand image, the act also increased the episode’s cult notoriety when it was released on DVD, thus potentially attracting niche demographics in the process (Mathijs and Sexton, 2011, p. 30). Importantly, despite Showtime self-censoring the episode, the US DVD cover claims that the text was ‘banned from cable broadcast’. Similar to once-banned video nasties and cult f ilms that are now available on general release (see Egan, 2007), Showtime’s framing of ‘Imprint’ as illicit by highlighting that it was, at one point, ‘banned’ – even if this was an artificial state of affairs generated by the channel brand itself – constructs a paratextual framework for the episode’s commercial home media release. 8 The episode was aired in the UK along with the rest of the series on the digital channel Bravo.

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

177

As discussed in Chapter 1, such claims enhance the neo-cult sensibilities of ‘Imprint’ as exotic, dangerous, and scarce, tapping into semiotic schema of Western paratexts’ framing of extreme Asian cinema and its enfant terrible Miike Takashi. Yet, while semantically similar, this is not the same as self-censoring where Showtime decided to pull the episode from broadcast. Recognizing Showtime’s agency in the kind of material that it can show as a subscription-based cable channel – i.e. content explicit in subject matter and imagery, and unlike network TV, not regulated by the FCC – some fans on the now defunct online forum Snowblood Apple were perplexed and/or frustrated that Miike’s episode had been denied to them: Showtime has decided that it’s too disturbing/whatever to air, which I find really odd considering the earlier episodes and the fact Showtime is a cable channel […] [B]asically Miike did what was really the idea of the show. This was a movie that I really wanted to see and the fact that it’s banned in the U.S. makes me even more curious to see it! [W]hat happened to the Land of the Free? […] Ok, I can see some sense to certain bans […] but these are works of art. True, banning shouldn’t exist when it comes to forms of art. Art is made for a reason right? Art is a representation of an individual. People (in the U.S.) don’t often accept artistic creativity from foreign countries because to them, it isn’t the norm.

Such rhetoric positions ‘mainstream’ American media and its audiences as lacking in cultural capital in comparison to transcultural fans, reiterating geographical dichotomies whereby populist American culture is articulated against world and/or Japanese cinema perceived as art (Hills, 2005b; Wee, 2014, p. 2; Dew, 2007, p. 67). Auteur positioning further reinforces the preexisting Western frameworks surrounding Miike (Rawle, 2014, p. 226). For others, however, censoring ‘Imprint’ in North America is actually deemed a suitable strategy: [T]he whole fetus thing wouldent go well with american viewers [sic]. I imagine it has more to do with the aborted foetus theme than anything else […] If Showtime has any religious backers that might well cause a little upset.

178 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Consequently, Only-Click formatting makes sense for these fans given Showtime’s presumed addressing of mainstream/non-fan audiences and their perceived inability to ‘handle’ such graphic horror. Importantly, fans’ language stresses the company’s actions in this: by discussing how ‘other audiences’ might be affected by such content (Barker et al., 2007, p. 130) fans consider what they view as Showtime’s cultural responsibilities. Illustratively, fans privilege ‘knowledge over affect’ (Hills, 2005a, p. 75), discussing anticipated issues around the ‘literalist readings’ which could be made by non-fans/mainstream audiences (ibid., p. 74). Yet these fans somewhat misread the political economies at play. Showtime, as a premium cable channel, is not targeting a mass audience. Therefore, an imagined ‘mainstream’ consumer base is unlikely to view ‘Imprint’ via the channel given that access to content is by subscription. Others, however, were sceptical as to why the director’s contribution was not being broadcast: I’ve heard (read) speculation that pulling Miike is just a marketing ploy for the DVD. The sounds like moneyspinning to me […] Make a big fuss about how it’s got to be pulled ‘cos it’s ‘too scary’ to show on TV, then put out as a separate DVD?

Here, the interlinking of informal Only-Click distribution supposedly due to banning with a subsequent official and commercial DVD release aimed at an established niche fandom is read as problematic. Moreover, whilst in reality this was an instance of self-censorship, fans discuss the cancellation of the episode as a ‘ban’. As such, these viewers use the (artif icial or questionable) act of ‘banning’ in their meaning-making surrounding the text at a pre-textual level, whilst also performing their own stances on censorship (Barker et al., 2007, pp. 38–39). These debates were largely carried out by US and British audiences, where negotiations of formal and informal circulation were taking place. For fans residing in territories where Only-Click TV was their sole option because MOH was not being broadcast anyway, this context of consumption meant that ‘Imprint’ being pulled did not affect them. Thus, we can see how, within a transcultural fandom, quite different Only-Click TV contexts manifest (Athique, 2016, p. 145).

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

179

Conclusion Jason Mittell remarks that ‘texts only come to matter in their consumption, circulation and proliferation’ (2015, p. 7). Evidently, Only-Click television within the digital realm of fandom presents an ‘aesthetics of multiplicity’ where a web of personal, (sub)cultural, and industrial narratives contextualize meaning around the formal and informal textual acquisition of twenty-first century TV horror texts (Ross, 2008, pp. 21–22). Resultantly, Only-Click TV is not a homogeneous practice ‘underpinned by a unified set of motivations that result in a similarly predictable set of outcomes’ (Crisp, 2015, p. 2). Instead, Only-Click TV is a multifarious model that serves various functions for various audiences for various reasons. For some, this practice comes out of a frustration that television texts are simply unavailable in their territory via traditional televisual technology; all of the chapter’s case studies have been broadcast/released in particular regions/countries and not in others. In some instances, it can be the pivotal tool in uncovering hidden TV gems from yesteryear and/or from other lands, facilitating and encouraging transcultural fandoms. In other examples, there is a temporal necessity of Only-Click consumption as it offers the only viable option to consume texts within a timeframe concordant with wider audiences, allowing for just-in-time interactions with texts and other fans. In either case, the transnational qualities of horror television – both the production and consumption of genre vehicles from around the globe – are supported and enhanced by the increased digitality of post-TV, particularly by informal media ecologies developed by Only-Click practices and audiences’ own digi-gratis labour. Yet Only-Click TV can often be marked by an industrial lack. As seen with TWD, whilst it can reduce temporal and spatial distance for transnational audiences, as a digital file it often lacks the extra-textual features of DVD or Blu-ray, which also frame meaning and add value to a text. This can prompt fans to buy official releases over and above, or even after, illicit consumption. This proves especially salient to basic cable channels, as multiple home media formats can cast the widest possible net for gaining commercial revenue from the largest audience, but it can also frame particular editions as exclusive, providing subcultural capital within fan communities even while further surplus value is extracted from these dedicated viewers. Furthermore, ‘[a]nalysing interactions between formal and informal media worlds requires us to think holistically about the media environment’

180 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

(Lobato and Thomas, 2015, p. 19). Therefore, whilst Only-Click TV is apposite for circumnavigating formal barriers to textual acquisition, with many industry stakeholders and groups actively trying to shut down practices often via technological strategies, lawsuits, and charges of copyright infringement (e.g. Curry, 2015; Kim, 2019), Only-Click has also been incorporated into off icial media distribution models, both technologically – BBC3 going online-only – and paratextually – Showtime framing ‘Imprint’ as banned in its DVD packaging. This presents a more dialogical relationship between formal and informal components of twenty-f irst century post-TV horror. We have seen Only-Click TV adopt the wonted ontological markers of the various forms of television they are pirating, such as release patterns, idents, opening title sequences and end credits, and even high-end resolution standards. In turn, we have seen established media industry players adopt the aspects of Only-Click into the branding of themselves and their content. That said, both BBC3 going online-only and Showtime marketing ‘Imprint’ as banned also highlight how the formal incorporation of informal rhetoric, whether that be modes of consumption or the semiotic framing of media, is not indubitably accepted by all audiences. Instead, viewers may read strategies of informal integration against the industrial contexts from which formal media outlets stem. This seems particularly true for TV native companies that have established brand identities within a broadcast paradigm of television. Indeed, by examining audience responses through practices such as active protests and online discussions evidences meaning-making operating outside of, but also impacting on, viewer–text relationships. Part 2 of this book continues and develops this line of thought by analysing audiences’ responses to TV horror through the prism of the abject spectrum model, exploring viewers’ written logos, visual interpretations, transformative texts, and grassroots transmedia.

References Abbott, Stacey. 2016. Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Abbott, Stacey and Jowett, Lorna (eds). 2021a. Global TV Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales. Abbott, Stacey and Jowett, Lorna. 2021b. ‘It’s Taking Over the Whole World: Global TV Horror, Then and Now.’ In Abbott, Stacey and Jowett, Lorna (eds). Global TV Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales. pp. 1–13.

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

181

Alexander, Julia. 2018. ‘Exclusive Shows on HBO, Netflix Leading to Increase in Piracy, Study Finds.’ Polygon. 3rd October. https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/3/17931926/ streaming-exclusive-piracy-netflix-disney-hbo-game-of-thrones [Accessed 4 April 2023] Arif, Shabana. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3 Hits Pirate Sites in 4K, Pointing to Netlix Leak.’ Gizmodo. 8th July. https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/07/stranger-things3-hits-pirate-sites-in-4k-pointing-to-netlix-leak/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Athique, Adrian. 2016. Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale. Cambridge: Polity Press. Baldock, James. 2017. ‘Doctor Who Spin-off Class is Axed – Why Didn’t It Work?’ Metro. 7th September. https://metro.co.uk/2017/09/07/doctor-who-spin-offclass-is-axed-why-didnt-it-work-6911405/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Barker, Martin, Mathijs, Ernest, Sexton, Jamie, Egan, Kate, Hunter, Russ, and Selfe, Melanie. 2007. ‘Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema.’ British Board of Film Classification. Baugher, Lacy. 2016. ‘Initial Ratings for Doctor Who Spinoff Class Are Less Than Fantastic.’ Culturess. December. http://culturess.com/2016/11/30/initial-ratingsdoctor-spinoff-class-less-fantastic/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] BBC. 2014. ‘BBC Three: From Digital First to Online Only.’ BBC. 5th March. http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26452235 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Bishop, Kyle William. 2015. How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century. Jefferson: McFarland. Bland, Archie. 2021. ‘BBC Three to Return as Broadcast Channel Next Year.’ The Guardian. 2nd March. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/mar/02/ bbc-three-to-return-as-broadcast-channel-next-year [Accessed 4 April 2023] Booth, Paul. 2016. Digital Fandom 2.0. New Media Studies: Second Edition. Oxford: Peter Lang. Brew, Simon. 2020. ‘DVD and Blu-ray Players Sales Spike During Lockdown.’ Film Stories. 5th May. https://www.filmstories.co.uk/news/dvd-and-blu-ray-playerssales-spike-during-lockdown/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Brown, Todd. 2006. ‘It’s Confirmed: Takashi Miike’s Imprint Will Not Be Screened As Part of The Masters of Horror.’ Screen Anarchy. 20th January. http://screenanarchy.com/2006/01/its-conf irmed-takashi-miikes-imprint-will-not-bescreened-as-part-of-the-ma.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Caldwell, John T. 2008. Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. London: Duke University Press. Casey, Dan. 2016. ‘Negan’s Full Uncensored Speech Coming to The Walking Dead Season 6 Blu-Ray.’ Nerdist. 5th April. https://archive.nerdist.com/negans-fulluncensored-speech-coming-to-the-walking-dead-season-6-blu-ray/ [Accessed 4 April 2023]

182 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Catania, Alessandro. 2015. ‘Serial Narrative Exports: US Television Drama in Europe.’ In Pearson, Roberta. and Smith, Anthony N. (eds). Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 205–220. Chilton, Louis. 2020. ‘Friends’ Removal From Netflix Leads to Surge in DVD Sales.’ Independent. 21st February. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ tv/news/friends-netflix-series-dvd-sales-streaming-hbo-max-jennifer-anniston-a9348961.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Crisp, Virginia. 2015. Film Distribution in the Digital Age: Pirates and Professionals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cunningham, Stuart and Silver, Jon. 2013. Screen Distribution and the New King Kongs of the Online World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Curry, David. 2015. ‘BBC Begins Crackdown of iPlayer Viewers Using a VPN.’ Digital Trends. 20th October. https://www.digitaltrends.com/web/bbc-iplayer-blocksvpn/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Cuthbertson, Anthony. 2020. ‘Piracy Surges as People Search for Free Films and TV Shows to Watch Online in Lockdown.’ The Independent. 27th April. https:// www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/free-movies-tvshow-stream-online-watch-torrent-muso-download-a9485331.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Davies, Ann, Shaw, Deborah, and Tierney, Dolores (eds). 2014. The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo Del Toro. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dawson, Max. 2011. ‘Television Abridged: Ephemeral Texts, Monumental Seriality and TV Digital Media Convergence.’ In Grainge, Paul (ed). Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube. London: BFI. pp. 37–56. Denison, Rayna. 2017. ‘Redistributing Japanese Television Dorama: The Shadow Economies and Communities Around Fan Distribution of Japanese Media.’ The Velvet Light Trap. 75. pp. 58–72. Dew, Oliver. 2007. ‘“Asia Extreme”: Japanese Cinema and British Hype.’ New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. 5(1). pp. 53–73. Dhaenens, Frederik and Van Bauwel, Sofie. 2014. ‘Fans Who Cut Their Soaps Queer: A Theoretical Study Into Online Fandom of Gay Television Representations.’ In Duits, Linda, Zwaan, Koos, and Reijnders, Stijn (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 181–192. Dowell, Ben. 2015. ‘Save BBC3 Protesters March to BBC Trust to Deliver 270,000-Signature Petition.’ Radio Times. 17th February. http://www.radiotimes. com/news/2015–02–17/save-bbc3-protestors-march-to-bbc-trust-to-deliver270000-signature-petition [Accessed 4 April 2023] Dowell, Ben. 2016. ‘Doctor Who Spin-Off Class ‘Will Get a Late Night Slot’ When it Airs on BBC1 Next Year.’ Radio Times. 6th December. http://www.radiotimes.

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

183

com/news/2016–12–06/doctor-who-spin-off-class-will-get-a-late-night-slotwhen-it-airs-on-bbc1-next-year [Accessed 4 April 2023] Earl, Jennifer and Kimport, Katrina. 2009. ‘Movement Societies and Digital Protest: Fan Activism and Other Nonpolitical Protest Online.’ Sociological Theory. 27(3). pp. 220–243. Egan, Kate. 2007. Trash or Treasure: Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Elkins, Evan. 2018. ‘Hulu: Geoblocking National TV in an On-Demand Era.’ In Johnson, Derek (ed). From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels. New York: Routledge. pp. 333–341. Evans, Elizabeth. 2011. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life. New York: Routledge. Evans, Elizabeth. 2015. ‘Layering Engagement: The Temporal Dynamics of Transmedia Television.’ Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies. 7(2). pp. 111–128. Evans, Elizabeth and McDonald, Paul. 2014. ‘Online Distribution of Film and Television in the UK.’ In Holt, Jennifer and Sanson, Kevin (eds). Connected Viewing: Selling, Sharing and Streaming Media in the Digital Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 158–179. Faltesek, Daniel. 2011. ‘TV Everywhere? The Old Spatial Politics of New Media.’ Communication, Culture and Critique. 4(4). pp. 401–418. Geraghty, Lincoln. 2014. Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture. London: Routledge. Gillan, Jennifer. 2011. Television and New Media: Must-Click TV. New York: Routledge. GlobalData Retail. 2020. ‘Covid-19 to Accelerate Decline of the Already Struggling Physical Video Market.’ Retail Insight Network. 24th April. https://www.retailinsight-network.com/comment/covid-19-to-accelerate-decline-of-the-alreadystruggling-physical-video-market/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Gray, Jonathan. 2008. Television Entertainment. London: Routledge. Harp, Justin. 2021. ‘The Walking Dead Season 10 Gets Blu-ray Steelbook Release – How to Buy.’ Digital Spy. 20th July. https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/ a37082244/walking-dead-season-10-steelbook-buy/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2016. Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics: Transmedia WorldBuilding Beyond Capitalism. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Havens, Tim. 2018. ‘Netflix: Streaming Channel Brands as Global Meaning Systems.’ In Johnson, Derek (ed). From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels. New York: Routledge. pp. 321–332. Hazelton, John. 2020. ‘Netflix Smashes Forecasts, Adds 15.8m Global Subs in Q1 Amid Coronavirus Lockdown.’ Screen Daily. 21st April. https://www.screendaily.com/ news/netflix-smashes-forecasts-adds-158m-global-subs-in-q1-amid-coronaviruslockdown/5149226.article [Accessed 4 April 2023]

184 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Hendy, David. 2013. Public Service Broadcasting. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hills, Matt. 2005b. ‘Ringing the Changes: Cult Distinctions and Cultural Differences in US Fans’ Readings of Japanese Horror Cinema.’ In McRoy, Jay (ed). Japanese Horror Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 161–174. Hills, Matt. 2007. ‘FROM THE BOX IN THE CORNER TO THE BOX SET ON THE SHELF: “TVIII” and the Cultural/Textual Valorisations of DVD.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 5(1). pp. 41–60. Hills, Matt. 2010a. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty First Century. London: I.B. Tauris. Hills, Matt and Sexton, Jamie. 2017. ‘Editorial Introduction: The Multiplicities of Transnational Cult – Intersecting With(in) Reason.’ Transnational Cinema. 8(1). pp. 1–4. Hjort, Mette. 2010. ‘On the Plurality of Cinematic Transnationalism.’ In Ďurovičá, Nataša and Newman, Kathleen (eds). World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge. pp. 12–22. Holt, Jennifer and Sanson, Kevin. 2013. ‘Introduction. Mapping Connections.’ In Holt, Jennifer and Sanson, Kevin (eds). Connected Viewing: Selling, Sharing and Streaming Media in the Digital Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 1–15. IMDB. ND. ‘The Walking Dead (TV Series): Days Gone Bye (2010): Release Info.’ International Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1589921/ releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_dt Jenkins, Henry. 2006a. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenner, Mareike. 2017. ‘Binge-watching: Video-on-Demand, Quality TV and Mainstreaming Fandom.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies. 20(3). pp. 304–320. Johnson, Catherine. 2012. Branding Television. London: Routledge. Jowett, Lorna and Abbott, Stacey. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London: I.B. Tauris. Just, Natascha, Büchi, Moritz, and Latzer, Micael. 2017. ‘A Blind Spot in Public Broadcasters’ Discovery of the Public: How the Public Values Public Service.’ International Journal of Communication. 11. pp. 992–1011. Kehr, Dave. 2006. ‘Horror Film Made for Showtime Will Not Be Shown.’ The New York Times. 19th January. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/arts/television/horror-film-made-for-showtime-will-not-be-shown.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Kim, Eddie. 2019. ‘After 15 Years, The Pirate Bay Still Can’t Be Killed.’ Mel. 22nd May. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/after-15-years-the-pirate-bay-stillcant-be-killed [Accessed 30 July 2021]

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

185

Kim, Jeongmee. 2014. ‘Introduction: East Asian Television Drama: A Story of Booms, Fevers and Waves.’ In Kim, Jeongmee (ed). Reading Asian Television Drama: Crossing Borders and Breaking Boundaries. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 1–24. Kompare, Derek. 2006. ‘Publishing Flow. DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Television.’ Television and New Media. 7(4). pp. 335–360. Kompare, Derek. 2010. ‘Reruns 2.0: Revising Repetition for Multiplatform Television Distribution.’ Journal of Popular Film and Television. 38(2). pp. 79–83. Kustritz, Anne. 2015. ‘Transnationalism, Localization, and Translation in European Fandom: Fan Studies as Global Media and Audience Studies.’ Transformative Works of Culture. 19. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0682 Lee, Alex. 2020. ‘Why Netflix Keeps Canceling Shows After Just 2 Seasons.’ Wired. 23rd September. https://www.wired.com/story/why-netflix-keeps-cancelingshows-after-just-2-seasons/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2014. ‘Transnational Cultural Fandom.’ In Duits, Linda, Zwaan, Koos, and Reijnders, Stijn (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 195–207. Lobato, Ramon. 2007. ‘Subcinema: Theorizing Marginal Film Distribution.’ Limina. A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies. 13. pp. 113–120. Lobato, Ramon. 2012. Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution. London: BFI. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: New York University Press. Lobato, Ramon and Thomas, Julian. 2015. The Informal Media Economy. Cambridge: Polity. Lobato, Ramon, Thomas, Julian, and Hunter, Dan. 2011. ‘Histories of User-Generated Content: Between Formal and Informal Media Economies.’ International Journal of Communication. 5. pp. 899–914. Lopez, Ana M. 1995. ‘Our Welcomed Guests: Telenovelas in Latin America.’ In Allen, Robert C. (ed). To Be Continued… Soap Operas Around the World. London: Routledge. pp. 256–275. Lotz, Amanda D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized: Second Edition. New York: New York University Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Michigan: Maize Books. Marshall, P. David. 2009. ‘Screens: Television’s Dispersed “Broadcast”.’ In Turner, Graeme and Tay, Jinna (eds). Television Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era. London: Routledge. pp. 41–50. Mathews, L. 2016. ‘The Walking Dead: We’re Finally Going to F—ing See the F—ing Uncensored Negan Intro.’ TV Guide. 21st June. http://www.tvguide.com/ [Accessed 30 July 2021]

186 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Mathijs, Ernest and Sexton, Jamie. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Mediatel. 2020. ‘Lockdown Boosts TV and DVD Sales, But Sport Channels Suffer.’ Mediatel News. 30th March. https://mediatel.co.uk/news/2020/03/30/lockdownboosts-tv-and-dvd-sales-but-sport-channels-suffer/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Meikle, Denis. 2005. The Ring Companion. London: Titan Books. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. Mittell, Jason. 2009. ‘Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 3. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0118 Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Pardo, Alejandro. 2015. ‘From the Big Screen to the Small Ones: How Digitization is Transforming the Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption of Movies.’ In Crisp, Virginia and Gonring, Gabriel Menotti (eds). Besides the Screen: Moving Images Through Distribution, Promotion and Curation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 23–45. Pett, Emma. 2017. ‘Transnational Cult Paratexts: Exploring Audience Readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme Brand.’ Transnational Cinemas. 8(1). pp. 35–48. Picarelli, Enrica. 2015. ‘On the Problematic Productivity of Hype: Flashforward’s Promotional Campaign.’ In Crisp, Virginia and Gonring, Gabriel Menotti (eds). Besides the Screen: Moving Images Through Distribution, Promotion and Curation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 125–143. Popple, Simon. 2015. ‘The New Reithians: Pararchive and Citizen Animateurs in the BBC Digital Archive.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies. 21(1). pp. 132–144. Quail, Christine. 2012. ‘Television Goes Online: Myths and Realities in the Contemporary Context.’ Global Media Journal. 12(20). pp. 1–15. Rawle, Steve. 2014. ‘The Ultimate Super-Happy-Zombie-Romance-Murder-MysteryFamily-Comedy-Karaoke-Diaster-Movie-Part-Animated-Remake-All-SingingAll-Dancing-Musical-Spectacular-Extravaganza. Miike Takashi’s The Happiness of the Katakuris as “Cult” Hybrid.’ In Hunt, Leon, Lockyer, Sharon, and Williamson, Milly (eds). Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 208–232. Raymundo, Oscar. 2016. ‘“The Marked Hour”: The Mexican Science Fiction Program That Gave Birth to the Best Directors in Hollywood.’ Vice. 28th November. https:// www.vice.com/es_latam/article/kwvwev/el-programa-mexicano-de-cienciaficcion-en-la-decada-de-los-ochentas-que-dio-luz-a-los-mejores-directoresde-hollywood [Accessed 4 April 2023]

Digital Crypt Keepers: Informal Digital Dissemination 

187

Rendell, James. 2021c. ‘Tracing Terror-Bytes: Ring: Saishusho as Japanese TV Horror, Online Transcultural J-Horror Fan Object, and Digital Only-Click Television.’ In Abbott, Stacey and Jowett, Lorna (eds). Global TV Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales. pp. 215–231. Ross, Sharon Marie. 2008. Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet. Malden: Blackwell. RTS. 2018. ‘Binge-watching Culture No Longer Just a Streaming Service Phenomenon.’ Royal Television Society. June. https://rts.org.uk/article/binge-watchingculture-no-longer-just-streaming-service-phenomenon [Accessed 4 April 2023] Schauer, Bradley. 2012. ‘The Warner Archive and DVD Collecting in the New Home Market.’ The Velvet Light Trap. 70. pp. 35–48. Shaw, Marty. 2014. ‘The Walking Dead Complete Fourth Season Limited Edition Blu-Ray.’ Geek Alert. 3rd May. https://www.geekalerts.com/the-walking-deadcomplete-fourth-season-limited-edition-blu-ray/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Shimpach, Shawn. 2010. Television in Transition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Sinclair, John. 2005. ‘International Television Channels in the Latin American Audiovisual Space.’ In Chalaby, Jean K. (ed). Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 196–215. Smith, Iain Robert. 2017. ‘Theorising Cult Cosmopolitanism: The Transnational Reception of Bollywood as Cult Cinema.’ Transnational Cinema. 8(1). pp. 20–34. Spangler, Todd. 2015. ‘“Walking Dead” Midseason Premiere Breaks Piracy Record for Zombie Series.’ Variety. 10th February. http://variety.com/2015/digital/ news/walking-dead-midseason-premiere-breaks-piracy-record-for-zombieseries-1201429844/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Stewart, Mark. 2016. ‘The Myth of Televisual Ubiquity.’ Television and New Media. 17(8). pp. 691–705. Sweney, Mark. 2010. ‘BSkyB to Launch Sky Atlantic.’ The Guardian. 1st October. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/01/bskyb-sky-atlantic-mad-men [Accessed 4 April 2023] Thornton, Niamh. 2010. ‘YouTube: Transnational Fandom and Mexican Divas.’ Transnational Cinemas. 1(1). pp. 53–67. Totaro, Donato. 2010. ‘Masters of Horror.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 87–90. van Dijck, Jan. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vargas, Andrew S. 2016. ‘Sci-Fi TV Series ‘La Hora Marcada’ Launched the Careers of Mexico’s Most Acclaimed Filmmakers.’ Remezcla. 11th May. https://remezcla.com/ features/film/la-hora-marcada-launched-career-alfonso-cuaron-emmanuellubezki-guillermo-del-toro/ [Accessed 4 April 2023]

188 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Vonderau, Patrick. 2013. ‘Beyond Piracy. Understanding Digital Markets.’ In Holt, Jennifer and Sanson, Kevin (eds). Connected Viewing: Selling, Sharing and Streaming Media in the Digital Era. New York: Routledge. pp. 99–123. Wallenstein, Andrew. 2014. ‘“The Walking Dead” Season 5 Premiere Piracy Hits All-Time High.’ Variety. 13th October. http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/ the-walking-dead-season-5-premiere-piracy-hits-all-time-high-1201329056/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Wee, Valerie. 2014. Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes: Translating Fear, Adapting Culture. London: Routledge. Whitten, Sarah. 2019. ‘The Death of the DVD: Why Sales Dropped More Than 86% in 13 Years.’ CNBC. 8th November. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/thedeath-of-the-dvd-why-sales-dropped-more-than-86percent-in-13-years.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Woods, Faye. 2016. British Youth Television: Transnational Teens, Industry, Genre. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Xu, Gary G. 2008. ‘Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood.’ In Hunt, Leon and Wing-Fai, Leung (eds). East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 191–202. Zhang, Xiaoran. 2019. ‘From Western TV Sets to Chinese Online Streaming Services: English-language TV series in Mainland China.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 16(2). pp. 220–242.

Part 2 Post-TV Horror Audiences

4. Not Just Horrifying: TV Horror Audiences’ Abject Spectrums Abstract Developing the abject spectrum model, this chapter analyses online audiences’ responses to horror television. This begins with audiences’ varying affective barometers to Penny Dreadful’s gore, before evidencing myriad emotional responses before, during, and after viewings of The Haunting of Hill House. Different audiences’ biographical relationships to The Exorcist shape reactions, offering what I term ‘knowledge-as-affect’, whilst Asian extreme/J-horror fans’ mixed responses to ‘Imprint’ question pre-existing orientalist understandings of these fandoms. Audiences’ ideological deconstruction of the zombie present polysemic readings of In the Flesh while Black audiences read The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead’s as reflecting the systemic oppression of Black citizen in the US. Comparatively, Black gamers praise TellTale’s Walking Dead videogame’s complex characterization of its Black lead. Finally, audiences’ employ pragmatic aesthetics that elevates Hannibal as art and negotiates Rihanna’s casting in Bates Motel. Keywords: affect, fandom, anti-fandom, repeat viewing, subtext, aesthetics

The first half of this book examined how horror rose from the depths of premium cable subscriptions to bedevil the post-television landscape, birthing in a host of channels and services that supported existing brand identities within an increasingly crowded marketplace of broadcast- and online-native portals. Textual analysis was employed to undertake a range of case study readings ‘supported and developed around […] wider contextual or extratextual framework[s]’ (Creeber, 2006, p. 35), which argued horror TV interpellated genre fans, target brand audiences, and wider viewership via various textual and paratextual features. However, media’s ‘[m]eaning comes into being only with the person who experiences it’ (Nowell-Smith, 2000,

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_ch04

192 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

p. 15). Moreover ‘neither signification nor information guarantees meaning’ (ibid.). Therefore, Part 2 of the book focuses on myriad audience responses to TV horror by conceptualizing and applying the abject spectrum model. Chapter 4 does so by analysing viewers’ online post, presenting a ‘portfolio of interpretation […] [highlighting] that contextual and individual factors form […] viewing experience[s]’ (Hill, 1997, p. 5). Chapter 5 will build on this but shifts attention to image-based online posts such as photos, screengrabs, memes, and original artwork, before Chapter 6 locates audience abject spectrums within offline and tactile contexts by examining food crafts and vinyl soundtracks. As argued in the Introduction, abjection is a process ‘central […] within the project of subjectivity’ (Tyler, 2009, p. 80). Resultantly, ‘Kristeva theorizes abjection in phenomenological terms associating it with bodily experiences’ (Arya, 2017, p. 10). This is vital to abject spectrums: the ongoing process of readings and responses to onscreen abjection are informed by individual life experiences located culturally and socially (Casebier, 1991, p. 4; Filmer et al., 1998, p. 32). In developing abject spectrums, I use abjection’s first-person perspective (Arya, 2014, p. 10) to analyse how online audiences make sense of TV horror texts. This begins by locating the emotional and corporeal aspects of abject spectrums by analysing how audiovisual horror makes audiences feel. Starting with Penny Dreadful, the chapter shows how graphic imagery’s ability to scare is contingent on viewers’ relationships with horror and individual tolerance levels for gore, meaning the series is both mildly scary and too horrifying. This line of thought is continued with The Haunting of Hill House where abject affect extends beyond screening sessions, can make audiences physically react and evoke emotions other than fear, and can continue to horrify but also offer shifting affective pleasures when rewatched. Previously noting the salience of film-to-TV horror transmedia (Chapter 2), the chapter then addresses how audiences’ differing relationships, ties, and memories of The Exorcist film franchise impact what I term knowledge-as-affect of its televisual permutation. Finally, highlighting Showtime’s paratextual strategies of neo-cult discourse surrounding ‘Imprint’ (see Chapter 1 and 3), the chapter looks at how J-horror/Asia Extreme film fans disliked the Masters of Horror (MOH) episode. As such, these viewers can be understood as anti-fans, those with negative affective registers towards ‘a given text[, person,] or genre, considering it inane, stupid, morally bankrupt and/or aesthetic drivel’ (Gray, 2003, p. 70). While in some instances, anti-fans are starkly oppositional to fans (ibid.), the two positions can bleed and overlap with one another (e.g. Click, 2019). In this case, anti-fans devalue

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

193

the graphic imagery in ‘Imprint’ as indicative of Miike’s overrated status within the transcultural J-horror/extreme Asian cinema fanbase and Showtime’s inauthentic attempts to popularize cult materials for an imagined mainstream viewership. Audiences’ readings highlight how horror’s abjection is polysemic, permitting multiple abject spectrums to operate in relation to a single text. Abject spectrums also account for blended responses, such as emotional reactions merging with ideological readings (Stephens, 2012, p. 530). Relatedly, the chapter illustrates how In the Flesh (ITF) fans have been moved to tears by the horror series’ themes and subject matter. Moreover, audiences’ heteroglossic allegorical interpretations utilize a range of social, cultural, and political discourses that impute quality status to the show. Indeed, with the zombie often ‘a blank canvas for various social commentaries’ (Rendell, 2021b), audiences are frequently invited, or take it upon themselves, to map subtext onto the monster. But since abject spectrums’ formation and development are phenomenologically underpinned, ideological readings are also contextualized by one’s own ongoing identity. Addressing the longstanding neglect of race in Horror Studies (Brooks, 2014) and Fan Studies (Wanzo, 2015), the chapter illustrates how Black audiences’ intersectional identity shapes (anti-)fan positioning towards The Walking Dead (TWD), its spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead (FTWD) (AMC 2015–), and TellTale’s The Walking Dead (TTTWD) (2012) videogame and their (mis)representation of Black male characters. Race-as-subtext is discursively prioritized (Hills, 2015), where such socio-political readings are contextualized by US race relations, ongoing systemic racial oppression, and race as phenomenologically lived. Finally, the chapter unpacks audiences’ aesthetic engagement with abjection (Arya, 2016). This begins by examining audiences’ appraisal of Hannibal’s pragmatic aesthetics, shifting between diegetic, operational, and technological aspects of the series that reflect high artistic value. In comparison, the choice to cast popstar/A-list celebrity Rihanna as Marion Crane in the final season of Bates Motel was far more contested by fans before, during, and after the series’ broadcast. Consequently, the chapter highlights how ‘pre-viewer expectations, concerns, worries and understandings […] operate as interpretive frames that can […] be activated during the reception process’ (Davis et al., 2014, p. 54). Presenting various case studies, the chapter attests to the diversity in audiences’ responding to, reading of, and rating horror screen media – in doing so, illuminating different facets and components of the abject spectrum model. This model is a gradational continuum that locates

194 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

audience affect to onscreen abjection between the emotional, somatic, ideological, and aesthetic. The model also factors in the in-process dynamics of individual experiences, the continuation of cultural history, and the potential for texts’ narratives to develop intratextually, intertextually, and transmedially.

Gut Wrenching: Emotional and Corporeal Affect to Horror Television A central axiomatic understanding of the horror genre is its aim to be horrifying (Sobchack, 2004b, p. 43), a symptom of abjection. True, creatives endeavour to terrify audiences, yet such textual determinism does not account for the complexities and differences between horrified audiences (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 94). Nor does this account for a more diverse range of emotional affect. It also says little about who fears what and to what degree they feel scared. Moreover, the value systems that form around different types of horror also impact audiences’ abject spectrums. As Leeder explains, ‘[h]orror fans can have very different priorities. Some value subtlety and suggestion, some gore and excess’ (2018, p. 153). Indeed, while some champion knowledge-over-affect (Hills, 2005a, p. 75), others applaud horror that elicits emotive responses (Barker et al., 2016, p. 88). Similarly, audiences demonstrate or perform their own myriad affective responses to horror television that often pertain to markers of quality TV. Discussing the style of horror in Penny Dreadful – an original longform serial following Sir Malcolm Murray, Ethan Chandler, Victor Frankenstein and Vanessa Ives’ battles with iconic literary and cinematic Gothic monsters – some audiences note the degree of fear they felt relative to their biographical history and engagement with the horror genre. For some, Penny Dreadful was mild in its ability to scare: 1 I’m not a horror fan […] and I would say […] [it] is not super scary but it is intense. I highly recommend it even as a non-horror fan. It’s more creepy than scary, and it’s one of my favorite shows of all time.

1

Audience data taken from Reddit, Amazon reviews, and Twitter.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

195

I would say this show is mildly scary but that’s coming from someone who is a horror fan so I may be desensitized somewhat. There’s gore and some dread inducing moments but there isn’t a lot of jump scares.

Not only evidencing differing-but-connected responses in terms of levels of horrified affect where Penny Dreadful’s intensity of horror is felt as high (see also Hanich, 2010, p. 24), these responses by seasoned genre fans and lay audiences are manageable in terms of the emotional/corporeal affect provoked. Notably, a central audience discourse focused on the show’s graphic imagery and horror iconography reflective of its premium cable positioning. Others found Penny Dreadful scarier and its levels of gore trying, yet this formed part of their viewing pleasures: Person that’s not a fan of horror here. I thought especially the first few seasons were kind of terrifying. I can definitely say it was worth it though. Loved the series! Just powered through Penny Dreadful. I think I like it! A bit too graphic for my taste but still very enjoyable. We watched the first iteration of “Penny Dreadful” and it is gory! My husband doesn’t mind it. I turn away.

The first quote indicates that genre fans are not the sole consumers of horror media and, moreover, wider audiences find TV horror horrifying and enjoyable. The second response highlights individual barometers pertaining to abject imagery. Additionally, even though the series might be deemed too brutal, viewers still found Penny Dreadful pleasurable, negotiating different aspects of the text. That is to say, horrality and the spectacle of body horror, despite being aspects of genre evolution in twenty-first century TV horror, are not the sole loci of affect for many audiences or might be enjoyed less than other textual qualities; for example, the melodramatic relationships between Penny Dreadful’s ensemble cast that produce affective pleasure other than fear and terror. This questions affect models’ overemphasizing indexical corporeal destruction or the threat of bodily damage to characters as viewers’ affective field is much broader and complicated. We might respond to all aspects of a show, or particular parts more than others, or affect may stay consistent over a number of series (as the first quote indicates) or it may fluctuate. Furthermore, the final quote attests to individuals extending their phenomenological distance to onscreen horror by physically removing

196 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

themselves in some way to short-circuit emotional and somatic effects (Hanich, 2010). Indeed, despite attempting to stick it out, for others the onscreen horror proved too much, resulting in them turning off the series: Penny Dreadful is well done, but way too dreadful for my wife and me to watch. We got through only a couple of episodes before being too horrified to continue. I can handle gore and stuff but […] [I] had to stop watching Penny Dreadful because it was too dark for me!!

As the last point demonstrates, indexical bodily damage is a visual marker fostering emotive and bodily responses (Aldana Reyes, 2016), responses that are too much for some. However, other horror components and/or imagery can engender similar reactions. Indeed, other parts of the text are bestowed with abject potential. In this case, harrowing themes and storylines evidence ‘social and personal thresholds to viewing violence’ (Hill, 1997, p. 51). Whilst still body-centric, as Aldana Reyes (2016) argues, affective stimuli centres more on types of violence (e.g. rape) inflicted on characters and the storylines around them that result in audience self-censorship, rather than purely depicting corporeal destruction. Likewise, even where depictions of bodily attack are less graphic, the type of violence may itself be affective enough that viewers extend their phenomenological distance. The data demonstrates differing responses to the same text, yet it is prudent to examine how different types of horror present varied reactions. Penny Dreadful evidences graphic textual abjection emblematic of post-TV horror, yet other texts harness Gothic sensibilities common to twentieth-century televisual output (Wheatley, 2006). For example, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House (House), loosely adapted from Shirley Jackson’s novel (1958), centres on the eponymous building and the paranormal mysteries that confront the Crain family. Many on Twitter attest to the show’s ability to scare them: This is scaring the shit out of me. I might need to turn on some lights. What happened to my nerves? It is a very well-done series. The suspense had me so tightly wound that I would be jumpy for hours after watching it. One of the best made horror series. Not that over the top horror element in it!! I just like how they don’t rely on jump scares.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

197

Whilst dread and suspense are anticipatory affects of materialized screen horror (Hanich, 2010, p. 156), these responses highlight post hoc fear where textual responses linger in the audience. Therefore, while others have argued that horror fiction provides temporally-bound safe spaces for fear (Hoxter, 2000, p. 181; Leffler, 2000, pp. 261–262; Hanich, 2010), the quotes indicate how affect exceeds textual ontology where the ‘security of everyday life’ (Leffler, 2000, p. 262) is not so secure. A form of affective overspill that punctuates the real world, abjection is still active after viewing horror media leaving some viewers in an elevated state. Moreover, not only is House praised for its ability to scare, but that its horror is read as having subtextual depth over ‘cheap’ jump scares that rely purely on somatic effect. That said, many profess to physically-emotive responses to the scene where a ghost leaps out from the back seat of the car as Theo and Shirley drive (S1, E8): I literally dropped my tablet on the bed and screamed. Watched alone with lights on. Still I screamed. Most importantly for me that jump was so good because it has so few and relied on genuine mood and imagery for chills. I was so invested in the dialogue that I swore out loud and needed a minute to recompose myself.

The scene’s jump scare generates what Hanich terms ‘cinematic shock’, a ‘brief, highly compressed type of fear. It responds to a threatening object or event that ruptures the situation suddenly and unexpected’ (2010, p. 127). Kristeva too addresses the power of shock/startle in relation to abjection, noting that, ‘forgotten time crops up suddenly and condenses into flash of lightning […] the moment when revelation bursts forth’ (1982, pp. 8–9). That this device is used sparingly makes this moment stand out as a particular affective instance. Yet this scene along with other hauntings in House are read by some as allegorical: [H]ow they incorporate horror, family issues, mental illnesses etc is amazing. What a great […] series. So many ways to interpret it, with death, grief, addiction. [M]asterful handling of addiction and loss and recovery in earlier episodes.

198 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Not only does House’s Gothic mystery and multi-layered time sequencing evoke Mittell’s ‘complex television’ (2015), but audience’s polysemic readings attest to the series offering symbolically complex drama that invites subtextual and ideological interpretations (discussed in detail later). This fosters other responses to the onscreen horror, namely the melodrama of characters’ relationships and familial trauma that evoke emotive reactions other than fear: [T]he Haunting of Hill House really had me sobbing. [J]ust bawled my eyes out to the last episode. It was such an emotional roller coaster!! I cried so much and got so scared throughout the series (sometimes even at the same time).

These responses present a wider emotional affective f ield than existing horror concepts and approaches have theorized. Abject spectrums account for heterogeneous audience responses but also how subsequent viewings are phenomenologically-informed as palimpsest interactions between an individual and text. Whilst rewatching may change or dampen emotional affect since audiences know what will happen (Staiger, 2000, pp. 179–181), in some cases, repeat viewing reiterates and strengthens previous responses: Rewatching The Haunting of Hill House again, but this time with the boys, and the sudden jump scare in episode 8 just scared the shit out of us! That will forever get me no matter how many times I watch this show. I’m rewatching The Haunting of Hill House and whilst it’s still scary second time around, it is just so bloody sad!!! Watching The Haunting of Hill House for the third time because I’m a what? Creature of habit!! […] GODDAMN THIS SHOW GETS ME EVERY TIME *crying emoji.

Rewatching can strengthen affective reactions (Barker et al., 2016). It can also produce new pleasures and/or responses that activate different elements of the abject spectrum. House is replete with hidden spectres that function as Easter eggs fans seek out, often by repeat viewing:

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

199

Did you find all the ghosts hidden in the background? I missed most of them on my first watch. I rewatched it back only to notice that they were a LOT of ghosts in the background scenes. It’s so fun. I rewatched it recently! […] I noticed a ton of tiny details in the background I didn’t pick up the first time it made me love it even more.

Rather than close engagement where phenomenological distance is shortened that elicits diverse emotional affect, rewatching does not quite see audiences read ‘through’ the images that centre on the text’s technical or aesthetic qualities (Hanich, 2010, p. 96). Yet it does stress close readings that reconfigure viewers’ gazes onto part of the scenes that foster other pleasures, namely forensic fandom where viewers undertake detailed interpretations of the mise-en-scène in order to decipher texts’ stories, details, complexities, nuances, and enigmas. The previous examples consider original and adapted television. However, given legacy horror film franchises’ transmediality (see Chapter 2) I want to examine how audiences’ knowledge and memories inform responses to subsequent TV horror2 (Harvey, 2015, pp. 34–37). The Exorcist (TV) develops on from the first film’s (Friedkin 1973) demonic possessions yet ‘forgets’ subsequent movie sequels (see Harvey, 2015). Some have never consumed any of the preceding films, yet enjoyed the show: I’ve never watched any of the movies and LOVED the series. There are some Easter eggs for those that have watched the movies but really anything that relates to the movies is explained enough in the series.

Evidently, transmedia supports franchise fans engagement, still it is not a prerequisite for all audiences. Borrowing from social network theory (Berg and Hepp, 2018), this individual has a ‘weak’ transmedial tie to the franchise where they have limited knowledge of the films and have yet to watch them. Consequently, for them The Exorcist (TV) remains experientially-bound as televisual. However, as the quote alludes to, for knowing audiences with ‘strong’ transmedial ties with detailed knowledge and experience of the films and/or novels, The Exorcist (TV) is part of a transmedia nexus that

2

Audience data from Reddit.

200 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

intratextually informs abject spectrums. For example, in season one we learn Angela is actually Regan (S1, E5): I think it must be Regan. I was wondering what the secret was the entire episode. Would never have guessed that. The homage to the film with the hat-wearing silhouette standing outside the door was the perfect lead-in. As soon as she sat down and started talking to Tomas about her mother it just clicked and I knew she was Regan. She even did a really spot on impression of Ellen Burstyn as her mother with that one line. It was kind of eery. Mind. Effing. Blown. This episode carried this show from good television to great television.

