Gothic Remixed: Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions in 21st-Century Culture

277 Pages·2019·18.207 MB·English

by  Megen de Bruin-Molé

Gothic Remixed

Gothic Remixed
Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions in
21st-Century Culture
Megen de Bruin-Molé
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2020
Copyright © Megen de Bruin-Molé, 2020
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Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bruin-Molé, Megen de, author.
Title: Gothic Remixed : Monster Mashups and Frankenfictions in 21st-Century
Culture / Megen de Bruin-Molé
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019010101 | ISBN 9781350103054 (hb) | ISBN 9781350103078
(epub) | ISBN 9781350103061 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Gothic fiction (literary genre)–21st century–History and
criticism. | Literature–Adaptations–History and criticism.. | Film
adaptations–History and criticism. | Appropriation
(Arts)–History–21st century. | Monsters in literature. | Cultural
industries–History–21st century.
Classification: LCC PN3435 B793 2020 | DDC 809.3/8738–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019010101
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-0305-4
ePDF: 978-1-3501-0306-1
eBook: 978-1-3501-0307-8
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Contents
Figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Frankenfictions 1
Gothic remixed 3
Monstrous adaptations 6
The many faces of Frankenfiction 12
Twenty-first-century remix culture 14
Frankenfiction as remix 18
Frankenfiction as adaptation 23
Frankenfiction as appropriation 36
Hauntings and illegitimate offspring 38
2 Adapting the Monster 41
F rom ‘miserable wretch’ to ‘modernity personified’:
Defining the twenty-first-century monster 44
‘Ourselves expanded’: Anno Dracula and the neoliberal vampire 55
Th e empire strikes back: Victorian monsters and The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen 62
‘We are all monsters’: Reclaiming privilege in Penny Dreadful 70
‘ Monstrum sum’: Intersectional monstrosity in The Extraordinary
Adventures of the Athena Club 80
The promises of monsters 86
3 Mashing Up the Joke 91
Camp as sincere parody 97
The irony of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 100
Literature with a twist: parodying the classics 106
Parodying neo-Victorianism 116
Taking the past seriously; or, the limits of postmodern irony 127
Beyond postmodern irony 131
vi Contents
4 Remixing Historical Fiction 135
The Gothic and historical fiction 138
The ‘look’ of the past: Visual Gothic histories 140
Sublime metamorphosis: Dan Hillier’s Victorian illustrations 142
Foreign animals: The immigrant portraiture of Travis Louie 155
Meet the family: Colin Batty’s Victorian cabinet cards 168
Flux machine: Kevin J. Weir’s animated horrors 178
Unnatural history 186
5 Appropriating the Author 191
Frankenfiction and Romantic authorship 193
Frankenfiction and the (un)death of the author 197
Frankenfiction and transmedia world-building 204
Women’s work: Mary Shelley as remixer/remixed 212
Feminist Frankenfiction? 225
Conclusion: The Monster Always Escapes 231
Bibliography 235
Index 261
Figures
1.1 Conclusion of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. I, Issue
#2 (2000 paperback edition), © Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.
Permission given by Tony Bennett at Knockabout Comics. Scan by
the author 30
2.1 Cover image from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol.
I (2000 paperback edition), © Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.
Permission given by Tony Bennett at Knockabout Comics. Scan by
the author 67
2.2 Screenshot from ‘The Blessed Dark’ (Penny Dreadful season 3
finale), © 2016 Showtime/Sky 79
3.1 Cover of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), © and ™ 2009 by
Quirk Productions, Inc. Image courtesy the Bridgman Art Library.
