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Tag Archives: vampires

Lily Frankenstein: The Gothic New Woman in Penny Dreadful

~ Stephanie Green

Abstract: Techniques such as recursive adaptation, narrative hybridity and ensemble performance are now a tradition in fantasy screen drama, in both cinematic and serial mode, from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) to Agents of Shield (2013), in which several popular culture sources are woven together to create a new evocation of themes, stories and identities. Set in late-Victorian London, the richly awarded TV series Penny Dreadful (2014) alludes to a host of precursor texts from nineteenth century Gothic and sensation fiction. Among the many interesting elements of this finely crafted series is the ways in which it recasts minor or supporting female characters from these stories as powerful leading figures. This discussion will discuss the portrayal of Lily Frankenstein, a crucial minor character, to show how Penny Dreadful portrays transformative female identity through a Gothic redefinition of the late-Victorian New Woman.

 

She bleeds but doesn’t die. She hungers but cannot love. She seeks companionship but rejects the companion for whom she was made. If the original Victor Frankenstein’s creature was a new Adam forged by early nineteenth century science at the hand of human hubris, monstrously self-liberated from his maker’s control, in Penny Dreadful (Showtime/Sky 2014–2016) his second successful creation is the recreated Lilith, a ‘new’ woman who asserts; “Never again will I kneel to any man. Now they shall kneel to me” (3.02). As this paper will show, the portrayal of Lily Frankenstein is one among several instances of how Penny Dreadful attempts to portray transformative female identity through a Gothic redefinition of the late-Victorian New Woman.

The New Narrative

Set against a fantastical portrait of late-Victorian London, the richly awarded TV series Penny Dreadful alludes to a host of precursor texts from nineteenth century Gothic and sensation fiction, which remain popular in transmedia forms, from film and television drama to video games. The series features themes and characters that appeared in the ‘penny dreadful’ novelettes of the day, referring directly to techniques of the popular fiction form to which its title refers; such as recursive adaptation, reinvention and narrative hybridity. Among the many fiction sources for the series are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1814), Rymer’s Varney the Vampire (1847), Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1895) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). By the third season, extended plot elements, new settings and characters reflect the changing generic flavours of fantasy narrative from the Gothic through to the influence of late nineteenth century American Western frontier fiction. With the Gothic, the Western has been fertile ground for transmedia adaptation, from the novels by James Fenimoore Cooper and Zane Grey to American to mid twentieth century DC and Marvel Western Comics, a form of popular fiction that has been similarly adaptable to new contexts, tastes and social conditions, able to absorb and reanimate already popular story lines.

First published in the 1830s, ‘penny dreadfuls’ were the trash fiction of the nineteenth century, thrillers full of shock, adventure and awe. A penny dreadful installment was cheap at one penny and the story line ever-evolving until the readership faltered (Springhall). Authors cribbed story lines, plagiarized plots and cobbled story lines together from diverse sources and recycled popular stock characters endlessly. Moralists railed against them as having a pernicious influence on the young (Chisolm), but they continued to flourish. According to the celebrated nineteenth century journalist George Sala, who read them voraciously as a boy, they offered

a world of dormant peerages, of murderous baronets, and ladies of title addicted to study of toxicology, of gypsies and brigand-chiefs, men with masks and women with daggers, of stolen children, withered hags, heartless gamesters, nefarious roues, foreign princesses, Jesuit fathers, grave-diggers, resurrection-men, lunatics, and ghosts (148).

Produced by Sam Mendes and John Logan, the television series Penny Dreadful exploits many of the traditional narrative techniques used in Victorian Gothic fiction, reframed as film noir. This is far from a deferential costume drama or a literary recreation. Penny Dreadful takes familiar characters such as Dr Frankenstein and his Creature, the ageless Dorian Gray, and various witches, vampires and monsters and uses them to evoke the idea of a haunted past as a background against which to tell new stories of a world that is, like our own, on the brink of unimaginable change. The settings, costumes, historical references and cultural tropes situate the story largely within the British Fin de Siècle, a period associated with literary and artistic experimentation, sexual decadence, progressivism and the popularization of women’s rights movements. The characters of Penny Dreadful do not think or behave in the same way or hold the same beliefs as their fictional forebears once did, but they represent familiar social and cultural identities and positions from that time. Lee and King regard them as “cultural memes that continue to live in contemporary culture” (2015 n.p.). In various ways, the series engages actively with the discursive elements of its source materials, using the ideas and experiences of the characters as symbolic strands of influence for reweaving meaning and narrative.

Techniques such as recursive adaptation, hybridity and ensemble performance are well established in fantasy screen drama, in both cinematic and serial mode, from 1940s Universal films, to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington, 2003) to Agents of Shield (Billy Gierhart et al., 2013), in which several popular culture sources are woven together to create a new incarnation of longstanding themes, stories and identities. Hutcheon remarks that we “retell – and show again and interact anew with – stories over and over; in the process, they change with each repetition, and yet they are recognizably the same” (Hutcheon 177). As this paper argues, however, Penny Dreadful takes up key ideas that emerged with force during late-Victorian culture and connects them in ways that reveal underlying connections and disconnections. The evolving genre of transmedia fantasy fiction enables the series to create a new account of lasting issues and anxieties in Western culture; including the use of excessive power, mechanistic control over human creativity, the dangers of enchantment, the sufferings of the Other, and the struggle for women to transcend bodily and domestic confinement as autonomous rational beings.

Recasting Women

Among the many interesting elements of this finely crafted series is the way in which it recasts minor or supporting female characters from these stories as powerful leading figures.  Its depiction of women is broadly coloured by historical conditions in which women lived during the late Victorian period. The series alludes to feminist advocacy for changing social roles at a time when women were excluded from universities, politics and the professions (3.01). Murphy has argued with reference to late Victorian fiction that the figure of the New Woman emerges at moments of cultural anxiety and change (2016). Negotiations over changing attitudes to women went hand in hand with changes in other attitudes and beliefs. Acceptance of investigative science was just beginning to influence public discourse, as reflected in Penny Dreadful in the public lectures on evolution conducted by Christian Camargo’s attractively sinister appearance as Count Dracula in the guise of research scientist Dr Sweet during Season Three. New ways of thinking about selfhood were also becoming important, as is conveyed by the appearance of the character of Dr Seward (Patti LuPone) in Season Three: a revisioning of the character from Stoker’s Dracula. Just as the pages of the historical penny dreadful were peopled with clichés and archetypes – super heroes, mad scientists, magicians, vanquishers and villains – the characters of Penny Dreadful are larger than life, with magical or extra-natural powers that are sometimes beyond their own control. Its women are shown as capable agents of transformation, unconstrained by conventional Victorian social limitations; self-determined, articulate, desiring autonomy, or longevity or control. More interesting than their mere potential to nurture and harm, theirs is nevertheless a compromised power, inflected with darkness, uncertainty and threat.

Lily Frankenstein (Billie Piper), Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), Evelyn Poole (Helen McCory) and Hecate Poole (Sarah Greene) are – or become – able to wreak supernatural forces, with powers to defend themselves and/or to control and recruit others. Their potency is, at the same time, limited by their relationship with more powerful male figures in their lives, whether human or inhuman. The witch or ‘nightcomer’ Evelyn Poole aligns herself with a mysterious Demon to achieve longevity and personal power but is destroyed by Vanessa and Ethan (2.09 and 2.10). Although in Seasons One and Two, Vanessa resists dominance by the same satanic figure who seeks to embrace and control her powers, she is consistently depicted as a figure of suffering resistance and recovery. In Season Three her promise as the Gothic New Woman is revealed when she begins to embrace her desire for Dr Sweet aka Count Dracula. She is ultimately portrayed as an acquiescent victim, rather than as an effectual force for good in the world (3.09). The character in Penny Dreadful which most clearly emblematises the Gothic New Woman is Lily Frankenstein. Only Lily expresses her desire for control in political terms: she rejects the idealism of the late-Victorian suffrage campaigners seeking equality with men, to assert a claim for a different kind of female power, literally the creation of a super race of women warriors bent on destroying the male “grasp” (3.01). Lily seizes agency and acts decisively to change her own circumstances and potentially those of others. Hers is a vision of a future in which female dominance is all and, as a force of destruction, she too is doomed to fail.

Lily’s references to a female super race are far from anachronistic post-hoc invention. Just at the time that the New Woman discourse emerged, the feminist Theosophist Frances Swiney was developing her vision of woman’s “cosmic progression” towards supreme being eclipsing all differences between men and women (Robb). Swiney turned the tables on the patriarchal establishment of evolutionary theory, as she saw it, to argue that biologically the male was a defective variant of the human species. A “preacher of the superiority of women” she argued for a new natural law based on the supremacy of woman (Gates 152-157). By the early twentieth century the idea that a woman, or a man, could be ‘made’ better, stronger, brighter, took hold in a new way as the ideas of Francis Galton found fruition in the work of the early twentienth century eugenistic movement with the notion of fostering human evolution through selective breeding (Galton 17 May 1904) – whose ugly implications would be realised with Hitlerian Facism. Lily offers a twist to this narrative – the spawning of a race of superwomen – that fails to bear fruit as the series draws to an end in the last episodes of Season Three and Lily is overcome by the rising power of institutionalised pseudo-science, represented by Dr Jekyll.

Unlike precursor accounts of the female ‘bride’ of Frankenstein’s monster – such as the short-lived female mate in Frankenstein (Shelley 1814/1980) or James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) who are pieced together from ragged human shards and then destroyed due to the reproductive implications of her survival – Lily is portrayed as a new product of industrial manufacture. She is created in the first episode of Season Two by a mixture of design and serendipity as Victor Frankenstein lines up his human-making machine to receive the lightning strike that will animate dead flesh and bones. Whereas his first attempts at animation were stitched together from body parts, this new female creature is made from the body of a whole woman, the consumptive street girl Brona Croft whom we first meet as the lover of toothsome American adventurer Ethan Chandler in Season One (1.02). The scene of Lily’s birth captures the shadow of industrial Gothic that is cast across the series; a dusty dungeon, poorly lit and crammed with gigantic machines of ugly purpose. Here, the birth of Lily reflects the theme of unnatural disorder produced by mechanical technology. As Parker observes, with reference to some of the key texts upon which Penny Dreadful draws – Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and Dracula – nineteenth century industrial Gothic examines the “eruption of horrific fantasy into the everyday” in order to examine the vision of a brutally mechanized nineteenth century urban society with its institutions of overwhelming cruelty and power (156-159). This theme is further explored in the series, in its various scenes of female entrapment, for example when Vanessa Ives is locked in a Victorian madhouse because of her visions (1.05 and 3.04).

Lily rises from the forge of mechanical creation in perfect form, beautiful, seemingly innocent and born anew without memories of her past, and – as we discover – virtually impervious to destruction. She is manufactured by Victor to supply his first created progeny, the scarred Creature, with a mate to mitigate the burden of his loneliness: a classic allusion to the original story. But Lily recoils from the Creature, her promised husband, who calls himself John Clare after the self-made Romantic poet (1793––1864). Although she models herself on her maker, adopting his accent and politeness, gradually she does remember the brutality and suffering of her past life (2.07). Even more importantly, she realises that she now has supreme strength and power. Creed argues that women in screen drama are confronting not because they are monstrously other but because they are already fully formed and fearfully empowered (Creed 6). The female monster appears as a compelling figure of supernatural power partly because she is already beyond being human. In masculine terms, Creed observes, with reference to Lurie and Williams, the uncastrated female is a ‘freak’ of nature whose sexuality threatens to overwhelm and destroy (Creed 6). Created by men, Lily refuses the modesty of covert sexuality and demands to be seen. She rejects her maker, Victor, and the romantic submission that John Clare proffers. Instead she is bent on revenge against man for the abuse suffered during her former life and conquest over the weak human race, and to make a new and pitiless world. She thus reconfigures the fin de siècle persona of the proto-modern New Woman to embody the far more forceful Gothic New Woman and become the harbinger of a world without men.

The Troubling New Woman

The New Woman of the 1890s emerged in the late nineteenth century as a trope of social and cultural change, one that was at once a sign of new possibility and of frightening upheaval. Within the public sphere, as women’s voices spoke up for female interests and concerns (Ledger 1-10), the New Woman appeared in literary and popular magazines, in novels, short fiction, essays and journalistic discussions of women’s role in society. Often the subject of cartoons, in the popular imagination of the day she was at first the mannish, bespectacled bluestocking, neglectful of wifely duty that was frequently pilloried in Punch (Shapiro) and eventually the sporty, bicycling Amazon (Heilmann 34-35). Her identity went hand in hand with the emergence of the women’s movement, from the 1860s through to late nineteenth century public campaigns for women’s property rights, suffrage, access to higher education, the professions and fashions that freed women from corsetry constraint (Purvis). She reflected the rising importance of female authorship and authority within a fast expanding publishing industry (Palmer ; Easley), and gave a face to the public voice for women’s interests.

On the one hand the New Woman was a triumphal figure – heralding in the new age of female opportunity and independence – and on the other she was regarded by the fierce purveyors of tradition as ‘improper’ and an easy target for marginalisation, fear and ridicule (Pykett). The New Woman sought education, independence and a role in public life. Emerging as the century drew to a close, the New Woman was enmeshed with the popular discourse of the ‘new’ and the cult of decadence with which Oscar Wilde and The Yellow Book writers and artists were associated (Ledger 94). Characterised as those who “abandoned the traditional sphere to lead more complex lives” (Nelson  6), she was thus regarded a threat to moral codes and social order, a harbinger of the decay of the phalanx of nineteenth century social institutions that loomed so large in the Victorian Gothic imagination. Wilde’s play Salome and the illustrations for its first published British edition by Aubrey Beardsley encapsulated the terrors and desires surrounded this vision of perfidious feminine desire as she reaches for the dripping severed head of John the Baptist with greedily parted lips. As the Gothic New Woman Lily reanimates Salome’s ambition for revenge and like her is a spectacular object of desire with a voracious appetite to author her own ‘master’ narrative.

References to the New Woman began to emerge in the British and American press at a time when Victorian Gothic sensation fiction, intimations of sexual decadence, urban serial killers and other threats, as the demands of women for access to education and suffrage were characterised by some popular journals. As the satirical periodical Punch so often reminded its readers in various ways, “stern women are alarming” (20 July 1895). At this same moment the promisingly modern character of Mina Harker became famous as Dracula’s victim in Stoker’s classic novel (1897), to be safely settled into domestic matrimony by its conclusion. As Djikstra remarks, “what better surrogates could there be to take the role of the executioner in man’s masochistic fancies?” (374-75). Badged with feminist eccentricity, she was easy for some to dismiss as the inconsequential irritant of a dying century. The New Woman  would have her legacy, however, in the next generation of women and their supporters, including the so-called Sufragettes, who lobbied successfully on the London streets, in town halls and in parliament for access to education and the suffrage (Holton).

The emergence of the Gothic New Woman can be seen as closely associated with the rise of mass print media consumption at the nineteenth century fin de siècle: a sustained cultural moment which contained the “transformation of the generic materials of the text into a motley fusion of speech and writing, recording and transcribing, image and typography” (Wicke  470). Although modes of narrative consumption have evolved and hybridised radically since that time, undoubtedly the diversification and delivery of dramatised narrative via small screen media has expanded its mass audience to achieve a global reach. The metaphor of consumption has special relevance in relation to the Gothic New Woman, as both an embodied figure of gendered difference and a subject of popular culture. The depiction of the late Victorian woman as voracious in her impetus for education, political and professional autonomy, shows the extent to which she was aligned in the public imagination with the personae of female destruction, the Eves, Liliths, Salomes and harpies of western cultural tradition (Djikstra). In Penny Dreadful, however, the New Woman is Gothic not simply because she is associated with destruction but because she is associated with unending change.

The connections between monstrosity, modernity, sexuality and the representation of the New Woman in fin de siècle Britain were rehearsed in the novels of Sarah Grand, George Meredith, Olive Schreiner, Kate Chopin, and in Beardsley’s illustrations of Salome (Cunningham ; Showalter ; Murphy). She had her precursors in the monstrous femme fatale figures of the 1860s and 1870s, Braddon’s Lady Audley, Rosetti’s rampant Lilith with their “outward purity and inward lust” and “seeming self-sufficiency” (Djikstra 374). Reforging her new persona in the furnace of revenge, Lily Frankenstein adopts elements of the New Woman as a figure of triumphal independence and conquest. As the Gothic New Woman, she is darkly independent, seductively resistant to domination, brilliantly articulate, refusing the rules of femininity and feminism in favour of power’s bloodier embrace (2.07). She casts off the demure Victorian mantle of wifehood provided by Victor Frankenstein who dresses her in high necked lace gowns and constraining corsets. In this role she prepares his food and lives as his secret companion. Her wide eyes, girlish smiles and modest glances reinforce his insistence that she is too unformed and ‘unready’ for marriage to the Creature. Even when she turns to him sexually (2.06) Frankenstein refuses the idea that her desire can be for anyone or anything but himself. By now, however, Lily is awake to the memory of her former self. Stifled by the small dwelling where Frankenstein keeps her she seeks a life of her own, drawn back to the night life of the flaneur that she explores with the charming Dorian Gray (2.07). What appears to be a burgeoning story of Lily’s double life as wife and lover is radically and violently overturned when, instead of returning to her wifely abode, she seduces a man at a public house and strangles him in his bed at the moment of climax, a private orgy of sex and death which reveals her new found strength and aggression, contrasts markedly with the oppressive experiences of her previous consumptive existence and unleashes her drive to power (2.07).

Much more than the harbinger of doomful desire or the awkward figure of alterity that Punch depicted when it lampooned the bluestocking women who fought for female suffrage and higher education, Lily Frankenstein is, rather, a new new woman; a Gothic redefinition of the late Victorian persona. Consider the moment when a group of suffrage advocates marches into the London square where Lily and Justine sit at a café. Lily dismisses their efforts as,

so awfully clamorous, all this marching around in public and waving placards. It’s not it. How do you accomplish anything in this life? By craft. By stealth. By poison. By the throat… quietly slit in the dead of the night (3.03).

Remade by men, now Lily remakes herself. She rejects their attempts to romanticise their desire for her and dismisses the bargain they have between them about the purpose of her existence. As she says to John Clare at a key moment: “Shall we wander the pastures and recite your fucking poetry to the fucking cows? You are blind… like all other men” (2:08).

As indicated, Lily is not the only character in Penny Dreadful with whom the theme of new womanist horror resonates: the glamorous sufferings of Vanessa Ives, the dark predations of the witches and the mysterious Dr Seward all reflect the idea of the transformative feminine. But where Vanessa seeks to triumph over supernatural evil and liberate herself from the clutches of the dark master, Lily wants much more than a life of adventure and desire. She is determined to gain control, to establish a new race of superbeings and to destroy all that has gone before. In seeking visceral revenge for the harm she and other women have suffered, however, she takes her ambitions one step too far. She is drawn to Dorian Gray and his search to transcend the dullness of eternal existence through extreme excitation (2:08); but this will be a fatal alliance for her enterprise.

Lily is one of several female characters in the series who might be said to represent the persona of the Gothic New Woman, among them Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) and Hecate Poole (Sarah Greene) but the term applies particularly to Lily because her portrayal unites key tropes of the Victorian fin de siècle: decadent, embodiment of the new age of modern machine manufacture, advocate of visceral female empowerment, above all, a force of change. As a remade woman her reincarnation as Lily – the flower of rebirth – gives her the supernatural strength needed to accomplish dominance over the men who exploited her in her previous life as the prostitute Brona Croft. She is also uncanny because having been created by man she can never die in the usual way, or go back to existence as her former living self. She can only move forward with history, subject to its material conditions just as she also attempts to reshape them. In this sense she seems more human than humanity itself.

Being Supreme

Although the series Penny Dreadful is set at the turn of the nineteenth century in London, Lily Frankenstein’s liberty is not the progressive freedom espoused by late Victorian suffrage reformists. She seeks a far more radical form of transformation. Although created by Victor and the Creature to become ‘a proper woman’, and to serve their own interests, as Season Two draws to its conclusion, it is clear that Lily is determined to choose her own future. In a speech that poses a frightening manifesto for the risen dead, she poses a question to Victor’s first progeny, John Clare, “why do we exist? Why have we been chosen?” and after her first revenge killing (2.07) answers her own question;

We were created to rule, my love. And the blood of mankind will water our garden. We are the conquerors. We are the pure blood. We are steel and sinew, both. We are the next thousand years. We are the dead. (2.08)

At a devastatingly triumphant moment, the final scene of Season Two (2.10) Lily Frankenstein (Billy Piper) dances with Dorian Gray in the ballroom of his London mansion: her exquisite late Victorian gown swings out as the couple circles the room, blood dripping down their backs, leaving a red stream in their wake. As Victor Frankenstein stares at the dancers, appalled by the spectacle of deathless horror, Lily tells Dorian “let him live with what he”s created…, a monster race.”  Together they anticipate a new horror narrative of extreme supremacy (2.10). Two episodes into Season Three and the female monster has become a Superwoman ready to bathe the world in blood to achieve Liberty: the “bitch that must be bedded on a mattress of corpses” (2.08). But the partnership with Dorian also leads Lily to the limit of her possibility. Her greatest obstacle as a force for resistance is, however, that she remains throughout an object of male desire.

The discussion is underpinned by the work of feminist cultural theorists who have interrogated the spectacular representation of the feminine in screen narrative as at once desirable and terrifying. Mulvey observes that the representation of the female body has been framed by “the mythology of the feminine … in which the woman became a phantasm and a symptom” (Mulvey  xiii). Lily is created by Victor Frankenstein precisely out of male desire for possession of a feminine fantasy. Even before her creation, Lily is desired by John Clare as an ideal romantic companion with whom to share long walks and poetic thoughts (2.01). Once she is ‘born’, she is desired by her maker, Victor, who betrays his pact with John Clare (2.08 and 2.09). Victor attempts to clothe Lily in girlish Victorian lace dresses and a tight laced corset so that she can barely breathe (2.04). He tells her that women “wear corsets not to exert themselves. What would they do if they did?” She replies that “they’d take over the world” (2.04). After she leaves Victor, she is desired by Dorian Gray as a source of excitation and shared enterprise. Ultimately, however, Dorian sets her up and then betrays her just as the other figures of male power in her life have done.

In her discussion of the female revenant in fin de siècle writing, Liggins observes that it is often the excessive potency and fluidity of the female body that poses “the greatest threat” (40). For the men who have used Lily, both before and after her reanimation, it is “the spectacle of the aestheticized but horrific dead body of the female” (42) that appears most monstrous. One of the show’s most consistent tropes is its depiction of the human body as pushed to excess – always on the edge of being broken. In various ways, the female characters struggle with the attempt to seek empowerment, whether caused by enchantment, witches and demons that seek to inhabit their minds, or by institutional incursions and restraints. In the scenes in which Vanessa Ives is trapped in one way or another by possession, hallucination, or memory, her thin white body is marked brutally by her sufferings, and her shadow eyes are particularly haunting. Vanessa alludes to her position as a woman whose truth is unable to be heard (3.04); instead she is subjected to the institutionalised discipline of silence and conformity. She survives through mental determination, the force of will over physical suffering, whereas Lily Frankenstein chooses action through violent games and gestures of dominance.

A woman whose own body has been used by countless men and then reanimated in the service of male scientific achievement, Lily inverts the terms in which her body has been put to use, and sets out to instigate a ‘new’ technique of her own. Invoking Salome, she commissions her followers to bring her the severed hand of every man in London they can find (3:06). The focus on spectacular embodiment in particular shows this, for example as Lily Frankenstein first gains control of her own circumstances, testing her physical strength and psychological power and then seizing control over others through seduction and brutality.

These experiments in body technique can be seen, in part, as a manifestation of the hybrid transmedia environment that screen adaptations of the Fantastic mode entail. As characters are remade, recontextualised, relocated, so is their potential for narrative evolution. However, the attempts of Penny Dreadful to remake classic stories of the past and thus to revision the potentialities of its characters for the future are in practice constrained, both by the financial and ideological imperatives of mass screen entertainment. Although powerful, the women of Penny Dreadful repeatedly face visible and invisible forces greater than themselves. The confluence between an ethos of advanced mechanical production and scientific inquiry with the presence of vast and fearsome ancient forces serve to remind the viewer of the shifting dangers and precarious conditions with which its central characters confront the world, making and unmaking themselves as agents, destroyers and victims of powerful forces around them. The stories of Lily, Vanessa and the other female characters in this series seem to be little more than adaptive ways of telling the old story in which the Gothic New Woman must be contained. At the same time, they promise more: whether through sacrifice, determination, strategy, or even through emotional connection. At the end of Season Three, in episode eight Lily reveals her heartbreaking story to Frankenstein and he releases her from the threat of Jekyll’s numbing serum. Like the first Frankenstein’s monster she escapes the grip of her maker, offering the hope of return.

Women of the Future

What possibilities, then, do Lily and Penny Dreadful suggest for the future stories of woman in screen narrative? Schubart argues that the identity of the contemporary female screen hero must be regarded as complex and conflicted (113). Screen drama post-feminism portrays women who seek power and express desire, and refuse to sacrifice a sense of purpose for romance. With Vanessa Ives, several of the female characters in Penny Dreadful show us a similar reframing of the late nineteenth century female persona, as women in possession of autonomy, desire and a personal or supernatural potency that enables them to overcome resistance to male authority and societal expectation. It is the character of Lily Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s second successful progeny, created by the dark mysteries of nineteenth century industrial manufacture (2.01), whom speaks most strongly to these themes. A ‘made’ woman who seeks self-determination, she reframes the cultural trope of the nineteenth century new woman for a frighteningly modernist, revolutionary purpose – to seize control of the means of [human] production and take revenge on her exploiters. That she is also portrayed as a mother in her former life further complicates her significance.

Creed argues that “most horror films also construct a border between what Kristeva refers to as ‘the clean and proper body’ and the abject body, or the body which has lost its form” (11). Owing its ‘debt to nature’, the maternal female body is inherently abject as a site of conflicted desire. “The corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border which has encroached upon everything. It is no longer I who expel, ‘I’ is expelled” (Kristeva qtd in Oliver 231). As a ‘made’ woman, Lily is a supreme object of male desire, a commodity exchanged between men. However, Lily reauthors her own narrative and asserts her subjective will, transcending her status of object to achieve self-determination. Lily’s radical imperative is to overcome the ultimate abjection – death – to show the possibility of a race of women who are able to reproduce without reliance on male or female sexual organs and thus threaten to overtake the means of production. Arguably, she thus promises to overcome the idea of the abject mother, promising a new race of superwomen. Lily is in one sense the epitome of the “body without organs” (Deleuze & Guattari 9-10), in her impulse to appear wholly purposeful yet to break down convention and the mechanism of production and to proliferate her kind. Yet, she is also something more: she is the Gothic New Woman, a figure of triumph and change while yet subjected to abuse and repression, just as the historical new women of the late Victorian era were pilloried for their claims to equality. As the extreme conventionalists of the 1880s asserted, women were (or should be) slaves to their bodies. Their lot in life was to reproduce and to serve the family, not to pursue educational or political aims. Some went so far as to claim that gaining an education would irrevocably change a woman’s body, destroying her ‘femininity’:

it would not be one whit more absurd to affirm that the antlers of the stag, the human beard, and the cock’s comb are effects of education; or that, by putting a girl to the same education as a boy, the female generative organize might be transformed into male organs … women whose ovaries and uterus remain from some cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits of men. While woman preserves her sex she will necessarily be feebler than man, and, having her special bodily and mental characters, will have to a certain extent her own sphere of activity; where she has become thoroughly masculine in nature, or hermaphrodite in mind, – when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her sex, – then she may take his ground, and do his work; but she will have lost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief feminine functions (Maudesley 32).

The series’ writer John Logan commented that the context of the late Victorian period was important for the writing and development of the series Penny Dreadful, with its emerging discourse of Darwinian evolution and its questions about what it mean to be human;

the fact that they were on a cusp of a modern age is why I chose to set it then. I think we’re on the cusp of the same thing now, & it’s frightening & there’s dissonance & there’s excitement about uncharted waters (Radich).

Although Penny Dreadful is undoubtedly a contemporary remaking of Victorian Gothic tropes, its characters and stories speak to a host of twenty-first century screen narratives and perspectives. One of the most intriguing things about Lily as the Gothic New Woman is the way that she brings together themes and tropes currently at work in our contemporary global culture: from the popularization of the revenant or zombie in entertainment culture, and questions of reproductive and ‘nutri-genetic’ control to the framing and production of human tissue for material manufacture at a time when mass bodily destruction has never been greater.

The theme of mass production and consumption has particular resonances with the television series Penny Dreadful. Here layers of historicity are appropriated for compelling story-telling, using techniques such as recursive adaptation to produce contemporary iterations of familiar stories and archetypal characters that resurface time and time again in popular mass consumption. The series offers all the accoutrements of historicist fin de siècle proto-modernity to create a Gothic fantasy account of a past time and place in which women seek to transcend their female limits, whether through self-determination and/or supernatural transformation. Yet, the overriding narrative driver for each of the female characters of Penny Dreadful is uncertainty. They must each face the possibility that what they make of themselves is fuel for the work of others who seek to exploit them. Made by others, yet determined in her goals to become more than her design, Lily’s ambition is, above all, to seize control of the narrative that defines her. Her enterprise is ambitious but seemingly unachievable as the series draws to a close. In the last four episodes of the third and last season, Lily is captured and drugged by Dr Jekyll and Dorian Gray and chained to a chair in the laboratory of the Victorian Lunatic Asylum where Jekyll performs his experiments on the unfortunate.

The confluence between an ethos of advanced mechanical production and scientific inquiry with the presence of vast and fearsome ancient forces serve to remind the viewer of the shifting dangers and precarious conditions with which its central characters confront the world, making and unmaking themselves as agents, destroyers and victims of power. The ambitious predator of a new age of transformation, Lily Frankenstein is the artificially revivified female monster who promises a superhuman triumph: to possess autonomy and power and overcome injustice against women. Like the Promethean creature of Shelley’s original novel (1814/1980), she also reminds us of our own frail humanity, the sacrifice of visionary ideas to petty short-sighted cruelties and the dangers of striving for monstrous perfection.

 

Works Cited

Chisholm, Hugh. “How to counteract the ‘Penny Dreadful.’” The Fortnightly Review, vol. 64, no. 58 (1895): pp. 765-775.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine. Routledge, 1992.

Cunningham, Gail. The New Woman and the Victorian Novel. Macmillan Press,  1978.

Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix. Anti-Oepdius. A&C Black, 2003.

Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture. Oxford University Press, 1986.

Easley, Alex. Literary Celebrity, Gender and Victorian Authorship 1850-1914. University of Delaware Press, 2011.

Galton, Francis.  “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 10, no. I, 1904, pp. 1-25.

Gates, Barbara. Kindred Nature, Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World. University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Holton, S. S. “The Making of Suffrage History.” Votes for Women. Edited by June Purvis and Sandra S. Holton. Routledge, 2000, pp. 13-33.

Heilmann, Ann. New Women Fiction; Women Writing First-Wave Feminism. Macmillan, 2000.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2006.

Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siecle. Manchester University Press, 1997.

Lee, Alison and Frederick D. King. “From Text, to Myth, to Meme: Penny Dreadful and Adaptation.” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, vol. 82 Autumn 2015): http://cve.revues.org/2343

Liggins, Emma. “Gendering the Spectral Encounter at the Fin de Siecle.” Gothic Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 2013, pp. 37-52.

Radich, Christina. “John Logan Talks Penny Dreadful.” Collider, January 18 2014.

Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Palgrave, 1989.

Murphy, Patricia. New Woman Gothic. University of Missouri Press, 2016.

Nelson, Carolyn Christensen. A New Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles and Drama of the 1890s. Broadview, 2000.

Kristeva, Julia. “The Powers of Horror.” The Portable Kristeva.  Edited by Kelly Oliver, Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 225-294.

Palmer, Beth. Women’s Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture: Sensational Strategies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Parker, Martin. “Organisational Gothic.” Culture and Organization, vol. 11, no. 3, 2005, pp. 153-166.

Pykett, Lynn. The ‘Improper’ Feminine: The Women’s Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing. Psychology Press, 1992.

Robb, G.  “Eugenics, Spirituality, and Sex Differentiation in Edwardian England: The Case of Frances Swiney”. Journal of Women’s History, vol. 10, no. 3, 1998, pp. 97-117.

Sala, George Augustus. Seven Sons of Mammon. Vol.1. Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham, 1862

Shapiro, S. C. “The Mannish New Woman, Punch and its Precursors.” Review of English Studies, vol. 42, no. 168, 1991, pp. 510-522.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. Oxford University Press, 1980.

Showalter, Elaine, editor. Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siecle. Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Shubart, Rikke, “Women with Dragons: Daenerys, Pride and Post-Feminist Possibilities”, Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements. Edited by Anne Gjeslvik and Rikke Schubart. Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 105-130.

Springhall, John. “‘Disseminating Impure Literature’: The ‘Penny Dreadful’ Publishing Business since 1860.” The Economic History Review, vol. 47, no. 3, 1994, pp. 567-584.

Whale, James. Bride of Frankenstein. Universal Pictures, 1935.

Bio: Dr. Stephanie Green is Deputy Head of School (Learning & Teaching) and Program Director for the Graduate Certificate in Creative and Professional Writing program, in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. Her academic books and journal articles include biography, studies in creative writing, literary and screen culture. Her most recent major publication is The Public Lives of Charlotte and Marie Stopes (2013). As a practicing creative writer, she has published fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and cultural journalism. Her work has appeared in journals such as Axon, TEXT, Griffith Review, Overland and in a variety of anthologies and collections.

The Journey: Vanessa Ives and Edgework as Self-Work

~ Rikke Schubart

Abstract: This paper analyzes the witch Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) in ensemble horror series Penny Dreadful (2014–16). Witches have been television material since Bewitched (1964–72), usually in comedy or light drama, and often for teen audiences. Penny Dreadful, however, is a horror-gothic show for adults, and Vanessa a woman plagued by her powers. She is traumatized by earlier sexual escapades and family losses, and now fights evil in late-Victorian London as part of a group led by Sir Malcolm. In this paper, I read Vanessa’s journey to know herself as a form of edgework, which in sociology is a term for when we in our leisure time perform extreme, exciting and dangerous activities that take us beyond the limits of safety. In sport sociology, ‘edgework’ is when participants ‘work’ the edge of danger (Laurendeau, 2008). Whether in sport or fiction, ‘edgework’ can both challenge social rules and facilitate self-growth. This analysis therefore takes an interdisciplinary approach to screen horror as phantasmagorical play (Sutton-Smith, 1997) that enables emotional edgework. 

“Man, know thyself, and you are going to know the Gods.”
~ Egyptian proverb written inside Luxor Temple

Vanessa: “It all began several years ago and far from here. The moors of the West country. I went in search for answers to who I was, to a woman I came to know as the Cut-wife of Ballentree Moore. She was the first witch I ever met.”

Penny Dreadful, “The Nightcomers,” 2.03

In the television horror-drama Penny Dreadful (Showtime/Sky, 2014–2016), the character Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) speaks verbis diablo, can cast curses, and is called Mother of Evil. Over the show’s three seasons she struggles to understand her powers and know her self. Is she the Devil’s whore? A witch? Or the Mother of Evil? She pursues these questions until she is killed at the end of the series.

In this paper, I read Vanessa’s journey to know herself as edgework, which in sociology is a term for when we in our leisure time do exciting and dangerous activities which can get us killed, like skydiving or BASE jumping. In edgework players do activities from which they learn to manage their emotions, manage their selves, and become more skilled at their choice of edgework. When they “work the edge,” they risk their lives, and they feel more alive than they do in their ordinary and safe lives. The edge takes them to an emotional peak experience, which is desirable, exciting, and dangerous. Edgework is this struggle to reach the peak, live on the edge, and push one’s edge still closer to death. Sociologist Stephen Lyng explains edgework as, “most fundamentally, the problem of negotiating the boundary between chaos and order” (1990 855). Thus, edgework is both physical and exterior and also psychological and interior. So, too, for fictional character Vanessa and for us, the audience, who engage with her. Vanessa faces exterior supernatural forces and her inner demons. We, the audience, face fictional events and our inner demons or, in the words of psychologist Michael Apter, we do self-substitution edgework (2007 66). We use fiction characters to substitute for our selves and do our edgework. Furthermore, edgework is gendered, and the paper will discuss Vanessa’s journey over the three seasons with the stereotypes (or tropes or scripts) of the medium, the witch, and the hysteric.

The journey to know one’s self is not easy or happy. It is an exploration of the darkness in the world and the darkness within. Vanessa’s journey is hazardous and the terrain hostile, but when offered an ordinary life, she refuses. Rather explore the dark than be bound to the light. The goal of such a life journey is not to ‘find’ one’s self. The self is not a pot of gold at the end of the journey; rather, the self unfolds in the process of doing edgework and in the journey as lived life.

The article starts with a brief look at Penny Dreadful and Vanessa. Next, I unfold further the theory of edgework before I examine Vanessa’s journey through the lens of edgework. I then return to the difference between a fiction character’s edgework and the audience’s edgework and, last, speculate how imaginary edgework can be self-work for the audience.

“Vanessa, c’est moi”: Penny Dreadful as Edgework Television

John Logan, creator and writer of Penny Dreadful, referred to Vanessa as “the beating heart of the series” (Ryan May 4, 2016) and at the show’s end said that, “Vanessa Ives, c’est moi,” echoing Gustave Flaubert’s famous words “Bovary, c’est moi” (Ryan June 20, 2016) about his protagonist in Madame Bovary (1856). I take this as a sign that Vanessa is a deeply personal creation and that her life’s journey reflects if not Logan’s own personal journey (this is not an auteur article), then values and themes Logan find important. For Flaubert, at least, Mme Bovary was a treasured artistic progeny and became his creative legacy.

Penny Dreadful is a horror-drama series conceived and written by the American playwright Logan and produced by American TV-network Showtime and English telecommunications company Sky. The plot centers on a group of four people who battle dark forces in Victorian London in 1891: Fifty-year-old explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), about-thirty-year old aristocrat Vanessa who has supernatural powers, American sharpshooter and werewolf Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), and doctor Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway). The show takes its title from so-called penny dreadfuls, cheap serial fiction sold in the 1830ies for a penny per weekly issue, and it uses a mash-up of characters from Gothic novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890, 1891), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Around the group we find Egyptologist Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale), decadent aristocrat Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), and Frankenstein’s creatures John Clare (Rory Kinnear) and resurrected prostitute Brona, now Lily Frankenstein (Billie Piper).

In the first season, Sir Malcolm is searching for his daughter Mina who has been abducted by a vampire. Vanessa Ives first joins him. The Murray and Ives families were once neighbors and Mina and Vanessa once best friends. But when Vanessa was engaged to Mina’s brother Peter, she seduced Mina’s fiancé, which caused a rupture between the families and led to Vanessa’s commitment to a mental clinic, the death of Vanessa’s parents, Peter’s death, Mina’s abduction, and Malcolm’s divorce. At the end of season one, Malcolm forgives Vanessa her “sin” and accepts her as his ward and new daughter. In Season Two the group battles a witch coven, and in Season Three they battle Dracula and the onset of the Apocalypse.

Among the show’s fantastic characters, Vanessa can be said to be the protagonist. She is prominent in publicity material and graces the cover of monthly comic book Penny Dreadful (June 2016–) which continued the story after the show’s end. She is presented as a strong woman: “It’s all about strong women, for me, this show, in spite of all the incredible male characters there are. The core is always going to be a woman,” Logan explained and emphasized Vanessa was “why I started writing it in the first place” (Ryan May 4, 2016). Penny Dreadful was popular with critics, rose from 70 to 83 on Metacritic, and received numerous nominations and won, among others, a Critics’ Choice Television Awards for Most Exciting New Series and a Satellite Awards for best television series and best actress (Green) in 2014, and an IGN Awards for best actress (Green) in 2014. Thus, fans were surprised when season three ended with Vanessa’s death and the words ‘The End.’ After the last episode was aired, Logan explained to fans that midway in writing season two he knew Vanessa should lose her faith and die in season three to regain her faith and be with God. And that it would be “an act of bad faith” (Ryan June 20, 2016) to continue Penny Dreadful without Vanessa. Frustrated fans speculated that the show ended because Showtime, disappointed with ratings, offered Logan a new show to write.[1]

Sidestepping the discussion of why the show ended, we can think of Penny Dreadful as edgework television: it balances on a precarious tightrope with, to one side, dark emotions and a complex intertextual mash-up horror plot and, to the other side, economic demands of commercial television. Penny Dreadful is an example of what Jason Mittell (2015) calls complex television, also known as quality television and literary storytelling due to its complexity of stories and psychological depth of characters.[2] Also, Season Three spends considerable time dealing with Vanessa’s depression. So, whether or not the show was intended to be three seasons, we will read Vanessa as a complex and psychologically deep character, like Mme Bovary.

Edgework, Fiction, Play: “What Games We Will Have Now”

Let us return to edgework and to how Vanessa and her viewers work the edge. Most edgework research I know discusses activities such as risk sports, criminal behavior, running with bulls in Spanish cities, and risky sex. In short, these are activities where players risk physical trauma. How is fiction, then, edgework, if the audience cannot break a leg or lose our life when watching? It is beyond this article to discuss the relation between fiction, engagement, and psychology, however, let me offer two arguments: First, when we are fully engaged with fiction, we experience events and emotions as if they were real.[3] When we watch a horror film we scream when characters scream, and we are happy when characters are happy. Second, we understand that fiction is an as-if world, and that we will not die when characters die. Thus, fiction is an example of what Apter calls a detachment frame; we can detach ourselves from events by telling ourselves they are ‘only’ fiction and cannot hurt us. Psychologically speaking, fiction can be edgework where the audience does high-level and low-level cognitive work, oscillating between experiencing real emotions and telling ourselves that although our fear is real, events are not real.[4]

Another way to look at edgework is as play. Thus, mountaineering and watching horror are different activities, yet, mentally they are both play in the sense that they are voluntary, exciting, and non-instrumental – they are for ‘fun.’[5] When we play, we are in play mode, meaning that we agree with those we play with that what we do is play and not real, and we momentarily exchange the rules of the real world with play rules. To play is ambiguous and paradoxical and can feel more real or ‘serious’ than reality itself. Play is experimental and free, yet bound by certain shared play rules. The player who brings a gun to the football match to take down the opposite team’s players breaks the rules of soccer. Or if a player says he or she doesn’t care about winning a match, the player also breaks the rules. Apter uses watching horror films as an example of edgework (but does not discuss this type of edgework). We can say that audiences treat fiction worlds and fiction characters as play and as as-if events. Thus, we feel real emotions yet know we are safe from physical trauma (but not safe from psychological trauma or being ‘hurt’ by a fiction).

Penny Dreadful is aware of being fiction and leisure time entertainment, and it alludes to its status as play by having characters visit theaters, cabarets, fairs, and wax museums. The first season’s vampires hide at the Theater du Grand Guignol, and the group fights them on the stage in the last episode. And in “What Death Can Join Together,” when Vanessa is possessed during her kinky sex with Dorian, the Devil greets her, “Good evening, my child. I’ve been waiting. What games we will have now” (1.06). Playing with fiction and playing with risks in risk sports are different yet similar activities. The fiction characters are extensions of us, the audience; without our engagement they would not exist, but would be merely words on paper or colors on a canvas. To sum up: fiction characters do substitute edgework, and the audience experiences real emotions in an as-if world.

What, then, is edgework? Edgework is voluntary, dangerous, and exciting. Lyng, who takes the term from gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, uses edgework about the excitement in risk sports like skydiving. The ‘edge’ is the line between order and chaos, life and death: edgework is the management of one’s performance on this edge, and practitioners are ‘edgeworkers.’ Edgework is, on the one hand, an individual and inner psychological experience, but also, on the other hand, a social and skilled activity you do in a world with others. “The ‘edge,’ or boundary line, confronted by the edgeworker can be defined in many different ways: life versus death, consciousness versus unconsciousness, sanity versus insanity, an ordered sense of self and environment versus a disordered self and environment” (857).

Apter expands edgework from risk sports to a variety of activities like fast driving, hooliganism, watching horror movies, committing crimes for fun, or giving a public lecture. Apter also uses the concepts of mental zones. Edgework activities take the player from a safety zone into a danger zone, which is next to the trauma zone. In the safety zone you are safe, in the trauma zone you risk being traumatized or dying, and in the danger zone you ‘work’ to push the edge as close to trauma as possible. Furthermore, Apter explains players use ‘safety frames’ when they do edgework. There are three: the confidence frame (they tell themselves they have the skill to perform the dangerous activity), the safety frame (they tell themselves they are still in the safe zone), and the detachment frame (the player feels psychologically detached from events, either because she feels she is an observer, fantasizes, remembers, or uses fiction). Safety frames give players a psychological experience of being safe, whether they are safe or not.

A paradox in edgework – the same that is often asked about fiction horror – is why we want to risk our lives for fun (in horror, why do audiences voluntary seek out negative emotions). Not all play involves negative emotions, however, many types of play do (you can loose a game or get hurt while playing).[6] The paradox can be addressed on several theoretical levels. On a social level, Lyng explains edgework as a response to over-socialization in modern society. When society is (too) safe, we feel restricted, bored, and lack being challenged. Edgework takes you to the very edge of your abilities. On an evolutionary level, Apter explains risk-seeking behavior as innate; we are naturally born to seek out exciting and dangerous activities, a behavior which is not sex-specific, but varies from individual to individual. Some are more risk-seeking than others, and young more than adults. Risk-taking behavior is adaptive to a group: it is better that one dies on the edge than the entire group, and the individual thus brings valuable information about risks and dangers back to the group.