Again, this transmedial character linkage is not known by all, but this does not reduce enjoyment for weak-tie viewers. As one individual remarks, ‘As somebody who never saw the movie (I know, forgive me), I thought the episode was excellent. I wasn’t aware of the significance of Angela’s reveal of her real name, but reading the comments here makes it apparent. Cool shit’. Intratextual memory is taken one step further in season two’s finale (S2, E10), where despite forgetting the film’s sequels a scene mirrors a set-piece from The Exorcist III (Blatty 1990). As fans comment: I literally shouted when they re-created the nurse scene from Exorcist III. What a finale! The second I saw the nurse in the huge hallway I knew that they were going for it! And they even showed the headless statue too! Awesome tribute. [T]errifying! The original version of that scene has always been one of the scariest for me. I felt it coming when I saw the corridor, yet I still screamed. I knew it was a reference and it’s still as goofy and funny as always, I had a good laugh out of it.

Not only does The Exorcist (TV) employ two different modes of horizontal transmedial memory (character and aesthetic (see Chapter 2)), but the data indicates how textual connections made between the television and f ilm permutations shape responses. For some, the homage elicits

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

201

pleasure in identifying intratextual nodes. For others, the scene is horrifying much like the film. Conversely, others find it humorous much like its cinematic predecessor where generic syntax employed to rouse fear has failed, yet nevertheless produces an emotive response in the form of humour/laughter. In these instances, neither knowledge-over-affect (Hills, 2005a) or affective potential (Barker et al., 2016) adequately account for these reactions. Instead, combining the two, I argue these viewers evidence knowledge-as-affect whereby immersion into the storyworld and quality TV are framed by familiarity with extant textual information. This could be (hyper)diegetic such as introducing existing characters or stylistic such as imitating imagery or scenes from the franchise. But while the previous case studies demonstrate emotional responses, individual abjection thresholds, and various pleasures, audiences also dislike twenty-f irst century TV horror. As discussed in Chapter 1, in bids for quality status the framing of Masters of Horror episode ‘Imprint’ harnessed Western transnational cinematic discourse established by Tartan’s ‘Asia Extreme’ label. The episode paratextually taps into and builds on Miike’s notoriety to shock and provoke, celebrated as an artistic signature that is markedly non-Western, ergo non-mainstream, that perpetuates auteur discourse surrounding the director. Indeed, transcultural audiences frequently reference ‘his’ films, recognizing an authorial oeuvre that provides the basis through which Miike is critiqued:3 What I love about his movies so much is that they are so different. [Miike’s] movies are different from the norm and very different from each other. Value stems from a perceived novelty of Miike’s work read against monolithic mainstream Western media. However, for others, [Miike] lacks the consistency of [Takeshi] Kitano who makes constantly great movies […] I’m always interested to know what he’s up to […] [b]ut to me he’s a little overrated.

Comparisons to other cult figures such as Takeshi Kitano group Miike’s work with similar Japanese directors, but the thread also comments on 3

Audience data from the Snowblood Apple forum.

202 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

his extensive and prolific output as diluting a clear authorial watermark in his work. Similarly, quantity does not equate to quality in some fans’ eyes: [M]aybe some quality control would be nice.

Miike’s prolificacy is read as implying a lack of authorial voice, with some arguing that he fails to offer subtext in his films. As one poster opines, ‘[He] ‘has [very little] […] vision at all […] just shock, and that’s it’. Such criticisms position Miike as ‘a director-for-hire’ (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 103), rather than a visionary auteur. It also highlights how despite being fans of J-horror/ Asia Extreme film, aficionados are critical of certain filmmakers within this textual cluster and do not accept all (sub)genre material wholesale (Pett, 2017). Similar criticisms were made of ‘Imprint’: [W]hat a piece of tripe […] Score one for the ‘Miike is overrated’ crowd. I thought the episode was garbage […] I think it was a stupid decision to do this kind of episode in full English dialogue. Billy Drago’s acting was horrible in those parts he had to actually talk (he was a cool looking character through). The English by others (i.e. Japanese) went from very bad to pretty good, but it wasn’t natural to me at any point to watch this kind of episode in English […] The episode was very brutal. Too brutal for me […] Too much violence for the sake of violence. Too bad script and too bad acting. The episode looked good though. I think Imprint is the first Miike film to have actually disappointed and bored me. Billy Drago’s acting irritated me too and the Japanese actors should have spoken their native language with English subtitles (oh well, I guess that wouldn’t be mainstream enough for a TV series […]) and the violence just got tiresome. Seriously, the torture scene bored me. I […] felt rather uncomfortable with the overly long torture scene […] and […] well, pretty much everything in the final act. really. It seemed to me like Miike was throwing things in just for shock value. Yes, I know […] that’s his reputation, but when he stops being creative and starts trading solely on cheap ‘gotcha’ moments, that’s when he needs to seriously consider retiring.

Criticism of the infamous torture scene illustrates how fans do not necessarily view the extremeness of East Asian imagery as indicating textual, generic, or cultural quality (Pett, 2017, pp. 40–41). On the contrary, they are

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

203

critical of such visuals. Equally, issues with the language choice focused on ‘Imprint’ utilizing English rather than Japanese dialect. Audiences found the dialogue problematic, unnatural, and ersatz as cult Asia Extreme horror which should be spoken in native tongue and accompanied by subtitles (Lee, 2014, pp. 197–198), with some ascribing this decision as a means to popularize ‘Imprint’. Consequently, despite the graphic ‘quality’ TV horror of MOH being markedly non-mainstream (Totaro, 2010, p. 87; Jowett and Abbott, 2013, pp. 9–13), for these fans the fact that the episode was not in Japanese, but in ‘mainstream’ English, inauthenticates it. While paratextual author functionality (Foucault, 1979) elevates creatives to interpellate genre fans and connote quality horror media, names as much as the texts they are attached to are open to a host of meanings engendered by audiences. Despite Miike’s ‘Imprint’ being aimed at (J-)horror and Asia Extreme fans, the very same demographic, even though they routinely enjoy graphic horror, promotes a dialogic counter ‘institution’ that challenges industry discourse framing the director and episode (Jane, 2019, p. 44). Audiences do not read such framings as auteur authorial signatures or gore as artistic or impactful. Rather, Miike’s name and ‘Imprint’ are devalued as hollow shock fodder. Moreover, the above commentary indicates how responses can shift and meld from emotive affect to aesthetic deconstruction (discussed in detail later), where screen abjection is understood as (poor) artistic choices. Thus, alongside affective responses, audiences can read horror TV in myriad ways that favour the genre’s allegorical nature.

Gory Allegory: Ideological Deconstruction of Horror Television Horror is frequently ‘a genre rich in socio-political subtext’ (Rendell, forthcoming). Moreover, ‘horror TV fiction often represents wider cultural topics and anxieties and/or critiques societal institutions’ (ibid.). Similarly, Abbott notes ‘[t]elevision […] has become a space that allows for a slow and complicated exploration of identity to be developed over time and for audiences to become increasingly involved and implicated within the […] [monster’s] story’ (2016, p. 149). British youth TV horror drama In the Flesh (ITF) provides a novel example of this, adopting the subjective position of ‘the I-zombie, in which the zombie is not only sympathetic but is also the narrator or focalising perspective of the text’ (ibid., p. 163). This provides audiences a perspective of what it feels like to be (treated as) abject, developing an existential underpinning through which the lead character Kieren

204 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Walker negotiates his identity and various struggles common within teen and young adult dramas. Kieren’s queer sexuality as the locus for conveying socio-cultural issues is central to many fans’ ideological engagement with ITF. Several individuals on Facebook fan groups note how the use of makeup by the undead to hide their true identity evokes a time when homosexuality was illegal and thus, as one commentator remarks, ‘veiled for fear of punishment, both legal and physical’. Likewise, another fan interprets how locals in Kieren’s hometown fear being bitten by ‘rotters’ as referencing previous cultural anxieties surrounding AIDS and homosexuality. Evidently, character development and identity politics are primary sources of fan pleasure, whilst presenting abject spectrums forming strongly emotive responses:4 Gay zombies talking about their feelings? Hell yeah! More please. [G]ay zombies made me cry.

Thus, while Othered diegetically, for many fans Kieren’s marginalization is an affective anchoring between audience and text. Interestingly, several fans read Kieren not through queer discourse but through medical discourses surrounding mental illness. This stems from the shifting cultural issues embodied by the returning undead from series one to series two (see Abbott, 2016, p. 112). Seriality allows for both characterization and subtext to develop, therefore adding to fans’ polysemic ideological readings: You know, in the first season everyone was saying it was really about being gay. And I saw that too especially since Kieran is gay. But now it seems more like commentary on mental illness. With the ‘attack’ on the school the previous episode and then the hospital had a definite One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest feel [sic]. Kieran being gay seemed a lot less important to me then the issues of family and society. I’m inclined to agree that it’s more about mental illness [sic]. The mental illness metaphor makes so much sense especially with the issue of medication. 4 Audience data from the Facebook groups ‘In The Flesh’ and ‘#saveintheflesh campaign group’.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

205

Keiran’s zombie journey translates very nicely to the idea of a person who has been hospitalized for a violent outburst related to mental illness being released back into their community [sic].

Other fans conflate multiple Otherings onto the undead body. The conservative politics of patriarchal institutions in ITF which threaten Kieren and his revenant compatriots are read as allegories of bigotry in wider society. As one individual remarks, ITF is ‘a commentary on prejudice’, whilst another argues it is an allegory of ‘modern life, feelings of alienation, prejudice, politicians with hidden agendas, drug abuse etc’. The ambiguity of the undead body fosters multiple interpretations in terms of how it is read against a backdrop of mistreatment by human characters, groups, and institutions. This is supported by fans who argue that: [Zombies] can be read as pertinent to any minority group. [ITF] is about mental illness, homophobia, PTSD and soldiers and any number of things all at once, not just one [of these elements]. In the Flesh isn’t just another zombie drama. It talks about rehabilitation, the mentally ill, the LGBTQIA+ community, depression, denial, loss, bullying, abuse, oppression, family, friendship. It makes you laugh and cry […] It isn’t filled with mindless zombies and gun-toting heroes. I hate Zombie stuff. Shows, movies, books – none of them do anything new, and they are usually overwhelmingly bloody and short on plot. In the Flesh is different – it stood the Zombie myth on it’s head, and presented us with a new story in which we not only had an amazing plot, but we could care about the characters and their development, as well […] look[ing] at things like mental illness and representation.

ITF’s representations of marginalized identities, cultural-political subtexts and issues are presented as quality TV markers. Moreover, praise for ITF is combined with criticism directed against a perceived saturated, exhausted, and formulaic corpus of zombie media. The fan community’s engagement with the undead as nuanced, polysemic (I-)zombiedom fosters a range of politicized subtexts. This illustrates how textual abjection does not have a one-to-one relationship with audience responses and interpretations, demonstrating the need for a theory of abject spectrums that gradationally oscillates between or blends affective responses (e.g. crying), with

206 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

thematic/ideological readings (the undead as subtextual). But if ITF fans undertake heterogeneous ideological deconstructions that champion the series, audiences have found other horror series problematic framed against wider socio-political contexts and their own identities. In terms of abject spectrums, audiences have found The Walking Dead emotionally moving (Abbott, 2012a) and praised its quality storytelling and aesthetics (Teurlings, 2018). However, despite garnering cult and mainstream success (Hassler-Forest, 2014, pp. 97–98), TWD has been accused of an ongoing reductive mistreatment of persons of colour (Steiger, 2011; Johnson, 2015), thus challenging its quality status (Lynch, 2022). With this, the ideological component of many Black audiences’ abject spectrums reacts strongly to TWD’s representations, the horror genre, and/or media industries that treat them as what Martin Jr terms ‘surplus Blackness’5 (2021). For Martin Jr, ‘[s]urplus Blackness hinges on the idea that Black audiences are rarely explicitly courted as anything other than a value-added audience for a project (or set of projects) designed for broader, mainstream (read: white) appeal […] Blackness is never considered enough on its own’ (ibid.). As one individual argues, TWD restricts Black male characterization with its ‘repeated inability to depict more […] [than] one ass-kicking Black man at a time’. Another fan writes, After three seasons […] [a] weird pattern borders on the comedic cliché and show in-joke: a central Black male character can only be introduced if the show’s previous Black man is bumped off, a pattern I (and others) have dubbed the ‘One Black Man at a Time’ rule. The Rule has come into effect no less than three times over the course of TWD.

Whereas ITF fans engage with the series’ overt socio-political allegory, many Black audiences of TWD deconstruct a perceived latent racial subtext within the series over other narrative or thematic qualities. In this case, race is the ‘discursive prioritisation’ (Hills, 2015) for ideological textual analyses. Many Black audiences find TWD problematic because of its recurring centring of white male lead characters at the perceived expense of marginalized Black male secondary characters. These anti-fan arguments show close engagement with the series, but they are also framed by wider civic issues around the mistreatment of Black and ethnic minorities in North America by patriarchal institutions such as the police and armed forces. Another viewer notes, ‘In the TV show there is a running joke of how “There can be 5

Audience data from online blogs.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

207

only one” black man, after T-Dog gets written out and replaced by the black prisoner.’ In addition, criticism has also been aimed at the show’s shuffling zombie hordes for lacking non-white walkers (Cunningham, 2010). A blogger laments, ‘My relationship with this show is over. I wanted to love it, but it kept telling me by virtue of its depiction of Black men, I wasn’t its “target” audience. I am a Black man who does not see himself represented well, if at all, on this show.’ Such declarations offer a response where identification is refuted (Brown, 2001), yet highlight ongoing relationships where fans stick it out, watching the series hoping for Black male characterization. Issues of Black masculinity and representation are also crucial for this audience member: The message such shows promote is a toxic one; serve and remain subservient, don’t aspire, consume, follow, protect assets that are not your own […] I am not confused about the role of Black men in American society for the last four hundred years. We have no role. And I recognize television will reinforce this perspective as long as people of color are not allowed to write on television, to create new media which is more accurately representative of how we think, feel and behave.

Anti-fan responses not only address ‘the legacy of black representation in American media, the ideology of the producers, and American social realities’ (Acham, 2013, p. 103) but also subverts the ‘author function’ (Jenkins, 2013a, p. 375) of Robert Kirkman, the co-creator (with Dave Erickson) of the comic book version of TWD (2003). Anti-fans criticize the show’s creators as white men emblematic of industry hegemony unable or unwilling to create strong Black male characters. Similarly, noting diegetic racial commentary by T-Dog, who discusses his precarious position as a sole Black man only for this rhetoric to be blamed on his semiconscious state (S2, E2), a viewer expounds: It is in that moment that, as viewers of color, we are reminded that white dudes are writing this, because despite T-Dog’s realization being very much in line with the world we know, on TV such a notion can only be the product of temporary dementia.

Another fan remarks, ‘[f]or all its strengths, the social dynamics on The Walking Dead replicate many problems from modern society. These issues of power are not thoughtfully explored and it seems a missed opportunity for an otherwise expertly crafted show’. Noting how the post-apocalyptic space

208 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

could subvert the US’s ongoing race relations that are divided by what Du Bois (1994 [1903]) termed ‘the color line’ – the line empowering hegemonic white culture concurrently exploiting people of colour – TWD is read as mirroring disempowered ethnic minorities in real-world North American culture and its long-standing legacy of systemic oppression (Weinbaum, 2001; Karenga, 2003; Steele, 2016). Furthermore, fans were unhappy with the killing of Tyreese, a Black man (S5, E9), during Black History Month, using hashtag combinations such as #TheWalkingDead, #racist, and/or #BlackHistoryMonth to engage with the topic on Twitter. More than binary readings of ‘capitulation or resistance’ (carrington, 2016, p. 14), online posts’ discursive prioritization evidence a ‘“politics of viewing” […] whereby individuals collectively engage in “a critical politics”’ while simultaneously ‘grappling with the pleasures of media consumption’ and ‘concerns over potential influences of representations’ (Chatman, 2017, p. 300). In doing so, these (anti-)fans recentre the text to focus on Black exploitation and Black experiences, ‘critiquing [wider] oppressive systems’ and making ‘everyday discourse […] a political strategy’ (Steele, 2016, p. 4) that responds ‘to misrepresentation in the mainstream media’ (ibid., pp. 114–115). Such reading schemas intersect with viewers’ racial identity and wider cultural contextualization (Scodari, 2011). However, it is important to signpost that TWD is part of a successful transmedia franchise. Its spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead offers a multicultural cast of characters. Though much like TWD, journalistic pieces and online fans’ discursive prioritization have read the show’s depictions of Black masculinity as problematic and the systematic deaths of Black men as resonating with the real-world treatment of Black citizens as Other, thus evidencing strong political subtexts (Kelly, 2015; Nededog, 2015). One anti-fan argues, in light of the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri, protests: We – people of color, and black people in particular – are this country’s zombies. We are the horrifying shadow suburbia is afraid will slip through the window at night. We are the reason for the US history of stockpiling guns, dating back to fears of slave rebellions.

This viewer sees the propagation of the United States’ white middle-class ‘civilized’ mythology to be extended by controlling and expunging the poor, abject Black community (Wynter, 1992; Weinbaum, 2001). Perpetuating racial fears, Black monstrosity ‘serve[s] to obscure the position of prestige, power, privilege, opportunity and supremacy associated with the very idea of whiteness’ (Ulysse, 2017, p. 147). Consequently, whereas the marginality of

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

209

the Black self in TWD elicits criticism from audiences, FTWD’s problematic depictions reside in its Othering of Black characters, where Black viewers take up an i-abject viewing position (see also Creed and Hoorn, 2016; Harris, 2009, pp. 42–43), seeing themselves as abject both in wider society and onscreen. As an individual comments: The first character killed off was black. Not just black – but a black drug dealer. And a weak black drug dealer who is fought off by his jonesing white client […] From the very start, the show has introduced an ineffectual black thug as the first zombie to die. A thug’s black body laid out on the street (As a culture, that’s how we like men’s black bodies: laid out dead on the street).

Acknowledging the series’ multicultural cast, anti-fans argue that this comes at the cost of subordinating Black masculinity with Black identity read as a cultural problem. These audiences reveal their double consciousness, their ‘sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others […] measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’ (Du Bois, 1994, p. 2). In doing so, they acknowledge ‘the hegemony of Whiteness without privileging it over the agency and spiritual energy found within the Black community’ (Brock, 2012, p. 532). Furthermore, anti-fans use the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in their discussions of FTWD, discursively linking wider civic issues with problematic depictions of race in television (Kuo, 2016). Signs and symbols from political campaigns spill into their textual analyses, with subsequent fan/civic engagement revolving around related issues. Other anti-fans concur, referring to the stereotypical treatment of Black characters that comes with the horror genre as a reason for quitting the series (see Coleman, 2011). Likewise, other fans ask, ‘[w]ith the current sociopolitical climate, do we really need to see police brutality and racial tropes become part of a zombie plotline?’ FTWD fictionalizes police brutality, but its resonance with real-world events is deemed insensitive by critics rather than a mode of political engagement. Such ideological critiques mnemonically compound genre memory (Erll, 2011, pp. 147–149) with individual and social memories of US race relations and racism that politicize FTWD in ways not necessarily envisioned by the show’s creators. Points of contention are largely intratextually-informed by affective responses to the racial dynamics of TWD (Robinson, 2015). Such affective responses indicate that audiences strongly react to textual representations, but they also show how ongoing relationships with fictional representations

210 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

can intersect with wider cultural expressions (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2009). Critical engagement with racial politics is mapped onto topics such as the treatment of Black men in wider society, traditional depictions of Black masculinity, the marginalization of ethnic minorities, and the thoughtless power of hegemonic media industries, thus resulting in a civic awareness that challenges The Walking Dead’s franchise storyworld. Black audiences’ discursive prioritization challenges Black characterization (or lack thereof) in TWD and FTWD, albeit in different ways. However, other Walking Dead texts, and audiences’ relationships with them, illustrate that racial discourse attached to the franchise is not monolithic. I turn now to TellTale’s The Walking Dead, a videogame where you play as Lee Everett (a Black male history professor incarcerated for murdering his wife and her lover). On the TellTale community forum, racial representations within TTTWD are strong narrative loci within discussions threads, such as: ‘What if Lee was white?’, ‘Why most of the characters in the game are Caucasian?’, and ‘Was Clem African-American?’. Moreover, threads also present wider cultural debates about race and gender, such as: ‘Racism in America’, ‘Excuses for racism’, ‘Race and racism’, and ‘Transgender and transrace’. Fans frequently post on both diegetic and cultural race relations, with arguments from one often informing the other. Discussions frequently circle around marginalized characters and players, the need for greater racial/cultural diversification in media, and post-racial debates that reject race as an issue. Many Black players champion Lee, seeing both his visibility and the ludic dimensions of his character development as markers of quality notably absent from TWD: With Lee, the game broke so many unfortunate traditions in gaming. And with the Walking Dead in general. After that travesty that was T-Dog’s character, I was glad to have Lee. He’s black but the whole narrative isn’t focused on ‘the black experience’ […] There is the urban joke at the farm […] the implication is that Lee constantly has to deal with little prejudices that are inevitably frustrating. There’s a real surfeit of white, male 20–30 something male protagonist in games, because that’s the demographic most developers aim for. The principle behind concepts like ‘affirmative action’ is to be a correcting course against those tendencies […] Race is an issue.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

211

Lee subverts hegemonic identities in videogames and television (Brown, 2001; Jansz and Martis, 2007), yet he is also read as a civic device for affirmative action. His characterization raises wider cultural issues, shifting Lee from being a feature of quality horror to a political symbol. Conversely, for some, Lee reinforces racist stereotypes pertaining to Black masculinity. As one fan notes, ‘Lee starts out in the back of a cop car after murdering his wife’s lover, and a lot of the options you have as you play Lee don’t cast him in a positive light.’ The cultural context is that of audiences’ own subject-in-process, whereby their racial/anti-fan self-identity is performed by means of responses to textual representations (Steele, 2018). Online Black audiences’ posts demonstrate heightened ideological and thematic readings of Walking Dead characters of colour, providing the schema by which the franchise is critiqued. This is not to essentialize racial identity, but rather to consider how wider cultural events and one’s relation to them become common reference points for challenging media representations, horror or otherwise (Steele, 2016, p. 5). Indeed, a horror text’s engagement with wider cultural anxieties and issues are often benchmarks by which audiences champion or chastise it. Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), for example, has been praised as a commercial horror hit and for ‘attempting to reveal incisive but less visible truths about middle-class liberal racism’ (Okundaye, 2021). Coleman (2023, p. 347) highlights that since Get Out’s release there has been an increase of Black representation within the horror genre. Related to this book’s central focus, Coleman adds that ‘[v]ital to the growth of Black-led horror during this era, especially after COVID-19 diminished theatrical options, was the development of video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the horror-focused Shudder’ (ibid.). Yet, while portals have supported, to a degree, the increase in diversity in the genre (ibid., pp. 347–348; see Warner, 2021), Black-centric horror texts are still open to scrutiny from Black audiences. In comparison to critical and commercial praise of Get Out, the anthology horror TV series Them (Amazon 2021), whose name appears highly derivative of Peele’s other popular horror vehicle Us (2019), only offers ‘scenes of gratuitous, racist violence without having anything interesting to say’ (Okundaye, 2021). Despite presenting characters of colour and storylines about racism, for many Black audiences Them is nothing more than ‘Black trauma porn’ (ibid.) indicative of the media industry’s attempts to profit off racial anguish. Yet, beyond ideological deconstruction and/or the ability to evoke emotive responses, the look and feel of horror is a salient component of abject spectrums.

212 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

The Artifice of Abjection: Aesthetic Engagement of Horror Television Thomas M. Sipos writes how ‘[h]orror abounds with pragmatic aesthetics’ (2010, p. 29); that is to say, the ‘technical and budgetary compromises […] [used for] artistic effect’ (ibid.). This includes technical elements such as ‘lighting, acting, script, set décor, [and sound/music]’ (ibid.). Aesthetics are also a central tenet of twenty-first century post-TV horror’s bids for ‘cinematic quality’ and audience interpellation (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, pp. 10–11), which Chapter 1 and 2 support yet complicate (see also Mills, 2013). Furthermore, aesthetics are central to textual clusters that form horror subgenres and cycles, often incorporated into their paratextual marketing (see Hantke, 2004) – for instance, found footage’s documentary style, splatterpunk’s excessive grandeur, and the shocking realism of torture porn. But while such ‘middle-level’ textual analysis addresses formal devices employed to horrify or entice audiences (Schneider, 2004), I want to consider viewer engagement with pragmatic aesthetics beyond these top-down understandings. Hanich (2010, p. 96) posits that one strategy for extending phenomenological distance between viewer and screen imagery, thus dampening or even nullifying emotive reactions, is by looking through, rather than into, the horror film. Engaging with the artifice of the text brings to the fore aesthetic qualities such as form, materiality, or fictionality. Moreover, beyond being reactionary strategies and genre devices, aesthetics are frequently a core talking point between audiences (Leeder, 2018, p. 216). Abbott writes that Hannibal’s prestige status stems from its ‘rich and textured aesthetic vision […] [including] the production design, from set to costume to cinematography to music’ (2018a, p. 123). This ‘vision’ is pivotal to many fans’ aesthetic engagement with the series. As one Reddit poster declares, ‘The show is art’.6 Taking this one step further, fans’ aestheticization of Hannibal is tied to works of art placed within the mise-en- scène: I’m so glad there is actual art on the walls. I always hate it when I see a show with generic abstraction painting in the background. It just adds so much to the texture of this show!

Echoing Abbott, fans argue that the show’s storyworld is enriched and is, therefore, quality TV because of the inclusion of real-world pieces in comparison to texts which employ artwork in a non-artistic manner. Much 6

Original emphasis.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

213

in the way cult fans construct imagined ‘mainstream’ audiences to define and legitimize themselves against (Sconce, 1995; Jancovich, 2002a), the same dichotomy is applied to imagined mainstream media, horror or otherwise. Moreover, Hannibal’s use of artwork indulges fans’ performance of cultural capital. As one conversation demonstrates: I’m interested in who this painting is of, that Hannibal stands in front of. On tumblr they tracked it down to a mosaic of St. Ambrosius that actually appears in the real chapel. It’s just a wonderful way to digest the episode and take everything in – so, thank you.

Not only highlighting digital media’s spreadability as audiences shift between social media sites (Jenkins et al., 2013), these aesthetic markers encourage forensic fandom where textual minutia is elevated within the diegesis but also as an intertextual marker that can be understood within wider grids of knowledge. For others, these pragmatic intertextual aesthetic references to real-world art further characterization: Hannibal also has an ‘interesting’ piece of art in his dining room. Leda and the Swan. Zeus takes the form of a swan, seduces/rapes Leda, who goes on to have sex with her husband that night as well. The result are four children, two divine by Zeus, and two mortal, born at the same time later on. Helen of Troy is one of Zeus’s children from that. Good catch! I’ve also noticed […] [Japanese] woodblock prints in the waiting room outside his office but they’re never in focus for long enough to get a good screengrab. Plus Hannibal’s aunt, Lady Murasaki, is obviously Japanese and was a great influence to him as a young man. He had an affair with her after his uncle died. Though his uncle may be alive in show-canon, so this may be changed somewhat.

Fans view diegetic aesthetics serving storyworld complexification and adding layers to the character. Moreover, through intertextual knowledge, wider cultural capital is incorporated into subcultural capital employed

214 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

within fan communities that aestheticizes Hannibal as art(istic) TV. Others value the series’ general guise and its stylized artifice: I love this show because I feel almost every aspect of it, from its cinematography to sound design to acting and so on, are very well done. Sometimes masterfully done. In particular the general aesthetic of the show is very unique and striking. [I] admire the colors the music the performances and at the same fell the mix of horror and awe the characters feel, it’s really an amazing experience. Simple concepts of blood hitting a pool of water in a well shot manner greatly add to the tone of the show. I wish more shows followed their artistic direction.

Rather than specific scenes as standout instances justifying claims of artistic merit (Hills, 2005a, p. 89), these fans signpost specific aspects of textual creation that evince the show’s overarching aesthetics. In performing textual deconstruction of Hannibal’s technological components that mark the series’ value, fans again demonstrate (sub)cultural capital surrounding media production that engenders their ability to read the text through an aesthetic lens. Notably, wider technological and industry discussions arise: It’s one of the most beautifully shot and colored shows ever […] [I]f you have eyeballs that function, you can see that it’s dripping with incredible shots. I’m astonished that the show ever made it to air on NBC in the first place. Shows are aired in 29.97 and it always felt like 23.98 because of the gorgeous cinematography. Curse them for airing so late to not gather enough ratings, but also it allowed for the violence. [W]atch in high-def; HD really makes it. I would add that they do a lot more than just visuals well. The audio is amazing and used perfectly. If you get the chance to listen to it in 5.1.

Hannibal’s artistic gore is frequently contextualized against its network broadcasting by fans. The series’ graphic horror is seen as subverting existing creative limitations linked to this realm of North American television, adding further value since Hannibal is perceived as pushing both textual

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

215

and industrial boundaries. However, its distinct horrality is perceived as a trade-off whereby for NBC to air such content, Hannibal is immured within late-night scheduling that often results in low viewing f igures. As such, Hannibal is read as distinctly network television. Moreover, the cinematic quality of Hannibal, highlighted by the second quote’s discussion of framerates-per-second, is seen by several posters as not lying solely within the text itself. Rather, aestheticization of Hannibal is fostered via media technologies that enhance textual qualities such as image and sound. In this case, cultural capital is not concerned with art knowledge or media production vernacular – instead, hardware technology required to experience the show’s aesthetics at their acme (Klinger, 2006). Consequently, much as space effects audiences’ abject spectrums (Hanich, 2010, p. 54), technologies for media consumption also impact affect. Furthermore, Abbott locates Hannibal within a growing ‘trend toward […] adapted prestige horror for television’ (2018a, p. 123). These transmedia extensions integrate (intra)textual histories/memories (see Chapter 2). Bates Motel is a prequel-of-sorts to the iconic Psycho (Loock, 2014), exploring the relationship between teenager Norman Bates and his mother Norma alongside an ensemble cast larger than the earlier film, whilst forgetting the subsequent three movie sequels, its filmic remake (Van Sant 1998), and TV movie sequel (Rothstein 1987). Consequently, the characters and various actors who play them are salient intratextual nodes between the two texts, with casting being a pertinent pragmatic aesthetic for fans (Davis et al., 2014; Shefrin, 2004). In the fifth and final season, Marion Crane – murdered in the shower by Bates dressed as his mother in the original film – is introduced (S5, E5–6). Originally portrayed by Janet Leigh, the series switches Crane’s ethnicity from a white to Black woman played by R&B/pop singer Rihanna. This change is significant. Black women have been repeatedly marginalized within Anglophonic horror media (Brooks, 2014). Rihanna’s introduction to Bates Motel, therefore, offers an instance of much-needed diversity within the genre that playfully misremembers the original film. Nevertheless, the casting galvanized mixed reactions from viewers:7 I worry that they have made this decision for the sake of press for the final season under pressure for the network. Shameless attempt to get more attention for the last season. She can barely sing let alone act. 7

Audience data from Reddit.

216 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

I would rather have a real actress, but this will probably get more people’s attention for the show. Well, that’s unexpected. I actually think it’s pretty cool. Rihanna is a huge star so that means […] [Bates Motel] will be getting a whole lot more attention now. I’m just crossing my fingers that she’ll do a decent job. The quality of the acting is one of the things I love most about Bates Motel. I’d hate for it to take a nosedive right at the end.

As with Lady Gaga’s introduction to American Horror Story (see Chapter 1), casting A-list celebrities in horror TV can interpellate broader viewership and attract wider fandoms. However, audiences’ evaluations of casting choices, whether they be existing fans or lay non-fans, inform responses to the text. As these quotes demonstrate, fans read the casting of Rihanna as aiding Bates Motel to gain wider viewership. Some read this as ‘selling out’ (see also Thornton, 1995, pp. 122–125), whereby this cynical attempt to increase viewing figures only serves to increase profit at the expense of textual/acting quality. For others, Rihanna’s casting is a positive as new audiences will be introduced to a pre-existing quality show. These responses also allude to how such media transmigration of musicians turning to acting frequently results in audiences’ analytical schema focusing on acting as a professional skill: I think she’s one of the worst mistakes a TV show has made in years. Horrific acting. Some lines are stilted, some are too fast and mumbled. She didn’t sound like a natural human, but like a young, nervous, talentless actor. She’s a great singer, but the acting was atrocious. It was just a very odd decision. They should’ve chosen a more appropriate actress who has had experience. I really loved seeing Rihanna in Bates Motel, but I thought her acting was bad. It seems like she couldn’t choose which moments to act like herself or play the helpless female role she was assigned. I kind of wish Norma killed her. Maybe she would have been a more convincing actress in a death scene. She was horrible, her acting was like when a teenager tries to pretend to have an attitude […] it was so immature and unfitting for this character and show. She had no place playing this character.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

217

Some are quick to note Rihanna’s singing skills, yet just as quick to repute her acting abilities. This largely overlaps between two aspects of ineptness. Firstly, Rihanna’s poor acting choices undermine the character, evident in line delivery that lacks consistency. Likewise, her incohesive performance disrupts immersion as audiences view her as playing herself rather than embodying Crane. Secondly, Rihanna’s age is frequently referred to as an indicator of inexperience. Described as a teenager, young, or immature infantilizes Rihanna in relation to acting as a craft that takes time and dedication. Such language is often used to discredit particular films, cycles, or subgenres of horror and popular culture generally aimed at younger female audiences or wider lay viewership (Jancovich, 2000; Godwin, 2013; Jones, 2018, p. 421). In both critiques, the fixity of star image within the diegesis unwantingly extends audiences’ phenomenological distance. As two viewers echo: Rihanna, who has broken immersion for many fans within two episodes. I found myself distracted during her scenes because I kept over-analyzing her acting ability, given the hype and the concern over her being cast. But if I didn’t know that was Rihanna I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

However, others defended Rihanna’s performance: [H]er performance tonight was stellar! this episode was done so well, I could honestly rewatch this in the future, just as I would Psycho. It’s an isolated masterpiece. I think she has some real talent. Her mannerisms are so on the mark for each scene. Just the way she woofs down the sandwich and cusses out her boyfriend […] very natural and realistic. I must admit I was very, very skepitcal or Rihanna’s acting ability and thought she would stand out by a sore thumb but I have to say she really was not all that bad and meshed believably with the world of the show [sic]. Rihanna is spectacular as Marion Crane so far! Acting style is so similar to Janet Leigh’s.

These fans authenticate Rihanna’s Crane in several ways. Firstly, her acting ability is granted high professional capital – specifically, the verisimilitude of

218 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

her gesticulations that counter claims of an idiosyncratic style. Secondly, her performance fits within the existing world, characters, and performances, supporting enthralment rather than causing immersive rupture. Finally, by making comparisons to Leigh, verification is confirmed by the association with the subculturally-championed pragmatic aesthetic of the original film. Consequently, to echo the second quote, Rihanna’s legitimization centres on aesthetic enmeshment with Bates Motel and/or the wider transmedia franchise. Conversely, other fans valued the knowing misremembering of Psycho that Rihanna embodied (see also Harvey, 2015, pp. 83–84). For example, reimagining Psycho’s iconic shower scene and Crane’s demise by having her live: Loved how the show has subverted gender roles from the infamous shower scene from the film. I was so scared for Rihanna. But I am glad she managed to get away. Both her and Madeleine were victims of an asshole sleaze bag. They didn’t mess with a masterpiece. This is Bates Motel, not Psycho. And it worked brilliantly for this story they were telling. I think Rihanna was great as Marion Crane. That may be an unpopular opinion, but I LOVED her arc and the difference from Psycho. I thought the way they did it was brilliant. They teased us at the beginning making us think it would be a woman who would get the knife. But they threw in that brilliant twist of having the guy get killed instead. It was a great surprise and something I was not expecting.

The scene’s subversion is championed for signposting to knowing viewers the intratextual connections to the film in postmodern fashion. Yet playing with the original narrative trajectory and outcome for characters elevates Bates Motel for its feminist treatment of Crane, empowering her whilst a male counterpart is killed off, and undermining horror’s misogynistic legacy (Clover, 1992). As such, Rihanna’s introduction as Crane allows the TV iteration to exceed its film counterpart. However, others’ issues lie with Bates Motel’s textual fidelity, or lack thereof, to the original film: The show has made it clear that it doesn’t want to be restrained narratively by the original Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, but this just seems a bit […] off. Why are we getting into the Marion Crane thing already when Norman isn’t even old enough? Wasn’t the whole point of the show trying

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

219

to show Norman Bates growing up and eventually killing Norma? I don’t want to see a new ‘reimagining’ of the original film; I want to see Norman continuing to avoid getting caught and dealing with Mother. I’m still put off by them including Marion in the first place. I really don’t want a remake of the events of the film. [Marion Crane is] an iconic movie character, rhianna looks nothing like her, rhianna is NOT an actress, she is a singer, they are disrespecting the Psycho and the Bates Motel fans by casting her [sic].

Leffler posits that, ‘variation and renewal of the [horror] genre’s conventions takes the audience by surprise and simulates a more active involvement in the individual work’ (2000, pp. 264–265). However, as often seen with remakes (Verevis, 2006, p. 129), modif ication to texts’ core aspects or iconic imagery foster novelty, yet also potentially alienate ‘devoted […] fan communities committed to a beloved […] source [material]’ (Grainge, 2008, p. 135). Thus, despite Bates Motel’s horizontal transmedia extension of Psycho’s hyperdiegesis, some found Crane’s introduction to the series an inferior vertical ‘remaking’ that undermines franchise lore. While the first two quotes stress subversion of narrative timelines and events tied to Hitchcock’s auteur vision, the last quote alludes to Crane’s race as a marker of (in)authenticity. Other fans were quick to note the racial/racist undertones informing this mode of discreditation: Were they disrespecting Psycho and the fans with all the other massive changes they’ve made to the narrative? Or is it only disrespectful when a black actress is cast in a traditionally white role? Yeah! How dare the creators of Bates Motel cast Rihanna! A unique and diverse casting? Psssh, that’s disgusting. If Rihanna can act then I don’t really see what the big deal is. There’s nothing wrong with POC playing originally-white roles. For a long time things were happening the other way around, so despite the fact that it likely has nothing to do with their decision, it’s a refreshing, interesting choice.

Texts that reimagine characters and/or add racial diversity have resulted in explicit criticism by some (anti-)fans (Jenkins, 2018, pp. 389–390), often

220 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

leading to toxic attacks aimed at actors of colour. For example, Leslie Jones was the victim of racist and misogynistic trolling for her role in the Ghostbusters (Feig 2016) reboot (Lawson, 2018). While vitriol aimed at Rihanna was not so violent, some conservative readings interpreted the casting as ‘political correctness’ supplanting textual memory, f idelity, or quality. Others recontextualized the casting using the problematic term ‘blackwashing’, 8 accusing Rihanna’s playing of Crane as no more than a cynical industry fad of favouring Black actors for ‘white’ roles for commercial gain; again, delegitimizing her acting. Furthermore, those who champion diversity or criticize those lamenting Rihanna’s casting are often chastised and/or nullif ied for being too emotive in their responses (Johnson, 2015, p. 272). Rebutting arguments that the casting challenges the overriding whiteness of Psycho, Hollywood, and the horror genre (Coleman, 2011; Yuen, 2017), audiences use post-racial pragmatic aesthetics – textual f idelity and professional skills – as a way to sidestep ideological readings and disavowal racial engagement that ultimately reinforces whiteness as the invisible norm, both within media texts and fandoms (Woo, 2018; Pande, 2018). As one viewer who wanted a white actor to play Crane argues: I personally think the predictable would have been a better choice, not because of […] racism but because Crane is a Hitchcock blonde and the whole point of her being that way is because she’s reminiscent of Norma.

Despite professing to be anti-political, these aesthetic responses are themselves political, further demonstrating overlap between the different components of the abject spectrum. Moreover, while actors ‘performing horror’ are a key part of textual immersion and hence loci for affect (Hutchings, 2004, pp. 148–168), actors and acting can be read by audiences as pragmatic aesthetics. Concurrently, beyond screen media’s horrality, actors’ identities – gender, age, race, sexuality, nationality, notoriety, and/or oeuvres – can shorten or lengthen audiences’ phenomenological distance throughout the duration of textual engagement via aesthetic enmeshment or rupture. 8 Blackwashing is an inversion of whitewashing – white actors playing people of colour – claiming actors of colour are taking white roles. This accusatory label fails to factor ‘in the long history (and present reality) of whitewashing, underrepresentation and racism in film’ (Evans, 2020).

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

221

Conclusion By exploring the variety of online responses to various TV horror texts, the chapter has conceptualized abject spectrums that evidence gradational affective engagement with screen media. As such, emotional, somatic, ideological, representational, aesthetic, inter/intratextual, technological, industrial, and para/extra-textual aspects of horror foster varying degrees of pleasure and displeasure for audiences. There are those who respond in a more emotive and somatic fashion that some enjoy whilst others dislike. Moreover, how one responds on initial and subsequent viewings can reinforce or produce different responses, attesting to the ongoing, palimpsest, and evolving nature of abject spectrums (Egan, 2022; Smith, 2019). Equally, as demonstrated it is not trained scholars who are solely capable of undertaking ideological readings of horror media. Audiences’ abject spectrums can concentrate on textual deconstruction, especially when lived identities are also politicized. Finally, audiences may focus on the materiality of the horror. Consequently, abject spectrums can centre on media as constructed and may break up the text into various aesthetic and technological components. This also shows how the medium that horror is produced for – in this case television – informs aesthetic readings of horror media. Alongside relating to pleasurable and displeasurable audience affect, abject spectrums shape different viewers myriad value schemas of horror media. Some horror aficionados aesthetically elevate particular scenes, ‘looking for a unique directorial touch or apprehending them as artistic exercises’ (Aldana Reyes, 2016, p. 125). Similarly, genre markers as aesthetic calling cards may be used by audiences whose ‘aesthetic competence’ (Leffler, 2000, p. 264) fosters intertextual references to previous horror vehicles. This process may artistically elevate the text for audiences as it both displays and subverts genre knowledge (Staiger, 2000, p. 186). Conversely, there are horror fans who dislike ‘gory, special-effects driven horror films’ (Cherry, 2002, p. 50), and/or align themselves with particular subgenre aesthetics, such as the Gothic (ibid., p. 52). Likewise, ‘an uncritical liking for the gore […] can sometimes be positioned as the equivalent of having “lowbrow” tastes by other fans’ (Cherry, 2012, p. 27). An individual may also find a horror text ‘poorly shot and embarrassingly plotted [thus aesthetically devalued] while simultaneously appreciating its socially critical or allegorical aspects’ (Weir and Dunne, 2014, p. 84). Conversely, some audiences value horror texts’ aesthetic qualities while preferring said texts avoiding (perceived) ideological commentary. For

222 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

example, one viewer takes umbrage with The Exorcist (TV) and its representation of female demons read as subtext: Couldn’t help but notice they really crammed all the PC bullshit into this one. What was with the whole ‘women aren’t good enough’ nonsense they were saying throughout it? Were they insinuating that demons were sexist? […] Then it ends with main demon being a female, the priest calling Casey the strongest person in the world, making fun of writing in the bible […] I was so hopeful that maybe, just maybe I could go through watching a whole season of a show on TV without having to be clubbed across the head with the PC bat. Oh well. Still an awesome show. Loved the music towards the end. Just beautiful.

Thus, individuals may have preferences for particular modes of affect, where they enjoy or dislike horror that activates certain components of their abject spectrums that are informed by their own identities and wider cultural contexts. Consequently, fans ‘aestheticize’ the media text itself (Hills, 2005a, p. 89). With Rihanna joining Bates Motel, fan aestheticization precedes textual interaction insofar as season five had not aired at this point. Likewise, J-horror fans’ existing evaluative rhetoric of Miike informed their subsequent responses to ‘Imprint’. In comparison, audiences value House for proceeding to scare them after they watched an episode. Both examples highlight how abject spectrums operate before, during, and after, audiences’ in situ consumption of horror media. Relatedly, if value equates to quality TV acclaim that stems from various modes of audience engagement – affective, ideological, aesthetic – yet such acclamation is not fixed nor permanent. Indeed, while longform seriality is apposite for horror television, this ongoing structure is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it fosters a range of affective pleasures and/or can tackle various subtexts. On the other hand, over time viewers may find quality wanes and affective pleasures diminish. Seriality has an inherent risk built into it where creatives attempt to balance consistency and innovation that audiences’ abject spectrums respond to. Texts may become no longer scary, lose ideological impetus, and/or exhaust aesthetic vision. For instance, despite initial praise for TWD, by season seven many fans felt the show was stagnating, had become repetitive, and lacked the complexity that previously defined the series. Resultantly, TWD’s ‘inability to adhere to viewer expectations of quality TV is a crucial factor in the increasingly negative reception of the show’ (Kroener, 2021, p. 32). From gore to bore, horror affect is not static, finished, or complete. Moving away from the

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

223

written logos of online posts, I now explore how abject spectrums present themselves in audiences’ own artistic creations and transformative works based on extant TV horror.

