ABSTRACT
In his book Goth Chic, Gavin Baddeley surveys Gothic television and wonders ‘whether TV could ever prove a suitable medium for Gothic drama’ (Baddeley 2002: 106). His answer is firmly in the negative, particularly in relation to American television. He asserts that the concerns of Gothic are not shared by the television audience at large, and that a medium he describes as ‘ruthlessly bland’ cannot support shows that are ‘dark or offbeat’ (Baddeley 2002: 106). If one is of the opinion that Gothic is essentially a minority interest, dealing in dark and unpleasant subject matter, which must therefore be watered down in order to appeal to a mass audience, it would seem that American television – with the largest mass audience in the world – must be an inhospitable environment for Gothic. However, if one takes the view that Gothic is a ‘safe’ way of indulging and excising our fears – as Fred Botting writes, ‘transgression, by crossing the social and aesthetic limits, serves to reinforce or underline their value and necessity, restoring or defining limits’ – then television is a space as well suited to Gothic as any other. Botting also points out that ‘In popular culture . . . Gothic writing thrived’ (Botting 1996: 7, 15) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which case television might well be the first place one would look for contemporary Gothic. Helen Wheatley, in her recent study of Gothic Television, argues that the link is quite natural, referring to these texts as ‘the most domestic of genres on the most domestic of media’ (Wheatley 2006: 25). Furthermore, an examination of Gothic material on television suggests that it is more deeply embedded in the American televisual language than it is in Britain.