On a neurological-chemical level, Apter points out edgework is characterized by our simultaneous experience of excitement and anxiety. In terms of neurochemistry, these two emotions are identical: both prepare for a fight-or-flight response to a situation and both start as an adrenaline rush. The difference is in our appraisal of the danger situation: If we think we can manage the situation, we feel excited, and if we don’t think we can, we become anxious. Cognitively speaking, we interpret the adrenaline rush as an emotion of either excitement (we feel safe) or anxiety (we feel fear). The closer we get to trauma, the harder adrenalin kicks in, and the more intense is our experience of excitement. “In other words, one buys excitement with fear, and the greater the cost, the better the product,” says Apter (43). As a mountaineer puts it: “Death is so close. You could let go and make the decision to die. It feels so good” (39).

On an individual-psychological level, finally, edgework is linked to self-work. “I wasn’t thinking at all – I just did what I had to do,” a skydiver explains, “[a]nd after it was over, I felt really alive and pure” (added emphasis, Lyng 1990 860). Lyng says, “[i]n edgework, the ego is called forth in a dramatic way” (860). This urgency makes you feel alive. On the edge there is no time for doubt and we use skills without questioning them. When Vanessa in Season Two suddenly speaks verbis diablo, the Devil’s language, she says it came to her “like an animal instinct” (2.01).

Finally, the self is gendered. In the development of our self, we use what cognitive psychology calls mental schemes, scripts, and stereotypes, which are the socially created ideas we use to know our world and to construct our self. There are schemes for every social role, and gender is a basic scheme we internalize from the age of five.[7] Edgework is gendered, and sociologist Jason Laurendeau (2008) says, “the ways skydivers, freeclimbers, mountaineers, or BASE jumpers, for example, ‘do’ risk are also – and simultaneously, and always already – ways that they negotiate gender” (304). We recall that the drive for excitement-seeking is not sex-specific. Therefore the differences in how players do edgework is a result of cultural learning, not biology. In my discussion of Vanessa’s journey to know herself, I will pay attention to how her edgework is gendered through the use of the scripts of the medium, the witch, and the hysteric.

Season One: Vanessa, the Medium

“I see things sometimes. I am affected by forces beyond our world,” Vanessa tells Ethan in episode three. In season one Vanessa’s script is the medium for the living’s communication with supernatural forces: ghosts, monsters, the Devil and even Egyptian Gods.

The séance held by Ferdinand Lyle at a party (“Séance,” 1.02) is an excellent example of Vanessa’s script and edgework. The séance was a popular Victorian parlour entertainment, and Lyle has invited medium Madam Kali, who appears to be an entertainer rather than a medium.[8] Lyle encourages Vanessa to take a seat at the table: “It will be an adventure!” When Madam Kali (Helen McCrory) summons the spirits, Vanessa is possessed. The well-behaved and elegant Vanessa transforms into a medium and a “possessed woman” who speaks in the tongues of Malcolm’s children Peter (dead in Africa) and Mina (who is missing), and also speaks as what seems an Egyptian God: “Amunet? No, much older.” Vanessa makes quite the spectacle, loosening her hair, bending backwards on top of the dinner table, and next leaves to have sex with a stranger in the street.

As said, we internalize the gender schema at the age of five, and unless we make a conscious effort to not be gendered, our every move, thought, and behavior is performed through a gendered lens. So, too, with edgework. Our choice of an edge, how to work the edge, and how to think of one self when doing edgework, is unconsciously gendered. In her study of gender and edgework, sociologist Jennifer Lois followed a team of voluntary mountain rescue workers for five and a half years. She observed that the women and men used the same meta-narrative about gender that said men were emotionally strong and women weak, and the workers shared a “norm of masculine emotional stoicism” (2001 387).[9] The meta-narrative about gender provided positive scripts for men (male stoicism), but undermined women’s belief in their ability (if stoicism is male, it means women are weaker than men). Male rescue workers were self-confident, and women were anxious and set low expectations. “[W]hen I talked to equally experienced men and women, apprehension still dominated women’s anticipatory feelings . . . and confidence dominated men’s. Furthermore, even when women performed well on missions, it did not seem to boost their confidence for future situations, while conversely, men’s poor performance did not erode theirs” (389). The difference was in anticipation and expectations, however, Lois observed no difference in men and women’s management of their emotions when working the edge.

Returning to Vanessa, we can interpret the supernatural domain as her “edge” and her communication with the supernatural forces as “edgework.” In “Night Work” Vanessa describes the demimonde to Ethan as “a half world between what we know and what we fear. A place in the shadows, rarely seen but deeply felt” (1.01). We can see the demimonde as a version of the danger zone situated between the safe zone, which is our “ordinary” world, and the trauma zone, which would be where vampires, monsters, and Gods reign. The trauma zone is then the ‘other’ side, whereas the demimonde Vanessa describes is a zone where humans and supernatural entities communicate. This half world is open to those who want to enter it. Thus, it is an edge, and if you go over the edge you will be ‘traumatized’: Mina becomes a vampire, the witch who enters a pact with the Devil becomes a Nightcomer in the second season, and when Vanessa gives in to Dracula in Season Three she becomes Mother of Evil. Vanessa the medium, however, works the edge and returns to the ordinary world.

The role as medium is gendered female in Western bourgeois society. Howell and Baker (2017) describe Vanessa as typical of the Victorian medium: “In the spectacle that Vanessa Ives makes of herself, the scene registers the appeal and disruptive potential of the female medium in the Victorian and Edwardian era spiritualist movement as one who could ‘invade and upturn the domestic havens of respectable gentlemen and their obedient wives through the subversive and often highly-sexualised séances’” (Howell and Baker ). The efficiency of social scripts is that we do not invent them; they are already written and ready for us to perform, which Vanessa does when Lyle urges her to the table.

We might imagine the ability to communicate with supernatural forces had nothing to do with one’s sex, yet Victorian society’s script as ‘Medium’ is female. Cognitive psychologist Sandra Bem (1981) says that when a schema (in our case a script) is gendered, it means it “conforms to the culture’s definitions of maleness and femaleness” (355) and it also “teaches that the dichotomy between male and female has extensive and intensive relevance to virtually every aspect of life” (362). In the first season, Vanessa performs as medium – that is, allows supernatural forces to “talk” through her physical body – three times: First at the séance, next in the flashback in episode five when she is committed to Dr Banning’s clinic, and the third time when she is possessed (after she has had sex with Dorian) and the group performs an exorcism on her in episode seven, “Possession.” The situations portrayed here connect supernatural communication with transgressive sexuality: having sex with a stranger in public, seducing one’s best friend’s fiancée, and implications of sado-masochism when Vanessa cuts Dorian with a knife during intercourse.

As we perform social scripts, we also negotiate them. We can follow them, or vary them, or, if we are conscious of them, try to change or reject them. Bem wants us to reject the gender schema because it is a negative schema that restricts women. In Vanessa’s case, her supernatural powers are represented in a script where woman is sexualized, unable to control her desires, and these desires presented as transgressive. Vanessa is also a sexualized spectacle; in her youth, her mother dies from heart attack at the sight of the naked daughter tied to the bed and possessed by the Devil, a spectacle the audience also sees (1.05). The sexual acts are overlaid with negative emotions of jealousy, shame, guilt, and the concept of sin. When Vanessa discovers her mother’s affair with Mina’s father, she starts to pray to the dark and becomes jealous of Mina. “How I envied you. Perhaps even hated you” (1.05). Vanessa’s mother blames the daughter for the social catastrophe: “Have you no shame?” Malcolm, too, accuses Vanessa: “I always thought my traveling would kill my family . . . I never thought it would be a cruel little girl.” When the adult Vanessa recalls this past she is ready to assume her guilt. “Perhaps it was already inside me, this demon” (1.05).

It is clear from episode one, when Ferdinand deciphers the ancient writing on a vampire body, that Vanessa is the object of dark forces that seek to take over the world of the living. However, the events of season one create ambiguity about whether she is predestined to be “the devil’s whore” (as a vampire calls her) or if this is her choice. When Vanessa is back from Banning’s clinic, lobotomized and tied to the bed, the Devil says at her bedside, “you always had a choice. You sought it out and fucked it. You could have shut the door at any time. You still can” (1.05). Is her sexuality her own, or is it manipulated by the Devil? It turns out that Malcolm has used Vanessa’s susceptibility to the dark forces by encouraging her to have an affair with Dorian. Malcolm hoped this would open the door to the demimonde and allow him to contact his daughter Mina. “You are now in a very special place between our world and the other. Perhaps between life and death. Reach out to Mina,” Malcolm asks Vanessa when she is possessed (1.07).

Vanessa’s ‘edge’ is expressed through sexualized encounters with dark forces. The season ends with Vanessa repressing her desire and rejecting Dorian after the exorcism: “Mr. Gray, I’m not the woman you think I am. And with you I am not the woman I want to be” (1.08). The last episode has a “decent” Vanessa, properly dressed and fighting vampires with the three men in the group, thus signaling she is now playing by a modified script. At this point in the series we can call this modified script a version of Mina since, like Mina in Stoker’s novel Dracula, Vanessa is both Medium and vampire hunter. Although Vanessa participates in the vampire battle, the men do most of the killing, and the season ends with Malcolm forgiving Vanessa her sin and making her his ward. In the season’s final scene, Vanessa asks a priest about exorcism. He says, “Now, if you have been touched by the demon it’s like being touched by the backhand of God, makes you sacred in a way, doesn’t it? Makes you unique. There is a glory in suffering. Now here’s my question: Do you really want to be normal?” (1.08).

Season Two: Vanessa, the Witch

Season two turns to the script of the witch which I later in this section differentiate into two subscripts, the Christian witch and the magical witch. Where the medium is a channel of communication and thus object rather than subject of supernatural forces, the witch is an active agent who can control and use supernatural forces. The medium sees where a witch acts. In Season One it is unclear if Vanessa does edgework out of choice (free will) or because it is predestined (“who wants to know they are hunted by the Devil?” 1.02). Season Two casts her journey in different terms: Vanessa is gifted (or cursed) with supernatural powers, but can she learn to master her powers?

The season presents the witch script as a process of learning, and from the opening episode to the finale we follow Vanessa from being unable to control her powers to be able to defeat the Devil and the witch coven. In edgework, too, the player must learn to perform on the edge. Lois divides edgework into four phases: “[P]reparing for the edge, performing on the edge, going over the edge, and extending the edge” (385). To prepare is to train and learn before approaching the edge. To perform is when players work on the edge, use their skills, and experience the adrenaline rush which takes them into a state that creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996 111-113) has called flow, where we are focused, lose sense of time, and perform our best. Edgework is performed in flow. Next, to go over the edge is when players release tension after working the edge and they allow themselves to experience emotions from the adrenaline rush, which might be joy if work went well or guilt if work went badly. To extend the edge, finally, is when players evaluate and assess their performance and emotions and set expectations for future edgework.

Now, as discussed earlier, the “edge” in edgework is both a geographical place – the location of one’s actual edgework whether BASE jumping or battling the Devil – and a mental location. The danger zone is the zone between the safe zone and the trauma zone, and within the danger zone, the edge is the border that touches the trauma zone. The edge is the literal place where you are in danger of being traumatized but are confident you can manage, and it is also where you “touch” trauma yet are confident you can return to the safe zone. One of Lois’ rescue workers, criticized for walking on dangerous cornices, explains, “Well, I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t safe. It’s not safe for you to be doing it, no, but it’s safe for me because I know what I’m doing” (388). In her study of BASE jumpers, Men on the Edge, anthropologist Caitlin Forsey says, “loss of control, fear, anxiety, dread and discomfort were connected to understandings of risk, as was the need to control the future through careful consideration of the potentially fatal consequences of the sport” (2012 52). Or, as Forsey quotes a BASE jumper, edgework is “taking necessary precautions and then knowingly doing something that could kill you” (52). The sport is a way to manage risk instead of avoiding risk. Laurendeau says BASE jumpers are “courting danger while still maintaining control over themselves, their equipment, their surroundings, and/or their sanity . . . The ‘edge,’ then, is that point at which risk takers are in peril of losing control” (294).

The season opens with Vanessa and Ethan being attacked by witches who try to abduct Vanessa. She defeats them by speaking verbis diablo, the devil’s language, which she did not know she could speak – “words came to me blindly, like an animal instinct. I don’t even know what I said” (2.01). It turns out Madam Kali (the medium in season one) is Evelyn, a powerful witch and head of a coven with four young witches. Evelyn has entered a contract with the Devil to deliver Vanessa to him in exchange for power, youth, and beauty. To fight the coven Vanessa must remember the past. In the flashback episode “The Nightcomers” (2.03) she remembers how many years ago, after Mina’s abduction, she became apprentice to a witch known as the Cut-wife. The Cut-wife, whose name is Joan (Patti LuPone), leaves Vanessa days outside the house before inviting her in. “You’re strong-willed and agile, like the scorpion,” says Joan (2.03), and Vanessa’s sign becomes the red scorpion she draws in her blood. It turns out Evelyn and Joan are sisters, the first using her powers in the service of the Devil, the second using her powers to serve her community.

Joan teaches Vanessa to harness and control her powers. “Why do you want to learn the arts?” “To find out who I am.” “And if the answer you don’t like?” “Better to know who I am.” When Vanessa cannot draw a Tarot card, Joan slaps her hard on the head and tells her to ‘feel’ the cards, to ‘believe’ in her sight. She says “you’ll know” and “you can do better” about interpreting signs. Vanessa then selects a card: ‘The Devil.’ In season one it was unclear if Vanessa invited the Devil in. Season Two removes this doubt: “I learned it. You were born with it,” Joan says about the powers. Joan shows Vanessa how to use plants and herbs for medicine, teaches her the verbis diablo, to cast the Tarot cards, and shows her a book with curses. Joan warns verbis diablo will lead to evil. “If you believe in God, better you pray with all the God in you. Only if all fails, speak the devil’s tongue, but mark me, girl, it’s a seduction and before you blink twice, it’s all you can speak” (2:3).

We can situate the witch narrative in Penny Dreadful by taking a wider look at history and witches. The powers of a witch are believed to be a magical relationship with the world; she can control the weather, kill crops, cause disease, kill and raise the dead, and tell the future. The extent of her magic depends on the intensity of her powers. Edgeworkers, too, report an almost magical ability to manage danger and master the physical world and “speak of a feeling of ‘oneness’ with the object or environment. For example, motorcycle racers and test pilots describe a feeling of ‘being one with their machines,’ a state in which they feel capable of exercising mental control over the machines” (Lyng 1990 861). Joan warns Vanessa against the spells. “Forbidden. The poetry of death. If ever the day comes when my little scorpion is crushed and beaten, if her God deserts her completely, only then does she open it. And on that day, she will never be the same. She will have gone away from God. Forever” (2:03). At the end of episode seven, Vanessa uses spells to kill the local Lord who burnt Joan as a witch and branded Vanessa, and now threatens her again. Ethan is upset, “You’ll never get your soul back,” he says and adds: “Welcome to the night, Vanessa.”

Season Two has only female witches: The sisters Joan and Evelyn, Evelyn’s coven of four young daughters, and Vanessa. The show draws from a Western culture’s belief in witches, which we can divide into two scripts: a Christian witch and a pre-Christian, or magical, witch. Evelyn is in league with the Devil and a Christian witch, whereas Joan uses her skills to serve a community. Joan, thus, is a magic witch. Let us briefly look at historical witch studies. Scottish historian Lizanne Henderson in Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment Scotland, 1670-1740 (2016) examines historical witch trials and witch beliefs. Witches are an old superstition and Henderson points out that not until 1450 did the Church claim that a witch was demonic, that is, in league with the Devil. Between 1450 and 1800, 100,000 people were accused of witchcraft and more than 60,000 executed, most of these women. But before 1450, the term “witch” was used about many practices such as charmer, diviner, sorcerer, magician, necromancer, warlock, and more. The Bible’s Witch of Endor (I Samuel 28:3-25) was for example a necromancer who had “divinatory powers and could raise the dead” (81) and the passage “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18) has kashaph, a Hebrew word that “carried the meaning of magician, sorcerer or diviner, but was not considered diabolical” (81).

Joan is a magical witch who uses her powers for the good of the community and Evelyn is a Christian witch who uses her powers for her own greed and serves the Devil. Next to these historical scripts – the Christian and the pre-Christian witch – there are also several popular culture witch scripts. There is the old evil hag with “bad skin, crooked teeth, foul breath, a cackling laugh and a big nose that has a wart at the end of it” (66) and the young pretty witch we know from Sabrina – The Teenage Witch (ABC, WB, 1996-2003). Also, we find a middle-age witch obsessed with youth in fairy tales like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, William Cottrell).[10] If we ask Henderson what the typical historical witch was like, she was neither old, nor young, nor obsessed with youth. Of women accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1670 and 1740, 78 per cent were married and only two per cent single, and if a common trope is the midwife (Joan’s calling name, Cut-wife, is because she performs abortions), only nine of 4,000 Scottish cases were midwives by occupation. Records show the typical woman accused of witchcraft was ordinary, belonged to the middle class, could be any age, and that accusations started with quotidian quarrels, “reflective predominantly of tensions between women” (84). And although 95 per cent of witches in Scotland were women, on Iceland, in contrast, of 22 executed witches only one was a woman.

In Penny Dreadful Evelyn is the middle-aged witch who has made a deal with the Devil to appear eternally youthful, while Joan is a good and magical witch slowly growing older. By magical I mean that Joan is the kind of witch before they were demonized by the church. What kind of witch, then, is Vanessa? Joan says, “I have never known a Daywalker with such power, truly, I don’t know if your heart is good or bad.” At the end of the season, Vanessa goes alone to Evelyn’s mansion to battle the coven and the Devil. Evelyn creates voodoo dolls with the hearts of murdered babies and the face of whom they represent, and Vanessa faces a doll with her own face and the Devil’s voice. He shows her a nuclear family with Vanessa, Ethan, and two children: “Let me show you what I can give you: to be free of pain. To be normal. To be loved by others. Is that not the aim of all human beings?” Joan had earlier asked if Vanessa would follow in her footsteps and be witch in Ballentree Moore. Vanessa refused (to serve the community) and she also refuses the Devil (her desires). She instead chooses her personal quest, to find Mina. “You selfish bitch, you will never have a happy life,” Joan warns.

“The Nightcomers” ends with Joan’s words ‘be true,’ which we will read as meaning Vanessa must be true to herself. When you are on a journey to know your self, you must stay the course even if a storm is coming. In “And They Were Enemies,” the Devil says: “There is no more powerful inducement than this: Face yourself” (2.10). Vanessa’s sense of self lies in her ability to repel the Devil with his own words, verbis diablo, a gibberish that makes no sense. She refuses to be ‘normal’ and tells the Devil. “You offer me a normal life. Why do you think I want that anymore? I know what I am – do you? . . . Beloved, know your master” (2.10).  Her edgework is to force the Devil back and her powers – her mental edgework – are her ability to manage the adrenalin rush, which edgeworkers experience as a magical unity with one’s environment. They say they feel self-realization, self-actualization, and self-determination and find “a purified and magnified sense of self” (Lyng 860). They feel more alive on the edge than in their everyday lives. This aliveness and strength from the adrenaline rush becomes terrifying rather than purifying when granted a woman. In season two Vanessa learns to use her powers, and she kills a bounty hunter (with a knife) and a Lord (with spells) before overcoming the Devil. Such display of strength is awesome and terrifying. Henderson links the witch trials to society’s fear of women. The witch is an “independent adult woman who does not conform to the male idea of proper female behavior” because she is “assertive . . . [and] does not nurture men or children, nor care for the weak” and “has the power of words – to defend herself or to curse” (77). In a patriarchal world, “the imagery of a rebellious, subversive woman must have seemed incredibly threatening to men and women alike” (77). Henderson reminds us that the rebellious witch script is modern, since the historical witch was no rebel.

Vanessa, thus, enacts a complex and modern witch script: she is desired by the Devil whom she rejects, and she is also asked to be a magical witch, which she rejects too. Thus she takes neither the path of Evelyn or Joan. She learns the power of words to defend herself, and she insists on her own path. We can read Vanessa as a re-authored witch with an eye for modern feminism: a selfish witch choosing to reject the nuclear family as well as the Devil, a witch who, however, is not egocentrical but on her very own journey, and willing to pay the price for stepping off the beaten track.

At the end in Season Two, characters set out on each their life journey. Ethan pleads guilty to his werewolf murders and is arrested, Malcolm travels to Africa, Victor becomes a drug addict, and Vanessa is alone. Losing Ethan, she loses her faith and burns her crucifix. “So we walk alone,” are the season’s last words.

Season Three: Vanessa, the Hysteric

As said, the journey to know oneself is not a merry one. Penny Dreadful is about the encounter with dark forces, and edgework is about facing trauma and possible death, and season three takes us to the perhaps darkest of all places, depression. The first two seasons cast Vanessa as medium and witch and we now come to the script of the hysteric and the setting of the padded cell in the Victorian mental clinic for ‘women’s diseases.’

First episode, “The Day Tennyson Died,” opens with Vanessa having isolated herself for five months in Malcolm’s mansion to dwell on the loss of her faith and of Ethan. The Egyptologist Lyle visits her and recommends an alienist (the Victorian age’s term for a psychoanalyst). Vanessa consults Dr. Seward (Patti LuPone), who tells her to do “something you’ve never done before.” Vanessa visits the Natural History Museum, where she meets museum director Dr. Alexander Sweet (Christian Camargo), who will turn out to be Dracula. Vanessa asks which creatures Dr. Sweet prefers? “The unloved ones. The unvisited ones. The broken and shunned creatures” (3.01). At the end of the episode Vanessa combs her hair and looks in the mirror: “The old monsters have gone. The old curses have echoed to silence and if my immortal soul is lost to me, something yet remains. I remain.” This “I” is a physical entity.

The third season intertwines supernatural forces with clinical depression, faith with flesh, medical treatments with a talking cure. Somewhere in this matrix is the person Vanessa, trying to locate her “self,” whatever such an ephemeral and mythisized thing is. In her sessions with Dr. Seward, Vanessa recovers herself. Dr. Seward tells the patient, “I don’t care about politeness. There are no manners here. If you want to scream like an animal you should. Or cry. Or yell. There are no emotions unwelcome in this room” (3.02). On a date with Dr. Sweet, Vanessa is in a labyrinth of mirrors, where a creature tells her she earlier met the Master in “the white room.” Vanessa therefore asks Dr. Seward to use hypnosis to return her to the Banning clinic, where she spent five months. Dr. Seward warns her: “The emotions can be very raw, I am warning you, are you willing to give yourself over to it?” (3.03). Although she is emotionally fragile after her depression, Vanessa insists: “Can I be more traumatized?”

Banning’s clinic was introduced in season one, where Dr. Banning performed trepanning (drilling a hole through the skull into the brain) on Vanessa. In the late nineteenth century, the historical setting of Penny Dreadful, female hysteria was a common medical diagnosis and women were believed to be of a weaker mind and more emotionally frail than men. Season One presented Vanessa as both a hysteric and possessed. Dr. Banning diagnosed Vanessa’s condition as “hysteria of a psychosexual nature” to be treated with “narcotics and escalating hydrotherapy. Cold water reduces circulation to the brain thereby reducing the metabolism and motor activity. The agitation and mental trauma will slow down and cease,” and if this does not help there are “surgical options” (1.05).

The audience is returned in season three to the Victorian treatment of “women’s disease,” which in Vanessa’s case has supernatural causes. She is also cast as hysteric, scratching her hand repeatedly during sessions which makes Dr. Seward comment on this physical symptom of inner conflict. Also, her isolation and unkept appearance signal mental disturbance. In “A Blade of Grass” Vanessa returns through hypnosis to the clinic. Here, her only visitor is a nurse, played by Rory Kinnear who also plays the creature John Clare, Frankenstein’s male monster. Vanessa laments: “God has forgotten me. He can’t find me here. I’m not Vanessa Ives here. I’m no one. I have no name. No purpose” (3.04). She is scratching the padded walls, attacks the nurse, refuses food and must be force-fed, and her thoughts ruminate about God and the Devil. At one point Dr. Seward is in the cell. “It’s a dissociative break, something like a coma,” Seward explains, “you will come out of it. When you’re at the heart of your trauma. When you’ve found what you’re looking for.” Vanessa then sees the fallen angels Lucifer and Dracula (both played by Kinnear), one wanting her soul, the other her body. Dracula tells her: “You’re powerful. You feel it coiling within you. Become the wolf and the bat and the scorpion. Be truly who you are . . . In this world you will always be shunned for your uniqueness but not with me. They will brand you as a freak and a sorceress” (3.04). Vanessa resists Lucifer and Dracula, levitates in the room and defeats them with verbis diablo (which, paradoxically, in the time-line of the story, means she knew verbis diablo before learning it from Joan).

The role of emotions in edgework is interesting in terms of sex and the gender script. In her observation of how the male and female rescue workers handle emotions, Lois say they interpret emotions differently. On the edge, everyone experiences the so-called adrenaline rush. This is not an emotion proper but a feeling state, which leads to emotions of urgency and fear. Low-level fear improves edgework but high-level fear impedes it. How you handle the adrenaline rush is crucial to your performance on the edge. Lois also observed that the rescue workers’ gendering of emotions – excitement was masculine and anxiety was feminine – led to emotions being considered appropriate and inappropriate. “For example, they believed that emotions such as uncertainty, urgency, fear, upset, vulnerability, and guilt were undesirable because those powerful feelings were potentially disruptive. They could interfere with members’ performance, causing them to sacrifice the efficiency of the mission as well as the safety of other rescuers and the victims” (401).

In a talking cure, the patient must examine his or her emotions. From an emotions research perspective, shame, guilt, and anxiety are not intrinsically feminine or masculine, but are equally innate in both sexes. Further, research in gender and power, e.g. in leadership, shows no sex difference; female leaders, for example, are not more emotional than male leaders, and male leaders not more rational than female leaders.[11] Where there is a difference in behavior, this difference is a result of mindset, stereotyping, and assumptions about gender appropriate behavior. When Dr. Seward tells Vanessa all emotions are welcome, this prompts the patient to open up instead of repressing emotions. At the same time, the emotions Vanessa is about to re-experience are those society deems ‘female,’ unwelcome, and unworthy: guilt, shame, anxiety, and paranoia.

We recall Vanessa’s mother and Malcolm in the first season blamed her for the social consequences of her seduction of Mina’s fiancée. This so-called sin was forgiven at the end of the season, however, guilt remains in her and we now re-visit Vanessa’s trauma, a knot of sexual transgressive behavior (the seduction), sin, and social disgrace resulting in self-punishment, self-blame, shame, anxiety, guilt, and physical reactions (scratching). I understand the trauma as Vanessa’s ‘edge’ in season three and her work with the trauma as her edgework. The show interweaves the scripts of the hysteric with that of the possessed woman and voices a modern feminist critique, expressed in Vanessa’s conversations with her nurse. “It’s science, it’s meant to make you better,” he says and asks her to pretend to be normal so the force-feeding and her treatments stop. Vanessa objects, “It’s meant to make me normal. Like all the other women you know. Compliant, obedient” (3.04). Whatever she is, she cannot be normal. Where the medium is welcome in the Victorian home, the hysteric is banned and isolated. The hysteric needs a cure, and Vanessa was released in her youth after trepanning. In the present, under hypnosis with Dr. Seward, Vanessa returns from the trauma when she knows the name of her adversary: Dracula.

As the season progresses, Vanessa is seduced by Dr. Sweet, and after they make love one night in the museum, she learns he is Dracula. When Dracula promises to love her to the end of time, never to leave her, and to let her be her self, she accepts to be his bride and lets him bite her. “I accept . . . my . . . self,” she says at the end of “Ebb Tide” (3.07), and London falls into the Apocalypse. “This is what I am. I have brought this terrible darkness to the world,” she says in the show’s final episode, “The Blessed Dark” (3.09).

Vanessa’s character expands from the tropes of medium, witch, and hysteric to include the martyr-hero. That is, a hero who sacrifices her or his life in the service of one’s faith. When Dr. Sweet asks whom Vanessa admires, she says Joan of Arc, who died singing, keeping her faith in God: “She heard a voice and believed it. And to believe with confidence is heroic” (3.02). Martyrdom and edgework seem different activities, however, both are voluntary, dangerous, and can take players to the extreme of trauma. We may also not think martyrdom a matter of play, however, play can be as obsessive as faith. Thus, Carl Boenish, the father of BASE jumping, died at the age of 43 when he jumped off a mountain in Norway, recorded by a film crew that was with him.[12] And the film Everest (2015celebrates the death of mountaineer Robert Edwin Hall, who died leading an expedition in 1996. When the group comes to save Vanessa, she begs Ethan to shoot her to end the darkness. At this moment she has become darkness itself and only her death will stop the Apocalypse. We can understand this belief as literal – there are forces of evil ­– but also as a psychological embrace of darkness within – that she is her self when she works the edge and touches trauma.

The third season ends with a visit to her grave. Here are what remains from the original group – Ethan, Malcolm, and Victor – and three characters introduced in the third season: Ethan’s Indian father Kaetenay (Wes Studi), Dr. Seward, and vampire hunter Catriona Hartdegen (Perdita Weeks). The creatures John Clare and Lily are alive and free to write their own life scripts.

Extending the Edge: Free Will and Self-Work

Let us now turn to edgework as self-work. What does it mean “to face yourself,” as the Devil challenges Vanessa to do at the end of Season Two? What do players take from edgework? And what can we, the audience, take from fiction edgework? Until now, we have discussed how Vanessa has prepared for and performed on the edge. I now want to explore the last phases, to ‘go over the edge’ and ‘to extend the edge.’ All four phases of edgework contribute to edgework as self-work, an activity already, simultaneously, and involuntarily also gendered self-work. We will now ask how Vanessa’s edgework is gendered.

We recall Lois found that men and women do edgework differently: Men anticipate the edge with confidence and excitement, women with trepidation and anxiety (2001 386-387). This is because men’s positive expectations are supported by society’s meta-narrative. “Yup. I am a cocky, young, think-I-can-do-it-all kid. I can get out of a situation . . . I perform tremendously under pressure. That’s when I shine at my absolute, top of my game. And I love being put in the hot seat,” says a 28-year-old male rescue worker (387). Women, on the other hand, are undermined by society’s meta-narrative and constantly worry that they will be unable to manage emotions. “I mean, I always second-guess myself in the field. I guess my problem is that I’m always unsure of myself. Like, I’d be afraid that I would do more damage than good, in a way . . . And that’s where my hesitation always comes in” (386).

We can read exterior and interior darkness as Vanessa’s “edge,” which is expressed differently over seasons: As guilt/Satan/vampires, as witchcraft/Satan, and as depression/Dracula. If we look at the four phases, then in the phase of preparation, Vanessa worries, like the female rescue workers, whether she will be strong enough to face evil, if she is worthy of being forgiven past sins, if she is haunted by evil, and if she will ever be happy. Other characters despair too in Penny Dreadful (especially Victor and his creature), however, men do not experience the same amount of shame, anxiety, guilt, and trepidation. In the second phase, performing on the edge, Vanessa’s performance is sexualized, making her an unconsenting spectacle and subject of erotic acts and sexual abuse. Here, male characters’ edgework has the form of traditional “masculine” activities such as battling, fighting, killing, and doing unethical science, rather than having sex.[13] However, when Vanessa confronts evil in the finales of season one and two, she controls her body, her emotions, and her desires, and she is dressed in decent Victorian fashion. In these situations, Vanessa works the edge without anxiety or worry. Yet, edgework is gendered: In the Grand Guignol Theatre Vanessa is the damsel-in-distress to be saved by the men, and in Evelyn’s mansion she almost kisses the voodoo doll, metaphor for the narcissistic desires the Devil promises to fulfill, which she refuses by cracking the doll’s face.

The third phase, to go over the edge, is when players release tension after working the edge and allow the adrenaline rush to become emotions. If edgework goes well, rescue workers hug one another and celebrate, but if a rescue mission fails, men and women cope differently. Female rescue workers cry, but male rescue workers do not allow themselves the “feminine” release of sadness and tears, and instead drink to stop negative emotions. In Penny Dreadful men drink too. Vanessa instead cries to release tension, like the female rescue workers. She cries when she is possessed (1.07), she cries when Ethan leaves her (2.10), and in season three she cries in sessions with Dr. Seward (3.03, 3.04), when Dracula bites her (3.07), and when she begs Ethan to kill her (3.09).

How, then, can we understand Vanessa’s death? Does she work the edge (manage chaos), does she go over the edge (let go of emotions), or does she extend the edge (go beyond existing limits)? The crying Vanessa wears a cream-colored simple dress which looks a bit like a bridal dress, perhaps to signify virtue and her soon-to-be union with God. “This is what I am. And this is what I’ve done. Brought this terrible darkness to the world,” she says (3.09), taking responsibility for the vampire plague. We can see her acceptance to become Dracula’s bride, to embrace inner darkness, and her surrender to death, as neither working the edge nor going over the edge, but instead as letting go. As ceasing her battle with chaos. But edgework is not a mountaineer’s willingness to fall to his death, or a BASE jumper jumping off without a parchute. Edgeworkers report being turned on by the risk of dying and be willing to take this risk. To embrace evil and beg for death is another story; it is not play, but suicide.

We could interpret Vanessa’s death is as martyrdom (like her favorite hero, Joan of Arc), yet this seems out of character compared to Vanessa’s earlier persistance in fighting. Fans complained about the season’s development and, for instance, found it wrong to introduce the action-heroine-like vampire hunter Catriona. A female blogger and film critic commented, “It felt like they [wanted] to introduce a character who could physically protect Vanessa, because Vanessa wasn’t a fighter like that, but Vanessa has her own powers. She doesn’t need a ninja/fencer lady.”[14] Or we could understand Vanessa’s death as an act of free will. Show creator Logan described her death as an expression of control: “[T]he show is about empowerment, and she controls her own destiny. To me, whether you’re male, female, gay, straight, whatever – you control your destiny. You make the choices that are right for your morality and your ethics and your heart, and that’s what she does. She owns her life, and at the end of the day, she owns her death” (my emphasis, Ryan June 20, 2016). Vanessa’s death, then, can be seen as a depressed woman giving in to darkness (suicide), martyrdom (sacrificing her life, like Joan of Arc, for her faith), or free will (freely choosing Dracula/evil as her destiny).

Let us return to why people do edgework. Sociologists explain edgework as an escape from the conventions of a safe and boring life, as a rebellion against social conventions, and as a way to create personal transformation and character development. It is, on the one hand, protest against an over-socialized society which does not let people express their true selves, and, on the other hand, a self-development which late-modern society encourages. Drawing from Beck’s theory of the risk society and Foucault’s thinking of the “govermentality” of bodies, Lyng points to edgework as a paradox intrinsic to modern society where “the risk society and governmentality perspectives may capture two dimensions of the same social order in the late modern period. The paradox of people being both pushed and pulled to edgework practices by opposing institutional imperatives reflects complexities in the contemporary experience of risk that we are just beginning to appreciate” (2005 10). When society is overwhelmingly organized, it leaves little space for our “I,” and edgework re-connects edgeworkers to their “I,” a self where they feel more real and more in control than in their ordinary life.

By choosing death, Vanessa is – if we take Logan’s words at face value – more in control of her own life than by living a “normal” life. She “owns” her death. However, in the line of my argument to see her engagement with darkness as edgework, this is not edgework because it crosses from the edge into the abyss. Arguably, at the moment of her death Vanessa changes from being an edgeworker to becoming a martyr, and perhaps not even a martyr, since a martyr is disinterested. Instead, Vanessa has become Dracula’s bride, Mother of Evil, and Queen of darkness. Perhaps, in fact, Vanessa has become a slave to her nature; her darkness is no longer for her to battle, but to give in and fall victim to. In which case Vanessa is, like the evil queens in fairy tales, destined to die. Or, like Mme Bovary, destined to die by her author’s hand.

Conclusion: Choosing Death and Doing Edgework

Playful engagement with death is expressed from the start of Penny Dreadful when Lyle recognizes the writings on the skin of a dead vampire as text from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Lyle explains to Malcolm that if the Gods Amun-Ra and Amunet were joined, “Amunet would become the Mother of Evil. All light would end and the world would live in darkness,” and adds, “I would not tell Miss Ives this” (1.02). Vanessa is about to become the center of an edgework show where the mythesized nuclear family is a temptation to be rejected and a love story must be played out as tragedy. Her life journey is that of the edgeworker, reaching for the next challenge, and her self-work is that of the risk-taker.

Let us, in conclusion, step back and view edgework in a bigger perspective. Empirical studies show that leisure edgework is popular in rich Western nations and done overwhelmingly by white middle-class men. Today, five per cent of BASE jumpers and twenty per cent of skydivers are female.[15] Laurendeau points out that “willingness to place one’s body ‘in harm’s way’ is . . . one of the central ways in which sport acts as a proving ground for masculinity” (296). Laurendeau underlines that gender is not static, but constructed in our choice of edgework and in how we perform edgework. Risk-regimes are lived as gender-regimes, and play with danger constructs risk as gendered. When men do edgework, they construct a masculinity sustained by society’s meta-narrative about gender. Edgework is a revolt, but this revolt is individualistic, independent, and requires a skilled, fit, and strong body. In short, edgework requires the body of the quintessential male Western hero.

When women do edgework they, too, embody gendered risk-narratives, but without the support of the meta-narrative. Thus, when Rob Hall died in 1996 on Mount Everest he was portrayed a hero in Everest and noone held against him that he left behind a pregnant wife. In contrast, when elite mountaineer Alison Hargreaves died on a climb in 1995, she was described as “an errant, unthinking mother” (Laurendeau 296). When people do edgework, they choose what edge to work and how to work it and, moreover, are viewed differently by society. So, too, with fiction characters. It is only fair to say that several characters in Penny Dreadful risk their lives to battle darkness, however, they embody different scripts, different emotions, and have different journeys. Ethan is cursed with lycantrophy, but not raped by the Devil, and when he cries, his are tears of love, not of traumatic pain like Vanessa’s. Joan of Arc might have sung when she burnt, but Vanessa cries when she dies. Joan and Vanessa’s fates are not parallel. Joan is triumphant and Vanessa heartbroken. Ethan becomes the hero destined to kill his beloved who has surrendered to dark forces (the story also of Wolverine and Jean in X-Men: The Last Stand [2006, Brett Ratner, 2006]). In fact, Ethan’s struggle is the edgework of season three’s finale, and he says, “I have stood at the very edge, I have looked into the abyss. Had I taken one more step I would have fallen. But no matter how far I ran away from God, he was still waiting ahead” (3.09).

Vanessa’s life journey illustrates that women are ambiguously able to take the stage as protagonists in fantastic fiction, yet remain restricted by gendered tropes and scripts that limit their range of action. If Vanessa illustrates a “politics of self-expression, identity and power,” (Owen 1989 240) hers is a conflicted journey. Writing about the Victorian female medium, Alex Owen describes how women then negotiated roles as medium, female hysteric, and wife, daughter, or independent woman, the latter by far the most dangerous. “We are left with the unresolved question of what is meant by a feminist politics, and the problem of how we deal with the crucial issues of power and strategy,” Owen concludes (1989 240). Fantastic fiction can take women beyond the limits of the natural world, however, not beyond a male author’s decision to end their lives or, from a production perspective, beyond the rules of commercial television. If Vanessa’s edgework was too dark for a mainstream audience, she remained popular with critics and fans who protested her end. “I’m done with Showtime. I cancelled my subscription last Friday,” a fan wrote and another lamented, “you let her die in that evil. Shame on you for sure when you could have given it an other ending [sic].”[16]

Vanessa did not manage to extend her edge so she could continue edgework, however, in afterlife she demonstrates that women, too, can work the edge. And if her creator and production company killed her, she is not their property. She belongs to us, the fans. We can use Vanessa to feel and work on our own emotions and life journeys. Thus, “Vanessa, c’est nous.”

 

Works Cited

Apter, Michael J.. Danger: Our Quest for Excitement. Kindle edition. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007.

Bem, Sandra Lipsitz. “Gender Schema Theory: A Cognitive Account of Sex Typing,” Psychological Review, vol. 88, no. 4, 1981, pp. 354-364.

Cameron, Deborah “Evolution, Language and the Battle of the Sexes: A Feminist Linguist Encounters Evolutionary Psychology,” Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 30, no. 86, 2015, pp. 351-358

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.

Fletcher, Robert. “Living on the Edge: The Appeal of Risk Sports for the Professional Middle Class.” Sociology of Sport Journal, vol. 25, 2008, pp. 310-330.

Forsey, Caitlin. Men on the Edge: Taking Risks and Doing Gender Among BASE Jumpers. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2012.

“Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy: Penny Dreadful Wasn’t Supposed to End This Way.” N.n. Wired, 2 July 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/07/geeks-guide-penny-dreadful/ Accessed 1 Feb. 2017.

Henderson, Lizanne. Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment Scotland, 1670-1740. eBook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Howell, Amanda and Lucy Baker. “Mapping the Demimonde: The Narrative Spaces and Places of Penny Dreadful.” E-journal Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, February, 2017.

Laurendeau, Jason. “‘Gendered Risk Regimes’: A Theoretical Consideration of Edgework and Gender.” Sociology of Sport Journal, vol. 25, no. 3, Sep. 2008, pp. 293-309.

Lois, Jennifer. “Peaks and Valleys: The Gendered Emotional Culture of Edgework.” Gender and Society, vol. 15, no. 3, June 2001, pp. 381-406.

Lyng, Stephen. “Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 95, no. 4, January 1990, pp. 851-886.

Lyng, Stephen, ed. Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. eBook. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in late Victorian England. Cambridge: Virago Press, 1989.

Ryan, Maureen. “‘Penny Dreadful’ Creator Talks Season 3, Vanessa’s Demons and the American West.” Variety, 4 May 2016, http://variety.com/2016/tv/features/penny-dreadful-john-logan-interview-1201766847/ Accessed 12 Jan. 2017.

Ryan, Maureen. “Creator John Logan and Showtime’s David Nevins on the Decision to End ‘Penny Dreadful’.” Variety, 20 June 2016, http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/penny-dreadful-ending-season-3-series-finale-creator-interview-john-logan-david-nevins-1201798946/ Accessed 12 Jan. 2017.

Schubart, Rikke Mastering Fear: Women, Emotions, and Contemporary Horror. NY: Bloomsbury, 2017, forthcoming.

 

Notes

 

[1] For angry fans, see online comments to Ryan, “On the Decision to End ‘Penny Dreadful’.” For speculations as to the show’s end as commercial rather than creator-decided, see ”Penny Dreadful Wasn’t Supposed to End This Way,” https://www.wired.com/2016/07/geeks-guide-penny-dreadful/ Accessed 30 Jan. 2017.

[2] For complex storytelling, see Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: NYU Press, 2015); see also Jason Mittell, “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television,” The Velvet Light Trap, no. 58, Fall 2006, pp. 29-40; for fantastic women as complex characters see the introduction in Rikke Schubart and Anne Gjelsvik, eds., Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements (NY: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 1-17.

[3] For the experience of fiction emotions as real and suspension of belief (not disbelief), see Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 101; for emotions as real, see also Rikke Schubart, Mastering Fear: Women, Emotions, and Contemporary Horror (NY: Bloomsbury, 2017, forthcoming). For discussions of emotions and thoughts in horror, see also the classic study by Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990).

[4] See the introduction in Grodal, Embodied Visions, pp. 3-21.

[5] For horror as mental play fighting and imaginary edgework see Schubart, Mastering Fear.

[6] For an excellent discussion of playing with failure in computer games, see Jesper Juul, The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2013), especially chapter 2, “The Paradox of Failure and the Paradox of Tragedy,” pp. 33-45.

[7] For gender schema see Sandra Lipsitz Bem in references; for gender as a negative stereotype see Margaret Shih, Todd L. Pittinsky and Nalini Ambady, “Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance,” Psychological Science, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 1999, pp. 80-83; for an excellent study of negative stereotypes, see Claude M. Steele, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. Kindle edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).

[8] On Vanessa and the medium, see Amanda Howell and Lucy Baker, “Mapping the Demimonde: The Narrative Spaces and Places of Penny Dreadful” in this issue of e-journal Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 2017. See also Alex Owen, The Darkened Room in the references.

[9] The linguistic Deborah Cameron describes the meta-narrative as, “a larger framework into which research findings on male-female differences can be slotted, whether their immediate subject is the differing behavior of men and women in shopping malls or their differing rates of involvement in violent crime . . .” (353). For the meta-narrative, see Deborah Cameron, “Evolution, Language and the Battle of the Sexes: A Feminist Linguist Encounters Evolutionary Psychology,” Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 30, no. 86, 2015, pp. 351-358.

[10] More recent examples of the middle-aged and youth-obsessed witch are Stardust (2007, Matthew Vaughn), Enchanted (2007, Kevin Lima), and The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan).

[11] On the mythologization on sex difference in leadership, see Judith Baxter, The Language of Female Leadership eBook (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 68.