References Abbott, Stacey. 2012a. ‘The Horror of Grief.’ CST Online. 14th December. http:// cstonline.net/the-horror-of-grief-by-stacey-abbott/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Abbott, Stacey. 2016. Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Abbott, Stacey. 2018a. ‘Masters of Mise-En-Scène: The Stylistic Excess of Hannibal.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 120–134. Acham, Christine. 2013. ‘The Cosby Show: Representing Race.’ In Thompson, Ethan and Mittell, Jason (eds). How to Watch Television. New York: New York University Press. pp. 103–111. Aldana Reyes, Xavier. 2016. Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership. London: Routledge. Arya, Rina. 2014. Abjection and Representation: An Exploration of Abjection in the Visual Arts, Film and Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Arya, Rina. 2016. ‘The Fragmented Body as an Index of Abjection.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 105–118. Arya, Rina. 2017. ‘Abjection Interrogated. Uncovering the Relation Between Abjection and Disgust.’ Journal of Extreme Anthropology. pp. 1–18. Barker, Martin, Egan, Kate, Phillips, Tom, and Ralph, Sarah. 2016. Alien Audiences: Remembering and Evaluating a Classic Movie. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Berg, Matthias and Hepp, Andreas. 2018. ‘A Qualitative Network Approach to Transmedia Communication.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 455–463. Brock, André. 2012. ‘From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation.’ Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 56(4) pp. 529–549. Brooks, Kinitra D. 2014. ‘The Importance of Neglected Intersections: Race and Gender in Contemporary Zombie Texts and Theories.’ African American Review. 47(4). pp. 461–475. Brown, Jeffrey A. 2001. Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. carrington, andré m. 2016. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

224 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Casebier, Allan. 1991. Film and Phenomenology: Toward a Realist Theory of Cinematic Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chatman, Dayna. 2017. ‘Black Twitter and the Politics of Viewing Scandal.’ In Gray, Jonathan, Sandvoss, Cornel and Harrington, C. Lee (eds). Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Second Edition. New York: New York University Press. pp. 299–314. Cherry, Brigid. 2002. ‘Screaming for Release: Femininity and Horror Film Fandom in Britain.’ In Chibnall, Steve and Petley, Julian (eds). British Horror Cinema. London: Routledge. pp. 42–57. Cherry, Brigid. 2012. ‘Beyond Suspiria? The Place of European Horror Cinema in the Fan Canon.’ In Allmer, Patricia, Brick, Emily and Huxley, David (eds). European Nightmare: Horror Cinema in Europe Since 1945. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 25–34. Click, Melissa A. (ed). 2019. Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age. New York: New York University Press. Clover, Carol J. 1992. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Coleman, Robin R. Means. 2011. Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. New York: Routledge. Coleman, Robin R. Means. 2023. Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. Second Edition. New York: Routledge. Creeber, Glen. 2006. ‘Analysing Television: Issues and Methods in Textual Analysis.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). Tele-Visions: An Introduction to Studying Television. London: BFI. pp. 26–38. Creed, Barbara and Hoorn, Jeanette. 2016. ‘Animals, Art, Abjection.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 90–104. Cunningham, Phillip Lamarr. 2010. ‘The Absence of Black Supervillains in Mainstream Comics.’ Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 1(1). pp. 51–62. Davis, Charles H., Michelle, Carolyn, Hardy, Ann, and Hight, Craig. 2014. ‘Framing Audience Prefigurations of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: The Roles of Fandom, Politics and Idealised Intertexts.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 11(1). pp. 50–87. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1994. The Souls of Black Folk. Mineola: Dover Publications. Egan, Kate. 2022. ‘Childhood Memories of Horror Films in the Home: Questions, Patterns and Context.’ In Egan, Kate, Smith, Martin Ian, and Terrill, Jamie (eds). Researching Historical Screen Audiences. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 223–238. Erll, Astrid. 2011. Memory in Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Evans, Greg. 2020. ‘Why Accusing Black Actors of “Blackwashing” in The Batman is Totally Ridiculous and Wrong.’ The Independent. 26th August. https://www.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

225

indy100.com/article/batman-movie-whitewashing-complaints-black-castjeffrey-wright-zoe-kravitz-9687696 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Filmer, Paul, Jenks, Chris, Seale, Clive, and Walsh, David. 1998. ‘Developments in Social Theory.’ In Seale, Clive (ed). Researching Society and Culture. London: Sage. pp. 23–36. Foucault, Michel. 1979. ‘What is an Author?’ Screen. 20(1). pp. 13–33. Godwin, Victoria. 2013. ‘Twilight Anti-Fans: “Real” Fans and “Real” Vampires.’ In Bucciferro, Claudia (ed). The Twilight Saga: Exploring the Global Phenomenon. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press Inc. pp. 93–106. Grainge, Paul. 2008. Brand Hollywood. London: Routledge. Gray, Jonathan. 2003. ‘New Audiences, New Textualities. Anti-Fans and Non-Fans.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies. 6(1). pp. 64–81. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. London: Routledge. Hantke, Steffen (ed). 2004. Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. Harris, Magdelena. 2009. ‘Injecting, Infection, Illness: Abjection and Hepatitis C Stigma.’ Body and Society. 15(4). pp. 33–51. Harvey, Colin. E. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2014. ‘The Walking Dead: Quality Television, Transmedia Serialization and Zombies.’ In Allen, Rob and van den Berg, Thijs (eds). Serialization in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. pp. 91–105. Hill, Annette. 1997. Shocking Entertainment: Viewer Response to Violent Movies. Luton: University of Luton Press. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hills, Matt. 2015. ‘Storytelling and Storykilling: Affirmational/Transformational Discourses of Television Narrative.’ In Pearson, Roberta and Smith, Anthony N. (eds). Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 151–173. Hoxter, Julian. 2000. ‘Taking Possession: Cult Learning in The Exorcist.’ In Mendik, Xavier and Harper, Graeme (eds). Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics. Guildford: FAB Press. pp. 171–186. Hutchings, Peter. 2004. The Horror Film. London: Routledge. Jancovich, Mark. 2000. ‘“A Real Shocker”: Authenticity, Genre and the Struggle for Distinction.’ Continuum. 14(1). pp. 23–35. Jancovich, Mark. 2002a. ‘Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions.’ Cultural Studies. 16(2). pp. 306–322. Jane, Emma. 2019. ‘Hate 3.0: Should Anti-Fan Studies Be Renewed for Another Season?’ In Click, Melissa A. (ed). Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age. New York: New York University Press. pp. 42–61.

226 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Jansz, Jeron and Martis, Raynel G. 2007. ‘The Lara Phenomenon: Powerful Female Characters in Video Games.’ Sex Roles. 56(3–4). pp. 141–148. Jenkins, Henry. 2013a. ‘The Walking Dead: Adapting Comics.’ In Thompson, Ethan and Mittell, Jason (eds). How to Watch Television. New York: New York University. pp. 373–381. Jenkins, Henry. 2018. ‘Negotiating Fandom: The Politics of Racebending.’ In Click, Melissa A. and Scott, Suzanne (eds). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. London: Routledge. pp. 383–394. Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, Dominique Deirdre. 2015. ‘Misogynoir and Antiblack Racism: What The Walking Dead Teaches us About the Limits of Speculative Fiction Fandom.’ Journal of Fandom Studies. 3(3). pp. 259–275. Jones, Bethan. 2018. ‘#AskELJames, Ghostbusters, and #Gamergate: Digital Dislike and Damage Control.’ In Booth, Paul (ed). A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 415–429. Jowett, Lorna and Abbott, Stacey. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London: I.B. Tauris. Karenga, Maulana. 2003. ‘Du Bois and the Question of the Color Line: Race and Class in the Age of Globalization.’ Socialism and Democracy. 17(1). pp. 141–160. Kelly, Sean. 2015. ‘“Walking Dead” Fans Claim Show Is Racist For Killing Minority Characters.’ Opposing Views. 11th February. https://www.opposingviews.com/ category/walking-dead-fans-claim-show-racist-killing-minority-characters [Accessed 19 November 2020] Klinger, Barbara. 2006. Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Kroener, Oliver. 2021. ‘The Day May Come When You Won’t Be Quality TV – The Walking Dead and Viewer Engagement.’ Series-International Journal of TV Serial Narratives. 7(1). pp. 31–44. Kuo, Rachel. 2016. ‘Racial Justice Activist Hashtags: Counterpublics and Discourse Circulation.’ New Media and Society. 20(2). pp. 495–514. Lawson, Caitlin E. 2018. ‘Platform Vulnerabilities: Harassment and Misogynoir in the Digital Attack on Leslie Jones.’ Information, Communication & Society. 21(6). pp. 818–833. Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2014. ‘Transnational Cultural Fandom.’ In Duits, Linda, Zwaan, Koos, and Reijnders, Stijn (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 195–207. Leeder, Murray. 2018. Horror Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

227

Leffler, Yvonne. 2000. Horror as Pleasure: The Aesthetics of Horror Fiction. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Loock, Kathleen. 2014. ‘“The Past is Never Really Past”: Serial Storytelling from Psycho to Bates Motel.’ LWU: Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 47(1–2). pp. 81–95. Lynch, Andrew. 2022. Quality Telefantasy: How US Quality TV Brought Zombies, Dragons and Androids into the Mainstream. London: Routledge. Martin Jr, Alfred J. 2021. ‘Surplus Blackness.’ Flow. 27th April. https://www.flowjournal.org/2021/04/surplus-blackness/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Mills, Brett. 2013. ‘What Does It Mean to Call Television “Cinematic”?’ In Jacobs, Jason and Peacock, Steven (eds). Television Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 57–66. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Nededog, Jethro. 2015. ‘“Fear the Walking Dead” Fans Aren’t Happy About the Amount of Black Deaths.’ Business Insider UK. 31st August. https://www. businessinsider.com/amcs-fear-the-walking-dead-boss-addresses-black-deaths2015–8?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 4 April 2023] Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2000. ‘How Films Mean, or, From Aesthetics to Semiotics and Half-Way Back Again.’ In Gledhill, Christine and Williams, Linda (eds). Reinventing Film Studies. London: Arnold. pp. 8–17. Okundaye, Jason. 2021. ‘“Black Trauma Porn”: Them and the Danger of Jordan Peele Imitators.’ The Guardian. 21st April. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-andradio/2021/apr/21/black-trauma-porn-them-jordan-peele-amazon [Accessed 4 April 2023] Pande, Rukmini. 2018. Squee From the Margins: Fandom and Race. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Pett, Emma. 2017. ‘Transnational Cult Paratexts: Exploring Audience Readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme Brand.’ Transnational Cinemas. 8(1). pp. 35–48. Rendell, James. 2021b. ‘“Now Is the Time of Monsters”: A Roundtable on Contemporary Horror.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. https://nrftsjournal. org/now-is-the-time-of-monsters/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Rendell, James. Forthcoming. ‘Horror TV.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book. Fourth Edition. London: BFI. Robinson, Joanna. 2015. ‘Has Fear the Walking Dead Inherited The Walking Dead’s Race Problem?’ Vanity Fair. 31st August. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/08/fear-the-walking-dead-black-actor-deaths [Accessed 4 April 2023] Schneider, Steven Jay. 2004. ‘Towards an Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror.’ In Prince, Stephen (ed). The Horror Film. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 131–149.

228 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Scodari, Christine. 2011. ‘“Nyota Uhura Is Not a White Girl”: Gender, Intersectionality, and Star Trek 2009’s Alternate Romantic Universes.’ Feminist Media Studies. 12(3). pp. 335–351. Sconce, Jeffrey. 1995. ‘“Trashing” the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style.’ Screen. 36(4). pp. 371–339. Shefrin, Elana. 2004. ‘Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Participatory Fandom: Mapping New Congruencies between the Internet and Media Entertainment Culture.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication. 21(3). pp. 261–281. Sipos, Thomas M. 2010. Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. Jefferson: McFarland. Smith, Martin Ian. 2019. Remembering “the Scariest Movie of All Time”: A Grounded Audience Study of The Exorcist. PhD diss., Northumbria University. Sobchack, Vivian. 2004b. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction. Second Edition. London: Rutgers University Press. Staiger, Janet. 2000. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. New York: New York University Press. Steele, Catherine Knight. 2016. ‘The Digital Barbershop: Blogs and Online Oral Culture within the African American Community.’ Social Media and Society. 2(4). pp. 1–10. Steele, Catherine Knight. 2018. ‘Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online.’ Television and New Media. 19(2). pp. 112–127. Steiger, Kay. 2011. ‘No Clean Slate. Unshakeable Race and Gender Politics in The Walking Dead.’ In Lowder, James (ed). Triumph of The Walking Dead: Robert Kirkman’s Zombie Epic on Page and Screen. Dallas: Smart Pop. pp. 99–114. Stephens, Elizabeth. 2012. ‘Sensation Machine: Film, Phenomenology and the Training of the Senses.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. 26(4). pp. 529–539. Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Keren. 2009. ‘“Where is Jack Bauer When You Need Him?” The Uses of Television Drama in Mediated Political Discourse.’ Political Communication. 26(4). pp. 367–387. Teurlings, Jan. 2018. ‘Social Media and the New Commons of TV Criticism.’ Television and New Media. 19(3). pp. 208–224. Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Totaro, Donato. 2010. ‘Masters of Horror.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 87–90. Tyler, Imogen. 2009. ‘Against Abjection.’ Feminist Theory. 10(1). pp. 77–98. Ulysse, Jude. 2017. “I Wait for Me”: Visualizing the Absence of the Haitian Revolution in Cinematic Text. PhD diss., University of Toronto.

Not Just Horrifying: T V Horror Audiences’ Abjec t Spec trums

229

Verevis, Constantine. 2006. Film Remakes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wanzo, Rebecca. 2015. ‘African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 20. https://doi. org/10.3983/twc.2015.0699 Warner, Kristen J. 2021. ‘Blue Skies Again: Streamers and the Impossible Promise of Diversity.’ Los Angeles Review of Books. 24th June. https://lareviewofbooks.org/ article/blue-skies-again-streamers-and-the-impossible-promise-of-diversity/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Weinbaum, Alys Eve. 2001. ‘Reproducing Racial Globality: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Sexual Politics of Black Internationalism.’ Social Text. 19(2): pp. 15–41. Weir, Kenneth and Dunne, Stephen. 2014. ‘The Connoisseurship of the Condemned: A Serbian Film, The Human Centipede 2 and the Appreciation of the Abhorrent.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 11(2). pp. 78–99. Wheatley, Helen. 2006. Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Woo, Benjamin. 2018. ‘The Invisible Bag of Holding: Whiteness and Media Fandom.’ In Click, Melissa A. and Scott, Suzanne (eds). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. London: Routledge. pp. 245–252. Wynter, Sylvia. 1992. ‘“Rethinking ‘Aesthetics”: Notes Towards a Deciphering Practice.’ In Cham, Mbye (ed). Ex-iles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema. Trenton: Africa World Press. pp. 237–279. Yuen, Nancy Wang. 2017. Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

5.

Spreadable Splatter: TV Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Textuality Abstract This chapter further applies the abject spectrum model, examining viewers’ creative output whereby social media imagery evidence affective responses to TV horror. This examines shifting In the Flesh fans’ images relative to the status of the show. Visual verif iers to Black audiences’ ideological readings of The Walking Dead, memes remix textual content that centres on Black male characters. Making aesthetic connections between diegetic imagery and f ine art, fans’ Tumblr GIFs of Hannibal provide what I term ‘intertextural poaching’. Other imagery reif ies queer subtext by remixing scenes, creating GIF f ic, and original fanart. The latter, presents aesthetic incongruity that makes the horrifying comedic. Finally, fans of Miike Takashi’s ‘Imprint’ curate screengrabs that indicate affective responses, positioning the episode as quality TV. Keywords: abject spectrum, fandom, pictures, textural poaching, curation, anti-fandom

The previous chapter examined audiences’ engagement with TV horror, verbalized on social media, illustrating various aspects of the abject spectrum that pendulate between emotional and somatic, ideological, and aesthetic affect. Alongside consuming screen media, audiences, particularly fans and anti-fans, delight in producing their own content pertaining to, affirming, and/or transforming extant genre objects that they subsequently share with other like-minded individuals. Therefore, further conceptualizing abject spectrums beyond watching horror television as a sealed-off experience, we can analyse these ‘prosumers’ – a hybridization of media producer and consumer – and the work they create as affective meaning-making practices, ‘as a form of interpretation and reception’ (Pavlíčková and Kleut, 2016, p. 351).

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_ch05

232 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

In doing so, the chapter better accounts for fandom and anti-fandom within horror scholarship (Booth, 2012a, p. 70). Moreover, considering the techno-spatial facilitation of horror participatory cultures, digital media scholarship and Fan Studies have largely examined social media sites’ written posts, tweets, and blogs (as Chapter 4 attests to), as well as transformative work such as literary fan fiction. Whilst such written logos remains fundamental to the ontologies and textualities of social media, there has also been a salient visual turn online. As Gillan remarks, the ‘web interfaces of Tumblr, Pinterest, and YouTube, among others, not only allow, but also encourage visual commentary’ (2016, p. 13). It is this visual commentary the chapter focuses on, where specific ‘moments and fragments, abstracted from the whole of the [horror media text] […] are their own units of meaning which circulate in a contemporary quotation culture, particularly on websites of the sharing Internet’ (Newman, 2014, p. 127). Indeed, I would argue that TV horror’s visual shift to more graphic and explicit modes of representation and employment of cinematic body horror lends itself to the playfulness of audiences’ image-based practices. Furthermore, unlike the sequential ordering of written content, ‘pictures convey meaning in a simultaneous manner and therefore allows us to show different layers and aesthetics at the same time’ (Schreiber, 2017, p. 47). Through distilling and editing (moving) images from extant media or creating original artwork based on fan objects, audiences’ images can engender ‘reiteration discourse […] repeatedly inscribing particular elements with value’ (Bore, 2017, p. 14), or conversely subvert media texts’ ‘original meanings […] or at least opened up to recontextualizations’ (Hagman, 2012). Thus, audiences’ visual content and practices serve as phenomenological markers of affective experience with regards to screen media horror (Bore, 2017, p. 14). Likewise, such fan practices of taking audiovisual horror and remediating it as still images or digital visual texts can be understood as user-centric transmediality (see Booth, 2019), both in the migration of horror media from one format to another and its (re)circulation through and across myriad online networks. Thus, this and the following chapter further nuance the understanding of twenty-first century post-television horror transmediality. Extending the argument of the longitudinal affect pertaining to the fluidity of abject spectrums, the chapter opens by considering how In the Flesh (ITF) fans’ image texts change over time and relation to the status of the show as active, dormant, or cancelled. Cherry explains that, ‘[t]hrough such popularity and circulation within fan culture, monsters come to be adopted by fan communities and are thus accorded totemic status’ (2018,

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

233

p. 112), incorporated into fan creations. Such totems, Cherry contends, ‘may be an entity that personifies fear in the narrative or storyworld’ (ibid.). However, in the case of ITF fan imagery centring on totemic characters, human relationships are stressed over abject zombiedom, accordingly elevating the show’s melodrama whilst simultaneously suppressing its horror generics. Whilst these emotional responses diverge from the ideological readings of the series discussed in Chapter 4, audiences of The Walking Dead (TWD) place secondary Black male characters at the fore of their meme texts to reify the latent structural marginalization of race within the show, supporting the socio-political deconstructions and discursive prioritizations analysed in the previous chapter. As such, the visual coding of (anti-)fan productions can support and even heighten scribed responses. This is also the case for Hannibal fans who engage with the show’s aesthetic qualities visually on Tumblr via the ‘textural poaching’ of shots from the show (Gillan, 2016), what I term intertextural poaching that collates Hannibal images alongside works of fine art or revered horror films, and fanart’s aesthetic incongruity whose queering of the source text’s visual schema mirror the queer textual poaching of characters depicted within these artworks – in doing so, offering a comedic tonality to their horror transformative pieces. Finally, ‘examining fan practices in different online spaces can help us develop our understanding of fandom’ (Bore and Hickman, 2013). The same holds true for developing the plurality of abject spectrums. Comparing the anti-fan responses to ‘Imprint’ on Snowblood Apple examined in Chapter 4, Tumblr image texts display a far more positive reception towards the Masters of Horror (MOH) episode and its director, Miike Takashi. Annotating cached images of violence and excess from ‘Imprint’ with written tags, fans’ work attests to the episode’s ability to elicit emotive somatic responses in them and aesthetically clusters the TV horror text as authentically East Asian/ Japanese, cult, and reflective of Miike’s auteur status.

From Feels to Fears: Fan Imagery’s Emotional Engagement with In the Flesh During, Between, and After Broadcast Chapter 4 examined how the tackling of existential crises of youth alongside wider socio-cultural subtexts in ITF fostered strong ideological readings from fans discussing the series. When turning to audiences’ own edited images, screengrabs,1 and reposts of BBC3 production photos posted on Facebook 1

A screengrab is a captured screenshot presented as a single still image.

234 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

fan groups and Twitter,2 abject spectrums continue to indicate a prevalence for character-centric responses yet eschew such prominent ideological deconstruction of the zombie in favour of emotional engagement. Fan posts champion the text’s emotive characteristics, focusing on the undead characters Kieren, Rick, Simon, and Amy. But rather than engaging with sympathetic monsters as allegorical of wider cultural Othering (Abbott, 2016, p. 169), fan imagery indicates strong affective poignancy. Fan imagery stresses the melodramatic and romantic intimacy between characters, subduing ideological readings and muting the horror genre coding of the parent text. For example, one fan’s post emphasizes the queer romance of Kieren and Rick shown in jovial laughter (S1, E2) rather than emotional conflict or trauma that is inflicted upon them within the narrative with the text ‘Ren + Rick 4ever’ overlaying the imagery. Similarly, other images centre on Kieren and Simon’s mutual amatory often highlighting their physical and emotional intimacy, such as Kieren removing the makeup from Simon that hides his ‘real’ self as a symbolic outing of his true identity both as gay and undead (S2, E4). Likewise, many posts celebrate Kieren and Amy’s friendship as ‘best dead friends forever’ as they laugh with one another. As a result, images shift away from framing the undead body as abject, instead displaying zombie characters as markedly human and focusing on the presence of social accord over the characters’ troubled zombie pasts. Equally, whereas ITF often depicts ‘emotional bleakness’ (Woods, 2016, p. 69), fans highlight and suspend within the stillness of their visuals joie de vivre found within the show. Furthermore, slash fanfic and art has traditionally queered textual content by creating same-sex/non-heteronormative love interests between characters known as shipping (Tosenberger, 2008, pp. 185–186). However, ITF fans do not engage with canon subversion, primarily since, much in the way that ‘Glee already “slashes” itself […] [by] depicting in canon the kinds of homosexual relationships that used to be the domain of fanfiction’ (Ellison, 2013, p. 114), the series focuses on queer pairings. ITF’s love interests – both homosexual (Kieren and Rick/Simon) and heterosexual (Amy and Philip) – are selected and brought to the fore in fan-created ‘shipper’ visuality3 (Duffett, 2013, p. 198). Such sentiments reinforce arguments around the deep affinity that 2 Audience data from the Facebook groups ‘In The Flesh’ and ‘#saveintheflesh campaign group’ and Twitter. 3 Mark Duffett explains that, ‘[s]hippers are fans who are much more interested in the triumphs and tribulations of romantic relationships than in other aspects of the dramatic text’ (2013: 198).

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

235

fans share with the text’s characters (Booth, 2012b, p. 310). Here, fans value the emotional drive of the series channelled through characters and their ‘authentic’ relationships rather than the spectacle of horror. However, after the first series’ broadcast and with no immediate declaration by BBC3 of a second series, fan discussions evidenced concern with the state of ITF. Anxiety manifested in fans’ responses between the first and second series, as they feared that ITF was not just dormant but cancelled. Williams conceptualizes this ontological shift, stating that when ‘original fan objects cease to offer any new instalments […] [the] fan moves into a period of post-object fandom’ (2011, p. 269). Williams adds that ‘[r]ather than considering post-object fandom as indicating that fandom is “over,” the term is intended to allow us to consider the differences in fan practices […] between periods when objects are ongoing or dormant’ (ibid.). As is the case with ITF fandom evidencing shifts in the affective and aesthetic modes presented in their visual work during, between, and after the series’ broadcast. However, on 22nd May 2013 BBC3 posted a tweet that visually confirmed a second series of ITF. With this announcement, fan discourse shifts temporarily away from diegetic character relationships. Instead, fans focus on extra-textual qualities such as filming/shot locations and the actors who play beloved characters that provide markers of fan (and textual) authenticity. ITF fans during this period of filming ‘desire foreknowledge […] as soon as possible, trading rumours along with “set reports” and photos’ (Hills, 2010a, p. 71), with fans ‘pre-textual poaching’ involving shared images of set locations that added weight to their hypotheses about future plotlines (ibid., p. 70). But since fans are emerging from a state of uncertainty, these visuals also provide emotional restoration and proof that there is still life in the series, rather than simply acting as spoilers (Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 301). Yet these types of images are not limited to grassroots fan texts, but are also evident in official industry visuals posted on Twitter. Typifying this, one tweet by BBC3 states ‘Gotta keep warm when you have Partially Deceased Syndrome! Here’s @LukeNewberry getting cosy on the #IntheFlesh set’. The employment of colloquial language such as ‘gotta’ suggests an informality to the tweet that might be perceived as everyday chat between friends as opposed to a broadcast channel talking to its audience. Moreover, adding Luke Newberry’s – who plays Kieren – Twitter handle reifies the tweet by linking the message directly to the actor’s social media profile that ITF fans will likely follow. Simultaneously, the use of #IntheFlesh allows BBC3 to embed their content within communal fan posts and discussions aggregated via the hashtag. Alongside the text, the tweet offers an exclusive

236 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

photo of Luke Newberry clutching a hot water bottle during the filming of the second series of ITF suggesting the production’s cold conditions. Thus, posts such as this offer both an enticement of the new series whilst also giving, however fleeting, behind-the-scenes access to the championed text’s production world. 4 Matt Hills notes that with new Doctor Who, ‘public f ilming puts spoiler-gathering fans in opposition to off icial PR strategy’ (2010a, p. 70). However, during ITF’s production, BBC3 offered a multitude of extra-textual behind-the-scenes images showing the show’s actors inbetween takes, having their makeup touched up, and interacting with one another. This shifting from diegetic to non-diegetic visuals adds further affective reinstatement, being used by fans alongside pre-textually poached imagery. BBC3’s bids to attract, and align themselves with, young digital audiences beyond the realm of amalgamating informal and formal media economies (Lobato and Thomas, 2015) (see Chapter 3) see an aesthetic aff inity between poached images and off icial posts. This suggests industry attempts to appease fans, authenticating the ITF/BBC3 brand in the process (Woods, 2016, pp. 243–246). This toing-and-froing between audience and producer texts is further blurred when analysing fans’ (re)posts of photos taken by ITF actors and the show’s creator Dominic Mitchell.5 Fans posting images of the actors beyond set locations reinforce the authenticity of the emotional friendships they have with one another. As Louisa Ellen Stein argues: [f]ans build on circulating star texts just as they do the characters those stars bring to life, often combining the two or muddying the supposed distinction between fictional and real. Fans make star-focused […] fan art […] creating star texts as flexible and multiplicitous as any other fan texts. (2015, p. 139)

Fans frequently post pre-textual visuals of actors Luke Newberry, Emily Bevan, Harriet Cains, and Emmett Scanlan, and the show’s writer Dominic Mitchell, in fun and convivial settings. Such photos are often taken from the cast’s public Twitter pages, authenticating their friendships on- and off-screen, and heightening fan–text engagement. During broadcast of the second series, fan posts returned to focusing on the relationships of 4 5

See Rendell (2019b). See Rendell (2019b).

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

237

characters within the storyworld, as previously discussed. However, on 6th February 2014, BBC3 gave an official statement of ITF’s cessation. Becoming a ‘post-object’, fans endeavoured to save the series through activist strategies (see Savage, 2014; Barton, 2014; Aloi and Johnston, 2015, pp. 7–8). This included the online campaign #saveintheflesh. Alongside written commentary, images were used in fan activist strategies that saw an overt divergence in the visual lexicon contradictory to previous imagery posted during the show’s broadcast by predominantly depicting characters in the zombie form and/or in distress. Fan activism sought to renew the show using ‘social media to spread awareness and updates about the campaign’ (Chew, 2018), and encouraged activist strategies such as signing online petitions. Moreover, the Facebook groups became a space for fans to share ‘their love [for ITF] […] as well as their rage and despair over the cancellation [of it]’ (ibid.). This is not only articulated verbally, but performed through emotive image texts. Stressing the ensemble cast as an indicator of quality TV (Lay, 2007, pp. 236–237), protest imagery also used the relationships of the characters, and how they attempted to save one another, as emotional moors and visual catalysts for activist engagement. For instance, one fan activist image post presents various shots of Kieren, Rick, and Amy as undead, with Kieren’s sister, Jem crying and Simon looking pensive, alongside the hashtag #saveintheflesh. Whilst this echoes fans’ image texts that focus on ITF’s characters and their relationships discussed previously, there is a marked shift from humanizing depictions to characters in distraught and/or undead states. Thus, rather than muting ITF’s horror qualities as the aforementioned examples do, the protest image texts bring the genre to the fore. If during times of active broadcast security, fans’ visuals tend to focus on the characters in human states, activist imagery emphasizes the horror aspects of ITF, whereby the undead body mirrors the potentially ‘undead’ state of the text itself. Therefore, the imagery calls fans on social media to save the series and its characters from their post-life state. By examining and comparing fans’ online image posts the chapter has evidenced ITF fan engagement that, whilst oscillating around the text’s sympathetic monsters, is also crucially related to fans’ longitudinal relationship with the characters during, between, and after the series aired. When the text is read as active, posts focus on the liveness of the characters and their bonds with others. During times of uncertainty, extra-textual qualities of the actors who play the characters help to emphasize that the show still has life in it. But as the text becomes ‘post-object’ then characters are

238 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

increasingly shown as undead, needing the audience to keep them alive, literalizing the ‘zombified’ text (Williams, 2015, p. 168) and potentially the fandom itself (Whiteman and Metivier, 2013, p. 294). Such arguments demonstrate how audiences’ affective registers towards media content shift over time, often in relation to the serial development, and the state of the text. Lastly, and by way of introducing my next case study, posts on Twitter edited ITF together with TWD in the form of a meme that suggests multi-fandom of both zombie series (Hassler-Forest, 2016, p. 3). Humour is derived from the vernacular used in TWD where a screengrab of the muchloved character Daryl Dixon exclaiming ‘walker!’ is placed next to a shot of ITF’s undead protagonist Kieren, whose surname is Walker, who responds ‘yes’. The final image is the same still of Daryl who replies in bemusement ‘wait … what?’ However, whilst demonstrating the potential for zombie transfandom between the two TV horror texts or a subgenre fanbase for the zombie as totemic monster, different audience affective registers manifest when comparing image texts engaging with the respective series. Moreover, ‘memes are not just for […] entertainment’ (Harlow, 2013, p. 64). Such image texts have been used as political tools for challenging TWD’s construction of Black masculinity and characterization that further attest to ideological deconstruction as part of the abject spectrum model.

Quoting the Quotas: Ideological Image Poaching of The Walking Dead’s Black Males in Anti-fan Meme Texts If user-generated visuals demonstrate audience–character affinity in ITF fandom, TWD images evidence affective discord between onscreen and real-world identities. A diverse range of memes focus on the series’ characterizations of Black masculinity, or lack thereof.6 Consequently, as with Chapter 4 where Black anti-fans’ abject spectrums ideologically critiqued the zombie series against the cultural context of race relations and racism within the US and their own phenomenologically inflected intersectional identities, audiences producing memes partake in politicized ‘discursive prioritisation’ (Hills, 2015). In this instance, images from the show itself are extracted to prioritize racial subtext through the utilization of meme rhetoric that highlights the ongoing relegation of secondary Black male characters in TWD that, again, engage with the ideological over the emotional or aesthetic segments of the abject spectrum. 6 Audience data from blogs, Google image searches, Twitter, and Knowyourmemes.com.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

239

Memes can be understood as the formulation of ‘macros’: ‘image[s] superimposed with a caption which subverts the meaning of the picture […] [to] negotiate and at times subvert the meaning of a text by […] providing a humorous commentary’ (Harman and Jones, 2013, pp. 954–995). Memes predominantly focus on the character T-Dog being the main Black male and yet marginalized in comparison to TWD’s white characters, reduced to a racial stereotype (Johnson, 2017, p. 17). This is emphasized by either showing him in isolation or juxtaposed to white characters. Like ITF, these individuals’ TWD image posts do not focus on ‘quality’ graphic gore. Rather, (anti-) fans recode and re-evaluate the text as online images provide alternative ‘grids of intelligibility’ (Newman, 2010, pp. 5–6), which present intratextual reading strategies centring on racial marginalization and Othering. Memes also allude to how TWD’s interracial dynamics resonate with Black males’ disempowerment by hegemonic white patriarchy within wider culture (Bayerl and Stoynov, 2016, pp. 1015–1017), and diegetic post-apocalyptic spaces where oppressive institutions are no longer functional, i.e. prisons. As one meme highlights T-Dog’s servile role within the group indicative of Black oppression in the US, stating ‘Only Black guy in the group. Made to do hard labor on farm next season will be in prison’. Another T-Dog superimposed meme indicates other stereotypical representations in TWD, stating ‘Black guys living in a world without police or government. Still dies in prison’.7 Similarly, other memes demonstrate how genre memory (Harvey, 2019) is inflected with racialized cultural memory, which in turn informs Black audiences’ genre expectations and (dis)pleasure (Mittell, 2004, pp. 14–17). A number of memes remark on T-Dog’s silence that reflects his lack of character development, how when he is finally afforded emotional depth he is immediately slain, and how this emblematizes racial marginalization in horror and/or the genre’s propensity for killing off Black characters before their white counterparts (see Coleman, 2011; Brooks, 2014). This latter point is often ironically framed whereby memes focus less on the reductive representation of T-Dog. Rather, his ability to last this duration is a point of humorous praise. Somewhat different to the serious tone of anti-fan writing evidenced in Chapter 4, a humorous recoding of the Black male body is presented via textual poaching, audience content which ‘extends the body of the primary text in directions never predicted by the […] producers’ (Jenkins, 2013b, p. 32). This suggests that ‘[t]his criticism can still be described as a potentially pleasurable form of engagement’ (Atkinson and Kennedy, 2015,

7

See Rendell (2019b).

240 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

p. 14), with posts identifying and critiquing the ‘narrative function’ of the series (Hills, 2015, pp. 152–153). Another central discourse memes emphasized is TWD’s formulaic structuring, and minimal visibility, of Black males. These examples utilize the visuality and structural content of memes to splice together the respective males of the series during moments of threat and fear as a wider commentary on the text’s ‘Black male quota’. This includes T-Dog, Morgan, Oscar, Noah, Bob, Father Gabriel, and Tyreese, who within the series’ narrative do not encounter one another, yet intratextual narrativization is created through these memes by incongruously grouping the characters together alongside superimposed text denoting that one or several of them will die on account of their aggregation within the meme space. Such meta-commentary also visually verifies audiences’ ideological claims of marginality and the killing off of certain characters. This textual poaching brings to the fore audiences’ perceived racial subtexts and narrative structures in TWD, subtexts which their image-based appropriations work to confirm. Beyond diegetic poaching, other image posts incorporate pre-existing meme vernacular, recognized visual markers, and pop culture intertextual references to engage with TWD’s racial representations. One such illustration depicts the series white lead Rick Grimes as Captain Kirk from Star Trek (NBC 1965–1969) next to various Black male characters as the expendable ‘redshirts’ who dutifully serve and die for their superior. These pop culture intertextual posts may appeal to a range of audiences, such as TWD (anti-) fans, fans of other cult media such as Star Trek, Futurama, and/or Star Wars, and ‘MemeGeeks’ who place such texts ‘in the meme canon’8 (Milner, 2014). Lastly, ‘casual users’ who do not make memes but readily share them through social media sites may simply find the images funny (Bayerl and Stoynov, 2016, pp. 1009–1010). Moreover, images are not restricted to one site or audience type as the spreadability of online media fosters myriad applications (Jenkins et al., 2013, pp. 2–3), recontextualizing Black characters in the process. No longer peripheral, posters’ image-poaching centres on Black male bodies, ‘disconnecting’ textual content so that it can be recontextualized to provide new frameworks of meaning. These posts focus less ‘on the look and feel’ of TWD’s horror (Gillan, 2016, p. 12), and more on appropriating ‘elements of a story world or a characterization’ (ibid.). Racial subtexts are discursively prioritized as the foci of readings manifest in memes, which 8 This audience’s main interest ‘in memes overall is part of a larger interest in the Internet and computer culture’ (Milner, 2014).

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

241

accentuate championed characters and problematic representations. Here, the trials and tribulations of white protagonists are absent (although ample other images and memes stress whiteness) in favour of focusing on the series’ reductive racial scripts (Simpson, 2017, pp. 135–136). Resultantly, TWD imagery is used by audiences who ideologically reinscribe the post-apocalyptic space, whereby the structured absence and ineptitude of secondary Black characters is distilled from TWD’s serial narrative via textual poaching. However, one must also consider on what social media platforms such texts and their racial discursive prioritization proliferate, and where they are less common. Dominique Deirdre Johnson’s research in TWD fan forums found that when criticisms were made of the racial representations of the Black female character Michonne, the habitual response from largely white members was one of dismissiveness and even hostility that refuted such readings (2015, p. 265). Resultantly, certain space is part of, and continued, the ‘circulation and reiteration of white hegemony’ (ibid.), whilst also circulating ‘antiblack sentiment within seemingly neutral contexts’ (ibid., p. 268). As I explain elsewhere, ‘this is not to say that Black fans are not welcome to enter this online space and engage in discussions; however, they may do so only at the expense of negating, neutralizing, and nullifying their intersectional analyses of race and gender’ (Rendell, 2019a; see also Pande, 2018). However, on other online sites and social media platforms there is far less habitual hegemony instilled by ‘a deep engagement in social relationships’ (Kozinets, 2015, p. 35), which is determined by white de-racialization communal dialogue. For example, websites like Nerds of Colour engage with popular culture and racial discourse. Secondly, ‘Black Twitter’ has emerged as ‘the discovery that Black usage of the popular media service at times dominated Twitter discourse. This went against the popular perceptions of White-dominated Internet use’ (Brock, 2012, p. 529). Furthermore, such digital produsage ‘can be understood as a discursive, public performance of Black identity’ (ibid., p. 537), whilst also creating ‘digital counterpublics’ that ‘actively resist hegemonic power, contest majoritarian narratives, engage in critical dialogues, or negotiate oppositional identities’ (Hill, 2018, p. 287). Finally, Steele argues that blogs replicate ‘the kind of oral cultural exchange central to the black community in the United States’ (2018, p. 113), which ‘function as space which is constructed by and for African Americans’ (ibid., p. 120). Furthermore, unlike Twitter, ‘[w]ithout trending hashtags […] to alert the dominant group of their presence, blogs can interrogate black culture and art without engaging with the dominant group’ (ibid.). Unsurprisingly then, compared to social media sites such as Reddit and The Walking Dead wiki

242 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

fan forum where racial discourse is uncommon or even refuted (Johnson, 2015), blogs and Twitter’s affordance of racial readings/performances are where such image texts have been predominantly disseminated (as evinced by Chapter 4). On such sites and platforms, some image texts are uploaded to reinforce the discourse evident in the written logos of Black audiences (Bayerl and Stoynov, 2016, p. 1007). Informed by their own cultural marginality and mistreatment, these online posts challenged racial representations in the TV series. Makers of these memes ‘actively intervene in the formation and propagation of [TWD and the Black male body] […] and leave their own mark by modifying it’ (ibid., p. 1008). This is done by isolating the body, undermining textual context/ideology, and hence opening up a space for ‘context flexibility’ (ibid., p. 1014). In these instances, image content is used to support explicitly politicized arguments, providing visual verifiers of the discourse of audiences’ written responses. For example, some memes were posted on The Nerds of Color and blogs accompanying articles on the series’ racial issues as reflective of wider US race-related issues discussed in Chapter 4, evidencing pro-civic engagement. That said, despite image posts supporting racial and civic discourse, memes might be read as shallow or superficial in their engagement compared to traditional political commentary (van Zoonen, 2005, p. 11). It is also ‘[h]ard to tell what effects civic engagement through social media will have or how effective it is’ (Jenkins, 2016, p. 6), with allegations of clicktivism/ slacktivism stressing alleged disengagement with ‘real-world’ political practices (Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson, 2015, p. 2). Whilst ITF fan imagery is discursively located within fan activist rhetoric and practices when the audience is trying to save the text, TWD memes are not overtly used in traditional (anti-)fan activism. Yet the continued uploading and sharing of memes keeps oxygen flowing to the critical discourse surrounding Black masculinity in the TV series, publicizing and reinforcing critical arguments (Bayerl and Stoynov, 2016, p. 1010). Furthermore, whilst such image texts can be found on sites that present critical readings informed by racial discursive prioritization, these memes can also be found on sites such as Know Your Meme. Therefore, other sites can recontextualize memes to make fun of, or ridicule, the disempowered silent Black male, especially on sites that use these images to reinforce racial stereotypes (see Nakayama, 2017; Burgess and Matamoros-Fernández, 2016). Whilst amusement is a core intention for memes, the broader their dissemination, the more indistinct their discourse becomes. Flexibility in content and circulation concurs with the argument that ‘humour as

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

243

success criterion […] may be a double-edged sword for political memes’ (Bayerl and Stoynov, 2016, p. 1017). Social demarcations between different viewers and responses to memes also depend on audiences’ ‘familiarity with the original series and/or an individual or social […] sensibility that may enhance reading the new meanings created by the [meme] text as resistant or not’ (Dhaenens, 2012, p. 446). Moreover, what is found in these posts typically represents a critical exposure of Black male marginality; something not present in TWD itself. Thus, whilst perhaps not definitively leading to forms of wider fan activism where fans’ detailed knowledge is used in civic action (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2016, p. 109) or where imagery is used for outwardly oriented ‘politicised’ fandoms’ ‘desire to change wider society’ (Dean, 2017, p. 413), we can still see how close engagement with TWD offers ‘a resource around which young people are making connections to civic and political worlds’ (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2016, p. 107). This is especially so when memes accompany more detailed written commentary, resulting in multimedia posts that can extrapolate the simplicity and subcultural shorthand of memes (see Warner and Rendell, 2021). Such extensive commentary and usage of digital media at a grassroots level concurs with Jenkins and Shresthova’s argument that ‘no one instantiation of the message is likely to reach all potential audiences, while deploying diverse communication practices is likely to accelerate the spread and extend the reach of […] [a] shared agenda’ (2016, p. 262). It is by analysing these multiple iterations of racial engagement with(in) TWD that civic issues inflecting the storyworld can provide overarching arguments around racial representation. Considering how Black males in TWD are ideologically reinscribed, textual poaching of canonical imagery and meme culture discursively prioritizes the programme’s secondary Black bodies. Political humour distils those characters that ‘show’ the silent Black man, reinscribing such characters within a critical discourse that is mapped onto TWD’s storyworld. Moreover, remixing within meme culture reinforces such sentiments by bringing together repeatedly marginalized Black males, providing strength in numbers to the reading strategies put forward in these posts that evidence new grids of anti-racist and critical meaning. Thus, whilst potentially humorous in their construction, memes, like other audience texts, present audience thematic deconstruction of screen media. Furthermore, the spreadable dissemination of memes across a range of social media platforms means that ‘posts on non-political […] websites [and social media platforms] may serve as political forums’ (Steele, 2018, p. 113). But whilst the texts examined thus far utilize existing images and media screengrabs with only slight editing

244 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

taking place, fans’ own original artworks can also support or subvert horror show’s characters, narratives, and aesthetics.

