Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Since the turn of the Millennium, horror has had a resurgence both in cinema and in television. With programmes like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer paving the way for other horror shows such as The Walking Dead, American Horror Story and Penny Dreadful, this introduction discusses the way that TV has become a bedrock of new, exciting, vibrant and bold horror productions.

This chapter seeks to compare and contrast two compelling portrayals of the bisexual or ‘gender-blind’ vampire: The Hunger (1983) and American Horror Story: Hotel (2015). These texts present a number of notable differences. They were released over 30 years apart and they also diverge markedly in form: Hotel is a 12-episode television serial, whilst The Hunger is a tight 97-minute-feature film. Whilst these differences highlight shifts in the format of horror more broadly, they also facilitate the reflection on whether the portrayal of the bisexual vampire has dramatically shifted alongside these changes. Such a reflection is ripe with potential given that in addition to their differences, both texts also share significant aesthetic and narrative similarities. Both Hotel and The Hunger foreground performativity and feature female protagonists who defy heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality. Undoubtedly, Hotel can be read as an aesthetic homage to The Hunger. However, whether Hotel also echoes some of the more conservative aspects of the earlier film’s politics is a more complex question. Focusing on the ways that these female vampire protagonists, as well as a selection of their lovers and victims, are gendered, this chapter will illuminate a number of developments and lingering issues in the ways that horror depicts (or circumvents) complex facets of the relationship between bisexuality and gender.

A lot has been written on zombies lately and on the rather conservative US-American TV Show The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010–) in particular. A lot less has been written on the SyFy-Show Z Nation (2014–), although it is a sophisticated feminist take on the zombie lore. Centring around a group of survivors, who escort a human–zombie–cyborg across the US and Mexico, the show not only undermines the patriarchalism of its archetype, but also raises questions of post-humanism by the means of Donna Haraway or Rosi Braidotti. With the help of media-self-reflexive parody and pastiche, the series comments on its extradiegetic world as much as on its own genre and offers a deconstruction of stereotypical (gendered) tropes and conventions. In the following chapter, I use a selective close reading of the text and its representation politics to demonstrate how a feminist deconstruction of zombie-horror can come into being and how an (academic) distinction between Quality and Trash TV can be just as regressive as productive in this process.

This chapter explores the episodes of Doctor Who featuring the Weeping Angels, in order to explore how their femininity impacts their monstrosity. Other (male) monsters in Doctor Who kill the victims outright: Daleks exterminate their victims and Cybermen upgrade (essentially extracting all of their humanity, turning them into mindless robots) their victims. The only reoccurring feminine monsters, the Weeping Angels, do not kill anyone. They don’t take away their humanity; they simply transport them to another time. They live out their entire lives in this new time, unharmed beyond the inconvenience of temporal displacement.

The Weeping Angels could be analysed as a reversal of Barbara Creed’s monstrous feminine (1993); as their femininity makes them more human and more compassionate instead of more monstrous. They also could be thought of in terms of feminist ethics à la Nel Noddings’ feminist approach to care. In this chapter, I will argue that though traditionally villainous women are made monstrous via their femininity; in the case of the Weeping Angels, their femininity gives them a sense of humanity and compassion, thus making them less monstrous.

American Horror Story, with its strong narrative arcs, interesting characters and high production values, is one of the most important horror TV series in the post-millennial years. This chapter will focus on the four roles played by Oscar-winning actress, Jessica Lange in the first four series.

The woman has appeared in many films as an unknown dangerous monster for men. Barbara Creed, in The Monstrous-Feminine. Film, Feminist, Psychoanalysis (1993), recognized the fear of women as a vampire and as witch. Masters of Horror (Showtime, 2005–2007) is a TV series that focuses their attention on distinct monsters, including female monster.

The aim of this chapter is to analyze some episodes of these two acclaimed TV series: ‘Deer Woman’ (Season 1 Episode 7) and ‘Jenifer’ (Season 1 Episode 4), in Masters of Horror. Both episodes show the struggle between the female threatening monster and the defensive male normalcy, where liberated women (they break the established rules) resist the males’ domination through cultural transgressions.

This chapter is based on different methodologies: cultural studies, history, discourse analysis and TV studies. That way, it will be essential to delve into the different readings about woman as a monster (dangerous creature for the established order) and as the otherness, where the flesh temptations (cannibalism, sex) and supernatural narrations place her outside society.