[12] See the documentary Sunshine Superman (2014, Marah Strauch) about Carl Boenish. The failed jump was a repetition of a jump performed successfully the day before, where Boenish and his wife set a world record by jumping off the highest point in BASE jumping history.

[13] Dorian is an exception, because although the character is sexualized, his escapades are not edgework in Penny Dreadful.

[14] Female blogger and film critic Theresa DeLucci quoted in “Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

[15] Five per cent is from Forsey, Men on the Edge, p. 58. Twenty per cent is from Naomi Bolton, “History of Women in Skydiving,” http://www.dropzone.com/news/General/History_of_Women_in_Skydiving_1017.html. Accessed 30 Jan. 2017.

[16] Fans’ comments to the series finale are available online at http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/penny-dreadful-canceled-no-season-four-season-three-end-showtime-series/. Accessed 30 Jan. 2017.

 

Bio: Associate Professor Rikke Schubart teaches at the Institute for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research explores emotions, gender, and genre in film and television. She has published many studies of horror and action films and about women in films. She also writes fiction. Her books include, Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2006 (McFarland, 2007) and Women of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements (Bloomsbury, 2016).

“There Is Some Thing Within Us All”: Queer Desire and Monstrous Bodies in Penny Dreadful

~ Jordan Phillips

Abstract: It has been said that we live in a time of monsters. Within the horror genre, these monsters commonly take the form of the creatures you would find in ancient mythologies or Gothic literatures; however, they have also been allegorically aligned with LGBT or Queer persons. John Logan’s queer horror series Penny Dreadful (2014-present) presents a nuanced and somewhat paradoxical portrayal of queer bodies within a horror text. The main characters are predominantly based on those of nineteenth-century Gothic fiction (Victor Frankenstein and his Monster, Dorian Gray, among others), and thus act both as a contemporary commentary on socio-cultural attitudes towards queerness, and a retrospective commentary on the state of queer politics within Victorian-era London. While the series does examine queer anxieties within Victorian times, it is my contention that the series is principally concerned with anxieties within the gay community from the last thirty years or so (1980s onwards). These points of unease are largely explored through the queer desires and monstrous bodies of its non-heterosexual characters, with their monstrously queer bodies acting as sites of transformative evolution or devolution. Within Penny Dreadful, queerness and monstrosity are often conflated (both literally and symbolically), meaning that the cultural categories of man/monster and human/non-human are unfixed. By close textual analysis of characters such as Ethan Chandler, AKA the Wolfman, and Dorian Gray, this paper will attempt to pinpoint these rhetorical slippages and analyse their meaning in relation to issues of cultural unease regarding queerness within both contemporary society and the Victorian era.

 

Introduction

Since the earliest days of the moving image, the figure of the monster has been implemented as a way in which to mobilise ideological tensions and socio-cultural anxieties connected to particular time periods and historical moments. Within the horror genre (the monster’s native milieu), these ideological messages are mainly constructed and transmitted through the performance of the abject body and its sexually transgressive desires, both of which have been critically understood by some as an allegorical conduit for queerness – that is, non-heterosexual or non-normative desire (Benshoff 1997). As marginalised social groups fought arduously for social recognition, the fictional monster was on a parallel path, prowling in the shadows, acting as a narrative locum tenens for the depoliticised and the demonised. Harry M. Benshoff (1997) postulates that some of the most sociologically and cinematically significant readings of the monstrous body are coterminous with that of the queer body – that is, those which consider themselves to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise non-heterosexual or non-normative. Benshoff historicises queer monstrosity as a largely disparaging paradigm, with queer bodies and desires being either symbolically annihilated or manifested metaphorically through the monster, ultimately resulting in heterosexist and phobic depictions of queerness. More recently, however, the queer monster has found a more nuanced and progressive domicile in the form of John Logan’s Neo-Victorian horror television series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016). Throughout this paper, I will interrogate the series’ depictions of performative queer desires and monstrous bodies by making use of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s (1996) monster theory in conjunction with Judith Butler’s (1990; 1993) theories of gendered performance, in order to analyse the extratextual and intratextual positioning of Penny Dreadful’s queer characters. By doing so, I aim to examine issues of cultural unease regarding queerness within the Victorian era, and how Logan’s series utilises its period setting in order to narrativise queer anxieties in the 21st century.

Theories of Queerness and Monstrosity

The horror genre can be broadly defined by the structural relationship between normality and abnormality – or, the normative and the monstrous (Wood 2002). The rhetorical slippages between the ontology of the human and that of the monster has fostered scholastic attention in relation to the monstrous body as a conceit for postmodern racial, gender, and sexual politics. Within Penny Dreadful, the interstice between normality and abnormality, between humanity and monstrosity, is performative. On the whole, horror is inherently performative in nature. Just when we think we have become inoculated to the virus-like popularity of horror, another strain presents itself and performs the social, political, and cultural dread imbricated within its particular time period. In this sense, horror is concerned with “dressing up” – that is, wearing the disguise of cultural terror in order to play out ghastly narratives within the creative quarantine of the often fantastical horror genre. To use Judith Butler’s (1990) example of identity-as-performance, horror is akin to the concept of drag – that is, performing gender identity through the reversal of gendered social roles i.e., hair, clothing, make-up. Horror, however, dresses up social unease and anxiety through the artifice of monstrosity and fear.

The unfixed, grotesque nature of these anti-normative bodies and desires invites a queer reading – that is, one which aims to deconstruct and dislocate culturally prescribed binarisms such as man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual from their hegemonic, heteronormative positioning (Turner 2000). Butler defines the concept of “performativity” as a tool in the study of identity formation and ritual-making in society. For Butler, “Performativity cannot be understood outside of a process of iterability, a regularised and constrained repetition of norms… This iterability implies that ‘performance’ is not a singular ‘act’ or event, but a ritualised production…” (1993 95). While Butler refers to identity (chiefly through the construct of gender), I instrument her theories as a way in which to anatomise the performance of queer monstrosity within Penny Dreadful i.e., how monstrosity may be concealed by performing as something else (human), and how the series literalises the performance of uncontrollable, transformative monstrosity to queer identity. Moreover, in his book Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996), Jeffrey Jerome Cohen posits the monstrous body as a potent metaphor for the so-called “cultural body,” suggesting that monsters are a way in which to read the culture from which they antecede: “The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment – of a time, a feeling, and a place” (1996 vii). It is my contention that the monstrous bodies within Penny Dreadful act as totems for socio-cultural anxiety and unease within contemporary society, under the guise of moralistic and puritanical Victorian belief systems and ideologies.

Penny Dreadful and its Queer Characters

Penny Dreadful is predominantly based on characters and plots adapted from nineteenth-century Gothic fiction, most notably Victor Frankenstein and his monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Mina Harker from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The series also features cinematic characters which were directly inspired from the works of Gothic literature i.e., the Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man from the 1935 and 1941 films of the same names. The series is inherently anachronistic in nature, being produced in the second decade of the 21st century and set during Victorian era London circa 1891. This dichotomy works to actualise the series’ political potential, giving voices to marginalised characters who have been historically disenfranchised – both in Gothic literature and the society which it mirrors. Logan’s Neo-Victorian series breathes new life into real-world issues which were embryotic in the Victorian era e.g., the deconstruction of socially entrenched gender binaries. Industrialisation brought about a crisis of masculinity due to the new working woman. Anxieties began to emerge over male feminisation and the perception of effeminacy being equated with homosexuality (McGunnigle 2005). While original Gothic tales have their villains embody the repressed anxieties and undesirable sexualities of the heroes and their society, Neo-Victorian texts emphasise the dual role of both the hero and the villain within their characters. This slippage of roles (both gender and character roles) is the creative and queer nexus of Penny Dreadful.

Scholars of teratology commonly examine the monster through its relationship with bodies that are seen as non-monstrous or normative. The monstrous Other is a liminal figure who represents the disruption of socially administered categories and the destruction of culturally constructed boundaries such as man/woman, good/evil, and heterosexual/homosexual (Halberstam 1995 27). However, as scholars such as Miller (2011) and Elliott-Smith (2016) have elucidated, the figure of the queer monster has undergone a cultural evolution since its conception as a totem of essentialising Otherness, and now has the potential to symbolise universalising Sameness. It is within this incongruous space where the reimagined Gothic characters of Penny Dreadful are narratively situated.

Penny Dreadful’s protagonists are a motley band of supernaturally-endowed deviants who ostensibly protect those they love from even more monstrous threats than themselves. The “heroes” in this series are monsters themselves. Monstrosity, including queer monstrosity, is not explicitly synonymous with evil. The series’ creator and sole writer, John Logan, is no stranger to queer, camp, or horror. His writing credits include cult films such as Bats (1999) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Logan, has commented upon the series’ queer inflection, articulating that his own experiences growing up as a gay man in 1970s New York served as an impetus for this correlation. Logan expresses that he always felt a connection to the closeted monster, and that the ways in which the series’ characters address the secrets within themselves ultimately defines who they are. Logan embraces this Otherness and implements its queer charge in order to narrativise the struggles and anxieties he has felt within his own life through the textual lens of these reimagined Gothic characters. Logan articulates that, “… the thing that made me alien and different and monstrous to some people is also the thing that empowered me…” (Thomas 2014). Logan also comments that he does not believe in the Manichean binaries of good and evil or hero and villain, opting instead for a more ontologically and moralistically fluid approach to his monsters. While I do not wish to predicate the entirety of my argument on the, widely contested, concept of auteur theory, I do in fact suggest that Logan’s own personal alignment with monstrosity and Otherness informs the series’ queer sensibility, and that his authorial intent is perhaps too potent to be overlooked entirely.

Textual and Extratextual Analysis

One of the key narrative drivers in Logan’s series is that of desire (or, to be more concise, queer desire). Many of the characters are portrayed as polysexual and do not conform to the compulsory heterosexuality commonly associated with traditional horror texts. Equating queerness with monstrosity creates a complex dialogue in regards to the historicity of Otherness. On one hand, queerness is intrinsically Other. There are those, like Logan, who welcome the association with the abnormal, the divergent, and the monstrous. However, there are those who would repel such associations, avowing that queerness and Otherness are socially constructed and are only as non-normative and as monstrous as the dominant social position (in this case, white, male heterosexuality) recognises them to be. Although this discursive polarity may seemingly convolute Penny Dreadful’s status as a queer artefact, it is within this very polarity wherein queer readings find their discursive power. Queer is fundamentally mobile. To conflate queerness with one particular genre, ideology, or any fixed positionality would undermine and destabilise the mutability and fluidity of queerness.

Logan’s series deploys a rhetorically ambiguous stance in relation to queerness. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1990) speaks of two views in relation to sexual identity and desire: the minoritising view and the universalising view. Queer people, like monsters, can exist in the minoritising shadows and seek to accrue political power through the solidification of Otherness; or, they can present their monstrosity unashamedly and reject their secretive, closeted existence, thereby harnessing the discursive power of universal Sameness. For Wood (2002 27), Otherness is representative of what white, heterosexual bourgeois ideology, “… cannot recognise or accept but must deal with… by rejecting and if possible annihilating it, or by rendering it safe and assimilating it, converting it as far as possible into a replica of itself.” Otherness can be projected as essentially different, or it may be converted into an assimilatory production of Sameness. Through both extratextual materials and intratextual characterisations, Logan creates an ambiguous dialogue in regards to queer bodies and desire by simultaneously suggesting that these characters’ bodies and desires are both monstrous and normative, Other and Same, hero and villain. Extratextual (in this case, any text that is not strictly within the episodic diegesis of Penny Dreadful) conditions greatly affect the rhetorical positioning of a text and its characters. In the case of Penny Dreadful, its status as an artifact of queerness is affected by its extratextual and paratextual scaffolding. Cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall (cited in Benshoff 1997) have indicated, discourses do not exist vacuously and are subject to multiple sites of reception which, in turn, allows for the active negotiation of textual subjectivities. In terms of the so-called “New Golden Age of Television” (2000-present), digital extratextual materials are a key component of television programming, with some suggesting that these texts are significant in the manufacturing of characterisation within the intratextual diegesis (Brookey and Westerfelhaus cited in King 2010). While I do not wish to imply that these extratextual materials (the series’ opening credit sequence and the promotional materials used to market the series) are unitarily responsible for the monstrous and queer positioning of the series’ characters, I would ascertain that they operate in tandem with Penny Dreadful’s intratextual narrative in order to establish an omnipresent sense of Otherness and monstrosity, and that this was a conscious decision by the series creator which moves beyond the realm of authorial expressivity.

The contrast between monstrosity and humanity is made consciously evident in the series’ opening credits sequence, with the characters being juxtaposed with images of animals and other deathly signifiers. Ethan Chandler AKA the Wolf Man (portrayed by Josh Hartnett) is analogised with the wolf and the serpent, whereas Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney) is compared with the spider and its prey. This first image suggests darkness over light, alluding to the characters’ dark, unholy desires. The last shot, however, sees the creature of the bat going forth into the light, implying a more virtuous side to the night-dwellers. The sequence plays with chiaroscuro as a way of symbolising the balance between Otherness and Sameness, a boundary which Logan’s monsters tread lightly between. The fear of humanity and monstrosity coinciding had taken root in Victorian society after the release of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. The post-Darwinian panic of ontological miscegenation is represented here though the performance of queer monstrosity, most notably through the desires of Ethan Chandler and Dorian Gray. This binary is also strongly present in the promotional materials for the series, in which the characters (some of whom are distinctly human) are positioned as intrinsically monstrous and Other. While these extratextual characterisations are consistent with Logan’s personal adoption of Otherness, they simultaneously carry a charge of Sameness in relation to monstrous bodies and queer desires.

“There is some thing within us all.” This ominous slogan played a significant part in the paratextual promotional posters (and was later introduced into the narrative proper) of Penny Dreadful’s first season. However, the ideology lurking behind this refrain is one which undulates ubiquitously throughout the series’ story and character arcs. The idea that there is some thing, something Other, something monstrous, is the thematic lynchpin of Penny Dreadful’s intradiegetic narrative. This ideology paradoxically suggests that we all have the potential to be the minoritising queer monster, but also positions Logan’s series as a more universalising narrative of queer monstrosity. These extratextual materials blur the boundaries between monster and human, normative and non-normative, and hero and villain. The monster-human duality of these characters is a preconceived paradigm, it is not one which they have thrust upon them by outside forces decoding their behaviours and actions. The promotional slogan for Penny Dreadful’s second season (“The Devil is in all of us”) is decidedly less runic in terms of the characters’ moral compasses and transgressive desires. The unidentified “thing” which resides within the characters has now been given a satanic marker, further solidifying their resonance with monstrosity and Otherness.

The promotional trailer for the series’ second season is a frenetic and lubricious sequence which displays the human-monster duality of the characters and alludes to the monstrous desires festering beneath their human exteriors. For example, Ethan performs his Sameness, his human side, until the frame dramatically shifts to a distorted image of his Otherness, his monstrous side, the Wolf Man. There is a kind of pageantry tied to these characters, a performative veneer of normativity and humanity. Queer theorists such as Judith Butler reject stable categories and address how human subjects “perform” gender and sexual identity, claiming that gender and sexuality is socially constructed and performative. The culturally constructed categories of monster and queer coalesce as oppositional categories to that of normativity: the abnormal which gives the normal its discursive meaning. The monster is the abject body which is used in order to support the hegemony of the non-monstrous bodies in society, much the same as queer bodies bolster the dominance of heterosexual bodies. Queer monstrosity, then, like gender and sexuality, can be considered to be constructed and performative. While some of Penny Dreadful’s characters reject and entomb their monstrously queer natures, others embrace their Otherness as a fundamental part of who they are. This idea is problematic, however, as the series’ characters represent both the human and the monster in one disruptive, queer body.

As Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) elucidates in the fifth episode of the first season, “There are things within us all that can never be unleashed.” Again, the thing within these characters, their Otherness, is continuously highlighted and carries a queer charge. Ethan is a lycanthrope (à la the Wolf Man) and Vanessa has powerful magical abilities. Both shape-shifters and witches have long been associated with queerness, and their coupling results in a queer reading. Their desires for a relationship, on several occasions, has been deemed infeasible due to their monstrous circumstances. They openly discuss their feelings for one another, but these moments quickly dissolve into discussions of their monstrous Otherness. In episode ten of the second season, Vanessa is shown a vision of an untenable future of normalcy with Ethan. In this alternate history, one without their monstrous conditions, the two live happily in their opulent Victorian home. Dressed all in white, the pair speak adoringly of their two children and bask in the contented glow of their “normal” life. Vanessa understands, however, that this illusion is just that: A mirage of normalcy she will never attain. The children, the human signifier of procreational hetero-normalcy, are the most impracticable in Vanessa’s eyes. It is unknown within the mythos of the series if Ethan’s or Vanessa’s supernatural capabilities would be hereditary, but the inclusion of the two children in the dream sequence heavily implies that Vanessa not only once craved a traditional familial life, but also that she fears that her possible offspring would be genetically predisposed to monstrosity.

Ethan and Vanessa are situationally queered in the sense that they are non-normative and have monstrous bodies, their desires carrying a queer charge in the process. The “thing” which was alluded to in the tagline of the promotional materials yearns to be released. The characters’ monstrous desires build up inside of them until they cannot be contained any longer (Ethan’s lycanthropy and Vanessa’s witch-like powers, respectively). According to Rigby (2006 70-71), within the male-dominated narrative worlds of Gothic literature, “… The women seem to mean the same ‘thing’: They act as conduits through which unacceptable male desires are routed… and, appropriately enough, most of the women suffer the same fate: death”. For Rigby, the thing within Penny Dreadful’s narrative is locatable as femininity or femaleness (which have long been aligned with male homosexuality and queerness). Women are not divorced from their ill-fates within Logan’s Neo-Victorian series, however, with both central female characters meeting their demise at the hands of male characters at various points within the series. The “thing”, whether it be representative of femininity, femaleness, queerness, or a triad of all three, is ultimately banished or eradicated.

Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) is another character whose fluid sexuality creates queer sensibilities within Penny Dreadful. As in the original novel, Dr. Frankenstein creates his “monster” (later dubbed Proteus, portrayed by Alex Price) from parts of other bodies and brings him to life by using electrical power generated by a storm. In Penny Dreadful, the virginal doctor creates life by using both nature and science, without the use of a woman or any kind of “natural” methods of procreation. This parthenogenic, monstrous body symbolises both the uncertainty of modernity and medicine/technology, as well as the doctor’s own queer sexuality. Upon his “birth,” the doctor holds his monster in a caring caress, as a mother does her child. While there are moments of intimacy between the two men, they are often interrupted by the presence of women. For example, Dr. Frankenstein takes the newly born Proteus walking around the streets of Victorian London for the first time. Here they are encountered by Ethan and Brona Croft (Billy Piper) – a prostitute dying of consumption and Ethan’s initial love interest – another non-normative couple. Brona insouciantly flirts with Proteus, much to the chagrin of both Ethan and Dr. Frankenstein. This exchange is indicative of the fragile homosocial/homosexual continuum, a popular trope in Gothic fiction (Sedgwick 1985). Whenever male homosociality verges too close to the homosexual, female characters are interpolated into the narrative in order to diffuse any homosexual signifiers. For Young (cited in Elliott-Smith 2016 106), who draws upon Sedgwick’s work in her analysis of James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the female exists as a, “desperate cover-up” and displacement of homoeroticism. While this may seemingly undercut Penny Dreadful’s queer aesthetics, this triangulation of queer desire works to supplement the series’ queer readings rather than hinder them.

As aforementioned, queer is inherently mobile and subversive. If Victor and his monster were in an illicit homosexual union, they would undeniably be a queer couple. However, as soon as their same-sex relationship encroaches the realms of possible exploitation, then their coupling would become problematic. Texts which exploit or sensationalise same-sex partnerships or aesthetics undermine the subversive and political potential of queer, effectively “de-queering” and depoliticising the characters and the social situations which they represent. Later, in a Pygmalion fashion, Victor falls in love with another one of his creations, Lily – a reanimated and renamed Brona. The two eventually consummate their relationship on a stormy night (season 2, episode 5), much like the ones which permitted the births of Frankenstein’s creatures. In this sequence, Victor’s queer sexuality is anthropomorphised by the storm. By engaging in a sexual union with one of his female creations, Victor is succumbing to his compulsory heterosexuality (despite Lily’s body being a decidedly queer one, she is still female). The next day, the storm has passed and Lily has cooked breakfast for her lover in the morning sunlight; their heterosexual coupling is textually reinforced by the ironically domestic mise-en-scene. The “thing” within Frankenstein appears to be his latent heterosexual urges and desires. By presenting Frankenstein’s sexuality as a kind of “queer heterosexuality” (Smith 2000), Penny Dreadful preserves the transgressive and fluid nature of queer. Earlier in the series, Brona articles the in impracticable nature of her sexual relations with men by stating: “You’re fucking a skeleton every night. There’s no future in it for either of us!” Brona’s words here are suggestive of Lee Edelman’s polemical analysis of queer theory, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004). For Edelman, queerness disrupts the social Order and derives pleasure in anti-procreative desire (that is, non-heterosexual sex). Due to Brona’s infected, and later monstrous, body, she too is representative of the anti-procreative queer, despite being heterosexual. It is this precise lack of hetero-procreative futurity which positions these reimagined Gothic characters as agents of queer monstrosity.

Early on in the series, the characters are introduced to the concept of the “demimonde,” a midpoint between heaven and hell where dark souls are contained. Etymologically, the term comes from 19th century France and refers to a group of hedonistic people who live on the fringes of respectable society. Vanessa explains to Ethan that the demimonde is, “a half world between what we know and what we fear,” a shadowy realm where some cursed souls are doomed to dwell forever. Ethan, who hitherto believed he was alone in his monstrosity, asks her what would happen if the monsters within them were to be unleashed, to which Vanessa replies, “[then]…, we are most who we are. Unrestrained. Ourselves.” Semantically, demi-monde is a fitting term for our band of sexually transgressive deviants whose supernatural natures Other them from respectable Victorian society. At a syntactic level, however, Logan’s re-appropriation of the supernatural demimonde is symptomatic of the queer monsters’ purgatorial desires. These characters, particularly Ethan and Dorian, are a living personification of the demimonde. Both Ethan’s and Dorian’s literary and cinematic counterparts have been historically aligned with queer monstrosity. Both have a dark and monstrous secret: Ethan’s is his lycanthropy, his monstrosity presenting itself cyclically every full moon, whereas Dorian’s is his portrait where he has stored his monstrous soul, preserving his youthful beauty.

Both Ethan and Dorian go through transformations (symbolic and somatic) which are representative of their monstrously queer performativity. Ethan Chandler performs as the quintessential Southern man. He’s tall, tough, muscular, and slips comfortably into the male protector role within the first few episodes of season 1. Ethan soon begins a relationship with Brona, who later becomes Lily Frankenstein. During this relationship, we begin to see moments of tenderness and femininity in Ethan; he is just as loving and gentle as he is masculine and aggressive. The characters’ monstrous desires build up inside of them until they cannot be contained any longer, in Ethan’s case, the monster within; the burgeoning, bestial presence he so desperately tries to banish. Ethan oscillates between the performance of the Southern gentleman and the monstrous Wolf Man. The latter side haunts Ethan; he knows he cannot control his monstrous body and, when he is transformed, he hunts and kills people across London uncontrollably. In episode 4 of the 1st season, Ethan takes Brona to see a stage play named “The Transformed Man,” a tale that involves lycanthropes and death, both of which resonate deeply with Ethan’s tortured soul, the living demimonde. Ethan later rebukes her company and retires to Dorian Gray’s excessively lavish manor. Dorian regales Ethan of the climactic music from the German operatic drama Tristan and Isolde. Liebestod (which, translated from German literally means “love death”) acts here as a musical signifier of the demimonde, and also the duo’s transgressive, purgatorial desires. In this scene, Ethan’s trauma over his divided Self presents itself by way of mental images tied to his monstrous nature: the cryptic symbols associated to the demimonde, the bloodied bodies of the people he has killed, and his fellow animal: the wolf. Here, Ethan and Dorian’s monstrous bodies are conflated with their queer desires.

Earlier in the episode, Ethan somberly asks Dorian if he wishes he could be someone else, to which Dorian replies, “all the time.” These words carry different inflections to these two men, however. Ethan loathes who he is, his monstrous body, seeing it as a curse he cannot be rid of. He hides his secret to the best of his ability and performs as a regular member of Victorian society, wishing he could be like everyone else. He clings to a universalising view of his monstrosity, hoping to acclimate into the very society that scorns him. Dorian, on the other hand, embraces his monstrous body and queer desires, opting instead for a minoritising viewpoint. Dorian remarks to Ethan: “I suppose we all play parts.” Ethan enquires as to which “part” Dorian plays, to which he replies: “human.” Ethan performs as human because he wishes to be normal, whereas Dorian performs as such simply because he has to, relishing his true nature of difference. Both of their performances are suggestive of the concept of “passing” i.e., a non-heterosexual person trying to pass as heterosexual out of fear of censure. Despite agreeing with Ethan that he too would like to be someone else, he relishes the idea of not being like everyone else. He pontificates, “to be different, to be powerful, is that not a divine gift?”

Over the last few decades or so, there has been a fiercely contested dichotomy raging within the gay community: the homomasculine or “straight-acting” discourse. There are many within the gay community who prescribe to the culturally constructed notion of “manliness” – that is, hard, stoic masculinity that attempts to emulate the dominant heteronormative codes of masculinity, thereby performing as the very systems which dominate them. They reject notions of homoeffeminacy or “femme-acting,” instead choosing to champion a universal discourse of power rather than a minority one (Clarkson 2006). This discourse is reflected within the performance of queer monstrosity within Penny Dreadful, with Ethan epitomising the homomasculine Same, whereas Dorian is totemic of the homoeffeminate Other. Other male characters who embody facets of these dichotomies are Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale), a fey Egyptologist and informant to Ethan and co, and Angelique (Jonny Beauchamp), a transgender courtesan and love interest to Dorian.

The effeminate Lyle enacts the stereotype of the “sissy”, often fawning over Ethan’s charm and muscularity. He has a wife, however, one which we later find out he has implemented as part of his closeted, heterosexual performance. Lyle cryptically speaks of his “condition” (his homosexuality) and harbors a great deal of shame because of this. He and Ethan are two sides of the same coin: One femme-acting, one straight-acting, but both queer and unsure how to channel their non-normative desires. Angelique, on the other hand, is anatomically male but prefers to dress and identify as a woman. The situation is, again, complicated by the presence of Lily. Dorian is attracted to her otherworldly presence and begins to court her, quickly forgetting about the lovelorn Angelique. At a cursory glance, it seems that Dorian is attracted to Lily because he senses the monstrous being within her. However, the fact remains that he leaves (and actually kills) Angelique to be with a biological female companion. As a reanimated creature, Lily is obviously monstrous. Towards the end of the second season, she reveals a demonic demeanour and vows to destroy humanity with Dorian by her side. These two immortal monsters are a problematic couple in terms of queer politics. Dorian killed his queer lover Angelique to be with Lily instead; however, his desire to be with Lily seems to stem from her monstrosity, not her innate femaleness. In this sense, as with Frankenstein and Lily, the heterosexual pairing is equally as queer as the non-heterosexual one.

Conclusion

In summation, Penny Dreadful is somewhat paradoxical and problematic in terms of its depiction of queer desire and monstrous bodies. Logan’s Neo-Victorian series plays with queer monstrosity in ways in which its Victorian progenitors could only have hoped to. Many of the characters are portrayed as polysexual and do not conform to the compulsory heterosexuality widely attributed to their fin de siècle counterparts, creating a rich, yet ambiguous, dialogue in relation to queerness, both within the Victorian society on which it is based and the contemporary society within which it is created. Some of the series’ characters, such as Ethan Chandler, are representative of universalising queerness, performing as normative in the hopes that he can one day escape his perdition as the living demimonde, his bestial side, his transformative body. Others, like Dorian Gray, however, adopt a more minoritising position, embracing his queer desires, his monstrous body, and his place within the shadowy demimonde. The series as a whole is reflective of the homophobic and heterocentric ideals upheld by Victorian society, but is also emblematic of contemporary discourses surrounding queerness and discursive models of power. The series presents its characters as sexually and morally ambiguous, and are a way of reading the Victorian culture from which they were originally bred, and also the contemporaneous one which has seen them adapted them in Logan’s series. Most of Penny Dreadful’s characters have elements of Otherness and Sameness embedded within their extratextual and intratextual DNA, inasmuch that they have both heroic and villainous characteristics, heterosexual and homosexual tendencies, and very human and monstrous desires.

 

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Cohen, Jerome, Jeffrey. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In: Cohen, Jeffrey, Jerome, ed. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, pp. 3-26, 1996.

Clarkson, Jay. “’Everyday Joe’ versus ‘Pissy, Bitchy, Queens’: Gay Masculinity on StraightActing.com.” The Journal of Men’s Studies, Vol. 14, issue 2, pp.191-207, 2006.

Edelman, L. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. USA: Duke University Press, 2004.

Elliott-Smith, Darren. Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins. New York and London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2016.

King, Sisco Claire. “Un-Queering Horror: Hellbent and the Policing of the ‘‘Gay Slasher’’.” Western Journal of Communication. Vol. 74, issue 3, 2010, pp. 249–268.

McGunnigle, Christopher. “My Own Vampire: The Metamorphosis of the Queer Monster in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Gothic Studies, Vol. 7, issue 2, 2005, pp.172-184.

Miller, S. J., “Assimilation and the Queer Monster.” Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror. Edited by A. Briefel and S. J. Miller. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011, pp. 220-234.

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

Rigby, M. Frankenstein and the Queer Gothic. PhD Thesis: Cardiff University, 2006.

Sedgwick, Kosofsky, Eve. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Sedgwick, Kosofsky, Eve. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Smith, C. “How I Became a Queer Heterosexual.” Edited by C. Thomas. Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. USA: University of Illinois Press, 2000, pp. 60-67.

Thomas, June. “’The Thing That Made Me Monstrous to Some People Is Also the Thing That Empowered Me‘.” Slate.com, 9 May. 2014,  Accessed 30 September 2016.

Turner, B, William. A Genealogy of Queer Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.

Wood, Robin. “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s.” Horror, The Film Reader. Edited by M. Jancovich. London: Routledge, pp. 25-32, 2002.

 

Bio: Jordan Phillips is a postgraduate researcher, teaching associate, and academic support tutor at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. His main areas of interest are sexuality and queerness within the horror genre; fan performance culture and audience reception; and gender and sexual politics within contemporary superhero texts. Jordan is a regular contributor to Critical Studies in Television (Online) and The Big Picture Magazine, and has co-organised/presented queer horror-specific screenings at film festivals. 

Cowboys and Wolf-Men: Ethan Chandler, Transgressive Masculinity, and Depictions of The Monstrous in Penny Dreadful

~ Tobias Locke

Abstract: Penny Dreadful’s commercial and critical success stems from its transformative adaptation of the Gothic literary canon that precipitated it, and its willingness to use that adaptation as a vehicle for contemporary discourse. While previous and current scholarly literature has linked Penny Dreadful with theories of adaptation, there has little focus yet on the active role the series’ characters play in this process. As admixtures of canonical and semi-original creations, Penny Dreadful’s principal characters are a driving force behind its adaptation of the Gothic, and act as powerful instances of cultural criticism, as exemplified in the character of Ethan Chandler. As a textual hybrid who inhabits multiple Gothic character archetypes simultaneously, Ethan is uniquely positioned to act as the series’ cultural critique of ideologies surrounding Victorian and contemporary masculinity.

Introduction

The year is 1891, around late September. Some nights past, a nest of vampires was slain in an abattoir beneath an East End opium den, but the London public is more concerned with a mother and child dismembered in a tenement some blocks over, not far from the garret where Victor Frankenstein assembles his latest creature. The Whitechapel crowds whisper amongst themselves: “Is it the Ripper come back?” and newspapers stoke public excitement with sensationalist headlines. One can only imagine the coverage if they knew the killer was a werewolf. Meanwhile, in the sedate mansions of Westminster, an African explorer and a medium discuss the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Dorian Gray expands his private pornography collection (Logan Penny Dreadful 1.01 “Night Work”, 1.02 “Séance”).

This smorgasbord of the Victorian Gothic, as reimagined by screenwriter John Logan, comprises the narrative foundations of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), which over the course of three seasons garnered critical acclaim and a voracious international fandom. Much of its success came from the way it reimagined rather than outright adapted its source texts: “If its literature were a song,” writes Slayton , “Penny Dreadful is an addictive remix instead of a cover that loses the potency and point” of the original. Slayton’s distinction is critical: despite Penny Dreadful’s appropriation of characters, themes, and narrative elements originating from archetypal Gothic texts – Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray  – showrunner John Logan was more interested in using these precursor texts as “provocation” for the series’ own narrative than making Penny Dreadful a straightforward adaptation (Wightman). Rather than faithfully re-presenting the Gothic canon on the small screen, Penny Dreadful acted as an admixture of its source material that destabilized the patrilineal relationship between adaptation and adapted text to favor the adaptation. This destabilizing comes from the series’ deliberately “un-naming” of its precursor texts, a means of creative development first articulated by Bloom (10). By refusing to situate itself as “descended” from any single text, Penny Dreadful freed itself of the expected “adherence to plot or character development” that constitutes direct adaptation; instead, the series situated its precursors in purely “generic terms: the penny dreadful, that which is, by its nature, derivative and second hand” (Poore 70-71). This deliberately obfuscated and self-reflexive relationship to its literary precursors and allowed John Logan the creative freedom re-present some of the Gothic’s “iconic characters in a new way” (Logan “Inside Penny Dreadful”). Even when canonical characters like Victor Frankenstein appeared in-narrative, they were ‘bespoke’ hybrids formed from their originals and other (occasionally disparate) Victorian Gothic archetypes, “calculatedly anachronistic” creations cut from a “vaguely familiar” cloth (Logan “Penny Dreadful: A New Narrative”; Poore 73). This allowed Penny Dreadful to sidestep what critic Joanna Russ terms “generic decadence,” whereby genre stories become “petrified collections of rituals, with all freshness and conviction gone” (49). More importantly for this discussion, the hybridity of the show’s characters situates them amidst one of the Gothic’s principal discursive archetypes: the abhuman, through which Gothic media demarcates or interrogates the ideological division between the human and monstrous. It is how Penny Dreadful’s characters function in the latter sense that will guide the focus of this paper, which pays particular attention to the character of Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett).

In this discussion, due emphasis is placed on John Logan’s original characters, around which the series’ “central spine” was built (Logan “Penny Dreadful: A New Narrative”). Previous scholarship has almost exclusively prioritised Penny Dreadful’s heroine, Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), whom Logan constructed as the series’ centrepiece (“Penny Dreadful: A New Narrative”): a haunted young woman scarred both by the constraints of her society and an all-too-tangible inner darkness that demands violently destructive or sexual self-expression. Penny Dreadful uses Vanessa as a pointed deconstruction of Gothic femininity by presenting her as a “character whose sexuality plays out along traditionally male story markers” and fulfills a narrative role more akin to the Byronic hero than the Gothic heroine (Poore 73; Valentine). Vanessa is bold, inquisitive, and passionate, which encourages her rebellion “against the theological [and] social patterns of [her] day” and exposes her to a world of demons and supernatural darkness, precipitating the series’ core conflict (Gosling and Logan 123). Vanessa-as-Byronic-figure is able to critique the lassitude and domesticated feminine purity of the traditional Gothic heroine, not only by her agency in the series’ narrative, but by existing as a fully realised and flawed character in her own right (Poore 73; Luckhurst xxii).

This paper does not aim to dispute these findings – Vanessa Ives is a central vehicle for analysing Penny Dreadful’s self-reflexive relationship to the Gothic – but it expands them, by applying the same analysis to another of the series’ original characters: Ethan Chandler. Like Vanessa, Ethan’s character embodies multiple generic archetypes: the gunslinger cowboy of Western fiction, the tortured and introspective Gothic/Romantic hero, and the changeling victim/victimizer of the werewolf. Unlike Vanessa, who exists outside of convention from the series’ outset (be it going gloveless at a dinner party or later seeking the help of an alienist), Ethan is initially depicted in conventional, even generic terms, as a rugged and rebellious trigger man, and only reveals his hybrid identity through a series of transformative moments throughout Penny Dreadful’s first season. These transformative instances complicate his previous characterisation, and positions Ethan, like Vanessa, as a critique of the gendered ideologies inherent in the archetypes he performs: specifically the bodily mastery and patriarchal dependency of the cowboy and the egotism of the Romantic hero. The revelation of Ethan’s “morphic varability” as a werewolf undermines the bodily mastery of the cowboy and Romantic hero, and positions Ethan, like most of the series’ cast-, as an ‘outsider,’ someone who, by their actions, ideology, or existence, threatens societal norms (Hurley 1996 3-4). However, Ethan-as-werewolf also emphasizes the individual introspection and sublime connection to nature inherent to the cowboy and Romantic hero archetypes; his abhuman state foregrounds Ethan’s part in Penny Dreadful’s central “reframing of the monster narrative” and associated cultural critique (Thomas; Hurley 2012 198). This self-reflexive and transformative relationship with character archetype typifies the show’s relationship to its precursor texts and the wider Gothic genre, and is fundamental to our understanding of its success in adapting the Gothic for the twenty-first century.

Lover, Liar, Lycanthrope – Ethan Chandler and Character Archetype

Despite my earlier description of Penny Dreadful’s central characters as “original,” there exists a more accurate descriptor – what Poore terms a ‘bespoke’ character. “Bespoke” characters, he claims, are “calculatedly anachronistic reflections” of character archetypes from Penny Dreadful’s precursor texts: figures pieced together from a traditionally Gothic pattern, but with an explicitly “modern” sensibility (73). The “vaguely familiar” nature of these bespoke characters allows John Logan to guide the audience to expect particular narrative outcomes, while affording him the creative freedom to meet or subvert these expectations to a greater degree than he could with Penny Dreadful’s canonical characters (“Penny Dreadful: A New Narrative”). This methodology is what Logan uses when he first introduces the audience to Ethan, in the third scene of Penny Dreadful’s pilot. The opening titles and preceding scenes firmly establish the show as high Gothic Victoriana, with images of blood-filled teacups and scarab beetles, East End tenants being torn apart by unidentified assailants, and introducing us to Vanessa Ives as she fends off a nightly demonic visitation ( 1.01, “Night Work”). This makes our introduction to Ethan Chandler all the more tonally jarring: we snap to a scene of light and colour, gunfire and brass bands as he swaggers through a sharpshooting exhibit in a Wild West show. Ethan is dressed as a caricature of the “gunfighters of the old American West, such as Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody” (Sinha-Roy): long flowing curls, a sheriff’s star, buckskins, cowboy hat, and a moustache so extravagant it covers his entire mouth as he recounts General Custer’s last stand against the Sioux at Little Bighorn (which he claims to have survived), all the while juggling horseshoes in the air with shots from his pistols. While Ethan certainly entertains the crowd (with Vanessa a steely-eyed exception), the sheer extravagance of his routine makes it come off as the kind of weary almost-parody that denotes decadent genre (Russ 49-50); Ethan himself can barely suppress a sigh as he wraps up his tale of pluck and daring.

The only hint we get that there might be a genuine cowboy beneath all the greasepaint is when Ethan, in an impromptu finale, shoots the feathers off a lady’s hat, cheekily winking at the riotous applause and earning a wry smile from Vanessa. We cut to him enthusiastically copulating with the woman whose hat he shot; afterward, in the midst of tearing off his stage moustache (to reveal another underneath), he tells his conquest that while she’s made his visit “truly memorable,” the “peripatetic” life of a theatrical is calling him away, just as the lure of the wild open ranges would call cowboys away from their sweethearts (Aronson and Kimmel 188). Even here, when we begin to see Ethan as a genuine gunslinger, there’s a self-awareness present; instead of being despondent, his partner merely asks if he’d like to know her name before he departs – indicating both are somewhat aware their encounter is all part of the show. By the time we move to the next scene, the show expects us to have a clear impression of Ethan’s character: a “brash, cocky American” gunslinger “who survives on his wits as much as his frequently-drawn guns” and “has a tentative relationship with the right side of the law,” despite the hint of performativity underpinning his roguish charm (Gosling and Logan 18). Yet Logan uses Ethan’s next scene to complicate his inhabiting the cowboy archetype, by pitting him against Vanessa and her uncanny powers of perception. Seated across from Vanessa, Ethan’s flirtatious Western drawl becomes less a part of his character than “a mask of on-stage bravado” (Gosling and Logan 19); she asks for his help with some “night work,” he responds with flirtation, leading her to bluntly query whether Ethan’s shooting ability and Western pluck are “a tall tale as well.” Ethan responds lackadaisically – “What do you think?” – and Vanessa ripostes with the following:

Expensive watch, but thread-bare jacket. Sentimental about the money you used to have. Your eye is steady but your left hand tremors, that’s the drink, so you keep it below the table hoping I won’t notice. You’ve a contusion healing on your other hand, the result of a recent brawl with a jealous husband, no doubt. Your boots are good quality leather but have been re-soled more than once…I see a man who has been accustomed to wealth but has given himself to excess and the unbridled pleasures of youth…A man much more complicated than he likes to appear. ( 1.01, “Night Work”)

Ethan’s response to her analysis is telling – he maintains his Western cockiness at first, but as she continues, becomes visibly uncomfortable, before staging his first transformative moment, revealing a steely calm as he asks if Vanessa means to have him murder someone. He attempts to cover this ruthlessness by reverting to his cowboy persona when he accepts the offer – “One smile and I say yes” – but it doesn’t take, and Ethan is left contemplative and half-in shadow, a picture of Romantic moral ambiguity.

In the next few scenes, as Ethan joins Vanessa and Sir Malcolm Murray in their vampire hunt, Penny Dreadful moves into the realm of an oblique Dracula adaptation (Slayton). Through our awareness of Dracula as one of Penny Dreadful’s source texts, and the vague familiarity inherent in Ethan’s characterization, we are guided to assume Ethan will “echo” Stoker’s Quincey Morris as the brash and romantic “muscle” of Penny Dreadful’s burgeoning “band of heroes” (Crow; Logan “Penny Dreadful: A New Narrative”). This expectation, which has been echoed by most television critics, is not unreasonable: like Quincey, Ethan is the outsider in both a geographical (an American in London) and generic sense (a cowboy in a Gothic narrative); he enters the realm of the supernatural in pursuit of a haunted female figure (Vanessa Ives or Lucy Westenra/Mina Harker), and most importantly, his American brashness acts as a powerful symbol of modernity amidst Gothic antiquity and superstition. Quincey’s moral fortitude and worldliness prove instrumental in holding the “band of heroes” together in the face of the vampiric threat, and essential to defeating Dracula, who meets his end courtesy of Quincey’s “very Texan Bowie knife”; furthermore, as namesake to Jonathan and Mina’s son, Quincey represents the American-led future of the 20th century (Crow, emphasis original; Stoker 162, 350-51). Logan seems to echo this American-as-modern mindset through Ethan by creating him specifically as the contemporary American audience’s “eyes into the story,” assuming an American character would be easier for audiences to follow into the ‘alien landscape’ of Victorian London and its supernatural demimonde (Gosling and Logan 20; Logan “Inside Penny Dreadful”).

However, a cowboy cannot survive in a Gothic world: Quincey dies at Dracula’s hands (Stoker 350), and the “guts and glory” of the archetypal cowboy cannot be sustained in the face of supernatural terror: Ethan flees the demimonde, despite his fascination with Vanessa, and her enigmatic claims that he seeks to escape a curse similar to her own ( 1.01, “Night Work”; Aronson and Kimmel 188). When Ethan returns in the second episode of the series, however, Logan stages another transformative moment: the episode opens with Ethan ‘standing alone, disoriented and bemused, on the cold, wind-swept shores of the Thames. Gone is the confidence and strength of the archetype’ that Ethan initially embodied; instead we see a tortured ambivalence that ‘makes Ethan, just for a moment, as alone in his strangeness as Vanessa is in hers, or as Frankenstein in his terrible knowledge’ (Gosling and Logan 19; 1.02, “Séance”). This expands on the hints of Romanticism we saw in the pilot, and integrates Ethan further into the show’s developing narrative cosmology.

If Penny Dreadful were a Dracula adaptation, this transformation would be (at least perceived as) a deviation from its source; rather, it reveals new patterns and connections inherent in the cowboy archetype that created both Quincey and Ethan. The archetypal cowboy is a wanderer, “unconstrained by the demands of civilized life” (Aronson and Kimmel 188). Expand upon the individualistic moral code and rebellious mystique of the cowboy, and conflate his quest for a personal form of “justice” with a quest for individual understanding or redemption, and the result will mirror the brooding egotism and existential angst of Romantic heroes from earlier Gothic fiction (Aronson and Kimmel 122-3). Thus, Ethan-as-Romantic hero is less deviation from and more expansion of his original gunslinger characterisation, allowing his character to move beyond merely echoing Quincey Morris as a cowboy in a Gothic novel, and develop a more active role in Penny Dreadful’s emergent narrative.

