Gothic Afterlives: Reincarnations of Horror in Film and Popular Media (Remakes, Reboots, and Adaptations), edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Lexington Books, 2019. Cover image by Romolo Tavani/Stock/Getty Images Plus, info: rowman.com.
Gothic Afterlives examines the intersecting dimensions of contemporary Gothic horror and remakes scholarship, bringing together innovative perspectives from different areas of study. The research compiled in this collection covers a wide range of examples, including not only literature but also film, television, video games, and digital media remakes. Gothic Afterlives signals the cultural and conceptual impact of Gothic horror on transmedia production, with a focus on reimagining and remaking. While diverse in content and approach, all chapters pivot on two important points: first, they reflect some of the core preoccupations of Gothic horror by subverting cultural and social certainties about notions such as the body, technology, consumption, human nature, digitalization, scientific experimentation, national identity, memory, and gender and by challenging the boundaries between human and inhuman, self and Other, and good and evil. Second, and perhaps most important, all chapters in the collection collectively show what happens when well-known Gothic horror narratives are adapted and remade into different contexts, highlighting the implications of the mode-shifting registers, platforms, and chronologies in the process. As a collection, Gothic Afterlives hones in on contemporary sociocultural experiences and identities as they appear in contemporary popular culture and in the stories told and retold in the twenty-first century.
Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction – Lorna Piatti-Farnell
Part I: Reincarnations and (Re)imaginings
1. Beyond the Barricades: Restaging the Siege Narrative in post-Romero Zombie Film and TV – Stacey Abbott
2. The Afterlives of Alice: Reanimating the Gothic Heroine in the Resident Evil – Gwyneth Peaty
3. Evil, Reborn: Remaking Disney and the Villain Intertext – Lorna Piatti-Farnell
4. Untold Draculas: Textual Estrangement, Cinematic Reincarnation, and the Popular Dracula Legend – Matthew Crofts
5. “Most of you are wondering who the heck I am”: Carmilla (2014-2016, online) as Digital Reimagining of LeFanu’s “Carmilla” – Lorna Jowett
Part II: Legacies, Dualities, and Hauntings
6. Remaking Olimpia: Agency and the Gothic Afterlives of “Female” Automata – Simon Bacon
7. Ann Radcliffe’s Legacy and Del Toro’s Crimson Peak – Deborah Kennedy
8. Unmade and Remade: Trauma and Modern Adaptations of Frankenstein – Jeanette Laredo
9. Dealing with Dualities: Modern Adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Matthew Thompson
Part III: (Re)turns and Re(possessions)
10. Remaking Stephen King: Texts and Contexts – Simon Brown
11. Stranger Things: Remixing Eighties Horror as Posthuman Gothic – Anya Heise-von der Lippe
12. Mexican Gothic Remakes: Carlos Enrique Taboada’s Films, Possessions, and Double Loops – Enrique Ajuria Ibarra
13. Tangled Hair and Broken Bodies: Remaking Women and Technology in Japanese Gothic Horror Tradition from The Tale of Genji to Ringu – Emerald L. King
14. “Don’t Fuck with the Original:” Final Girl Impact on the Twenty-First Century Horror Film Industry – Cheryl Hague
Index
About the Contributors