Description
Book Synopsis Netflix''s The Haunting of Hill House has received both critical acclaim and heaps of contempt for its reimagining of Shirley Jackson''s seminal horror novel. Some found Mike Flanagan''s series inventive, respectful and terrifying. Others believed it denigrated and diminished its source material, with some even calling it a betrayal of Jackson. Though the novel has produced a great deal of scholarship, this is the first critical collection to look at the television series. Featuring all new essays from noted scholars and award-winning horror authors, this collection goes beyond comparing the novel and the Netflix adaptation to look at the series through the lenses of gender, architecture, education, hauntology, addiction, and trauma studies including analysis of the show in the context of 9/11 and #Me Too. Specific essays compare the series with other texts, from Flanagan''s other films and other adaptations of Jackson''s novel, to the television series Supernatural,
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments vi
- Introduction—Holding Darkness Within: Welcome to Hill House 1
- I. Jackson and Flanagan
- The Hunters and the Haunted: The Changing Role
- of Supernatural Investigation (Steve Marsden) 15
- Hijacking Jackson: Adapting Mike Flanagan's Oculus 27
- II. The House
- It's Coming from Inside the House: Houses as Bodies
- Without Organs 39
- A House Without Kindness: Hill House and the Phenomenology
- of Horrific Space 50
- III. The Trauma
- Some Things Can't Be Told: Gothic Trauma 63
- Recovery from Trauma in Post–9/11 Horror/Terror of Mike Flanagan's Oeuvre 74
- Education, Praxis and Healing 85
- "A House Is Like a Body": Processes of Grief and Trauma 95
- IV. The Haunted
- Mike Flanagan's Mold-Centric The Haunting of Hill House 107
- Where the Heart Is 118
- The Future Isn't What It Used to Be: Hauntology, Grief
- and Lost Futures 128
- Ghosts of Future Past: Spatial and Temporal Intersections 142
- V. Gender and Queering
- Red Room, Red Womb: Phantom Feminism 155
- The Horrific Feminine: Terrifying Women 166
- Haunted Families, Queer Temporalities and the Horrors
- of Normativity 176
- VI. Comparative Hauntings
- "Came Back Haunted": International Horror Film Conventions 189
- The Beloved Haunting of Hill House: An Examination
- of Monstrous Motherhood 200
- The Madwoman in the Parlor: Motherhood and the Ghost
- of Mental Disorder in Hill House and Hereditary 211
- Family Remains: Family Bonds Against the Paranormal
- in The Haunting of Hill House and Supernatural 222
- "They Never Believe Me": Discourses of Belief in Hill House
- and #Me Too 233
- VII. Horror Makers on The Haunting of Hill House
- A Ghost Is a Wish Your Heart Makes 245
- The Screaming Meemies Resurrected 248
- What Really Walks There? 251
- Spirits and Mediums: Adapting Jackson 253
- Gothic Storytelling 258
- About the Contributors 267
- Index 271