This Is My Design: Hannibal Fanart, (Inter)textural Poaching and Aesthetic Incongruity As evidenced in the previous chapter, audiences watching Hannibal frequently focus on the show’s visual qualities to explore detailed characterization and quality TV credentials as art horror, demonstrating abject spectrum aesthetic responses. Yet this particular mode of viewing is not limited to audience engagement with screen media but can also be seen in participatory cultures. Tumblr, for example, offers a plethora of fan image transtexts centring on Hannibal’s distinct graphic abject visuality ‘that communicate [audiences’] emotions (“feels”), reactions, and everyday events’ (Bourlai and Herring, 2014, p. 171). Image texts on Tumblr are frequently screengrabs or GIFs9 which visually quote specific aspects of Hannibal (Newman, 2014), but offer little in the way of detailed textual critique or narrative exposition. For instance, a post of a single shot of Hannibal as the Wendigo in monochrome chiaroscuro lighting (S2, E11) makes for a strikingly stylized, dark, and impressionistic image in keeping with the show’s visual symbolism. Similarly, a close-up of a cello neck slowly moving through a mouth and down an exposed throat (S1, E8) highlights detailed gore in tune with the tone of the show’s use of graphic imagery. Likewise, a mid-shot of Will and the FBI team examining a corpse (S1, E7) displays the sombre mise-en-scène and dark hues that frequent Hannibal’s colour palette, yet tells nothing of how the victim was murdered, who committed the crime, or their motive/psychotic urges; key textual information in the serial killer subgenre (Balanzategui et al., 2019). This aesthetic focus can be understood as a form of ‘textural poaching’ (Gillan, 2016). Jennifer Gillan explains that fan f iction’s ‘textual poaching focuses more on appropriating elements of a story world or a characterization and utilizing them within original content’ (ibid., p. 12). Comparatively, GIF images ‘capture the allure of the textural complexity of the chosen frames, showcasing the visual appeal of moments that spark enough fascination to circulate more broadly’ (ibid.). Disconnecting textual imagery from the 9 GIF is short for graphics interchange format. It is an image text ‘made from ripped video footage that is edited in an image software programme before being exported in gif format’ (Perez, 2013, p. 151), providing limited animation that repeats on loop.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

245

narrative, visual posts ‘convey the textural feel of a series’ (ibid., p. 14) via ‘textural poaching’. Textural poaching often focuses on ‘moments of excess […] [as they] can be easily extracted from the narrative because they feel like separate modules’ (ibid., pp. 15–16). Horror as a body-centric genre (Williams, 2004) and Hannibal’s distinct horrality lends itself to visual textural poaching given its emphasis on depicting corporeal destruction in excessive fashion. Moreover, more common on Tumblr are multiple images within a single post. Many of these sets follow the same textural poaching strategies as the single images previously described. However, much like audience commentary analysed in the previous chapter, others verify diegetic intertextual markers that attest to the show as high popular culture. For instance, particular paintings used in the diegesis are paired with photos of their real-world housings. Yet, other image-sets make connections to wider media not explicitly found in the storyworld. Nuancing Gillan’s concept, some images or GIF-sets further attest to the show’s visual pedigree by utilizing intertextural poaching, whereby diegetic imagery is placed next to other images that emphasize Hannibal’s artistic lean and/or horror hallmarks. For example, the set-piece of two victims whose flayed skin has been hung to resemble winged angels (S1, E5) is positioned next to Jacques Gautier d’Agoty’s ‘The Anatomical Angel’ (1746). Another set compares the same murder scene with the work of Lucia Dovicakova, whilst a close-up shot of Will’s bloodied face (S2, E13) is likened to Jacopo Vignali’s ‘Cyparissus’ (c. 1625). These intertextural poachings visually signpost points of aesthetic excess by discursively associating the shots with f ine art media. In this instance, compared to television that has merited quality status due to cinematic associations, Hannibal’s quality here is assigned to its painterly attributes, reif ied by making aesthetic connections between the series and extant art through the practice of image-set creating. Utilizing the same conventions of intertextural poaching but making alternative aesthetic connections to other media, several image-sets place Hannibal alongside horror cinema. This includes GIFs that pair shots for compositional resemblance between scenes from the series and films, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper 1974), Possession (Żuławski 1981), The Cell (Singh 2000), Pan’s Labyrinth, and Midsommar (Aster 2019). Removing these shots and scenes from their reference texts de-narrativizes the imagery that stresses comparative formal (inter)textural qualities, whereby flashbulb recognition over detailed character knowledge serves as aesthetic translation between the images and the media they quote.

246 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

While these literal forms of ‘textual clustering’ (Mittell, 2004) focus on outward connections with wider genre media, other image-sets look inward, serving close detailed transformative readings of Hannibal. Specifically, queer readings and shipping of Hannibal and Will Graham; what fans label ‘Hannigram’. For example, one GIF-set collates various times Hannibal touches Will’s face that highlight queer intimacy between the two, whereby disparate linear microexpressive moments foster cumulative teleology surrounding Will and Hannibal’s relationship. Another GIF-set arranges shots of Will and Hannibal having heterosexual intercourse that removes their female partners. While the referent scene suggests queer romantic subtext via intercutting (Lewerenz, 2019, p. 63), the looped Tumblr GIF-set affirms queer desires via explicit montage that remixes a ‘new’ event extrapolated from the referent text. Like ITF fan visuals that focus on diegetic relationships, Hannibal fan images stress melodrama over horror in their queering of Hannigram in these character studies (Stein, 2018, p. 94). This is done via various visual schema: firstly, the pathos of Will and Hannibal’s feelings for each other are mirrored in the bleakness of the aesthetics. Close-ups and extreme close-ups of corporeal proximity between the two indicates emotional closeness, yet these shots are frequently in the dark and devoid of colour. Some also have poetic and lyrical text overlaying images that heighten the romantic tragedy of their homosocial attraction. For example, one GIF-set uses the lines from Sylvia Plath’s ‘Three Women’: ‘Is this my lover then? This death, this death?’ over GIFs of Hannibal placing a blanket over Will and the two embracing. Secondly, and very much related to the previous point, many images centre on the series’ finale at the end of season three. As Williams discusses: [g]iven the presence of fans who supported a romantic relationship between Hannibal and Will […] the presence of repeated GIFs moved the final scene from one of upset to a moment where one could read the interactions between the characters as supportive of Hannigram. In these potentially transformative moments, fan edits and uses of GIFs helped refocus the final moments of the series from a potentially tragic reading to one of romance. (2018)

Finally, through humour, dramatic scenes from the referent text are broken down into a set of images with superimposed new text denoting character speech that pronounce Will and Hannibal’s gay feelings. Here, the original subject matter and aesthetic style are juxtaposed with fan-created dialogue that subverts existing scenes in a comedic manner. For example, a GIF-set of

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

247

Will’s first meeting with Hannibal that results in hostility from the former towards the latter (S1, E1) reimagines this as a flirtatious encounter: Hannibal: ‘So, where you from? Heaven?’ Will: ‘Yeah, I’m a ghost.’ Hannibal: ‘I died fifteen years ago.’ Will: ‘Just like that pickup line.’

These image-sets visually verify the amorous emotions felt or displayed between characters by either collaging disparate diegetic imagery – reading between the lines or amongst the shots – or removing images from the series’ sequential narrative that ‘change [textual] meaning or render visible moments that were hidden until images or sequences were slowed down and reworked in the GIF format’ (Williams, 2018). Analysing Tumblr GIF fic,10 Booth argues fans’ appropriation of, and love for, their championed media as a source for creativity is based on the ‘pastiche […] [of] both […] semantic reproduction of textual elements and syntactic appropriation of ideological moments from the media text’ (2015b, p. 26). Relatedly, these shipping images provide textural poaching by harnessing the look and feel of Hannibal, but also evidence particular ideological reading strategies that centre on melodrama over horror. Consequently, these fan works further discursively prioritize queer subtext that frames the GIF fics’ own narrative through line, yet also indicate emotional affect derived from characters’ bonds as seen with ITF fan imagery. Thus, such fanart shows the overlapping potential of abject spectrums. But while the previous examples provide aesthetic fidelity to the reference text via fans taking and remixing existing diegetic material, other fan imagery aesthetically reimagines Hannibal whilst still centring on the queering of Hannigram. Namely, original fanart. Certainly, many pieces adopt the show’s aesthetic, notably the colour palettes, dark mise-en- scène, and iconography (see Schär, 2014; Abbott, 2018a; Elliott, 2018). Therefore, textural poaching strategies are maintained albeit via alternative creative processes. For example, several works depict 10 GIF f ics are ‘the combination of multiple GIFs together to create a story line. Although the narrative may be unique to the GIF fic, each of the images is a past pastiche of a particular moment from the original text’ (Booth, 2015b, p. 26).

248 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Will with antlers; a metaphor employed in Hannibal to connote Will’s transmogrification as both monstrous and queer. However, other fanart deviates in several ways. Busse explains that fans create ‘works of art or fiction that stray significantly form the source text’ (2017, p. 125), yet maintain ‘the source text [and its genre] as discursive referent[s]’ (ibid., p. 126). Additionally, Kohnen states ‘fanart challenges viewers to reconsider what they know about […] character[s]’ (2018b, p. 351b). Some fanart does this by devising original queer scenarios between Will and Hannibal. However, compared to longform fanfiction (see Balanzategui et al., 2019, pp. 45–50), fanart provides a single suggestive image. This often goes one step further than season three’s finale, with the two in romantic embrace, dancing, kissing, and in bed together, for example. Rather than focusing on, or splicing together, particular moments of the source text that prioritize queer readings, fanart allows audiences to form their own fantasy scenarios that extend beyond official Hannibal canon. A fan work titled ‘Coming home after a day at the beach’, for instance, depicts Hannibal with his arm around Will as they walk along a shoreline shirtless, removing any sense of monstrosity. Given the show’s motifs of food and cannibalism, a number of fanart works see Hannigram preparing, cooking, or eating meals that knowingly undermine a central abject threat in Hannibal: the ingestion of human flesh. In doing so, fanart can employ humorous incongruity that pertains to, and plays with, the series’ plots, subject matter, and horrality. Robert Bloch suggests that ‘comedy and horror are opposite sides of the same coin […] Both deal in the grotesque and unexpected, but in such a fashion as to provoke two entirely different physical reactions’ (quoted in Carroll, 1999, p. 146). For some, the excesses of abjection and the grotesque are the connective tissues between the two genres that produce gross-out comedy horror (Paul, 1994), such as The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville (BBC2 2009–2011) (Hunt, 2008b, pp. 82–104; Jowett and Abbott, 2013, pp. 148–154). However, certain comedic Hannibal fanart does not utilize such aesthetic schemas, thus requiring further examination. Discussing horror comedies, Carroll posits that ‘where the fearsomeness of the monster is compromised or deflected by either neutralizing it or at least drawing attention away from it, the monster can become an appropriate object for incongruity humour’ (1999, p. 157). While Carroll over-emphasizes horror solely eliciting fear that further neglects how audiences may align with monsters (Cherry, 2018, p. 113), horror comedy can play on genre knowledge, expectations, and totems. From this, unexpected and/or ‘[s]urprising turns of events or rather unheard-of combinations are what define comedic incongruity’ (Gölz, 2009, p. 2). Such incongruity is the dominant expressive mode of much Hannibal fanart.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

249

For example, one piece sees Hannibal wearing a pink cooking apron that reads ‘Policía vegana A ver ese nabo’ (vegan police to see that turnip) with hearts emanating from him as he holds a severed leg. The incongruity here is that Hannibal partakes in cannibalism but this fanart labels him literally as someone who refrains from eating any animal produce. Moreover, the apron’s colour and style are incongruous to the slick and stylish attire that Hannibal adorns in the series. Finally, the suggestion that the leg is the turnip of which Hannibal is visually displaying love for vis-à-vis the hearts is also incongruous since the limb is not a vegetable. The work overtly refers to Hannibal’s monstrous appetite, yet discursively undermines the grotesque horror via several interrelated incongruous elements. This is supported by the general aesthetic of drawing, which, unlike Hannibal’s baroque visual style and the verisimilitude of its onscreen gore, is a flat drawing rendered with simple line work, block colours, and bloodless imagery. This is not to suggest that the fanart is inferior to the source text. Instead, it stresses overt visual incongruity as a particular fanart practice of aesthetic textual engagement with the TV horror. Indeed, in both humorous and serious fanart, incongruous aesthetic queering is common. For example, several pieces, whilst highlighting Will’s fragile mental state or Hannibal’s manipulation of Will into something abominable, re-aestheticize these depictions by utilizing cartoon or graphic novel styles in the textual rendering of these characters. This in itself offers aesthetic variety as much as incongruity as some fanart takes more realistic approaches while others more impressionistic as they move into other artistic styles and genres. This is exemplified by fanart that renders Hannibal as cute in its melding of comedic and aesthetic incongruity. Echoing Carroll’s horror-comedy formula, Ward argues that cute Cthulhu merchandise subverts core horror aesthetics, ‘effectively castrat[ing] Cthulhu by deliberately reducing the image’s power to scare us by making Cthulhu pitiable’ (2013, p. 99). For Ward, ‘[a]s a horror icon, Cthulhu has power over his observers because he creates feelings of fear and loathing in them. However, as a cute monster, the power shifts to the observer because the blank expression allows the observer to imbue the toy with their own feelings and emotions’ (ibid., p. 105). Such aesthetic incongruity is prominent in cute Hannibal fanart that visually frames the humorous incongruity, demonstrating fan affect towards Hannibal and/or Will. This can be denoted by the tags used to group work but also act as an aesthetic marker. For instance, a number of fanart pieces are supported with the tag #chibi (Japanese styles of manga and cartoon ‘easily distinguished for their short and cute figures’ (Cohn, 2010, p. 189), which greatly deforms the size and shape of bodies (ibid., p. 193)). Furthermore, ‘Chibi often is used to mean “short/

250 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

small person/child” […] Here, the graphic style of a figure is changed from its normal representation to an extremely cartoony style indicating a state of overwhelming emotion’ (Cohn and Ehly, 2016, p. 22). Chibi fanart often re-enacts scenes from Hannibal but removes the pathos, gore, and horror, replacing it with expressive cute comedy exaggerated via this cartoon aesthetic. But whereas cute Cthulhu merchandise portrays the monster as ‘sexless’ (Ward, 2013, p. 100), cute Hannibal fanart remains sexual(ized) through queer discourse. Moreover, while ‘Cthulhu starts with a narrative which is removed in the process of creating merchandise’ (ibid., p. 94), fanart-as-textual-poaching reincorporates and extends referent storylines and character relationships within a cute milieu. But while such fanart supplants gruesome screen abjection with cartoonish visuality, Heljakka (2016, p. 36) argues that even cute humorous fan texts of horror media, such as her case study of Twin Peaks, can be a strategy for facing the reference text’s dark subject matter and imagery. Consequently, for cute fanart to be incongruous, audiences must still engage with the horror and abjection of Hannibal. But if these examples thus far show transformative image creation that supports audience readings, fan engagement, and/or anti-fan criticisms, which support the heterogeneous abject spectrums, audience visual posts can also be used to evidence contrasting responses to TV horror. Snapshot Horror: Tumblr Curation of ‘Imprint’ as National or Authored Quality TV As Chapter 4 discusses, online written commentary posted on the Snowblood Apple forum displayed anti-fan stances towards the Masters of Horror episode ‘Imprint’. However, shifting focus onto Tumblr’s image-based fan practices identifies very different knowledge structures and abject spectrums whereby fans cache scenes and spectacle from the episode, presenting layers of meaning via accompanying text and tags (Stein, 2015, p. 158). Similar to Hannibal Tumblr posts, aesthetic readings of the reference text dominate fan imagery. However, this is combined with equally strong corporeal responses where audiences describe how the text made them feel when they watched them, illustrating emotional-somatic aspects of their abject spectrums. Not only do tags denote the series, episode, and its director, such as #masters of horror, #imprint, and/or #takashi miike/#miike takashi, but tags such as #japan #asia #jhorror #asian horror hermeneutically seal the episode within clearly defined national borders, with no posts referring to

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

251

‘Imprint’ as an American/Japanese co-production. Likewise, whereas the intertextual formation of championed Asia Extreme/J-horror via anti-fans in Chapter 4 positioned the episode outside an ‘authentic’ cluster of Japanese genre texts, fans’ Tumblr posts work instead to authenticate ‘Imprint’ within a nationally codified body of work. In effect, we see a resituating of cultural borders between two transcultural fans groups: ‘Imprint’ is alternatively seen as reflecting/authenticating or imitating/appropriating Japanese identity. Posts also visually quote the most excessive scenes in ‘Imprint’, reinforcing its aesthetic, graphic, and generic discourses of horror (Bore, 2017, p. 13; Booth, 2012a). While fanart centres on the blue-haired yōkai, the violent red-haired concubines, or Komomo in a docile state, most screengrabs and GIFs focus on the torture scene which posters on Snowblood Apple were critical of (see also Pett, 2017). The objectification and fragmentation of Komomo’s body via the phallic invasion of needles shifts away from the episode’s female revenge/empowerment thematics common within Japanese ghost horror (Wee, 2014). Instead, corporeal female trauma is frozen in still screengrabs or offered limited movement via GIFs. Additionally, the text’s uncanny and ambiguous narrative is halted (Jowett and Abbott, 2013, p. 104), whereby posts utilize the episode’s horror aesthetics centred on the female victim to serve as a singular frame of reference. Resultantly, fans’ image texts are anti-erotetic in that, contra incorporating ‘[a] movie scene or a series of depicted events [that] make questions salient’ (Carroll, 1985, p. 97), they eschew narrative propulsion that provides exposition or enigma in favour of a temporal transformative modality that coagulates the episode’s horror spectacle as a snapshot of affect. Similarly, while many posts focus on the blue-haired female demon, largely presenting her in infancy, several images depict her as an adult that utilize a collage format to reinforce the trauma of the female body as monstrous (Hogan, 2010, p. 381). Consequently, unlike fan imagery that fosters a ‘syntactic connection to the ideological meaning of the original [text]’ (Booth, 2015b, p. 31), as seen with Hannibal fans’ Tumblr posts that discursively prioritize queer readings of the TV series, the textural poaching of ‘Imprint’ dismantles narrative, ‘unseating the ideologies [of the text]’ (Stein, 2015, p. 65). These graphic images focus on and highlight the trauma of the Japanese female body inflicted by the concubines, such as placing needles under Komomo’s fingernails and in her gums, with nothing discursively aligning this to the plight of women under patriarchy. Thus, the female body remains ambivalently Other in its textually abject state, whereby abject spectrums, in this snapshot, reduce the ideological potential of onscreen horror in favour of exaggerating its aesthetic and emotive affective qualities.

252 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Interestingly, several posts reference the toy windmills in ‘Imprint’, highlighting the importance of phenomenological biographies in shaping abject spectrums beyond audiences’ screen experience. Because posts take still images or GIFs out of the narrative, such de-contextualization leaves representations in an uncertain state. If one has not seen the episode then the windmills are not textually aff ixed to the horror of ‘Imprint’, thus symbolic meaning is likely to be more slippery since these images are not at all excessive when compared to the examples previously discussed. Yet if one has seen the episode then the objects become powerful diegetic markers linked to the deaths of aborted foetuses and the murder of Komomo. These posts highlight the arbitrary nature of abject coding beyond the realm of bodily aesthetics and corporeal trauma. Moreover, such potential for horror can only be extrapolated by a ‘knowing audience’ (Redmon, 2015). Viewers must go through the process of suffering in order to understand these totems (Kristeva, 1982, p. 140), or be informed about them by other knowing audiences, adding phenomenological layering (Gillan, 2016, p. 13). Posts also use a range of accompanying tags alongside the aforementioned core examples. Unlike the written posts on Snowblood Apple that see ‘Imprint’ as a TV mainstreaming of Asia Extreme film (see Chapter 4), Tumblr tags use #cult to demarcate the marginality and cultural value of the text and, thus, the posters themselves. Several posts also use #torture to denote the images presented and signpost specific instances in the episode that caused affective responses. Contra ‘knowledge over affect’ dynamics stressed in the forums (Hills, 2005a, p. 75), Tumblr fosters ‘feels culture’ (Stein, 2015, p. 156) whereby a ‘reblogged and additively transformed post makes visible communally shared emotion’ (ibid.). Consequently, while abject spectrums pertain to private and internalized emotional responses to screen abjection, within certain spaces they can be publicly celebrated (ibid.). For example: #FUcked up horror movies. This is probably the most disturbing movie I have ever seen in my life. … pretty disturbing. ommfg why did I just watch this??? My insides hurt. Like I feel really nauseous. And I watched it on cable tv so most of the graphic stuff was cut or blurred. BUT STILL.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

253

Stein notes that ‘[a]lthough tags are intended to help with categorizing, archiving and retrieval, Tumblr users often include tags to capture their momentary response to an image […] Emotion-oriented tags often intertwine with tags that function as analysis’ (2015, p. 158). Such posts, whilst highlighting and performing corporeal affects/effects of abjection (Kristeva, 1982, pp. 3–4; Sobchack, 2004a, p. 80), also present a sense of accomplishment (Hollows, 2003, p. 55). Unlike written commentary on Snowblood Apple that plays down or dismisses violent imagery, Tumblr posts exaggerate such textual content. Therefore, posts’ text and tags, whilst punctuating images with meaning, also personalize them. This indicates how social context shapes abject spectrums as they are negotiated and performed when responses are championed or scorned. This means an individual may perform their abject spectrum according to wider (fan) communal influences, and that spectrums can become informed by social (media) contexts that shape readings. However, whilst some discuss their horrified responses to ‘Imprint’, presenting the most disturbing scenes, others offer contrasting affective responses. One poster notes that although they know the episode ‘is supposed to be horror’, they found the conjoined twins to be comedic, repeatedly consuming the scene for ‘10 whole minutes of replaying and laughing’. Socio-temporal factors can shape affect, such as contemporary audiences laughing at old horror (Hills, 2005a, p. 209) or replaying scenes that can transmogrify or decontextualize images of abjection into comedic elements (Staiger, 2000, pp. 179–181; Paul, 1994, p. 410). However, laughing at abject imagery is a complex response as I previously explored with Hannibal fans. Kristeva comments, ‘laughing is a way of placing or displacing abjection’ (1982, p. 8). By rendering the object manageable (ibid., p. 107), ‘we laugh to defuse a threat’ (Eitzen, 1999, p. 98). This potentially undermines the episode’s horror affect that serves Showtime’s premium cable branding, since the excessive spectacle that ‘quality’ horror is supposedly attached to is in fact destabilized by some viewers and reconfigured as parody. Whilst fans seek cultural distinction from the lay audience by acquiring, performing, and sharing knowledge and not being scared in the way that non-fans are perceived to be (Hills, 2005a, p. 74), subverting the normative or intended functions of horror can also be performed by posters in order to juxtapose themselves against non-fans’ presumed literalist responses (Eitzen, 1999, p. 95; Booth, 2015b, pp. 37–41). To performatively laugh in the face of screen danger can also construct a masculine identity that subverts the feminized and abject Other of the imagined/projected audience, potentially reducing a text’s artistic value to camp or parody (Pinedo, 1997, p. 48).

254 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

However, laughing at images of abjection can also signal ‘a relief of tension […] to mitigate its horror’ (ibid.), counteracting textual immersion and its constricting of phenomenological distance (Hanich, 2010, p. 97). To laugh is to view ‘from arm’s length’ (Eitzen, 1999, p. 85). Lastly, the monstrous id-twin in ‘Imprint’ might be read as a ‘gross-out’ moment. Whilst still stressing the excessive spectacle of the text (Booth, 2012a, p. 77), since such moments are premised on ambivalence (Paul, 1994, p. 419), horror can readily evoke comedy (or vice versa). Such an outrageously shocking twist, whilst consistent with Miike’s canon, may seem incongruous within a ‘high-end’ TV narrative (Nelson, 2007, pp. 2, 161). In this case, potential laughter might even stem from the sheer unexpectedness of the scene. Additionally, favouring such excessive scenes reinforces the ‘Miike-asauteur’ Western rhetoric perpetuated by industry (Martin, 2015, p. 42). This is further supported by some posts centring on the paratextual framing of ‘Imprint’, using its US and UK DVD covers to reinforce the graphic sensibility established by Tartan and continued by MOH, showing aesthetic alignment with the neo-cult sensibilities of Showtime, the series, and the episode (see Chapter 1 and 3). Other posts focus on extra-textual features, such as tagging the episode’s actors Michie Itō and Youki Kudoh, who play Komomo and the unnamed blue-haired female monster respectively, or behind-the-scenes images. This includes locating ‘Imprint’ on a Miike Takashi tribute Tumblr blog, along with image-sets that combine the episode with other Miike films such as Audition and Ichi the Killer, thereby situating the episode within his established Western canon. Consequently, intertextural poaching is not only salient for highlighting aesthetic kinship between media made by different creatives that signifies (sub)cultural value, but it is also a pertinent strategy for conveying a particular creative’s aesthetic signature. Fans’ intertextural poaching materializes aesthetic continuity across Miike’s (select) oeuvre that indicates auteur recognition anchored to extreme imagery that artistically elevates both the creative and their output. As one fan remarks: Takashi Miike’s ‘Imprint’ is one of my favourite movies. I have quite a few others of his on DVD, including Visitor Q, which is without doubt the most fucked up movie I’ve ever seen! Watching ‘The Great Yokai War’ this morning.

Such posts focus less on ‘Imprint’ as East Asian/Kaidan horror, instead looking to cluster content within the auteur rhetoric of Miike through curating specif ic productions/scenes/images and hence visually authenticating the director’s work. Posts, therefore, are not only about recognizing the

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

255

monstrous female body but can also function as curatorial practices through utilizing wider textual clustering (Mittell, 2004, pp. 16–17). Posters perform (inter/intra)textual knowledge and subcultural capital, constructing and curating their own online presence in the process (Balzer, 2015, pp. 110–111; Zhao and Lindley, 2014, p. 2431). Indeed, as a ‘social media curation site’ (Hall and Zarro, 2012, p. 1), Tumblr’s interface and facilities mean that content is palimpsestic, polymorphous, and polyvocal. Conveying ‘fannish multiplicity’ (Stein, 2018, p. 88), Tumblr users present, and therefore align themselves with, the image transtexts they post, performing subcultural capital in the process. Furthermore, Tumblr’s reblogging functionality perpetuates these images and scenes as subculturally significant, reinforcing semantic pastiche as a semiotic anchor for fans’ affect; what Stein terms ‘individual collective affirmation’ (2015, p. 155). Likewise, reblogging fosters ‘reiteration discourse’ (Bore, 2017, p. 14), such as discursive prioritization of queer readings for Hannibal fans or the distilling of excessive body horror in ‘Imprint’. Moreover, adding tags and notes to reblogs performs ‘communally shared emotion, registered through asynchronous authorship’ (Stein, 2015, p. 156), providing a bricolage dynamic to images that highlights individual and communal fan knowledge and/or affect. As indicated, tagging is a tool for multiple purposes: it groups posts for communal engagement, allow those reblogging to add tags-as-commentary that demonstrate individual affect, aesthetically frames referent media, and can be used in such a way that ‘personalized tags […] help to organize [one’s] […] personal archive of Tumblr posts’ (Kohnen, 2018b, p. 355). As such, Tumblr’s functionality provides a ‘folksonomy’ for fans, ‘a system of categorization emerging from within the wider community of knowledge users’ (Bruns, 2008, p. 187), which demonstrates both personal and generalizable abject spectrums. In some instances, this serves the branding of the referent text. For example, many ‘Imprint’ posts use the tag #masters of horror which situate posts within content that relates to the series as a whole, therefore reinforcing MOH’s anthology structure through Tumblr’s interface. However, while fans curate meaning around referent texts, ‘select[ing] which […] [images] to display, where to place them, and what narrative to tell about this selection’ (Hogan, 2010, p. 381), myriad visual bricolages tethered together via tags support Tumblr’s ‘def iantly nonhierarchical, decentralized, and uncontrollable [domain]’ (Morimoto and Stein, 2018). This manifests in Tumblr’s interface which provides the user an ever-changing tapestry of images linked to a tag that fosters metatextual aesthetic incongruity. This porosity results in Hannibal being both

256 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

graphic and cute, horror and melodrama. Comparatively, ‘Imprint’ is both frightening and humorous, nationally-bound horror and auteur vehicle. All of which are displayed and curated within the same space as various image combinations on one’s Tumblr feed as they scroll down through a potentially infinite number of posts. Such meta-visuality evidences ‘the multiplicity of interpretations and affective returns to beloved [horror] media objects’ (Stein, 2018, p. 87).

Conclusion Viewers have harnessed social media’s pictorial qualities to perform their receptive, interpretive, and evaluative responses to TV horror, where affect informs, and thus encodes, their creative works. Consequently, such image productions and circulations online demonstrate visually audiences’ abject spectrums. Moreover, not only attesting to a range of responses to, and elucidations of, horror screen media, but the variety of visual commentary also serves a multitude of purposes. From performing love and adoration for particular aspects of a fan object to highlighting the problematic facets of a show. From being a creative outlet for fanart to formulating part of a protest toolkit employed to save a series from cancellation. From antierotetic spectacle to creating original narratives. From deep dives into the storyworld that extrapolate transformative readings to situating TV texts alongside other genre vehicles or revered media to imbue the former with (sub)cultural value derived from the latter. From affirming textual qualities to subversive transformation of reference material. All of which have the potential to reflect the emotive, somatic, ideological, and aesthetic realms of the abject spectrum in ways that support audiences’ vocalized reactions and critiques of horror media, but also nuance the concept to better account for the creative ways affect is demonstrated in audiences’ own transtexts. As Schreiber states, ‘visual data analysis can unearth aesthetic, embodied and affective aspects of communicative relations which might otherwise be overlooked’ (2017, p. 37). Moreover, whilst audiences’ visual practices suspend or foster limited animation to ‘moving’ audiovisual media, such imagery’s meanings are not wholly fixed in the process. If a picture is worth a thousand words, said words are prone to destabilization and recontextualization, in turn layering the picture with even more meaning. As the TWD memes demonstrate, where images are housed and how they are configured in relation to other media – such as a tweet or blog that combines the written word

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

257

with accompanying illustrations – can shape semiotic affect as can where the content is posted. Meme rhetoric itself subverted the referent text, used to reify the marginalization and lack of character depth for Black males within TWD. However, others may take these memes to in fact perpetuate racist discourse. Further, as well as highlighting the affective complexities of horror audiences in relation to their consumption of horror media and their own creative works, the chapter also highlights how genre fans, far from being a paradoxical audience demographic siloed from other viewer types due to their taste for the transgressive, incorporate digital practices common with social media’s visual turn much like other media fandoms. For instance, others have utilized memes to criticize Hollywood’s lineage and ongoing hegemony of whiteness and racial Othering (Rendell, 2021a), whilst aesthetic and humorous incongruity in fanart that alters horror screen media is emblematic of wider online remix cultures facilitated by digital media technologies (Lessig, 2004; Knobel and Lankshear, 2008; De Kosnik, 2016). This is not to imply technological determinism on horror audiences. Rather, the prosumer paradigm that digital media expediates has allowed genre fans, anti-fans, and lay audiences to produce media that performs their complex affective registers to horror whilst also complicating our understanding of abject spectrums and horror theory more generally. For instance, visual commentary highlights how for many audiences of horror television, horrality is not the only championed aspect of the text, how image-sets’ intertextural poaching display cross-media value schemas, or how screengrabs and fanart nuance conceptualizations of the relationship between horror and comedy. With this in mind, I turn to the final chapter to explore how TV horror fandom transmedia goes beyond the digital to further examine how abject spectrums serve audiences’ creative practices.

References Abbott, Stacey. 2016. Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Abbott, Stacey. 2018a. ‘Masters of Mise-En-Scène: The Stylistic Excess of Hannibal.’ In Belau, Linda and Jackson, Kimberly (eds). Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear. London: Routledge. pp. 120–134. Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. 2015. ‘Introduction.’ In Aloi, Peg and Johnston, Hannah E. (eds). Carnivàle and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 7–16.

258 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Atkinson, Sarah and Kennedy, Helen W. 2015. ‘“Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need an Effective Online Audience Engagement Strategy”: The Case of the Secret Cinema Viral Backlash.’ Frames Cinema Journal. 8. pp. 1–24. Balanzategui, Jessica, Later, Naja, and Lomax, Tara. 2019. ‘Hannibal Lecter’s Monstrous Return: The Horror of Seriality in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal.’ In Finn, Kavita Mudan and Nielsen, EJ (eds). Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. pp. 27–53. Balzer, David. 2015. Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else. London: Pluto Press. Barton, Kristen M. 2014. ‘Chuck Versus the Advertiser: How Fan Activism and Footlong Subway Sandwiches Saved a Television Series.’ In Barton, Kristen M. and Lampley, Jonathan Malcom (eds). Fan CULTure: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 159–172. Bayerl, Petra Saskia and Stoynov, Lachezar. 2016. ‘Revenge by Photoshop: Memefying Police Acts in the Public Dialogue About Justice.’ New Media and Society. 18(6). pp. 1006–1026. Booth, Paul. 2012a. ‘Saw Fandom and the Transgression of Fan Excess.’ In Gournelos, Ted and Gunkel, David J. (eds). Transgression 2.0.: Media, Culture, and the Politics of a Digital Age. New York: Continuum. pp. 69–83. Booth, Paul. 2012b. ‘The Television Social Network: Exploring TV Characters.’ Communication Studies. 63(3). pp. 309–327. Booth, Paul. 2015b. Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Booth, Paul. 2019. ‘Transmedia Fandom and Participation: The Nuances and Contours of Fannish Participation.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 279–288. Bore, Inger-Lise Kalviknes. 2017. Screen Comedy and Online Audiences. London: Routledge. Bore, Inger-Lise Kalviknes and Hickman, Jonathan. 2013. ‘Studying Fan Activities on Twitter: Reflections on Methodological Issues Emerging From a Case Study on The West Wing Fandom.’ First Monday. 18(9). https://doi.org/10.5210/ fm.v18i9.4268 Bourlai, Elli, and Herring, Susan C. 2014. ‘Multimodal Communication on Tumblr: “I Have So Many Feels!” ‘WebSci. 14. pp. 171–175. Brock, André. 2012. ‘From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation.’ Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 56(4). pp. 529–549. Brooks, Kinitra D. 2014. ‘The Importance of Neglected Intersections: Race and Gender in Contemporary Zombie Texts and Theories.’ African American Review. 47(4). pp. 461–475.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

259

Bruns, Axel. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. Oxford: Peter Lang. Burgess, Jean and Matamoros-Fernández, Ariadna. 2016. ‘Mapping Sociocultural Controversies Across Digital Media Platforms: One Week of #Gamergate on Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr.’ Communication Research and Practice. 2(1). pp. 79–86. Busse, Kristina. 2017. Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Carroll, Noël. 1985. ‘The Powers of Movies.’ Daedalus. 114(4). pp. 79–103. Carroll, Noël. 1999. ‘Horror and Humour.’ The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 57(2). pp. 145–160. Cherry, Brigid. 2018. ‘Fan Totems: Affective Investments in the Sea Creatures of Horror and Science Fiction.’ In Hackett, Jon and Harrington, Seán (eds). Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and Popular Culture. East Barnet: John Libbey. pp. 111–126. Chew, Natalie. 2018 ‘Tumblr as Counterpublic Space for Fan Mobilization.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 27. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1186 Cohn, Neil. 2010. ‘Japanese Visual Language: The Structure of Manga.’ In JohnsonWoods, Toni (ed.). Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Continuum. pp. 187–203. Cohn, Neil and Ehly, Sean. 2016. ‘The Vocabulary of Manga: Visual Morphology in Dialects of Japanese Visual Language.’ Journal of Pragmatics. 92. pp. 17–29. Coleman, Robin R. Means. 2011. Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. New York: Routledge. Dean, Jonathan. 2017. ‘Politicising Fandom.’ The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 19(2). pp. 408–424. De Kosnik, Abigail. 2016. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dhaenens, Frederik. 2012. ‘Queer Cuttings on YouTube: Re-Editing Soap Operas as a Form of Fan-Produced Queer Resistance.’ European Journal of Cultural Studies. 15(4). pp. 442–456. Duffett, Mark. 2013. Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture. London: Bloomsbury. Eitzen, Dirk. 1999. ‘The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy.’ In Plantinga, Carl and Smith, Greg M. (eds). Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 84–99. Ellison, Hannah. 2013. ‘Submissives, Nekos and Futanaris: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of the Glee Kink Meme.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 10(1). pp. 109–128. Elliott, Jaquelin. 2018. ‘This is My Becoming: Transformation, Hybridity, and the Monstrous in NBC’s Hannibal.’ University of Toronto Quarterly. 87(1). pp. 249–265.

260 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Gillan, Jennifer. 2016. ‘Textural Poaching Twin Peaks: The Audrey Horne Sweater Girl GIFs.’ Series – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives. 2(2). pp. 9–24. Gölz, Peter. 2009. ‘Fear and Laughing in Sunnydale: Buffy Vs. Dracula.’ Journal of Dracula Studies. 11(1). pp. 1–8. Hagman, Hampus. 2012. ‘The Digital Gesture: Rediscovering Cinematic Movement through Gifs.’ Refactory: A Journal of Entertainment Media. 21. https://refractoryjournal.com/hagman/ [Accessed 14 December 2020] Hall, Catherine and Zarro, Michael. 2012. ‘Social Curation on the Website Pinterest. com.’ Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 49(1). pp. 1–9. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. London: Routledge. Harlow, Summer. 2013. ‘“It was a “Facebook Revolution”: Exploring the Meme-Like Spread of Narratives During the Egyptian Protests.’ Revista De Comunicación. 12. pp. 59–82. Harman, Sarah and Jones, Bethan. 2013. ‘Fifty Shades of Ghey: Snark Fandom and the Figure of the Anti-Fan.’ Sexualities. 16(8). pp. 951–968. Harvey, Colin. E. 2019. ‘Transmedia Genres: Form, Content, and the Centrality of Memory.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 157–164. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2016. Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics: Transmedia WorldBuilding Beyond Capitalism. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Heljakka, Katriina. 2016. ‘Toying with Twin Peaks: Fans, Artists and Re-playing of a Cult-series.’ Series – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives. 2(2). pp. 25–39. Hill, Marc Lamont. 2018. ‘“Thank You, Black Twitter”: State Violence, Digital Counterpublics and Pedagogies of Resistance.’ Urban Education. 53(2). pp. 286–302. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hills, Matt. 2010a. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty First Century. London: I.B. Tauris. Hills, Matt. 2015. ‘Storytelling and Storykilling: Affirmational/Transformational Discourses of Television Narrative.’ In Pearson, Roberta and Smith, Anthony N. (eds). Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 151–173. Hogan, Bernie. 2010. ‘The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing Performances and Exhibitions Online.’ Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society. 30(6). pp. 377–386. Hollows, Joanne. 2003. ‘The Masculinity of Cult.’ In Jancovich, Mark, Reboll, Antonio Lázaro, Stringer, Julian, and Willis, Andy (eds). Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 35–53.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

261

Hunt, Leon. 2008b. The League of Gentlemen. London: BFI. Jenkins, Henry. 2013b. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Updated Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge. Jenkins, Henry. 2016. ‘Youth Voice, Media, and Political Engagement.’ In Jenkins, Henry, Shresthova, Sagita, Gamber-Thompson, Liane, Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta, and Zimmerman, Arely M. By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism. New York: New York University Press. pp. 1–60. Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry and Shresthova, Sagita. 2016. ‘“t’s Called Giving a Shit!” What Counts as “Politics”?’ In Jenkins, Henry, Shresthova, Sagita, Gamber-Thompson, Liane, Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta, and Zimmerman, Arely M. By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism. New York: New York University Press. pp. 253–289. Johnson, Dominique Deirdre. 2015. ‘Misogynoir and Antiblack Racism: What The Walking Dead Teaches Us About the Limits of Speculative Fiction Fandom.’ Journal of Fandom Studies. 3(3). pp. 259–275. Johnson, Paul Elliott. 2017. ‘Walter White(ness) Lashes Out: Breaking Bad and Male Victimage.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication. 34(1). pp. 14–28. Jowett, Lorna and Abbott, Stacey. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London: I.B. Tauris. Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta. 2016. ‘“Decreasing World Suck”: Harnessing Popular Culture for Fan Activism.’ In Jenkins, Henry, Shresthova, Sangita, Gamber-Thompson, Liana, Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta, and Zimmerman, Arley M. By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism. New York: New York University Press. pp. 102–148. Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta and Thorson, Kjerstin. 2015. ‘Good Citizenship as a Frame Contest: Kony2012, Memes, and Critiques of the Networked Citizen.’ New Media and Society. pp. 1–19. Knobel, Michele and Lankshear, Colin. 2008. ‘Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization.’ Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 52(1). pp. 22–33. Kohnen, Melanie E. S. 2018b. ‘Tumblr Pedagogies.’ In Booth, Paul (ed). A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 351–367. Kozinets, Robert V. 2015. Netnography: Redefined. Second Edition. London: Sage. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Lay, Samantha. 2007. ‘Good Intentions, High Hopes and Low Budgets: Contemporary Social Realist Film-Making in Britain.’ New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. 5(3). pp. 231–244. Lessig, Lawrence. 2004. ‘Free(ing) Culture for Remix.’ Utah Law Review. 4. pp. 961–975.

262 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Lewerenz, Ellie. 2019. ‘“Adapt. Evolve. Become.”: Queering Red Dragon in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal.’ In Mudan Finn, Kavita and Nielsen, EJ (eds). Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. pp. 54–73. Lobato, Ramon and Thomas, Julian. 2015. The Informal Media Economy. Cambridge: Polity. Martin, Daniel. 2015. Extreme Asia: The Rise of Cult Cinema From the Far East. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Milner, Kate M. 2014. ‘“There’s No Place for Lulz on LOLCats”: The Role of Genre, Gender, and Group Identity in the Interpretation and Enjoyment of an Internet Meme.’ First Monday. 19(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i8.5391 Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. Morimoto, Lori and Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2018. ‘Tumblr and Fandom.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 27. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1580 Nakayama, Thomas K. 2017. ‘What’s Next for Whiteness and the Internet.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication. 34(1). pp. 68–72. Nelson, Robin. 2007. State of Play: Contemporary “High-End” TV Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Newman, Kathleen. 2010. ‘Notes on Transnational Film Theory: Decentered Subjectivity, Decentered Globalization.’ In Ďurovičá, Nataša and Newman, Kathleen (eds). World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. London: Routledge. pp. 3–11. Newman, Michael Z. 2014. ‘Say “Pulp Fiction” One More Goddamn Time: Quotation Culture and an Internet-Age Classic.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 12(2). pp. 125–142. Pande, Rukmini. 2018. Squee From the Margins: Fandom and Race. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Paul, William. 1994. Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy. New York: Columbia University Press. Pavlíčková, Tereza and Kleut, Jelena. 2016. ‘Produsage as Experience and Interpretation.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 13(1). pp. 349–359. Perez, Nistasha. 2013. ‘Gif Fics and The Rebloggable Canon of SuperWhoLock.’ In Booth, Paul (ed). Fan Phenomena: Doctor Who. Bristol: Intellect. pp. 148–157. Pett, Emma. 2017. ‘Transnational Cult Paratexts: Exploring Audience Readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme Brand.’ Transnational Cinemas. 8(1). pp. 35–48. Pinedo, Isabel C. 1997. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. Albany: State University of New York Press. Redmon, Allen H. 2015. ‘“After Everything I’ve Seen…”: Rewatching Shutter Island as a Knowing Audience.’ Adaptation. 8(2). pp. 254–267.

Spreadable Spl atter: T V Horror’s Online Fans’ Image Tex tualit y

263

Rendell, James. 2019a. ‘Black (Anti)Fandom’s Intersectional Politicization of The Walking Dead as a Transmedia Franchise.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1477 Rendell, James. 2019b. ‘A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Corpses: Audiences’ Affective Engagement With In the Flesh and The Walking Dead Through Online Image Practices.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 16(2). pp. 88–117. Rendell, James, 2021a. ‘“I Am (Not) Major”: Anti-fan Memes of Paramount Pictures’ Ghost in the Shell Marketing Campaign.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 19(2). pp. 173–199. Savage, Christina. 2014. ‘Chuck Versus the Ratings: Savvy Fans and “Save Our Show” Campaigns.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 15. https://doi.org/10.3983/ twc.2014.0497 Schär, Andrew. 2014. ‘Color Theory & Hannibal.’ Medium. 18th August. https:// medium.com/@AndrewSchar/color-theory-hannibal-b19c9d07c892#:~:​ text=Hannibal%20%E2%80%93%20Color%20Theory%20At%20It’s%20 Best&text=In%20this%20case%2C%20a%20kind,the%20same%​20color)%20 are%20used [Accessed 4 April 2023] Schreiber, Maria. 2017. ‘Showing/Sharing: Analysing Visual Communication From a Praxeological Perspective.’ Media and Communication. 5(4). pp. 37–50. Simpson, Edgar. 2017. ‘Converged Conversations: A Case Study of Journalism and Digital Commentary in the Public Sphere.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 23(2). pp. 132–147. Sobchack, Vivian. 2004a. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Staiger, Janet. 2000. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. New York: New York University Press. Steele, Catherine Knight. 2018. ‘Black Bloggers and Their Varied Publics: The Everyday Politics of Black Discourse Online.’ Television and New Media. 19(2). pp. 112–127. Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2015. Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age. Iowa: University of Iowa Press. Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2018. ‘Tumblr Fan Aesthetics.’ In Click, Melissa A. and Scott, Suzanne (eds). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. London: Routledge. pp. 86–97. Tosenberger, Catherine. 2008. ‘Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts: Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction.’ Children’s Literature. 36(1). pp. 185–207. van Zoonen, Liesbet. 2005. Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

264 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Ward, Rachel Mizsei. 2013. ‘Plushies, My Little Cthulhu and Chibithulhu: The Transformation of Cthulhu From Horrif ic Body to Cute Body.’ Irish Gothic Journal. (12). pp. 87–106. Warner, Kristen J. and Rendell, James. 2021. ‘The Politics of Casting and Media Fandom: A Conversation between Kristen Warner and James Rendell.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. https://nrftsjournal.org/the-politics-ofcasting/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Wee, Valerie. 2014. Japanese Horror Films and Their American Remakes: Translating Fear, Adapting Culture. London: Routledge. Whiteman, Natasha and Metivier, Joanne. 2013. ‘From Post-Object to “Zombie” Fandoms: The “Deaths” of Online Fan Communities and What They Say About Us.’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 10(1). pp. 270–298. Williams, Linda. 2004. ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.’ In Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall (eds). Film Theory and Criticism: Sixth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 727–741. Williams, Rebecca. 2011. ‘“This Is the Night TV Died”: Television Post-Object Fandom and the Demise of The West Wing.’ Popular Communication. 9(4). pp. 266–279. Williams, Rebecca. 2015. Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative. London: Bloomsbury. Williams, Rebecca. 2018. ‘Tumblr’s GIF Culture and the Infinite Image: Lone Fandom, Ruptures, and Working Through on a Microblogging Platform.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 27. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1153. Woods, Faye. 2016. British Youth Television: Transnational Teens, Industry, Genre. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Zhao, Xuan and Lindley, Siân E. 2014. ‘Curation Through Use: Understanding the Personal Value of Social Media.’ Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 2431–244.

6. Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtracks as Materialities of Transmedia TV Horror Abstract This chapter explores tactile transmedia as a significant aspect of official TV horror content and fan-made transtexts, arguing abject spectrums shape audiences’ crafted content. The chapter analyses official TV horror cookbooks as tentpole texts, unofficial cookbooks bestowed with creative freedom, and fan-authored comestibles that employ the abject gaze where food is both disgusting and delicious. The chapter then locates horror TV soundtracks within the twenty-first century boom in vinyl collecting, engendering audio-centric quality TV discourse. Furthermore, transmedia fosters co-branding between portals making TV horror and record labels distributing soundtracks via shifting configurations of textual clustering. Finally, the chapter examines fans’ mockup designs of TV horror soundtracks, employing what I term ‘paratextural poaching’, adopting aesthetic congruity between transtexts and official media. Keywords: abject spectrum, tactile transmedia, fan crafting, cook books, vinyl, paratextural poaching

Thus far, the monograph has predominantly framed post-TV’s transmediality in digital and/or online forms. But while such cross-media networks are paramount to horror television and twenty-first century TV in general, Freeman and Gambarato assert that ‘beyond the digital domain, transmediality can and should involve a variety of alternative combinations between online and offline platforms’ (2019, p. 4). This is because ‘the possibilities to enrich the audience experience via offline activities, live events, and analogue initiatives, are immense because they can dramatically contribute to (1) the feeling of immersion, (2) the sense of belonging, and (3) the emotional

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_ch06

266 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

response of audiences’ (ibid.). The offline and analogue are equally as significant to post-TV horror transmedia as digital new media, yet the former is often neglected in favour of stressing the latter. Addressing this oversight, Chapter 6 focuses on physical real world transmedia. Relatedly, while Chapter 5 located audiences’ image transtexts within online media’s visual turn, Fan Studies has often ‘privilege[d] textual over tactile engagement’ (Rehak, 2014), neglecting more craft-based practices (Hills, 2009) and ‘object-oriented’ fans (Santo, 2018). Dovetailing these two points, this chapter explores two instances of offline material transmediality that cultivates a more holistic understanding of the post-TV horror (trans) media landscape, introduces novel fan practices and creativity, and further develops notions of horror audience affect understood through the abject spectrum model: the continuum of emotional/corporeal, ideological, and aesthetic affective responses to screen media horror. The first section of this chapter centres on food as a particular fan craft that takes an intriguing line of inquiry when applied to horror. Highlighting a lack of study into food in horror media (Piatti-Farnell, 2017, pp. 9–11), Piatti-Farnell states that, ‘[a]s far a cinematic representation is concerned, food horror emerges as part of a continuous cultural trend that throws the consuming body into sharp relief’ (2011, p. 262). Similarly, signposting that ‘[t]he role of food within fandoms remains relatively under-explored’ (2020, p. 26), Williams argues that experiencing comestibles – in this case, both making and consuming – as ‘hyperdiegetic paratexts’, ‘fans are invited to imagine the experiences of characters within a storyworld and offered the possibility of extending their own imaginative engagement through the possibility of sensory immersion through food and drink’ (ibid.). Addressing both authors’ statements, the chapter explores how foodstuffs, recipes, and culinary crafts are contextualized and imbued with meaning (Barthes, 2009, pp. 89–91), by first establishing foods and eating as expositional devices and their abject potential that support audience media immersion. Employing Godwin’s (2021) taxonomy of food craft, the chapter then argues that the making and consuming of food are acts of ‘tactile transmedia’ (Gilligan, 2012), where objects bridge ‘the gap between the virtual “worlds” on-screen and the lived material body [of the fan]’ (ibid., p. 25). Subsequently, the chapter analyses licensed TV horror cookbooks that support mimetic fan crafts via culinary instruction and fan knowledge via extra-textual features. In doing so, authorized cookbooks extend the affective range beyond shows’ horror schema. Switching attention to the creative freedom bestowed unofficial recipes based on horror television illustrates how food can affirm storyworlds, provide sources for textual

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

267

poaching and expanding hyperdiegeses, and be ingredients for parodying the genre that plays on fan knowledge. Moreover, fans’ own authored creations based on, or inspired by, TV horror see an employment of an ‘abject gaze’ (Pierson, 2010) that mimetically supports reference texts’ horrality whilst ‘translocating’ (Chiaro, 2008) edible ingredients that fosters sensory incongruity: food that appears abject but tastes delicious. Considering food as totemic objects for horror crafting that supports tactile transmedia, the chapter locates their production and consumption within the private spaces of fans’ homes and/or as part of the multi-sensorial milieu of fan-created local events. This ephemeral housing of fan crafting, performance, and socialization encourages us to ‘challenge the dominant view of transmediality as something that flows across and between different media spaces’ (Williams, 2020, p. 12), instead placing emphasis on transmedia as embodied and/or spatially-rooted (Hills, 2017a). The second section turns an ear to horror music and the remediation of audiovisual soundtracks to analogue vinyl. There is perhaps a danger in stressing the increased realistic spectacle of violence and gore that has become so popular in twenty-first century horror television that sound and music are relegated to ‘background’ (Donnelly, 2005, p. 36) or ‘additive’ textual features (Kalinak, 2010, pp. 20–21). However, as the chapter demonstrates, soundscapes are fundamental to the genre and in activating the various aspects of audiences’ abject spectrums. Moreover, audiences ‘actively listening to a score […] challenges the soundtrack’s hierarchical status by placing sound equal with screen’ (McCorkie, 2016, p. 180), as can the materiality and textual facets of the media formats they are converted to. As with DVD and Blu-ray’s crucialness ‘to transmedia storytelling […] bringing weight to different pieces of a story via commodification’ (Freeman and Proctor, 2017, p. 165), vinyl as another (home) format, I argue, enhances textual experience by adding weight, and thus value, to TV horror’s sonic stories. Operating within ‘the dialogue between musical production and the media artefacts […] individual [vinyl soundtrack] texts are connected in an intermedia relationship to other texts in the network […] [serving] the cohesive narrative that emerges in and through the transmedia platform’ (Burns and McLaren, 2020, p. 395). The chapter examines the ‘text-function’ (Hills, 2007) of televisual vinyl culture, demonstrating vinyl’s materiality offers media convergence as a site of listening to, gazing at, and reading about TV horror. This first locates the audio conversion of television horror within the wider vinyl revival that dialogically gains meaning in relation to media’s increased digitization that instil quality cult value into the analogue format and its musical content. The chapter then looks at soundtracks for

268 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Twin Peaks and Stranger Things released on vinyl yet not converted from antecedent audiovisual content. Instead, these original releases act as acoustic transmedia storytelling texts. Switching from the audial to material, the chapter argues that vinyl’s auratic features – packaging size, album artwork, composers’ author-functionality, extra-textual features, vinyl design and colourations, and limited release – all work to amplify value in soundtracks and the parent TV horror texts. Contextualizing the format’s auratic merit against wider industry cultures, the chapter highlights how vinyl soundtracks serve channel/portal branding and the record labels producing the analogue releases as an instance of co-branding that reduces financial risk. The chapter ends by analysing how such scopophilic auratic elements are incorporated into fans’ own vinyl mockups of TV horror soundtracks who integrate series’ official paratexts into their own designs as a form of what I term paratextural poaching. In doing so, these mimetic acts stress the material and haptic qualities of transmedia even if the vinyl themselves are never produced. In keeping with this book’s theoretical underpinning, I frame the experientiality of foodstuff and sound as phenomenologically bound to the body (see Piatti-Farnell, 2011; Cassidy, 2016; Stilwell, 2005). As such, the chapter considers how these textual qualities feed into abject spectrums, but also how these affective schemas are encoded and/or played with by fans crafting and the materiality of offline/analogue transmedia.

You Are What You Eat: Food, Culture, and (Trans)media At its most fundamental level, food is a prerequisite for the survival of all living beings. Yet, as Piatti-Farnell notes, ‘the significance of food […] extends far beyond the essential nature of physical nourishment’ (2011, p. 1). Foodstuff is enmeshed within identity ‘(national, ethnic, gender, generational)’ (Dirks and Hunter, 2013, p. 5), and culturally contextualized through gastronomic rituals (Douglas, 1972). Foods are also loci for bringing people together for intimate social and familial gatherings or the catalyst for immersing oneself into other cultures (Reinhard et al., 2021). With this, ‘the very experience of food can be understood as both a mediated and mediating force in establishing an interrelated and psychically sound connection with the outside world’ (Piatti-Farnell, 2017, p. 122). This is most stark in culinary-centred genres such as cookery programmes and food films (see Murray, 2013; Lindenfeld and Parasecoli, 2016). Yet beyond food-centric media, gastronomy is a central expositional device within all manner of texts. Foods reveal ‘aspects of characters’

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

269

emotions, identities, cultural backgrounds, fears, and aspirations’ (Bower and Piontek, 2013, p. 177). This is exemplified in Hannibal by the eponymous character’s taste for haute cuisine. Foodstuff can also ‘indicate setting – frequently revealing the national, regional, urban, rural, and class aspects of a [storyworld]’ (ibid.) – for example, the sweets and confectioneries that form part of Stranger Things’ nostalgic tableaux of 1980s North America. Finally, foodways can advance plots (ibid.), such as how comestibles have been read as hermeneutic objects that serve Twin Peaks’ surreal mysteries (Hageman, 2015; Piatti-Farnell, 2016; Boulègue, 2017). Furthermore, the audiovisual aestheticization of food in media can ‘evoke an array of sensorial stimuli and somatic reactions – from hunger to thirst, from flavour to texture’ (Piatti-Farnell, 2017, p. 20). Lindenfeld and Parasecoli concur, stating that ‘[o]ur enjoyment of food images […] makes us hungry for “real food,” just as “real food” makes us hunger for mediated images of food. When we feast our eyes, we feast’ (2016, p. 19). But the ingestion and taste – both sensorial and social – of food also has its abject counterpart. Fittingly, in one of the earliest examples of abjection Kristeva discusses her personal recounting of tasting sour milk as a child (1982, pp. 3–4). This, I have previously argued, evidences phenomenological liminality (see Introduction). Similar responses can also be aesthetically demarcated (e.g. food that is visually and miasmically rotten). Certainly, as much as it is essential to life, ‘[f]ood is also the object of major anxiety, for what and how we eat may be the single most important cause of disease and death’ (Belasco, 2008, p. 2). Consuming that which is inedible or toxic, for example, endangers our existence. Moreover, certain foodstuffs or the cooking of specific ingredients are coded as ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966). This may be linked to one’s identity (e.g. being vegetarian or vegan) and/or culturally delineated (e.g. avoiding particular meats or eating animals classified as pets) (Fiddes, 1991; Falk, 1994). Indeed, diet is a salient marker for constructing the Other, evident in the fabricated colonial myths of cannibalism used to exploit and subjugate non-white indigenous populations (Nadkarni and Pande, 2019). Consequently, while I conceptualize abject spectrums as an affective model for audience engagement with horror screen media, the model also resonates with other experiential instances between the self and the world within which it exists. Moreover, as with the mediation of food that provides textual exposition, abject foodways are common narrative devices. This is particularly apt for horror media via tropes such as: ‘terrible food, nauseating food spectacles, hideous appetites, appalling eating, uncomfortable meals and awful food relationships. These layered strategies seek to make us think about and also

270 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

feel something in relation to the dark side of food and eating presented in horror texts’ (Kimber, 2016, pp. 125–126). Foodways in horror texts frequently subvert binaries between the edible and the inedible, throwing into sharp relief cultural food rules. Harnessing horror’s body genre qualities, this manifests in three, often interconnected, ways: 1) a fixation on orality, 2) consuming that which is abject, and 3) victims becoming the dish of the day for the monstrous Other(s). As such, this mode of horror plays with its food, instilling, Piatti-Farnell argues, ‘disgust and revulsion [in audiences]’ (2017, p. 13) by tapping into subjective memories of eating, social anxieties surrounding harmful digestion, and cultural avoidances of that which is ‘yuck’ (Belasco, 2008, p. 16). Resultantly, foodways – whether enticing or abject – form central textual nodes for audience immersion that viewers’ abject spectrums can respond to. We might be horrified or our stomach turn at diegetic consumption, we might allegorically read into a text the construction of foodstuffs, or marvel at the aesthetic qualities of comestibles and how they are ‘brought to life’ onscreen. Likewise, diegetic foodstuffs foster active fan engagement through the acts of eating and cooking. As Reinhard et al. argue, ‘[e]ating the food represented in the text allows the fan to experience a different type of emotional attachment – a more sensual attachment that allows them to increase their identification with the text’ (2021, p. 10). Moreover, culinary creation based on extant storyworlds can be understood as a form of fan craft. Bode explains that fan crafters ‘express their involvement in their chosen fandoms by making things by hand, sometimes to sell, sometimes to giveaway, sometimes to keep’ (2014). Godwin (2021) adds further depth to transmedia food craft via a taxonomy of cookery practices: 1) the ‘linked’ category attaches ordinary food and drink to the storyworld without any transformative action required. 2) ‘Themed’ foods create inedible diegetic objects out of edible ingredients. 3) ‘Inspired’ foods are original creations that utilize the storyworld as inspiration that would not look out of place within the diegesis. 4) With ‘re-created’ comestibles, fans replicate storyworld food as closely as possible. Such nomenclature is salient when turning to horror television official cookbooks, unofficial recipes, and fan-constructed craft. Within all types of TV horror food craft, foodstuffs’ scenographic composition is anchored to the parent text, whereby the fan-as-cook or fan-as-diner ‘becomes a co-producer in the dramaturgy of the meal’ (Abrams, 2013, p. 9). Consequently, food objects are ‘key expositional object[s] and “diegetic portal[s]”’ (Atkinson, 2019, p. 19) that foster tactile transmediality (Gilligan, 2012), where ‘a media text is extended into the material world through […] tangible products, creating opportunities for fans to continue exploring a

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

271

storyworld even as their homes […] become part of said world’ (Santo, 2018, p. 330). Such hyperdiegetic exploration, expansion, and melding can be found in a range of official, unofficial, and fan-authored transmedial foodstuffs.

Official TV Horror Cookbooks Officially licensed TV horror cookbooks frequently support food recreation through culinary mimesis, where ‘fan foodies […] feel their way into fictional heterocosms’ (Steur, 2021, p. 164). Hills conceptualizes mimetic fandom as centring on ‘material culture and haptic presence but indicates the value of a framing immateriality, namely the cult world’ (2014c). For mimetic fandom to produce ‘a desired bridging of text and reality’ (ibid.), objects require markers of accuracy that evince textual authenticity (ibid.; Godwin, 2015). Applied to food fan craft, accuracy-cum-authenticity manifests in various discourses within official TV horror culinary literature. With Hannibal, ‘food is the best medium to illustrate the blurred boundaries between art and barbarism’ (Ewoldt, 2019, p. 240). Janice Poon is the show’s food stylist and author of Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur’s Cookbook (2016). Poon’s insider status as above-the-line creative and subcultural celebrity chef within the fannibal community provides professional authenticity within the book’s ‘foodscape’ (see Johnston and Goodman, 2015). This is first demonstrated in the foreword where Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal) discusses working with Poon. Mikkelsen writes that, ‘[b]esides being the sweetest person you could ever run across, Janice turned out to be a master teacher […] a master chef’ (in Poon, 2016, p. 7). He adds that, ‘[w]hilst the actor spends 15 seconds on screen […] taking all the credit, Janice and her team would spend days making each dish look splendid and taste fantastic’ (ibid.). Displayed at the bottom of the page, Mikkelsen’s signature acts as an authorial signifier of Poon’s qualities. This is ingeminated in the afterword where Michelin-starred chef José Andrés – Hannibal’s culinary consultant – praises Poon’s skills (in Poon, 2016, p. 235). Consequently, Mikkelsen’s subcultural cachet and Andrés’ professional prestige authenticate Poon and the cookbook. Secondly, as ‘[a] recipe is […] an embedded discourse […] [with] a variety of relationships with its frame’ (Leonardi, 1989, p. 340), the pages of Feeding Hannibal are polysemic in their bids for ‘authentic’ mimesis. Notably, the cookbook’s foodways dialogically support the show and characterization. Recipes retell diegetic narratives where the scene and character(s) contextualize the recipes. An array of high-end and unusual ingredients

272 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

reflect Hannibal’s elevated tastes including: lamb’s testicles, duck foie gras, Burgundian snails, frogs’ legs, caviar, pork hearts, calf’s head, pig tails, Wagyu beef, various bloods, and veal lung – which Poon indicates is not available in all countries. Moreover, Poon adds further subtext to her choice of ingredients that semiotically enrichens Hannibal. For example, she explains pomegranates quintessentialize Hannibal as an anti-hero given the fruit’s signification within Greek mythology as ‘beautiful and tempting but full of seeds of retribution (2016, p. 188). The tail-end of the book also instructs ‘[h]ow to Hannibalize Your Table’ (ibid., pp. 212–213), where fans can craft their own Gothic table decorations and receptacles that mimic Hannibal’s gastronomic spectacle. This is supported by photography of the foods that mirror the show’s food porn aesthetic, whereby close-up shots longingly linger on food preparation and exquisite meals. Concurrent to diegetic mimesis, Poon gives pedagogy surrounding ingredients’ sociohistorical lineage, for example how ‘[a]ncient Romans considered snails an elite food’ (ibid., p. 42), and mid-1900s French grape harvesters would eat snails cooked in ‘a small fire in a patch of grass’ (ibid.). This provides both gastronomical and scholarly authenticity to her creations. Yet for fans to partake in such delicacies requires a level of economic and culinary capital, and access to specialist food stores (see also Reinhard and Ganguly, 2021, pp. 84–85). However, the book is more than a cooking manual. In contrast to media texts’ heterotopic erasure of material labour (Chung, 2018), Feeding Hannibal’s authenticity is anchored to the artifice of textual creation whereby Poon gives extra-textual knowledge about the making of Hannibal. This includes behind-the-scenes stories: e.g. Mikkelsen’s skilful execution of an extremely difficult egg-cracking trick (2016, p. 19), the difficulty of acquiring sea urchin out of season (ibid., p. 178), and her inspirations: e.g. Gogol’s novel Dead Souls’ (1842) zakouski for her Russian Kholodets (2016, p. 50). Alongside stills that depict production, Poon’s pencil sketches of dishes provide further personalization to her work and visualize the procedural nature of recipe creation. Consequently, the autobiographical nature of cookbooks (Hastie, 2006) allows for Poon to inscribe Feeding Hannibal with personal authenticity that brings fans closer to the storyworld and places them inside Hannibal’s production culture. Compared to Feeding Hannibal’s bounty of delicacies, The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook and Survival Guide (Wilson, 2017) (OCaSG) is framed by The Walking Dead’s (TWD) post-apocalyptic hyperdiegesis. Combining the scarcity of sustenance with a necessity for returning to rural foodways, mimetic authenticity is linked to the practicalities of culinary craft. This is exemplified in OCaSG’s first section, ‘Food Survival Basics’ (ibid., pp. 10–33).

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

273

The chapter highlights the provisions one needs including non-perishable food, equipment, and medical supplies. Consequently, food is a proairetic device driving the action discussed within the pages by forcing survivors to scavenge, grow, and barter for items or resolve conflict as enemies endeavour to pilfer caches. The chapter also provides hunting and fishing, fire building, foraging, and food preservation skills. These actions are supported by stills from TWD that depict characters undertaking such acts. Equally, the book’s aesthetic mimics the show’s survival motif as the pages appear stained, damaged, and worn to give the veneer that the guide has been well-used during the apocalypse. Located within the growing popularity of zombie literature (Bishop, 2015, pp. 12–13; Collins and Bond, 2011), OCaSG is part of the cycle or subgenre that ‘anticipate[s] and desire[s] the dead rising and unhinging societal order’ (Vossen, 2014, p. 92). Like the cookbook’s ‘non-fictional’ instructions, texts such as The Zombie Survival Guide (Brooks, 2003) inform audiences how to not only survive but flourish within the apocalypse that escapes ‘the drudgery [and trepidation] of capitalism’ (Vossen, 2014, p. 92). However, despite TWD’s central zombie threat, the undead feature very little in OCaSG – five stills from the series located primarily in the ‘Food Survival Basics’ chapter. Rather, TWD’s melodramatic concern for human interaction within the post-apocalypse, often facilitated by meals, frames the book’s foodscape. Therefore, unlike the plethora of Walking Dead transmedia that stress zombie horror (Hassler-Forest, 2016), TWD’s post-Western generics (Keeler, 2018) propagate the North American frontier ‘good life’. Doing so, the cookbook’s foodways conjure the ‘rural mystique’. This ‘defines open country and small town living as good, wholesome, and beautiful, and views urban living as comparatively unnatural and undesirable’ (Willits, 1993, p. 160). Fittingly, the latter has been allegorized onto the post-Romero zombie (e.g. Briefel, 2011; Murphy, 2011; Vint, 2013). Such ‘rural nostalgia’ romanticizes pre-industrial communities over individualistic technologized present-day (Bunce, 1994, p. 29). This is particularly evident in OCaSG’s presentation of family. For example, Lori’s pancakes made for Rick and Carl (Wilson, 2017, p. 37), the Greene farm as ‘a little slice of pastoral heaven’ (ibid., p. 65), and Amy and Andrea reminiscing about their father as they fish (ibid., p. 53) all perpetuate idealized familial narratives over the plight of humankind. Even when OCaSG discusses human threats, recipes still perpetuate the jouissance of eating. For example, ‘Carl’s Biscuits’ discusses how after trying to assassinate Negan, Carl was forced to bake the perfect biscuits with the method provided (ibid., p. 83). Furthermore, recipes’ nostalgic bent is visually supported by rustic imagery: placing

274 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

foodstuffs in steel dishes on well-worn wooden tables, bathed in sepia tones and idyllic lighting that evokes frontier simplicity and homeliness. Likewise, shots of Rick tending to communal gardens and Daryl with his bow present frontier masculinity that shuns modern technological apparatus as they provide for others as hunter-gatherers. OCaSG’s mimetic authenticity is, therefore, mapped onto the closeness one has with food through survival techniques and the bonding surrounding meals via a postmodern (re)turn to an imagined and heavily mediated depiction of America’s past that runs counter to the alienating McDonaldization of present-day consumer culture (see Ritzer, 1996). Consequently, the cookbook widens the transmedia franchise’s affective grid beyond horror generics. These licensed transmedia cookbooks nuance Clarke’s ‘tentpole TV’ model that harnesses long-tail economics to produce official narrative expansion through ‘any number of off-broadcast iterations from online to traditional print and video games’ (2010, p. 123). Textual offshoots are frequently directed at fans as the ‘visual and narrative sophistication of tentpole TV in all its manifestations begs […] [for] more minute analysis’ (Clarke, 2013, p. 7). Resultantly, food serves as the ‘mastermind narration’ (Clarke, 2010, p. 124) between the show and literature, either by replicating food from the storyworlds or depicting food inspired – and officially sanctioned – by the show. Yet transmedia cookbooks also ‘interpellate the reader to participate in an embodied and empowered experience of consumption [through the act of cooking]’ (Magladry, 2018, p. 113). Consequently, official cookbooks support mimetic culinary craft as both transformative and affirmational (Steur, 2021, p. 169). That said, fans are not entirely beholden to a recipe and are free to adapt cooking techniques and/or substitute ingredients – for example, switching meat for vegetarian or vegan alternatives. Such creative flexibility is also present in unofficial cookbooks.

Unofficial Cookbooks The agreement between publishers of licensed tentpole official cookbooks and producers of parent texts offers certain cachet that supports mimetic food craft through high-end production, use of ‘insider’ sources/creatives, and access to content production. Yet fans often utilize both formal and informal paratexts to enhance their engagement with the hyperdiegesis (e.g. Prastya, 2020). Alongside a range of informal popular culture cookery literature that is often self-published, there are several unofficial TV horror cookbooks including: X-Files, Supernatural, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries,

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

275

and several Stranger Things publications. Sharon Powell’s Cheesecake Ripper!: Unofficial Hannibal Cookbook (2020) provides a generalization of these independent texts. The book opens by directly hailing a fan disposition, asking ‘[d]o you love Hannibal? Are you a fan of his culinary acumen? Do you wish to recreate some of his popular dishes? You have come to the right place!’ (ibid., p. 6). Compared to Feeding Hannibal’s focus on professional voices and production cultures, this interpellation firmly situates Cheesecake Ripper as a ‘“cookbook for fans” which is first a fan product and a cookbook second, and emphasizes the importance of play, negotiative reading and performance in its consumption’ (Magladry, 2018, p. 112). This is reflected in the book’s simplicity and shortness. Whereas Poon’s 153 examples stress diegetic fidelity, Powell’s thirty recipes are less specific. For example, stating that ‘[o]ne of the most iconic moments of the show is Hannibal sniffing his wine before taking a sip’ (Powell, 2020, p. 8), Powell’s Wine Sangria requires ‘1 bottle [of] good quality wine’ (ibid., p. 9) with minimal instruction for concocting the beverage. Likewise, compared to Feeding Hannibal’s visual mirroring of the show’s food porn stylization, Cheesecake Ripper’s imagery basically depicts comestibles. Again, the onus is on the reader to make the aesthetic link between the literature’s imagery and the parent text it is inspired from. Avoiding reductive official and unofficial hierarchies of transmedia value (Godwin, 2021), the latter’s generalization provides space for play as readers can choose the ingredients and how they prepare them, informed by their own knowledge of Hannibal. Other unofficial cookbooks incorporate food craft into wider fan experientiality and storyworld immersion. For example, Damn Fine Cherry Pie: The Unauthorised Cookbook Inspired By the TV Show Twin Peaks (Bowden, 2016) (DFCP) combines the tactile – instructions for Twin Peaks gastronomy, themed events, fashion, and even owl origami – with the textual – details about the show’s production, awards won, and information about David Lynch – facilitating different modes of craft and subcultural capital. Like Cheesecake Ripper, DFCP quickly interpellates pre-existing fandoms, where Bowden uses the Introduction as an autobiographical performance of love for Twin Peaks. A book by a fan for fans, DFCP seeks subcultural authenticity via interpellative coalescence whereby the speaker discursively aligns themself with the desired recipients being hailed. Inspiration is framed as both Bowden’s authorial voice and a verb for fans using the paratext for corporeal storyworld immersion. Characters frequently contextualize comestibles where their names form part of recipes’ titles. Yet little accompanying narratization is given, relying on audience familiarity as loci for

276 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

intratextual connections between DFCP and Twin Peaks. For instance, ‘Lucy Moran’s Coffee Donuts’ (ibid., p. 96) is a reference to the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department receptionist who provides pastries and coffee to officers and Agent Cooper. Equally, whereas official cookbooks visually replicate shows via stills, DFCP relies on fan knowledge as its visual schema makes totemic nods to Twin Peaks. Food is displayed alongside iconography such as owls, taxidermy, logs, a lipstick, and wood façade that provide semiotic anchoring between the scenography and dramaturgy of the recipes (see Abrams, 2013). Finally, DFCP supports transmedia worldbuilding by dedicating a section to the White Lodge. Mentioned in Twin Peaks by Hawk and Garland Briggs, Bowden ‘furnishes’ the White Lodge1 by creating several meals inspired by the Lodge’s ethos of ‘love, purity, goodness and honesty’ (Bowden, 2016, p. 112); the antithesis of the infamous Black Lodge. The Lodge’s philosophy is reflected in the recipes that centre on healthy ‘wholesome food’ (ibid.) that would be served there. Mimetic food fan craft is, therefore, supported by tactile inspiration embodied by fans faithfully affirming the existing hyperdiegesis and in undertaking transformative culinary cartography they map and enrich un(der)explored parts of the storyworld. Other unofficial cookbooks less interested in mimetic craft, nor bound by mastermind narration to parent texts, are bestowed creative freedom unafforded to official counterparts. This is evident in Stranger Fillings (The Muffin Brothers, 2017) and The Walking Bread (Grains, 2016) that parody Stranger Things and TWD, respectively. Denith explains that parody ‘should be thought of, not as a single and tightly definable genre or practice, but as a range of cultural practices which are all more or less parodic’ (2000, p. 9). In this case, recipes as ‘hypertexts’ transform ‘hypotextual’ TV storyworlds (ibid., p. 13) into themed foodstuff. Furthermore, Hutcheon (2000, p. 32) argues against a transhistorical understanding of parody. Specifically, these cookbooks’ parodic humour derives from the graphic horror TV spectacle that has arisen in the second millennium, where ironic distance plays with and compounds media abjection with twee baked goods. For instance, the portmanteaus ‘Demogorgon-Zola Tartlets’ (The Muffin Brothers, 2017, p. 16) and ‘Zombéclair (Grains, 2016, p. 20) depict antagonistic diegetic monsters as edible treats. Compared to official cookbooks’ mimetic depictions, these parody cookbooks employ aesthetic incongruity much like cute fans artworks’ inversion of horror media (see Chapter 5), signposting the artifice of their themed food objects. Likewise, both paratexts use baking 1 DFCP was published in 2016, one year prior to Twin Peaks: The Returned which would depict the White Lodge.

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

277

to depict objects and scenes from the parent texts, such as Negan’s baseball bat Lucille in TWD (Grains, 2016, pp. 119–123) and Hopper traversing the Upside Down in Stranger Things (The Muffin Brothers, 2017, pp. 114–119). Hutcheon contends that parody, whilst comedic, is sophisticated since it requires audiences to decode the ‘bitextual synthesis’ (2000, p. 33) between hypotext and hypertext. Parody’s criterion of recognition and interpretation discursively harnesses fan knowledge where the cookbooks’ themed foods, which despite being relatively simple craft manuals, quote the parent texts, necessitating detailed and ongoing understandings of the latter’s complex narratives. This is particularly salient for The Walking Bread since its layout follows TWD’s first six seasons. Finally, Hutcheon states that parody subverts ‘artistic originality and uniqueness and […] capitalist notions of ownership’ (2002, p. 89). Indeed, fan-authored craft echoes such sentiments.

Fan-authored Creations Compared to the guidance of official and unofficial cookbooks, fan-authored craft is informed by parent texts’ ‘direct’ and ‘suggested’ horror (Hanich, 2010) as primary source material in the creation of foodstuff.2 Doing so, fans employ an ‘abject gaze’ that voyeuristically fixates on the corpse and corporeal trauma (Pierson, 2010; Penfold-Mounce, 2016), whilst paradoxically stressing the jouissance of food. A similar argument is made of food porn, which McDonnell explains ‘is a set of visual aesthetics that emphasizes the pleasurable, sensual dimensions of food’ (2016, p. 239), which ‘leverages the attraction of unfamiliar and increasingly unattainable standards of foods’ (ibid., p. 242). McDonnell adds that as an aesthetic, food porn is a gaze learnt by users and reiterated in subsequent social media output (ibid., pp. 246–247). Blending culinary and subcultural capital, TV horror fans’ scopic regimes activate similar affective schema as they incorporate screen texts’ visual and aesthetic abjection into their ‘unfamiliar’ edibles. For example, Catherine Barson Eastis has created inspired and recreated dishes from horror screen media, including American Horror Story, Beetlejuice, Hocus Pocus (Ortega 1993), and The Babadook (Kent 2014). Her recreation of ‘Gnocchi Stuffed with Medulla Oblongata in a Fra Diavolo Sauce (with pureed neuro tissue for that silky texture)’ (Barson Eastis, 2016) from iZombie (S1, E4) faithfully depicts the diegetic meal. As with parts of Poon’s Feeding Hannibal, whilst this craft foregrounds mimetic aesthetic 2

Audience data from food blogs.

278 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

verisimilitude ergo visual authenticity, the central inedible food horror of human brains is not translated from screen to plate. Therefore, such food craft as an immersive act requires ‘translocation’. As Chiaro explains: in its translocation from source to target culture, changes will inevitably occur in the cook’s (translator’s) quest for equivalence […] [They] just find equivalent or near-equivalent ingredients and thus consider substitution strategies. In the case of non-existence of an ingredient in the target culture, therefore when faced with un-translatability, omission or compensation with another similar component come into play as viable solutions. (2008, p. 197)

Common in fictional food recreation (McGinley, 2021), gastronomic ‘translocation’ of diegetic abject ingestion is more complex since it taps into ‘the appeal of food horror as a representational category […] [that is] normality dangerously appealing as it transforms into the abjected, the undesirable, the culturally unspeakable’ (Piatti-Farnell, 2017, p. 262). However, epicurean sensations are maintained, producing ironic distance between the recipe and the diegetic object it mimics. For Barson Eastis, she translates human brain for chicken sausage. Such sensorial dissonance between spectacle and taste is exaggerated in more extreme examples – for instance, the realistic recreation of Daryl Dixon’s zombie ear necklace from TWD as a pastry-based snack (ProfGenki, ND). Here, inedible items are not mixed with edible ingredients; often this is the case for meals in Hannibal and iZombie. Instead, food craft produces the abject comestible akin to Godwin’s (2021) themed food: dark decaying flesh is made via raw egg white and brown food colouring painted over the dough ears, with tomato sauce mimicking congealed blood. Crafting these objects, consequently, taps into the sensorial and somatic affect of horror media as well as the aesthetic regions of the abject spectrums through the employment of mimetic realism. Such material play is also found in broader horror-themed cookery where the abject gaze incorporates generic visual motifs and tropes, particularly body horror. For instance, ‘zombie guts Halloween cinnamon rolls’ (Tammy and Garska Rodriguez, 2017) graphically depict human intestines in a baking dish. Gore is produced by red food colouring and red velvet cake mix. As such, fan-authored food craft paradoxically visualizes abject objects whilst simultaneously de-abjectifying said objects’ materiality. Moreover, whilst maintaining mimetic aesthetic verisimilitude, recipes’ ironic distance can also foster esculentary comedic incongruity where human remnant crafted foods’ ingredients are plant-based, melding cannibalism with diets that

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

279

reject meat and animal products. This also allows for potential ideological facets of fans’ abject spectrums to inform their craft materials, for example, ‘vegan zombie jerky’ (Oseland and Gordon, ND). Consequently, Lamerichs’ assertion that cooking food ‘is a highly visceral way of engaging with one’s favorite fiction’ (2021, p. 119),3 takes on new complexities when engaging with food horror as fans play with(in) transmedia storyworlds and with abjection’s sensorial qualities. Finally, given meals’ social dimensions, food craft can also be incorporated into ‘special fan community events’ (Reinhard et al., 2021, p. 8), combined with other forms of tactile transmedia engagement. Notably, food is a central component of TV horror-themed parties where fans transform their homes into fictional diegeses. Both Allie (2015) and Wolf (2016) create Twin Peaks comestibles, placed alongside iconic totems such as Laura Palmer’s high school photo, Agent Cooper’s Dictaphone for attendees to leave messages to Diane, logs, and a fish in a percolator. Transformative ornamentation is furthered by décor that encompasses the show’s aesthetics, including sepia hues and rich reds as well as Red Room-inspired chevron tablecloths as material forms of textural poaching. Concurrently, spatial haptic immersion is supported by attendees dressing as or like (recreating or inspired by) characters from Twin Peaks, known as cosplay where fans embody the show and perform their fan identity. Fittingly, as argued in Chapter 1, Halloween is a cultural festival enjoyed by horror fans and non-fans alike who use popular culture as indexical signs for costume play and the fabric for social gatherings. Attesting to the show’s mainstream status, Stranger Things is a popular Halloween party theme (e.g. Chase and Gumbinner, 2017; Allen, 2019). As Sarah blogs, ‘[m]y husband and I aren’t even super into the show (though we definitely enjoy it) but figured with all the hype, it would make a great theme to a little gathering at our house Halloween weekend’ (2019). Despite (performed) reticence towards fan affect, Sarah recreates Eggo confectionary and inspired food and drink, including Barb’s Best Brownies and Eleven’s Nosebleed Punch. An Alphabet draped in fairy lights adorns the wall alongside missing posters for Barb and Will, whilst partygoers dress as characters. Thus, food as a storytelling device (Bower and Piontek, 2013) fosters immersive play in-and-of-itself but can also form part of intratextual and textural melanges of tactile transmedia transformation, where fan-authored scopic regimes extend storyworlds into real-worlds through spatio-configurative mimetic crafts. Consequently, comestibles are symbolically elevated as are the special events they form part of; both of which activate ephemeral participation – food 3

My emphasis.

280 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

will be eaten, events will come to an end. Continuing the broadening of transmedia beyond the digital and the significance of materiality within fan immersion, I now consider the significance of TV horror soundtracks released on vinyl.

Horror Music, Television, and Transmedia In many respects, music is employed in horror in much the same way as other genres (Hutchings, 2004, p. 146): ‘to “thicken” the audio-visual experience’ (Lury, 2005, p. 71). Diegetic and non-diegetic sounds establish tone, mood, and atmosphere; provide depth to characterization often via leitmotifs (Woods, 2013); spatially and temporally anchor storyworlds; and ‘serve as […] aural bridge[s], sonic glue that welds different visual scenes together’ (Lury, 2005, p. 72). Sound is, therefore, both informative and affective. Yet, as with foodstuff, music has abject qualities (Link, 2010, pp. 42–43). As Kristeva remarks, ‘[b]eyond the narrative, dizziness finds its language: music […] not only as metaphor of an imaginary rival where the voice of the mother and of death are hiding’ (1982, p. 146). Hence, the sonic is as fundamental to abject spectrums as the visual. Donnelly states that, ‘[h]orror film music functions as a central “effect” in horror film (2005, p. 106). This is most pronounced in how sound and non-diegetic music ‘seek to evoke affective responses associated with horror such as suspense, discomfort, fear, or disgust through aural qualities including key, timbre, tempo, effects, and so on’ (Weinstock, 2019, p. 67). Non-diegetic music is often used forebodingly, informing audiences that something awful is about to happen, either by marrying with the tense nature of the scene or by providing dissonance between sound and seemingly normal onscreen events (or vice versa) (Cherry, 2009, p. 70; Donnelly, 2005, p. 90). Rupturing sound known as stingers can also be harnessed to shock and startle audiences (Hutchings, 2004, p. 134). Moreover, non-diegetic sound or music can represent the diegetically monstrous (Halfyard, 2010a, p. 22). Thus, the soundtrack can manifest the monstrous even when it is not depicted, producing what Chion terms ‘acousmêtre’ (1994), an ‘acousmatic being […] heard but not seen; these characters often have striking “powers” or “gifts” because of their acousmatic existence: they see all, know all, are omnipotent and ubiquitous’ (Stilwell, 2005, p. 55). Being everywhere sonically and nowhere visually aids in the threatening nature of horror. Furthermore, given that traditionally TV horror was based on suggestion, sound has been an important tool for implying the monster in television (Wheatley, 2006,

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

281

p. 41). Conversely, music can support the ambiguity surrounding monsters that presents them in a sympathetic light (Halfyard, 2016, pp. 100–101). Relatedly, if TV horror offers more than scares then horror television soundtracks are paramount in creating a wider emotional plane that supports textual imagery. Likewise, music is fundamental to genre-hybridization (Halfyard, 2010a), so common in horror’s televisual productions. For example, In The Flesh’s (ITF) soundtrack frequently uses melancholic Keaton Henson songs to heighten sad scenes, exaggerate or reflect characters’ internal turmoil, therefore adding to the series’ melodrama. But although sound affectively supports media immersion and audiences’ phenomenological distance (Hanich, 2010, p. 170) that promotes emotional responses, music can also be ideological or used in subtextual deconstruction. Discussing how music constructs associations and understandings of cultures, Donnelly explains that ‘music [serves] as a primary bearer of ideology’ (2005, p. 56). Citing Orientalist discourse, Donnelly evidences how music is frequently deployed to represent national or cultural Others through reductive sonic clichés. Further, soundtracks can support texts’ overarching thematics. For instance, Peele’s use of Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone’ (2016), whose lyrics caution to ‘stay woke’, supports Get Out’s (2017) social commentary on white supremacy and Black oppression in the US (Clark, 2017). Likewise, the soundtrack includes the song ‘Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga’, ‘Swahili for “listen to your ancestors,” […] an urgent, whispered warning that “something bad is coming. Run”’ (Briseño, 2020, p. 240). The track is both musically and vocally ominous, evoking dread, but its ghostly timbres also ideologically reflect America’s colonial history and ongoing terrorizing of racial ‘Others’ (ibid.). Equally, ‘[a]s the resurgent preference for vinyl records […] shows, media ideologies can extend to the material properties of a medium’ (Harvey, 2017, p. 595); a point I return to later in this chapter. Finally, music has aesthetic value. Donnelly raises a contradiction when film music, traditionally ascribed low cultural status, uses ‘art-music’ or ‘modern classical’ music since they are located within the realm of ‘sublime high art […] the apogee of western culture’ (2005, p. 42). Certainly, the freedom often more readily afforded to horror over other genres (Lerner, 2010, p. ix; Hutchings, 2004, pp. 146–147) and/or its utilization of classical music (e.g. The Shining (Kubrick 1980) (Donnelly, 2005, pp. 36–54; Code, 2010) can elevate the status of genre vehicles. Turning to television, since the financial budgets of most TV are markedly less than film, the former cannot readily afford originally composed music or increasingly expensive rights to music licences (Stilwell, 2011, pp. 123–124; Smith, 1999, p. 47), thus must use cheaper

282 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

alternatives: free music, stock libraries, ‘soundalikes’, and inexpensive licences (Lury, 2005, p. 74). Therefore, using ‘cinematic’ soundscapes can evince high production values and evoke quality TV aesthetics (Halfyard, 2010b, p. 122). Moreover, Halfyard (2016, p. 9) contends that as much as spectacle is central to cult television innovation, musical experimentation plays a coequal part in TV’s cultification from the 1990s onwards. Including telefantasy, science fiction, and horror, Halfyard notes that, much like film, ‘music in cult TV shows supports and constructs narrative, and […] in doing so, it becomes part of what makes the show cult’ (ibid., p. 2), yet they are quick to demarcate differences between television and cinema. Firstly, compared to hermetically bound experiences of movie watching in the cinema or on DVD/Blu-ray, broadcast television is part of a flow where audiovisual media constitute ongoing segments (Ellis, 1982, p. 112). Interpellating audiences, music can punctuate this flow. This is most evident through TV title tunes which serve as part of the paratextual repertoire of TV horror opening credits (Abbott, 2015). Yet televisual title music markedly differs from film opening credits, not only in length but also through their repeated nature as ‘over the course of a series, the title sequence and end credits will potentially be viewed and heard dozens of times’ (Halfyard, 2016, p. 45). This offers opportunities and problems specific to television. On one hand, iconic title music facilitates what Fairchild terms ‘“brand flow” within and across the daily and weekly program schedule’ (2011, p. 493), supporting the show’s branding and the brand identity of the channel, portal, or service disseminating it. On the other hand, repeat- and binge-viewing may lead to opening and closing credits being skipped on DVD boxsets. Furthermore, skipping these (para)textual moments is now inbuilt into streaming services, meaning title music can lose ‘its hailing function’ (Halfyard, 2016, p. 46). Secondly, sonic repeatability is central to television where music aids narrative flow within and across episodes, engendering regularity, continuity, and payoffs (Fairchild, 2011, p. 499). Providing memory anchors for audiences, ‘[t]he process of making musical connections between events tends to be done through the use of themes’ (Halfyard, 2016, p. 15). This is often done via music blocks, a cheaper alternative to ‘commissioning an underscore to fit the dynamics across the whole programme’ (Donnelly, 2005, p. 119). Whilst especially useful for complex television, again unlike film, given the length of some series, recycled music risks becoming trite. Thus, while music is often repeated, variations of themes/blocks or use of different songs add novelty within familiarity. This is salient in character development, such as ‘Carl’s Theme’ in TWD, used to support Carl’s shift from passivity/childhood to activity/adulthood (McCreary, 2012).