Zombification by Doogie Horner. Reprinted with permission from
Quirk Books 101
3.2 Interior illustration from Alice in Zombieland (2011), by Sir John
Tenniel and Brent Cardillo. Illustration © 2011. Reprinted from
the book Alice in Zombieland with permission of its publisher,
Sourcebooks 110
3.3 ‘Appendix A’ and ‘Appendix B’ from Mansfield Park and Mummies
(2009). ‘Appendix’, courtesy of Pearson Scott Foresman. ‘After
Mummification’, © 2009 by Vera Nazarian. Scans by the author 114
4.1 ‘Snake’ (2006) © Dan Hillier 146
4.2 ‘Mother’ (2006) © Dan Hillier 148
4.3 ‘The Black Cape’ (1894) by Aubrey Beardsley. Given by Michael
Harari, in memory of his father, Ralph A. Harari. Hi-res scan
courtesy of the V&A 150
4.4 ‘The Way’ (2011) © Dan Hillier 151
4.5 ‘Lunar Seas’ (2013) © Dan Hillier 154
4.6 ‘Pals’ (2006) © Travis Louie 158
4.7 ‘Dutch Woman’ (1905) and ‘Sad Miss Bunny’ (2011). ‘Dutch
Woman’ by Augustus F. Sherman, from The New York Public
Library. ‘Sad Miss Bunny’ © Travis Louie 160
viii Figures
4.8 ‘Oscar and the Giant Tarsier’ (2014) © Travis Louie 167
4.9 ‘Blobby McGee’ (2014) © Colin Batty. Courtesy of Peculiarium 171
4.10 ‘Frankenvintage Seated’ (2014) © Colin Batty. Courtesy of
Peculiarium 173
4.11 ‘Two Ladies and a Thing’ (2014) © Colin Batty. Courtesy of
Peculiarium 174
4.12 ‘Krupp Von Bohlen’ (2012) © Kevin J. Weir. GIF expanded for still
reproduction 180
4.13 ‘Decoy Howitzer’ (2012) © Kevin J. Weir. GIF expanded for still
reproduction 183
4.14 ‘Peekskill’ (2012) © Kevin J. Weir. GIF expanded for still
reproduction 185
5.1 ‘Twin Manicurists’ (1996) © Janieta Eyre 226
Acknowledgements
In her 1831 preface to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley writes: ‘Invention, it must be
humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of the voids, but out of chaos;
the materials must, in the first place, be afforded’. I cannot think of a better
description of the process of academic writing. Like Victor Frankenstein, I
am blessed with a wealth of material, and an unreasonably supportive family.
Tom de Bruin (my Igor) put in many hours of unpaid labour listening to my
ideas, copy-editing my drafts, and re-programming my citation software. I
am also deeply indebted to Catherine Spooner and Anthony Mandal for their
comments and advice on my early draft, to the two anonymous reviewers
who provided extensive and insightful feedback on the manuscript, and to
the fantastic team at Bloomsbury and Integra for guiding the project through
to publication. Above all, this book would never have come to be without the
constant encouragement, advice, and support of Ann Heilmann.
The College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHSS) at Cardiff
University provided me with a three-year grant to conduct this research. I am
especially grateful to the postgraduate and early-career community at Cardiff,
who welcomed and supported me in my research and teaching. Special thanks
are due to Catherine Han, Daný van Dam, and Akira Suwa, my PhD siblings.
Thanks also to Marija Grech, Chris Müller, and Jernej Markelj, who patiently
listened to more than their share of concerns and frustrations. Thanks to my
fantastic network of friends and colleagues for their encouragement, for their
suggestions, for their generous sharing of unpublished research and ideas,
and for their eagerness to talk about monsters!
Early parts of Chapter 3 appear as ‘“Now with Ultraviolent Zombie
Mayhem!” The Neo-Victorian Novel-as-Mashup and the Limits of Postmodern
Irony’. Neo-Victorian Humour: The Rhetorics and Politics of Comedy, Irony
and Parody, eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben (Amsterdam:
Brill/Rodopi, 2017), 249–76. Parts of Chapter 5 first appeared in the article
‘“Hail, Mary, the Mother of Science Fiction”: Popular Fictionalisations of Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley in Film and Television, 1935–2018’, Science Fiction Film
and Television 11, no. 2 (2018): 233–55. Like all academic texts, this book is