Furthermore, Ethan’s Romantic elements add depth and nuance to his character as he echoes Quincey Morris later throughout the series, most notably in the second-to-last episode of the first season, when Vanessa suffers a violent demonic possession. This episode acts as another oblique Dracula adaptation: Ethan, Frankenstein, Sembene, and Sir Malcolm’s four-week vigil at Vanessa’s bedside echoes the gathering of van Helsing, Quincey, Arthur Holmwood, and Jack Seward to prevent Lucy Westenra’s death from the vampire’s attacks (Stoker 104-52) and later, to save Mina Harker from vampiric infection. Subsequently, Ethan moves into an approximation of Quincey’s role throughout the episode as both watchman and moral centre of the group, and like Quincey, is the one to first offer Vanessa the option of a ‘clean’ death before she succumbs to her monstrosity ( 1.07 “Possession”; Stoker 305). “Unlike Quincey, Ethan grapples with the ethical quandary of either killing Vanessa, or letting her live and prolonging her suffering, bringing him into conflict with Sir Malcolm, who, echoing van Helsing with Mina, attempts to use Vanessa to track down the remaining vampires in London. Furthermore, in an extended bout of introspection, Ethan laments Vanessa’s position as outcast between worlds, comparing it to the Americanising of Native American children, who are ultimately outcast from either world. Ethan’s soliloquy not only castigates British and American colonialist ideology through a supernatural lens, but also acts as a self-reflexive criticism of his own archetypal position as a cowboy who tamed the Western frontier to serve white American expansion (Aronson and Kimmel 188; 1.07, “Possession”). As we later learn, it was Ethan’s role in the Indian Wars and the wholesale slaughter of Native peoples that shaped his Romantic introspection and moral crisis, and that rather than a cowboy’s sense of honor, it is a Romantic desire for atonement that drives Ethan to commit to protecting Vanessa from the supernatural forces that hunt her: “You will not die while I am here. You will not surrender while I live. If I have one goddamn purpose in my cursed life, it’s that” ( 2.07, “Little Scorpion”). The visual and narrative context around this dialogue – which echoes a similar declaration of fealty from Quincey to Mina Harker (Stoker 305) – firmly establishes Ethan-as-Romantic-hero over Ethan-as-cowboy: surrounded by nature, Ethan rejects Vanessa’s fatalistic belief that her struggle will never with a rebellious statement of individualist strength (both hers and his, which is how they overcame her previous possession), but it is the following exchange that solidifies Ethan as a Romantic figure while again complicating his character:

Vanessa: You are one man.

Ethan: More than that, and you know it. We are not like others.

We have claws for a reason’ ( 2.07 “Little Scorpion”)

This exchange refers to the third archetype that Ethan embodies throughout Penny Dreadful, an archetype I have up to now ignored in my analysis: the werewolf. The revelation of Ethan-as-werewolf complicates my heretofore-argued position of Ethan as a Romantic hero playing the cowboy by adapting portions of both characterizations into a transformed hybrid narrative: we become aware of Ethan’s lycanthropy in the closing scenes of the first season, and this transformative moment hinges upon Ethan simultaneously inhabiting the cowboy and Romantic hero archetypes. As a cowboy, he is on the run from a pair of Pinkerton agents, but this Western narrative is given a Romantic bent, as Ethan is hunted for a Gothic-seeming, deliberately obscured crime, the nature of which, and Ethan’s accompanying guilt for, necessitated his self-imposed exile in London. However, when cornered by the Pinkertons, Ethan responds with neither a cowboy’s gun-blazing defiance nor a Romantic hero’s fatalism: the bones shift under his skin, revealing a clawed, yellow-eyed wolf-man, who dismembers the Pinkerton agents and everyone else in the vicinity, as the camera tilts up to a mist-shrouded full moon (1.08, “Grand Guignol”).

Ethan-as-werewolf serves as an archetypal meeting point that brings his cowboy and Romantic hero elements into a cohesive whole: like the cowboy, the classical werewolf is a violent lone wanderer; like the Romantic hero, he is set apart from the rest of humanity due to a hidden sin or “curse” that causes anxiety, introspection, or a fatalistic belief in one’s own damnation, and all of these elements form a critical part of Ethan’s characterization (Gosling and Logan 20). Interestingly, Ethan-as-werewolf also emphasizes the connection to wildness, to nature as opposed to civilization, that is implicit in both the cowboy and Romantic hero, although this Logan only references this obliquely, such as in the visual framing of Ethan’s declaration to Vanessa, where they are situated in a natural arch of greenery ( 2.07, “Little Scorpion”).

However, the reveal of Ethan-as-werewolf, and its subsequent impact upon the other archetypes he performs in Penny Dreadful’s narrative, is more interesting if we examine how it makes Ethan an extension of John Logan’s “creative goal” for the series – exploring humanity through depictions of the monstrous (Gosling and Logan 15). If we examine Ethan’s hybrid characterisation through this lens, it becomes apparent that Ethan, like Vanessa, acts as a critique of the masculine ideologies that his cowboy- and Romantic hero-selves embody. As with Vanessa, Ethan’s ability to present this sort of gendered critique is entirely dependent upon his hybrid identity – both as a ‘bespoke’ echo of Penny Dreadful’s textual canon, but more importantly, as an extension of the Gothic abhuman.

Abhuman Humanity – Ethan as Wolf-Man

The abhuman is an almost omnipresent Gothic entity, apparent in texts as far back as Frankenstein, but was formally defined by Hurley (1996 3-4) as “a not-quite human subject, characterised by its morphic variability, continually in danger of becoming not itself, becoming [O]ther”; a liminal body that exists between disparate states such as living and dead, human and animal, or between binary expressions of gender (Hurley 2012 190). Arguably, both Ethan and Vanessa exemplify this condition of being: Vanessa due to her connection to the spiritual world, “masculine” (i.e active and dominant) expressions of sexuality, and the physical and emotional exertions that accompany possession; Ethan due to his lycanthropy and the associated loss of emotional and bodily control that results in a violent physical metamorphosis.

The physical and emotional transformations that the abhuman state enacts causes the traditional Gothic narrative to cast it as the ‘ruination of the human subject’ and, by that token, a powerful source of horror – Frankenstein’s Creature or Mr. Hyde, for instance, are presented as repugnant figures that parasitically consume and ultimately destroy their human counterparts (Hurley 1996 3). The abhuman is terrifying for the ways it is not human, rather than identifiable for the ways it is. However, in a later analysis, Hurley notes that the abhuman, if presented sympathetically, allows Gothic narratives to ‘critique the cultural norms which the monster violates’, emphasizing the human aspect of the abhuman to effect social commentary (2012 198). Penny Dreadful’s depictions of the abhuman serve the latter purpose, in order to perform “a reframing of the monster narrative…onto the feelings of the outcasts rather than the majority” that critiques normative ideas of identity, sex, and gender (Thomas).

While Vanessa and Lily carry the gender critique of the series, and Frankenstein’s Creature interrogates general notions of the outsider, Ethan-as-abhuman acts as a critique of heteronormative (traditionally “manly”) conceptions of masculinity and patrilineal inheritance, which have been present in the Gothic since its inception (Brinks 11). Brinks raises the intriguing question: “if a male subject can be inhabited, displaced, or self-alienated, even temporarily, by uncanny forces that unleash, precipitate, or coincide with effeminzing effects, in what sense does he possess a masculine identity?” (12) This query is directly applicable to Ethan: his abhuman identity displaces and transforms the masculine identities he embodies as cowboy and Romantic hero. This liminal identity and its accompanying physiological metamorphosis causes Ethan to lose his ‘“volition” and rationality, qualities which are traditionally the special prerogative of the masculine subject”; Ethan-as-werewolf is “Thing” rather than man, “a mere body without self-identity or violition” beyond carnal desire, making him (by Victorian standards, at least) an “imperfect” or feminized male subject – a fact John Logan and actor Josh Hartnett confirm in a public interview, where Ethan’s lycanthropy was metaphorically linked to the menstrual cycle and described as being rooted in “emotional”  (i.e. feminine) rather than physical (masculine) power (Hurley 1996 144-5; Wightman). This metaphoric conflation solidifies Ethan-as-abhuman as an example of  ‘failed’ Gothic masculinity, which is explored in various ways through the series’ interwoven narrative strands (Brinks 11-2; Hurley 1996 144-5).

Throughout the first season, as the audience is given hints to Ethan’s abhuman identity, they coincide with moments where he embodies non-traditional (i.e. emotionally-driven and community-oriented) masculinity: Ethan first demonstrates his power through preternatural communion with a pack of wolves at London Zoo; later, his repressed memories of his lycanthropy prompt a homosexual encounter with Dorian Gray; most tellingly, his ‘official’ revelation as a werewolf in the first season finale is rooted in his grief for a lost loved one ( 1.03, “Resurrection”, 1.04, “Demimonde”, 1.08, “Grand Guignol”). This coincidence continues throughout the second season as Ethan’s lycanthropy becomes more apparent. Rather than a physical protector, he acts as an emotional support to Vanessa, and is emasculated by her when confronting the supernatural threats of that season: it is Vanessa’s knowledge of the Verbis Diablo and its occult power that enables her to drive away witches, enact revenge on Sir Geoffrey Hawkes, and ultimately overcome Evelyn Poole, the season’s antagonist ( 2.01, “Fresh Hell”, 2.07, “Little Scorpion”, 2.10, “And They Were Enemies”). In all of these instances, Ethan’s abhuman power is ancillary to Vanessa’s own abhuman state, and the associated ‘inappropriately aggressive femininity [that requires] as object an effeminized version of masculinity’ to offset it, which Ethan (and arguably, most of the male cast) provides (Hurley 1996 143).

Ethan’s seemingly inverted masculinity enables the series to portray social fears of individual or social degeneration evident in fin-de-siècle Gothic texts, which reviewers claim is echoed in contemporary Gothic media’s preoccupation with notions of monstrous identity and gendered domestic insecurity (Sarner; Buzzwell; Valentine). The werewolf figures as a key symbol that both the Victorian and contemporary Gothics use to negotiate these concerns, and understanding how this symbolism (especially surrounding gender) has persisted and altered from the Victorian to the contemporary Gothic will help formalise Ethan’s situation as part of Penny Dreadful’s gender commentary.

Victorian depictions of the werewolf, and more generally of the abhuman/monstrous body, were based around a process of “identity formation by negative definition” that involved juxtaposing the Anglo middle-class male (the de facto Victorian example of a ‘stable’ human identity) against an abhuman other, in a process that foreshadowed Kristeva’s theories of abjection (Coudray 2; Hurley 1996; Kristeva). The Victorian werewolf, as an extension of the abhuman, symbolized a ‘process of degeneration as imprinted in the psyche, and seeping outward to become imprinted on the body’, disrupting a stable self/Other binary through the hybridizing of human and animal, gradually giving rise to the figure of the bipedal wolf-man that Ethan becomes in Penny Dreadful (Coudray 12-4). The abhuman is a fundamentally changeling representation of its audience’s conception of the Other – sexual, national or otherwise; consequently, Victorian depictions of the werewolf operated fairly equally as a male or female archetype, as the werewolf’s metaphoric purpose was to act as a signifier of general difference, transgressive gender performance, or moral and physical disintegration (Six and Thompson 238-9; Coudray 6, 10, 12-4). Examining Ethan-as-werewolf in this light situates him as a “failed” or transgressive instance of the Victorian masculine figure, in keeping with Penny Dreadful’s textual roots, yet this reading is complicated when we overlay contemporary conceptions of the werewolf archetype onto this analysis. While the contemporary werewolf shares broad metaphoric similarities with its Victorian predecessor, humanised portrayals of lycanthropy in media such as Twilight (although this trend extends to the early 1990s, if not earlier) have re-symbolised and increasingly gendered the werewolf archetype. Contemporary depictions of lycanthropy portray it as almost exclusively masculine – to the point that female werewolves are “rare or aberrant” – and heterosexual: the werewolf’s abhumanity is now linked to “male aggression and [the] uncontrolled, unprovoked violence” that lies beneath masculine interaction and the male identity, with the wolf a pseudo-Jungian Shadow that must be dominated by the human male (McMahon-Coleman and Weaver 41-4). Alternatively, the contemporary werewolf acts as allegory for heterosexual adolescence: the (typically male) protagonist in a werewolf narrative is forced to “grow up” and achieve social, sexual, and/or emotional success through displays of supernatural dominance and self-determination, which has most recently been depicted in MTV’s adaptation of Teen Wolf (Pappademas; Schell 112-15).

With this reading in mind, Ethan-as-werewolf should re-align with the heteronormative masculinity implicit in the cowboy or Romantic hero archetypes he performs, yet as a werewolf/abhuman, Ethan is presented as an in- or subverted masculinity more in keeping with Victorian conceptions of the abhuman. Thus, Logan situates Ethan’s character as a deliberate critique of Victorian heteronormative masculinity, using the series’ historical setting and characterization to provide “a cultural criticism of the nineteenth century from the perspective of the twenty-first,”  a relatively traditional means of discourse in historical fantasy that is more interesting for the ways that it in turn reflects upon twenty-first century conceptions of masculinity (Poore 73). The moments of inverted or “failed” masculinity that reveal Ethan’s lycanthropy in the first season should not be read as failings but rather as representations that develop an alternate, and arguably healthier, masculine identity, which in turn re-symbolises his abhuman shapeshifting as an opportunity “to step beyond or resist more stereotypical or traditional depictions of male-female roles [and] inhabit a new space” (McMahon-Coleman and Weaver 41). Ethan’s encounter with the wolf pack presents an idea of masculinity rooted in the fraternal and communal rather than ideas of individual dominance; his encounter with Dorian re-symbolises Penny Dreadful’s imagining of the werewolf as a metaphor for sexual fluidity, capable of expressing tenderness and intimacy as much as violence and aggression.

These transformative moments mean that by the time Ethan’s abhuman nature is fully realized at the end of the first season, John Logan was able to re-symbolise Ethan-as-werewolf as a masculine symbol–yes–but as a symbol of protectiveness, loyalty, and empathy, rather than a narrow caricature of violent dominance. Ethan-as-abhuman is not made less masculine by his abhumanity, but rather uses it throughout the series as a source of strength to overcome the demons that plague him, be that supernaturally or emotionally. Part of this re-symbolisation arises from Penny Dreadful’s relationship with its source material – its generic rather than specific relation to its precursor texts means that Gothic archetypes such as the werewolf can be examined from an alternate perspective. It is worth noting, that at least in Ethan’s case, the word ‘werewolf’ is never used to describe him in-narrative:  his lycanthropic state is either described as “the wolf,” or more specifically as Lupus Dei (lit. “Wolf of God”) – a supernatural protector, whose identity in Penny Dreadful’s narrative cosmology is built around the altered masculine ideology Ethan-as-werewolf espouses ( “Fresh Hell”, 2.07, “Little Scorpion”, 2.09, “And Hell Itself My Only Foe”).  This process is key to understanding Penny Dreadful’s success in transforming the Gothic: it re-creates its predecessors in a way that destabilizes the preconceptions and ideologies attached to them. Despite presenting us seemingly familiar Gothic characters in a familiarly Gothic space, Penny Dreadful, rather than retreading a well-worn path, disrupts and re-shapes his ‘bespoke’ characters in a way that forces audiences to re-examine them and their relationships to their predecessors, and give some thought to what exactly is so ‘monstrous’ about these terrifying figures.

 

Works Cited

Aronson, Amy, and Michael Kimmel. Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO Inc., 2004.

Bloom, Harold. The Anatomy of Influence – Literature as a Way of Life. Yale University Press, 2011.

Brinks, Ellen. Gothic Masculinity: Effemincacy and the Supernatural in English and German Romanticism. Bucknell University Press, 2003.

Buzzwell, Greg. “Gothic Fiction in the Victorian Fin De Siècle: Mutating Bodies and Disturbed Minds.” Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians.  2014. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gothic-fiction-in-the-victorian-fin-de-siecle

Coudray, Chantal Bourgault du. “Upright Citizens on All Fours: Nineteenth-Century Identity and the Image of the Werewolf.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts vol. 24 no. 1, 2002,  pp. 1-16.

Crow, David. “Penny Dreadful: A Twisted Reflection of the Dracula Story.” Den of Geek 31 October  2014. http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/penny-dreadful/236850/penny-dreadful-a-twisted-reflection-of-the-dracula-story

Gosling, Sharon, and John Logan. The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful. Titan Books, 2015.

Hurley, Kelly. “British Gothic Fiction, 1885-1930.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Edited by Jerrold E. Hogle, Cambridge University Press, 2012. pp. 189-207.

—. The Gothic Body – Sexuality, Materialism and Degeneration at the Victorian Fin-De-Siècle. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez,  Columbia University Press, 1982. Print.

Logan, John. “Inside Penny Dreadful.” 10 May 2014. Web.

—.Penny Dreadful. Television program. Showtime, United States, 2014-2016.

—. “Penny Dreadful: A New Narrative.”  March 17th 2014. http://www.sho.com/video/30671/inside-penny-dreadful

Luckhurst, Roger. “Introduction.” Dracula. By Bram Stoker. Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. vii-xxxii.

McMahon-Coleman, Kimberley, and Roslyn Weaver. “Wolf Boys and Wolf Girls: Shapeshifting and Gender Politics.” Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture: A Thematic Analysis of Recent Depictions. McFarland & Company Inc., 2012. pp. 41-67.

Pappademas, Alex. “We Are All Teenage Werewolves.” The New York Times20 May  2011. ww.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/magazine/we-are-all-teenage-werewolves.html

Poore, Benjamin. “The Transformed Beast: Penny Dreadful, Adaptation, and the Gothic.” Victorianographies vol 6 no. 1, 2016, pp. 62-81.

Russ, Joanna. “The Wearing out of Genre Materials.” College English  vol. 33 no. 1, 1971,  pp. 46-54.

Sarner, Lauren. “Why Is the Gothic Having a Comeback Right Now?” Inverse 2015. https://www.inverse.com/article/6795-why-is-the-gothic-having-a-comeback-right-now

Schell, Heather. “The Big Bad Wolf: Masculinity and Genetics in Popular Culture.” Literature and Medicine  vol 26 no. 1, 2007, pp. 109-25.

Sinha-Roy, Piya. “Actor Hartnett Takes on Mystery and Monsters in ‘Penny Dreadful’.” Reuters 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-television-pennydreadful-idUSKBN0DR0PO20140511

Six, Abigail Lee, and Hannah Thompson. “From Hideous to Hedonist: The Changing Face of the Nineteenth-Century Monster.” The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Edited by Mittman, Asa Simon and Peter J. Dendle, Ashgate Publishing, 2012. pp. 237-56.

Slayton, Nicholas. “How Penny Dreadful Reanimated the Gothic-Horror Genre.” The Atlantic 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/a-good-fright-is-hard-to-find/373597/

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Thomas, June. “’The Thing That Made Me Monstrous to Some People Is Also the Thing That Empowered Me’.” Slate 2014. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/05/09/penny_dreadful_s_john_logan_why_a_gay_writer_feels_a_kinship_with_frankenstein.html

Valentine, Genevieve. “10 Reasons You Need to Be Watching Penny Dreadful.” io9 2014. http://io9.gizmodo.com/10-reasons-you-need-to-be-watching-penny-dreadful-1585906220?IR=T

Wightman, Catriona. “Penny Dreadful’s Comic-Con 2014 Panel: As It Happened.” Digital Spy 2014. http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/news/a586320/penny-dreadfuls-comic-con-2014-panel-as-it-happened/.

 

Bio: Tobias Locke (b. 1995) is a current doctoral candidate at Griffith University’s School of Humanities, specializing in contemporary and Neo-Victorian Gothic fiction. He blames Penny Dreadful for this, and looks forward to enacting revenge by writing extensively about it. This is his first publication.

 

The Contaminant Cobweb: Complex Characters and Monstrous Mashups

~ Anita Nell Bech Albertsen

Abstract: This article maps out character complexity in Penny Dreadful by focusing on the intertextuality of monstrous female characters. The aim of this study is twofold. First, it seeks to examine show how mashup characters gain complexity through textual contamination as they are woven into an intertextual cobweb of signification. Secondly, it aims at examining how monstrous characters like Vanessa Ives can be conceived as mashups contaminated by different manifestations of the monstrous-feminine as coined by Barbara Creed. An overarching hypothesis of this study is that interfigural strategies contribute to character complexity of traditional female monsters usually seen in televisual horror-drama.

 

In the televisual landscape, a horror-drama TV hybrid has emerged in recent years – a sub-genre that stretches from Scream Queens (2015), Hannibal (2013-15), American Horror Story (2011-) to Fear The Walking Dead (2015-) among others. Period horror-drama Penny Dreadful (2014-16) has also contributed to this wave of New Gothic television. Set in the late Victorian era, it makes space for many strong and complex female characters who challenge the traditional Victorian male perception of women and the codes of morality.

By focusing on the intertextuality of (morally) complex female characters, this article – in dialogue with David Greetham’s The Pleasures of Contamination (2010) Brian Richardson’s work on transtextual characters (2010), and Barbara Creed’s well-known book The Monstrous-Feminine (1993) –will examine how characters like Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) can be conceived as mashups “contaminated” by different manifestations of the monstrous-feminine. Penny Dreadful’s mashup characters are woven from an intertextual cobweb which deepens the complexity of horror’s traditional female monsters. This article’s theoretical take on how characters gain complexity and depth through textual contamination draws on a range of well-known media and literary theories, such as Creed’s study and Wolfgang G. Müller’s literature-based theory in “Interfigurality – A Study on the Interdependence of Literary Figures” (1991), to capture new developments in recent horror television, focusing on monstrosity and character complexity and transtextual or mashup characters.

By mapping out character complexity in Penny Dreadful, this article aims to show how hybrid female monsters can be conceived as a locus for an ongoing negotiation of gender in horror, a site where stereotypical gender roles are transgressed and modified, then fed back into the circulation of social patterns. This argument thus challenges the classical conception that female monsters, such as the witch (Vanessa Ives), are entirely monstrous by claiming that supernatural female characters have emerged in contemporary horror which incorporate contradictory traits, such as being powerful yet vulnerable, empowered yet sexualized, possessing magical powers, yet suffering all-too-human doubts.

Using the monstrous-feminine as impetus, Penny Dreadful showcases some of the most complex (and conflicted) female characters in contemporary screen horror-drama, transgressing against more traditional and stereotypical performance of femininity through monstrous figures like protagonist Vanessa Ives and also Hecate Poole (Sarah Greene) and Lily Frankenstein (Billie Piper). Although embodying female empowerment, they are also conflicted figures of pain struggling with (sometimes literal) inner demons of which Vanessa Ives reminds us by saying “The devil is in all of us. That’s what makes us human.” Thereby she pinpoints a feature shared by many monstrous creatures, such as the witch, in contemporary horror: the embedded humanity and ambiguity within the monster itself.

A Contaminant Cobweb of Gothic Stories

Penny Dreadful can be best described as literary mashup, as it embraces heterogeneous cultural and literary sources by merging nineteenth century high and low culture and weaves several mythical literary characters known from the late Victorian era into a new narrative patchwork, evolving and mutating material to fit new times. Thus Penny Dreadful breathes life into a genre – the fantastic – which according Tzvetan Todorov has been bled dry by modern age and in particular by the rise of Freudian psychoanalysis. The series does so by transforming classic texts through the employment of epigonic postmodern storytelling techniques like genre blending and diverse intertextual strategies including the adaptation practice termed ‘contamination.’ According to David Greetham’s The Pleasures of Contamination (2010) this practice occurs when “one mode of discourse . . . leaks into or infects another, so that we experience both at the same time” (1). In Penny Dreadful, creator John Logan demonstrates the practice of intertextual contamination – both at a thematic, an ideological and a narrative structural level – where several narrative elements and famous characters from nineteenth century novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) are blended together and through which these myths of gothic fiction ‘contaminate’ each other and the series itself. To further complicate this reading of adaptive and intertextual processes, these Victorian novels are themselves imitations and adaptations. (See Rikke Schubart’s and Toby Locke’s discussions of adaptation elsewhere in this issue).

Such epigonic techniques applied by Penny Dreadful transgress the textual and generic boundaries of the series by combining elements and characteristic traits of several text-types into a woven web of signification. In the opening credits, this method of intertextuality and hybridity appears to be represented by the image of a spider spinning a web. A similar method also serves as an underlying principle when language creator David J. Peterson constructs the artificial language Verbis Diablo for the series, the “devils tongue” spoken by anyone touched by the Devil. This language is not original, but a pastiche made up of several languages (Arabic, Middle Egyptian, Attic Greek, Latin, Farsi etc.). Peterson combined grammar as well as pieces of multiple words from many different languages in order to produce new ones, including portmanteau words,[1] through a process of linguistic and semantic blending.

Penny Dreadful makes numerous references to British literature (William Shakespeare, John Clare, William Blake, William Wordsworth among others)[2] and also to horrific popular culture, of the nineteenth Century (Putney’s Family Waxworks – a gruesome version of Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Grand Guignol’s naturalistic horror theatre, press sensationalism, Victorian snuff theatre shows, spiritualist séances). Numerous intertextual references are rattling around inside the series’ storylines, their meaning shaped by strategies of quotation, plagiarism, pastiche, and allusion, all of which create an interrelationship between texts, adding layers of depth to Penny Dreadful and its characters by drawing on the viewers’ prior cultural knowledge.

Through its title and its imitations, plagiarism, and adaptation of popular texts and culture, the television series lives up to the reputation of the penny dreadfuls in the nineteenth-century. This publishing phenomenon was popular serial literature printed at a low cost and this literature was designed to shock and awe a mass audience by focusing on the sensational, adventure, horror, crime, and the supernatural. These genres also merge together into one hybrid form in Logan’s television series, creating a new work that appeals to (post)modern audiences with lurid tales of crime, transgressive sexuality, and the supernatural.

On an ideological level, Penny Dreadful furthermore adapts a multitude of ideas by synthesizing Christian theology, elements from Egyptian mythology, and nineteenth century spiritualism and imperialism. This remixing of ideas reflects postmodernism and the perspective that our traditions and their cultural content can be reimagined by taking material and merging it into a new original creation. In that sense, the series is a playful game of layering meaning into a contaminant cobweb of signification.

Postmodern Monster Mashup – Lucifer did not Fall Alone

In Penny Dreadful diverse characters from different literary works and traditions are brought together in a new fictional context and in this new constellation of characters each of them are changed. If re-used characters from several pre-texts are considered as organic parts of the subsequent narrative, the perception of them necessarily changes as the narrative itself generates change. Simultaneously, the mashup impregnates the original texts with meaning blurring the line between original creation and adapted material. By this mode of signification Penny Dreadful aligns with postmodernism in particular through its promiscuity and playful blending, also its collapse of the distinction between high art and mass/popular culture.

The only characters who are Logan’s own creation and don’t obviously originate directly from source texts are Ethan Chandler and protagonist Vanessa Ives (although articles elsewhere in this issue, by Locke, Amanda Howell and Lucy Baker offer insights into the literary origins of both). Throughout all three seasons of the series the main plotline focuses on Vanessa’s inner battle between faith versus religious despair as she wrestles with her inner demons – literally, as Lucifer (so it appears for two seasons) is haunting her and desires her as his bride. He believes she is the reincarnation of the mother of all evil, the Egyptian primordial goddess Amunet (meaning ‘the female hidden one’), the consort of the god Amun-Ra (a.k.a. the Dragon, Dracula and Dr. Alexander Sweet), who, if conjoined together, will plunge the world into eternal darkness. A number of subplots are interwoven into this main storyline about Vanessa’s battle and each subplot is related to different antagonists in each season of Penny Dreadful. In the first season the antagonist is a master vampire with different nests of vampires, and in the second season the series brings a villainous antagonist, the witch Evelyn Poole and her coven, the nightcomers. Nonetheless, the primary antagonist that seem to go throughout all three seasons is finally revealed in the third, at first disguised in human form as zoologist and director at the London Natural History Museum, Dr. Alexander Sweet, who befriends Vanessa in an attempt to manipulate her and in the end: seduce her. However, his true nature as Dracula is exposed in “Predators Far and Near” (3.02).

Logan reimagines and develops Bram Stoker’s original character as the brother of Lucifer expelled from Heaven, a fallen angel in his own right – contributing to a complex cosmology that blends a great deal of mythological source material – Egyptian and Christian mythologies interwoven with classical gothic elements. Within the storyworld of Penny Dreadful this cosmology is presented through, among other things, The Verbis Diablo, used on eleventh century relics inscribed by Brother Gregory– what Mr. Lyle refers to as “the memoirs of the Devil” (2.04). By deciphering the satanic memoirs the group led by Malcolm Murray learns that while Lucifer is a demon of spiritual essence who feeds on the souls of the dead in Hell, his brother Dracula is by contrast a demon of the flesh who fell to Earth, where he was cursed to feed on the blood of the living by night. As eternal rivals for ascension to the heavenly throne, they both quest for Vanessa in her incarnation as the mother of all evil. A prophecy says she is needed in order to complete the apocalypse where both are released from their bondage allowing them to reconquer Heaven: “And so will the Darkness reign on Earth, in Heaven, everlasting. And so comes the Apocalypse” (2.08).

For two seasons viewers were under the impression that Lucifer was the only one vying for Vanessa’s soul, but in the final season Vanessa is courted by Dracula from outside, while continuing to be haunted by Lucifer within. What’s particularly fascinating about this supernatural merged Dracula-Amun-Ra-demon-character is that a higher level of ambiguity and humanity is embedded within him than is usually seen in horror. For example, he wants Vanessa to reciprocate his romantic feelings. He is truly in love with her. Adding to his humanity, he is extremely powerful, yet he is not all powerful because he needs Vanessa to complete his masterplan and he has been patiently waiting 2000 years for this plan to be fulfilled. Although he is a mashup character from traditional figures of relatively uncomplicated evil such as Dracula and the Devil, Dr. Sweet, as indicated by his name, is a more morally ambiguous character, one who deconstructs the boundaries between monstrous and human, between supernatural and mundane.

When disparate characters are blended and new creations (mashups) arise, the original characters interpenetrate one another so that audience recognizes and experiences each of them simultaneously. They are furthermore contaminated by a history of adaptations in literature, film and television that have transformed figures like Dracula over time and turned them into vehicles of cultural transmission. Paradoxically, mashup characters also trigger the opposite effect of familiarity – that is alienation – when original characters are re-introduced in an unfamiliar (merged) way that deviates from conventionalized representations. In other words, despite being shaped by intertextual strategies such as appropriation, mashup characters also create originality through deviation or what Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky calls defamiliarization.[3] This aesthetic effect he defines as art’s capacity to de-automatize habit and convention by investing the familiar with strangeness in order to revitalize that which has become too familiar. Similarly, mashup characters are forcing audience to see mythical figures from a different and more complex perspective.

In all three seasons of Penny Dreadful monstrosity is a theme closely interwoven with motifs like doubt, repression, guilt, transgressive sexual desires, and not the least, with the confluence of good and evil that runs through the veins of many characters. This makes it postmodern in that sense that it stresses the equalization and levelling out the symbolic hierarchy between good and evil. Instead, as the episode title “Good and Evil Braided Be” (3.03) suggests, each character is simultaneously good and evil. This is what– among other things –makes characters in Penny Dreadful complex and morally ambiguous.

Lucifer (light bringer) and Lupus Dei (the wolf of God) are the most prominent traditional figures of ambiguity depicted in the series. Whereas Lucifer is a fallen angel (of light) expelled from Heaven and cast down to Earth, Lupus Dei brings about good by means of evil acts. As suggested by Ethan Chandler himself “We have claws for a reason” (2.07) indicating that there might be a higher (godly) purpose to his monstrous acts and nature. This is confirmed by The Verbis Diablo relics where “the Wolf of God” is mentioned as a long-fated protector of Vanessa and as such he turns out to be the key player in the battle against Lucifer and Dracula for her soul.[4]

 

Dark Shadows and Human Complexity

Penny Dreadful’s thematic structure is characterized by a sort of confluent duality which is formulated in the second season teaser by each character in turn declaring that “There is no light without darkness. No courage without fear. No pleasure without pain. No salvation without sin. No life without death.” In other words, each character in the ensemble, assisting the adventurer Malcolm Murray in the search for his missing daughter Mina, is characterized by conjoined concepts: light-darkness (Vanessa Ives), courage-fear (Ethan Chandler), pleasure-pain (Dorian Gray), salvation-sin (Malcolm Murray) and life-death (Victor Frankenstein); accordingly, they depict ambiguous personality traits. Not only does this dualism resonate deeply with the Victorian idea of man’s dual nature – i.e. his sinister alter ego – but also with the debates of that time about the plurality of human consciousness and moral behavior, because moral concerns received special attention in the Victorian era as a consequence of people losing their religious beliefs.

The dichotomy between good and evil, light and darkness, is integral to Vanessa’s character. Simultaneously she is a practitioner of Catholicism, skepticism and pagan witchcraft: her catholic rituals often cross the line into other spiritual practices like clairvoyance and witchcraft; while she is praying she both makes the sign of the cross and draws her protective talisman, a scorpion, with her own blood, an allusion to Egyptian mythology. Much of the series has been devoted to the tension between Vanessa and her faith and eventually by the end of second season, her loss of faith – which is the ultimate consequence of her suffering in God’s absence. Vanessa’s psychological dilemma seems to capture the zeitgeist of the fin de siècle at the threshold to the modern era, which is the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.[5] In a state of religious despair Vanessa frequently seeks out her friend John Clare (Rory Kinnear) alias The Creature, whom she meets as they volunteer together in the cholera dungeon, for comforting debates on theology and poetry as they tend to the afflicted. He, on the other hand, seems to impersonate modernity and the rise of the new man emancipated from the chains of religion, because – as he explains Vanessa in “Verbis Diablo” (2.02) – “I believe in this world and those creatures that fill it. That has always been enough for me. Look around you. Sacred mysteries at every turn.” He presents a critique of religion that echoes the thoughts of German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach from Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), where he emphasizes that religion deprives man of temporal life by promising him eternal life and by teaching him to trust in God’s help it takes away man’s trust in his own powers. In other words, truth is considered profane according to John Clare. When asked if he truly doesn’t believe in heaven, John Clare answers by quoting four lines from William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence (1863) “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.” In other words, by celebrating the worldly and profane instead of eternity John Claire has no fear of hellfire as most Christians. He and other pagans “can be who they are, good or ill as their nature dictates. We have no fear of God, so we are accountable to no one but each other” (2.02). Thereby he unfolds secularism and anthropology as moral narratives of modernity, according to which the creature of modernity knows itself to be the true agent of its actions, in contrast to people of the Victorian era who displace their own agency onto gods, demons, and so forth.

Intertextually contaminated by late Victorian literature and its exploration into the duality of human mind and into mankind’s choice to do moral and immoral acts, the series Penny Dreadful dwells on the shadow side of the human psyche associated with evil, repression, and demonization of the other self, i.e. the doppelgänger. Thus, on a thematic level, Penny Dreadful owes a lot to Stevenson’s portrayal of Dr. Jekyll’s struggle between his dual personalities of the honorable Henry Jekyll and his evil double Edward Hyde in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In contrast to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stevenson’s monster is not created by stitched-together body parts, but rather emerges from the dark side of the human personality – a sinister alter ego. This thematic resemblance between Stevenson’s work and Penny Dreadful is intertextually hinted by quotation in third season’s character-driven flashback episode “A Blade of Grass” (3.04) where the caring orderly (The Creature before his transformation) at the Banning asylum reads Stevenson’s poem for children “My Shadow” (1885) to Vanessa, while she is institutionalized, and shadows of beasts appear on the wall of her padded cell when she wrestles with her demons. Appropriately enough, Stevenson’s poem is about the dual nature of man – not unlike Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which takes duality of man even further by literally splitting the consciousness of Dr. Jekyll into two: a decent side suppressing desires that runs contrary to the restraints of society and an amoral side that seeks to gratify instincts. In Penny Dreadful and in Stevenson’s book the exploration of the idea of duality and its metaphor of light and dark is also a commentary on the duality of British society in the Victorian era. Even London itself has a dual nature in Penny Dreadful with its respectable streets side-by-side with crooked alleys and sinister areas. with blood-splattered theaters and underground private clubs where aristocratic gentlemen indulge in criminal behaviour (illegal dog fights) and macabre sexual proclivities such as snuff theatre shows.

Women of Complexity

In the course of the eighteenth century the concept of individuality in characterization in literature gained central importance and consequently character types were rejected as non-realistic, at least in high culture. Since then, the construction of character complexity through increased humanization and enrichment has been an ideal to strive for. This ideal is also emphasized by narrative theory, for example in Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s Narrative Fiction , where she proposes three axes to categorize literary characters in terms of the story: “complexity [one or more character traits], development [static vs. dynamic], penetration into the ‘inner life’ [the availability and details of mental life information]” (Rimmon-Kenan 41). Since interiority in visual media is a restricted area of access, viewers must use their cognitive mind-reading ability to infer characters’ beliefs and morality on basis of exterior clues including appearance, utterances, behavior and how other characters act towards and talk to them. Individual characters are given psychological depth, individuality, and complexity “mostly through (often conflict-laden) interaction with other characters. As spectators, we observe their behavior, errors, and twists and turns” (Trohler 468). The ideal of a representation of individuality can thus be approached by using a constellation of traits that “stands in apparent contrast to each other, or of which some are surprising to find in combination with the others” (Eder et al. 39).

This also applies to the style of characterization of Penny Dreadful. Vanessa Ives is contradictory in so many ways. She seems more terrified of happiness, conformity and normality – which she initially strives for – than of the darkness and its creatures haunting her. Eventually she rejects normality in the second season episode “And They Were Enemies” when confronted with Evelyn Poole’s Vanessa-fetish-doll possessed by the Devil (2.10). Through this demonized (hence distorted and fraudulent) self-image, the Devil asks Vanessa to face herself. He tempts her with a deep longing of hers by showing her the conventional life she could have – one that involves marrying Ethan and having adorable children – in exchange for her soul when she dies of old age. Already having given up on the possibility of being normal, Vanessa out-duels her look-alike doll by asking it: “You offer me a normal life. Why do you think I want that anymore? I know what I am. Do you?” and while chanting in verbis diablo she finishes the doll off by cracking its face open while saying “Beloved. Know your master!” (2.10). Thereby she releases the scorpions within the doll, her true nature, realizing what her struggle will be: to come to terms with the darkness in her.

In regards to characterization, one of the most captivating things about Penny Dreadful is how patiently it deepens the complexity of its characters by grounding them psychologically through flashback episodes. They provide a swift summary in which prior happenings leading up to the current point in story are recounted in order to fill in crucial backstory of its protagonist whose inward development is of crucial importance. As far as Vanessa Ives goes, her character is complex, meaning she is complicated and contradictory in so many ways. She has a variety of ambiguous and multiple traits to her personality – that undergoes important changes as the plot of the series unfolds. However, the various characters in Penny Dreadful are not grasped as having the same ‘degree of fullness,’ as E.M. Forster already recognized in Aspects of the Novel from 1927 with his distinction between flat and round characters. Considering how Rimmon-Kenan defines the character as a “network of character-traits” (Rimmon-Kenan 59) a round character’s complexity and psychological depth can be achieved by implementing several paradoxical attributes to it. Paradoxicality is what Evelyn Poole is lacking as character and therefore she is not grasped as having the same degree of fullness or psychological depth as Vanessa, Lily and John Clare/The Creature. This quote from Forster also supports the importance of complex characters acting in ways that challenge viewers’ expectations “The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is flat pretending to be round” (Forster 231) In Forster’s conception, round characters cannot be summed up in a single phrase, as they are highly developed and complex, meaning they show a full range of emotions and have a variety of traits and different sides to their personalities that may create conflict in their character. In contrast, flat characters are schematically reduced and immediately recognizable on account of some few distinct traits. They are constructed around a single idea or quality and therefore identical with caricatures, types, and stereotypes.

As character Vanessa is highly developed, dynamic, and complex, capable of unexpected and surprising behavior as demonstrated in the two-part finale of Season Three, including episodes 8 and 9: “Perpetual Night” and “The Blessed Dark.” Many viewers and critics were surprised by Vanessa’s choice of embracing perpetual darkness in the form of Dracula, and they were struck by disbelief about her eventually choosing death rather than the Apocalypse. However, those viewers seem to have ignored Vanessa’s previous choices to consciously act evil – for instance by seducing her best friend’s fiancé on the evening before their wedding in “Closer Than Sisters” (1.05) and later by chanting a spell from Joan Clayton’s book Verbis Diablo to have Sir Geoffrey’s dogs kill him in retaliation for his burning of Clayton. In other words, not unlike other characters in Penny Dreadful, Vanessa is both good and evil, and she makes a choice in second season to abandon her faith in God, and later in third season to embrace her dark destiny as well as her evil nature. After abandoning her faith, Vanessa experiences like many other characters in Penny Dreadful the downside of modernity as described by existentialism – that is, the loneliness which is an unavoidable condition of humanity in a world without God. “So we walk alone” (2.10), Ethan declares in his letter to Vanessa, emphasizing that loneliness is the only villain that nobody can defeat in the series’ storyworld.

Plots can be operationalized as story events that make it difficult to predict how a protagonist will behave, but Vanessa’s inner conflict between good and evil place viewers in a position of predicting how she might choose to act. Her unexpected and surprising behavior prompts viewers to reconcile her actions with their understanding of her basic dispositions. Considering Vanessa’s long-term inner struggle, her heart-wrecking loneliness after her loss of faith, and her longing for love and companionship, it wasn’t really such a surprise that she eventually gave in to Dracula, as this seems to be a perfectly logical emotional choice. Furthermore, death seems to be a logical conclusion for Vanessa’s moral choices – for instance in “A Blade of Grass” (3.04) where she tries to starve herself to death at the Banning’s asylum, and in “Possession” (1.07) where she asks Ethan to end her life when the moment is right.

But after all, did Vanessa give in to Dracula? When embracing him by saying she was accepting herself rather than accepting him she chose herself over him. Thus, she alone is master of her fate, and without her faith this act of choosing herself simultaneously situates every Heaven and every Hell on Earth; or, as coined by Vanessa herself in the final episode, “Fear not old prophecies. We defy them. We make our own Heaven and our own Hell.” Thereby she is – similar to the human being in modernity – condemned to her own freedom, leaving her with the decision of right and wrong. Metaphorically speaking, similar to any autonomous existence Vanessa is emancipated from the chains of religion and must thus be the governor of her moral life and face her inner darkness. And in the end, she eventually demonstrates her ambivalence about the evil inside her by using her own death to subvert her previously choice of the apocalypse and thereby saving Earth from perpetual darkness. Thus, despite being a character of repression Vanessa Ives is actually empowered throughout the series as her storyline takes shape, gradually developing her from being a tortured institutionalized deviant, unwillingly possessed by the Devil and tormented by witches into a woman who personifies female empowerment. In other words, Penny Dreadful subverts the traditional woman-in-peril storyline when Vanessa surrenders to Dracula and simultaneously declares “I accept… myself” (3.07). Thereby she finally accepts her dual nature and finds her own subjective truth: the very same thing that makes her monstrous also empowers her and makes her who she is.

Something Borrowed – Intertextual characterization

In his article “Interfigurality” (1991) Wolfgang G. Müller presents a widely applicable theory of transtextual characters showing how literary characters gain depth and resonance by sharing elements with characters in other works. Accordingly, ‘interfigurality’ refers to the intertextual fragments of characters or to intertextual markers manifesting through characters. Müller’s theory could also be used to analyze the complex characterization in visual narratives such as Penny Dreadful and the series’ pastiche-like combination of original characters from very diverse pre-texts to new creations (mashup characters). Additionally, the series is based on character combinations, where familiar figures from different pre-texts are brought together and made to interact with each other. According to Müller, the clearest type of interfigural reference is contributed by the names of characters related. Names are also the most obvious device of relating characters of several heterogeneous sources in Penny Dreadful. As mentioned earlier, Dr. Alexander Sweet, for example, is a contamination of three different mythical figures: Dracula, the Devil and the Egyptian god Amun-Ra. Now Dr. Sweet cannot be simply interpreted as an amalgamation of these three mythic figures, as Dracula is the primary model for Dr. Sweet, whereas the other two figures seem subordinate to Dracula/Dr. Sweet. Braided together with these two figures Dracula/Dr. Sweet is not only provided with backstory. Simultaneously, he is woven into a bigger mythology surrounding the Devil and Amun-Ra contributing to build up Penny Dreadful’s own fictional world and complex mythology. Such mashups of re-used characters can be considered as an extreme type of interfigurality, in Müller’s conception, which emerges “whenever a literary figure is extricated from its original fictional context and inserted into a new fictional context” (107). In other words, mashups can be considered as a deviation technique meant to undermine original figures – meaning that characters re-emerging in later works are more than just duplicates as they are “marked by a characteristic tension between similarity and dissimilarity with their models from the pre-texts” (Müller 109).

Mashup characters share several attributes, prominent traits, and large and complex story elements (such as fragments of storyworlds and environments) with diverse characters in other works. Through John Logan’s intertextual characterization, i.e. the intertextual links manifesting through blending characters, he plays with audience’s prior cultural knowledge, adding complexity and psychological depth to each of the series’ mashup characters by absorbing them “into the formal and ideological structure of his own product, putting [them] into his own uses” (Müller 107). Accordingly, a mashup character’s degree of complexity depends on it being recognized by viewers as something familiar and antecedent. In other words it should be considered as a re-used slightly distorted character where names provide clues for further interfigural links, encouraging viewers’ memory to make connections between different characters and different stories. Thus, intertextual characterization is rooted in cognitive processes of the viewer and, therefore, the mashup character is not just a bundle of traits based on different textual data. They are also mental constructions based on viewers’ knowledge and previous experiences of other texts and characters from which mashups draw much of their appeal and content.

