Console-ing Passions 2012 CFP: “‘I Want my Paranormal TV’: Negotiations with the Dead (and Undead) on the Small Screen”

Just wrote the CFP for my Console-ing Passions 2012 panel. We’ll be in Boston. If you have work that you think might make a tasty contribution, post a comment or contact me through the blog (I don’t want to put up my .edu address).

Will provide a more substantive update in the next week or so. Grievously busy. Spending today on job market materials and lesson planning and writing a snappy one-paragraph bio of myself for “Diabolique” (my article on Eastern European horror cinema will run in their November/December issue, and I’ll be appearing on a podcast to discuss my article sometime soon; will post details when I have them).

“I Want my Paranormal TV”: Negotiations with the Dead (and Undead) on the Small Screen

Annette Hill, in Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture, observes that in recent years, paranormal beliefs have entered the mainstream. Indeed, the past decade has reflected this proliferation across media, from paranormal romance fiction (in the form of the Twilight series and its many imitators) to a resurgence in the paranormal horror film, witnessed in the success of such films as Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007) and Insidious (James Wan, 2011). However, television has proven a particularly beneficial medium for paranormal narratives and negotiations of belief, particularly (but not limited to) dramas (True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, The Walking Dead) and reality television (Ghost Hunters, Paranormal State). As a panel, “I Want my Paranormal TV” investigates the unique relationship between television and the paranormal, as well as its connections to the horror genre and the possibilities it offers in terms of narrative, genre, representation, aesthetics, and more.

Please note that at this early stage, I am intentionally keeping this CFP rather broad in scope in order to encourage a diverse series of submissions. Upon the review of submitted abstracts, I will refine the panel rationale based on panelist interests and approaches.

Possible topics/approaches to paranormal television may include:

• Intersections between horror and melodrama
• Generic hybridity
• Representations of gender and sexuality
• Representations of social class and race, including whiteness
• Convergences between the horror genre and reality TV, particularly its imperatives of surveillance
• Reception/audience studies
• Relationship between the paranormal and television as a medium/apparatus
• Historical approaches (previous manifestations of the paranormal on TV)

Katie Among the Goblins: “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

One of my first memories of watching television involves an afternoon showing of 1973’s made-for-television movie  “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” starring Kim Darby as a woman terrorized by little gnome/goblin creatures who live inside her fireplace. This would have been some time in the mid-1980s, so it was already an “old” movie and therefore fit consumption for the afternoon movie as well as for a five year old to be watching. I don’t remember most of it, except for the ending: these little buggers mean business and they end up dragging the heroine through the house, down into the basement and into the fireplace and into whatever kooky world they inhabit. I remember thinking someone would save her, but no one did. And then the movie was over.

Let me tell you, I gave that scene much thought over the years. I did see the movie again, this time as an adult (well, I was 19, so I was a semi-adult), and while it wasn’t scary at all, I can at least say that it was as effective as any other made-for-TV horror from its period. Flash forward another ten years or so, and I hear tell that it is being remade as a theatrical feature. I’m not too keen on the whole remake thing (the only one I really liked was Rob Zombie’s “Halloween”) but when I heard Guillermo del Toro was involved, I figured it just might work out.

So the question is: did it work out? Shrugs.

She gets abducted by goblins. I mean Scientologists. I mean goblins.

The good news: I didn’t fall asleep (as opposed to “Fright Night 3D,” two nights earlier, where I slept through the entire middle part of the film, and hence why I never reviewed it) and even better, the damn thing wasn’t in 3-D (so much horror this summer, and so much of it in cursed 3-D, and yes, I know I could see it in 2-D, but when they have 3-D in the title, it creates this hideous compulsion). “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” has all the gothic trappings of a classic ghost story (or, as some have suggested, a fairy tale): the isolated mansion, symbolizing a decrepit and archaic aristocracy; family strife (the child heroine Sally foisted on her father by an irresponsible mother, trying to get used to her new home as well as an inattentive father and his awkward-as-hell girlfriend Kim, played by an awkward-as-hell Katie Holmes); skepticism about the problem at hand and imputations of pathology towards our heroine; a foreboding backstory; a wise but quickly dispatched servant figure (in this case, a handyman); and of course, the obligatory archival research scene. Seriously, the only thing missing is ghosts, and instead of those we have the little CGI creatures. Now, in the original, there were really only a few of these things and they were played by little people in costumes and we barely, if ever, got a good look at them. Here, they look like something out of “The Lord of the Rings” or maybe those little dinosaurs who attacked the girl at the beginning of “The Lost World.” They also kind of look like E.T. I guess they are scary enough, but then again, once you’ve seen the BATSHIT OLD LADY from “Insidious,” nothing really compares.

What we are left with is, as always, a film that is just as much a family melodrama as it is a horror film (and why this thing is rated R is anyone’s guess, I really couldn’t tell you). Father and daughter are reconciled (kind of, although I bet they are going to make some therapy practice thrive in the years to come), the house goes into foreclosure, and there is of course the downbeat ending also found in the first film but which somehow seems less scary and just… I don’t know, anti-climactic here.

I don’t know. I didn’t hate it. I won’t buy it. I wouldn’t teach it. I guess if I was house-sitting and it came on cable one night, I might sit through it. Really, it had a very made-for-TV feel to it, and that might have had something to do with the plot structure. I wasn’t a fan of bringing in a child protagonist (it’s the same problem I had with “Halloween 4” and “Halloween 5,” I am wondering who really wants to see a child terrorized and screaming for two hours). At times, it reminded me of one of those Betty Ren Wright young adult horror novels that I loved so much as a child. The “through the eyes of a child” thing just feels like it has been done a million times. Katie Holmes was sympathetic enough, but that might just be because I feel sorry for her in real life. Actually, the creepiest thing in the movie was how much the little girl cast as “Sally” resembles Katie, who plays “Kim.” I get the feeling that was probably intentional and loaded with subtext, but frankly, the movie didn’t interest me or scare me enough to feel like pondering the role of the Electra complex in all the goings-on. Like I said , it was just alright: I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it, it didn’t stay with me, it just passed the time. This is opposed to “Insidious,” where I sat up with the lights on for half of the night.

I had a bat get in my house yesterday, it flew in through an open window in the middle of the day. I screamed and ran out the front door and had to stay outside all day until my neighbor came home to get rid of it. That was scarier than this movie.