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Contemporary Gothic (Reaktion Books - Focus on Contemporary Issues)

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In this book on popular culture, Spooner writes about how "Gothic narratives have escaped the confines of literature and spread across disciplinary boundaries to infect all kinds of media, from fashion to advertising to the way contemporary events are constructed in mass culture." This is evident in the clothing worn by many punk-rock musicians, the prevalence of tattoos and body piercing, and the popularity of horror movies. But Spooner not only engages in an entertaining inventory of the diverse manifestations of the gothic in contemporary culture, but also delves into the historical and literary roots of the gothic and reasons for its attraction and persistence. In its idiomatic, inimitable way, the gothic represents the potent psychic themes of subconscious memories of the past and ties to the dead, the creation of the "other" (e. g. Frankenstein's monster), the fragmentary self, the mutability of the body, and one's own death and reincarnation. The gothic does not resolve anxieties "both personal and collective" attending these, however. Spooner's general perspective is that it is a way of dealing with the anxieties. The periodic reawakening of the gothic usually originate among younger people for its graphic imagery connoting unconventionality and a degree of rebelliousness. Spooner is a lecturer in literature at England's Lancaster University and author of the 2004 book "Fashioning Gothic Bodies." Her sure hand with the wide range of subject matter makes for an especially lucid exploration of the vein of the gothic in today's pop and youth cultures.