This also applies to the monstrous dimension of Penny Dreadful‘s female characters. In Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed unfolds a psychological reading of female monsters and focuses her analysis on seven faces or manifestations of female monstrosity in horror films, where monstrosity is produced at the border:

… between human and inhuman, man and beast … in others the borders are between the normal and the supernatural, good and evil . . . or the monstrous is produced at the border which separates those who take up their proper gender roles from those who do not . . . or the border between normal and abnormal sexual desire (Creed 11).

Creed’s theory is formulated in reference to Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection which refers to what threatens life and therefore “must be radically excluded” (Creed 11) – that is the distortions of the feminine created from subconscious male fears. Creed outlines such misogynist fantasies about female monstrosity – faces of female monstrosity – as the archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother and castrator. These archetypical representations of the monstrous feminine simply form a catalogue of typical horror-film iconography, and due to the reductionism of such categories they might seem rather insufficient for dealing with the complex female characters in Penny Dreadful. Acknowledging that complex characters rarely fit into firm categories as the monstrous feminine, both Vanessa and Lily are, however, essentially reminiscent of pastiche-like combinations of Creed’s seven guises of the monstrous feminine, adding an archetypical dimension and further depth to these characters. They are complex, multidimensional and have morally ambiguous character traits and therefore capable of surprising and culturally subversive behavior. Yet, they tend to be innovative variations of well-known (stereotypical) character types. Furthermore, as a merged character Vanessa is woven into an intertextual cobweb that adds layers and depth to her personality. Besides her gift of being a clairvoyant and a medium, both Evelyn Poole and the Ferdinand Lyle believe Vanessa is the reincarnation of the ancient Egyptian goddess Amunet (1.02). However, given the fact that Vanessa’s sigil, the scorpion, in Egyptian mythology belongs to the Goddess of protection named Serket, originally the deification of the scorpion, Penny Dreadful takes certain liberties with Egyptian mythology by merging the lore surrounding Serket and Amunet into one character.

To further the mystery surrounding Vanessa’s character it is revealed in second season that she is also a powerful witch and if there is one monstrous role that belongs entirely to women in horror it would be that of the witch. This character is a focal point in horror and fantasy where it has been attributed stereotypical traits and thereby turned into a stock character – partly because of frequent use in popular media fictions. In many cases, stereotypical media stock characters owe their existence to few influential works, and in horror the representation of the witch consistently foregrounds her sexual nature, her supernatural powers, and her being closer to nature than men (see Rikke Schubart’s discussion of Vanessa as witch in this issue). According to Creed, the witch is defined as an abject figure in that she “sets out to unsettle boundaries between the rational and irrational, symbolic and imaginary. Her evil powers are seen as part of her ‘feminine’ nature.” (Creed 76). The complexity of Vanessa’s character is not only caused by characterization but also by her merged and interfigural nature. She is intertextually contaminated by several archetypes of female monstrosity – including “the possessed monster” and “the witch.” Thus, what characterizes the witch in Penny Dreadful is a playful subversion of key aspects of the witch trope that appears by merging it with other iconic character’s and archetypes of the monstrous-feminine – such as “the monstrous mother” and “deadly castrator” – as impersonated by Evelyn Poole, who also merges many traditional witch tropes such as “the enchantress,”“the diabolic priestess,” and “the child-hurting villain.”

Revolt of the Monstrous-Feminine

In Monstrous-Feminine Creed challenges the mythical patriarchal view that women terrify because they are castrated. Instead she argues fear of the feminine arises due to castration anxiety. Thus, as emphasized by Creed the concept of border is also essential to the construction of the characters’ monstrosity in Penny Dreadful where that which crosses or threatens to cross the border is abject – in the Kristevan sense of the word. Many female characters, including Vanessa Ives, Lily Frankenstein, Dr. Florence Seward, Joan Clayton, and Catriona Hartdegen, can be perceived as distortions of the Victorian ideal of womanhood. They all fight social restraints imposed upon them by a male-dominated society, as when Lily – after her resurrection, empowerment and vendetta against men – escapes Victor Frankenstein’s plans to domesticate her by turning her “into a proper woman” (3.07). By “proper woman” he means a tamed, obedient, and silenced woman who loves him but has no independent thoughts or impulses, basically destroying Lily and through medical treatment reducing her to a controllable thing.

In a sense, both Lily and Vanessa are victims of a male-dominated medical discourse and as characters they allude to the way deviant women were treated in the nineteenth century. The flashback episode “A Blade of Grass” (3.04) contains an embedded narrative about Vanessa’s five-month institutionalization in an insane asylum. The framing narrative takes place entirely in Dr. Florence Seward’s office, where Vanessa under hypnosis recalls her first encounter with Dracula in her padded cell where she undergoes all sorts of horrific medical practices of the nineteenth century such as isolation, hydrotherapy, lobotomy and the use of gags, strait-jackets, and forced feeding. Vanessa insists she is being tortured through these practices which the orderly calls science and Vanessa believes is meant to make her “normal, like all other women you know. Compliant. Obedient. A cog in the social machine.” What Vanessa critically calls torture is in her opinion social control of women, manifested by the asylum, over female deviance and it has stripped away her identity and purpose by refusing to see her as a subject. According to Vanessa, conformity is forced onto women who deviate from the cultural norm in terms of role, sexual orientation, demeanor, and so on.

The character Vanessa hides almost endless complexity. She seems smooth on the surface visualizing the Victorian ideal of the domestic and socially restricted woman. First of all, she embodies the ideal of submissive womanhood by being a ward under a male guardian (Sir Malcolm Murray) and secondly through her Victorian clothing, such as her tight-lacing and high-necked dresses, that clearly perfects a message of willingness to conform to submissive pattern and to repress her sexuality. However, Vanessa’s inner demons lurk beneath this surface of equanimity and they are released every time she gives in to her true sexual nature liberating herself from social restrictions.

In the episode “Possession” (1.07) Vanessa’s recurrent episodes of demonic possession return triggered by her falling for libertine Dorian Gray, which unleashes her dark side during sex with him. By constantly drawing connections between feminine desire, sexuality, aberrant feminine behavior, bodily vulnerability, and abjection this episode aligns with one of the archetypical representations of the monstrous feminine as coined by Creed, that is, woman as possessed monster. This episode’s portrayal of Vanessa as a possession victim belongs to the lineage of dual personality horror figures and it owes a lot to The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973). Both as demonic possessed and as medium Vanessa is regularly invaded by another personality which according to Creed is abject as the “boundary between self and other has been transgressed” (ibid.). In her states of possession Vanessa is aggressive and violent, has supernatural strength, and is capable of telekinesis and levitation. She speaks with a hoarsely mocking, guttural, and malicious voice, crawls around like an animal, leaps up onto the ceiling and utters obscenities. She also directs her rage at the most taboo sexual desires of men, for example when she asks Malcolm about pornographic necrophilia: “There is a brisk trade of photographs of dead woman, did you know that?” (1.07).

Despite the combined endless efforts of Malcolm, Ethan, Victor and Sembene, Vanessa is possessed for weeks. As much as this frustrates the men, Vanessa’s battle against her inner demons is hers to fight, hers alone. Therefore “Possessions” seems, in terms of gender roles, to be an exploration of female monstrosity and the inability of patriarchal order to control the woman those perversities is expressed through a rebellious body which is transformed into a playground for bodily filth – for instance her hair hangs in a greasy tangle and her skin erupts in sores. The graphic display of a rebellious body is central to the construction of the abject in “Possession,” in particular through signs of bodily excretion like spittle, blood, urine, and sweat – filth that stains Vanessa’s clothes and bedlinen. As possessed body, Vanessa is monstrous because she breaks major taboos. Thus, she is abject by disturbing the paternal symbolic which is govern by “identity, system and order” (Creed 1993 37), that serves to establish and maintain a proper self and body.

Vanessa’s recurrent episodes of possession are consistently linked to her deepest desires and sexuality – as some sort of psychosexual hysteria caused by guilt brought to the surface by unrestrained sexual activity, which is how Dr. Frankenstein interprets her possession. As revealed in the flashback episode “Closer Than Sisters,”(1.05) a major cause of Vanessa’s possessions is her mother. Vanessa becomes susceptible to evil in her early adolescence when she spies on her mother, who is fornicating with Malcolm. Rather than being repulsed by their adultery, she enjoys watching them and simultaneously an evil presence ignites within her.

Engaging with Morally Ambiguous Characters

Multifaceted narratives like Penny Dreadful are constructed to encourage viewers to empathize with morally ambiguous character, because the series’ style of characterization sets up oppositions then fades black and white into greyscale areas of morality, presenting a multifaceted vision of people and the world, which resonate with postmodern audiences and cultural norms beyond a good-and-evil dichotomy.

Vanessa Ives is an example of one of those highly individualized complex characters, “who resist abstraction and generalization, and whose motivation is not susceptible to rigid ethical interpretation” (Scholes et al. 101). When viewers respond to and evaluate morally ambiguous characters, the question of right or wrong cannot be put so easily to their actions because such characters’ behavior and/or beliefs seem to complicate viewers’ common sense concepts of good. Vanessa, for example, has a built-in tension as there is always the question whether her evil nature will be able to take over, causing her to fail her quest. Although Vanessa may behave in morally questionable ways the negative effects on viewers’ moral judgements of these characters may be diminished by character motivation. In a 2013 study “What makes Characters’ Bad Behaviors Acceptable?” Maja Krakowiak and Mina Tsay-Vogel (empirically) tested how character motivation and a story’s outcome influence how viewers’ perceive characters. Their findings suggest that many viewers may even sympathize with characters acting morally ambiguous, because “they are able to excuse these actions through the process of moral disengagement” (Krakowiak & Tsay-Vogel 180). The process of moral disengagement may be facilitated if certain cues are present in a narrative. For example, it can be easier to excuse an immoral action if the character’s motivation is altruistic rather than selfish or if the immoral act produces a positive rather than negative outcome. This also applies to Vanessa, who in the final episode makes an altruistic sacrifice so that everyone else can live.

Penny Dreadful’s Victorian period setting and female characters reflects the beginning of social changes that led to redefining gender relation questioning the foundation of paternalistic society in an attempt to consolidate women’s rights. Similar to contemporary television series such as Game of Thrones (2011-present), the series takes part of a growing trend of strong female characters revolting against social norms and masculine supremacy. Both series present some of the most compelling and interesting female characters on screen where plot and complex characters blur the line between good and evil, reflecting changing social ideas about modern women and their roles. In both television series female characters are shaped in contradictory ways by gender norms of today’s culture and contemporary mythologized ideas about the past in such a way that today’s gender roles are remade through the depiction of an inherently misogynistic past. In both series there is an underlying narrative of moral ambiguity and female empowerment that touches common ground and resonates deeply with modern audiences reflecting moral complexity as a modern human condition.

 

Works Cited

Blake, William. “Auguries of Innocence” (1863).

Cardwell, Sarah. Adaptation revisited. Manchester UP, 2002.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Illustrated by John Tenniel, Macmillan and Co, 1872.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine. Routledge, 1993.

Eder, Jens, Fotis Jannidis, and Ralf Schneider. “Characters in Fictional Worlds: An Introduction.” Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media, edited by Eder, Jens, et al., Walter de Gruyter, 2010, pp. 3-66.

Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. Routledge, 2009.

Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel and Related Writing (1927). Edward Arnold, 1974.

—. “Flat and round characters” (1927). The Theory of the Novel, edited by Philip Stevick, The Free Press, 1967, pp. 223-231.

Greetham, David. Pleasures of Contamination: Evidence, Text, and Voice in Textual Studies. Indiana University Press, 2010.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2006.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study (1886). Kessinger Publishing, 2004.

Krakowiak, Maja & Tsay-Vogel, Mina. “What Makes Characters’ Bad Behaviors Acceptable? The Effects of Character Motivation and Outcome on Perceptions, Character Liking, and Moral Disengagement.” Mass Communication and Society, vol. 16, no. 2 2013, pp. 179-199.

Mackie, J.L. “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind, vol. 64, no. 254, pp. 200–212.

Müller, Wolgang G. “Interfigurality – A Study on the Interdependence of Literary Figures.” Intertextuality, edited by Heinrich Plett, Walter de Gruyter, 1991.

“Penny Dreadful Season 2 Warns the Devil is in All of Us.” YouTube. Posted March 31 2015.   Accessed 30 March 2017.

Richardson, Brian. “Transtextual Characters.” Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media, edited by Jens Eder, Fotis Jannidis, Ralf Schneider,Walter de Gruyter, 2010, pp. 527-41.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (1983). Routledge, 2002.

Herbert Schlossberg. Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England (2009). Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Scholes, Robert, James Phelan, Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative (1966). Oxford University Press, 2006.

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique” (1917). Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1998.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Cornell UP, 1975.

Trohler, Margrit. “Multiple Protagonist Films: A Transcultural Everyday Practice.” Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media, edited by Jens Eder, Fotis Jannidis, Ralf Schneider,Walter de Gruyter, 2010, pp. 459-477.

Wordsworth, William. Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1807). D. Lothrop and Co., 1884.

Notes

[1] “Portmanteau” refers to a linguistic blend of words in which multiple words – both their sounds and the meanings of its components – are combined into a new word. An example of a portmanteau word would be brunch which is a contraction of breakfast and lunch. This linguistic technique of combining words in various ways is also used in Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking-Glass (1871) where Humpty-Dumpty explains to Alice what “mimsy” means. “Mimsy” means miserable and flimsy which are packed up into one word.

[2] There are many literary references in Penny Dreadful. For example, episode “Resurrection” (1.03) opens with Victor Frankenstein contemplating on the brutality of mortality, quoting lines from Wordsworth’s poem Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1807) referring to the way modernity (modern science) has corrupted the romantic ideal of beauty. This is hinted by Frankenstein’s creation Caliban alias the Creature when he equates himself with the age of industry asking Frankenstein: “Did you not know that’s what you were creating? The modern age? Did you really imagine that your modern creation would hold the values of Keats and Wordsworth? We are men of iron and mechanization now … were you really so naïve to imagine that we’d see eternity in a daffodil?” (1.03).

[3] Victor Shklovsky introduced this concept in his seminal essay “Art as Technique” from 1917.

[4]Being God’s creatures both Lucifer and Lupus Dei personate the problem of evil which is an argument against the existence of God. This problem is related to the traditional conception of God as all-knowing, all-good-willed, and all-powerful which implies that if God Exists then he knows how to, wants to, and is able to prevent evil and all suffering. Evil and suffering, though, are parts of the world around us and thus there is no such God. There are many different philosophical answers to this problem but none of these are entirely satisfactory alone – one of them is presented by John Mackie in “Evil and Omnipotence” (1955).

[5] A similar point has been made by Thomas Henry Huxley in his 1886 essay “The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study” where he argued that the proper use of theology was as a subject to be studied by science within the realm of anthropology, which itself he considered a subdivision of biology. For further reading on English religion in the Victorian period, please see Herbert Schlossberg: Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England (2009).

 

Bio: Anita Nell Bech Albertsen is an Associate Professor of Danish Literature at the University of Southern Denmark where she has taught courses in Danish literature, Literary theory, Media studies and Creative Writing. Her research interests include narrative theory, e.g. text world theory, anti-narration, and cognitive theory. In 2007 she was a visiting scholar at Project Narrative, Ohio State University, working under the auspices of Professor David Herman – on a PhD thesis on cognitive theory, phenomenology and anti-narration (published in Danish 2010). Her recent publications include Danish articles on televisual documentaries and narrative theory.

Volume 28, 2017

Themed Issue: Identity and the Fantastic in Penny Dreadful

Edited by Amanda Howell, Stephanie Green, Rikke Schubart & Anita Nell Bech Albertsen

 

  1. Introduction: Identity and the Fantastic in Penny Dreadful  ~ Amanda Howell, Stephanie Green, Rikke Schubart & Anita Nell Bech Albertsen
  2. Mapping the Demimonde: space, place, and the narrational role of the flâneur, explorer, spiritualist medium and alienist in Penny Dreadful~ Amanda Howell & Lucy Baker
  3. The Contaminant Web: Complex Characters and Monster Mashups ~ Anita Nell Bech Albertsen
  4. Cowboys and Wolf-Men: Ethan Chandler, Transgressive Masculinity, and Depictions of The Monstrous in Penny Dreadful ~ Toby Locke
  5. “There Is Something Within Us All”: Queer Desire and Monstrous Bodies in Penny Dreadful ~ Jordan Phillips
  6. Vanessa Ives and Edgework as Self-Work ~ Rikke Schubart
  7. Lily Frankenstein: The Gothic New Woman in Penny Dreadful ~ Stephanie Green

Mapping the Demimonde: space, place, and the narrational role of the flâneur, explorer, spiritualist medium and alienist in Penny Dreadful

~  Amanda Howell and Lucy Baker 

Abstract: This paper uses the perspectives and formative obsessions of familiar figures from nineteenth century pop culture and literature—the flâneur, the explorer, the alienist and the spiritualist medium—as lenses through which to view and the means to map the interlocking narrative worlds of Penny Dreadful. Aimed at understanding how its world is shaped by remediation, by borrowing from and refashioning media of the past, it argues that the notion of the demimonde, described by Vanessa Ives as a ‘half world’ between this one and another, supernatural one, is the master metaphor of the series. Using these historical, literary, stock characters as guide and prompt, the paper surveys the series’ pervasive concern with liminality, its operational aesthetic for building an imaginary nineteenth century world in the interstices between or the collisions of the pop cultural and pop fictional texts it brings together.

 

mapping is a deceptively simple activity. To map is in one way or another to take the measure of a world. . . . the mappings record is not confined to the archival; it includes the remembered, the imagined, the contemplated. . . . the map is both the spatial embodiment of knowledge and a stimulus to further cognitive engagements. (Cosgrove 1-2)

Do you believe there is a demimonde, Mr. Chandler? A half world between what we know and what we fear. A place in the shadows, rarely seen but deeply felt. Do you believe that? (Vanessa Ives 1.01 “Nightwork”)

 

Introduction

‘Penny dreadful’ is the pejorative term given to those cheap serial fictions aimed at newly literate working classes of the nineteenth century in Britain, a ‘monster audience of at least three millions’ (Collins 221), positioned despite its size on the edge of Victorian Britain’s leisure cultures. These fringe-dwelling narrative entertainments lend their name to Showtime’s British/American co-production, Penny Dreadful, while their pop fictional and pop cultural milieux, broadly conceived, inspire the premise and settings for the three-season series focused on supernatural adventure. Just as contemporary horror cinema reinvents the kinetic aesthetics and visceral pleasures of the ride and rollercoaster (Ndalianis), the horror television of Penny Dreadful is shaped by remediation, as it borrows from and refashions media of the past. In these terms, its London setting in particular resembles nothing so much as a historically-themed amusement park focused on sharing with both characters and audience the diverse novelties offered by Victorian leisure culture of which cheap serial fiction is only one, particularly evocative, example. From a Wild West display, to an evening’s séance, wax museum, gossima tennis (ping pong) parlour, underground rat-baiting club, a theatre devoted to gory spectacle, and a public lecture illustrated by magic lantern, the series surveys diversions with an emphasis on the exotic and adventurous, the thrilling and forbidden. Appropriate to this amusement park aesthetic, suggestive of a walking tour of the pop cultural past, each season’s action culminates in a violent confrontation in a haunted house: The Grand Guignol of Season One (transferred, miraculously, from Paris to London), the witches’ castle of Season Two, and the dockside lair of Dracula in Season Three.

The work of remediation does not stop here, however: despite the emphasis in Penny Dreadful on collecting and recreating the cheap (and not so cheap) thrills of Victorian popular culture as the basis of verisimilitude, particularly in its urban settings, the parameters of its stories are never bound by the physical world it creates. Characters, tropes, plots drawn from multiple sources in popular literature and popular culture are extended and interwoven in the course of the series, expanded through the memories of characters and open to further development still by knowing readers in the audience. In this respect, the term demimonde (reserved in the nineteenth century to describe the not-quite-respectable edges of high society) refers not just to the liminal social spaces of urban amusement, or even, as in Vanessa Ives’s recasting of the term, only to the dark realms of the supernatural. As a master metaphor for the spaces of Penny Dreadful the notion of the demimonde signals instead a more pervasive concern with the liminality that characterises the series’ operational aesthetic, its methods of shaping its world and its stories in the interstices between or the collisions of the pop cultural and pop fictional texts it brings together.

This paper addresses itself to some of the ways that the varied, in-between narrative spaces of Penny Dreadful are mapped for the audience, specifically by looking at how familiar figures from nineteenth century pop culture—the flâneur, the explorer, the alienist and the spiritualist medium—have shaped the series’ character network and in their distinctive perspectives helped to map its interlocking narrative worlds. The flâneur is that urban man of leisure, the strolling observer characterised by a roving eye and appetite for distraction,  empowered to cross boundaries of class and station, his mobile gaze associated with the diverse pleasures and possibilities of emergent modernity; the explorer is associated with adventure in colonised worlds, crossing oceans and cultures to seek out the dangerous, exotic, and other; the medium and the alienist, despite being associated with what appear to be the diametrically-opposed fields of spiritualism and medical science, share the ability to cross or collapse boundaries of time and space, one by accessing the parallel world of spirits and the other by accessing the hidden world of unconscious memory through the ‘talking cure.’

These figures have the ability to survey spaces of and between this world and that, to take the measure of worlds both known and (collectively) imagined within genres of fantasy and crime, adventure and horror—the stuff of the penny dreadfuls themselves. We come to know the world Penny Dreadful creates primarily through characters drawn from an array of Victorian fictions, their perspectives shaping the series’ ‘spatial embodiment’ of the Victorian scene. Accordingly, the discussion to follow offers an overview of some of the ways Penny Dreadful maps for audiences an imaginary nineteenth century world shaped by its diverse source texts and the multiple perspectives of its ensemble cast.

Penny Dreadful as complex television

[T]here is comparatively little experimentation in terms of innovative spatial storytelling, so if we were to predict where another wave of narrative innovation might come, we might look to how serial storytelling plays with space. (Mittell  275)

In its multiple, interwoven narratives and narrative worlds, self-reflexive and historically-conscious Penny Dreadful is an example of what Jason Mittell calls “complex television,” exemplifying a contemporary tendency toward a “more self-conscious mode of storytelling than is typically found within conventional television narration” (41). As such, it offers a double layer of pleasures: engagement with the world of narrative fiction and engagement with the way that the narrative fiction is constructed. As a nod to its origins in formulaic pop and pulp fictions of the past, there is a quest that centralises action for each season: the search for Mina Murray/Harker (Olivia Llewellyn), daughter of Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) in the first season, the pursuit of Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) by the Devil (represented by various actors) in season two and by his brother Dracula (Christian Carmargo) in season three. These quests are echoed by sub-plots in which the Creature re-named John Clare (Rory Kinnear) and his creator Dr. Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) both seek their bride in the female monster Lily Frankenstein (Billie Piper), who, like Vanessa Ives, pursues her own quest, refusing her role as narrative object of male seekers and lovers. The quest narratives of Vanessa and Lily are very different—in the grand Manichaean schemes that characterise the series’ larger story arcs, one seeks to stop the apocalypse the other to enkindle it—but both are determined to remake themselves as subjects of their own narratives  (as indeed are the witch antagonists, Evelyn and Hecate).

These interwoven quests keep the serialised narrative moving forward, but the series also has what might be better described as a multi-nodal structure, owing to the way that its varied source texts are stitched together. The most obvious and best known of these are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Jules Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers /Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). These are combined with the varied contributions from gothic tales of werewolves, penny serials like James Malcolm Rymer’s and Thomas Peckett Prest’s Varney the Vampyre  (1845-47), mid-nineteenth century dime Westerns, popular tales of exploration and colonisation, and folklore such as stories of “skinwalkers” held by North American First Peoples. In the way it uses and embroiders on the stories and characters of no-longer-copyrighted literary fictions, myth, and folklore, Penny Dreadful persistently reminds the audience that the public domain is not just a negative space—a space where there are authors and inventors, but no owners—but also a space of shared memory and engagement, open to adaptation, transformation, and audaciously entrepreneurial repurposing. Positioned “always in the middle, between things, interbeing” in the manner of Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome (27), Penny Dreadful functions as an intersectional text as it continues the narratives of genres and specific works that circle around each other, back and forth through time and space. We perceive, track or map them largely through those characters who serve as their representatives in Penny Dreadful, characters shaped in part by the readers’ experience, memory, perceptions of precursor texts.

These characters, remade and reworked from their originary texts, are the stuff of what Henry Jenkins, in his 2007 discussion of transmedia storytelling, describes as a type of anti-capitalist corporate folklore, each iteration adding to an ever-expanding archive created and curated over time by multiple readers and writers across diverse media. In this respect, Penny Dreadful fits the definition of what Abigail Derecho, in her theorisation of fan fiction as artistic practice, refers to as “archontic literature” (61). Relevant to the way that familiar Victorian narratives and characters are used in Penny Dreadful is Derecho’s observations concerning the way that archontic literature—the array of continuations, sequels, spinoffs, remediations, fan fictions—use the play of similitude and difference to explore “potentialities within the originary texts” (74). These ‘potentialities’ within source texts produce the series’ characteristic play of proximity and distance, the familiar and strange, in its imagining of the Victorian world—varied plateaus of understanding and engagement offering each viewer something of an individualised journey through the reimagined spaces, times, and genres. The familiar characters and tropes that are the focus of this discussion highlight the series’ use of its source texts to engage with concerns shared by its imagined Victorian world and the contemporary world of the Penny Dreadful audience: the challenges of urban modernity, family life, nationalism and colonialism, sex and gender roles.

Accordingly, in Penny Dreadful there is a diegetic emphasis on the work of interpretation and reading and mapping that mirrors the extra-diegetic activity required of the audience, as each character carries or pursues his or her story from the past, reflecting and bidding viewers to reflect on how it might be utilised in the present and perhaps reconfigured in the future. For instance, the once marginal literary figure, the bride of Frankenstein’s monster, moves from the fringes of literature to the centre of the Penny Dreadful world, both remembered and re-membered. Then there is the narrative trajectory of Dr. Frankenstein’s friend, Dr. Jekyll (Shazad Latif), which −once he inherits the title of Lord Hyde upon his father’s death  −rests entirely within the imagination of the knowing viewer alert to possibilities offered by this allusion to and reconfiguration of the source text’s representations of monstrosity and class difference, in terms of race and Britain’s colonialist history.

The Flâneur’s Roving Eye: mobility, modernity, and the possibilities of urban space

For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world. . . . we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life.. . . . He is looking for that indefinable something we may be allowed to call “modernity,” for want of a better term . . . .  the transient, the fleeting, the contingent. (Baudelaire “The Painter of Modern Life”)

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLÂNEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. . . . Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. (Wilde, “de Profundis”)

The perspective offered on urban spaces of Penny Dreadful owes much to the nineteenth century notion of the flâneur, that mobile seeker after urban views and scenes. Chief among characters who play this role is Dorian Gray, through whom the series engages with “potentialities” of Wilde’s source text in regard to the decadent appeal Victorian London’s popular culture and more broadly still the possibilities it offers for queering the series’ view of that urban space. Everywhere and in some respects nowhere in the ensemble performances of the series, omnipresent yet distanced, Gray with his mobile gaze and sensation-seeking offers access to London entertainments both high and low. In the way Gray, like Baudelaire’s “Painter of Modern Life,” connects diverse spaces and experiences, he reflects the flâneur’s role as a “living bodily site on which vision, movement, and sensation pre-cinematically came together” (Charney 1998, 75). But he also functions as an agent of modernity—a catalyst, sparking change in characters and storylines when he takes the role of an “urban-observer-artist who is not a detached voyeur but rather interacts with the city in what is almost a symbiotic relationship, feeding off the city that he creates from its own fragments” (Parsons 2000, 36), as he pursues his desire for sensation and diversion.

The pursuit of excitement, of decadent self-indulgence, makes Gray a conduit to the perverse, dangerous, and forbidden for other characters whose depths and desires he helps to reveal along with the possibilities of the urban scene: he meets ailing prostitute Brona Croft (Billie Piper), the mysterious heiress Vanessa Ives, and American sharpshooter Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) in quick succession in season one and has erotic encounters with all three, sparking strong affective responses in each. He and the world-weary consumptive prostitute Brona unexpectedly revel in her imminent death when she coughs blood on him during a pornographic photo shoot (“Séance” 1.02). His rhetorical question, “I’ve never fucked a dying creature before. Do you feel things more deeply, I wonder?” speaks not just to his decadent sensation-seeking but likewise the basis of her re-creation from the tragic Brona Croft into Lily Frankenstein, whose narrative trajectory from undead bride to vengeful immortal is rooted in recollected feeling, Brona’s experience of poverty, pain, and loss. After a night of gorily flamboyant theatricals at the Grand Guignol, blood-sport, bar fighting, absinthe, and Wagner, Dorian Gray’s seductive charms bring Ethan Chandler’s inner animal that much closer to the surface in a scene that evokes troubling memories and ends in an evocative kiss (“Demimonde” 1.04). And, Vanessa Ives re-encounters her Demon when she climaxes during a sexual encounter with Gray (“What Death Can Join Together” 1.06). Bearing out the lessons of Wilde’s source text (echoed in turn, by Wilde’s own reflections in De Profundis at the end of his two-year imprisonment under the Labouchere Amendment [1885] for “gross indecency”), encounters with Dorian Gray as the embodiment of urban modernity are never dull, but can prove dangerous to moral life.

In his more murderous proclivities, Dorian Gray recalls Wilde’s dark vision of a character whose privileged access to the varied diversions of the city and decadent appetites destroy those around him while corrupting his soul. Wilde’s prison letter De Profundis, on the other hand, offers a different vision of the flâneur as one whose desires and sensation seeking ultimately render him vulnerable. Penny Dreadful takes a certain delight in reclaiming the transgressively queer desires that landed Wilde in prison for its Dorian Gray, particularly in its characterisation of his relationship with Angelique (Jonny Beauchamp) and his dalliance with Chandler. But it also registers the potential vulnerability of the urban wanderer, according the mobile gaze of the flâneur to various characters less empowered than Gray, those whose bodily autonomy is never assured, always at risk as a consequence of their social position.

For instance, in stark contrast to Gray’s mobile gaze is that of John Clare who is also known as ‘Caliban’ or ‘the Creature’, whose jealous surveillance of first the Doctor and then Lily Frankenstein carries him through the alley-ways of the city, even as his search for employment and human comfort lands him first at the Grand Guignol (“Resurrection” 1.03), then the even more dubious entertainments of the Putney Family Waxworks (“Fresh Hell” 2.01), and causes him to seek respite in the underground dwellings of London’s homeless and impoverished where Vanessa and Sir Malcolm work in a soup kitchen (“Verbis Diablo” 2.02). Clare’s physical difference keeps him to the shadows, literally: from him we get a view of the alleyways, the back-stages, the hidden corners of the city, often alternate views of the same varied haunts frequented by Dorian Gray. Despite being himself a creature of modernity, of industrial manufacture, Clare refuses the cityscape that Gray embraces. Instead he turns inward and back in time to the ethical and aesthetic frameworks of Romantic poetry to find meaning in a world he experiences as utterly hostile, a source of continual anxiety and pain. Through Clare we have a very different perspective of London, the flip side of the flâneur overwhelmed by “the chaotic and bewildering environment of. . . rapid industrializing and growing cities of the nineteenth century” (Parsons 19). Unemployed, displaced, and monstrous, he too often finds himself not a subject of the urban scene like Gray but rather—like the prostitutes who eke out precarious livings on the street—its object.

That Clare is always in danger of becoming an urban spectacle himself is confirmed by the gruesome end to his brief career at Putney’s. Clare’s role recalls the unhappy travels of the monster in Shelley’s source text but also provides an opportunity for the series to explore its interest in othering Victorian England, made explicitly queer in regard to the gregarious and cosmopolitan Egyptologist Professor Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale) who provides another alternative view of its urban space, giving entry to the secret and inaccessible corners of the British Museum when he and Ethan Chandler stage a ‘heist’(“Verbis Diablo” 2.02), having previously shared his particular corner of society with Sir Malcolm and Vanessa (“Séance” 1.02). Being both secretly Jewish and a closeted homosexual who performs heterosexual Christianity in order to protect himself, he is yet another figure in which the urbanity and mobility of the flâneur is wedded inextricably to vulnerability at a time when the penalty for sodomy was life in prison.

As is made clear by Gray’s involvement with both Angelique and Brona/Lily, similarly vulnerable and challenging is the prostitute who, like the flâneur, is a quintessentially urban, mobile figure. She is at once an object of desire, offering visual pleasure, a commodity in a burgeoning culture of leisure-time diversion. But she is also a threat to male authority, the challenging public spectacle of undomesticated female sexuality: in “the same moment that prostitutes reaffirmed the privilege and power of the flâneur”  by offering the possibility of commodified sex on demand ‘the mobility of prostitutes provided cause for concern’ (Hubbard 324-25). In this respect, the prostitute has the potential to reshape the experience of the urban space she moves through, a potential explored and exploited most fully by Lily Frankenstein. Significantly, once Lily begins in earnest to retaliate against male dominance of the streets, remaking the prostitute’s role as a challenging but quintessentially vulnerable urban wanderer by turning the tables on male sexual violence, Gray all but withdraws from his peripatetic ways, even as his home is transformed from a site of reclusive decadence into a bright haven for mistreated women. When confronted concerning his altered attitude to the social experiment he initially supported, Dorian Gray explains to Lily Frankenstein that, once again, he is bored:

I’ve lived through so many revolutions, you see, it’s all so familiar to me. The wild eyes and zealous ardour, the irresponsibility, and the clatter. The noise of it all, Lily. From the tumbrils on the way to the guillotine to the roaring mobs sacking the temples of Byzantium. So much noise in anarchy. And in the end it’s all so disappointing. (“The Ebb Tide” 3.07)

As season three progresses, in fact, Gray appears increasingly static. His engagement with modernity is for his own amusement, one disrupted by Lily’s transformative tendencies and aims. At the end, his gaze is no longer that of restless modernity but instead that of a “perfect, unchanging portrait” of himself, finally appearing as just another beautiful addition to the blue gallery (Dorian Gray in “Blessed Dark” 3.09). He rejects Lily’s vision of a transformed urban modernity when its novelty gives way to sameness in the eyes of the urban wanderer who is also a jaded immortal. But even—or perhaps especially— in his fickleness, he personifies the modern sensation- and entertainment-seeking public.

Explorers: paternalism, colonialism, tales of adventure

Most of the local natives have been run off, or captured by the Germans and the Belgians for the rubber and ivory trade, for slaves in all but name. What romance I saw in Africa is done for me, the land is tainted now beyond repair, and I want to be quit of the filthy place. What then? Are there no fresh wonders left? No worlds yet to conquer? (Sir Malcolm Murray “The Day Tennyson Died” 3.01)

In the first two seasons of Penny Dreadful, an oversized map of the Nile dominates the main parlour of the London residence of Sir Malcolm Murray, reminder of his past as an explorer and adventurer. The world whose measure it takes offers an apt metaphor for the series itself, being as it is poised on the edge of history and fantasy: it is an archival record based on eyewitness accounts of mid nineteenth century expeditions to discover the source of the Nile by the likes of Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone and Richard Burton, but also one that evokes the adventure genre more broadly, one of the favourites of cheap fiction.

In the way that it uses explorers and the trope of exploration to build and expand its narrative worlds, Penny Dreadful engages with the concerns of the subgenre of late Victorian fiction scholars have labelled “Imperial Gothic” (Warwick; Brantlinger). A key figure in exploring these concerns in the series is Sir Malcolm Murray whose narrative is dominated by his journeys into Africa, the stories of adventure interwoven with revelations of his myriad failures as a father and husband. The horrors of his domestic dereliction, neglect, and abuse are highlighted at the climaxes of both Seasons One and Two, even as the map overlooks the scene of a new family of sorts, which forms and reforms itself to pursue his daughter Mina, then later to save his illegitimate daughter Vanessa, then to save Sir Malcolm himself. Sir Malcolm’s rather ignominious, sometimes strikingly anti-heroic history illustrates a key concern of Imperial Gothic, that there has been a “diminution of opportunities for adventure and heroism” (Warwick 338). And, through the changing figure of Sir Malcolm Murray-as-explorer, Penny Dreadful addresses what Stephen Arata points out as one of the key cultural contexts of horror in Stoker’s Dracula, a sense of the “decline of Britain as a world power” and how “the increasing unrest in British colonies and possessions” all “combined to erode Victorian confidence in the inevitability of British progress and hegemony” (622). More pervasively, Penny Dreadful confirms in its varied engagements with the figure of the explorer the link that Patrick Brantlinger observes in Imperial Gothic between the lure of the primitive and exotic on the one hand and the appeal of the occult on the other (Arata 624; Brantlinger  228-29).

This twinned fascination with the primitive/exotic and with the occult shapes the season three courtship by and characterisation of zoologist Dr. Sweet (Christian Camargo), who is ultimately revealed to be the most recent persona of Dracula. His characterisation makes clear the link between colonial exploration, death and destruction, his courtship of Vanessa Ives turning on his interest in collecting dangerous beings and his longing to explore dark and dangerous places abroad—and the intimation that he regards her as both of these things. In this way, Dr. Sweet, as would-be explorer, taps into key tropes of the Imperial Gothic, just as Sir Malcolm does, wherein the danger and excitement of that exploration is gendered: the dark, ‘feminine’, ‘non-rational’  space of Africa is presented as “one of the last mysterious places left on earth” (Warwick 340), a formulation that will be echoed in turn by Sigmund Freud’s characterisation of female sexuality as “the dark continent.” Vanessa Ives appears intrigued by Dr. Sweet’s implicit acceptance of her otherness, her kinship, for instance, to the Omdurman  or Death Stalker scorpion. After bonding over a shared interest in dangerous creatures, death and taxidermy, the consummation of their affair surrounded by corpses and relics, aestheticised death on display in the Natural History Museum of London, echoes Vanessa’s teenaged seduction of Mina’s fiancé, closing the circle, linking her past and present, the beginning and end of the series.

Ultimately Dracula/Sweet, with his growing army of Night Creatures, offers his own zoological spin on what Stephen Arata identifies in Dracula as a fear of “reverse colonisation” (623-24) engaging fears of degeneration and decadence that are part of the Imperial Gothic in his characterisation of those ‘night creatures”’ on display in his museum and those awaiting his command in the dockside lair, with their common claim on sympathy. As Alexandra Warwick observes in regard to this notion of reverse colonisation,

During the course of the nineteenth century, the very poor and socially marginal had become increasingly gothicized. Their world is a mysterious labyrinth that exists alongside the life of middle class, its effects leaking out in uncontainable ways. By the end of the nineteenth century anthropology provided ways of seeing the underclass as belonging almost to a separate and more primitive form of existence. The philanthropist William Booth’s nonfictional text In Darkest London (1890) demonstrates this in clearest of ways…with the East End sharing all the “othered” qualities of its distant territories. (340-41).

The street people who are also Dracula’s night creatures, those “broken and shunned creatures” figure the Imperial Gothic fear of the primitive and the regressed. Ultimately they carry the ability to other, to regress, all of London once the poison fog descends at the end of season three, when humans are animalised, reduced to carcasses to be bled dry in “The Blessed Dark” (3.09).

While Vanessa Ives and Dr. Sweet explore their shared fascination with the exotic and dangerous, Sir Malcolm first disavows his ties to Africa—replaying a disgust with corporatized exploitation of its mineral wealth which has stripped away any romance it once held—only to have his wanderlust rekindled. When Kaetenay (Wes Studi), a “Chiricahua Apache by birth and rite” rescues him in the East African settlement of Zanzibar, he sets Sir Malcolm off on another journey, to save the wayward werewolf Ethan Chandler (“The Day Tennyson Died” 3.01). Thus the imaginary frontier of Africa is replaced by an equally fantastic representation of America. Kaetenay, as native informant and guide offers, like the flâneur, a mobile perspective on the West, while like Vanessa he also serves as a spiritualist medium for visions. Figuring in this respect another sort of connection between the exotic/primitive/colonised portions of the world and the occult/supernatural, Kaetenay propels the narrative from the urban slums of the repeatedly-colonised Zanzibar in Africa to the open spaces and sparse cities of the Wild West, back again to London, reasserting through his visions that London is no longer primarily an industrial or urban space but a space of transformation, a spiritual realm. Like Vanessa Ives and her mentor Joan Clayton (Patti LuPone), Kaetenay is an explorer of the spiritual landscape beneath the physical one. And, for Kaetenay like Clayton this is signalled by a privileged relationship with nature. Different in this respect from colonisers like Murray—or even a collector like Sweet—nature is not intimidating, nor is it to be conquered, nor captured as a trophy, only understood and cohabitated with. In his mystery and mobility, Kaetenay is both guide for the resolutely unmagical Sir Malcolm and supernatural father for Ethan Chandler. And, as the last of a tribe systematically extinguished by America’s conquering of its frontier, he is a relic of a different sort of apocalypse than that faced by Londoners, a link between that experience of genocidal violence and that which threatens darkest London at the conclusion of the series.

The connection between the exotic and the supernatural that underpins those anxieties animating the Imperial Gothic is tied to difference more generally in Penny Dreadful. Like Professor Lyle and Lily/Brona, Vanessa, Dr Sweet and Kaetenay all confirm the series’ investment in seeing the Victorian era differently—or more precisely, for using its richly detailed setting and its familiar narratives of adventure and horror and mystery for a spectacular staging of difference, whether it’s the queering of urban culture or the critical reassessment of the Victorian cult of domesticity/true womanhood. It is an aesthetic and narrative investment that is, in some respects, strikingly at odds with—at the same time that it is also enabled by – the frame-story’s dualist insistence on good and evil, light and dark, so typical of the formulaic narrative worlds of the penny dreadful, also colonialist narratives of dark continents and dangerous primitives. The series’ stagings of difference qualify the purity of evil and good, emphasizing instead the mixed composition of characters. Their difference sets them apart from the mainstream within the series’ Victorian milieu and is fundamental to their appeal and authority as narrative agents.

Given its investment in difference, Penny Dreadful is, in some respects, metatextually subversive in its engagement with familiar genres of discovery and colonialism. However, in spite of this impulse toward subversion, it is ultimately the core group of men from the main character group who survive at the end of season three. Vanessa Ives, despite her importance as an explorer of psychological and spiritual landscapes makes a final sacrifice of her death. Spiritualist counterparts Kaetenay and Joan are both dead by the end, while Lily/Brona is disempowered and abandoned. While Dr Seward and Catriona Hartdegen survive, the alienist and the vampire hunting thanatologist are returned to unobserved sites of origin. The resplendently othered and individualised Professor Lyle has left for warmer and more hospitable climes, while Mina has long since been laid to rest. And so, the series finishes with what could appear to be an affirmation of paternity and colonialist masculinity in the survival of Sir Malcolm and his adopted son Ethan. They have the last word, their final conversation an epilogue of sorts to the series:

Sir Malcolm: Never have I so wanted to run away. On some hunt or expedition to Africa, India. Anywhere but here.

Ethan: Will you?

Sir Malcolm: No. I must find my life without her. Miss Ives was the last link to who I was. I must find out who I am yet going to be. Oh, I will miss her to my bones. Will you stay, Ethan?

Ethan: You’re my family.

(both recline against the wall in Vanessa’s previous bedroom, staring at her bed in the dusklight) (“The Blessed Dark” 3.08)

There is the hint here of perhaps further adventures to be undertaken by the adoptive father (though he denies it) and son, bound in grief and loss. That said, the scene also emphasises the importance of death, both real and metaphorical, to the series in the way that it is represented through key characters as a liminal space of alterity and possibility. In this way the series explores the ongoing potential and appeal of the undead offered by Stoker’s source text and its many adaptations. Thus the spaces of the museum—both public and private—with their displays of exotic corpses are not just a testament to the achievements of explorers like Sir Malcolm but are privileged and eroticised as gateways to the supernatural, to other stories and other worlds, while being linked more generally to the potentialities of death-as-transformation that persist as point of fascination Penny Dreadful shares with its gothic source texts.

The alienist and the spiritualist medium: talking cures, visions, and stories across time and space

. . . . like spirits, spinsters were culturally perceived as threatening and transitional, moving across borders and hovering between worlds, liminal bodies existing on the fringes of a society they threatened with their very liminality. The circumvention of Victorian heteronormative sexuality is performed by [Georgiana] Houghton through her role as spinster, which enables her to engage in reproductivities outside of those of the Victorian marriage contract, as she birthed spirits through her séances . . . .  (Williams 10-11)

hysterics suffer for the most part from reminiscences (Breuer and Freud)

From the mid nineteenth century onward, the spiritualist movement was a part of popular Victorian culture, particularly attractive to women—like well-known medium and artist Georgiana Houghton—perhaps because it offered  “possibilities for attention, opportunity, and status denied elsewhere” also “a means of circumventing rigid nineteenth-century class and gender norms” (Owen 4). Penny Dreadful engages with  spiritualism especially through the character of Vanessa Ives, whose abilities as seer make her an agent of focalisation and conduit to other worlds and times, first vividly in evidence when she upstages Madame Kali (Helen McRory) at an evening salon in home of Professor Lyle (“Séance,” 1.02). Although the scene is set for Kali’s spiritualist performance, Ives, suddenly possessed, engages with the past of adventurer Sir Malcolm Murray, channelling the voice of his son who died during their expedition in Africa, also relaying secret knowledges in the voice of a vengeful spirit who berates the famous adventurer for his sexual escapades. The scene connects London to darkest Africa, the salon’s exotic supernatural spectacle to less salubrious images of colonial exploration, all insects and dysentery, Sir Malcolm’s failures as father and husband twinned with colonial exploration as a summary portrait of male privilege abused. In the spectacle that Vanessa Ives makes of herself, the scene registers the appeal and disruptive potential of the female medium in the Victorian and Edwardian era spiritualist movement as one who could “invade and upturn the domestic havens of respectable gentlemen and their obedient wives through the subversive and often highly-sexualised séances” (Williams 9). Spaces of the past and present, public and private, sacred and profane throughout the series continue to clash in the performances of Vanessa Ives.