Much like the raw painting of Dorian Gray, this investigation will attempt to glimpse beyond the surface façade of the characters portrayed in ShowTime’s Penny Dreadful. Examining the recurring relationship structures within the series, this chapter will dissect ideas of obsession, passion, and justice. What can the relationship dynamics reveal about notions of a monstrous nature? Like the brush strokes of Dorian’s portrait, each layer of analysis will reveal a broader picture of the term monster, being that which is not only applicable to a few individuals, or one particular sex, but a reflection of society. Why are modern day audiences captivated by such character portrayals, and much like the portrait of Dorian Grey, what disturbing truth lurks behind our civilized exterior?

The popularization of slasher as subgenre begins with the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974) and Halloween (Carpenter, 1978). Both films serve to define the topic of the subgenre: a serial killer that often slaughters groups of teenagers, especially attractive young women, using bladed weapons (Linz & Donnerstein, 1994; Molitor & Sapolski, 1993, 1994). Thus, although the definition of the slasher is not really fixed in terms of gender, the killers have been traditionally interpreted by men, while the victims have been usually interpreted by women (Clover, 2015; Trencansky, 2001; Weaver et al., 2015). Not for nothing, another important character is the final girl, who uncovers the monster´s motivations and finishes the killer off in the final scene; an important role that is actually a form of female subjugation. However, some exceptions can be found such as Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th, Cunningham, 1980), but she is simply defined as Jason´s mother. More interesting is the case of the Scream saga, in particular Scream 4 (Craven, 2011) where a teenage girl, portrayed by Emma Roberts, tries to play the role of the killer and the final girl at the same time.

In recent years, the slasher has gained importance in television. After Harper’s Island (CBS, 2009), an homage to the subgenre rather than a real slasher TV show, in 2015, MTV launched Scream, based on the film series and which continues exploring the gender roles anticipated by the last movie of the saga. In the same year, Fox launched Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens (2015–2016) starred by Jamie Lee Curtis, the final girl of Prom night (Lynch, 1980) and Halloween saga, and Emma Roberts. In this regard, current television tries to renew the slasher, but starting from the clichés and even some familiar faces of the subgenre.

The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the representation and evolution of female characters in slasher television series, exploring the relationship among the killer, the final girl and the rest of the victims. In this way, television series like Scream, Scream Queens (Fox, 2015–2016) or Slasher (Super Channel, 2016–) are analysed.

In 2013, the television programme Hannibal debuted on television. Taking characters and narrative from three novels by Thomas Harris (Red Dragon (1981), Silence of the Lambs (1989) and Hannibal (1999)) over three seasons, the audience got to spend time with Dr Hannibal Lecter. Appearing 32 years after the first book and 27 years after Hannibal’s first screen appearance, much has changed in Dr Lecter’s world and the most interesting of these changes is the gender of characters.

In Red Dragon, Dr Alan Bloom and Freddy Lounds are men, and in the television series, they are women. This chapter argues that another change in genders occurs as Will Graham replaces Clarice Starling as the person Lecter seduces. It also introduces a female psychiatrist for Dr Lecter. These changes alter the presentation of the specific characters but also that of the overall narrative arc of the television series.

This chapter will identify and evaluate these shifts in gender and consider how these changes impact the viewer experience. The change of the familiar to the unfamiliar is uncanny, and it is this argument that adds to the presentation of Will and Hannibal as figures of horror and increases audience anxiety and fear.

Brooker’s mini-series Dead Set displays numerous representations of British masculinity in crisis. Released just as the zombie narrative was regaining momentum, the series uses the threat of an apocalypse to expose British men as weak, cowardly and ultimately monstrous. Initially set within the confines of the Big Brother house, the characters have willingly come under scrutiny for the delectation of a scandal-hungry public. The men are seen to self-consciously perform their own brands of masculinity. However, when people quickly descend from figuratively devouring each other into actually devouring each other, these masculine ideals are left in tatters, and without them, the surviving men are in constant peril.

