Monstrous Interiors: Quasi-Domestic Space As the Ontological Terrorist of Toxic Masculinity

Resonating with these pandemic times, Catherine Spooner has described the Gothic as a ‘malevolent virus’. In my paper, I will propose that the haunted house narrative, so central to American Gothic, has itself mutated in response to a backdrop of post-millenial social, political and financial collapse in a manner quite different to developments in the rest of the Gothic literary world. The narrative strand which has emerged, presents the reader with a new form of the Gothic male protagonist, whom the British psychologist R.D Laing in The Divided Self (1960), would describe as a ‘schizoid’ subject. Fragile, failing and fragmenting, he escapes a failing career, marriage and parenthood by removing his family to a quasi-domestic space which promises repair. House or hotel, these ‘haunted houses’ are different from the earlier ‘hungry houses’ identified by Gothic writer Stephen Graham Jones in his introduction to Robert Marasco’s classic haunted house novel, Burnt Offerings. This new quasi-domestic space, often combining work and home, rises up to meet the male schizoid, not merely as the traditional Gothic setting, but as a sentient being; a monster in its own right. His entrapment in this new Gothic labyrinth that is constantly shifting, expanding and shrinking, provides a performative stage on which the schizoid male is forced into an existential crisis beyond that of the trauma of spousal and parental failure, ultimately forcing him to confront what it is to exist in space and time. A reaction to the rise of neo-liberalism and toxic masculinity, this important strand to American Gothic embraces the multiplicity of the Gothic’s new forms and is evident in texts such as Steve Rasnic Tem’s, Deadfall Hotel, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Thomas Liggotti’s, The Town Manager, Jac Jemc’s, The Grip of It and Shaun Hamill’s A Cosmology of Monsters. Developing from their deeper roots in the Calvinist Gothic tradition of Hawthorne, Brockden Brown and Poe via the mid-century works of Stephen King and Robert Marasco, these new post- millennial narratives provide a space in which notions of masculine subjectivity are fundamentally challenged.

Scaring away anxiety: Therapeutic avenues for horror fiction to enhance treatment for anxiety symptoms

From scary stories to horror films and haunted houses, the horror genre is wildly popular. Although horror aims to elicit fear and anxiety, many people with anxiety are horror fans and some report using horror to cope with anxiety. In this article, we provide a theoretical rationale for why people with anxiety might choose to access and find relief in horror films. First, we discuss aspects of horror that could make it alluring to people with anxiety and how the use of horror may be negatively reinforcing. Next, we examine how engagement with horror could be used to build skills for resilience in generalized situations. We build on processes from evidence-based therapies (i.e., cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy) to explain how horror media has the potential to be used as a therapeutic tool. Finally, we discuss steps for future research on horror as a therapeutic tool for anxiety-related disorders.

Horror and Camp: Monsters and Wizards and Ghosts (Oh My!) in Big Mouth

This chapter moves readers from Andrew Smith’s adolescence-as-dystopia to the popular animated Netflix series Big Mouth, which represents adolescence as a horror show. Like Grasshopper Jungle, Big Mouth provides audiences with monstrous avatars for the storm and stress of adolescence. Instead of horny, rampaging mutant mantises, however, Big Mouth offers viewers Hormone Monsters, haunted houses, ghosts, and other Gothic tropes as embodiments of those anxieties that surround puberty and its horrifying humiliations. Unlike Grasshopper Jungle, Big Mouth universalizes queerness, celebrates the polymorphous perversity of childhood, and uses camp to defuse many of the anxieties that attend other representations of adolescent sexuality. Big Mouth offers us a kind of camp with strong ties to shame—what Kathryn Bond Stockton calls “dark camp”—and illustrates how shame and debasement can function as a powerful model of relationality, one that unites the show’s young protagonists through shared queer feelings.

Dampak Social Dostancing Covid-19 “Himbauan Mudik Siap Huni Rumah Angker di Sragen

This study has two objectives, the first to describe the effect of Covid-19 social distance for travelers in Sragen, and to describe whether the haunted house provided for independent quarantine for travelers has a deterrent effect. In this study, researchers used a qualitative descriptive design and the techniques used in data collection were listening and note taking techniques. The data source of this study consisted of data obtained from YouTube about social impacts, and the deterrent effect received by the community in the presence of an appeal that had been enforced in Sragen. Data analysis, which is used in this study is a text analysis technique. This technique is a technique used to describe the long-term social impact of covid-19 "appeals for homecoming in haunted houses in Sragen". Research results show that the appeal imposed by the Sragen regent has a positive impact on the welfare of the community, with the existence of this community appeal can be enforced regulations that have been imposed with independent isolation for four days at home.