ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an analysis that is related to the Monster High franchise as it functioned in the years 2010–2016. A mass-market consumer product meant to increase revenue, Monster High brand was markedly Gothic during that time. Gothic novels, films, cartoons, and music served as the source of inspiration for the doll makers and the people responsible for the related transmedia content. Other than specific references to Gothic characters, places, and practices, what made the franchise appealing were apparently its glamorous theatricality, subcultural intertextuality, and playful subversiveness, all of them related to the Gothic tradition and usually associated with literature or arts rather than mass-produced commodities such as plastic children toys. Embodying selected elements of the Gothic, Monster High dolls can explain what aspects of Gothic are valid, commercially successful, and culturally productive in the contemporary globalised Western consumerist culture.