Positioned between multiple narrative worlds, Ives reveals and gives access to—via memories accessed through hypnosis and letter writing, also through her native emotional acuity and acquired knowledge demonic language—the spatial, temporal, and thematic connections between stories and story worlds. She is both a spiritualist medium and also a conduit for the mediumistic work of the alienist in Season Three. Specifically, Mina Murray and much of Stoker’s Dracula exist in an alternate dimension that in season one is accessed almost entirely through her visions (“Resurrection” 1.03; “Closer than Sisters” 1.05) and tarot reading (“What Death Can Join Together” 1.06). In Season Two, we only come to understand the work of the three witches through Vanessa Ives’s own memories of her retreat to the rural remoteness of Ballentree Moor where she studies with Joan Clayton (“Nightcomers” 2.03). In season three Dracula enters the diegesis in the guise of charming zoologist, Dr. Sweet, but we only discover his backstory, when Ives, on the advice of Professor Lyle, seeks the help of an American alienist, Dr. Seward (Patti Lupone), to deal with her deep depression following the departures of Ethan Chandler and Sir Malcolm Murray at the end of season two. Her hypnotic state allows her to access not just memories of her struggle with Victorian treatments for mental illness during her incarceration at the Banning Clinic (“A Blade of Grass” 3.04 ), but also her contact with the supernatural, the contest between brothers Lucifer and Dracula (Rory Kinnear). Seward, like Clayton is represented as an empowering figure for Vanessa Ives, one who illuminates a potentially dangerous path to greater knowledge, through dark magic and the scarcely less harrowing possibilities of the unconscious mind. Through the backstory of the clinic we see Ives’s similarities to Lily Frankenstein, the connections between their stories as characters who struggle against the normalising spectre of womanhood, a struggle inflected by but surpassing class difference. Ives’s experiences in the clinic—like Lily’s in Dr. Jekyll’s lab where Dr. Frankenstein plans to restore his beloved to a Victorian feminine ideal by removing much of what makes her herself— expose the institutional and technological control of bodies and minds by medical and scientific establishments, control to which Victorian women are shown to be particularly vulnerable.

The recollected space of the Banning Clinic is punctured by Dr Seward’s hypnosis of Vanessa Ives in a way that links the work of the medium to that of the alienist, both having the power to recur to a troubled past, to explore and reveal secret histories of a ‘dark continent’. By exposing the Clinic’s abusive treatment of an unruly woman—torture and persecution in the guise of care with the aim of restoring normalcy—and by changing Dr. Seward’s gender from its originary text in Dracula, the series undertakes an explicitly feminist intervention into the all-male environment of the Victorian medical establishment. And along the way, it dramatically alters the gendered dynamic of early experiments with the talking cure like those recorded by Breuer and Freud in Studies in Hysteria. As a restaging of these late nineteenth century histories of psychoanalytic exploration, Seward’s theraputic sessions with Ives are linked to the series’ ongoing interest in offering counter-narratives of Victorian culture, even as they valorise those qualities in Vanessa Ives punished at the Banning Clinic. Just as Professor Lyle attests to recovering his sense of identity, of being offered by Dr Seward the opportunity become “resplendently himself,” Seward similarly offers Ives a greater sense of purpose and self, effectively attempting through the talking cure effectively to change her story. The Doctor attempts reformulate her self-representation as the object of demonic possession into more nuanced notion of complex psychology, to replace evil with illness. The Creature, Clare, whose past as an orderly and Ives’s guard in the Clinic attempts a similar reformulation, his monstrous unhappiness contextualised by the story of his kindness and humanity to Ives and the family he left behind.

The use of the same actress to portray both Joan Clayton, cut-wife – witch and midwife, abortionist and healer—and her descendant Dr Seward explicitly links their functions within the Penny Dreadful universe. Both the witch and the alienist through their ministrations to women offer alternative perspectives on the worlds of the series, attempting (with mixed results) to help the women to challenge their social restrictions, offering freedom from reproductive coercion and the psychological manifestations of control—thus the opportunity to change women’s place in and the trajectory of narrowly proscribed gendered narratives. As the cut-wife/ abortionist, Joan Clayton works to offer women options within the gendered limitations of Victorian culture, to change their stories by allowing those regarded as fallen women to reclaim their place in the home. As the healer and the witch Clayton also forces the universe to bend to her will; like her descendent Seward, she reshapes space and time, not by tapping into unconscious memory through hypnosis but instead through witchcraft. Dr. Seward works through the new science of psychoanalysis, but that said she is not beyond weaponising her skills, for instance against Renfield, her assistant, after he becomes a victim/acolyte of Dracula, provoking guilt and shame to draw out of him the strange tale of Dracula, information crucial to their fight. In Professor Lyle’s salon, Vanessa uses her role as medium and her sensational account of the Sir Malcolm’s past as an active condemnation of masculine entitlement and wrong-doing.  Similarly, Dr Seward’s role as alienist, her delving into Vanessa’s past, is used to condemn the doctors of Banning Clinic, also Renfield’s weakness of character, while supporting her patient’s intuition and experience by accessing hidden spaces of her traumatic memory.

While a number of minor characters are new creations, Vanessa is the only major character not obviously based upon a previous work. That said, she is clearly inspired by both the challenging female sexualities of Dracula (his hungry, lustful brides) and its varied engagements with that figure of gendered promise and threat, the New Woman (figured especially in what Stoker’s novel, unlike Penny Dreadful, represents as a rather stoic and resourceful figure of Mina Harker). Vanessa’s dramatic shifts between sacred and profane, blessed and cursed, make her in some respects the personification of the bifurcated roles allotted to and the limited scope of Victorian femininity evident in Stoker’s work, as she is both the fallen woman and the angel in the home. In her role as narrative conduit, Vanessa emphasises the way that promising and problematic femininity, once held in thrall by the supernatural seductions of Dracula, is viewed by Stoker in terms of both supernatural empowerment and also mental and moral illness. More broadly, as a single woman—the defiantly unconventional spinster heiress, Miss Ives—Vanessa represents a figure that, like the prostitute, troubles the Victorian model of female heteronormative sexuality bound to the home (Logan 198-99; Krandis 199, 3). She is a figure that, at the same time she enables multiple narratives and connects multiple narrative spaces, also, like Brona Croft/Lily Frankenstein, works against the narrative trajectories which situate the woman solely as the object of male desire, of male quest. Vanessa is pursued but resists pursuit, and in the end chooses her own path of destruction to thwart Dracula’s plans.

Conclusion

In the remediated world of Penny Dreadful, popular fictions of the Victorian era are repurposed, compositing a new reality from multiple texts. Tapping into both the original texts and their potentialities, it is a world where the remembered and the imagined, the actual and the desired, are given narrative and spatial representation. The viewer, prompted to draw on memory and knowledge of the same texts, extends the stories and their spaces further still. By way of surveying this complex world, this discussion has focused specifically on how figures drawn from Victorian popular culture—the flâneur, the explorer, the alienist and the spiritualist medium—have shaped the series’ character network and through their work of focalisation, also its narratives and spaces.

Through remediation and multi-perspectival narration, Penny Dreadful offers an example of complex television, a variation on the multi-dimensional world. It is not as extreme in this respect as, say, Lost which plays with alternate realities; but it is clearly an experiment in “spatial storytelling” (Mittel 275). In the way that it narrativizes and spatializes the relationship between one text and another—one form of amusement and another—the series can be usefully understood in terms of the contemporary trend of transmedia storytelling. The source texts of the series, like the myriad public amusements that make up the London setting of the series, are imagined as spaces that extend beyond the screen, each a site of nascent storylines in the manner of transmedia franchise properties where each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. One could watch and comprehend Penny Dreadful without having read the works by Shelley, Stevenson, Wilde, Verne, and Stoker—but it would be a limited comprehension of only part of The Penny Dreadful universe, which we understand both to reinvent but also to co-exist alongside these originary texts.

Our discussion has focused on how popular, familiar character types anchor this hermeneutic project. Penny Dreadful pays homage to the dominant narratives with the typical aspirational world views conjured by the most celebratory accounts of the flâneur-as-observer, the conquests of the explorer, the other-worldly sensitivities of the spiritualist medium, and the scientific certainties of the alienist. Each offers a way of reading the world and access to the new, strange, wonderful, and unseen. But the series also offers counter-narratives related to the urban, exotic, supernatural and psychological adventures conjured by these figures, using its interest in socially marginalised characters and the liminal spaces—including the intersectional spaces when different genres are brought together—to variously queer and critique those dominant narratives. Self-reflexive and historically-conscious in the way it uses its recursive fictions and remediative aesthetic to replay and reframe the enduring pleasures of nineteenth century popular culture and fictions, Penny Dreadful extends the scope of its interwoven narrative worlds through both the character network of its ensemble cast and through its imaginative challenges to its audience. An innovative example of cable programming-as-archontic literature in these terms, it is appropriate, then, that the series would achieve its own sort of immortality, transcending through transformation the deathblow of cancellation, reanimated as comic series written by the series scriptwriters and published through Titan Books (which has already published a prequel), set six months after the television finale. The persistent appeal of the familiar narratives and the durability of the Penny Dreadful characters confirmed, they begin a new life expanded into other transmedia properties.

 

Works Cited

Arata, Stephen. “The Occidental Tourist: ‘Dracula’ and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.”  Victorian Studies, vol. 33 no. 4, 1990, pp.  621-45.

Baudelaire, Charles. “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863). The Painter of Modern Life And other Essays. Translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne,  Phaidon Press, 1964.

Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel. Remembering Anna O: A Century of Mystification. Translated by Kirby Olson, Routledge, 1996.

Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914. Cornell University Press, 1988

Breuer, Josef and Sigmund Freud. Studies in Hysteria (1895). Translated by Nicola Luckhurst, Penguin Books, 2004.

Charney, Leo. Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift. Duke University Press, 1998.

Collins, Wilkie. “The Unknown Public.” Household Words, vol. XVIII, no. 439, 21 August 1858, pp. 217-222. http://www.djo.org.uk/household-words/volume-xviii

Cosgrove, Denis. “Introduction: Mapping Meaning.” Mappings, edited by Denis Cosgrove, Reaktion Books, 1999, pp. 1-23.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Continuum, 2004.

Derecho, Abigail. “Archontic Literature: A Definition, a History, and Several Theories of Fan Fiction.” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays, edited by Karen Hellekson, Kristina Busse, McFarland & Co, 2006, pp. 61-78.

Hubbard, Phil. “Women Outdoors: Destabilizing the Public/Private Dichotomy.” A Companion to Feminist Geography, edited by Lise Nelson and Joni Seager, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005, pp. 322-334.

Jenkins, Henry. “Transmedia Storytelling 101.” In Confessions of an ACA Fan, The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 March 2007.

Logan, Deborah Anna. Fallenness in Victorian Women’s Writing: Marry , Stitch, Die, Or Do Worse. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Mittel, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press, 2015.

Ndalianis, Angela. “Dark Rides, Hybrid Machines and the Horror Experience.” In Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, edited by Ian Conrich, 11-26. London: IB Tauris, 2010.

Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room. Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Parsons, Deborah L. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City, and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Warwick, Alexandra. “Imperial Gothic.” In Encylopedia of the Gothic. Edited by William Hughes, David Punter, and Andrew Smith, 338-342. Oxford and Malden MA: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016.

Williams, Sara. “Introduction.”Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance (1882),by Georgiana Houghton, edited by Sara Williams, 5-17. Brighton: Victorian Secrets Press, 2013

Wilde, Oscar. “de Profundis” (transcribed from 1913 Methuen & co. edition). e-books@Adelaide. University of Adelaide Library.

Bios:

Dr Amanda Howell, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Australia, is a screen scholar especially interested in gender, race, and “body” genres: action, war, horror, and the musical. Her most recent major publication is A Different Tune—Popular Film Music and Masculinity in Action (Routledge 2015). Her other publications have appeared in journals such as Camera Obscura, Screening the Past, Genders, and Continuum. She is currently developing a book-length project focused on contemporary art house horror.

Lucy Baker is a Doctoral Candidate in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at Griffith University Australia, where she also teaches in cultural and media studies. Her research focuses primarily on the representations of gender in fanworks and adaptations. She is the author of “Girl!Version: The Feminist Framework for Regendered Characters” in the Journal of Fandom Studies (2016), book chapters on the television series Elementary, and has a forthcoming chapter about vampires and domesticity.

Introduction: Identity and the Fantastic in Penny Dreadful

– by Amanda Howell, Stephanie Green, Rikke Schubart and Anita Nell Bech Albertsen

 

“. . . the best characters are the most complicated ones.”
— John Logan (Qtd. Thomas 2014)

 

 

 

 

 

In Season Two of television horror-drama, Penny Dreadful (Showtime/Sky, 2014-16), Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), American sharpshooter and werewolf, asks Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), a British heiress with supernatural powers and a troubled past, what happens when the monsters inside of them are released? She says: “We’re most who we are. Unrestrained. Ourselves.” Summing up a central concern of the series, she confirms the view of its creator John Logan, that the “greatest horror in Penny Dreadful is the horror of people. . .  the way we interact with one another.” (Calia 2015) Penny Dreadful explores the darkness that exists not only in the physical world but also in the human mind. In it, monstrosity takes the familiar form of witches, werewolves, vampires, the revived and reconfigured undead—Dr. Frankenstein’s monsters—who kill and maim, but the series also routinely explores other, more mundane, forms of cruelty and depravity, while embracing a range of difference. In Penny Dreadful, the most human characters are revealed to be the most monstrous.

Logan, as a gay man, says he feels a “deep kinship” with monsters; used in the series to explore gendered difference, they are linked to troubled, troubling, and alternative identities more generally. Accordingly, Vanessa and Ethan, along with friends like the “joyous fop” Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale) and foes like the seductive villainess, Madame Kali (Helen McCrory), struggle to come to terms with their deviant natures and problematic desires, those demons within and without which shape their worlds. Over its three season run, characters and storylines are developed in challenging and unpredictable ways, making this show one of the most appealing of horror television, and of special interest to feminist audiences. Consequently, when the show was—brutally!—cut short at the close of Season Three with Vanessa’s death, concluded with the words “The End,” frustrated fans complained that storylines were unfinished, that characters were not fully developed, that themes of monstrous identities were hastily patched up rather than completed. We, the authors of this Special Issue on Penny Dreadful, sharing with other fans the sense that there is more to say and do with these characters, return here to examine, revisit, and reflect on its monstrous nature, its dark inventiveness and perspicacity.

The idea for this Special Issue started with a research collaboration funded by a Griffith University and University of Southern Denmark travel scheme. At an initial meeting in Brisbane, Australia, May 2016, we confirmed our shared research interest in the women of screen horror and fantasy and our particular fascination with Penny Dreadful. Our collaborative work started with a themed panel at the Screen conference held in Glasgow, June of the same year, whose presentations are the inspiration and core of this Special Issue. Penny Dreadful epitomizes our interests in female empowerment, extreme embodiment, and the evocative potentialities of the fantastic. While the women of the series are subject to many of the constraints associated with feminine identity in the Victorian era –restrictions of the medical establishment, domestic ideologies, social mores, fashion – they are wrought with contemporary inflections, striving against these limits for self-possession and autonomy in ways that resonate for contemporary viewers. Ironically, while sharing our research and enthusiasm for the series as a site for exploring feminism and women in the fantastic at the Screen conference, the last two episodes of Penny Dreadful were broadcast. The series concluded, shockingly, with Vanessa’s burial, creator Logan responding to outraged fans, that ‘the show was always going to achieve closure with the death of Vanessa’ (Auseillo 2016). But, you can’t keep a good woman down. While Showtime’s series ended with three seasons, Vanessa and Penny Dreadful continue, fittingly enough, both as a comic book series and in the writings of its fans on sites like An Archive of Our Own. This special issue, likewise, is something of a post-mortem and a revival for a series that highlights the longevity, durability, and imperishable appeal of popular narrative, especially varieties of gothic horror fiction. We offer this special issue, pleased that Penny Dreadful continues, multiply transformed, beyond the death of its cancellation.

Logan conceived and wrote Penny Dreadful as a mash-up of characters from the classic Gothic novels, among these Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890, 1891), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), to which he added new original characters inspired by these texts, like protagonists Vanessa and Ethan. The title refers to the popular name for cheap serial fiction sold in the 1830s for a penny per weekly issue. The show cleverly interweaves past and present entertainment industries in an assemblage that blends story elements multiply-sourced from literature and other screen fictions with scenes set in the varied amusements of Victorian Britain: the theater, the wax museum, spiritualist séances, funhouse hall of mirrors, illegal rat-baiting clubs, and more. Filmed on location in Dublin, and at Bray’s Ardmore studios, it is set in a Victorian London in 1891, using its setting to evoke a nineteenth century fin de siècle sentiment and ethos. At once highly stylised, but striving for authenticity, its meticulous attention to histories of Victorian popular culture ground its atmospheric and lushly aesthetised fantasy in social realities. The world of Penny Dreadful is at once fantastic yet recognizable as an historical time and place in which tradition and transformation wrestled for dominance. At the same time, it pays homage to the emotional uncertainties of a new millennium. Its exploration of new technologies, its references to mappings and conquests of the physical world, its fascination with monstrous possibilities of science, with genocidal abuses of power, its pervasive mood of doom, and anticipation of apocalypse are only too familiar for its contemporary audiences. This dark and crisis-ridden world is beautifully crafted from elements from the past but speaks to us of ongoing concerns: gender and sexuality, desire and responsibility, power and its abuse; what it means to be human, to be alive, to die, to be transformed.

Attesting to the durable appeal of its source texts, those familiar speculative fictions of early horror and science fiction, Penny Dreadful refits their themes and concerns for contemporary audiences. The overarching plot concerns a small group of four – the explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), Vanessa, the doctor Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) and the sharpshooter Ethan – who battle supernatural forces. In Season One they combat vampires, seeking them in hidden corners of London; in Season Two they struggle against witches who invade their home and dreams; and in Season Three they face Dracula himself and his army of night creatures. The Devil is involved in all three seasons and the mythology developed by the series refers to Egyptian Gods Amunet and Amun-Ra. Around the central group of characters we find Malcolm’s servant Sembene (Dani Sapani), aristocrat Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), and Frankenstein’s monsters John Clare (Rory Kinnear) and Lily Frankenstein (Billie Piper), as well as witches Evelyn and Joan (Patti LuPone), and the alienist Dr. Seward (also LuPone). Campaigns against evil take place in an in-between world that Vanessa calls the demimonde, where every character, supernatural or not, struggles simultaneously with external violence and inner workings of complex and fractured identities. Some characters are irredeemably evil and ultimately destroyed, but even the central protagonists, a reimagining of Bram Stoker’s ‘Crew of Light’ are torn and tormented characters striving to combat destruction and control their emotions in a never-ending struggle to overcome doubt, loneliness, inner and outer darkness.

In the way that Penny Dreadful uses its multiple texts, drawing on both familiar nineteenth century narratives and their more recent screen iterations, its aesthetic shows the influence of contemporary transmedia storytelling, where the

process of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers and writers. We are drawn to master what can be known about a world which always expands beyond our grasp. This is a very different pleasure than we associate with the closure found in most classically constructed narratives, where we expect to leave the theatre knowing everything that is required to make sense of a particular story. (Jenkins 2007)

Following on from Henry Jenkins’s work in transmedia fictions, this Special Issue can be viewed as the effort of aca-fans to make sense of the rich palimpsest of stories and characters that is Penny Dreadful, bringing to bear their various expertise and ‘encyclopaedic impulses’, interests and investments. While sharing a broad concern with the self-reflexively gendered focus of the series and feminist in spirit, this collection of articles draws on an interdisciplinary mix of scholarly approaches, from sociology and cinema studies and fan studies, to literary theory and queer theory, to Victorian history and cultural studies.

Amanda Howell and Lucy Baker in ‘Mapping the Demimonde’ provide a broad overview of the series viewed through the lens of familiar Victorian characters—the flâneur, explorer, spiritualist medium, and alienist—whose perspectives frame the stories of Penny Dreadful, lending shape to and inflecting the meanings of its narrative spaces. Anita Nell Bech Albertsen, Toby Locke, and Jordan Phillips offer another sort of overview of the series which is concerned specifically with methods of characterisation. Albertsen and Locke show how the construction of complex characters in Penny Dreadful moves beyond any simple or generic definition of monstrosity, to focus on the portrayal of characters such as Vanessa Ives and Ethan Chandler, while Phillips focuses on how the series’ interest in monstrosity effectively queers a range of characters.  Rikke Schubart offers a closer look at Vanessa Ives, using the concept of ‘edgework’ from sports sociology to investigate how her character interrogates and reframes gendered scripts such as the medium, the witch, and the hysteric. Stephanie Green, finally, offers a close reading of Lily Frankenstein as a figure of monstrous manufacture, drawing on the show’s re-imagined Victorian cultural context to identify her in terms of Gothic self-definition as the new ‘New Woman’.

 

Works Cited

Ausiello, Michael, “Penny Dreadful Not Returning for Season 4, Confirms EP John Logan.” TVLine 20 June, 2016:

Michael Calia, “‘Penny Dreadful Creator John Logan on Witches, the Occult and ‘the Horror of People.” Wall Street Journal May 15 2015

Jenkins, Henry. “Transmedia Storytelling 101.” In Confessions of an ACA Fan, The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 March 2007.

Thomas, June. “The Thing That Made Me Monstrous to Some People is Also the Thing That Empowered Me”. (Interview with John Logan) Slate. 9 May 2014

 

‘God Hates Fangs’: Gay Rights As Transmedia Story in True Blood — Holly Randell-Moon

Abstract: In this paper I examine the television program True Blood’s allusions to gay liberation in terms of the biopolitical and neoliberal implications of consuming civil rights as a transmedia story. In the program, vampires have ‘outed’ themselves to the population at large and in conjunction with the invention of synthetic blood (Tru Blood) are able to publicly participate in social and economic activities without harming humans. Home Box Office’s (HBO) use of Tru Blood to market the show is premised on the commodification of a (vampire) rights based movement across a range of different story-telling mediums. On the one hand, this means that the program is drawing attention to the biopolitical function of rights discourse by suggesting that it is the management of particular kinds of life, through particular kinds of consumption, which remains valuable to the dominant political and economic order. On the other hand, the mapping of vampirism onto civil rights also functions to legitimise a political discourse wherein the purported social ‘harm’ of granting minority groups equal rights can be mitigated by market forces and the cultivation of a constituency whose political power is linked to their ability to consume. The consumption of the True Blood story by fans thereby enacts principles of biopolitical management and containment of civil rights groups through HBO’s and fans’ willingness to enact play-political consumption and performance of rights in a transmediated public sphere.

rm1The television series True Blood (HBO, 2008-2014), based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels by Charlaine Harris, features a number of allusions to gay liberation and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) politics in its depiction of ‘vampire rights’. In the fictional town of Bon Temps, in Louisiana, United States, where True Blood is set, vampires have ‘outed’ themselves to the population at large and in conjunction with the invention of synthetic blood (Tru Blood) are able to publicly participate in social and economic activities without harming humans. The production of Tru Blood as a commodity enables individual and collective groups of vampires to advocate for the civil and political rights enjoyed by humans. In the vampires’ attempts to become part of ‘mainstream culture’, there are several references to gay liberation. These include the American Vampire League, whose activism and media interventions mirror that of groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, the use of the phrase ‘coming out of the coffin’ to describe the increasing numbers of vampires publicly acknowledging their existence to humans, and the prejudice directed at vampires by humans, particularly by those with conservative or evangelical Christian beliefs. This specific cultural, political and religious milieu for vampire rights is telegraphed in the opening title sequence by a brief shot of a church sign, which reads, “God Hates Fangs”. Amongst the ostensibly non-fictional images of Southern quotidian life—swamps, road kill, baptisms, church choirs, bar brawls—it is the only indication in the sequence of the program’s focus on the supernatural.

The diegetic plausibility of the vampire liberation movement is aided by various transmedia paraphernalia simultaneously operating outside of and in relation to events in the show’s narrative. This includes the availability of Tru Blood beverages and merchandise, Facebook and social media material for the advocacy groups featured within the show and partnerships between Home Box Office (HBO—the channel that broadcasts True Blood) and advertising companies, such as Geico insurance, to produce fictional campaigns targeted explicitly towards vampire consumers but implicitly, True Blood fans. In this extension of the program’s narrative of vampire rights to other types of media and forms of consumption, True Blood is exemplary of the new practices of transmedia storytelling championed by Henry Jenkins. He defines transmedia as

a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. (Jenkins 2011; original emphases)

For Jenkins, this type of storytelling enables and builds on audience participation in the meaning-making process of media texts (2006). This mode of storytelling is also closely associated with viral marketing, which utilises “pre-existing social networks like websites and YouTube in order to increase franchise or brand awareness” (Ndalianis 2012, 164). Transmedia forms of storytelling, like those employed for True Blood, can be quite complex and multi-faceted, involving the extension of a text across not only different types of media but also different geographical locations and consumer activities. In her excellent book, The Horror Sensorium (2012), Angela Ndalianis details transmedia stories and campaigns involving scavenger hunts, political rallies, social media tourism and urban graffiti that centre on the production of an embodied fan relationship with media texts. She argues that the transmedia stories deployed for texts such as The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008), Lost (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2004-2010)and True Blood “address the fiction/reality interplay by mitigating their stories more invasively into the social sphere” (165). They do this by encouraging fans and consumers to become ‘actors’ in a transmedia performance of a ‘living’ narrative (166). This performance produces a kind of meta-affect because fans “extract cerebral and sensory pleasure participating in and contributing to a highly crafted fictional world that’s in the process of unveiling itself” (169). An example of this type of meta-affective performance occurred in early 2009, in Auckland, New Zealand, when a series of wooden posters advertising True Blood were installed along public streets. Featuring information about True Blood’s airdate (the series was premiering on New Zealand television at this time), the posters had “In case of vampire” written across the top and “Snap here” at the bottom presented alongside flat wooden stakes. Potential fans and viewers of True Blood were invited to participate as performers in the program’s narrative by exercising vigilance and protection from the newly outed vampires by snapping off a wooden stake and carrying the physical textual detritus into their everyday lives.

trubloodbotWhat structures this kind of performance and participation by fans is the story and narrative used to extend a text via transmediation. In this paper I want to examine the execution of True Blood’s transmedia storytelling through a narrative of vampire rights that alludes to civil rights debates around gay liberation. I want to focus on the specifically transmedia dimensions of this narrative and how this particular media form interpellates viewers into a biopolitical and neoliberal mode of consuming civil rights. The program’s use of Tru Blood, both intra- and extra-textually, is premised on the commodification of a rights based movement across a range of different story-telling mediums. On the one hand, this means that the program is drawing attention to the biopolitical function of rights discourse by suggesting that it is the management of particular kinds of life, through particular kinds of consumption, that remains valuable to the dominant political and economic order. On the other hand, the mapping of vampirism onto civil rights also functions to legitimise a political discourse wherein the purported social ‘harm’ of granting minority groups equal rights can be mitigated by market forces and the cultivation of a constituency whose political power is linked to their ability to consume. Fans’ affective investment in vampire rights is then managed via consumption in a transmedia format that mirrors biopolitical strategies of management and containment of minority groups through civil rights discourse.

“No darlin’, we’re white, he’s dead”: Vampires and biopolitics

In her essay “Technologies of Monstrosity”, Judith Halberstam argues that “[a]ttempts to consume … vampirism within one interpretive model inevitably produce vampirism. They reproduce, in other words, the very model they claim to have discovered” (1993, 334). For this reason, in her analysis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula she argues that the central figure is “not simply a monster, but a technology of monstrosity” (334). Representations of monstrosity in texts like Dracula function not so much to reify particular characteristics of monstrosity (be it sexual immorality or corporeal difference) but to produce and disseminate particular discourses constituted as monstrous. So if we take a particular representation of vampires to signify for example, minority rights, we are also at the same time producing an understanding of what minority rights mean in popular and political culture.

Given that monstrosity is typically construed as a threat to human life, textual portrayals of monstrosity are also concerned with the management of that threat and the balancing of the value of human life with the containment of monstrosity. The development and application of various governmental strategies designed foster the life and health of citizens is defined by Michel Foucault as biopower (1991b, 263). In order to maximise the economic productivity of the state, governments and state institutions have “to qualify, measure, appraise, and hierarchize … the living in the domain of value and utility” (1991b, 266). One way to organise social practices around ‘value and utility’ is to encourage citizens to invest in a racialised and heteronormative construction of the family as the site through which life can be fostered or neglected (1991a, 99). As the management of the economic and social life of the polity comes to pivot on heterosexual familial reproduction, non-heterosexual or non-normative sexualities can be positioned in biopolitical terms as threats to the ‘health’ and productive order of a society. In her essay “Tracking the Vampire” Sue-Ellen Case explains:

From the heterosexist perspective, the sexual practice that produced babies was associated with giving life, or practicing a life-giving sexuality, and the living was established as the category of the natural. Thus, the right to life was a slogan not only for the unborn, but for those whose sexual practices could produce them. In contrast, homosexual sex was mandated as sterile—an unlive practice that was consequently unnatural, or queer, and, as that which was unlive, without the right to life. Queer sexual practice, then, impels one out of the generational production of what has been called “life” and historically, and ultimately out of the category of the living. (1991, 4)

In a biopolitical paradigm, subjects deemed unable to contribute productively to the life of a society can be excluded from the rights and protections offered by that society. This exclusion is then overlain with a naturalising discourse, which works to justify the asymmetries of legal and social recognition as simply part of the ‘natural order of things’. This is why Case sees a link between the cultural discourses used to frame both vampirism and homosexuality. In a dominant heteronormative order that conflates a particular kind of social and political life with life itself, both vampirism and homosexuality become aligned with death or unlife.

rm3The representation of the various kinds of harm vampire rights pose to humans in True Blood then seems an apposite metaphor for the biopolitical exclusion of LGBTI people from certain state-based rights. As a number of scholars have pointed out, True Blood’s treatment of vampiresis characteristic of a wider shift in textual portrayals of vampires “from the right to exile … to the right to citizenship in the postcolonial United States” (Hudson 2013, 663). Bernard Beck sees “[t]he plain message of today’s vampire lore” as evidence “that we are becoming less fearful and hostile, more curious and sympathetic to those we insist on defining as strangers” (2011, 92). This narrative shift from exclusion to inclusion in representations of vampiric difference is reflective of a broader social and political consensus around managing minority groups through integration rather than expulsion from a neoliberal economic order. Deborah Mutch notes that the narrative framework for the acceptance of vampires in book series such as Twilight and The Southern Vampire Mysteries are premised on “accepting human definitions of nation and race which are then superceded by globalised trade” (2011, 75).

While the supernatural genre has the ability to, as Dale Hudson puts it, “decolonize our familiar habits of thinking”, particularly with respect to cinematic and televisual “political realism” (2013, 662), textual portrayals of supernatural creatures nevertheless tend to incorporate dominant biopolitical conceptions of human life as the normative narrative bedrock against which other kinds of lives or living is measured. Hudson points out that in True Blood, vampirism is constituted as species difference through reference to characters as ‘vampire Bill’, whereas human characters are not described as ‘white Jason’ or ‘black Tara’ within the diegesis of the show (666). Where vampirism is discursively positioned as bodily distinct from human-ness, the nation on which this embodiment is placed remains invisible. True Blood’s representation of First Nations peoples and their interaction with vampires (those old enough to have arrived in North America during colonisation) is limited enough to suggest an erasure of colonialism as significant to the historical formation of the United States. As Hudson notes, “Indigenous nations appear only in the realm of the supernatural in True Blood” (669). For Hudson, the program’s use of the supernatural allows an imagining of “the New South as a space inhabited by multiple species on multiple planes of reality” (664), which invites consideration of “the right to rights” (685). My interest in this paper is how True Blood’s portrayal of “the right to rights” is linked to the public management and presentation of rights-based groups via transmedia texts, which are dependent on public forms of consumption and fan activity.

“You are not our equals. We will eat you. After we eat your children”: Vampire rights

In True Blood’s narrative conflicts around vampire rights, there are several allusions to civil rights and equality movements. The series has been received predominantly as a commentary on gay liberation. A New York Post article, for example, contends that “the fictional vampires’ quest for the same rights and social acceptance enjoyed by” humans “has become synonymous with the very real fight for gay rights” (Shen 2009). The author of the novels on which the show is based also seems to encourage this association (see Solomon 2010). As with the gay rights movement, vampires’ attempts to achieve equality are perceived by their opponents as a threat to the social and cultural stability of the polity they inhabit. However, the crucial difference between vampires and LGBTI peoples is that the alleged ‘harm’ posed to society by granting the latter civil rights is symbolic and imagined whereas vampires, within the diegesis of the show, do perpetrate considerable violence. In this vein, a reviewer of the show opined, “[t]hese vamps are assholes, not oppressed minorities. They deserve to be hated. If these murderous, evil creatures are figures for gay people, then they are figures for the religious right’s worst nightmare of what gay people are” (Newitz 2008). The program’s creator, Alan Ball, also avers with this reasoning “because the vampires on our show are, for the most part, vicious murderers and predators, and I’m gay myself, so I don’t really want to say, ‘Hey, gays and lesbians are basically viciously amoral murderers’” (Grigoriadis 2010).

outdoor-advertising-aimed-at-vampiresThe question of whether rights should be reserved only for those who are morally deserving is addressed in an interesting way by the American Vampire League (AVL) within the show. In the first episode (“Strange Love”, 1.1), the AVL spokesperson, Nan Flanagan (in an interview with Bill Maher) refutes assertions that vampires perpetrate large-scale murder and assault against humans (for lack of documented evidence) and counters that humans themselves are responsible for slavery and genocide. Later on in the series, another vampire Russell Edgington uses this same logic—humans have caused irreparable damage to the environment and the species they share it with—to reach a very different conclusion regarding vampire-human relations. For Edgington, vampires are right to insist on their superiority to and difference from humans. He broadcasts these views on a live news program and after deboning the anchor, proclaims to the human audience, “You are not our equals. We will eat you. After we eat your children” (“Everything is Broken”, 3.9). Human anti-vampire bigotry meanwhile stems from a corporeal vulnerability to vampires’ biological requirement for human blood. In its extreme form, anti-vampire prejudice manifests as a speciest right to survival exercised by vigilante groups such as the one seen in Season Five. This group of men don Barack Obama masks as they inflict violence and in some cases, death, upon vampires and other supernatural beings. This group mentions and appears to be linked to the ‘Keep American Human’ movement, which has its own website and promotional material. This doubly imbricated right to ‘America’ and to life is framed by anti-vampire humans as exclusive. One of the vigilante characters complains, “it’s some sort of crime now being a regular old human” (“In the Beginning”, 5.7) as if the uniqueness of being human cannot be co-extensive with the existence of other species.

Vampire prejudice thus goes beyond the simple fear of death or bodily harm and involves a speciest condemnation of vampire existence that is often inflected with a moral discourse. When the show begins, vampires have achieved a limited degree of civil equality such as the right to marry (in certain states in the US and if the unions are heterosexual) and are protected by anti-discrimination laws (businesses cannot refuse to serve vampires as customers), which are reluctantly enforced by police. There are also a series of moral and social codes, centred primarily on sexuality, that police vampire and human interactions. Humans who engage with or are thought to engage in sexual relations with vampires are derisively referred to as “fang-bangers”. The central character Sookie Stackhouse is often judged negatively in terms of her moral standing and character for her relationship with the vampire Bill Compton. The first season features a violent expression of this chauvinism in the form of a serial killer with a pathological hatred of women who sleep with vampires.

The corporeal vulnerability of humans to vampire attack is balanced by the portrayal of vampire blood as producing hallucinatory and amphetamine-like effects when consumed by humans. Vampire blood or V-juice is a highly sought-after but illegal commodity associated with the vampire bar scene and fang-bangers, which may allude to subcultural forms of clubbing and recreational drug use. In Season One, a lonely vampire named Eddie claims that he can only express and act on his homosexual orientation by trading his blood for sexual favours with human men (in particular Sookie’s co-worker and friend, Lafayette Reynolds). In an inversion of the life-giving connotations of heterosexual sex, one scene in the first season shows Sookie’s brother Jason and his girlfriend consume V-juice and make love whilst Eddie is tied up and tortured in the basement below them. Here it is an undead subject whose blood provides the impetus and facilitation of heterosexual sex.

The moral repugnance at the tarnishing of human life and sexuality bought about by vampire-human contact is aligned with most (although not all) forms of Christianity in True Blood. The second season features an evangelical group called the Fellowship of the Sun that promotes “pro-livin’ values” (Home Box Office 2012) and warns the human polity about the dangers of vampire rights and the “the wing nuts on the left” who advocate for them (“The Fourth Man in the Fire”, 1.8). In a television interview, the pastor of the church, Reverend Steve Newlin, explains that vampire rights threaten “the rights of our sons and daughters to go to school without fear of molestation by a bloodthirsty predator in the playground or in the classroom” (“The Fourth Man in the Fire”, 1.8). One of the advertisements produced by the Fellowship of the Sun, not featured in the show but distributed online and in poster form in some cities, depicts a young blonde boy with the caption, “To them he’s just a midnight snack” (Ndalianis 2012, 178).

The figure of the child here is important as Ben Davies and Jana Funke note, “the teleology of straight time is projected onto the sex act, which displaces its own meaning, significance or indeed non-significance for the production of the future” (2011, 6). In this way, the future viability of a heterosexual society is linked to the purity and protection of children. In a video press release for the advertising campaign, the elder Reverend Theodore Newlin passionately declares, “our children are our most precious resource, our lifeblood” (the video appears on YouTube under the category ‘Nonprofits & Activism’). On the Fellowship’s website, homosexuality is listed alongside vampirism as a social danger: “It’s nothing new for teenagers and young adults to flock to the newest trend, and it’s hardly uncommon for these fashion choices to be self-destructive, like smoking, drugs, tattoos or homosexuality. But the latest fad—a soulless eternity of drinking blood—can’t be undone with a laser treatment or rehab. Vampirism is forever” (Home Box Office 2012). While some organisations and US Republican presidential candidates view homosexuality as a choice or temporary lifestyle that can be cured or corrected, what makes vampirism especially pernicious for the Fellowship is that it cannot be erased or overcome, it’s “forever”. In another television interview, the younger Reverend Newlin says, “the vampires as a group have cheated death. And when death has no meaning, then life has no meaning. And when life has no meaning, it is very, very easy to kill” (“Nothing but the Blood”, 2.1).

Anti-vampire sentiment is not an opposition to the merits or otherwise of particular vampire rights, rather the opposition stems from the consequence that these rights serve to entrench vampire presence in civil and social spaces. It is precisely because vampirism constitutes a permanent state of being that the necessity of repealing vampire rights takes on an apocalyptic sense of urgency. Such rhetoric alludes to and perhaps parodies anti-gay rights activism, particularly the National Organisation for Marriage’s (NOM) Proposition 8 “gathering storm” commercials which featured activists and citizens expressing concern about marriage equality backgrounded by blue screens depicting severe lightening storms and flooding. Here the public recognition of difference is conflated with disaster. In the type of advocacy employed by the Fellowship of the Sun, and NOM, the out-group’s very existence seems to imperil a safe and normal social and political order.

Where NOM’s advocacy and rhetoric is left open to debate and parody in the marketplace of democratic political suasion, the Fellowship is clearly set up as an object of ridicule within True Blood. First Newlin (in Season Two) and then his wife Sarah (in Season Six) are positioned as villains whose attempts to instigate genocidal war against vampires figure as obstructions and then climatic battles against which Sookie and friends must contend. Hudson argues that “Steve’s punishment is to be ‘made’ vampire, presumably unleashing his latent desires for Jason” and he “becomes a self-defined ‘gay vampire American’” (2013, 672). Such a transformation is presented humorously as a revelation of the character’s moral and political hypocrisy because his hatred of vampires is ostensibly linked to a self-hatred of his orientation. The reading of groups such as the Fellowship as opposed to progressive social and political causes is reflected in scholarly and popular reception of the show. For example, J. M. Tyree explains the premise of True Blood by noting, “The resistance movement to vampire rights is formed out of the ideological dregs of fundamentalist Christianity” (2009, 32). An online recapper describes the vigilante Keep America Human group as “a bungling bunch of bigoted idiots who spew thinly veiled Fox News talking points like ‘lamestream media’” (Berkshire 2012).By framing the Fellowship and Keep America Human’s advocacy against vampires as villainous, True Blood can be seen as participating in progressive representations of civil rights wherein “proclaiming a future in which the current resistance to gay marriage will seem backward” allows those subjects who already accept civil rights to be “projected forward in time” (Davies and Funke 2011, 6).

True Blood’s vampire rights narrative enables the production and facilitation of a set of transmedia texts framed around advocacy. As various groups within the show vie for political, cultural, economic and species preservation, this sets up an affective biopolitical participation wherein fans and reviewers debate the merits of civil rights, equality and state protection. A positive reading of this biopolitical transmedia engagement with the show is that a popular political consensus around inclusion and integration encourages fans to view the contribution of violence and essentialised forms of prejudice to political debate in negative terms—whether in the form of the Fellowship’s moral inflection to humans’ right to life or vampires’ reduction of human ontological existence to food. In the next section of the paper, I want to unpack the implications of how this fan engagement with the biopolitics of vampire rights is achieved through transmedia storytelling as a specifically commodified activity.

“There’s no such thing as bad; or time for that matter”: Vampires and neoliberalism

Aside from some obvious corporeal differences—fast movement, sharp orthodontics, sartorial preference for dark, binding clothing—vampires in True Blood attempt, for the most part, to fit into the social and cultural environment around them. In an interview for The New York Times Harris explains that her vampires “are more sympathetic” than previous sanguisuge incarnations. Of Dracula she says: “He had disgusting personal habits. He had the three wives; he crawled up the sides of the buildings; he had the sharp teeth and fingernails. Mine are at least trying to look like everyone else, but it’s not working out too well for them” (Solomon 2010). While earlier representations of vampires tended to exacerbate their monstrosity as difference, in Harris’ novels and its televisual counterpart, monstrosity is framed around the problem with assimilation to a human-centred social and political order. This integration is premised on the presence of a biotechnological industry, economic infrastructure and political consensus enabling them to do so.

The AVL is able to advocate for the public acceptance of vampires, on the basis that they do not pose a threat to humans, because of the development of the synthetic Tru Blood replacement for human blood. Originally developed by a Japanese biomedical company as a solution for human blood loss and transfusions, an accidental side effect is that the product can provide sustenance to vampires. Thus while the show centres around the politics of integration, the fulcrum for this integration is the successful branding and marketing of Tru Blood as “a globally transported commodity” (Mutch 2011, 81). The second vampire we see in True Blood is shown purchasing the beverage from a 7-Eleven style convenience store. In this opening scene of the first episode, two bored white teenagers eagerly approach the store clerk, fashioned in dark clothing, piercings and long black hair, to inquire about the possibility of scoring V-juice. The clerk indulges the potential V customers, menacing them with intimations of violence, before abruptly revealing his status as human, to the delight of the male teenager and relieved anger of his female counterpart. A burly gentleman in military garb and a cap adorned with a Confederate flag comes forward to express his displeasure with the ruse. After the male teen excoriates the customer by saying, “fuck you Billy Bob”, ‘Billy Bob’ reveals his fangs and responds, “Fuck me. I’ll fuck you boy. I’ll fuck ya’ and then I’ll eat ya’” (“Strange Love”, 1.1). The vampire’s interactions with both the clerk and the young couple subvert generic expectations, from the characters within the show as well as the audience, of the vampire as reclusive and gothic. Hudson reads this scene as evoking “the lingering embers of ‘lost cause’ for white-male-human privilege” where “the privileged position of the white-male-human in the Old South might be restored only in supernatural terms in the New South” (2013, 672). Now a vampire, the Southern white Confederate man can still expect his purchasing power and public presence to proceed without humiliation or impediment.

The development and dissemination of Tru Blood for public consumption creates new forms of human and vampire interaction, which diverse sets of stakeholders attempt to negotiate and regulate in different ways. The AVL attempts to gain political enfranchisement through a Vampire Rights Amendment (VRA) while other supernatural species, such as werewolves, wait cautiously to see how vampires are treated before likewise revealing themselves publicly (Hudson 2013, 665). The means through which a pharmaceutical product propels the development of vampire rights reinforces Halberstam’s point that Gothic monstrosity is always “an aggregate of race, class, and gender” (1993, 334). In order to participate as good biopolitical citizens, vampires must have the capital to access Tru Blood as well as the legal protection to purchase and consume the product in a discrimination free environment. The fake commercials for Tru Blood, released on YouTube, attempt to help this economic and political process along by portraying Tru Blood consumption as alternatively cool and sexy or folksy and non-threatening. For example, in one commercial, three young white men approach a bar and place their orders in quick succession:

I’ll take that vodka with the really cool ad campaign.