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

283

Finally, chorusing with Halfyard, Brembilla highlights how within transmedia nexuses, ‘music can […] be employed as a shared asset with… entertainment industries, one that merges and adds value to other core products […] [and bolsters] world-building process[es]’ (2019, p. 87). This sees, or hears, music remediated to serve TV texts and cross-media satellite texts, but this may also include TV music’s remediation vis-à-vis reformatting as part of transmedial processes. Indeed, part of TV horror fans’ affective pleasures exceed traditional screenmedia modes of consumption as television music is a ‘consumable product’ (VanCour, 2011) as they collect and discuss TV horror soundtracks. The remainder of this chapter examines this in relation to transmedia studies.

Haunting Sounds: TV Horror Soundtracks and Vinyl’s Text-Function Soundtrack fandom has been examined in relation to CD formatting (e.g. Smith, 1999; Donnelly, 2005; Halfyard, 2016), yet notably TV horror soundtracks are being released on vinyl. In fact, once heralded as the death knell of vinyl, CD sales have decreased drastically in the face of ever-increasing digitization whilst vinyl sales see year-on-year increases (Sarpong et al., 2016, p. 112). Like TV, music has its own distinct history and relationship with digitization (see Rendell, 2020), and, of course, some releases are solely distributed on CD, such as Ash vs Evil Dead and ITF. Moreover, ample TV horror soundtracks are available via streaming services. Yet vinyl reformatting raises interesting points of analysis. Sexton’s examination of the surge in cult cinema soundtrack vinyl collecting f inds that ‘many of these f ilms are relatively obscure and the genre predominantly drawn from is […] horror’ (2015, p. 13), where these f ilms’ niche positionality marries with vinyl’s ‘independence’ as a format and via the companies releasing the works. Resultantly, ‘f ilms can accrue cult values through circulating across different areas of music culture’ (ibid.). Cult TV soundtracks imbricate with Sexton’s findings, with horror the principal genre, and releases via independent labels, many of whom Sexton discusses. However, TV horror soundtracks offer more diversity. This includes twenty-first century horror television, (e.g. Penny Dreadful, Castlevania (Netflix 2017–)), TV horror from yesteryear (e.g. The Addams Family (ABC 1964–1966), Dark Shadows (ABC 1966–1971), Tales from the Crypt (HBO 1989–1996)), and standalone or ‘event’ episodes (see Abbott, 2010) (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s ‘Once More, with Feeling’ (S6, E7) and select episodes of

284 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

anthology series Black Mirror (Channel 4 2011–2014/Netflix 2016–)). Equally, TV horror vinyl is far less obscure: all are US- and UK-based, with the exception of German supernatural thriller Dark, released on major channels or portals. Said channels/portals also release non-horror TV soundtracks too, evidencing how these genre transmedia practices fit within wider media ecologies. Thus, from one angle TV horror’s destabilization of cult/ mainstream bifurcation (see Chapter 1 and 2) extends to soundtrack releases. Yet, from another angle, vinyl can re-instil cult characteristics. As discussed in Chapter 1 and 2, horror’s foray into ordinary TV and post-TV streaming over bounded DVD complicates Hills’ (2007) arguments surrounding quality TV discourse imbued within physical formats. However, revising Hills’ theorizations on televisual reformatting to consider other (trans)media, namely TV horror soundtracks released on vinyl, evidences quality-cult attribution. Adapting Foucault’s ‘author-function’ (1979), Hills (2007, p. 45) explains how DVD’s text-function propagates quality TV discourse by isolating works from broadcast flows, whose material symbolism is ‘akin to artworks or novels’ (ibid.), and stresses ‘closeness’ between audience and text (ibid., p. 48). Vinyl serves similar text-functionality, fostering quality TV value both as an isolative format and material artefact. However, television’s customary privileging of dialogue (Lury, 2005, p. 65) and increased cinematic spectacle are silenced with vinyl, as a show’s music is distilled as the quality-cult focal point. Likewise, music spread out thinly and sporadically over a series (e.g. Halfyard, 2016, pp. 136–137) is concertinaed and amplified on vinyl. Jenkins argues that transmedia ‘helps us to rewatch […] scenes again with different emotional resonance. More often, it is about picking up on a detail seeded in the original film and using it as a point of entry into a different story or a portal into exploring another aspect of the world’ (2009a). This holds true when listening to a soundtrack, itself a repeat interaction with the parent text, albeit one where the recontextualization of sound asks us to explore it in an alternative manner: purely as audio rather than audiovisual. Vinyl is transmedial in that it adds ‘texture’ to the soundtrack and its parent text by augmenting soundscapes as primary affective portals (Rodgers, 2019). This may result in listeners responding to the text in ways they had not previously. Moreover, rewatching the audiovisual media after listening to the vinyl can shift audiences’ phenomenological engagement in this repeated interaction that activates different parts of the abject spectrum as ‘transmedia extensions may or may not add something key to the unfolding of the narrative, but they nevertheless impact our overall aesthetic experience’ (Jenkins, 2009b).

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

285

Importantly, vinyl’s affective qualities are dialectical to digital media, where the former’s ‘post-digital popularity is […] simultaneously valued for oldness and newness’ (Palm, 2019, p. 650). Compared to digital media’s transferability, mobility, and intangibleness and CD’s erasure of ‘music’s “warmth”’ (Bartmanski and Woodward, 2015, p. 21), vinyl is imbued with human traits that connote authenticity: ‘fallibility, warmth and mortality’ (Yochim and Biddinger, 2008, p. 183). As such, vinyl feels more ‘alive’ to listeners (ibid., p. 188) in its sonic depth (a ‘more-extensive bass range’ (Davis, 2007, p. 404) and imperfections (scratches and pops emanating when playing the record (ibid.)). Moreover, whilst DVD allows close interactions necessary of complex TV, vinyl warrants close engagement vis-à-vis listening practices that stress complex TV soundtracks. Given that vinyl cannot easily skip tracks, opening title and closing credit music – episodes’ potential ‘dead time’ (Halfyard, 2016, p. 47) passed over by DVD and digital media – are given fixed and heightened presence in their reformatting. Likewise, playing vinyl necessitates attention and physical engagement on the part of the listener: one must carefully place the needle onto the LP and flip the two-sided album over halfway through. Consequently, ‘vinyl is the slow food equivalent of music listening practices’ (Bartmanski and Woodward, 2015, p. 21). Thus given the special attention vinyl commands, ‘it can function as a more demanding, “organic” and thus sophisticated and reflective medium’ (ibid.), where individuals who consume this format over alternatives ‘mark themselves as serious music fans’ (Hayes, 2006, p. 61). Concurrently, compared to digital hardware’s expansive memory and the seemingly limitless space of cloud storage that houses thousands of compressed audio files, vinyl is limited to approximately twenty-two minutes playtime per side. With this, given the length of a single series or how shows often span multiple seasons/series, many TV horror soundtracks are double-LP or multi-volume vinyl releases. As examples, the first season of Stranger Things and seasons 1–3 of Hannibal have two-volume soundtracks per season. Multi-bounded vinyl celebrates TV horror’s increased musicality and the sonic richness of cult television (Halfyard, 2016, pp. 162–163), much like the textual verdancy of multi-bound novels and literary epics and taps into fans’ completist tendencies when collecting (Geraghty, 2014). Interestingly, some albums consist of music unheard on TV horror texts yet form part of their soundscapes: Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Soundtrack features six unreleased Angelo Badalamenti musical cues for the third season of Twin Peaks, and Stranger Things: Halloween Sounds from the Upside Down is a collection of ‘14 original unreleased tracks from the [second] series specifically curated to be as creepy and atmospheric as

286 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

possible for the halloween season [sic]’ (Invada, 2018). Kalinak puts forward that, ‘[f]ilm music’s power is […] always dependent on a coexistence with the visual image’ (2003, p. 21). These scores do not accompany images whereby tracks can be specifically located on antecedent TV episodes. However, these soundtracks are not divorced from diegeses that Kalinak’s ‘visual image’ refers to. On the contrary, since music is paramount to cult worldbuilding (Halfyard, 2016; Brembilla, 2019), the audio-textual overspill of unreleased music onto vinyl extends the soundscape as acoustic transmedia storytelling. In doing so, these soundtracks encourage ‘people to imagine un-visualised scenarios, extended storylines and emotional augmentations through sound alone’ (Rodgers, 2019, p. 249). The visual storyworld qualities of Stranger Things: Halloween Sounds from the Upside Down are myriad. Notably, the album’s tone stems from its filmic dark and electronic ambience (see Donnelly, 2005, p. 159), employed throughout the series to create mood and affect that pays homage to 1970s and 1980s cinema. An album for Halloween, the soundscape employs sonic horror generics over melodrama or comedy; emotions also structured into the series. That the album was composed by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, creators of Stranger Things’ entire original scores, also authorially tethers the soundtrack to the series’ audio canon. Finally, the album’s artwork depicts a patch of pumpkins rotting illuminated by a red hue – referencing events from season two – in the same aesthetic schema as previous Stranger Things soundtracks and other official paratextual imagery. As the latter two points indicate, vinyl’s elevation of TV horror also extends beyond listening practices and textual isolation to its other material qualities.

Beyond Sounds: Vinyl’s Auratic Material Packaging Bartmanski and Woodward point out ‘[t]he LP format’s material packaging is relevant for understanding its reported aura’ (2015, p. 8). Benjamin posits that, ‘[t]he original constitute[s] the abstract idea of its genuineness’ (2008 [1936], p. 5), whose aura is depleted when mechanically reproduced (ibid., p. 7). Even though itself a product of ‘technological reproduction’ (ibid., p. 6), in the face of profuse digital replicability, vinyl’s ‘aura attribution’ (Lepa and Tritakis, 2016, p. 19) sees the format ‘regain the status of “original artworks” if they are rather seldom in the everyday repertoire and thereby fulfilling symbolic demands that other audio media do not afford’ (ibid.). Thus, far from essential, vinyl’s auric qualities are symbolically constructed through the format’s converging media. With this, the album cover is a primary

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

287

paratextual feature that culturally elevates the soundtrack and parent text. Bartmanski and Woodward add: [t]he obvious attraction of vinyl […] is the large size of the photo on the LP record cover, about 500% larger than a CD cover, let alone the small accompanying images included in such applications as iTunes. The scaled-up visual and material dimensions of the vinyl package […] lend themselves to references to record covers as artworks in their own right. (2015, p. 9)

This is particularly noticeable with releases whose original artwork differs from DVD covers or general promotional imagery. Various Black Mirror releases exemplify this. The soundtrack artwork for ‘San Junipero’ (S3, E4), ‘Men Against Fire’ (S3, E5), ‘USS Callister’ (S4, E1), and ‘Arkangel’ (S4, E2) were designed by Brazilian artist Butcher Billy renowned for his pop art aesthetic. The album covers’ visuality mimic comic books, another analogue media form, with the Comic Code Authority approval stamp and issue price bookending the show’s title. The symbolic framing of the album cover, and potentially the gatefold and back cover, as created by the hand of an artist to be viewed not through the mediating screen of computer, television, or mobile phone, but in audiences’ hands or on their walls; what Benjamin labels works of art’s auratic ‘material duration and historical witness’ (2008, p. 7), sees a transference of art-as-high-culture to the text-function of vinyl ‘displayed as an object unto itself and to be looked at in the way that one looks at more traditional art’ (Yochim and Biddinger, 2008, p. 192). Additionally, combining vinyl’s textual-functionality with author-functionality, album covers frequently name series’ composers. The connotative power of composers adds value to TV texts, as many are renowned for their work in cinema, such as Black Mirror vinyl composed by Clint Mansell (‘San Junipero’) and Mark Isham (‘Arkangel’). Moreover, by crediting the Newton brothers on both The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor soundtracks with no reference to the shows’ creator Mike Flanigan, much like Stranger Things vinyl signposting Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein but no mention of the Duffer brothers, TV horror soundtracks become authored texts in their own right, rather than simply serving authored audiovisual motherships. Further, if DVD commentaries engender parasocial relations between fans and creatives that reify auteurism and quality TV status (Hills, 2007, p. 52), liner notes accompanying vinyl offer similar relationships, but shift authority to composers who voice the processes of music-making for

288 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

shows. This is exemplified by Bear McCreary’s liner notes written for The Walking Dead: Original Soundtrack. McCreary writes: Seven years ago, I met Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd in North Hollywood, to discuss the score for their new series, The Walking Dead. Before a single actor had been cast, before one frame of footage was shot, we knew this show required a unique musical tone […] Frank and I agreed that drama, action, and horror would be felt more intimately if the score were used only in pivotal scenes, and that it should be written with tonal clarity […] This approach allowed me to create big emotional impacts with sparse musical gestures… Scoring the first season, I had the opportunity to collaborate with some of my favorite instrumentalists […] [and TWD] has given me the chance to collaborate with different showrunners, each of whom brought their distinct voice to the narrative. (2017)

McCreary discusses at length his vision, production choices, and experimentation that frame TWD’s soundtrack as innovative. Vinyl textual conversion simultaneously instils artistic merit to an aspect of production usually marginalized in favour of visionary showrunner/auteur discourse whilst also indicating the collaborative nature of TV creation. Doing so, authored liner notes offer ‘higher value […] [by providing] rich information disclosing the depth of preparation behind the recording’ (Bartmanski and Woodward, 2015, pp. 9–10), further humanizing the soundtrack, reifying auratic qualities of tangible artistic creation (Yochim and Biddinger, 2008, p. 192). That said, despite subverting notions of the single authored quality TV text, the musical (co-)authority of TV horror soundtracks converted to vinyl in this chapter is solely granted to white men. Consequently, we locate such homogeneity within wider systems of racial and gendered marginalization in music production (Oakes, 2020), classical music (Anderson and Bonadio-de Freitas, 2020), horror (see Peirse, 2020), and wider media industry practices (Warner, 2015a; Yuen, 2017). Auratic value extends to distinctive vinyl designs beyond the standard black LP (Bartmanski and Woodward, 2015, p. 9), where parent texts’ tones, aesthetics, and even thematics bleed into the format’s colouration and design. The soundtrack release for Dracula (BBC 2020), for instance, is a blood red vinyl with overt connections to the titular monster’s life source. Series three of Stranger Things sees a neon pink vinyl of the soundtrack resonate with the show’s colour palette and 1980s nostalgic visuality (see Chapter 1), whilst a picture-disc vinyl for the Black Mirror episode ‘Men Against Fire’ uses a silhouetted cockroach within a red circle to parallel

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

289

the episode’s ideological critique of dehumanizing Othering. Furthermore, the latter two examples have several other colourway releases, which, like multi-volume soundtracks, promote ‘the collectability of vinyl’ (Bartmanski and Woodward, 2015, p. 9). Relatedly, by enforcing consumer restrictions, vinyl’s material aura and collectability are heightened (O’Dwyer, 2020, p. 878). Firstly, the artificial scarcity of limited-edition albums enhances vinyl’s symbolic value via the exclusivity that small-batch production fosters and the material distinctiveness engrained within this commodity subsect (Bottomley, 2016, p. 160). As noted, soundtracks are often released several times. With this, unique artwork and vinyl colourations and designs are reserved for these editions, such as Mondo (re-)releasing Hannibal’s soundtrack limited to 1000 copies. Consisting of twenty music cues from seasons one and two on ‘steak tartare’ vinyl, the release was packed in original artwork created by Phantom City Creative. Limited editions may also provide exclusive extra-textual content: Mondo’s release provides an interview with Hannibal’s composer Brian Reitzell and Iam8Bit/Lakeshore’s Collector’s Edition Bates Motel soundtrack is accompanied by Chris Bacon’s liner notes; both paratexts are only available via these now sold-out releases. Consequently, as rare media artefacts and sources of especial knowledge (Farrugia and Gobatto, 2010), special, limited, and collector edition vinyl yields prized subcultural capital for fans who must quickly purchase these iterations before they sell out. Secondly, limited presses can be temporally-bound to the international cultural event Record Store Day (RSD). Beginning in 2007, with the annual day held on the third Saturday in April, RSD was designed ‘to elevate the sales and profile of vinyl records’ (Palm, 2019, p. 650) and support ‘local, independent record retail in the face of two primary threats: digital competition […] and corporate consolidation’ (Harvey, 2017, p. 586). One-way value is added to the event and the music sold on this day is via ‘RSD exclusive releases’. Harvey explains: [l]ike other holiday commodities, the most sought-after Record Store Day objects are endowed with value merely by virtue of being released for the event. Stamped with a vinyl-centric logo […] hundreds of limited-issue 12-inch and 7-inch vinyl records are, in Kopytoff’s coinage, ‘singularized’ through ‘restricted commoditization, in which cultural objects are confined to a very narrow sphere of exchange’. (ibid., p. 589)

Similarly, ‘RSD firsts’ are records initially released in limited numbers on RSD before subsequent wider distribution. RSD exclusives include TV

290 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

horror soundtracks such as: Music From the X-Files: The Truth and the Light, comprising music from the first three seasons and dialogue from the cast on a glow-in-the-dark vinyl limited to 3000 copies; The Walking Dead Original Soundtrack: Volume 2 with original picture disc design limited to 1800 copies; and The Stone Tape, a fluorescent green 10-inch vinyl pressed on just 800 copies; whilst Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series and Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Soundtrack are RSD firsts both limited to 5300 copies. Importantly for Harvey, fan-as-consumers partaking in RSD perform an ideological stance against digitization and mass consumption (2017, p. 587); however, TV horror soundtracks present a paradoxical positionality. RSD reinforces the independent cult values attached to vinyl and inflected onto the soundtracks (Sexton, 2015), yet as signposted many albums are from popular television horror often consumed by digital means. Therefore, whilst RSD exclusives cultify TV horror series and their soundtracks, their increased presence at this annual event is indicative of major industry players colonizing RSD (Palm, 2019, p. 650), using the day to enhance brand identity whilst simultaneously releasing content at inflated prices knowing loyal fans will pay higher costs. Such subversion of independent/major bifurcation indicative of the music industry (Negus, 1992) further blurs cult/ mainstream distinctions of post-television horror as examined throughout this book. Moreover, vinyl’s text-function and material aura that supports quality-cult accreditation of TV horror and, in doing so, portal/channel branding is complicated when analysing this act of textual conversion.

Signature Sounds: Vinyl as Co-branding Alongside the author-functionality of naming shows’ music creatives, soundtracks visually signpost producing channels/portals much like idents. For example, The Handmaid’s Tale record cover states it is a ‘Hulu original’, while all Netflix LPs have the company’s name either at the top or bottom of the album cover in a colour that makes it stand out from the underlaid image. As previously discussed (Chapter 1 and 2), branding is paramount for distinction within the post-television landscape. But while vinyl supports the brand identity of a TV show and its industry producer (Fairchild, 2011, p. 498), soundtracks are released by external record labels. Intra-industry collaboration is common in twenty-first century transmedia world-building (Johnson, 2013) and distribution (Evans, 2019), where companies manoeuvre into media markets in which they have yet to make a foothold by partnering with external established parties. Doing so reduces financial risk especially

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

291

for creating niche content within longtail media ecologies (Clarke, 2013), which soundtrack vinyl could be considered as such. Consequently, the format’s material symbolism ‘co-brands’ various television and music companies. Helmig et al. explain that co-branding is advantageous ‘because a second brand can contribute a perception of additional value to both the co-branded product and the primary brand itself that the primary brand cannot achieve on its own’ (2008, p. 362). Co-branding makes sense in the context of this book since, despite channels and portals garnering distinct brand identity supported by their horror television and cinema catalogues, post-TV industry players’ reputations do not readily extend to other media formats, namely vinyl. Much like the symbolic potential of RSD, record labels involved in (re-)issuing soundtracks are often independent companies such as Invada, Lakeshore, Mondo, and Death Waltz who instil cult value into vinyl by positioning themselves as alternatives to mainstream media and consumerism (Sexton, 2015, p. 16). Invada state they are renowned ‘for releasing outsider alternative music with no limitations or restrictions on genre, style or even format’ (ND), whilst Lakeshore decrees itself ‘the global independent leader in top line soundtrack releases’ (ND). Thus, beyond vinyl’s textual-functionality, affiliations to certain types of record labels legitimizes TV horror texts and their soundtracks as quality-cult. Moreover, albums’ materiality that allows post-TV to elevate (para)texts by incorporating external brand identities mutually serves collaborating record labels as partnerships allow them to develop their portfolios of work that enhance consumer recognition. Compared to major labels that predominantly work on cultivating ‘artist-brands’ (Meier, 2017, p. 75), independent, niche, or genre-specific labels develop distinct company brand identities formulated from their rosters and output (O’Connor, 2008, p. 85); a similar approach adopted by DVD labels distributing and paratextually framing select works, such as Criterion, Tartan’s ‘Asia Extreme’ subsidiary, and Arrow (Kendrick, 2001; Martin, 2015; Hills, 2017b). As argued in Chapter 1, twenty-first century TV horror texts serve and solidify channel/ portal brands incorporated within curated audiovisual libraries. Yet vinyl textual conversion means soundtracks operate within different, albeit connected, discursive clusters. Mittell’s postulation that ‘[g]enres emerge from intertextual relations between multiple texts’ (2004, p. 8), as does their ‘meaning and value’ (ibid., pp. 16–17), thus operates across multiple axes that intercut the media object. This allows a text to be plurally clustered that fosters polysemic significance. Importantly, the labels packaging and distributing TV horror soundtracks also release other media’s music, the

292 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

majority of which is horror film (see Sexton, 2015). Within Death Waltz’s library, for instance, Twin Peaks sits alongside soundtracks from Zombie Flesh Eaters (Fulci 1979), Halloween II (Rosenthal 1981), and Saint Maud (Glass 2019). Likewise, Haunting of Hill House’s score is part of Waxwork’s corpus that includes The Prowler (Zito 1981), Us, and The Babadook. Therefore, horror television’s cinematic value emerges not just from textual qualities but from discursive clustering with cult horror films unified under a record label’s brand identity. Such clustering also transpires on labels’ websites. Despite vinyl’s material aura operating dialectically with digital media, ‘[t]he contemporary vinyl marketplace is sustained online’ (Palm, 2019, p. 645). The same rings true for audiences collecting vinyl soundtracks. Fans post on social media recent acquisitions, pre-ordered limited editions, and impressive catalogues to perform subcultural identity and gain status within communities. In this case, analogue media is an entry-point into, rather than an ‘escape’ from (Humayun and Belk, 2020), the digital landscape (Sarpong et al., 2016, p. 115). Beyond this, soundtracks and vinyl inspire transformative practices, namely vinyl mockups.

Poaching Sounds: Fan Vinyl Mockups Using digital software, such as Photoshop, fans design analogue vinyl soundtracks and then upload the artwork to social media sites such as Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram. Posts can then themselves become clustered via hashtags/tags such as #vinyl #mockup. Covering a diverse range of genres, artists, and media (cinema, television, stage, and videogames) that cut across mainstream and underground taste cultures, fans create mockups for albums either already in existence and available on vinyl or media yet to be textually converted to vinyl. The latter is pertinent to TV horror but also demonstrates how horror participatory practices overlap with other genre fandoms and how audiences are fans of horror and other genres. In doing so, these works of art reify fans’ axiological affect towards media objects and their soundtracks by harnessing the textual-functionality of vinyl analysed in this chapter, particularly the format’s scopophilic aura. Unlike official vinyl packaging that presents original art, fan mockups tend to use existing DVD and Blu-ray covers or industry promotional images as their album front covers. This then informs the colour palette and design of the accompanying vinyl. This is seen in a fan mockup of the Scream Queens soundtrack. The season one album cover takes the advertising shot of the four

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

293

central Kappa Kappa Tau sorority girls all dressed in baby pink. The same pink hue is then the double LP’s colourway housed in sleeves using further promotional shots of the ensemble cast wearing black with blood on them. Rather than textural poaching from the parent text’s visual schema (Gillan, 2016) (see Chapter 5), mockups taking from official paratexts’ visuality employ paratextural poaching to ensure aesthetic congruity between the fan art and championed media text, which is then applied to vinyl’s various packaging features that heightens the mockups’ cult verisimilitude. Other fans create multiple designs of the same album that imitate official multi-releases of soundtracks, knowingly tapping into the cult collectability of vinyl. A series of American Horror Story vinyl posted on Instagram spanning season one (Murder House) to season nine (1984), with each season comprising two different colourways, exemplifies this. For season four (Freakshow), whose album cover poaches the screaming clown mouth from the season’s DVD release, one double LP incorporates red, blue, purple, and white into its splatter effect that echoes the colour palette of one of the season’s most iconic monsters, Twisty the Clown. The second design has two differing LPs: the first, a marble effect teal and red vinyl that uses the colours of DVD packaging and promotional material. The second, a splatter effect yellow, black, red, and teal vinyl; colours frequently used in the season’s cinematography. Alongside mockups’ visuality, the fan titled each vinyl that semiotically links to aspects of the respective season; a strategy often employed in cult soundtracks. For instance, the designs’ titles for season seven (Cult) are: ‘Phobia Blue’, connecting to Cult character Ally Mayfair-Richards’ maladaptive psychological torment, antagonist Kai Anderson’s hair colour, and the colour of the album cover; and ‘Republican & Democrat’, signposting the partisan politics that drive narrative conflict. Poaching aspects of textual storyworld to load mockups with detail, fans employ subcultural synaesthesia where forensic engagement with the TV series gives aesthetic choices deeper intertextual meaning. Additionally, beyond the material symbolism of packaging, fans can increase their works’ textual depth by including track listings, either on the vinyl’s central sticker or as an information sheet included with the release. The former is illustrated by the mockup of the standalone Glee (FOX 2009–2015) Halloween ‘horror’ episode,4 ‘The Rocky Horror Glee Show’ (S2, E5). On side A of the red and black Splatter 12-inch the first four tracks of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman 1975) covers are listed,5 also indicating the record should be played at 4 5

Currently only available in CD form. The CD consists of seven tracks.

294 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

33⅓ RPM. Mockups’ textural, textual, and ontological detail presents a mode of mimetic fandom, which addresses less the immaterial cult worlds and the totemic objects that furnish them (Hills, 2014c), but rather the transmedia material cultures that emerge from them. Moreover, emphasizing a ‘perceived realism [that] enables immersion’ (Godwin, 2015), mimetic authenticity is engendered by converging textual aspects – the soundscape – with media fidelity – the vinyl format. Leveraging the auric qualities of the latter, fans’ mockups are bestowed with a ‘haptic presence’ (Hills, 2014c) even if the works never enter the real world. Indeed, with fannish productions born out of a ‘mix of fascination and frustration’ (Jenkins, 2013b, p. 261), mockups remain prototypes, acting as ‘wish images’ (Sobchack, 2007) since designs are not manufactured. Consequently, textual and textural poaching is instilled with future materiality that fans desire from official producers. As one fan writes alongside an image of their AHS vinyl posted on Instagram, ‘[o]ddly, this series has never had its soundtracks pressed to vinyl, which is a true shame. Hopefully someone from the AHS team will see this and present it to whoever can make this wish come true’. Responding fans echo the sentiments: I would love this soooooo much! This would be so iconic. WE NEED THIS.

In this case, the tactile is channelled through the textual, the analogue through the digital, the auratic through the mechanically reproduced. These dialectic subversions, far from causing affective rupture for audiences towards the symbolic order of media formatting, actually bring fans closer to their beloved media objects or particular aspects of them (i.e. soundtracks) and with other fans. Indeed, much like actual official vinyl releases whose transmedia potential engenders different modes of engagement with the parent text, mockups may make fans return to the audiovisual TV horror series with new viewing, or listening, dispositions that provoke new modes of engagement.

Conclusion If, as demonstrated, both food and sound have abject potential then they are important textual features of horror television that can be engaged

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

295

with affectively through the various regions of audiences’ abject spectrums. Moreover, while post-TV has largely been understood as growing due to digital media affordances, which this book has supported, this televisual paradigm has distinct tactile, material, and analogue attributes that support media immersion and the various sectors of audiences’ abject spectrums. In this case, both food and music are transmedial nodes. The former through its tactile transmediality that melds the fictional universe with real world spaces via food as multisensorial totems. The latter through a transmedial conversion of series’ soundtracks to vinyl format. Positioned within wider tentpole matrixes of horror TV and transmedia tie-ins potentially makes the ‘consumer rethink the meaning of all other associated texts’ (Clarke, 2013, p. 20). Both Poon’s words in Feeding Hannibal (2016) and vinyl’s auric qualities, for example, may result in fans returning to TV horror shows more aesthetically inclined than before, disaggregating specific aspects of the texts as part of their viewing pleasure and reading through the screen to engage with the production of the series that attest to the palimpsestic layering of phenomenological experiences. Thus, such industry-produced paratexts support the commercial logic of transmedial expansion, offering additional revenue streams targeted at fans-as-consumers, synergizing and solidifying brand identity across a multimedia network, and keeping loyal audiences engaged with franchises beyond the screen text (Freeman and Gambarato, 2019, p. 4). Nevertheless, those who buy or make media-oriented objects imbue said objects with their own meanings. Collecting, crafting, and curating are integral to ‘how individuals express their identity and individuality within a consumer society’ (Santo, 2018, p. 330). Moreover, these acts and the materiality that frames them can ‘encapsulate [a fan’s] memories of a particular event or experience, bits of their biography, or elicit affect tied to nostalgia or a sense of place that is only tangentially related to the text upon which an item is based’ (ibid., pp. 330–331). Far from trivial, object-oriented affect is an important area for both Horror and Fan Studies. Furthermore, beyond collecting merchandise and ancillary paratexts, fans can fill in the gaps they feel are missing from a text’s multimedia and multi-material nexus by creating their own objects (Rendell, 2018). Fans highlight particular aspects of the show as the source material that they are inspired to remediate into fitting transmedial forms. The malleability and variety of food make it apt for crafting objects, while soundtracks’ ethereality lends itself to audio-only conversion with vinyl’s material aura providing visual spectacle. Moreover, wish image mockups are not limited to vinyl: fans post online their Funko and Dorbz designs of characters they want the

296 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

companies to produce, including characters from horror vehicles such as Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski 1968), Sleepaway Camp (Hiltzik 1983), Pet Sematary (Lambert 1989), The Thing, and Cloverfield as well as non-horror media such as Nancy Drew, Nintendo character Kirby, and X-Men’s Wolverine/Logan. Finally, making and eating comestibles, and listening to or curating vinyl music, largely take place within the offline space of fans’ homes. Yet these private modes of transmedia become public-facing when images of objects and events are posted online, itself an act of (re)mediation and respatialization as the material world is rehoused in the virtual. Consequently, as Freeman and Gambarato highlight at the beginning of this chapter, transmedial configurations are made up of online and offline interactions. This fosters subsequent fan engagement and identity performance as those posting can gain subcultural capital, with others from the (often transnational) fanbase seeing and responding to these localized acts. Indeed, while digital media has supported the growth of fan communities (Booth, 2016), online participatory cultures also develop and are maintained by offline and analogue practices.

References Abbott, Stacey. 2010. ‘Innovative TV.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B Tauris. pp. 91–99. Abbott, Stacey. 2015. ‘“I Want to Do Bad Things With You”: The Television Horror Title Sequence.’ In Geraghty, Lincoln (ed). Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 110–126. Abrams, Joshua. 2013. ‘Mise en Plate: The Scenographic Imagination and the Contemporary Restaurant.’ Performance Research. 18(3). pp. 7–14. Allen, Kara. 2019. ‘Stranger Things Party Ideas.’ Kara’s Party Ideas. 29th June. https:// karaspartyideas.com/2019/06/stranger-things-party-ideas.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Allie, Elisabeth, 2015. ‘Fire Walk With Us: Twin Peaks Dinner Party.’ Jeepers. 11th May. https://lizzbert.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/fire-walk-with-us-twin-peaksdinner-party/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Anderson, Sam and Bonadio-de Freitas, Jocelyn. 2020. ‘It’s Time to Talk About Classical Music’s Diversity Problem.’ Noteworthy. 10th February. https://blog. usejournal.com/its-time-to-talk-about-classical-music-s-diversity-problema99994784706 [Accessed 4 April 2023] Atkinson, Sarah. 2019. ‘Transmedia Film: From Embedded Engagement to Embodied Experience.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

297

(eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 15–24. Barson Eastis, Catherine. 2016. ‘COSPLAY IN THE KITCHEN – IZOMBIE – STUFFED GNOCCHI.’ The Gluttonous Geek. 13th November. https://thegluttonousgeek. com/2016/11/13/izombiegnocchi/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Barthes, Roland. 2009. Mythologies. London: Vintage Books. Bartmanski, Dominik and Woodward, Ian. 2015. ‘The Vinyl: The Analogue Medium in the Age of Digital Reproduction.’ Journal of Consumer Culture. 15(1). pp. 3–27. Belasco, Warren. 2008. Food: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg. Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The Work of Art of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin. Bishop, Kyle William. 2015. How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century. Jefferson: McFarland. Bode, Dana Sterling. 2014. ‘Beyond Souvenirs: Making Fannish Items by Hand.’ Transformative Works of Culture. 16. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0548 Booth, Paul. 2016. Digital Fandom 2.0. New Media Studies: Second Edition. Oxford: Peter Lang. Bottomley, Andrew J. 2016. ‘Play It Again: Rock Music Reissues and the Production of the Past for the Present.’ Popular Music and Society. 39(2). pp. 151–174. Boulègue, Franck, 2017. Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic. Bristol: Intellect. Bowden, Lindsey. 2016. Damn Fine Cherry Pie: The Unauthorised Cookbook Inspired By the TV Show Twin Peaks. London: Mitchell Beazley. Bower, Anne and Piontek, Thomas. 2013. ‘Food in Film.’ In Albala, Ken (ed). Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 177–186. Brembilla, Paola. 2019. ‘Transmedia Music: The Value of Music as a Transmedia Asset.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 82–89. Briefel, Aviva. 2011. ‘“Shop ‘Til You Drop!”: Consumerism and Horror.’ In Briefel, Aviva and Miller, Sam J. (eds). Horror After 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 142–162. Briseño, Rosemary. 2020. ‘Unmasked Horror in Idyllic Places: America as a “Sunken Place”.’ In Pascuzzi, Francesco and Waters, Sandra (ed). The Spaces and Places of Horror. Delaware: Vernon Press. pp. 237–250. Brooks, Max. 2003. The Zombie Survival Guide. New York: Random House. Bunce, Michael. 1994. The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape. London: Routledge. Burns, Lori A. and McLaren, Laura. 2020. ‘Interpreting the Materials of a Transmedia Storyworld: Word-Music-Image in Steven Wilson’s Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015).’ In Zagorski-Thomas, Simon and Bourbon, Andrew (eds). The Bloomsbury Handbook of Music Production. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 392–404.

298 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Cassidy, Marsha F. 2016. ‘Ruth Eats, Betty Vomits: Feminism, Bioculture and Trouble with Food.’ In Peri, Bradley (ed). Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 65–82. Chase, Kristen and Gumbinner, Liz. 2017. ‘How to Throw a Stranger Things Themed Party! 20 of the Coolest Ideas This Side of The Upside Down.’ Cool Mom Picks. 18th October. https://coolmompicks.com/blog/2017/10/18/stranger-things-party-ideas/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Cherry, Brigid. 2009. Horror. London: Routledge. Chiaro, Delia. 2008. ‘A Taste of Otherness Eating and Thinking Globally.’ European Journal of English Studies. 12(2). pp. 195–209. Chion, Michel. 1994. Audio Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press. Chung, Hye Jean. 2018. Media Heterotopias: Digital Effects and Material Labor in Global Film Production. Durham: Duke University Press. Clark, Trent. 2017. ‘Jordan Peele Explains Why Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” was Perfect for “Get Out”.’ HipHopDX. 23rd February. https://hiphopdx.com/news/ id.42476/title.jordan-peele-explains-why-childish-gambinos-redbone-wasperfect-for-get-out# [Accessed 4 April 2023] Clarke, M. J. 2010. ‘Lost and Mastermind Narration.’ Television and New Media. 11(2). pp.123–142. Clarke, M. J. 2013. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. London: Bloomsbury. Code, David J. 2010. ‘Rehearing The Shining: Musical Undercurrents in the Overlook Hotel.’ In Lerner, Neil (ed). Music in the Horror Film. New York: Routledge. pp. 133–151. Collins, Margo and Bond, Elson. 2011. ‘“Off the Page and Into Your Brains!”: New Millennium Zombies and the Scourge of Hopeful Apocalypses.’ In Christie, Deborah and Lauro, Sarah Juliet (eds). Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. New York: Fordham University Press. pp. 187–204. Davis, John D. 2007. ‘Going Analog: Vinylphiles and the Consumption of the “Obsolete” Vinyl Record.’ In Acland Charles R. (ed). Residual Media: Residual Technologies and Cultures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 398–427. Denith, Simon. 2000. Parody. London: Routledge. Dirks, Robert and Hunter, Gina. 2013. ‘The Anthropology of Food.’ In Albala, Ken (ed). Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 3–13. Donnelly, K. J. 2005. The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television. London: BFI. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. New York: Routledge. Douglas, Mary. 1972. ‘Deciphering a Meal.’ Daedalus. 101(1). pp. 61–81. Ellis, John. 1982. Visible Fictions. London: Routledge.

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

299

Evans, Elizabeth. 2019. ‘Transmedial Distribution: From Vertical Integration to Digital Natives.’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 243–250. Ewoldt, Amanda. 2019. ‘Fannibals Are Still Hungry: Feeding Hannibal and Other Series Companion Cookbooks as Immersive Fan Experience.’ In Mudan Finn, Kavita and Nielsen, EJ (eds). Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. pp. 239–257. Fairchild, Charles. 2011. ‘Flow Amid Flux: The Evolving Uses of Music in Evening Television Drama.’ Television & New Media. 12(6). pp. 491–512. Falk, Pasi. 1994. The Consuming Body. London: Sage. Farrugia, Rebekah. and Gobatto, Nancy. 2010. ‘Shopping for Legs and Boots: Tori Amos’s Original Bootlegs, Fandom, and Subcultural Capital.’ Popular Music and Society. 33(3). pp. 357–375. Fiddes, Nick. 1991. Meat: A Natural Symbol. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1979. ‘What is an Author?’ Screen. 20(1). pp. 13–33. Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo. 2019. ‘Introduction: Transmedia Studies – Where Now?’ In Freeman, Matthew and Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo (eds). The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 1–12. Freeman, Matthew and Proctor, William. 2017. ‘Up All Night: The Shifting Roles of Home Media Formats as Transmedia Storytelling.’ In Wroot, Jonathan and Willis, Andy (eds). DVD, Blu-ray and Beyond: Navigating Formats and Platforms within Media Consumption. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 159–176. Geraghty, Lincoln. 2014. Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture. London: Routledge. Gillan, Jennifer. 2016. ‘Textural Poaching Twin Peaks: The Audrey Horne Sweater Girl GIFs.’ Series-International Journal of TV Serial Narratives. 2(2). pp. 9–24. Gilligan, Sarah. 2012. ‘Heaving Cleavages and Fantastic Frock Coats: Gender Fluidity, Celebrity and Tactile Transmedia in Contemporary Costume Cinema.’ Film, Fashion & Consumption. 1(1). pp. 7–38. Godwin, Victoria. 2015. ‘Mimetic Fandom and One-sixth-scale Action Figures.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 20. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0686 Godwin, Victoria L. 2021. ‘Making and Marketing Fan Food and Drink: Immersion and Transformative Work.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E., and Chin, Bertha (eds). Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. London: Routledge. pp. 134–148. Grains, Rick. 2016. The Walking Bread. London: Trapeze. Hageman, Andrew. 2015. ‘Dale Cooper and the Mouth-Feel of Twin Peaks.’ In Hertweck, Tom (ed). Food on Film: Bringing Something New to the Table. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. pp. 141–157.

300 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Halfyard, Janet K. 2010a. ‘Mischief Afoot: Supernatural Horror-comedies and the Diabolus in Musica.’ In Lerner, Neil (ed). Music in the Horror Film. New York: Routledge. pp. 21–37. Halfyard, Janet K. 2010b. ‘Boldly Going: Music and Cult TV.’ In Abbott, Stacey (ed). The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 120–128. Halfyard, Janet K. 2016. Sounds of Fear and Wonder: Music in Cult TV. London: I.B. Tauris. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. London: Routledge. Harvey, Eric. 2017. ‘Siding with Vinyl: Record Store Day and the Branding of Independent Music.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies. 20(6). pp. 585–602. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2016. Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics: Transmedia WorldBuilding Beyond Capitalism. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Hastie, Amelie. 2006. ‘The Miscellany of Film History.’ Film History. 18(2). pp. 222–230. Hayes, David. 2006. ‘“Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf”: Youth and Music Consumption in the Postmodern Age.’ Popular Music and Society. 29(1). pp. 51–68. Helmig, Bernd, Huber, Jan-Alexander, and Leeflang, Peter S. H. 2008. ‘Co-branding: The State of the Art.’ Schmalenbach Business Review. 60(4). pp. 359–377. Hills, Matt. 2007. ‘FROM THE BOX IN THE CORNER TO THE BOX SET ON THE SHELF: “TVIII” and the Cultural/Textual Valorisations of DVD.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 5(1). pp. 41–60. Hills, Matt. 2009. ‘Interview with Matt Hills, Part 2.’ Doctorwhotoys.net. http:// doctorwhotoys.net/matthills1.htm [Accessed 4 April 2023] Hills, Matt. 2014c. ‘From Dalek Half Balls to Daft Punk Helmets: Mimetic Fandom and the Crafting of Replicas.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 16. https://doi. org/10.3983/twc.2014.0531 Hills, Matt. 2017a. ‘From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars Celebration as a Crossover/Hierarchical Space.’ In Guyness, Sean and Hassler-Forest, Dan (eds). Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 213–224. Hills, Matt. 2017b. ‘A “Cult-like” Following: Nordic Noir, Nordicana and Arrow Films’ Bridging of Subcultural/Neocultural Capital.’ In Wroot, Jonathan and Willis, Andy (eds). Cult Media: Re-packaged, Re-released and Restored. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 49–65. Humayun, Mariam and Belk, Russell. 2020. ‘The Analogue Diaries of Postdigital Consumption.’ Journal of Marketing Management. 36(7–8). pp. 633–659. Hutcheon, Linda. 2000. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Hutcheon, Linda. 2002. Politics of Postmodernism: Second Edition. London: Routledge.

