Date of Award

6-1-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Selah Saterstrom

Second Advisor

Brian Kiteley

Third Advisor

Bin Ramke

Keywords

Creative, Gothic, Melodrama, Television, Writing

Abstract

Beyond This Point Are Monsters is a creative work which establishes a fluid, unstable space between the mediated image and the written word. It addresses issues of repetition and difference in the TV melodrama and the inscribed surface of the house in the Gothic novel, performing the romantic and sensational tropes of the Gothic formula in order to subvert them. The project investigates and inhabits the soap opera Dark Shadows which aired daily on ABC from 1966 to 1971, and examines the manner in which the show defies its own genre conventions. I chose Dark Shadows as the foundational source for my text because it is a program which incessantly crosses its own boundaries. Conventionally, soap opera is a form of fictional realism, but the digressive concerns of Dark Shadows stray far from the everyday, while its necessarily fast production pace lacerates the program with constant failure and mistakes. Dark Shadows is flawed, but in a way which troubles the rules of genre and the viewer's relationship to the screen. My investigation is manifested in the form of fictional writings and photographs which borrow the conceptual metaphors and visual gestures of the show. Each "episode" of Beyond This Point Are Monsters mirrors a plot that is anterior to the show's own official plot, leaking language and images that are withheld and effaced in the original.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Roxanne M. Carter

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

257 p.

Discipline

Film studies, Fine arts, Literature

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