Ridiculously expensive imported beer with a name I can’t pronounce.

I’ll have one of those exotic cocktails.

Their requests are interrupted by a conventionally attractive white woman who orders Tru Blood and then carries it to her wan date, languishing in the shadows of the bar. The men stare at the Tru Blood customer in astonishment and awe. The ad ends with the tagline, “Tru Blood, because you don’t need a pulse to make hearts race”:

The commercial has no branding for True Blood or HBO and is a self-contained transmedia text—the Tru Blood logo shown at the end even has small legalise advising potential consumers, “Synthetic blood products contain varied cellular content than actual blood. Please consult a Tru Blood Cellular Specialist for specific nutritional information”. True Blood fans are addressed as both consumers of the show and of the fictional Tru Blood beverage. These fans are positioned as savvy and media literate cognisors in a way that disarms the purpose of both the True Blood text and the Tru Blood advertisement to establish a blatantly commercial relationship with fans through a postmodern knowingness of alcohol marketing. The intended affective response here, as per Ndalianis, is to generate meta-pleasure in recognising the text’s transmedia connection to the show (in the absence of specific show branding) amidst the generic conventions of alcohol commercials.

Another commercial features a group of mostly white men camping and enjoying beer around a fire. We then see the group through a point of view shot from the darkness in a way that appears to show a predator sneaking up on them. In a reverse shot, a vampire emerges behind one of the men and snarls. The men are startled and then begin to laugh as they welcome the vampire as a recognised friend. “You boys got something for me to drink?” the vampire chuckles as his friends hand him a Tru Blood.

These commercials generate a convivial affective connection to the show anchored through transmedia commodity relations that mirror the internal commodity relations between characters in True Blood. The success of Sookie and Bill’s relationship for example, is implicated in the proliferation of cheap pharmaceutical substitutes. After a passionate bout of lovemaking and bloodletting, Bill tenderly instructs Sookie to take vitamin B-12 tablets to compensate for and replenish her blood loss. Coming out of the coffin is also made more consequential for some vampires due to their social media proficiency. Hudson notes that, “Unlike Jessica today, whose ‘babyvamp’ blog  is part of the series’ multiplatform format” Bill “could not interact with a human society that knew him to be a vampire” (2013, 665). Here the internal narrative of the show permits a younger character to be expanded into its transmedia storytelling in a way that would seem implausible and inauthentic to Bill’s character (at least before he is recruited as an AVL figurehead in Season Three). These video blogs, which are performed by the actors in character, also function to link consumption practices to vampire integration. One vlog has the vampire Pam dispense fashion advice to Jessica and her ‘audience’ about where humans should shop to avoid wearing silver (a metal that enkindles vampire flesh in True Blood). Extra-textually, the real brands that Pam lists off as acceptable for human-vampire contact also confirm to True Blood viewers which consumption practices will identify them as fans of the show (below).

Where once vampires could be seen to attest to “the consequences of over-consumption” (Halberstam 1993, 342), the vampires in True Blood reflect a different set of economic and biopolitical concerns. Writing for Newsweek Jennie Yabroff posits that the current crop of vampire films and televisions shows are permeated by “vampires who have enough self-control to resist the lure of human blood, reflecting, perhaps, the conservative direction the culture has taken” (2008). The popularity of vampires who are able to exercise self-control is politically conservative insomuch as it reflects a neoliberal focus on improving and maximising the capacities of the self. In such an economic climate, Stephen Ball writes that workers are encouraged “to think about themselves as individuals who calculate about themselves, ‘add value’ to themselves, improve their productivity, live an existence of calculation” (2001, 223). That this neoliberal calculation and control could be construed as vampiric speaks to cultural shifts in assessing social and economic success. In his book The Culture of the New Capitalism, Richard Sennett writes that workers who flourish in the contemporary business climate are “oriented to the short term, focused on potential ability, willing to abandon past experience”. This type of employee “is—to put a kindly face on the matter—an unusual sort of human being” (2006, 5). While this continual need to improve, calculate and enhance oneself and one’s resources can prove taxing to a living human, vampires have the physical capabilities as well as an endless amount of time to adapt to and thrive in volatile neoliberal economic conditions.

Vampires who are able to successfully pursue their business and political endeavours recognise the strategic value of performance. Despite her exhortations that vampires can ‘mainstream’ through the consumption of Tru Blood, the AVL’s Nan Flanagan presents herself quite differently to humans in comparison with her fellow vampires. In the episode, “Everything is Broken” (3.9), Russell Edgington kills a human on live television and Nan is revealed watching the event unfold mid-snack on a female human. When Bill is invited by Nan to appear at the AVL-sponsored Festival of Tolerance (“Let’s Get Out of Here”,4.9), he queries the political efficacy of only having three vampires present at the event, “it’s like having a civil rights protest without any black people”. In response, Nan scolds him, “They’re called African Americans and maybe those protests wouldn’t have turned into the blood baths they became if they hadn’t been there, ever consider that?” This cynical and racist understanding of minority groups as responsible for the institutional and social violence inflicted on them is an instrumentalised version of strategic essentialism (see Spivak 1987). The disjunction between Nan’s private ‘life’ and the AVL’s public management of vampire behaviour and comportment draws attention to the ways identity politics bargains on the securing of certain rights at the expense of the lived, or undead, complexity of the identities being politicised.

The shifting between rights discourse in Nan and Bill’s conversation, from the African-American Civil Rights Movement to vampire rights, is indicative of True Blood’s dual treatment of historical inequality as a topic that is both serious and linked to a post-industrial commodification of identity politics. The program typically presents critical views of the US’ racist history through the character of Tara. She is sceptical of Bill’s intentions when they first meet because he admits that his family owned slaves (“The First Taste”, 1.2) and complains, “People think just cause we got vampires out in the open now race isn’t an issue no more” (Hudson 2013, 674). Later Tara is ‘outed’ as a vampire to a former high school classmate who patronisingly affirms her identities by saying, “now you’re a member of two minorities!” (“Somebody That I Used to Know”, 5.8). The politics of being ‘out’ as a vampire are also refracted through allusions to racial segregation. Where Eddie and Steve Newlin’s status as vampires allows them to act on their sexual attraction to men (albeit in different and limited ways), other vampires do not have “built-in privileges of masculine whiteness” (672). For Tara, her body reads as both vampire and African-American, Bill meanwhile is discursively positioned as simply ‘vampire Bill’. As Arlene Fowler explains to her child (upon seeing Bill), “No darlin’, we’re white, he’s dead” (“Sparks Fly Out”, 1.5), whiteness and race are embodied by the living first and non-white bodies second. While the AVL stakes an authoritative claim to what constitutes ‘good’ vampire behaviour, vampires must negotiate their public presence among humans along normatively defined lines of race, gender and sexuality.

These intersections of vampire rights and human-centred identity politics are dramatised in transmedia texts which portray vampires’ attempts to police themselves according to competing sets of claims about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ vampire behaviour. In one of her vlogs, Jessica politely advises Tara to avoid saying phrases like “it sucks” now that she is a vampire, for fear of alarming her audience and the public at large (see vlog below).

The ways in which vampires in True Blood are portrayed “both as a threat and as a fully paid up part of civilian life” (Matthews 2011, 200) exemplifies a biopolitical order which depends on the self-policing and disciplining of subjects according to social norms so that excessive external coercion by the state is not required (Foucault 1977). In this sense, True Blood is the culmination of a representational trajectory of vampires as ostensible outsiders to ciphers for sensible consumption, civic pride and business ethics. In an AVL sponsored Public Service Announcement entitled “Accept the Truth” (below), various vampires describe themselves as ordinary “Americans”, for example, “I’m a short-order cook in New York City, I’m cold to the human touch”, and “I run a horse ranch in Northern Montana, sunlight turns me to ash”.

These dramatic declarations of nationality read as humorous precisely because audiences are used to seeing vampires as obviously different from and suspicious of human life. The extension of the True Blood narrative primarily through these media texts, which simultaneously exhort and parody ‘good’ performances of citizenship and consumption, interpellates fans into a transmedia public sphere along the same lines, through HBO-approved forms of consumption. In the final section of the paper, I want to unpack the distinctions and comingling of political-play as consumption and activism in terms of the role of transmedia storytelling and marketing in disciplining the use of public space.

“But please remember I can rip your throat out if I need to”: Vampires and political-play consumption

I have argued so far that True Blood’s vampire trope conjoins civil rights with consumption and civic pride based on a neoliberal performance and management of the self. The program’s focus on the performance of vampirism enabled by a state protected mode of consumption is carried over into fans’ engagement with the show through officially sanctioned forms of consumption. The program’s production and broadcast through the premium HBO cable channel enables a much more explicit and liberal portrayal of sex and violence than traditional broadcast television, and this is undoubtedly a significant reason the show was pitched to and commissioned by HBO. The positioning of the show as both risqué and compatible with a politically progressive demographic is used in marketing material for the show.

For example, one HBO commercial (above), advertising the Season Two DVD box set, has a white family unwrapping Christmas presents from a young woman, presumably their daughter. In response to her Grandma’s query, “What’s this honey?”, the woman gives a quick recap of the season culminating in this description, “and the whole town has a huge orgy. Merry Christmas Grandma, I love you so much”. The commercial’s tagline is “The perfect gift for almost everybody” . The marketing of True Blood’s sexually explicit and graphically violent content as different to or in opposition to the ‘safe’ television programming that your grandmother enjoys sits at odds with the class and cultural capital required to actually consume the show. This includes access to premium cable or at least reliable broadband Internet to download or view the program as well as the supplementary web material that accompanies the program and is designed to satiate audience interest in between episodes and seasons. Whatever form of risk or subversion the vampires in True Blood present to the existing textual order of vampirism is incorporated into an already safely established mode of television production and consumption.

As Ndalianis points out, the goal of an effective transmedia campaign and story is to make audiences “forget that they’re a marketing strategy devised to sell a product” (2012, 166). Fans are encouraged to immerse themselves “in an emerging narrative that isn’t fixed or pre-staged but which they perform a key role in unraveling” (189) and “the participant is invited to literally play and become part of a performance as if it’s real” (172; original emphases). The unfolding of transmedia participation in ‘real-time’ is precisely how the constructed nature of the story is obfuscated. While fans can unravel or make sense of a transmedia story in diverse ways, the underlying narrative which structures the assemblage of transmedia texts is nevertheless necessarily fixed or pre-staged in order to generate an economy of performance that will move the story along.

The framing of transmedia stories around questions of rights, survival or torture can legitimate biopolitical performances through the commodification of fan activity. For instance, Ndalianis describes an aspect of The Dark Knight campaign, which “included phoning a security guard and trying to convince him to save someone being tortured” (168). In this scenario, fans can ‘create’ their own story based on their conversations with the ‘security guard’ but the narrative economy of bargaining over torture still remains intact. An interesting feature of the transmedia campaigns analysed by Ndalianis are the attempts to import ‘real’ protest into the fictional political campaigns devised for Harvey Dent, the protagonist/antagonist in The Dark Knight,and True Blood’s AVL. In the former, Dent’s campaign website was overlain with graffiti that painted his image with clown make up, signifying the Joker’s growing ‘invasion’ of the movie’s promotion (186). In the latter, AVL ads promoting the VRA were covered over, after their initial ‘clean’ public presentation, with anti-vampire slurs such as ‘Killers’ (179). The more consumers interacted with the campaigns, the more oppositional dissent was introduced into their advertising. This ‘dissent’ then becomes an entertaining spectacle, in which fans can participate, that drives the unfolding transmedia narrative as a story about biopolitical conflict; i.e. what are the democratic limits to expelling the Joker and criminals from Gotham City and vampires from public space in True Blood respectively.

In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard argues that the “impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion” (2006, 19). To illustrate this point he talks about the impossibility of staging a ‘fake’ bank robbery and assumes that “the network of artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements” (20). It is impossible therefore, to stage something that remains “close to the ‘truth,’ in order to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect simulation” (20). I would argue however that successful transmedia campaigns illustrate the degree to which the simulacra of political and juridical order is routinely accomplished by corporate and commercial interests and even accommodated by municipal councils and local governments. These transmedia activities seem to be premised on an expectation and acceptance that political campaigns which ostensibly aim to address crime and inequality will inevitably meet public backlash or violent acts of civil disobedience. Contestation over rights and public space are a normalised feature of transmedia campaigns.

Presumably this is entertaining in the context of a performance for a fictional text, albeit one that requires performance in the non-fictional social and political realm of everyday life, but we might compare this transmediation of political contestation with the everyday disciplining of activism in the public sphere. For example, in 2012, pro-Israel advertisements placed in New York subways by the American Freedom Defense Initiative were defaced with words such as “Racist” and “Hate Speech” and activists such as Egyptian-American writer Mona Eltahawy were arrested for spray-painting over them (Holpuch 2012). Here the spectacle of the invasion and countering of advocate discourse is swiftly disciplined by police and security forces, who acted to protect the purchase of advertising space by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. In New Zealand, 2007 saw a series of anti-terror raids resulting in heavy fines, long court proceedings and jail time for anarchist and Māori activists. Among the evidence used to surveil and arrest the defendants were recorded conversations detailing an apparently jocular suggestion that former US President George W. Bush could be assassinated on his next visit to New Zealand by launching a bus at his person (see Operation 8 [Abi King-Jones and Errol Wright, 2011]). Vijay Devadas (2008) provides a thorough examination of the events by situating them within the convergence of government and private security agendas during the ‘war on terror’. I note here that in distinction to transmedia campaigns that compel play-performance of public safety and order issues, parodic suggestions in the execution of advocacy by marginalised communities exacerbate rather than diminish their biopolitical position as threat.

Of course the difference between these ‘real’ events and transmedia storytelling is that the latter involves “a cognitive and sensory satisfaction that relishes in the performativity and playfulness of the text” (Ndalianis 2012, 183). The playfulness and enjoyment of transmedia fan participation seems to occur by virtue of the lack of substantive social and political consequences to transmedia performances. Where Baudrillard might see such performances as testing the authoritative apparatus of juridical and state institutions in such a way as to restate the latter’s epistemological authority to delineate ‘real’ from ‘fake’ civic activity, I would argue that transmedia activity, provided it is authorised by corporate and municipal bodies, does not test ‘the apparatus’ of a juridical and institutional order so much as it ‘simulates’ this order safely and with a positive affective disposition protected by officially authorised forms of consumption.

Ndalianis’ work maps out a framework of analysis, which takes into account the embodied, affective and urban social participation of transmedia storytelling as a significant dimension of fan activity. Given that transmedia storytelling involves the cultivation of activity and participation in the public sphere and urban environment, by connecting private acts of consumption to a theatre of public brand performance, it would be productive to extend Ndalianis’ analytic framework to an investigation of the types of affective relations emerging between fans, the public sphere, media texts, corporate industry and processes of social and political inclusion and exclusion. Does transmedia storytelling encourage a positive affective relation to biopolitical performance so long as this performance is confined to the ‘fictional’ realm? Do media scholars need to account for the consequences of transmedia ‘play’ such as the mass-shooting which took place in an Aurora, Colorado, cinema during a screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises by a young man impersonating a character from the Batman textual archive? How might we compare the increasing surveillance of political advocacy and creative protest with the seeming acquiescence of municipal and city councils to permit corporate branding to invade civil and public spaces for transmedia storytelling campaigns? Notwithstanding the possibility for resistance or divergence on the part of fans with the ‘intended’ transmedia story, the type of narrative used to anchor transmedia campaigns nevertheless frames and orients fan relations to texts through modes of consumer engagement that are legitimated by corporate, state and municipal institutions. Although my focus here has been on the ways in which transmedia consumer engagement legitimises biopolitical modes of performance and debate around civil rights, it may prove fruitful to investigate other types of relations that emerge from embedding fans into state institutions and discourses via transmedia storytelling.

Conclusion: “That’s the sickest shit I’ve ever seen … and I watch Dance Moms!”

In this paper, I have examined how biopolitical imperatives and constraints around vampire integration in True Blood are mediated through transmedia forms of storytelling and marketing. The transmediation of vampire rights involves fan immersion in discursive and representational practices which (re)produce vampirism as an allusion to gay liberation and LGBTI politics. The program’s use of Tru Blood, both intra- and extra-textually, is premised on the commodification of identity politics but also attests to the permeation and popularisation of a rights-based consensus for minority groups. In a positive reading of the program’s allusions to gay rights, True Blood’s transmedia storytelling appears to evince an inclusive textual and representational landscape for LGBTI politics. At the same time, the program draws attention to the biopolitical function of rights discourse by suggesting that it is the management of particular kinds of life, through particular kinds of consumption, that remains valuable to the dominant political and economic order rather than the identities these rights are attached to. In this sense, the mapping of vampirism onto civil rights also functions to legitimise a political discourse that measures some rights against others in terms of the strategic economic and social benefits such rights grant to the polity or fan community as a whole. This weighing up and measuring of rights in terms of who deserves social and political life, and what ‘life’ can be ‘good’ for the community, is surely more monstrous than anything True Blood’s vampires are capable of.

 

References

Ball, Stephen. 2001. “Performativities and fabrications in the education economy.” In The Performing School: Managing teaching and learning in a performance culture, ed. Denis Gleeson and Chris Husbands, 210-226. London: Routledge.

Baudrillard, Jean. 2006. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Beck, Bernard. 2011. “Fearless Vampire Kissers: Bloodsuckers We Love in Twilight, True Blood and Others.” Multicultural Perspectives 13 (2): 90-92.

Berkshire, Geoff. 2012. “‘True Blood’ recap: Roman’s fate revealed ‘In the Beginning’.”

HitFix, July 23. Accessed April 27, 2014. http://www.hitfix.com/monkeys-as-critics/true-blood-recap-romans-fate-revealed-in-the-beginning.

Case, Sue-Ellen. 1991. “Tracking the Vampire.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3(2): 1-20.

Davies, Ben, and Jana Funke. 2011. “Introduction: Sexual Temporalities.” In Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture, edited by Ben Davies and Jana Funke, 1-16. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Devadas, Vijay. 2008. “15 October 2007, Aotearoa: Race, terror and sovereignty.” Sites 5(1): 124-151.

Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, Michel. 1991a. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1991b. “Right of Death and Power over Life.” In The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, edited by Paul Rabinow, 258–272. New York: Penguin Books.

Grigoriadis, Vanessa. 2010. “The Joy of Vampire Sex: The Schlocky, Sensual Secrets Behind the Success.” Rolling Stone, September 21112: 54-59.

Halberstam, Judith. 1993. “Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Victorian Studies 36(3): 333-352.

Home Box Office. 2012. Fellowship of the Sun. Accessed January 1, 2012. fellowshipofthesun.org. [site archived here: http://archive.today/9Nr9]

Holpuch, Amanda. 2012. “Activist Mona Eltahawy released after arrest in New York subway protest.” The Guardian, September 26. Accessed April 26, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/26/mona-eltahawy-released-new-york-subway.

Hudson, Dale. 2013. “‘Of Course There Are Werewolves and Vampires’: True Blood and the Right to Rights for Other Species.” American Quarterly 65 (3): 661-687.

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. 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, August 1. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html.

Matthews, Nicole. 2011. “Noughties Reading.” In The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure, edited by Peter Bramham and Stephen Wagg, 195-210. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mutch, Deborah. 2011. “Coming Out of the Coffin: The Vampire and Transnationalism in the Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse Series.” Critical Survey 23(2): 75-90.

Newitz, Annalee. 2008. “Let’s Face It: ‘True Blood’ Hates Gay People.” io9, November 1. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://io9.com/5071755/lets-face-it-true-blood-hates-gay-people.

Ndalianis, Angela. 2012. The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses. Jefferson: McFarland Publishing.

Sennett, Richard. 2006. The Culture of the New Capitalism. London: Yale University Press.

Shen, Maxine. 2009. “Flesh & ‘Blood’.” New York Post, June 23. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://nypost.com/2009/06/23/flesh-blood/.

Solomon, Deborah. 2010. “Once Bitten: Questions for Charlaine Harris.” The New York Times, April 30. Accessed April 28, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02fob-Q4-t.html?_r=0.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1987. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen.

Tyree, J. M. 2009. “Warm-Blooded: True Blood and Let the Right One In.” Film Quarterly 63(2): 31-37.

Yabroff, Jennie. 2008. “A Bit Long in the Tooth.” Newsweek, December 15. 152(24).

 

Filmography

Ball, Alan. True Blood. 2008-2014. USA: HBO.

King-Jones, Abi and Errol Wright. Operation 8. 2011. NZ: www.cutcutcut.com.

Lieber, Jeffrey, Abrams, J. J., and Damon Lindelof. Lost.2004-2010. USA: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

Nolan, Christopher. 2008. The Dark Knight. USA: Warner Home Video.

 

Notes

[1] My thanks to the anonymous referee for their thoughtful comments and suggestions for improving the paper’s analytical focus. I am also grateful to Kevin Fisher for sharing his insights on Baudrillard and transmedia during the writing of this paper and to Katharine Legun for her help with improving the clarity and coherency of the paper. An early version of this paper was published in the magazine Cherrie. The original version of the paper can be found here: http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/feature/vamps-and-queers-5136.html

 

Bio: Holly Randell-Moon is a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her publications on popular culture, gender, and sexuality have appeared in the edited book collections Common Sense: Intelligence as Presented on Popular Television (2008) and Television Aesthetics and Style (2013) and the journal Feminist Media Studies. She has also published on race, religion, and secularism in the journals Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, borderlands and Social Semiotics and in the edited book collections Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences (2008) and Mediating Faiths (2010).

 

Defining Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance: Crossing Boundaries of Genre, Media, Self and Other in New Supernatural Worlds – Leigh M. McLennon

Fig.1 “Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is one of the pioneering fiction series of urban fantasy and paranormal romance.”

Figure 1. Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is one of the pioneering fiction series of urban fantasy and paranormal romance.

The Emergence of Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy

Although it emerged only in the 1990s, the urban fantasy and paranormal romance genre now exerts a powerful influence on representations of monsters and the supernatural in popular culture.  Over the last 25 years or so, urban fantasy and paranormal romance (hereafter abbreviated as UF/PR) has developed into a new, easily recognisable genre formula: sympathetic vampires (and/or other monsters) join magic-wielding (often leather-clad) heroines to solve mysteries and/or consummate transgressive romances. This genre is now prevalent not only in popular fiction, but in broader popular culture including television, film, comics, RPG, and pop culture and scifi conventions.

Academics, members of the publishing industry and readers alike have noted the prevalence and the commercial success of this new genre. For example, Angela Ndalianis suggests in The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses that “paranormal romance erupted as a runaway success in the 1990s.”[1] And in the years since 2000, UF/PR has continued to rise meteorically in popularity. In “P is for Paranormal – Still,” Lucinda Dyer of Publisher’s Weekly professed in 2010 that “Paranormal is le dernier cri in the romance category—its hold on readers and publishers alike defies any logic or explanation. In its first year it was a phase, then it became a definite trend. Now, it’s a sea change, with no evidence that the tide’s waning.”[2] And book critic and online reviewer Paul Goat Allen has argued that “the last ten years, specifically, in genre fiction have been nothing short of landscape-changing,” suggesting that from 2000 to the present time constitutes “a glorious Golden Age of paranormal fantasy.”[3] Further data from the publishing industry and online reviewers and fans clearly and unequivocally demonstrates the strong impact this new genre on the popular fiction industry and its consumers. [4]

Yet UF/PR remains surprisingly under-appreciated as a coherent body of genre texts. The primary difficulty in studying UF/PR as a genre is that although UF/PR has developed its own set of recognisable genre conventions (including character types, literary motifs and specific themes), these conventions have not been adequately defined or outlined critically. Pop culture industries have proliferated and even parodied[5] a successful genre formula, yet confusion remains for both fans and academics over distinctions between genre labels, distinctions between genres and sub-genres, and consequently over the inclusion or exclusion of particular texts as urban fantasy, paranormal romance, or something else altogether.

Critical confusion over the parameters of UF/PR is suggested by an over-abundance of new genre labels: should we properly label this genre “urban fantasy,” “dark fantasy,” “paranormal romance,” “paranormal thriller,” or “paranormal procedural”? An online search for genre labels such as “urban fantasy” and “paranormal romance” reveals a plethora of author- and fan-based blogs and websites debating the merits and niceties of using each genre categorisation. As Lenny Picker notes in Publisher’s Weekly, developing “a universally accepted definition of the boundaries of paranormal fiction” is a serious challenge. Picker further laments that “there’s just nothing even remotely resembling a consensus, even among some of the top authors with works included in the genre.”[6] Picker here highlights that it is difficult to define the limits of what is included as UF/PR, even for those who write this fiction. Critical analyses similarly have not reached  a clear consensus on how this genre is to be labelled and defined.

The relationship between UF/PR and other popular genres of fiction is also unclear. In Fang-tastic Fiction, Patricia O’Brien Matthews suggests there is also a critical confusion over how this newly-emerged genre relates to other, pre-existing categories of genre. O’Brien Matthews observes, “whether you search online, at a bookstore, or in a library, you will find no consensus as to where paranormal fiction titles are shelved.”[7] Angela Ndalianis similarly observes that “anyone can now walk into a bookshop” and find paranormal titles “in their very own paranormal romance section, but also under romance, horror, science fiction and fantasy, and crime – all in one store!”[8] If UF/PR is shelved in multiple sections in libraries and bookstores, do we understand this fiction as a genre, a subgenre, or a hybrid genre?

Given the newness of UF/PR and these confusions over what UF/PR itself actually constitutes (or is constituted by), it is unsurprising that to date few critics have provided a truly comprehensive and clear history of this genre. But (as will be discussed below) when critics analyse individual UF/PR texts, unless framed by a history of the genre, their analyses too often remain disconnected from significant intertextual and pop-cultural influences. Such intertextual influences extend across different forms in different media (for example, from novel to film, or novel to television). But studies of UF/PR in one textual medium do not often expand their inquiry to transmedia adaptations and iterations. Consequently, they do not recognise which conventions of this genre are transmedia; nor how different media formats may actually influence the conventions and content of UF/PR. The result is a general critical failure to recognise or analyse the significant textual influences of generic hybridity and transmedia formats in UF/PR. Critics subsequently fail to address how individual UF/PR texts operate as iterations that both uphold and subvert the strictures of genre. It is thus difficult to analyse the broader significance of how this popular genre trend is both inflected by and used to explore our own contemporary culture.

A broader history of urban fantasy and paranormal romance is needed. This article aims to provide a definition and history of UF/PR. In doing so, it will provide a platform from which we can better analyse and understand how individual UF/PR texts may generate and contest this genre’s formal and thematic boundaries. With this in mind, my definition of urban fantasy seeks to be specific, delimiting some of the key parameters and conventions of UF/PR, while also being inclusive, allowing for alternative approaches, histories and readings.  First, this article will establish a methodological framework for its genre study of UF/PR. Next, the article will critique several extant approaches to this genre. It will then offer my own original and complementary genre history and definition. Most significantly, this article argues UF/PR is defined in part by generic hybridity. It further argues that UF/PR is both formally and thematically concerned with destabilising boundaries – boundaries of genre, of media, of self and the monstrous Other.  Finally, the article will conclude that understanding how UF/PR transgresses the boundaries of both genre and media is crucial to understanding its current popularity and commercial success.

Genre Theory: A Methodological Framework for Defining A Genre

Before offering a history and definition of UF/PR, it is useful to critically summarise how this genre has previously been defined by academics, the publishing industry, and the fans who consume UF/PR texts. Critically assessing competing genre histories of UF/PR will better position this article to suggest a more comprehensive definition and history below. As Altman suggests, the work of the genre theorist is “to adjudicate among conflicting approaches, not so much by dismissing unsatisfactory positions, but by constructing a model which reveals the relationship between differing critical claims and their function within a broader cultural context.”[9] By critically assessing extant definitions of urban fantasy and paranormal romance, this article is better positioned to reveal and consequently provide evidence to confirm or dispute the conventions of this genre that have been heretofore proposed.

Considering previous genre definitions and histories of UF/PR also highlights (and better positions this article to avoid) two key problems prevalent in performing any genre study. First, there is a problematic critical tendency to view genre as existing in a perfect form at a fixed point in time. Altman suggests these critical problems stem from a traditional, “synchronic” approach to genre theory: “Genres were always – and continue to be – treated as if they spring full-blown from the head of Zeus.” They are analysed, Altman continues, as though they are “fundamentally ahistorical in nature,” existing in an abstract, perfect form that he likens to “platonic categories.”[10] Without an ideal model for a genre, it is difficult to decide whether individual texts uphold or subvert generic conventions. And yet such models are misleading because they suggest the structures of any given genre are “ahistorical” and static.

Second, there is a problematic critical tendency to construct genre history as an inevitable and linear development of what will become a fixed set of conventions. In contrast, Altman suggests that a diachronic approach to genre history ought to focus instead on “on chronicling the development, deployment, and disappearance of this same structure” of genre.[11] In other words, genre history should suggest that what may seem at a particular point in time to be a fixed generic structure is always a dynamic interplay of conventions. As Altman writes in Film/Genre, genre is not a static state but a “process of genre creation,” a “process of genrification” which is “continuous” and “ongoing.”[12] A diachronic approach therefore demands that critics understand genre as a developing set of structures which evolve, cohere and dissolve over time. Moreover, genre history should not tell of the straightforward development of a form of genre, followed by a number of variations on that form: instead, it must allow for the recognition that alternative histories and alternative developments in genre structures are always possible.

In addition to a tendency to ignore how genres continually undergo a process of formation and/or disintegration, previous critical attempts to define UF/PR ignore that this process is what Altman terms “a transactional process whereby conflict and negotiation among user groups constantly transform generic designations.” Altman highlights that the formation of a genre is a process that is engaged in by “user groups,” groups which influence both the “production” of texts and their “reception”: in other words, groups which include members of industry, popular and academic critics, and general audiences.[13] While Altman focuses on the film and television industry, in Popular Fiction Ken Gelder emphasises the importance of considering both production and reception when analysing popular fiction. Gelder argues that genre fiction is “not just a matter of texts-in-themselves, but of an entire apparatus of production, distribution . . . and consumption.”[14] He thus suggests that the process of commercial development and consumption also plays an important role in developing genre. Taking into account the “transactional” nature of the process whereby genre emerges through an “apparatus of production,” my genre definition and history differs sharply from previous critical attempts to define UF/PR because it also seeks to include the observations and analyses of various significant “user groups”: academic critics, authors, members of the publishing industry, and the audiences who consume these texts.

Problems in Defining UF/PR: Competing Histories and Definitions

There are several critical problems that recur in extant histories and definitions of UF/PR. By highlighting these recurring problems here, this article may then avoid them in the history and definition of UF/PR to follow. These recurring critical problems are as follows. First, critics tend to approach UF/PR as a subgenre that has been influenced by a single “parent” genre. Related to this, both critics and fans often exhibit a genre bias, filtering their genre history and definition through the lens of the genre that they perceive to be the primary influence on UF/PR. In attempting to define UF/PR as the generic offspring of another genre, these studies often incorrectly imply that UF/PR is primarily influenced by one other genre in particular: fantasy or romance or Gothic and horror. For example, Ndalianis offers an excellent analysis of “what happens when romance and horror meet” in the paranormal romance genre.[15] However, Ndalianis primarily approaches paranormal romance as a “subcategory” of the broader category of romance fiction (78), thereby disregarding significant influences on UF/PR from other genres such as fantasy or crime fiction. In their critical fan discussion of romance in Beyond Heaving Bosoms, Wendell and Tan also suggest that UF/PR is a “subgenre” of paranormal romance.[16] Conversely, The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature includes “urban fantasy” and “paranormal romance” as genre categories in its study of fantasy fiction, suggesting that one might consider urban fantasy and/or paranormal romance primarily as fantasy genre texts.[17]

In one example of how genre bias may influence definitions of UF/PR, in “Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Romance,” Kaveney gives a definition of a genre she categorises as “dark fantasy,” which includes paranormal romance as one of its subcategories.[18] However, her broad definition of dark fantasy literature fails to distinguish dark fantasy from Gothic and horror fictions more broadly;[19] and her more specific definition of popular dark fantasy relies on invoking conventions from another genre entirely, that of detective and crime fiction.[20] Moreover, Kaveney maintains that paranormal romance is a subcategory of dark fantasy, defined by “the extent to which its plot is determined by its erotic dimensions.”[21] This definition, however, problematically conflates “erotic” fiction with romance fiction, a distinction that is in fact highly significant.[22] Kaveney’s bias toward fantasy fiction in a critical anthology for that genre nonetheless limits her analysis of the significant influences of Gothic/horror, romance and crime genres on UF/PR.[23] Her categorisations of “dark fantasy,” “template dark fantasy” (urban fantasy) and “paranormal romance” are thus unconvincing.

The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature also offers an example of the second problem common to extant critical assessments of UF/PR: critical academic definitions of UF/PR may be alarmingly disconnected from industry and consumer definitions of the same texts. This Cambridge Companion broadly and inexcusably disregards the ways in which the terms “urban fantasy” and “paranormal romance” are used by those who produce and consume UF/PR texts.[24] For example, Kaveney’s use of “dark fantasy” as a genre label is highly problematic because “dark fantasy” is no longer a term popularly used or even recognised by current fans of UF/PR.[25] Irvine’s chapter “Urban Fantasy” similarly disregards the popular usage of this genre label. Irvine offers a very precise definition of this urban fantasy as “a group of texts . . . in which the tropes of pastoral or heroic fantasy were brought into an urban setting,” noting that the genre “quickly grew to encompass historical novels and overlap with . . . new wave fabulism or the New Weird.” Irvine emphasises heavily the role of the city in urban fantasy as both setting and actor in the narrative. But Irvine laments that “the writers of ‘paranormal romance’ have all but co-opted the term” urban fantasy, using it for an entirely different set of texts. In this respect, his focus on fabulist and “weird” urban fictions is starkly at odds with consumer definitions of UF/PR.[26] In fact, Kaveney’s “template dark fantasy” better aligns with the popular conception of “urban fantasy” as a genre category.

Figure 2. Laurell K Hamilton’s Narcissus in Chains (2001) marks a shift in Hamilton’s series from mystery-oriented horror to paranormal erotica.

Figure 2. Laurell K Hamilton’s Narcissus in Chains (2001) marks a shift in Hamilton’s series from mystery-oriented horror to paranormal erotica.

The third critical problem common to extant critical definitions of UF/PR is the way that these definitions consistently attempt to establish urban fantasy and paranormal romance as separate taxonomic categories. For example, by separating urban fantasy and paranormal romance taxonomically, the editors of the Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Fiction strongly suggest that urban fantasy and paranormal romance are distinct modes of popular fiction. Fan outrage over a perceived misuse of these terms also suggests that a distinction can be made between “urban fantasy” and “paranormal romance.” For example, Laurell K Hamilton is controversial among readers of UF/PR for abruptly transforming her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series (1993-present) from urban fantasy into paranormal erotica in the series’ tenth novel, Narcissus in Chains. For more than a decade, Hamilton has endured significant criticism from fans and anti-fans whose genre expectations are disappointed by the genre shift within her series.[27]

One commonly-accepted distinction between urban fantasy and paranormal romance is whether action/mystery or romance act as the primary narrative drive in the plot. For example, Gwenda Bond notes that in the publishing industry, “the terms urban fantasy and paranormal romance are often used interchangeably. But . . . while the two frequently cross over among audiences, there is a key distinction.” In support of her argument, she quotes Avon Publications’ executive editor Erika Tsang: “In paranormal romance the relationship between the couple is the focus of the main plot. In urban fantasy, the world that the couple exists in is the focus.” In other words, the extent to which the romance constitutes the primary narrative of the text determines whether or not it can be categorised as “paranormal romance”; texts in which a horror- or mystery-based narrative take priority may be more properly considered “urban fantasy.”

In the same article, Bond also quotes Heather Osborn, a romance editor at Tor Books, in another attempt to distinguish urban fantasy from paranormal romance. Osborn determines a genre distinction between urban fantasy and paranormal romance dependent on what romance fans such as Wendell and Tan commonly term the “Happily Ever After” convention:[28] “My number one consideration is if there’s a resolution of the romance at the end of the book. If there’s no resolution of the romance, and it’s in the romance section, readers will let their anger be known.” Bond suggests that for readers, a high content of romance and a romantic resolution play a crucial role in defining a genre text as paranormal romance and not urban fantasy. Bond’s article thus highlights how definitions of genre must negotiate between competing influences from consumers and the publishing industry.[29]

The above examples demonstrate how critics, authors and fans may offer differing and competing histories and definitions of UF/PR as a genre. Though these histories and definitions have been critiqued here, it is important to recognise that such definitions are not necessarily incorrect. Rather, they fail to be comprehensive. Moreover, they are misleading in that they privilege a genre model which understands UF/PR as a subgenre, or even as two distinct genres, which have evolved in a straightforward fashion from one or two parent genres. By attempting to categorise and understand UF/PR as subgenre of horror or fantasy or mystery or romance, and by distinguishing between urban fantasy and paranormal romance as separate subgenres, these definitions obscure the complex generic interplay which actually constitutes UF/PR.

A Genre History of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance

Rather than attempting to distinguish between urban fantasy and paranormal romance, or trace a genre history through one specific parent genre, this article instead offers a genre history that focuses on how UF/PR has developed as a hybrid genre. In this way, it provides a complementary history to those definitions critiqued above. “Urban fantasy” first emerged as a genre label in the early 1980s. The term categorised a new form of popular fantasy fiction which dramatised a magical incursion into a fictional version of the contemporary, urban world. In this fiction, a human protagonist confronts fairies and elves from an alternative, magical world. In the 1980s and early 1990s, this early urban fantasy was produced by North American writers such as Charles de Lint, Terri Windling,, Emma Bull, and Mercedes Lackey.  In addition to a shared narrative plot, the early urban fantasy texts of these authors also share thematic conventions. First and foremost, early urban fantasy destabilises the boundaries between reality/fantasy and self/Other. Consequently, the protagonist in the text is forced to question his or her own identity and social role in relation to those boundaries. In effect, the protagonist must decide to reject the fantastic Other and maintain conventional binaries and boundaries, or to embrace the possibilities of a multiplicitous identity in new worlds no longer constrained by such binaries and boundaries.[30]

Figure 3. Terri Windling’s Borderland (1986) and Bordertown (1986) are two examples of early urban fantasy series in which the real world and fantasy fairylands collide.

Figure 3. Terri Windling’s Borderland (1986) and Bordertown (1986) are two examples of early urban fantasy series in which the real world and fantasy fairylands collide.

Over time, however, the term “urban fantasy” has been more broadly applied (sometimes retro-actively) to describe other popular speculative fictions.[31] Today it is also commonly used to categorise “weird fiction” by authors such as China Miéville, contemporary fantasy by authors such as Neil Gaiman, and steampunk fiction by authors such as Tim Powers, Scott Westerfield, and Gail Carriger. It is also commonly used to categorise much popular fiction centred on supernatural beings, including werewolves, witches, angels, and the seemingly omnipresent vampire.

Certain examples of vampire fiction in particular had already begun to merge into urban fantasy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many texts from this period can be retroactively labelled as UF/PR due to their generic blending of fantasy, horror, mystery and action conventions – for example, Lee Killough’s Blood Hunt and Bloodlinks, P.N. Elrod’s Vampire Files series, television series Forever Knight, Tanya Huff’s Blood series, and Laurell K Hamilton’s early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels.[32] Early versions of vampire-centred urban fantasy (including novels by Killough and Elrod, and television series Forever Knight) typically follow a male human protagonist who is transformed into a vampire and subsequently struggles to solve a series of mysteries.

Figure 4. Mercedes Lackey’s Knight of Ghosts and Shadows begins another early urban fantasy series in which the boundaries between the contemporary real world and an alternate fantasy realm dissolve. On its cover, two elves battle in front of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

Figure 4. Mercedes Lackey’s Knight of Ghosts and Shadows begins another early urban fantasy series in which the boundaries between the contemporary real world and an alternate fantasy realm dissolve. On its cover, two elves battle in front of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

To date, few academics have adequately accounted for the connection between fairy-centred early urban fantasy by authors such as de Lint, Bull, Windling and Lackey, and this early vampire crime fiction. Instead, critics tend to separate the two kinds of fiction into “traditional urban fantasy” and “contemporary urban fantasy,”[33] or suggest that the labels have been “co-opted” and incorrectly applied.[34] But if we consider formal and thematic hybridity and the transgression of boundaries to be the distinguishing elements of UF/PR texts, this explains how two apparently disparate trends in popular fiction (elves and vampires) merged into the broader category of “urban fantasy” after the year 2000.[35] For example, in early urban fantasy fiction, a human protagonist from the contemporary world is confronted with supernatural knowledge that challenges his or her understanding of reality and identity; similarly, in vampire crime fiction, a human protagonist who discovers the existence of vampires faces a similar challenge to his or her ideological worldview . The presence of a specific supernatural character trope (such as elves or vampires) is less significant than its combination with the broader generic structure of hybridity, a structure which inflects both form (transgressing genre conventions) and content (challenging the power structures of self/Other).[36]

Vampire literature in the 1980s and 1990s primarily explores the destabilisation between the boundaries of fantasy and reality, and self and Other, through the trope of the “humanised” or “good” vampire. The figure of the humanised, ethically and spiritually self-conscious vampire first emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in fictions by Fred Saberhagen, Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Suzy McKee Charnas, and George R. R. Martin. David Punter and Glennis Byron summarise how the vampire’s role in representing the social Other has changed over the last century due to “the modern humanisation of the vampire.”[37] They define how “in nineteenth-century fiction, the representation of the vampire as monstrous, evil and other serves to guarantee the existence of good, reinforcing . . . formally dichotomized structures of belief which . . . still constituted the dominant world view.”[38] But in vampire fiction in the late twentieth century, the vampire becomes “more sympathetic, closer to the human and much less radically the ‘other’”[39] as “the oppositions between good and evil are increasingly problematized.”[40] The vampires and other “humanised” monsters of UF/PR develop from this earlier trend begun in the vampire literature of the 1970s.

Figure 5. Detective Nicholas Knight from Forever Knight (1992-1996) exemplifies a trend from the late 1980s and early 1990s in which vampire detectives struggle to reject their vampiric nature and behave as “good” humans.

Figure 5. Detective Nicholas Knight from Forever Knight (1992-1996) exemplifies a trend from the late 1980s and early 1990s in which vampire detectives struggle to reject their vampiric nature and behave as “good” humans.

UF/PR in the 1980s and 1990s likewise destabilises the assumed connections between monstrosity, evil and Otherness. For example, vampires like Killough’s Garreth Mikaelian, Huff’s Henry Fitzroy and Forever Knight’s Nicholas Knight struggle against their monstrous ontologies in order to be “good people.” Many of these protagonists face torturous ethical struggles similar to those of Anne Rice’s well-known vampire aesthetes in Interview with the Vampire.[41] However, unlike Rice’s Lestat and Louis, who must drink human blood, vampires in 1990s urban fantasy differ on one important point: to be good vampires, they must refuse to drink human blood. Through their determined abstinence, the vampires of these early urban fantasy texts become the first truly “good” vampires in fiction, television and film. For the first time, vampire fiction in the 1990s broadly explored the concept of vampires who want to do and be good in the human world by acting as human as possible. Throughout this decade, the convention of the abstaining vampire remained popular.

Also in the 1990s, Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series and Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer follow this same humanist conception that to be a good vampire means to abstain from vampirism and behave as much like a human as possible. In the early 1990s, Hamilton’s vampire-hunting, crime-solving heroine Anita Blake feels conflicted in her attraction to vampires, believing that vampires must be evil if they want to feed from her.[42] Similarly, Joss Whedon’s titular heroine in Buffy the Vampire Slayer can only become romantically entangled with “good” monsters who refuse to feed on humans (for example, the vampire Angel, who possessed his soul; and later the vampire Spike, who was forced to stop feeding on humans).[43]

Anita Blake and Buffy are also exemplary UF/PR texts of the 1990s because they introduce arguably the most significant new genre convention to emerge in UF/PR in this decade: a strong female protagonist in the role of an investigator and action heroine. Characters like Huff’s Vicki Nelson, Hamilton’s Anita Blake and Whedon’s Buffy Summers manifest the contemporary cultural significance of girl-power, and post- and third-wave feminism that emerged the 1990s.[44] These heroines refuse the traditional position of victim in the horror genre. In UF/PR, they instead embrace the agentive role of the heroine.[45]

But in new fictional worlds that challenge the boundaries between fantasy and reality, these heroines struggle in new ways with the destabilisation of boundaries between the self and the Other. As Elaine Graham states in Representations of the Post/Human, “that which is different becomes pathologised as ‘monstrous’ and thus inhuman, disposable and dangerous …. So women . . . are designated inhuman by virtue of their non-identity to the white, male reasoning able-bodied subject.”[46] Graham here explains how women in a patriarchal society are constructed as socially Other, and this Otherness may be framed as monstrosity. Speaking of the role of the heroine in the horror text, Linda Williams argues, in “When the Woman Looks,” that the female protagonist in a horror text experiences “fear of the monster’s freakishness, but also recognizes the sense in which this freakishness is similar to her own difference,”[47] the difference of female Otherness in patriarchal culture. Williams thus suggests that recognition of a shared Otherness can lead to new affinities between monsters and heroines. Female protagonists in UF/PR texts of the 1990s struggle with tensions between their role as heroines who must defeat monstrous Others, their romantic and sexual attraction to monstrous Others, and the recognition that they too are Othered in their role as feminist or post-feminist agents in a patriarchal society.