For the purposes of this chapter, I will look specifically at three characters within the series and how their representations adhere to the ideas put forward by Anthony Clare, among others – that contemporary masculinity is in a period of crisis. I also wish to uncover how representations of masculinity within the series reflect contemporary social and political concerns within British society – a distrust of state apparatus and the rise of a particularly malicious, right wing ideology are both prevalent here. The zombie has long been acknowledged as an allegory for society’s ills – but this chapter asks: what can those fighting (or failing) against the zombie threat tell us?

Since Bram Stoker’s tale of Count Dracula struck a chord with a sensation-hungry public, vampires have remained a popular part of horror in cinema. Since the turn of the millennium, vampires have now become a mainstay of horror TV. Programmes like True Blood (2008–2014) and The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017) have propelled the vampire into the home.

This chapter will investigate the problematic, but often sympathetic relationship between vampires and humans in The Vampire Diaries.

The CW’s long-running horror-drama series Supernatural (2005–) has been accused of undoing progressive advances for women made by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996–2003). While it’s hard to deny the truth in that claim, Supernatural also problematizes conventional gender roles from a very different approach, one that plays with perceptions of masculinity and social class.

Buffy Summers may initially seem to have more in common with Supernatural’s Sam Winchester, a chosen one with special powers who wants a normal life away from the supernatural. However, Buffy shares more in common with Dean Winchester. Embodying popular gendered stereotypes in their introductions, it’s gradually revealed that there is more complexity to each. Both form alliances with Others; both recognize elements of the Other in themselves. Both transgress conventional gender boundaries, complicating the notion of a binary gender system. Both series introduce the seemingly familiar only to alter it into the uncanny. See the little cute blonde virginal cheerleader? She can kick your ass. See the stupid cocky womanizing jock? All he wants is family and a home. This chapter explores the increasingly gender-blended, social-class-crossing behaviours of Supernatural’s Dean Winchester as an heir to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This chapter will focus on the Netflix television series The Exorcist (2016–) starring Gina Davis as Angela Rance/Regan MacNeill and Ben Daniels as Father Marcus. The Rances are a well-off urban family in Chicago, with Angela, a successful and powerful professional woman. The Exorcist allows Angela Rance, a woman in midlife, to be central to the narrative, despite the paucity of positive, central roles for women over 50.

The chapter will also examine the depiction of gender through the themes of families and homes. Homes are sanctuaries but can also be a site of violence. The Rance home is the first clue that all is not well, when Angela hears noises in the walls. Families, homes, faith and betrayal are everywhere in The Exorcist, including the Rances, the Church, the priesthood, the Friars of Ascension and the homeless settlement. Traditionally, families and homes are where women can achieve creativity and some kind of agency, as well as being contained.

The third approach of this chapter will be to compare gender representations in the television series and the film The Exorcist (1973). In theory, the intervening 44 years could have seen gains for women and feminism, but 2017 has seen women’s rights eroded yet again. The film was made at the height of the women’s liberation movement and second-wave feminism, and at the start of the era of ‘video nasties’ and explicitly gory slasher and cannibal films, so I will use the historical context to frame a discussion about the two different versions.

The contemporary zombie genre is known for exploring what the end will look like, with its widespread infection, chaos and violence – all images that resonate in a post-9/11 America. These zombie narratives also speak to a present-day America with their emphasis on diminishing individuality and agency. Unlike early Haitian incarnations of the zombie figure, the modern zombie terrifies because no singular agent possesses the victim’s mind. In contrast, the light-hearted CW television show, iZombie (2015–) rethinks the zombie paradigm. Not only does it envision how zombies would manifest in everyday life, without the requisite apocalypse, but it also subverts the antiquated gender politics common to the genre by providing viewers with a female zombie protagonist, Olivia Moore (Rose McIver) who is not only highly functional, but also female and with plenty of agency. Moore, through whose eyes the show is told, absorbs personality traits and memories belonging to the brains she eats, from frat boy to alcoholic, stripper to housewife. This device creates such a cornucopia of roles for McIver to explore that it brings to mind the work of American photographer Cindy Sherman, providing a rare multi-dimensional woman on TV. iZombie also takes the contemporary zombie text’s reliance on the trop of infection one step further. This chapter not only examines iZombie’s unusual female point of view, but also its portrayal of ‘zombie-ness’ as a chronic contagious illness with many similarities to HIV.

This chapter interrogates gender, inner conflict and narrative arcs of the characters of Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier in the TV series The Walking Dead.

