Northampton Electronic Collection of Theses and Research

A new golden age of TV horror: a round table discussion

Jowett, L., Abbott, S., Elliott-Smith, D. and Janicker, R. (2016) A new golden age of TV horror: a round table discussion. Panel Presentation presented to: Cine-Excess X: Cult Genres, Traditions and Bodies: A Decade of Excess, Birmingham, UK, 10-12 November 2016. (Unpublished)

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Panel Presentation)
Abstract: This round table will debate, examine and reflect on the evolution of horror on television and its popularity in the last 10 years. When Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett hatched the idea for a book on TV Horror in the early 2000s, and subsequently presented papers on the topic at various Cine-Excess conferences over the years, they had only a sense that by the time the book was published in 2012 there would be many more horror TV series to watch, write about and discuss. With the phenomenal success of The Walking Dead, as well as The Strain, True Blood, iZombie, Ash vs The Evil Dead, the cult fandoms surrounding In the Flesh and Hannibal, and recent Netflix successes including From Dusk till Dawn, Scream and the summer hit Stranger Things, a new horror boom is in full swing. In 2016 the appetite for horror on TV continues unabated, and Jowett and Abbott are joined on this panel by Darren Elliott-Smith, author of the recently published Queer Horror Film and Television: Masculinity and Sexuality at the Margins and Rebecca Janicker, editor of a forthcoming collection on American Horror Story. Both Elliot-Smith and Janicker’s work focuses on AHS, a series that has challenged the genre and particularly the structure of television serial drama. In choosing to switch characters (and actors), setting (geographical and temporal), and premise with each new season, AHS becomes a horror anthology series like no other. It is not alone in innovating and pushing the boundaries of horror on TV. The panellists will tackle questions of TV horror as just another form of TV, as a form of horror with a distinctive flair for storytelling, of different national TV contexts and industries, of TV’s fanboy-auteurs and televisual Masters of Horror, of changing audiences and new delivery platforms potentially affecting how horror on TV is produced and consumed. Recurrent themes and preoccupations of TV horror are also up for debate—aesthetics and FX, excess, the body, deviance and (ab)normality, gore and violence, sex and sexuality, queerness and gender, power and morality. Structures of horror on TV, particularly those most aligned with the nature of television’s existing models, inevitably come under scrutiny, with seriality, anthology and episodic versions tackled, as well as combinations of horror with other genres, including comedy and children’s drama.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Horror genre, television, viewing habits, gender, age, sexuality, television audiences
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1992 Television broadcasts
H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Women > HQ1101 Women. Feminism
Creators: Jowett, Lorna, Abbott, Stacey, Elliott-Smith, Darren and Janicker, Rebecca
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes: University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Arts, Science & Technology
Date: 12 November 2016
Date Type: Publication
Event Title: Cine-Excess X: Cult Genres, Traditions and Bodies: A Decade of Excess
Event Dates: 10-12 November 2016
Event Location: Birmingham, UK
Event Type: Conference
Language: English
Status: Unpublished
Related URLs:
URI: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/9011

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