Figure 6. This season four (2011) poster for True Blood (2008-2014) emphasises the centrality of part-fairy female protagonist Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin). Playing with the gaze, the poster represents Sookie simultaneously as a sexually empowered subject and an object of the monstrous male desire.

Figure 6. This season four (2011) poster for True Blood (2008-2014) emphasises the centrality of part-fairy female protagonist Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin). Playing with the gaze, the poster represents Sookie simultaneously as a sexually empowered subject and an object of the monstrous male desire.

In the years since 2000, female protagonists have dominated UF/PR, typically narrating their own adventures from the first person perspective. In this era, the boundaries between self and Other, human and monster, and good and evil become further blurred. Protagonists no longer simply fight monsters, but themselves become increasingly monstrous. Heroines who began as mostly human in the 1990s become increasing supernatural. For example, beyond 2000 Hamilton’s Anita Blake develops from a mostly-human necromancer to a mostly-monstrous carrier of the lycanthropy virus and a succubus who feeds on sexual activity. And the heroine of Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries, Sookie Stackhouse, begins as a mostly-human telepath but learns she is actually an entirely different monstrous species, a fairy.[48]  In the twenty-first century, many other heroines also begin their series as supernatural creatures outright: for example, Kelley Armstrong’s werewolf heroine Elena Michaels,[49] and Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson, a shapeshifting Native American skinwalker.[50]

As UF/PR has further developed after 2000, the now-supernatural protagonists of UF/PR often live in an innovative new supernatural, fictional world. Prior to 2000, monstrous horror texts generally depicted a protagonist who stumbled onto the secret existence of a supernatural being or even a secret, underground supernatural world. But since 2000, a new kind of fictional world has emerged in which the supernatural is openly acknowledged as a part of the everyday. In this supernatural-yet-everyday world, vampires, werewolves and other supernatural beings live openly in human society, framed as social and cultural minority groups. Laurell K Hamilton pioneered the concept of the everyday-supernatural as a new setting in her Anita Blake series in the 1990s. Since 2000, the everyday-supernatural has become increasingly popular as a fictional setting and is now utilised in series by many popular authors including Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, Carrie Vaughn, Patricia Briggs, Illona Andrews, Chloe Neill, Kelly Gay and Faith Hunter.

Figure 7. Viral marketing for True Blood (2008-2014) drew on its “everyday supernatural” world model to play with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. A poster campaign here advertises the “Vampire Rights Amendment,” a fictional amendment to the US Constitution which would grant vampires rights as citizens in the human world.

Figure 7. Viral marketing for True Blood (2008-2014) drew on its “everyday supernatural” world model to play with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. A poster campaign here advertises the “Vampire Rights Amendment,” a fictional amendment to the US Constitution which would grant vampires rights as citizens in the human world.

In the everyday-supernatural world, monster hunters and slayers lose their moral certainty as protagonists, further destabilising the binaries of real/fantastic, human/Other and good/evil. As Graham writes, “One of the ways in particular in which the boundaries between humans and almost-humans have been asserted is through the discourse of ‘monstrosity.’ Monsters serve both to mark the fault-lines but also, subversively, to signal the fragility of such boundaries.”[51]  In texts which use everyday-supernatural settings, humans and monsters must constantly renegotiate the boundaries between self and Other in order to co-exist successfully. In these fictional worlds, heroines are no longer able to uphold human law and protect the innocent, because human law can no longer adequately account for cultural and ethical differences between the monstrous and the human inhabitants of society.

At the same time, in many UF/PR texts produced after the year 2000, vampires and other monsters are no longer required to abstain from their predatory hungers (both literal and sexual) to be considered ethically “good.” Instead, they now seek fulfilling, posthuman interconnections with others. Paranormal romances challenge the boundaries between self and the monstrous Other when a romantic attraction causes two potential lovers to re-evaluate their identities and philosophies. And, as Helen Bailie writes in “Blood Ties: The Vampire Lover in the Popular Romance,” in paranormal romance “the taking of blood . . . becomes a necessary element of the sexual relationship” and the vampiric bite “is an affirmation of . . . acceptance of the vampire lover and his environment.”[52] In UF/PR beyond 2000, vampiric feeding is no longer inherently evil. Instead, the vampiric exchange of blood becomes repositioned as a positive act of interconnection which also demonstrates acceptance of the lover’s Otherness.

The popularity of these new genre conventions in the years since 2000 suggests a significant posthuman shift in UF/PR as a genre. David Held has suggested “reason[ing] from the point of view of others” is a significant necessity in the “overlapping communities of fate” created by modern globalisation.[53] Such overlapping communities are geographic and social, but they are also cultural, technological, and ecological. These communities exist in posthuman worlds: worlds which necessitate, in the worlds of Neil Badmington, “a careful, ongoing . . . rethinking of the dominant humanist (or anthropocentric) account of who ‘we’ are as human beings. In the light of posthumanist theory and culture, ‘we’ are not who ‘we’ once believed ourselves to be. And neither are ‘our’ others.”[54] Posthumanist theory argues that the differences between the (white, patriarchal, dominant) humanist self and the (raced, gendered, queer, animal, technological, monstrous) Other have become destabilised in the contemporary world. Since 2000, UF/PR increasingly explores the possibilities and the difficulties of thriving in iterations of contemporary, global, monstrous and post-human worlds. In the twenty-first century, UF/PR uses its communities of monsters to suggest that as we are increasingly enabled and required to see the world from the point of view of the Other in the global world, we are increasingly unable to maintain clear boundaries between what is self and what is Other, who to include and who to exclude, and what is right and what is wrong.

A Definition for Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance

As indicated by this history of UF/PR, the primary elements of this genre can be articulated in a variety of ways. The foregoing chronological history of UF/PR can be combined with Rick Altman’s syntactic and semantic framework for genre in order to give a more functional and specific set of definitions for UF/PR. Altman suggests that genre can be defined both syntactically and semantically to build a more complex picture of how particular genres develop and operate. He argues that

we can as a whole distinguish between generic definitions which depend on a list of common traits, attitudes, characters, shots, locations, sets, and the like – thus stressing the semantic elements which make up the genre – and definitions which play up instead certain constitutive relationships between undesignated and variable placeholders – relationships which might be called the genre’s fundamental syntax. The semantic approach thus stresses the genre’s building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the structures into which they are arranged.[55]

In other words, a syntactic definition of genre outlines a narrative structure that broadly repeats within a genre, and a semantic definition refers to its recognizable conventions, tropes and motifs. Syntactic and semantic elements interact to create a specific genre text.

This model allows us to define UF/PR as follows. In terms of its syntax, or its basic narrative paradigm: UF/PR combines elements of romance, horror, mystery and/or thriller narratives to tell the story of a conflict and/or an alliance between a human (or human faction) and a supernatural monster (or supernatural faction). This story occurs in a world in which the boundaries between reality and the supernatural fantastic have been destabilised or re-ordered entirely. As the plot progresses, the conflict and/or alliance between factions destabilises the boundaries that define and distinguish self from Other and good from evil within this world. This definition is necessarily broad because UF/PR texts are highly flexible and may articulate this semantic structure in many different ways, hybridising it with a wide variety of conventions from other genre fiction.

A more specific paradigm for UF/PR as a genre can be established by identifying its most prominent semantic elements. These are as follows:

  1. UF/PR is paranormal fiction. Its stories contain paranormal, supernatural, fantastic and monstrous entities. This paranormal element is usually found in excess: UF/PR narratives usually contain not one kind of monster or magic, but many kinds.
  2. UF/PR constructs a specific setting for its fictional worlds. The fictional worlds UF/PR closely mimic our contemporary reality but contain additional supernatural content. Moreover, there are two significant variants of this setting. In one, the supernatural elements of the world are secret, underground and hidden from mainstream society. In the other, there the supernatural is an accepted part of the everyday, existing openly as part of contemporary society.
  3. UF/PR commonly follows a monster-hunter, investigator or detective as a protagonist, utilising a mystery or thriller plotline. Thus, the protagonist must typically work to resolve a conflict, crime or other mysterious event.
  4. The UF/PR protagonist generally possesses a supernatural power or monstrous nature, and often becomes increasingly supernaturally powerful or monstrous as the narrative progresses.
  5. The majority of protagonists in UF/PR are female.
  6. The majority of protagonists in UF/PR also narrate their adventures from the first person perspective.
  7. UF/PR is a hybrid and transmedia genre, utilising elements from many other genres and formats. In this respect, in transgressing the boundaries of genre and media, the form of UF/PR complements its content, which thematically transgresses the boundaries between reality and the fantastic and the self and Other.

Over time the particular elements which are blended in UF/PR from various popular genres have become formulaic. However, not all UF/PR texts use all of these semantic elements of genre all the time. And not all UF/PR series blend these conventions in the same proportions. This is where confusion typically arises over the distinction between urban fantasy and paranormal romance.  This specific yet flexible definition of UF/PR suggests, however, that the significance of a distinction between urban fantasy and paranormal romance has been over-emphasised.

Figure 7. Viral marketing for True Blood (2008-2014) drew on its “everyday supernatural” world model to play with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. A poster campaign here advertises the “Vampire Rights Amendment,” a fictional amendment to the US Constitution which would grant vampires rights as citizens in the human world.

Figure 8.  The poster for Breaking Dawn: Part 2 (2012) shows protagonist Bella Swan, now transformed into a vampire, as she runs toward battle against the Volturi, the ruling vampire council. Even though the Twilight Saga is primarily romance, it thus utilises key conventions of urban fantasy.

For example, even in an apparently straightforward “urban fantasy” text with a male protagonist, such as Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files,[56] we encounter a romance subplot. And even the texts most commonly categorised as “paranormal romance” may utilise elements typically found in urban fantasy. For example, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga bolsters its primary narrative of a love triangle between human Bella Swan, vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black with other semantic and syntactic elements common to urban fantasy. Typical of most UF/PR protagonists, Bella acquires her own monstrous and supernatural powers when she eventually becomes a powerful vampire herself. And the Twilight Saga includes detailed supernatural world-building, such as supernatural social conflicts which its heroine must resolve. Bella must mediate the broader supernatural feud between the vampires and werewolves of her world; she must also mediate between her good vampire family, and the dangerous vampiric political hierarchy of the Volturi.[57]

It is for this reason I suggest the distinction between urban fantasy and paranormal romance is unnecessary, and prefer to refer to the genre under the umbrella term “urban fantasy and paranormal romance.” Rather than imagining these two modes of fiction as distinct genres, or as distinct subgenres, it is more helpful to consider urban fantasy and paranormal romance as two ends of a broader genre continuum. The model of a genre spectrum allows a broad range of both urban fantasy and paranormal romance texts to be analysed in relation to the same syntactic and semantic elements of genre. Where exactly to place historical paranormal fiction[58] or fairytale retellings[59] on this spectrum is a matter for further analysis. It is almost impossible to account for all possible iterations, combinations and subversions of genre convention in one genre model. However, a conception of UF/PR as a genre continuum allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between urban fantasy and paranormal romance, and the hybridisation of other generic conventions in texts which are considered UF/PR.

Crossing Boundaries: UF/PR as a Thematically Transgressive, Hybrid and Transmedia Genre

In understanding UF/PR as primarily influenced by one or two other genres, critics, authors and fans alike fail to consider the extent to which UF/PR is constructed through and characterised by genre hybridity. UF/PR transgresses traditional boundaries of genre by simultaneously hybridising, cannibalising and parodying generic structures from other numerous genres.[60] For example, from fantasy fiction, UF/PR may borrow conventions such as extensive serialised world-building, a quest narrative, and a band of unlikely companions as key characters. From the Gothic, it may borrow a vulnerable, emotionally sensible heroine. From American Gothic specifically, it borrows its fictional geographic locations, the challenge of puritan values through sexual deviance, and anxiety about the government of society. Drawing from monstrous horror, UF/PR explores the taboo and abject, the spread of contagion and the loss of self control. The prevalence of vampires in UF/PR also results in texts that invoke conventions of vampire literature, such as the late twentieth century convention of the morally conscientious vampire protagonist or lover. From romance, UF/PR borrows the conventions of a forbidden love (interracial, interspecies and across socio-economic class) and/or the love triangle. Borrowing from chick lit, female protagonists in UF/PR may explore gendered tensions between career and romance, or draw on the convention of the urban affective family. From detective and crime fiction, UF/PR frequently borrows the generic structure of a mystery format, as well as detailed descriptive attention to procedures and forensics, to violent action, and to guns and other weaponry. Like the noir detective, UF/PR protagonists are often social outcasts or loners; they emphasise the significance of toughness in the face of adversity; and they usually uphold a personal moral code that does not necessarily mesh with conventional morality. And UF/PR also draws on science fiction in its speculative nature, its use of advanced technologies and new medical procedures, and even in the construction of futuristic, post-cataclysmic and post-apocalyptic societies.

Kim Harrison’s Hollows series[61] provides a specific example of how these various conventions may blend together in one UF/PR series. Harrison’s protagonist Rachel Morgan combines character tropes from the horror and detective genres: she is a witch/demon who uses her supernatural powers to work as a tough-talking private investigator. Harrison’s fictional world model is a speculative alternative reality that is post-cataclysmic: Rachel lives in a fictional version of Cincinnati that exists after “the Turn,” a historical event in which a batch of genetically modified tomatoes generated a virus that wiped out a large percentage of the human population. The Turn also exposed the existence of supernatural species such as witches, werewolves, vampires, elves, pixies who were immune to this virus. Harrison’s world-model thus draws on conventions of science fiction, fantasy and horror, creating a speculative alternate reality in which creatures from fantasy and horror mingle with advanced medical and scientific knowledge. Rachel forms a detective agency with Ivy, a lesbian vampire, and Jenks, a pixy. As well as following a mystery format, the series also follows the quest narrative of high fantasy fiction when this band of unlikely companions work together not only to solve crimes but to save the city and/or the world from magical threats. Rachel’s band of unlikely companions is also another form of the urban affective family: Rachel, Ivy and Jenks live together and gradually welcome other friends into their close-knit and trusted family group. Harrison’s series also includes a number of romance subplots in which Rachel repeatedly falls for the wrong man – in mystery parlance, an homme fatal. Rachel also experiments with a same-sex relationship with Ivy, pushing the boundaries of heterosexual romance fiction. Harrison’s titles (for example, The Good, the Bad and the Undead and For a Few Demons More)[62] also parody titles in the Western genre. Harrison uses intertextual reference in her titles to position her heroine as a reworking of the Western outlaw-hero. Thus, Harrison’s series is a complex blend of conventions from horror, fantasy, vampire literature, science fiction, crime fiction, romance, chick lit and even the Western.

Figure 9. Kim Harrison’s Hollows series (2004-2014) exemplifies how UF/PR series blend genres.

Figure 9. Kim Harrison’s Hollows series (2004-2014) exemplifies how UF/PR series blend genres.

These examples are not intended as a comprehensive catalogue of the various conventions utilised in UF/PR: rather, the various conventions listed are intended to demonstrate that far from simply being a subgenre of fantasy, horror and/or romance, UF/PR is truly a hybrid genre. It draws broadly from the structures of a number of other genres and subgenres to both reinforce and subvert certain genre expectations. Individual UF/PR texts and series may not utilise all of these structures, but across the UF/PR genre, all these conventions and more are available for analysis. Genre hybridity is so prominent in UF/PR that it should be considered one of the most significant distinguishing factors of this genre.

In addition to crossing the boundaries of popular genres, UF/PR also crosses the boundaries of media. And in addition to a general critical failure to give adequate attention to UF/PR as a hybrid genre fiction, there has also been a general critical failure to analyse how UF/PR operates as a transmedia genre. UF/PR is most prolific as a category of popular fiction, usually formatted as serialised novels. But it also crosses into short story collections, world and series guides with exclusive new materials, ebook-only novellas and short stories (and other materials available via author websites), television, film, RPGs, graphic novels, web series, and even viral marketing and transmedia branding of consumer products.  Yet critics often fail to consider how cross-media adaptation and transmedia storytelling might impact the content and reception of UF/PR texts.

Henry Jenkins writes extensively on transmedia narratives in Convergence Culture[63] and on his blog, Confessions of an Aca-fan.[64] He defines “transmedia storytelling” as “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”[65] He further suggests that transmedia storytelling encourages “the production and circulation of knowledge within a networked society.”[66] In addition to this circulation of knowledge, Jenkins suggests that “the encyclopaedic ambitions of transmedia texts often results [sic] in what might be seen as gaps or excesses in the unfolding of the story… Readers, thus, have a strong incentive to continue to elaborate on these story elements.”[67] In this respect, transmedia texts are both participatory and performative. Such texts encourage ongoing audience speculation and discussion, and allow for audience participation and performance in media such as fanfiction and social media.

Jenkins distinguishes transmedia texts from those which are simply adapted from one medium to another, arguing that “we need to distinguish between adaptation, which reproduces the original narrative with minimum changes into a new medium and is essentially redundant to the original work, and extension, which expands our understanding of the original by introducing new elements into the fiction.”[68]  However, he also emphasises the concept of multiplicity, “the possibility of alternative versions of the characters or parallel universe versions of the stories” that emerge as texts develop between media. Jenkins suggests that “Multiplicity allows fans to take pleasure in alternative retellings, seeing the characters and events from fresh perspectives.”[69] The pleasure found in this multiplicity is also possible from more straightforward adaptations between media. If we consider UF/PR as a genre rife with this multiplicity, an understanding of UF/PR as both highly adaptive and transmedia becomes more clear.

It may seem at first as though UF/PR involves primarily straightforward adaptations in which texts are translated from one medium to another. However, UF/PR actually blurs the distinction between adaptation and transmedia storytelling, revelling in the possibilities of multiplicity for its characters and fictional worlds. For example, L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries trilogy has been adapted to a popular television series of the same name.[70] As adaptation, the television series drastically changes the narrative plot and characters of the original series. Far from being a straightforward adaptation of fiction to television, the popularity of the tv series has resulted in the publication of a number of new novels in the series.[71] Moreover, the success of the television series has led to the publication of online-only, tie-in short stories on L J Smith’s official website.[72] Even more surprisingly, as Smith, the series’ original author, no longer writes official Vampire Diaries tie-in novels, she recently began publishing her own “fanfiction” on Kindle Worlds, an Amazon.com fanfiction publishing platform. Through the Kindle format, Smith thus offers fans yet another alternative version of the broader Vampire Diaries narrative.[73] Numerous other UF/PR authors have also produced a range of works that span novels, short story anthologies, world guides, online-only e-books and e-novellas, and graphic novels (for example, Laurell K Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Marjorie Liu, Patricia Briggs and Kelley Armstrong have produced texts across these media).

Figure 10.  True Blood offers an example of a transmedia UF/PR text. Beginning as Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novel series (2001-2013), this text extends across novellas, short stories, companion world guides, as well as the television series True Blood (2008-2014), tie-in graphic novels, and True Blood’s viral and transmedia marketing campaign. Shown here is a viral billboard campaign.

Figure 10. True Blood offers an example of a transmedia UF/PR text. Beginning as Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novel series (2001-2013), this text extends across novellas, short stories, companion world guides, as well as the television series True Blood (2008-2014), tie-in graphic novels, and True Blood’s viral and transmedia marketing campaign. Shown here is a viral billboard campaign.

Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries series provides an even more dramatic example of how one UF/PR text can function as a transmedia text.[74] Harris’ series traverses various fictional genres: novels, short stories, novellas, a Sookie Stackhouse Companion including new “facts” about Harris’ fictional world (and even recipes mentioned in her fiction!), and an encyclopaedic series coda.[75] But Harris’ series also crosses into other media. Most prominently, it has been adapted as True Blood.[76] True Blood adapts material from Harris’ series, but it also contributes substantial new characters, plotlines and world-building to the series. True Blood itself has also crossed into ebooks and graphic novels. In 2008, a graphic novel prequel was released online only,[77]  and a number of tie-in graphic novels depict characters drawn after the corresponding actors in spin-off adventure narratives.[78] True Blood also has a wide transmedia viral marketing campaign that extends beyond the boundaries of traditional narrative media. The True Blood viral campaign includes extensive poster campaigns, tie-in advertising from real companies, functional websites promoting fictional settings and organisations from the series, social media campaigns, audience competitions, behind the scenes footage and bonus scenes made available online (and on dvd), and even a character blog supposedly produced by teen vampire Jessica Hamby.[79]

In The Horror Sensorium, Ndalianis provides a useful analysis of True Blood’s transmedia viral marketing. Ndalianis writes that as a transmedia text, True Blood “participates in a performance that’s about meta-horror – we take delight in the playful fiction that insists that, like the series, vampires are a part of our community . . . the transmedia fictions invite responses of amusement and cognitive play.”[80] Ndalianis suggests here that meta-textuality allows consumers to find pleasure in the blurred boundaries between reality and the fantastic. This suggestion also resonates with the way that UF/PR as a paranormal and hybrid genre also generally blurs these distinctions. For example, UF/PR juxtaposes fantastic conventions from horror with the gritty realism of detective and crime fiction, or treats as mundane the fantastic, supernatural and sometimes absurd hurdles that interfere with romantic relationship-building. This generic hybridity thus also invites “amusement” and “cognitive play.”

An understanding of UF/PR as a genre that crosses boundaries of both genre and media provides a crucial insight to understanding this genre thematically. The boundary-crossing form of UF/PR is echoed in the thematic transgression of boundaries and binary configurations prevalent in its content. As these highly speculative texts transgress the boundaries between mystery, horror, fantasy and romance, and between various media, they also transgress the boundaries between the broader category of the real and the fantastic. In unsettling normative reality to explore the non-normative supernatural worlds, they unsettle established social categories such as self/Other.

Conclusion

Over approximately the past 25 years, urban fantasy has developed into a coherent and recognisable genre of popular fiction. It is likely that the popularity of this genre in this era partially stems from its potential to register and reflect contemporary socio-cultural anxieties, such as the shifts in post- and third-wave feminism, globalisation, and posthumanist shifts in technology, environment and community briefly registered in this article. However, a comprehensive analysis of UF/PR must also offer a commercial and industrial explanation for its popularity.

The serialised, hybrid-genre, adaptive and transmedia formats of UF/PR are essential to its success in popular culture industries. First, as a hybrid-genre, UF/PR becomes accessible to a broad number of fiction readers who may typically read fantasy, or romance, or crime fiction, and may become interested in how these genres blend with elements of the paranormal. Second, the seriality of UF/PR texts defers conclusions, inviting continued consumption over a number of years and sometimes decades. As Jenkins writes, the open end of the serialised text creates “a strong enigma which drives the reader to continue to consume the story even though our satisfaction has been deferred.”[81] Third, both seriality and a transmedia format invite consumers to become invested and to participate in the open spaces of a narrative, spaces which Jenkins describes as “gaps or excesses in the unfolding of the story.”[82] Fourth, as a highly adaptive and transmedia genre, UF/PR is also highly accessible to consumers: Jenkins suggests that transmedia storytelling “reflects the economics of media consolidation” and as such “may expand the potential market for a property by creating different points of entry for different audience segments.”[83] In addition to a strong emphasis on extensive fictional world-building, the deferred conclusions and other open spaces of the narrative invite consumers to seek out other points of accessibility to the broader narrative. In short, the serial, hybrid-genre, adaptive, and transmedia formats of UF/PR contribute strongly to its popular success as a new genre, creating a number of points of accessibility for a broad range of audience members from various other genres and media, and inviting continued playful and participatory consumption.

Since the 1980s, urban fantasy and paranormal romance has developed into a fully coherent and extremely popular new genre. By identifying the destabilisation of boundaries as a broadly recurring thematic element in UF/PR, it becomes possible to consider how this genre might register real, contemporary social anxieties about unstable boundaries. And by identifying UF/PR as a hybrid, serial, adaptive and transmedia genre, we may better understand more generally how genre structures can be invoked in broad yet highly complex ways. UF/PR now predominantly shapes our representations of monsters and the supernatural in popular culture. But only time will tell how long UF/PR may remain popular in its current form and content before it further develops or disintegrates into something new again.

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Harrison, Kim. Hollows. 12 novels. 2004-present.

–        Harrison, Kim. The Good, The Bad and the Undead. New York, HarperTorch, 2005.

–        Harrison, Kim. For a Few Demons More. New York: Harper Voyager, 2007.

Huehner, Mariah, and others. True Blood Volume 3: The French Quarter. San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2012.

Huff, Tanya. Blood series. 5 novels. 1991-1997.

Killough, Lee. Blood Hunt. New York, NY: Tor, 1987.

–        Blood Links. New York, NY: Tor, 1988.

Lackey, Mercedes. Knight of Ghost and Shadows. Wake Forest, NC: Baen, 1990.

McMillian, Michael, and others. True Blood Volume 4: Where Were You? San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2013.

Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2012.

Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight.  New York: Little, Brown, 2005.

Rice, Anne. The Vampire Chronicles. 10 novels. 1976-2003.

–        Interview with the Vampire, New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1976.

–        New Tales of the Vampires. 2 novels. 1998-1999.

Smith, L.J. The Vampire Diaries. 4 novels. 1991-1992.

–        The Vampire Diaries: The Return Trilogy. 3 novels. 2009-2011.

–        The Vampire Diaries: The Hunters Trilogy. 3 novels. 2011-2012.

–  “Matt and Elena – First Date.” http://www.ljanesmith.net/stories/stories/184-matt-and-elena-first-date. 2010.

–  “Matt and Elena – Tenth Date: On Wickery Pond.” http://www.ljanesmith.net/stories/stories/96-matt-and-elena-tenth-date-on-wickery-pond. 2010.

– “An Untold Tale: Elena’s Christmas.” http://www.ljanesmith.net/stories/stories/281-an-untold-tale-elenas-christmas . 2010.

– “Bonnie and Damon: After Hours.” http://www.ljanesmith.net/stories/stories/384-after-hours. 2011.

Wohl, David; Badower, Jason; and Blond. True Blood: The Great Revelation. TopCow Productions Inc and Spacedog Entertainment. 2008.

FILMOGRAPHY

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Created by Joss Whedon. 1997-2003.

Death Valley. Created by Spider One, Eric Weinberg and Curtis Gwinn. 2011.

Forever Knight. Created by Barney Cohen and James D. Parriott. 1992-1996.

Ghost Ghirls. Created by Maria Blasucci, Jeremy Konner and Amanda Lund. http://screen.yahoo.com/ghost-ghirls/. 2013.

Once Upon a Time. Created by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. 2011-present.

The Vampire Diaries. Created by Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson. 2009-present.

True Blood. Created by Alan Ball. 2008-2014 (projected end date)

Notes:


[1] Angela Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc, 2012), 76. Ndalianis specifically cites the work of Rebecca Paisley, Nora Roberts, Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Sizemore, Christine Feehan and Maggie Shayne as evidence of this new romance genre. (For more on early paranormal romance, see Little, Jane, “The Pioneers of Paranormal Romance”).

[2] Lucinda Dyer, “P is for Paranormal – Still.” Publishers Weekly, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/43272-p-is-for-paranormal-still.html (date access November 7, 2013).

[3] Paul Goat Allen, “The 20 Best Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Last Decade.” Barnes and Noble, http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Explorations-The-BN-SciFi-and/In-LKH-s-21st-Anita-Blake-Novel-Her-Iconic-Heroine-and-Her-Saga/ba-p/1347550 (accessed November 7, 2013).

[4] While the romance genre began to produce a number of paranormal titles and even dedicated imprints in the 1990s (such as the Silhouette Shadows imprint from Silhouette), as this article will later argue, UF/PR only crystallised into its now-common genre conventions following the year 2000. Reviewer Paul Goat Allen suggests in “In LKH’s 21st Anita Blake Novel, Her Iconic Heroine – and Her Saga – Continue to Evolve” that “a boom in paranormal fantasy” began in 2001 following the success of Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. In 2006, Belinda Luscombe noted in Time magazine that “More than 170 sagas of paranormal amour hit the shelves in 2004, twice as many as two years before” and noted that popular author Christine Feehan at that time was selling approximately 500,000 copies of each of her new paranormal romance releases (74-75). In the same year, Carol Memmott of USA Today observed a continuing boom in paranormal romance, citing that “Nearly 20% of all romance novels sold in 2005 had paranormal story lines, compared with 14% in 2004, according to Romance Writers of America figures.”  Tim Holman, publisher at Orbit Books, noted that in 2008 urban fantasy accounted for 45% of best-selling science fiction and fantasy fiction, commenting that “the rise of urban fantasy has without any doubt been the biggest category shift within the SFF market of the last 10 years in the US” (in Hogan, Roy, “Urban Fantasy: Science Fiction’s Future?”). In 2009, Tor Publishers officially recognised “urban fantasy” as publishing imprint label,  suggesting that despite the fact that they have long published similar popular fantasy and horror titles, urban fantasy had now gained popular traction as a recognizable genre label (see “Tor Books Now Offering Urban Fantasy Novels, But They Always Have, Too!”). And in 2012, Bloggers at allthingsuf.com suggested that the number of paranormal texts released each year had risen to over 750, which is a marked leap from the approximately 170 cited by Luscombe in 2004 (it should be noted, however, that allthingsuf.com don’t provide a source for this statistic). This selection of data from the publishing industry and online reviewers and fans clearly and unequivocally demonstrates the strong impact of the emergence of this new genre on the popular fiction industry and its consumers.

[5] For examples of UF/PR parodies, see the mockumentary series Death Valley (created by Spider One and others, 2011); novel Team Human (Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier, New York: HarperTeen, 2012); and Ghost Ghirls, a Yahoo-based web series (created by Maria Blasucci and others, http://screen.yahoo.com/ghost-ghirls/, 2013).

[6] Picker, Lenny, “The New (Para)Normal,” Publishersweekly.com, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/51394-the-new-para-normal.html (accessed 19 October 2013)

[7] Patricia O’Brien Matthews, Fangtastic Fiction: Twenty-First Century Paranormal Reads (Chicago, IL: ALA Editions, 2011), 2.

[8] Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium, 80.

[9] Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” (Cinema Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3, Spring, 1984, 6-18), 6.

[10] Ibid., 8

[11] Ibid.

[12] Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI Publishing, 1999), 70.

[13] Ibid., 166.

[14] Ken Gelder, Popular Fiction: the Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2.

[15] Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium, 80. See Ndalianis for useful and detailed history of paranormal romance filtered through the lenses of the both history of the romance genre and the history of Gothic fiction.

[16] Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, New York: Touchstone, 2009, 280.

[17] Edward James and Sarah Mendlesohn, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

[18] Roz Kaveney, “Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Romance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Sarah Mendlesohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 214-223), 220

[19] Ibid., 215

[20]Ibid, 219. In fact, the influence of crime and detective fiction is broadly underestimated even in texts where the influence of the mystery genre is overtly referenced. For example, author Charlaine Harris considers her popular Southern Vampire Mysteries novels (2001-2013) to be mystery fiction. Harris stated in an interview with Sfsite.com that “All the Sookie books are mysteries, too. I never think of them as horror, and I’m always astonished when they’re shelved with horror” (Alisa McCune, “A Conversation with Charlaine Harris”). For more on UF/PR as a detective and crime genre, see Linda Holland-Toll’s analysis of the Anita Blake series in “Harder than Nails, Harder than Spade: Anita Blake as ‘The Tough Guy’ Detective”; and the MA thesis of Caroline Stikkelbroeck, “Monstrum: The Vampire in the Detective Study.”

[21] Roz Kaveney, “Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Romance,” 220

[22] Writing predominantly from a fan perspective in Beyond Heaving Bosoms, Wendell and Tan highlight that fans and readers may perceive a marked distinction between romance novels and erotica in this genre (112-114).

[23] Kaveney, “Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Romance,” 215.

[24] For examples of author histories and definitions of their own genre, see in the references to this article: Kerri Arthur, “Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy: Defining Two Popular Subgenres”; Carrie Vaughn, “The Long and Diverse History of Urban Fantasy” and “Carrie’s Analysis of Urban Fantasy Part I”; and  Laurell K Hamilton, “Vampires and Paranormal Thrillers”. For examples of fan-based definitions of UF/PR, see blog entries such as:

For more fan-based definitions of UF/PR, see blog entries such as: “Defining Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance: What’s the Difference?” by Larissa Benoliel; “Urban Fantasy vs Paranormal Romance,” by Marsha A Moore; “Escape to Romance: Paranormal Romance vs Urban Fantasy” by “BooksavvyBabe”; and “Paranormal vs Urban Fantasy, What is the Difference?” by Sue Grimshaw.

[25] For example, in 2013 the organisers of Dragon*Con, the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the USA, divided their popular “dark fantasy” fan track into two separate tracks, “horror” and “urban fantasy” because these terms were more easily recognisable for genre fans. On the former Dark Fantasy Track Blog, the organiser states, “Simply put, I got tired of explaining what I meant by ‘Dark Fantasy.’ There are several different subgenres that are described as ‘dark fantasy,’ and it became necessary to pick one” (“FAQ: Dark Fantasy Fan Track”). See also “New Tracks for 2013” in the Daily Dragon online. This statement suggests that fans of both urban fantasy and the horror genre more broadly do not utilise “dark fantasy” as a genre label, and that Kaveney’s use of this label is therefore inappropriate.

[26] Alexander C Irvine, “Urban Fantasy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Sarah Mendlesohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 200-213), 200

[27] For a succinct summary of the controversy, see Paul Goat Allen’s blog post, “The Controversial Saga That’s Good for Genre Fiction—and Society.” See also Laurell K Hamilton’s response to critical fans in her own blog entry, “Dear Negative Reader.”

[28] Wendell and Tan, Beyond Heaving Bosoms, 142-43.

[29] Gwenda Bond, “When Love Is Strange: Romance Continues Its Affair with the Supernatural,” Publisher’s Weekly, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20090525/12458-when-love-is-strange-romance-continues-its-affair-with-the-supernatural.html (accessed 20 October 2013).

[30] Other recurring thematic content includes the disruption of the distinction between the pastoral and the urban, as traditional pastoral elements of fantasy intrude on contemporary cities. Some texts explicitly take an ecocritical approach to this breakdown between the pastoral and the urban. For example, Mercedes Lackey’s Knight of Ghost and Shadows (1990) pits an evil real estate developer in contemporary Los Angeles against the elves who reside in its last remaining park spaces.

[31] See also Irvine, who prioritises and analyses these forms of urban fantasy.

[32] Lee Killough, Blood Hunt, (New York, NY: Tor, 1987) and Blood Links (New York, NY: Tor, 1988); Forever Knight (created by Barney Cohen and James D. Parriott, 1992-1996); P N Elrod, The Vampire Files (13 novels. 1990-2009); Tanya Huff, Blood series (5 novels, 1991-1997); and Laurell K Hamilton, the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series (22 novels, 1993-present).

[33] See Nanette Wargo Donohue, “The City Fantastic” (Library Journal, 1 June 2008, 64-67).

[34] Irvine, “Urban Fantasy,” 200.

[35] Early urban fantasy is a hybrid genre because it combines genre of traditional high fantasy such as elves with genre elements from horror, including not only supernatural beings like witches but horror-inflected descriptive material of magical violence. It also combines the traditional fantasy quest narrative of the hero with the mystery narrative of the investigator who must solve a mysterious problem, usually involving a crime. Contemporaneous vampire crime fiction is a hybrid genre because it combines established tropes from vampire literature with elements of detective and crime novels including the lone tough guy protagonist, the femme fatale, and the mystery narrative of an investigator who must solve a mysterious problem, usually involving a crime.

[36] In this sense, “hybridity” is the focus of much post-colonial criticism. Key sources for this use of the term include the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981) and Homi Bhabha (“Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi,” Critical Inquiry 12. No.1, 1985: 144-65).

[37] David Punter and Glennis, Byron, The Gothic (Malden, MA: Blackwell 2004, 270-272), 272.

[38] Ibid., 270.

[39] Ibid., 271.

[40] Ibid., 270. For more on the humanization of the vampire in the 1970s, see also Joan Gordon, and Veronica Hollinger, “Introduction: The Shape of Vampires” (1-7), and Zanger, Jules, “Metaphor into Metonymy: The Vampire Next Door” (17-26) in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (eds Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, 17-26. Philadelphia, P.A.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). See also Nina Auerbach’s seminal history of the vampire text in Our Vampires, Ourselves (London: University of Chicago Press, 1995). More recent analyses of the changing conventions in vampire texts into the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries can also be found in  William Patrick Day’s Vampire Legends in Contemporary America: What Becomes a Legend Most (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2002); Milly Williamson’s Williamson, Milly. The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (London: Wallflower, 2005);  and Ken Gelder’s New Vampire Cinema (London: BFI, 2012).

[41] Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1976); and The Vampire Chronicles and New Tales of the Vampires, 1976-2003.

[42] Hamilton, Laurell K, Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (22 novels, 1993-present). See particularly Hamilton’s novels in this series from 1993-1997.

[43] Buffy the Vampire Slayer (created by Joss Whedon, 1997-2003).

[44] For useful discussions of postfeminism and third wave feminism, see Sarah Gamble, “Postfeminism,” in The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Post-Feminism (edited by Sarah Gamble, New York: Routledge, 2001, 36-45); Yvonne Tasker and Dianne Negra, Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham : Duke University Press, 2007); Stephanie Genz, Postfeminities in Popular Culture (New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); and Benjamin A. Brabon and Stephenie Genz, Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

[45] Buffy in particular has been much-analysed as a figure of post- and third-wave feminism. For example, see Irene Karras, “The Third Wave’s Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (thirdspace: a journal of feminist theory & culture, vol.1 no.2, March 2002, http://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/viewArticle/karras/50); Patricia Pender, “Kicking Ass is Comfort Food: Buffy as Third Wave Feminist Icon” (in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration, edited by Stacy Gillis and  Gillian Howie, New York, NY: Palgrave-Macmillan Press, 2004); and Elana Levine, “Buffy and the ‘New Girl Order’: Defining Feminism and Femininity” (in Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, edited by Elana Levine and Lisa Ann Parks, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). For an exploration of postfeminism in contemporary Gothic texts, see also Postfeminist Gothic: Critical Interventions in Contemporary Culture (edited by Benjamin A. Brabon and Stephanie Genz, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

[46] Elaine Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 53.

[47] Williams, Linda, “When the Woman Looks.” (Re-Visions: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism, eds. Linda Williams, Mary Ann Doane and Patricia Mellencamp. Frederick, MD: the University \Publications of America and the American Film Institute, 1986, 83-99), 87-88.

[48] Charlaine Harris, The Southern Vampire Mysteries (13 novels, 2001-2013).

[49] Kelley Armstrong, Women of the Otherworld (3 novels, 2001-2012).

[50] Patricia Briggs, the Mercy Thompson series (7 novels, 2006-present).

[51] Graham, Representations of the Post/Human, 12.

[52] Bailie, Helen T. “Blood Ties: The Vampire Lover in the Popular Romance” (Journal of American Culture 34, no. 2, 2011, 141-48), 145.

[53] Held, David. “Regulating Globalization?”(in The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate, edited by David Held and Anthony McGrew, 420-30. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 200) 425-6.

[54] Neil Badmington, “Posthumanism” (in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science, edited by Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini, New York: Routledge, 2011, 374-384), 374.

[55] Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,” 10.

[56] Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files (14 novels, 2000-present).

[57] Meyer, Stephenie, The Twilight Saga (4 novels, 2005-2008).

[58] For example, Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2010).

[59] For example, popular television series Once Upon a Time (created by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, 2011-present); the fairytale retellings of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (London: Gollancz, 1979); and Marissa Meyer’s cyborg Cinderella novel, Cinder (New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2012).

[60] Critics such as Jacques Derrida, Tzvetan Todorov and Janet Staiger question the use of the term “hybridity” in genre analysis. in “Hybrid or Inbred,” Janet Staiger rejects the use of the term “hybridity” in genre analysis, arguing that “since poststructuralism hypothesises [the] breaching of boundaries and impurity to be features of  every  text, then any text located as an instance of genre would also, ipso facto, breach generic boundaries.” Staiger thus argues that to some extent, any text may be read as hybrid-genre.

Staiger’s analysis echoes the genre criticism of Tzvetan Todorov. Todorov suggests that all genres may be distinguished by this breaching of boundaries: “transgression, in order to exist as such, requires a law that will, of course, be transgressed.” Todorov thus implies that the laws of genre are only able to be distinguished by comparing how specific iterations of genre transgress those laws.  Staiger also echoes Derrida, who similarly argues that “every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text; there is always a genre and genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging. And not because of an abundant overflowing or a free, anarchic, and unclassifiable productivity, but because of the trait of participation itself, because of the effect of the code and of the generic mark.” Derrida suggests here again that genre is a process in which texts participate; moreover, that it is common for texts to belong to multiple genres. Thus, as these critics suggest, it is common for individual texts to transgress the boundaries of genre, or to attempt to recombine elements of multiple genres in new ways.

However, is nonetheless possible to define hybridity as a significant, distinguishing factor of UF/PR because UF/PR utilises these hybrid structures not just in individual texts that participate in genre: it utilises hybrid structures of genre overtly, across the UF/PR genre as a whole. I would even suggest that paranormal texts which do not perform some hybridisation of structures from other popular genres do not qualify as UF/PR at all. As UF/PR has developed, this hybridity may become taken for granted – for example, hybridising conventions from romance fiction with conventions of vampire literature is now common. But it nonetheless remains definitive. Again, the prevalence of this hybridisation throughout UF/PR is again suggested by the compound labels given to this genre. Compound, two-pronged genre labels such “urban fantasy,” “popular romance,” and “paranormal procedural” imply that the combination of multiple popular generic structures in these texts is so prominent as to be definitive. See: Jacques Derrida, “The Law of Genre” (Critical Inquiry, 7, no.1, 1980, 55-81), 65; Tzvetan Todorov, “The Origin of Genres” (New Literary History, 8, no.1, 1976, 159-170), 160. Janet Staiger, “Hybrid or Inbred: the Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood Genre History,” (Film Criticism 22, no.1, 1997, 5-20), 9, 15-16

[61] Kim Harrison. Hollows. 12 novels. 2004-present.

[62] Kim Harrison, The Good, The Bad and the Undead (New York, HarperTorch, 2005) and For a Few Demons More (New York: Harper Voyager, 2007).

[63] Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York, NY: New York University, 2006).

[64] Jenkins, Henry, Confessions of an Aca-fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins (WordPress: http://henryjenkins.org/, 2013).

[65] Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an Aca-fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html (accessed 03 November 2013).

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Henry Jenkins, “The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling (Well, Two Actually. Five More on Friday),” Confessions of an Aca-fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html  (accessed 03 November 2013).

[69] Ibid.

[70] L J Smith, The Vampire Diaries, 4 novels, 1991-1992; The Vampire Diaries (created by Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson, 2009-present).

[71] L.J. Smith, The Vampire Diaries: The Return Trilogy and The Vampire Diaries: The Hunters Trilogy; Aubrey Clark, The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation Trilogy (2013-present).

[72] “Matt and Elena – First Date” (2010), “Matt and Elena – Tenth Date: On Wickery Pond” (2010), “An Untold Tale: Elena’s Christmas” (2010) and “Bonnie and Damon: After Hours” (2011), available at http://www.ljanesmith.net/stories/stories.

[73] L.J. Smith, “Blogs from 2014: L J Smith’s new Vampire Diaries series,” L J Smith Official Site, http://ljanesmith.net/blog/2014/635-l-j-smith-s-new-vampires-diaries-series (accessed 15 April 2014).

[74] Charlaine Harris, The Southern Vampire Mysteries (13 novels, 2001-2013).

[75] Charlaine Harris, The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, New York: Ace Trade, 2012, and After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse, New York: Ace, 2013

[76] True Blood, created by Alan Ball (2008-2014; projected end date).

[77] David Wohl, Jason Badower and Blond, True Blood: The Great Revelation, TopCow Productions Inc and Spacedog Entertainment, 2008.

[78] Alan Ball and others, True Blood Volume 1: All Together Now (San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2011); Marc Andreyko and others, True Blood Volume 2: Tainted Love (San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2011); Mariah Huehner and others, True Blood Volume 3: The French Quarter, (San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2012); Michael McMillian and others, True Blood Volume 4: Where Were You? (San Diego, CA: IDW Publishing, 2013).

[79] The blog “BabyVamp-Jessica.com” (http://www.babyvamp-jessica.com/) includes written blog entries and video entries starring actress Deborah Ann Woll, who plays Jessica on True Blood.

[80] Ndalianis, The Horror Sensorium, 181.

[81] Jenkins, “Revenge of the Origami Unicorn.”

[82] Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101.”

[83] Ibid.

 

Bio: Leigh McLennon is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. During her candidature at the University of Melbourne, she has also participated in a graduate exchange with the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include genre fiction, popular culture, Gothic literature, Shakespeare, 19th century literature,  posthumanism, and feminist theory.

 

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