From the outset, these two characters are constructed in line with traditional gendered stereotypes, yet they both go through a transformation during the series, moving away from their starting point. Carol and Daryl are introduced to the audiences in scenes that situate them within traditional gendered roles and spaces. Thus, Carol is presented as submissive, compliant and obedient; she speaks with a soft voice and is positioned within domestic spaces in the camp site: by the camp fire, by the washing spot in the lake, inside the tent, etc. In contrast, Daryl is presented as a loner and a hunter, is referred to as a volatile person and portrays a physical appearance that echoes redneck masculinities (O’Sullivan, 2016).

This chapter will engage with theories of performativity and gender in relation to character design, in order to analyse and compare the ways in which these two characters challenge the gender stereotype through actions, yet often conform to it through the inner conflict and the solutions adopted.

As Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott have pointed out, the US TV serial Supernatural owes much of its success to the way it combines horror with family drama, strengthening the affective involvement of viewers in the lives of its protagonists, the monster-hunting Winchester brothers. The notion of home – presented variously as a domestic, feminine space from which the Winchesters and their compatriots are excluded; a mobile and contingent space of masculine bonding; and a hybrid space which allows for self-expression outside prescribed gender norms, but which also holds the potential for danger – is central.

Heather L. Duda has pointed to the ways monster hunters are excluded from the normative institutions of their societies, and this is certainly true of the Winchesters, who live in their family car and are unable to maintain ‘normal’ homes. Later seasons give them a home in the form of an underground bunker, not designed as a domestic space, but nonetheless a place where their hypermasculine behaviours can be relaxed. This chapter examines the tensions that emerge in this apparent move from a traditional narrative of the home as feminine space under threat to something more ambivalent, where masculine identity itself may be in danger.

Testing boundaries in the context of encountering horror representations have long been of interest to cultural studies scholars. There have been rich cultural accounts of how audiences negotiate with what is frightening or disgusting on screen (Hill, 2005) not just in general but also in what concerns specific social groups as well (e.g. children, Buckingham, 2000). Horror, disgust and the emotion of fear have not been examined in the Greek context so far and it is our aim to attempt a first investigation of how certain groups of viewers engage with the horror genre. We draw upon the argument that fear from encountering horror is a socially based emotion through which people do not just test their own boundaries but also their boundaries within a group of peers (Hill, 2005). Given that women are stereotypically thought to be more afraid than men, we are particularly interested to see how women aged between 20 and 35 in Greece engage with fear or disgust in the mainstreamed context of the horror offered by American Horror Story. We are particularly interested in the ways they perceive horror but also deadly women or female villains. Our interest in this particular series lies not only in its popularity across the world but also because of its nature as a representative series of the horror genre and because all different narratives it offers are mostly based on female characters primarily as villains. Also, as a text available across different cultures, it could probably allow us to engage with cross-cultural research in the future. Therefore we wish to conduct an online survey with women aged 20–35 in Greece, followed by focus groups with women of the same age group in an attempt to provide both a mapping and a further investigation of the topic.

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho stunned both the cinema-going public and critics alike. Its tale of a young, genial, likeable and mother-fixated hotel proprietor – Norman Bates (played by Anthony Perkins) – whose psychotic tendencies and fractured personality tapped into the zeitgeist of an America changing in a post-World War II world, was very much the antithesis of rock ‘n’ roll rebels like Elvis Presley and James Dean. Norman Bates was Anthony Perkins and Anthony Perkins was Norman Bates.

In 2013, Norman resurfaced from numerous remakes in Bates Motel. With its nod to the past, and a look to the future of how Norman’s story pans out, the series’ narratives, characters and situations showed there was life for him, his mother and the motel beyond cinema.

This chapter examines how Creed’s ideas of ‘Monstrous’ can be overlaid onto Norman, his mother Norman and Bates Motel.

Since the Millennium, the world of TV horror has radically altered. Aided by newer production methods including streaming, downloading and narrowcasting, programmes like The Waking Dead, American Horror Story, Penny Dreadful and the reinvention of Doctor Who have shown how resilient the horror genre is to both television formats and platforms.

This conclusion ties together the chapters, whilst offering the idea that much more work is needed to fully comprehend the importance of gender studies linked to horror television.