#lenora ledwon

In addition to the enigma of the family, another key aspect of the Gothic is its narrative ambiguity. Gothic novels are characterized by problematic structures. One much-commented-upon characteristic of the Gothic is “the difficulty the story has in getting itself told,” a problem in structure which means that Gothics “cannot be efficiently told” and are criticized for being “unaesthetic, preserving only the unities of the subconscious.”

The viewer experiences moments in which emotionally-charged voices and images are mediated through technological devices such as telephones, microphones, tape recorders, video cameras and even television. Such technological reproductions, because they are reproductions and not “originals,” are themselves ghostly. And the final device transmitting these extremes of fear and love is the television set. Television becomes the ghost in the home.

The fact that so many important communications in [Gothic television] are mediated through technological devices highlights two standard Gothic complaints — the difficulty of communication and the impossibility of ever really knowing another human being.

Television would seem an ideal medium for Gothic inquiry. It is, after all, a mysterious box simultaneously inhabited by spirit images of ourselves and inhabiting our living rooms.

Emphasis on mediated messages — messages that are transmitted through technological devices — underscores the limits of the medium.

Television, the most domestic of all mediums, is a natural venue for the Gothic, the most disturbed of domestic fictions.

Whether the message must travel along miles of television wire, be transferred to audiotape, or be split up into signals that are sent into space and bounced off a satellite before re-emerging in the images on your television, there exists the haunting possibility that something is lost in the mediating process.