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

301

Hutchings, Peter. 2004. The Horror Film. London: Routledge. Invada. ND. ‘About Us.’ Invada. https://www.invada.co.uk/pages/about-us [Accessed 4 April 2023] Invada. 2018. ‘KYLE DIXON & MICHAEL STEIN – STRANGER THINGS: HALLOWEEN SOUNDS FROM THE UPSIDE DOWN [LTD PICTURE DISC].’ Invada. https://www.invada.co.uk/products/kyle-dixon-michael-stein-strangerthings-halloween-sounds-from-the-upside-down-ltd-picture-disc [Accessed 20 October 2021] Jenkins, Henry. 2009a. ‘The Aesthetics of Transmedia: In Response to David Bordwell (Part Three).’ Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 10th September. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2009/09/the_aesthetics_of_transmedia_i.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Jenkins, Henry. 2009b. ‘The Aesthetics of Transmedia: In Response to David Bordwell (Part Two).’ Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 13th September. http://henryjenkins.org/ blog/2009/09/the_aesthetics_of_transmedia_i_1.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Jenkins, Henry. 2013b. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Updated Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge. Johnson, Derek. 2013. Media Franchising: Creative Licence and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York University Press. Johnston, Josée and Goodman, Michael K. 2015. ‘Spectacular Foodscapes.’ Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. 18(2). pp. 205–222. Kalinak, Kathryn. 2003. ‘The Language of Music: Vertigo.’ In Dickinson, Kay (ed). Movie Music: The Film Reader. London: Routledge. pp. 15–23. Kalinak, Kathryn. 2010. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keeler, Amanda. 2018. ‘A Postapocalyptic Return to the Frontier: The Walking Dead as Post-Western.’ Critical Studies in Television. 13(4). pp. 422–437. Kendrick, James. 2001. ‘What is the Criterion? The Criterion Collection as an Archive of Film as Culture.’ Journal of Film and Video. 52(2–3). pp. 124–139. Kimber, Shaun. 2016. ‘“Meat’s Meat, and a Man’s Gotta Eat.” (Motel Hell¸1980): Food and Eating Within Contemporary Horror Cultures.’ In Bradley, Peri (ed). Food, Media and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 125–143. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Lakeshore. ND. ‘About Lakeshore Records.’ Lakeshore. https://lakeshorerecords. com/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Lamerichs, Nicolle. 2021. ‘The Promise of Cake: Food Fandom, Tourism, and Baking Practices Inspired by Portal.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E., and

302 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Chin, Bertha (eds). Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. London: Routledge. pp. 118–133. Leonardi, Susan J. 1989. ‘Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.’ Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 104(3). pp. 340–347. Lepa, Steffen and Tritakis, Vlasis. 2016. ‘Not Every Vinyl Retromaniac is a Nostalgic: A Social Experiment on the Pleasures of Record Listening in the Digital Age.’ M&Z. 4. pp. 16–30. Lerner, Neil. 2010. ‘Preface: Listening to Fear/Listening with Fear.’ In Lerner, Neil (ed). Music in the Horror Film. New York: Routledge. pp. viii–xi. Lindenfeld, Laura and Parasecoli, Fabio. 2016. Feasting Our Eyes: Food Films and Cultural Identity in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. Link, Stan. 2010. ‘The Monster and the Music Box: Children and the Soundtrack of Horror.’ In Lerner, Neil (ed). Music in the Horror Film. New York: Routledge. pp. 38–54. Lury, Karen. 2005. Interpreting Television. London: Hodder Arnold. Magladry, Madison. 2018. ‘Eat Your Favourite TV Show: Politics and Play in Fan Cooking.’ Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. 32(2). pp. 111–120. Martin, Daniel. 2015. Extreme Asia: The Rise of Cult Cinema From the Far East. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McCorkie, Brooke. 2016. ‘Fandom’s New Frontier: Star Trek in the Concert Hall.’ Journal of Fandom Studies. 4(2). pp. 175–192. McCreary, Bear. 2012. ‘The Walking Dead: Judge, Jury, Executioner.’ Bear McCreary Official Site. 4th March. https://www.bearmccreary.com/#blog/blog/the-walkingdead/the-walking-dead-judge-jury-executioner/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] McCreary, Bear. 2017. ‘Liner Notes.’ The Walking Dead: Original Television Soundtrack [vinyl]. Lakeshore Records. McDonnell, Erin Metz. 2016. ‘Food Porn: The Conspicuous Consumption of Food in the Age of Digital Reproduction.’ In Bradley, Peri (ed). Food, Media and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 239–265. McGinley, Sarah F. 2021. ‘Consuming Butlers and Curry Buns: Cooking, Becoming, and Desiring with Black Butler.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E., and Chin, Bertha (eds). Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. London: Routledge. pp. 105–117. Meier, Leslie M. 2017. Popular Music as Promotion: Music and Branding in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge.

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

303

Murphy, Bernice. 2011. ‘Imitations of Life: Zombies and the Suburban Gothic.’ In Christie, Deborah and Lauro, Sarah Juliet (eds). Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. New York: Fordham University Press. pp. 116–138. Murray, Sarah. 2013. ‘Food and Television.’ In Albala, Ken (ed). Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies. London: Routledge. pp. 187–197. Nadkarni, Samira and Pande, Rukmini. 2019. ‘Hannibal the Cannibal: Tracking Colonial Imaginaries.’ In Mudan Finn, Kavita and Nielsen, EJ (eds). Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. pp. 145–168. Negus, Keith. 1992. Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. London: Edward Arnold. Oakes, Jenny. 2020. ‘Where are the Female Composers in Film/TV and Production Music and What Can We Do to Address this?’ Synchtank. 24th June. https:// www.synchtank.com/blog/where-are-the-female-composers-in-film-tv-andproduction-music-and-what-can-we-do-to-address-this/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] O’Connor, Alan. 2008. Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy: The Emergence of DIY. Lanham: Lexington. O’Dwyer, Rachel. 2020. ‘Limited Edition: Producing Artificial Scarcity for Digital Art on the Blockchain and its Implications for the Cultural Industries.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 26(4). pp. 874–894. Oseland, Chris-Rachael and Gordon, Tom. ND. ‘Vegan Zombie Jerky.’ Kitchen Overload. https://kitchenoverlord.com/vegan-zombie-jerky-crackers/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Palm, Michael. 2019. ‘Keeping What Real? Vinyl Records and the Future of Independent Culture.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 25(4). pp. 643–656. Peirse, Alison (ed). 2020. Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. 2016. ‘Corpses, Popular Culture and Forensic Science: Public Obsession With Death.’ Mortality. 21(1). pp. 19–35. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. 2011. Food and Culture in Contemporary American Fiction. London: Routledge. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. 2016. ‘“That Cherry Pie is Worth a Stop”: Food and Spaces of Consumption in Twin Peaks.’ In Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew and Spooner, Catherine (eds). Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 87–104. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. 2017. Consuming Gothic: Food and Horror in Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

304 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Pierson, David P. 2010. ‘Evidential Bodies: The Forensic and Abject Gazes in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.’ Journal of Communication Inquiry. 34(2). pp. 184–203. Poon, Janice. 2016. Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur’s Cookbook. London: Titan Books. Powell, Sharon. 2020. Cheesecake Ripper!: Unofficial Hannibal Cookbook. Self-Published. Prastya, Narayana Mahendra. 2020. ‘The Fan Use of Football Club Official Media (Descriptive Study of The Use of PS Sleman Official Media).’ Komunikator. 12(1). pp. 37–45. ProfGenki. ND. ‘Zombie-Ear Necklace Snack (The Walking Dead).’ Instructables. https://www.instructables.com/Zombie-Ear-Necklace-Snack-The-Walking-Dead/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Rehak, Bob. 2014. ‘Materiality and Object-oriented Fandom.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 16. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0622 Reinhard, CarrieLynn D. and Ganguly, Lauhona. 2021. ‘Learning How to Cook Without Lifting a Knife: Food Television, Foodies, and Food Literacy.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E., and Chin, Bertha (eds). Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. London: Routledge. pp. 71–88. Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E. and Chin, Bertha. 2021. ‘Introduction: Food Culture and Fandom.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E., and Chin, Bertha (eds). Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. London: Routledge. pp. 1–14. Rendell, James. 2018. ‘Bridge Builders, World Makers: Transcultural Studio Ghibli Fan Crafting.’ East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. 4(1). pp. 93–109. Rendell, James. 2020. ‘Staying In, Rocking Out: Online Live Music Portal Shows During the Coronavirus Pandemic.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. pp. 1–20. Ritzer, George. 1996. The McDonaldization of Society: Revised Edition. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Rodgers, Holly. 2019. ‘The Audiovisual Eerie: Transmediating Thresholds in the Work of David Lynch.’ In Vernallis, Carol, Rogers, Holly and Perrott, Lisa (eds). Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and the New Audiovisual Aesthetics. New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 241–270. Santo, Avi. 2018. ‘Fans and Merchandise.’ In Click, Melissa A. and Scott, Suzanne (eds). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. London: Routledge pp. 329–336. Sarah. 2019. ‘Stranger Things Party.’ A Love Letter to Food. 29th October. http:// alovelettertofood.com/2017/10/stranger-things-party/ [Accessed 4 April 2023]

Sick Senses: Fan Food and Soundtr ack s 

305

Sarpong, David, Dong, Shi, and Appiah, Gloria. 2016. ‘“Vinyl Never Say Die”: The Re-incarnation, Adoption and Diffusion of Retro-technologies.’ Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 103. pp. 109–118. Sexton, Jamie. 2015. ‘Creeping Decay: Cult Soundtracks, Residual Media, and Digital Technologies.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. 13(1). pp. 12–30. Smith, Jeff. 1999. ‘Selling My Heart: Music and Cross-Promotion in Titanic.’ In Sandler, Kevin S. and Studlar, Gaylyn (eds). Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 46–63. Sobchack, Vivian. 2007. ‘Chasing the Maltese Falcon: On the Fabrications of a Film Prop.’ Journal of Visual Culture. 6(2). pp. 219–246. Steur, Leah. 2021. ‘Taste Culture: Fan Food as Sensorial Play and Pilgrimage.’ In Reinhard, CarrieLynn D., Largent, Julia E., and Chin, Bertha (eds). Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. London: Routledge. pp. 163–176. Stilwell, Robynn J. 2005. ‘Sound and Empathy: Subjectivity, Gender and the Cinematic Soundscape.’ In Furby, Jacqueline and Randell, Karen (eds). Screen Methods: Comparative Readings in Film Studies. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 48–58. Stilwell, Robynn J. 2011. ‘“Bad Wolf”: Leitmotif in Doctor Who (2005).’ In Deaville, James (ed). Music in Television: Channels of Listening. New York: Routledge. pp. 119–141. Tammy, Jennifer and Garska Rodriguez, Stacey. 2017. ‘Zombie Guts Halloween Cinnamon Rolls.’ In the Kids’ Kitchen. 11th October. https://www.inthekidskitchen. com/zombie-guts-halloween-cinnamon-rolls/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] The Muffin Brothers. 2017. Stranger Fillings. London: Trapeze. VanCour, Shawn. 2011. ‘Television Music and the History of Television Sound.’ In Deaville, James (ed). 2011. Music in Television: Channels of Listening. New York: Routledge. pp. 57–79. Vint, Sheryl. 2013. ‘Abject Posthumanism: Neoliberalism, Biopolitics, and Zombies.’ In Levina, Marina and Bui, Diem-My T. (eds). Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 133–146. Vossen, Emma. 2014. ‘Laid to Rest: Romance, End of the World Sexuality and Apocalyptic Anticipation in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead.’ In McGlotten, Shaka and Jones, Steve (eds). Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 88–105. Warner, Kristen J. 2015a. The Cultural Politics of Colourblind Casting. New York: Routledge. Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. 2019. ‘Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (1982) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).’ In Bacon, Simon (ed). Horror: A Companion. Oxford: Peter Lang. pp. 67–74. Wheatley, Helen. 2006. Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

306 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Williams, Rebecca. 2020. Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality And Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Willits, Fern K. 1993. ‘The Rural Mystique and Tourism Development: Data From Pennsylvania.’ Journal of the Community Development Society. 24(2). pp. 159–174. Wilson, Lauren. 2017. The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook and Survival Guide. London: Titan Books. Wolf, Katie. 2016. ‘Twin Peaks Dinner.’ Reel Fancy Dinners. 23rd February. https:// reelfancydinners.blogspot.com/2016/02/twin-peaks-dinner.html [Accessed 4 April 2023] Woods, Faye. 2013. ‘Storytelling in Song: Television Music, Narrative and Allusion in The O.C.’ In Jacobs, Jason and Peacock, Steven (eds). Television Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 199–207. Yochim, Emily and Biddinger, Megan. 2008 ‘“It Kind of Gives You That Vintage Feel”: Vinyl Records and the Trope of Death.’ Media, Culture and Society. 30(2). pp. 183–195. Yuen, Nancy Wang. 2017. Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Conclusion Abstract This chapter addresses future studies into post-TV horror and the utilization of abject spectrums beyond horror. The chapter considers post-TV horror’s transnational facets and the need to research non-Anglophonic horror television, before signalling how media’s general digitization prompts further consideration of televisuality structuring other horror media. Positioning fans as active creatives, the chapter considers Creepypastas as grassroots digital folktales and horror media that have their own fandoms. The chapter explores how abject spectrums can be applied to and complicated by horror videogame playing, whist pedagogical settings can paratextually direct students’ abject spectrums. Finally, while abject imagery displays strong affinities with horror iconography and themes, the chapter evidences other genre media that can galvanize audiences’ abject spectrums. Keywords: horror, abject spectrums, digital media, pedagogy, non-fiction, reality TV

This book has sought to examine two central and interrelated components: 1) the increased popularity and variety of twenty-first century horror television within a post-TV paradigm that includes screen media content and broader transmedia ecologies. 2) abject spectrums as a conceptual model that accounts for the heterogeneity of responses and readings of horror television and how these filter into audiences’ own participatory cultures and meaning-making practices. This section ruminates on where we might turn our attention to build on these components and the fields of Horror Studies, TV Studies, Digital Media Studies, and Audience and Fan Studies. Naturally, with any study supported by case studies there are further examples that can support and/or add further complexity to analyses, arguments, evaluations, and concepts. Certainly, as Chapter 3 attests to, the transnational potential for formal and informal dissemination routes of TV

Rendell, J., Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror: Digital Distribution, Abject Spectrums and Participatory Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726320_con

308 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

horror further enriches the field on inquiry beyond commonly examined Anglophonic territories (see Abbott and Jowett, 2021a). Much like the study of horror film (e.g. Schneider and Williams, 2005), the international production and circulation of televisual horror allows us to research industries that produce such genre vehicles, cultures that the genre is contextualized against, and global audiences who consume the genre. Furthermore, post-TV has challenged, but not eradicated, television’s ontology that has fostered new areas of horror media beyond traditional broadcast that evince televisual qualities. Chapter 2 explores two instances of this: YouTube Red original series and Twitch.TV. Locating post-TV within portals that create, import, and/or distribute other horror media that share certain features can allow us to better understand the multimedia makeup of the twenty-first century digital environment. This may include the brand identity and interpellation strategies of Netflix original TV horror series, such as Stranger Things, and horror films, such as the Fear Street trilogy (Janiak, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). It may also incorporate textual form, including the longform narrativization of horror web series posted on YouTube (yet not produced by YouTube), such as Marble Hornets (2009–2014) and Clear Lakes 44 (2015–2016) or the six-part webisode series Bright Falls (2010), the transmedial prequel to the survival horror videogame Alan Wake (Remedy 2010). Likewise, as other technologies have become increasingly digitized and installed with new media internet capabilities, their employment of horror is structured not only by generic qualities but by the hybridization of their medium specificities with televisual qualities. For example, the mobile phone horror When Evil Calls (Roberts, 2006) utilizes an episodic structuring whilst the smartphone augmented reality text Night Terrors: Bloody Mary (2019) combines the digitality of augmented reality, the ludicity of videogames, the materiality of immersive theatre, and television’s mediated liveness to create a horror immersive experience. As such, much as post-TV’s increased digitization has disrupted and decentred television as the textual and experiential epicentre, the overlap and hybridization of new media technologies with extant media such as television highlights how the latter can shape the former too. The same also rings true for recent changes in post-TV, horror or otherwise. For example, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) is an interactive episode of the anthology TV series where audiences decide the narrative trajectory through a series of options given to them as the story develops. This presents an ergodic literary mode of storytelling (see Aarseth, 1997) and gamification feedback between text and viewer that fosters replayability as the latter seek out the former’s multiple narrative paths (Han and Lee, 2020). This in turn dialogically impacts and (re)shapes

Conclusion

309

audiences’ abject spectrums as experience of the text becomes layered whilst simultaneously the text changes with each interaction (Stoldt, 2020) (a point I will return to later). As with television’s increased digitization that decentres the broadcast medium within the post-TV paradigm, Lindsay Hallam demonstrates a similar relationship with cinema. Hallam explains that the subsuming of new media technologies into the visual lexicon of horror results in a post-cinematic turn for the genre, where found footage and desktop films produces ‘new cinematic expressions that communicate the sensations and intensities created in this media-saturated environment and its subsequent affects’ (2020, p. 184). Resultantly, for post-cinema horror ‘[c]inema is no longer the “cultural dominant”’ (ibid.), with ‘the lines between film and other media becom[ing] especially blurred’ (ibid., p. 187). Moreover, many of these post-cinematic horrors are watched on computer hardware, or in the case of the Snapchat horror text Sickhouse (Macpherson, 2016) viewed on audiences’ smartphones. This further disarticulates cinema theatres as the dominant affective space for media consumption and offering an uncanny synergy between the textual content/thematics and the technology it is experienced on. Consequently, not only do we need to consider the medium specificity of horror (Mittell, 2004), but also how genre evolution that hinges on (inter)textual cycles is supported by socio-technological advancements that produce, circulate, and curate media that horror frequently sutures into diegeses or subtexts (see also Sconce, 2000; McMurdo and Mee, 2021). Equally, as highlighted in Chapter 5 and 6 transmedial matrixes are also formed, in part, by audiences’ creative practices, which have been supported by Web 2.0 media’s prosumer underpinning. Thus, while fans have made both textual and tactile transmedial works that extend and enhance their beloved horror TV texts, others are using audiovisual and digital media to create their own original horror stories. This is perhaps most apparent with the collaborative folkloric development of Creepypastas, internet ghost stories and urban legends, such as Slenderman and Jeff the Killer. Creepypasta storytelling ‘self-reflexively constitutes a gothic horror genre specific to vernacular internet storytelling practices’ (Balanzategui, 2019, p. 189), combining written text with images and/or memes that develop through the spreadable, malleable, and palimpsestic faculties of digital media. Beyond, or perhaps part of, the ‘Gothicised prosumption-based model of authorship’ (Balanzategui, 2020, p. 150), fandoms have also developed around Creepypastas. There is, for example, a Creepypasta fan wiki as well as sites that sell Creepypasta clothing and merchandise. Furthermore,

310 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

these online community-developed monsters have made their way into mainstream media, with the TV anthology series Channel Zero adapting well-known Creepypasta tales. Other grassroot creativity integrates the social media site’s formal structuring into the horror textuality. For instance, TikTok horror videos limited by the platform’s durational range of fifteen seconds to three minutes can be understood as, I would argue, screen media short, flash, or even micro horror fictions (see Nelles, 2012). As argued in Chapter 5’s conclusion, developments in media technologies foster new ways for audiences to affectively engage with the genre. As discussed in Chapter 4, abject spectrums also operate in relation to videogames. But while videogames as a screen media share the same ontological distance with the viewer/player as film and television (see Hanich, 2010), there is a ludic dimension to the medium that also effects abject spectrums. Gamer immersion into videogame storyworlds operates on a continuum much like other audiovisual media yet does so largely due to audience interactivity required to develop the narrative and expand the storyworld (Brown and Cairns, 2004). Differing from solely watching film and television, alongside immersion gamers playing videogames engenders ‘flow’, ‘the sensation of influencing the activity in the virtual world (“gaming action”)’ (Michailidis et al., 2018, p. 3) and ‘presence’, ‘the sense of being in the virtual world’ (ibid.). Affective enthralment, therefore, partly stems from ‘seeing the consequences and rewards [or punishments] for decisions that provide […] the core narrative experience, as much as the explicit narrative conveyed through cut-scenes and character dialogue’ (Brown, 2014, p. 163). Consequently, and central to the conceptualization of the abject spectrum model, ‘[t]his phenomenological framework reminds us of the importance of thinking not only about the games or texts as objects, but also the effects that they have on their recipients’ (ibid., p. 160). Moreover, as with cinema and TV, horror videogames harness ‘feelings of dread, tension and anticipation [which] are fed by gameplay as much as the audio-visual environment’ (McCrea, 2019, p. 62). Although compared to the former media that employ horror and its myriad subgenres, horror in videogames is commonly the subgeneric affix to the genre of gameplay that structures the ludic dimensions of a text: e.g. survival horror, first-person shooter horror, role-playing game horror. The ludic aspects of such horror videogames resonate with Kristeva’s theorization of abjection. For Kristeva, ‘narrative[s] of suffering and horror, [act as such] not only because the “themes” are there […] but because […] [the] whole narrative stance seems controlled by the necessity of going through abjection, whose intimate side is suffering and horror its public feature’ (1982, p. 140). In the case of horror

Conclusion

311

videogames, a player is compelled to go through abject suffering as an interactive aspect of the medium if they want to progress within the text. As a result, the affective potential of ludic immersion means ‘fear becomes much more intense’ (Rouse III, 2009, p. 20). As with those who avoid other types of horror media, ‘some people are simply too afraid to play a frightening game for the reason that they do not enjoy this sort of experience’ (Perron, 2018, p. 106). Perron develops this line of thought, explaining that the optimal ludic experience of a scary video game is reached when a gamer’s survival skills are dynamically balanced with the deadly threat they face. If the player-character is never put in a situation where a gamer feels that they are in danger, the adventure is not scary. Or if the player-character is constantly killed by the foe, the experience is more frustrating than creepy. (ibid.)

As the final point alludes to, videogames’ phenomenological frameworks are also shaped by the inherent palimpsestic replayability of the medium, where failing to progress through the abject suffering requires you to tackle the text again informed by previous attempts. Failure itself has affective potential as indicated by Perron. Furthermore, ‘the circumstances of your game playing, personality, mood, and time investment will influence how you feel about failure’ (Juul, 2013, p. 13). This again attests to a much wider emotional response to the horror genre than purely feeling scared. Much like repeat viewing of horror screen media, replaying horror videogames produces a ‘quasi-familial status’ between audience and text (Klinger, 2010, p. 139), where experiential affective knowledge engendered by failure can allow us to develop the skills needed to prevail over the in-text abjection and continue on. Such goal completion informed by the time and energy of (re)playing can also create emotive responses such as relief, pride, or elation; feelings less likely present when watching horror screen media but equally likely to manifest when playing non-horror videogames. Consequently, affect is founded on ‘the dual domain of the semiotic and the procedural’ (Sicart, 2013, p. 47). Alternatively, we may turn to paratextual information disseminated by other players – often online – that offers us knowledge on how to tackle the in-game abject obstacles (Juul, 2013, p. 15), or input cheats that result in a diminution in antagonistic threats – such as making the player invincible. As a result, the fear of the unknown becomes knowable and/or no longer a danger to us, altering our affective relationship with the text. Some games may even subvert audience knowledge and ability to predict by developing AI

312 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

that results in monstrous threats not being in fixed locations, randomizing when the player will encounter them to maintain dramatic tension, such as Left 4 Dead (Valve 2008) and Alien: Isolation (see Švelch, 2020). Other videogames present various choices that alter the story or have a number of unlockable achievements that require players to re-traverse abject narratives of suffering in a different manner, encouraging further replaying that opens up new affective pleasures and responses (Taylor, 2009, pp. 53–54). But whilst horror videogames can stimulate various emotional responses, Chapter 4 evidenced that audiences can also ideologically deconstruct game texts much like film and television. In comparison to TellTale’s The Walking Dead where praise was given for its nuanced intersectional depiction of Black masculinity, Resident Evil 5’s (Capcom 2009) ‘depiction of raced and gendered characters trades upon [colonial] stereotypes’ (Brock, 2011, p. 430). Equally, LGBTQ+ and female gamers have been vocal in wanting better and more complex queer and gender representations in videogames (Shaw, 2014; Malkowski and Russworm, 2017). Not only aimed at in-text representations, audiences’ discursive prioritizations are also negotiated within wider fan communities’ habitus and practices that can be hostile and even toxic to these critiques and calls for more meaningful diversity. Indeed, not all fans are progressive with reactionary responses also demonstrating ideological aspects of abject spectrums (see Tomkinson, 2022). Finally, as with audiences looking through audiovisual media, gamers may aesthetically engage with horror videogames. This may centre on the photorealist visuals aided by next generation technological advancements, illustrated by texts such as Resident Evil Village (Capcom 2021) and Blair Witch (Bloober Team 2019). Conversely, playing horror games from yesteryear may look comparatively dated due to their pixelation that prompts aesthetic readings, as may new neo-retro games ‘reflect[ing] a revival of past styles or designs (as in retro 8-bit, retro 16-bit etc.)’ (Sloan, 2016, p. 36). Videogames may also be read through to foster discourses of authorship. This is exemplified by Hideo Kojima (creator of the Metal Gear Series (1987–2018), P.T. (7780s Studio 2014), and Death Standing (Kojima Productions 2019)) and Keiichiro Toyama (Creator of the Silent Hill series (1999–), Siren (Sony 2003), and Siren: Blood Curse (Sony 2008)), both of whom have been framed as auteurs (deWinter, 2019; Pring, 2021). Gamers may also focus on the technical features of a horror videogame, specifically the mechanics that govern how a text is played. Mechanics are ‘not what we see or hear while playing a game. Rather, “mechanics” refers to the vast amount of information [(such as algorithms)] that goes into constructing the world of the game’ (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2016, p. 51). Other pragmatic technological readings may centre on

Conclusion

313

interactive functionality of hardware (such as controllers, keyboards, and haptic technologies) that gamers must use to engage with a videogame’s interface and narrative. Furthermore, as with watching horror TV, aspects of the abject spectrum can be blurred when playing horror videogames. For instance, players who undertake ‘speedruns’ to attempt to complete a game as quickly as possible frequently curtail much of their engagement with the text’s narrative or worldbuilding dynamics. This goal-centred approach can create strong emotional reactions and deep readings of a videogame’s mechanics, and in doing so, ‘entirely new, unanticipated narratives that take on a form and meaning far more experimental and radical than those intended by these games’ developers’ (McKissack and May, 2020, p. 545). Consequently, abject spectrums are pertinent to horror videogames but only when we consider how abjection and the horror genre are shaped by medium specifics. As with players who may use paratexts to guide them through the horrors of videogame, we can also think how abject spectrums can be directed in other contexts. Namely, studying horror within pedagogical settings. Ahmad and Moreland note that it is ‘[i]n the classroom where horror texts come alive, in a sense, through being read, watched and discussed, we are brought closer to an understanding of […] “[media] principles, techniques and devices” rather than being able to comfortably assume a one-size-fitsall experience’ (2013, p. 8). Supporting the argument of myriad audience affect, teaching the genre within an educational environment provides a space for students and indeed scholars to develop their engagement with horror. Thinking about horror critically by employing key terminology alongside the pragmatic techniques of media production can, therefore, inform students’ abject spectrums. Moreover, classes accompanied by screenings that task students to read a text in a specific manner based off a lecture’s core content. Getting students to deconstruct slasher’s final girls in relation to wider gender politics or focus on the aesthetics of Giallo cinema discursively condition the audiences’ abject spectrums as their academic knowledge advances. In seminars, these points may be extrapolated whilst students also discuss how the screenings made them feel. As I have discussed elsewhere, such pedagogical examination of horror affect can be incorporated into classes where students think about their own relationships with the genre: on my second-year module Media Audiences and Fandom we look at theories of immersion in horror media such as cinema, television, and video games and the subjectivity of individual audience members. We

314 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

gauge in the class who enjoys horror and who dislikes it, or (dis)likes particular types or styles. We then explore how we might enthral or distance ourselves from the images onscreen before looking at how fans engage with the genre in their participatory practices. This is effective as it allows all the students to see themselves in the class content and learn key theories, concepts, and debates surrounding horror reception [even if they avoid the genre]. (Rendell, 2021b)

This may even feed into summative assessments where students are examined on their ability to harness a specific sector of the abject spectrum as they engage critically with scholarly literature that informs their own analysis of horror media. Of course, guiding affect is not confined to the classroom. Horror fans frequently consume an array of paratexts that shape their abject spectrums, such as autobiographies of beloved cult creatives, monographs on the making of classic genre vehicles, podcasts that dissect the canon in minute detail, and even academic publications. All of which impact audiences’ field of knowledge and subsequent textual experiences. For instance, knowing the specifics of creating the gory set-pieces on a film like The Thing and who advanced such special effects can allow us to read through the text as we gain new aesthetic pleasures. Since genre aficionados often go beyond consuming a horror text, undertaking forensic fan practices that enhance their subcultural capital, their abject spectrums are phenomenologically underpinned by wider materials. This attests to affective responses’ heterogeneity but does so not based solely on a hermetic relationship between audience and text. It is also salient to consider that whilst abject imagery may find affinity with horror’s iconographic, thematic, and affective generics, abjection is pertinent to other genres. Thus, compared to previous horror effect/affect concepts that restrict themselves within the castle walls of genre boundaries, we can also explore how abject spectrums operate in non-horror media (Arya, 2014, pp. 143–146; Lechte, 2016, pp. 22–24; Mey, 2016, p. 145). For example, medical dramas with their focus on, and detailed depictions of, corporeal trauma and the procedures undertaken to attempt to heal bodies and save lives (Jacobs, 2003). Shown with high degrees of verisimilitude, the genre may engender the same somatic or emotional responses evidenced in this book. Equally, a central tenet of crime fiction are murdered victims who epitomize the ultimate abjection: the corpse. Frequently, as part of the procedural process to catch the killer(s), the cadaver becomes a site of clues presenting an ‘abject gaze’ (Pierson, 2010, p. 185) that highlights the spectacle of crimes inflicted on the body and the intersectional identities

Conclusion

315

attached to both the assailants and the victims (Close, 2018; Lavigne, 2009). It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that both genres have been hybridized with horror for the television screen (see Rendell, forthcoming). Beyond works of f iction, abjection manifests in non-f iction. This is evident in news reporting that presents daily on ‘true’ horrors from around the world: ‘gruesome, sudden death in accidents, disasters, massacres, murders, diseases and war’ (Taylor, 1998, p. 2). Restrained in visual depictions compared to fictional terrors (ibid., p. 5), nevertheless the ontological distance that premises many concepts of audience immersion into, and subsequent affective response to, horror media does not hold water here. That said, these real horrors are still mediated and as Hills (2005a, p. 135) illustrates often through the generic prism and narrative structures of horror fiction. Thus, abject spectrums are reading and responding to both the stories that are ontologically located in audiences’ own worlds – even if said stories are geographically dispersed – and the mediating techniques that inform and aestheticize stories. But whilst we may be hard pressed to find fans of ‘horror’ news reporting, other forms of real-world horror have developed strong fanbases and participatory cultures. With the popularity of docuseries such as Making a Murderer (Netflix 2015–2018) and Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (Netflix 2019), as well as true crime podcasts such as Serial (2014–) and Stranglers (2016–2017), audiences’ evidence heterogeneous motivations for seeking out such gruesome media and a wide range of responses when experiencing these non-fictions (see Boling and Hull, 2018; Kennedy, 2018). Moreover, Rico writes, ‘[u]sers on social networking sites such as Facebook, DeviantArt, and especially Tumblr post public comments and fan-created texts (e.g., sketches, videos, and blogs) in honor of the Columbine shooters while often fending off remarks from the general public criticizing their fandom’ (2015). McMurdo adds that despite the taboo subject matter of aligning with and even fantasizing about real-life serial killers, true crime communities display ‘fan practices [that] are not too dissimilar to those of well-known and legitimized fandoms, such as Star Trek fans’ (2019, p. 66), as well as, I would argue, fandoms centring on celebrities (see Soukup, 2006). An underexplored research area, serial killer fandom with its centring on social taboos, monstrosity, and death, finds thematic and aesthetic overlap with the horror genre. Broll terms the former ‘dark fandoms’, ‘communities of fans who identify with or otherwise celebrate those who have committed heinous acts, such as mass or serial murders. These communities usually form online’ (2020, p. 795). While the loci of these fanbases may be violent and morally transgressive, as with certain horror subcultures and fans of

316 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

extreme music genres, dark fandoms ‘may not be violent – they may be fans out of curiosity, identification with the murderer’s background, or any other reason’ (ibid.), which can be located alongside wider dark topics of fascination (ibid., p. 796). As with the paradox of horror – why would audiences enjoy something that is designed to produce negative responses in them – that this volume has addressed through the concept of abject spectrums, dark fandoms prompt further inquiry around audience affective engagement with true horror media. More glossy but no less dark, reality TV also relishes in abject imagery. For instance, a number of series such as Fear Factor (NBC 2001–2006) and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! include tasks where contestants have to consume abject foodstuffs including rotten comestibles, animals’ body parts and organs, and live creatures. We can also see how abject spectrums operate in relation to these shows. For some audiences, these gross-out moments make them recoil in disgust (Wilson, 2010). Others finding such stunts ideologically and morally objectionable protest the mistreatment of animals for commercial entertainment (Lenska, 2020). Others may aesthetically see such content as little more than cheap ordinary TV (Bonner, 2003), held in opposition to the cultural cachet of high-end television. Of course, viewers may combine all three aspects of their abject spectrums that shape their debasement of reality TV or these specific genre texts. Finally, as the last paragraph attests to, if non-horror media can abound in abject images and themes (Creed, 2022), abject spectrums can be active in relation to media content in a far more latent manner compared to overt abject imagery that highlights the phenomenological basis of the concept. Orquidea Morales offers a germane example of this. Morales questions ‘[i] f horror is the evocation of a physical response along with a sense of fear and dread and this is often accomplished […] through identification with what we see on screen, then where does that leave us – the Latinx fans that love the genre, yet are rarely seen on screen, let alone as leads?’ (2021). Indeed, as demonstrated in Chapter 4, race and national identity as lived intersectional facets of one’s biographical fabric are paramount in informing abject spectrums. For Morales, their history of crossing the Mexico–US border concurrent with the fear of stigmatism, xenophobia, and racism informs their responses to media in abject ways even with non-horror texts. They note that ‘there was and still is a visceral response to the border patrol vehicles, the border wall, and the checkpoints’ (ibid.), and that, ‘[e]ven images of these horror architectures and machines make my body react, including in non-horror films’ (ibid.). Citing Pixar’s children film Coco (Molina and Unkrich 2017) as typifying this response, Morales writes that

Conclusion

317

the scene where Hector tries to cross the border only to be chased by the undead border patrol. When he tries to cross the marigold bridge, the petals turned into liquid dragging him down and facilitating his capture and deportation. This scene was intended to be a funny and playful way to let us learn more about Hector’s character and desire to return to the world of the living. (ibid.)

However, for Morales, ‘Latinx horror is about reading against the grain and feeling beyond what the text dictates by bringing in our own experiences […] [where the scene is] read and experienced as horrific, a reminder of the real-world policies and enforcements that cause real deaths on the border’ (ibid.). While my conceptualization of abject spectrums is developed via its application to TV horror, it is important to note, as Morales demonstrates, one’s own experiential histories are brought to bear on media interactions and that abject spectrums also operate for non-horror media.

References Aarseth, Espen J. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Abbott, Stacey and Jowett, Lorna (eds). 2021a. Global TV Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales. Ahmad, Aalya and Moreland, Sean. 2013. ‘Introduction: Horror in the Classroom.’ In Ahmad, Aalya and Moreland, Sean (eds). Fear and Learning: Essays on the Pedagogy of Horror. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 5–17. Arya, Rina. 2014. Abjection and Representation: An Exploration of Abjection in the Visual Arts, Film and Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Balanzategui, Jessica. 2019. ‘Creepypasta, “Candle Cove”, and the Digital Gothic.’ Journal of Visual Culture. 18(2). pp. 187–208. Balanzategui, Jessica. 2020. ‘The Digital Gothic and the Mainstream Horror Genre: Uncanny Vernacular Creativity and Adaptation.’ In Falvey, Eddie, Hickinbottom, Joe, and Wroot, Jonathan (eds). New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 147–164. Boling, Kelli S. and Hull, Kevin. 2018. ‘Undisclosed Information – Serial is My Favorite Murder: Examining Motivations in the True Crime Podcast Audience.’ Journal of Radio & Audio Media. 25(1). pp. 92–108. Bonner, Frances. 2003. Ordinary Television. London: Sage. Brock, André. 2011. ‘“When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong”: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers.’ Games and Culture. 6(5). pp. 429–452.

318 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Broll, Ryan. 2020. ‘Dark Fandoms: An Introduction and Case Study.’ Deviant Behavior. 41(6). pp. 792–804. Brown, Alistair. 2014. ‘The Sense of an Ending. The Computer Game Fallout 3 as a Serial Fiction.’ In Allen, Rob and van den Berg, Thijs (eds). Serialization in Popular CULTURE. London: Routledge. pp.157–169. Brown, Emily and Cairns, Paul. 2004. ‘A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion.’ Extended Abstracts of the 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM Press. pp. 1297–1300. Close, Glen S. 2018. Female Corpses in Crime Fiction: A Transatlantic Perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Creed, Barbara. 2022. Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema. London: Routledge. deWinter, Jennifer. 2019. ‘Miyamoto/Kojima.’ In Payne, Matthew Thomas and Huntemann, Nina B. (eds). How to Play Video Games. New York: New York University Press. pp. 177–184. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon, Smith, Heide Jonas, and Tosca, Susana Pajares. 2016. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Third Edition. London: Routledge. Hallam, Lindsay. 2020. ‘Digital Witness: Found Footage and Desktop Horror as Post-Cinematic Experience.’ In Falvey, Eddie, Hickinbottom, Joe, and Wroot, Jonathan (eds). New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 183–199. Han, Zhe and Lee, Hyun-Seok. 2020. ‘Study of User Reuse Intention for Gamified Interactive Movies upon Flow Experience.’ Journal of Multimedia Information System. 7(4). pp. 281–293. Hanich, Julian. 2010. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt. 2005a. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Jacobs, Jason. 2003. Body Trauma TV: The New Hospital Dramas. London: BFI. Juul, Jesper. 2013. The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kennedy, Liam. 2018. ‘“Man I’m All Torn Up Inside”: Analyzing Audience Responses to Making a Murderer.’ Crime, Media, Culture. 14(3). pp. 391–408. Klinger, Barbara. 2010. ‘Becoming Cult. The Big Lebowski, Replay Culture and Male Fans.’ Screen. 51(1). pp. 1–20. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Lavigne, Carlen. 2009. ‘Death Wore Black Chiffon: Sex and Gender in CSI.’ Canadian Review of American Studies. 39(4). pp. 383–398.

Conclusion

319

Lechte, John. 2016. ‘Abjection, Art and Bare Life.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 14–29. Lenska, Rula. 2020. ‘Rula Lenska: “I’m a Celebrity” Is No Place for Animals.’ Peta. 30th November. https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/rula-lenska-im-a-celebrity/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Malkowski, Jennifer and Russworm, TreaAndrea M. (eds). 2017. Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games. Indiana: Indiana University Press. McCrea, Christian. 2019. ‘Kojima Production’s P.T. (2014).’ In Bacon, Simon (ed). Horror: A Companion. Oxford: Peter Lang: pp. 61–66. McKissack, Fraser and May, Laurence. 2020. ‘Running With the Dead: Speedruns and Generative Rupture in Left 4 Dead 1 and 2.’ Games and Culture. 15(5). pp. 544–564. McMurdo, Shellie. 2019. ‘“It’s a Filthy Goddamn Helpless World”: Reimagining Columbine, Tate Langdon and the Spectre of School Shooters.’ European Journal of American Culture. 38(1). pp. 57–69. McMurdo, Shellie and Mee, Laura. 2021. ‘Ghosts in the (VCR) Machine: Video, the Horror Genre, and Dead Media.’ KURJA POLT Genre Film Festival. 8th–13th June. Ljubljana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No31WOHGQEs [Accessed 4 April 2023] Mey, Kerstin. 2016. ‘Corpus Delicti.’ In Arya, Rina and Chare, Nicholas (eds). Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 144–159. Michailidis, Lazaros, Balaguer-Ballester, Emili, and He, Xun. 2018. ‘Flow and Immersion in Video Games: The Aftermath of a Conceptual Challenge.’ Frontiers in Psychology. 9. pp. 1–8. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. Morales, Orquidea. 2021. ‘The Visceral in Latinx Horror.’ Flow. 27th April. http:// www.flowjournal.org/2021/04/visceral-in-latinx-horror/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Nelles, William. 2012. ‘Microfiction: What Makes a Very Short Story Very Short?’ Narrative. 20(1). pp. 87–104. Perron, Bernard. 2018. The World of Scary Video Games: A Study of Videoludic Horror. New York: Bloomsbury. Pierson, David P. 2010. ‘Evidential Bodies: The Forensic and Abject Gazes in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.’ Journal of Communication Inquiry. 34(2). pp. 184–203. Pring, Joe. 2021. ‘Silent Hill Creator Teases His New Horror Game.’ We Got This Covered. 16th February. https://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/silent-hill-creatorteases-horror-game/ [Accessed 4 April 2023]

320 

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Rendell, James. 2021b. ‘“Now Is the Time of Monsters”: A Roundtable on Contemporary Horror.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. https://nrftsjournal. org/now-is-the-time-of-monsters/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Rendell, James. Forthcoming. ‘Horror TV.’ In Creeber, Glen (ed). The Television Genre Book. Fourth Edition. London: BFI. Rico, Andrew Ryan. 2015. ‘Fans of Columbine Shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.’ Transformative Works and Cultures. 20. https://doi.org/10.3983/ twc.2015.0671 Rouse III, Richard. 2009. ‘Match Made in Hell: The Inevitable Success of the Horror Genre in Video Games.’ In Perron, Bernard (ed). Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 15–25. Schneider, Steven Jay and Williams, Tony (eds). 2005. Horror International. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Sconce, Jeffrey. 2000. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence From Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University Press. Shaw, Adrienne. 2014. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sicart, Miguel. 2013. Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay. Cambridge: MIT Press. Sloan, Robin J. S. 2016. ‘Nostalgia Video Games as Playable Game Criticism.’ Game: The Italian Journal of Game Studies. 5(1). pp. 35–45. Soukup, Charles. 2006. ‘Hitching a Ride on a Star: Celebrity, Fandom, and Identification on the World Wide Web.’ Southern Communication Journal. 71(4). pp. 319–337. Stoldt, Ryan. 2020. “Interaction Television as a Cultural Forum: Storytelling and Meaning-Making in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.” Flow. 3rd February. https:// www.flowjournal.org/2020/02/interactive-television-as-a-cultural-forum/ [Accessed 4 April 2023] Švelch, Jaroslav. 2020. ‘Should the Monster Play Fair? Reception of Artificial Intelligence in Alien: Isolation.’ Game Studies. 20(2). Taylor, John. 1998. Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Taylor, Laurie N. 2009. ‘Gothic Bloodlines in Survival Horror Gaming.’ In Perron, Bernard (ed). Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play. Jefferson: McFarland. pp. 46–61. Tomkinson, Sian. 2022. ‘“She’s Built Like a Tank”: Player Reaction to Abby Anderson in The Last of Us: Part II.’ Games and Culture. pp. 1–18. Wilson, Scott. 2010. ‘Blowing Chunks: Fear Factor, Reality Television and Abjection as a Disciplinary Practice.’ Continuum. 24(5). pp. 751–761.

Index (by Paula Clarke Bain) Abbott, Stacey 12, 14, 15, 116–17, 203, 212, 215 abjection abject spectrums 27, 28 aesthetic engagement 45, 47, 193 affective responses 31, 32, 35, 38 Aldana Reyes on 31, 32, 35, 38 Creed on 27, 41 emotional and corporeal affect 194, 197 fan imagery 248, 250, 253–54 and food 38, 269 and gender 40, 41 horror documentaries 138 horror videogames 310, 311, 313 ideological readings 39–43, 205 Kristeva on 27, 31, 38–41, 45, 192, 197, 253, 269, 310 and laughter 253 non-fiction 315 non-horror screen media 314 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 192–94, 197, 205 abject spectrum model 35–36, 39, 45, 47–50, 180, 192–94, 238, 266, 310 abject spectrums aesthetic engagement 45–48, 211, 215, 220 affective responses 35–37, 39 audience engagement 49, 180 binge-viewing 114 emotional and corporeal affect 192, 194, 198, 200 fan food and soundtracks 49, 266, 267, 269, 270, 295 fan imagery 231–33, 234, 238, 250–53, 255, 256–57 future studies in post-TV horror 50, 307, 309, 312–17 and gender 41 horror videogames 310, 312–14 ideological readings 40, 41, 44, 204–06 non-fiction 315 non-horror media 50, 316–17 overview 25–30 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 191–229 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums overview 192–94, 221–23 acousmêtre 280 activism 175, 237, 242, 243 adaptation 117–18 advertising 136, 171, 174 aesthetic engagement 45–48, 212–20, 221 affect 34, 36, 37, 42, 45, 194, 195, 215

affective potential 37, 38, 201, 311 affective responses 30–39, 194, 198, 205, 209, 221 Ahmad, Aalya 313 AHS see American Horror Story Alan Wake (videogame) 308 album covers 286–87, 290, 292–94 Aldana Reyes, Xavier 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 44, 45, 118, 196 Alien franchise 47–48, 92–95, 312 Alien: Isolation (videogame) 47, 312 All4 116 Allie, Elisabeth 279 Amazon 115–16, 125, 142, 143, 144, 174 Amazon Fire 163 Amazon Prime 12, 91, 111, 116, 136, 142, 145, 160, 171 AMC 12, 137, 142, 165, 171, 172 American Horror Story (AHS) 12, 43, 71, 86–91, 124, 216, 277, 293, 294 An American Werewolf in London 92 analogue activities 265–66, 267, 292, 296 Anderson, Michael J. 73–74 Anderson, Sky LaRell 135 Andrés, José 271 animal bodies 316 anthology series 13, 74, 75, 87, 169, 171 anti-fandom 192–93, 207–09, 211, 232, 233, 238 Apple TV 142 apps 111, 125, 142, 143, 144 Argento, Dario 142 Armstrong, Megan A. 120 Army of Darkness 118, 119 Arnzen, Michael A. 118 art-horror 29, 138, 244 artwork 212–13, 232, 233, 245, 271, 289 Arya, Rina 192 Ash vs Evil Dead 111, 118, 119–20, 122, 123, 123 n. 4, 283 Asia Extreme cinema 75–78, 176, 192, 201–02, 251–52, 291 audio 25, 214, 215; see also soundtracks Audition 77, 254 augmented reality 308 auratic transmedia 22–23 auratic value 286–88 auteurs 75, 77, 112, 169, 177, 201, 202, 219, 233, 254, 312 authenticity 128, 134, 137, 139, 140, 143, 144, 219, 271, 272, 285 author, death of 76 n. 1 author function 207, 284

322  The Babadook 277, 292 Back to the Future 94 Bacon, Chris 289 Badalamenti, Angelo 285 bans 28, 78, 118, 176, 177, 178, 180 Barker, Martin 43 Barnes, Leo 123 n. 3 Barston Eastis, Catherine 277, 278 Bartmanski, Dominik 286, 287 basic cable TV 86, 91, 172 Bates Motel 22, 91, 115, 124, 193, 215–19, 220, 222, 289 BBC 12–13, 115, 116, 174–76 BBC3 71, 82–83, 159, 174–76, 180, 233, 235, 236, 237 BBC iPlayer 115, 116, 160, 161, 174, 175, 176 Beetlejuice 95, 277 Being Human 174 Belau, Linda 15 Benjamin, Walter 286, 287 Berryman, Rachel 128–29 Big Brother 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 128 binge-viewing 16–17, 110, 113–15, 125–26, 141, 144, 166, 172, 282 Bishop, Dante 123 n. 3 BitTorrent 163 Black audiences fan imagery 239, 241, 242 Fear the Walking Dead 193, 208–10 Horror Noire 138, 140 Jurassic Park 34 Peele films 211 and queerness 141 ‘surplus Blackness’ 206 Them 211 The Walking Dead 193, 206–11, 239, 241, 242 Black characters Bates Motel 215–20 fan imagery 233, 238–44, 257 Fear the Walking Dead 193, 208–10 Jurassic Park 34 Peele films 211, 281 TellTale’s The Walking Dead videogame 193, 210–11, 312 The Walking Dead 193, 206–10, 233, 238–44 women 215 Black History Month 208 Black horror 138, 140, 211 Black Lives Matter 41, 44 Black masculinity 207–11, 238–44, 312 Black Mirror 12, 284, 287, 288–89, 308 Black Twitter 241 ‘blackwashing’ 220 Blackwood, Algernon 13 Blair Witch (videogame) 312 The Blair Witch Project 29, 129 The Blob 92

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Bloch, Robert 248 blogs 241, 242 Blumhouse Television 123 n. 4 Blu-ray 158, 159, 162, 172, 173, 179, 267, 282, 292 Bobo, Jacqueline 44 Bode, Dana Sterling 270 body horror 32, 70, 72, 112, 195, 232, 255, 270, 278 Booth, Paul 36, 140, 169, 247 The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula 19 Bourdaa, Mélanie 23, 24 Bowden, Lindsey 275, 276 Bowen, Sesali 12, 69 boxsets 114, 172, 173, 282 Brabon, Benjamin A. 88 Bram Stoker’s Dracula 95 brand identity BBC 13 BBC3 82, 174–75, 236 E4 and Dead Set 81, 115 FX and AHS 86 HBO 115 horror genre 13 idents 116, 131 mainstreaming 70 Netflix 113, 115, 308 Only-Click TV 161, 166, 180 post-TV curation 16 post-TV distribution and bingeviewing 113, 115, 116 Shudder 139, 143, 144 title music 282 transmedia and television 23 vinyl as co-branding 290–92 YouTube 130–31, 144 Brazil 160 Brembilla, Paola 283 Briggs, Joe Bob 137 Bright Falls 308 Broll, Ryan 315 Brooks, Kinitra D. 34 Brophy, Philip 14 Brown, Steven T. 32–33, 46 Browning, Tod, Freaks 72 Bruns, Axel 132 BSkyB 161 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 115, 283 Bunnicula 19 Busse, Kristina 248 Butcher Billy 287 bygone TV horror 167–71 C4 see Channel 4 Cabin Fever 112 cable TV 12, 71, 86, 91, 110, 172, 179 Calvert, Bronwen 14 Campbell, Bruce 118, 119 cannibalism 248, 249, 269, 278 Carmilla 13 Carmona, Raya 128, 130

323

Index

Carnivále 72–74, 79 Carpenter, John 92 Carrie 92 Carroll, Noël 29, 248 CCTV 83, 84 CDs 283, 285 celebrities 80, 86, 88, 128, 216, 315 celetoid 80, 81 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 45 The Cell 245 censorship 12, 28, 176, 177 Channel 4 (C4) 79, 81, 115, 116, 161 Channel Zero 91, 310 Chare, Nicholas 27 Cheesecake Ripper!: Unofficial Hannibal Cookbook 275 Cherry, Brigid 15, 19, 47, 232–33 Chiaro, Delia 278 Chibi fanart 249–50 Child Bride 72 Childish Gambino 281 children 19, 28, 38 Child’s Play franchise 22 China 160 Chion, Michael 280 Chronaki, Despina 43 Chucky 22 cinema cult cinema 70, 74–75, 283 film music 46, 281–82, 283, 286, 292 film ratings 34 film sequels 110, 118, 122, 144 film-to-TV horror transmedia 116–26, 144 future studies in post-TV horror 309 golden age of TV horror 12 horror music, television, and transmedia 281–82 horror theory 37 n. 9 post-cinema 309 transmedia and television 22 and TV horror 13, 14 vinyl soundtracks 283 wide screen 130 see also horror films cinematography 32, 212, 214, 293 Clarice 91 Clarke, M. J. 21, 274 Clasen, Mathias 26 Class 175 classical music 281, 288 Clear Lakes 44 308 clicktivism 242 cliffhangers 17, 114, 126, 130 Cloverfield 129, 296 clustering 15, 170, 212, 292 co-branding 268, 290–92 Coco 316–17 cognitive philosophy 28–29, 30, 33, 37 n. 9, 42, 45

Coleman, Robin R. Means 34, 211 Collector’s Edition Bates Motel 289 comedy 248, 250, 253–54, 257 comic books 22, 173, 207, 287 commodity fetishism 172 communicative memory 117–18 complex television 21, 117, 172, 198, 282, 285 Conrich, Ian 119, 120 consumed nostalgia 93, 94, 95 consumption 28, 126, 159, 174, 179 convergence cultures 20, 22, 24, 25, 49, 158 Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes 315 cookbooks 25, 49, 266, 270, 271–77 cookery 268, 270, 277–80 Corner, John 138 cosplay 279 covers 286–87, 292–94 COVID-19 pandemic 157, 159, 211 craft practices see fan crafting Craig, David 128 Craven, Wes 123, 123 n. 4, 125 Crazyhead 116 credits 171, 282, 285 Creed, Barbara 27, 28, 32, 40–41 Creepshow 137 Creepypastas 309–10 crime texts 314–16 Crisp, Virginia 20 Criterion 291 Critters 92 Cthulhu merchandise 249–50 Cuarón, Alfonso 169 Cullen, Cam 166 Cullen, Sarah 138 cult cinema 70, 74–75, 283 Cult of Chucky 22 cult TV 70, 71–78, 282, 283, 285 cultural capital 177, 213, 214, 215 cultural memory 110, 117–18, 239 Cunningham, Stuart 128 d’Agoty, Jacques Gautier 245 Damien 22, 74 Damn Fine Cherry Pie: The Unauthorised Cookbook Inspired By the TV Show Twin Peaks (DFCP) 275–76 Darabont, Frank 288 Dark 284 dark fandoms 124, 315–16 Dark Glasses 142 Dawn of the Dead 80, 84 Dead by Daylight (videogame) 135 Deadhouse Dark 141 Dead Set 79–82, 113 dead time 285 Deadwood 74 Death Standing (videogame) 312 Death Waltz 291, 292

324  Deliverance 40 Del Toro, Guillermo 169 DeMonaco, James 123 n. 4 Denith, Simon 276 Den of Geek 12 Derhy Kurtz, Benjamin W. L. 23, 24 DeviantArt 315 Dexter 78 DFCP see Damn Fine Cherry Pie Dickens, Charles, A Christmas Carol 12 diegetic music 280 diegetic transmedia 23 digi-gratis 169–70, 179 digital media 18, 48, 78, 110–11, 116, 133, 144, 285 Digital Media Studies 307 digital television (DTV) 78 digitization 126, 283, 290, 308, 309 discursive prioritization 43, 44, 46, 47, 206, 208, 210, 238, 242 disgust 29, 270, 316 distribution informal digital dissemination 20, 157–59, 162, 171, 173 Only-Click TV 165, 166 post-TV distribution and bingeviewing 16, 17, 112–16 YouTube Premium 131–32 Dixon, Kyle 286, 287 DIY broadcasting 132 Doctor Who 174, 236 documentaries 19, 138, 138 n. 11, 139, 212, 315 Donnelly, K. J. 46, 280, 281 Don’t Scream 174 Dorbz figures 295 Douglas, Mary 40 Dovicakova, Lucia 245 downloading 163, 164, 172, 173 Doyle, Gillian 19 Dracula 13, 47, 174, 288 Drago, Billy 202 drag queens 135 drama 19 dread 30, 31, 32, 133 drillability 21, 95 Du Bois, W. E. B. 208, 209 Duffer brothers 287 Duffett, Mark 234 n. 3 Du Maurier, Daphne, Rebecca 13 DVD binge-viewing 16, 114, 282 covers and packaging 77–78, 172, 176, 254, 287 credits 282, 285 extra-textual features 85, 172 fan vinyl mockups 292, 293 formal media strategies 171–73 informal digital dissemination 158, 159, 162, 165–66, 176, 178, 179–80

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Masters of Horror ‘Imprint’ 77–78, 159, 176, 178, 254 region-specific coding 162 text-function 284 transmedia storytelling 267 and vinyl soundtracks 284, 285, 287, 291 The Walking Dead 165, 171–73 East Asian cinema 43, 75, 76, 168 Easter eggs 87, 94, 198, 199 The Edgar Allan Poe Centenary 13 education 313–14 Edward Scissorhands 95 E4 71, 79, 81, 82, 115, 116 Elkins, Evan 161–62 Elvira 137 emic authenticity 111, 139, 140, 143, 144 emotional affect 134, 194, 195, 196, 198, 199, 212, 221 The Empire Strikes Back 94 Englund, Robert 92 n. 6 ephemerality 111, 133, 144 Erickson, Dave 207 Escape the Night 132 Evans, Elizabeth 21, 162 event TV 141 Evil Dead franchise 118–20, 122, 123 evolutionary theory 26, 29 Ewing, Jeff 12 The Exorcist 28, 91, 92, 115, 192, 199–201, 222 extra-textual features 171, 172, 179, 254 Facebook 50, 175, 204, 233, 237, 315 The Fades 83, 174 failure 311 Fairchild, Charles 282 The Fall of the House of Usher 13 fan activism 237, 242, 243 fanart 233, 234, 236, 247–51, 256, 257 fanboy auteur 139, 140 fan crafting 266, 267, 270, 271, 276, 277–80, 295 fandoms affective responses 36–38 anti-fandom 192–93, 207–09, 211, 232, 233, 238 Creepypastas 309 dark fandoms 124, 315–16 fan imagery 233, 235 forensic fandom 95, 172, 199, 213, 314 ‘just-in-time fandom’ 158, 164–67, 173, 179 mimetic fandom 271, 294 TV horror soundtracks and vinyl 283 fanfiction 234, 244, 248 fan food fan-authored creations 277–80 food, culture, and (trans)media 268–71 official TV horror cookbooks 271–74 overview 265–68, 294–96 unofficial cookbooks 274–77

325

Index

fan identities 37–38, 43, 96, 139, 279 fan imagery 231–64 emotional engagement with In the Flesh 233–38 Hannibal fanart 244–50 overview 231–33, 256–57 Tumblr curation of ‘Imprint’ 250–56 The Walking Dead Black males in meme texts 238–44 Fan Studies 37, 193, 232, 266, 295, 307 fan-subbing 20, 169 fantasy 14, 15 Fargo 88 FCC (Federal Communications Commission) 71, 86, 91, 173, 177 fear 29, 30–35, 133, 194, 197 The Fear 174 Fear Factor 316 Fear Itself 75 Fear Itself, Evil 91 FEARnet 145 Fear Street trilogy 308 Fear the Walking Dead (FTWD) 193, 208–09, 210 Feasey, Rebecca 119 Feeding Hannibal 271–72, 275, 277 female audience 35 n. 7, 41, 42, 70, 75, 217 female body 251 female characters 215, 222, 241 female directors 75 female gamers 312 female victim 251 ‘feminine’ TV 80–81 Feminist New Wave 40, 41 Ferguson protests 208 Fight of the Living Dead (FOTLD) 111, 127, 128–31, 144 film music 46, 281–82, 283, 286, 292 film ratings 34 films see cinema; horror films final girls 313 The First Purge 122 Flanigan, Mike 287 flexi-serials 71, 87–88, 89, 91, 120, 122, 127 flow 133, 142, 144, 310 food and abjection 38, 269 fan-authored creations 277–80 food, culture, and (trans)media 268–71 Hannibal fanart 248 official TV horror cookbooks 271–74 overview 25, 266–67, 268, 294–96 reality TV 316 unofficial cookbooks 274–77 food porn 272, 275, 277 forensic fandom 95, 172, 199, 213, 314 formatting 162, 163, 171–72, 173 Foucault, Michel 76 n. 1, 284 found footage 129, 212, 309 FOX 161, 171

France 160 franchises 22, 23, 118, 199 Frankenstein 13 Freaks 72 Freeman, Matthew 21, 25, 265, 296 Freevee 143 Freud, Sigmund 26, 42 From Dusk till Dawn 22 Fuji Television 167, 168, 171 Fuller, Bryan 140 Full Moon 143 Funko Pop! 95, 295 Futurama 240 FX 12, 71, 86, 161 Gaga, Lady 71, 88–91, 216 Gambarato, Renira Rampazzo 21, 25, 265, 296 gamedocs 19, 83, 84, 132 gameplay emotions 134, 135, 136 Garris, Mick 75 Gaynor, Stella Marie 137 gender 34, 35 n. 7, 40, 43, 75, 80, 210, 218, 288, 312–13 Genette, Gérard 76 genre 15, 16, 19, 48, 69, 71, 112, 124 genre-hybridization 281 genre knowledge 34, 221, 248 genre markers 14, 221 genre memory 93, 94, 95, 209, 239 geoblocking 162, 163, 166 Geraghty, Christine 48 Geraghty, Lincoln 167 German expressionism 90 Germanotta, Stefani see Lady Gaga Germany 160, 162 Get Out 211, 281 Ghostbusters 93, 220 Ghost Hunters 83 ghosts 83, 251, 309 A Ghost Story 13 Ghoul 161 Giallo cinema 139, 313 GIF images 244, 245, 246–47, 251, 252 Gillan, Jennifer 232, 244, 245 Glee 234, 293 Godwin, Victoria 266, 270, 278 Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls 272 GoPro cameras 129 Gothic 13–14, 83, 86, 88–90, 112–13, 124, 169, 194, 196, 198, 221 Grapes of Wrath 72 graphic horror 74, 79, 86, 97, 178, 203, 214, 276 Gray, Jonathan 76, 164 Gremlins 92 gross-out moments 248, 254, 316 grotesque 248 Halfyard, Janet K. 70, 282, 283 Hallam, Lindsay 309

326  Halloween festival 81, 82, 93, 113, 279, 286 Halloween films 124, 135, 292 Hall, Tony 175 Hamari, Juho 136 The Handmaid’s Tale 115, 116, 290 Hanich, Julian 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 45, 197, 212 Hannibal aesthetic engagement 193, 212–15 cookbooks 271–72, 275 fan imagery 233, 244–50, 251, 255 film-to-TV horror transmedia 116–17, 124 food and culture 269 food craft 278 post-TV distribution 91, 116 vinyl soundtracks 285, 289 Hannibal Rising 117 hard-edged horror 15 hard subtitles 168 Harrington, Erin 75 Harvey, Colin 110, 117–18, 124 Harvey, Eric 289, 290 hashtags 235, 241, 292 The Haunting of Bly Manor 88, 287 The Haunting of Hill House 88, 115, 192, 196–99, 222, 287, 292 HBO 71–74, 78, 86, 115, 161 Heathers 94 Heljakka, Katriina 250 Hellraiser films 92 Helmig, Bernd 291 Hemlock Grove 110, 112–13, 116, 126 Hendy, David 17 Henson, Keaton 281 high-definition (HD) 131, 212 high-end drama 19, 73 The Hills 128 Hills, Matt 14, 22, 26, 29, 36, 43, 75, 85, 125, 158, 165, 172, 236, 271, 284, 315 A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss 19, 138 n. 11 Hitchcock, Alfred 13, 218, 219, 220 Hocus Pocus 277 Hogan, Ron 12, 15, 97 Hollywood 43, 168, 220, 257 Holmes, Dave 39 Holt, Jennifer 166 homosexuality 90, 141, 204, 205, 234 Hora Marcada (Hour Marked) 168, 169, 170, 171 horizontal memory 118, 124, 144, 200 horrality 14, 72, 78, 195, 257 horror affective responses 30–39 appeal of 25–29, 49 definitions 15 future studies in post-TV horror 307–17 TV horror 11–66 TV horror overview 11–16 see also TV horror

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Horror Channel 69 horror films abjection 27–28 affective responses 30–31, 32, 37 n. 9 cult cinema 70, 74–75, 283 film-to-TV horror transmedia 116–26 future studies in post-TV horror 308 German expressionism 90 Hannibal fanart 245 influence on TV horror 144 lucrativeness 18 and Masters of Horror (MOH) 74–75 sequels 110, 118, 122, 144 soundtracks 292 in Stranger Things 93 and videogames 133 horror literature 116 Horror Noire 138, 138 n. 12, 140 Horror Studies 193, 295, 307 horror theory 26, 27, 28, 34, 36, 43 horror TV see TV horror horror videogames 111, 133, 134, 135–36, 310–13 Hostel 112 Howard, Douglas 35 Hughes, Sarah 12 Hulu 160, 162, 290 humour 35, 119–20, 134, 201, 238, 242, 246, 253, 276 Hunt, Nathan 110 Hurd, Gale Anne 288 Hutcheon, Linda 276, 277 hybridization 71, 308 hyperdiegesis 21, 22, 95 hypertext, and hypotext 276, 277 Ichi the Killer 77, 254 ‘ideal’ audiences 25, 26, 33, 38, 42 identity affective responses 33–34, 37–38 and food 268, 269 ideological readings 40, 44, 45, 193, 203–05 in In the Flesh 204, 205 racial identity 193, 208, 209, 241 idents 116, 131, 171, 174, 180, 290 ideological readings 39–45, 193, 203–11, 221 I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! 128, 316 image texts 232; see also fan imagery immersion 24, 30, 31, 96, 133, 134, 201, 217, 266, 308, 310 ‘Imprint’ (Masters of Horror episode) 23, 75–76, 159, 176–78, 180, 192–93, 201, 202–03, 222, 233, 250–56 Iñárritu, Alejandro González 169 incorporation of other genres and audiences 69–107 basic cable, AHS and Gaga 86–91 British young adult/teen horror TV 78–86

327

Index

Netflix, blockbuster horror and Stranger Things 91–96 overview 69–71, 96–97 quality/cult TV horror 71–78 India 160, 161 informal digital dissemination and consumption 157–88 bygone TV horror 167–71 formal media strategies 171–78 Only-Click TV background 160–64 Only-Click TV and ‘just-in-time’ fandom 164–67 overview 20, 48, 157–59, 179–80 informal media ecologies 145, 165, 179 Instagram 292, 293, 294 intellectual property (IP) 117, 167, 168, 171 interdiscourse 44 internet technologies 17, 18, 160 interpellation 33, 69, 81, 88, 97, 137, 160, 161, 212, 308 intersectionality 41, 141, 193 intertextuality 93, 125 intertextural poaching 233, 245, 254, 257 In the Flesh (ITF) 83, 174, 193, 203–06, 232–38, 242, 281, 283 intimacy 128, 129, 133, 134, 136 intratextuality 120, 125, 200 Invada 291 Invasion of the Body Snatchers 92 The Invisible Man 141 IP (intellectual property) 117, 167, 168 iPlayer see BBC iPlayer IPTV (internet protocol television) 163 Isham, Mark 287 I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse (ISAZA) 82– 85, 162, 174 IT 92 n. 5 ITF see In the Flesh ITV 13 ITV Hub 160 iZombie 91, 277, 278 Jackson, Kimberley 15 Jackson, Shirley, The Haunting of Hill House 196 Jancovich, Mark 110, 125 Japan 160, 167 Japanese horror (J-horror) affective responses 32 ideological readings 43 informal digital dissemination and OnlyClick TV 158, 160, 161, 167, 168, 170, 177 and Masters of Horror ‘Imprint’ 23, 75, 76, 192–93, 201–03, 222, 251 post-TV 19 Jaramillo, Deborah L. 82 Jarrett, John 22 Jaws 92 J-dorama 167

Jeff the Killer 309 Jenkins, Henry 21, 22, 24, 117, 162, 243, 284 Jenner, Mareike 113 Jock (cartoonist) 172 Johnson, Catherine 17, 111, 115, 126, 127, 130–31, 132, 142, 144 Johnson, Derek 91 Johnson, Dominique Deirdre 18, 241 Johnston, Derek 81 Jones, Leslie 220 Jowett, Lorna 14, 15, 88 jump scares 31 n. 3, 195, 196, 197, 198 JU-ON: Origins 161 Jurassic Park 34 ‘just-in-time fandom’ 158, 164–67, 173, 179 Justin.TV 132 Kalinak, Kathryn 286 Kavka, Misha 128–29 Killer Camp 19, 85 Kim, Jeongmee 167 King, Stephen 9, 92 Kirkman, Robert 207 Kitano, Takeshi 201 knowledge-as-affect 192, 201 knowledge-over-affect 194, 201 Know Your Meme 242 Kodi 163 Kohnen, Melanie E. S. 21, 36, 248 Kojima, Hideo 312 Kristeva, Julia 27, 31–32, 38–42, 45, 192, 197, 253, 269, 280, 310 Krzywinska, Tanya 133 Lady Gaga 71, 88–91, 216 Lakeshore 291 Lamerichs, Nicolle 279 Lange, Jessica 87, 88 languages 23, 43, 169, 202–03 Latin America 168–69 Latinx horror 316–17 laughter 201, 253–54 The League of Gentlemen 174, 248 Leeder, Murray 25, 46, 70, 194 Leffler, Yvonne 219 Left 4 Dead (videogame) 312 Leigh, Janet 215, 217, 218 Lethal Weapon 117 Let the Right One In 78 ‘Lewton Bus’ 31 LGBTQ+ communities 41, 90, 140, 205, 312 licensing 117, 281–82 Lima, Cecília Almedia 114 Lindenfeld, Laura 269 Lindsey, Cameron 110 linearity 133 liner notes 287, 288, 289 list-making 140 lived experience 30, 31, 33, 44

328  liveness 133, 135, 141 The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue 80 Lobato, Ramon 159, 160, 161, 163, 174 Lore 115 Lotz, Amanda D. 16, 18, 158 n. 1 Lovecraft Country 74, 78 LPs 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 293 Lubezki, Emmanuel 169 Lusted, David 48 Lynch, Andrew 15 Lynch, David 275 Machado, Carmen Maria 15 Madden, Victoria 42 Mad Max: Fury Road 41–42 Madonna 94 mainstreaming 70, 85, 96, 115, 167 Making a Murderer 315 The Making of Alien 47 male spectator 41 Mann, Daniel 42 Mansell, Clint 287 marathon viewings 114 Marble Hornets 308 Marshall, P. David 165 Martin Jr, Alfred J. 206 Marwick, Alice 127–28 masculinity 119, 122, 207–11, 238, 253, 274 Masters of Horror (MOH) 23, 74–79, 159, 176–78, 180, 192–93, 201–03, 222, 233, 250–56 materiality 49, 221, 267, 286–90 McCabe, Janet L. 39 McCormick, Casey J. 114 McCrea, Christian 133 McCreary, Bear 288 McDonald, Ian 138 n. 12 McDonnell, Erin Metz 277 McFarlane Toys 95 McGreevy, Brian, Hemlock Grove 112 McMurdo, Shellie 315 mechanics, of videogames 312–13 media ecologies 48, 86, 97, 116, 145, 158, 165, 167, 179, 284, 291 melodrama 35, 198, 246 memes 24, 233, 238–44, 256–57, 309 memory communicative memory 117–18 cultural memory 110, 117–18, 239 franchise memory 22, 23, 118 genre memory 93, 94, 95, 209, 239 horizontal and vertical 118, 124, 144, 200 musical anchors 282 merchandise 76, 95–96, 249–50, 309 Metal Gear Series 312 #MeToo movement 41, 121 Mexican horror 19, 158, 168, 169, 170 Michie Itō 254 micro-celebrities 111, 127–28, 129, 130, 131, 132 micro horror fictions 310

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

The Midnight Club 74 Midsommar 245 Miike Takashi 75–77, 176–78, 193, 201–03, 222, 233, 254 Mikkelsen, Mads 271, 272 Mikos, Lothar 33 mimetic fandom 271, 294 mise-en-scène 119, 199, 212, 244 Misfits 116 The Mist 74 Mitchell, Dominic 236 Mittell, Jason 15, 21, 164, 179, 198, 291 mobile phones 83, 125, 144, 308, 309 mockup vinyl soundtracks 25, 268, 292–94, 295 Mondo 289, 291 The Monkey’s Paw 13 monsters 26–27, 29–30, 42, 46, 88, 141, 193, 248, 276, 280–81 monstrous-feminine 40, 41 Morales, Orquidea 316–17 Moreland, Sean 313 Morris, Jeremy Wade 140 Most Haunted 83 multi-formatting 171–72 multimedia 21, 24, 50 Murnau, F. W. 90 n. 4 Murphy, Ryan 87 Murray, Sarah 140 music abject sound 46 AHS and Lady Gaga 88–89 fan vinyl mockups 292–94 Hannibal 212 horror music, television, and transmedia 280–83 Stranger Things 92, 94 streaming:17 TV horror soundtracks and vinyl 283–86 Twilight franchise 70 vinyl as co-branding 290–92 vinyl’s auratic material packaging 286–90 vinyl soundtracks overview 267, 294–96 Music From the X-Files: The Truth and the Light 290 Must-Click TV 162 Myers, Michael 135 Mystery and Imagination 13 narrative 22, 28, 46, 87 narrowcasting 69, 71, 79, 114 NBC 214, 215 NCIS 12 Ndalianis, Angela 39 Nelson, Robin 73, 87 ‘neo-cult’ television 75, 76, 78 neo-slasher films 123 The Nerds of Color 241, 242 Netflix Black-centric horror 211

Index

future studies in post-TV horror 308 golden age of TV horror 12 Hannibal 116 The Haunting of Hill House 196 Hemlock Grove 110, 112, 113 idents 131 informal digital dissemination and OnlyClick TV 157, 160–62, 166, 174 post-TV horror texts and platforms 16, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 145 Scream 125 Stranger Things 11, 71, 91–96 vinyl co-branding 290 The Netherlands 160 network television 91, 109, 215 Newberry, Luke 235–36 Newman, Michael Z. 20, 232 news reporting 315 Newton brothers 287 A Nightmare on Elm Street 92 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddie’s Revenge 47 Night of the Living Dead 80, 84 Night Terrors: Bloody Mary 308 non-diegetic music 46, 280 non-fiction 315 Nosferatu 90 nostalgia 91, 93, 94, 95, 119, 273 novels 22, 95, 285 Now TV 161 OCaSG (The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook and Survival Guide) 272–74 Oliver, Kelly 39 The Omen franchise 22 omnibus horror 75 The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time 139–40 online TV 17–19, 126, 127, 132, 145 Only-Click TV 48, 158–59, 160–73, 175–76, 178–80 opening title sequences 171, 282, 285 operational aesthetics 46 orality 270 ordinary television 80, 82, 85, 316 Orientalism 281 Osathanunkul, Chin 131 Othering 42, 88, 90, 141, 234, 239, 257, 269, 270, 281 over-the-top (OTT) internet protocols 16, 48, 161 Oz 74 Pande, Rukmini 37 Pan’s Labyrinth 35, 245 Parasecoli, Fabio 269 paratexts 22, 76, 78, 112–13, 171–72, 266, 274, 314 paratextural poaching 268, 293 parody 253, 277

329 participatory cultures 49, 232, 244, 296, 307, 315 parties, horror-themed 279 Patton, Mark 47 Paul, Jake 128 pedagogy 313–14 Peele, Jordan 281 Get Out 211 Us 211 Peirse, Alison 15 Penny Dreadful 78, 192, 194–96, 283 Perron, Bernard 134, 311 persons of colour 34, 38, 206–08, 211, 219–20 petitions 175 Pet Sematary 296 phallus 40 Phantom City Creative 289 phenomenological approaches 30–31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 44 phenomenological distance 39, 43, 45, 195, 196, 199, 212, 217, 220, 254 phobias 29 Piatti-Farnell, Lorna 266, 268 picture discs 288 pictures 232; see also fan imagery piracy 20, 145, 157, 163, 166, 168, 171, 180 Pixar 316 Plants and Zombies (videogame) 84 Plath, Sylvia 246 Platts, Todd K. 15 pleasure 26, 27, 29, 37, 45, 47 Poe, Edgar Allan 13 political correctness 220, 222 politics of viewing 208 Poon, Janice 271–72, 275 Feeding Hannibal 271–72, 277, 295 portals 16, 111, 115, 116, 145, 166, 211, 308 Possession 245 post-cinema horror 309 posters 112, 113 postfeminism 89 post-structuralism 76 n. 1 post-TV (post-television) definitions 16 future studies in post-TV horror 307–17 post-TV horror texts and platforms 109–56 and TV horror 16–20 post-TV horror audiences fan food and soundtracks 265–306 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 191–229 TV horror’s online fans’ image textuality 231–64 post-TV horror ecologies informal digital dissemination and consumption 157–88 post-TV horror texts and platforms 109–56

330  TV horror’s incorporation of other genres and audiences 69–107 post-TV horror texts and platforms 109–56 film-to-TV horror transmedia 116–26 overview 48, 109–11, 144–45 post-TV distribution and binge-viewing 112–16 Shudder as emic authentic post-TV horror 137–44 Twitch.TV as live post-TV horror 132–37 YouTube Premium’s post-TV horror 127–32 Powell, Sharon, Cheesecake Ripper!: Unofficial Hannibal Cookbook 275 pragmatic aesthetics 46, 212, 213, 220 premium cable TV 71, 74, 86, 112, 113, 178, 191, 195, 253 pre-textual poaching 235, 236 prized content 158, 165, 166 production cultures 44, 47 progressive pleasure 26 prosumers 231, 257, 309 protest imagery 237 The Prowler 292 Psycho 22, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220 psychoanalytic theory 25–26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 37 n. 9, 38, 40, 42 Psychoville 248 P.T. (videogame) 312 Pulse 162 The Purge 91, 111, 115–16, 120–23, 125, 144 Quality Telefantasy 79 ‘quality’ TV binge-viewing 17 ensemble casts 237 and horror genre 13 incorporation of other genres and audiences 70–71, 96–97 informal digital dissemination and Only-Click TV 161, 164, 171, 176 quality/cult TV horror 71–78 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 194, 212, 222 queer fan imagery 233, 246–50 queer fan readings 47 Queer for Fear 138 n. 12, 140–41, 144 queer gamers 312 queer horror 90, 140–41, 204, 234 race Bates Motel 219 Carnivále 72 fan identities 37–38 fan imagery 233, 238–43, 257 Fear the Walking Dead 208–10 future studies in post-TV horror 312, 316 Jurassic Park 34 Latinx fans 316

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

Poole films and Them 281 The Purge 121 reimaginings 219–20 TellTale’s The Walking Dead videogame 210–11 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 193, 206–11, 219–20 videogames 210–11, 312 vinyl and music production 288 The Walking Dead 24, 193, 206–08, 233, 238–43 Raimi, Sam 118, 123 n. 4 Rasen (Spiral) 168, 169, 170, 171 reactionary pleasure 26 reality competitions 19 reality TV (RTV) Dead Set 79–82 Fight of the Living Dead 111, 128–32 future studies in post-TV horror 316 I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse 82–85 teen/young adult TV horror 71 Rebecca 13 REC 129 recipes 266, 270, 271, 273–75, 278 record labels 268, 290, 291, 292 Record Store Day (RSD) 289–90, 291 Reddit 212, 241, 292 Red Dragon 117 Reinhard, CarrieLynn D. 270 Reiser, Paul 93–94 Reitzell, Brian 289 religion 27 remakes 43, 219, 220 Rendell, James 12, 314 Renaissance Pictures 123 n. 4 repeat viewing 28, 36, 198–99, 282, 284, 311 repression 25–28, 45, 119 Rescue Me 86 Resident Evil franchise 84, 135, 312 Rico, Andrew Ryan 315 Rihanna 193, 215–19, 220, 222 Ring: Saishusho 167, 168 Ringu franchise 43, 167, 168 The Rocky Horror Picture Show 293 Romero, George 84 Rosemary’s Baby 91, 296 Roth, Eli 112, 113, 114 RSD (Record Store Day) 289–90, 291 RTV see reality TV Ryder, Winona 94–95 Saint Maud 292 Saishusho 167, 168, 169, 170 Sandin, James 123 n. 3 Sanson, Kevin 166 #saveintheflesh campaign 204 n. 4, 234 n. 2, 237 Schmidt, Lisa 88 Schreiber, Maria 256

Index

science fiction 14, 15, 93 Scott, Suzanne 139 Scream 91, 111, 123–26, 144 Scream Queens 91, 292–93 screengrabs 233, 244, 251, 257 Secret Cinema 96 secret screenings 142 self-censorship 39, 78, 176, 177, 178, 196 sequels 110, 118, 122, 144 Serial (podcast) 315 serialization 28, 35, 86–87, 110, 122–23, 144, 158, 164, 171, 222 serial killer fandom 315 set locations 47 sex 40, 71, 74 sexism 121 Sexton, Jamie 283 sexuality 34, 89, 90 shadow economy 163 shareware 131 She’s Gotta Have It 117 Shimako Iwai, Bokkee Kyoutee 23, 77 The Shining 281 ‘shipping’ characters 234, 246, 247 shock 30, 31, 197 Showtime 71, 74–78, 159, 176–78, 180, 192–93, 253–54 Shresthova, Sagita 243 Shudder 69, 137–44, 145 Shudder Guides 139, 140 Shudder TV 111, 141 Sickhouse 309 Silence of the Lambs 117 Silent Hill series 312 Sim, Gerald 20 Simien, Justin 141 sin 40 Siodmark, Robert 139 Sipos, Thomas M. 212 Siren (videogame) 312 sitcoms 19 Six Feet Under 115 Sjöblom, Max 136 Sky 78, 79, 161 Sky Atlantic 161 slacktivism 242 Slasher 88 slasher cinema 70, 92, 123, 124, 125, 313 Slasher: Flesh & Blood 32 slash fanfic and art 234 Sleepaway Camp 296 Slenderman 309 smartphones 83, 144, 308, 309 Smart TV 144 Smith, Martin Ian 28 smooth binging 114 Snapchat 309 Snowblood Apple (forum) 50, 177, 233, 250, 251, 252, 253

331 soap operas 35 n. 7, 87, 168 social media fan imagery 232, 233–37, 240–43, 255–57 fan vinyl mockups 292 Fight of the Living Dead 111, 130 In the Flesh 233–37 future studies in post-TV horror 310, 315 The Haunting of Hill House 196 legacy television 17 Scream 124 Shudder and event TV 142 Tumblr curation of ‘Imprint’ 255 TV horror and fans 49, 96 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 196, 208, 213, 231 vinyl as co-branding 292 The Walking Dead 208, 240–43 YouTube Red Originals 128 social network theory 199 soft subtitles 168 n. 5 The Sopranos 74, 115 sound 46, 214, 215, 268, 280, 284, 286 soundtracks fan vinyl mockups 292–94 horror music, television, and transmedia 280–83 overview 25, 49, 267–68, 294–96 TV horror soundtracks and vinyl 283–86 vinyl as co-branding 290–92 vinyl’s auratic material packaging 286–90 South Korea 160 Spain 160 Spanish language 169 special effects 46–47, 110, 113, 120, 314 speedruns 313 Spielberg, Steven 92 Spilker, Hendrik Storstein 136 The Spiral Staircase 139 splatter horror 112, 118, 119, 120, 212 sports coverage 138 n. 12, 142 Squid Game 11, 160 star image 88, 89, 95, 128, 216, 217, 236 Star Trek 240, 315 Star Wars 93, 94, 240 Steele, Catherine Knight 241 Stein, Louisa Ellen 24, 236, 253, 255 Stein, Michael 286, 287 stingers 280 The Stone Tape 290 storytelling, and storyworlds 21–24 Strangelove, Michael 18 Stranger Fillings (cookbook) 276, 277 Stranger Things costs 19 fan food 269, 275–76, 279 geoblocking 162 Netflix, post-TV and blockbuster horror 71, 91–96, 308

332  Only-Click TV and ‘just-in-time’ fandom 166 popularity 11 post-TV distribution and binge-viewing 115 and tentpole texts 22 vinyl soundtracks 268, 285–86, 287, 288 Stranger Things: Halloween Sounds from the Upside Down 285–86 Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds 95 Stranger Things: The Game 95 Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down 95 Stranger Things 3: The Game 95 Stranglers (podcast) 315 streaming 16, 17, 110, 116, 133–34, 159, 166, 173, 211, 283 Stream Queens 135 subconscious 25 subcultural capital 43, 158–60, 167, 169–70, 172, 213–14, 255, 289, 296 subject-in-crisis 83 subscription video on demand (SVoD) growth of post-TV horror 15, 16, 19 Hemlock Grove 113, 114, 115 informal digital dissemination 48, 157, 159, 160, 163, 166, 171 post-TV distribution and binge-viewing 116 post-TV horror texts and platforms 110, 111, 145 Shudder 137, 142 subtitles 20, 168, 169, 170, 202, 203 suggestive horror 14, 29, 32 Supernatural 274 ‘surplus Blackness’ 206 survival horror videogames 135, 310 survival suspense 32 Survivor 84 Suzuki, Koji Rasen 167, 168 Ringu 167 SVoD see subscription video on demand taboos 40, 315 tactile transmedia 25, 266, 267, 270, 279, 295, 309 tags 249, 250, 252, 253, 255, 292 Taken 117 Takeshi Kitano 201 Tales from the Crypt 283 Tartan 76, 176, 201, 254, 291 Taylor, Brittani Louise 128, 130 Taylor, Ryan 117 teaching 313–14 teasers 130, 131 teen horror TV 70, 71, 78–86, 174 Teen Wolf 91 telefantasy 14, 15, 79, 174–75

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

telenovelas 168, 170 television see TV horror Television Studies 48 TellTale’s The Walking Dead (TTTWD) 193, 210–11, 312 tentpole media texts 21, 22, 24, 274 terror 30, 31, 34 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 124, 245 text-function 284 textual clustering 15, 170, 212, 246, 255 textual poaching 233, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244, 250, 294 textural poaching 233, 244, 245, 247, 251, 279, 293, 294 Them 211 The Thing 92, 296, 314 Thomas, Julian 174 TikTok 310 Tilly, Chris 12 time 118, 122 title sequences 171, 282, 285 Tokyo Vampire Hotel 115 Tomkins, Silvan 34–35, 36 tourism 47 toxic masculinity 122 Toyama, Keiichiro 312 toys 95 transfandom 238 transgenerational co-viewing 71, 91, 92, 93, 95 transgressive aesthetics 70 translocation 267, 278 transmedia abject spectrum model 47–48 definition 21 fan food 49, 266, 267 horror film-to-TV transmedia 144 legacy horror film franchises 199 and memory 124 and non-transmedia of text 173 Stranger Things 95, 96 tactile transmedia 25, 266, 267, 270, 279, 295, 309 and television 20–25 vinyl soundtracks 49, 266, 267, 284 The Walking Dead 164 transmediality 20, 232, 265–67 transmedia storytelling 21–22, 28, 36, 110, 117, 118, 286 transmedia television 21 transnational flow 20, 24, 158, 160, 171, 179 transtexts 23–25, 37, 49 True Blood 22, 78, 161, 274 True Detective 88 true horror media 315–16 Trump, Donald 121 Trussell, Jacob 12 Tsaliki, Liza 43 Tseng, Chiao-I. 134

Index

Tumblr 232, 233, 244, 245, 246, 247, 250–56, 315 TV horror 11–66 abject spectrums 25–30 aesthetic engagement 45–48 affective responses 30–39 book structure 48–50 early TV horror 12–13 future studies in post-TV horror 307–17 horror music, television, and transmedia 281–82 ideological readings 39–45 incorporation of other genres and audiences 69–107 overview 11–16 post-TV 16–20 quality/cult TV horror 13, 71–78 transmedia and television 20–25 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 191–229 aesthetic engagement 212–20 emotional and corporeal affect to horror TV 194–203 ideological deconstruction of horror TV 203–11 overview 191–94, 221–23 TVIII 110, 157, 158 TV licence 161 TV Studies 307 TV utterances 15, 16 TWD see The Walking Dead 28 Days Later 80 Twilight franchise 70 Twin Peaks 74, 250, 268, 269, 275–76, 279, 285, 290, 292 Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Soundtrack 285, 290 Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series 290 Twin Peaks: The Returned 276 n. 1 Twitch.TV 18, 111, 132–37, 142, 144, 145, 160, 308 Twitter 196, 208, 234, 235, 236, 238, 241, 242, 292 uncanny (unheimlich) 26, 42 Universal Film 13 Us 211 USA Network 115 Valentino, Rudolph 90 n. 4 The Vampire Diaries 274 van Alphen, Ernst 45 Van Esler, Mike 18 vertical memory 118 video 16, 48, 110, 113, 114, 118, 176 videogames 47, 95, 111, 131–36, 144, 210–11, 310–13 video nasties 118, 176 video-on-demand 113; see also subscription video on demand (SVoD)

333 Vignali, Jacopo 245 vinyl soundtracks fan vinyl mockups 292–94 horror music, television, and transmedia 281 overview 25, 49, 267–68, 295, 296 TV horror soundtracks and vinyl 283–86 vinyl as co-branding 290–92 vinyl’s auratic material packaging 286–90 violence 14, 32, 40, 41, 71, 74, 110, 196, 202 virtual private networks (VPNs) 163 visual texts 49, 232 vlogs 128, 129, 130 The Walking Bread (cookbook) 276–77 The Walking Dead (TWD) Amazon portal 115 and British young adult/teen horror TV 79, 82, 84 elevation of cable TV 91 fan food 272–74, 278 fan imagery 233, 238–44, 256–57 informal digital dissemination 158, 168, 171–73, 179 music 282 official cookbooks 272–74 Only-Click TV and ‘just-in-time’ fandom 164, 165 popularity 12 and race 24, 193, 206–08, 233, 238–43 transmedia storytelling 22 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 193, 206–08, 209–11, 222 unofficial cookbooks 276–77 vinyl’s auratic material packaging 288, 290 wiki fan forum 241–42 The Walking Dead: Original Soundtrack 288 The Walking Dead Original Soundtrack: Volume 2 290 The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook and Survival Guide (OCaSG) 272–74 The Walking Dead videogame (TTTWD) 193, 210–11, 312 Ward, Rachel Mizsei 249 Waxwork 292 Wellington Paranormal 162 werewolves 112, 113 Whale, James 141 What We Do in the Shadows 19, 162 Wheatley, Helen 13, 15 When Evil Calls 308 whiteness 34, 208, 209, 220, 241, 257 whitewashing 220 n. 8 Whitten, Sarah 159 wide screen 130 Williams, Rebecca 235, 266 The Wire 74 witch figure 41, 42

334  Wolf, Katie 279 Wolf Creek 22 women audience 35 n. 7, 41, 42, 70, 75, 217 characters 215, 222, 241 directors 75 female body 251 female victim 251 gamers 312 ideological readings of gender 40–43 Wood, Robin 26, 28 Woods, Faye 79 Woodward, Ian 286, 287 The X-Files 115, 274, 290 Yellowjackets 78 Youki Kudoh 254 young adult TV 71, 78–86, 174 YouTube brand identity 116 fans’ image textuality 232 future studies in post-TV horror 308 informal digital dissemination 158, 160, 168–70 post-TV horror texts and platforms 18, 111, 126, 145 YouTube Premium 127–32, 144, 160, 168

Tr ansmedia Terrors in Post-T V Horror

YouTube Red 111, 127, 127 n. 6, 128, 130–32, 136, 308 YouTube Red Originals 127, 128 Zhang, Xiaoran 160 Zimmerman, Samuel 139 Z Nation 91 Zombie Flesh Eaters 292 zombie horror British teen/young adult channels 71 Dead Set 79–82, 113 fan imagery 234, 237, 238 fast zombies 80 Fear the Walking Dead 193, 208–09, 210 Fight of the Living Dead 111, 127, 128–31, 144 In the Flesh 83, 174, 193, 203–06, 232–38, 242, 281, 283 I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse 82–85, 162, 174 literature 273 Only-Click TV and ‘just-in-time’ fandom 164 popularity 79, 273 TV horror audiences’ abject spectrums 193, 203–09 The Walking Dead see The Walking Dead (TWD) The Zombie Survival Guide 273