Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Steven Gerrard is Reader of Film at Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University, UK. He has written two monographs: one celebrating all things naughty but nice in the Carry On films, and another investigating the Modern British Horror Film. Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her publications include Pole Dancing, Empowerment & Embodiment and Modern Vintage Homes & Leisure Lives: Ghosts & Glamour. She is currently writing a book about Wonder Woman. Robert Shail is Professor of Film and Director of Research in the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is widely published on postwar British cinema, masculinity in film, and more recently on children's media. In 2016, he was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for his study of the Children's Film Foundation.

• Introduction; Steven Gerrard Part One: The Monstrous Feminine1. 'She's that kind of a woman': Tracing the gender and sexual politics of the female vampire via The Hunger and American Horror Story: Hotel; Chloe Benson2. 'Is this a chick thing now?': The feminism of Z NATION between Quality and Trash TV; Nadine Dannenberg3. Weeping Angels: Doctor Who's (De)Monstrous Feminine; Khara Lukancic4. The Representation of Older Women in Twenty-First Century Horror: An Analysis of Characters Played by Jessica Lange in American Horror Story; Natasha Parcei5. 'She was not like I thought': The Woman as a Strange Being in Masters of Horror; Erika Moreno Tiburcio6. The Monster Within: Lily in Penny Dreadful; Kylie Boon7. Final Girls and Female Serial Killers: A Review of the Slasher Television Series from a Gender Perspective; Víctor Hernández-SantaolallaPart Two: The Monstrous Masculine 8. 'Is Hannibal in love with me?' Gender changes in the Television series Hannibal; Clare Smith9. 'I'm pissed off, and I'm angry, and we need your permission to kill someone': Frustrated Masculinities in Charlie Brooker's Dead Set; Lauren Stephenson10. The Problematic Relationship with Sympathetic Vampires in the TV series The Vampire Diaries; Fernando Canet11. So Many Chick Flick Moments: Dean Winchester's Centrifugal Evolution; Susan Cosby RonnenbergPart Three: The Monstrous Other12. Depictions of Gender, Homes and Families in the TV version of The Exorcist; Samantha Holland13. How iZombie Rethinks the Zombie Paradigm; Dahlia Schweitzer14. Damaged Survivors in the Walking Dead. Gender and the Narrative Arcs of Carol and Daryl as Protectors and Nurturers; Marta F. Suarez15. 'Some normal apple-pie life': Gendering Home in Supernatural; Jessica George16. Female Audiences' Reception of American Horror Story in Greece; Despina Chronaki and Liza Tsaliki17. 'Mother, I've really had enough of this! You can't just leave me alone in this abyss where I can't find you!' Norman/Norma and Bates Motel; Steven GerrardConclusion; Steven Gerrard

Contributed by film and media studies and other scholars from Europe, Australia, and the US, the 17 essays in this volume examine gender roles in horror television through the idea of the monstrous. They consider how female characters have been presented in various ways, such as the gendering and sexualization of female "monsters," how older actresses are represented through their characters, and how women are seen as heroine, victim, and "monster," in The Hunger, American Horror Story, Z Nation, Doctor Who, Masters of Horror, Penny Dreadful, and slasher television series; masculinity and the traditional hero in Hannibal, Dead Set, The Vampire Diaries, and Supernatural; and monsters as Other, with discussion of how American Horror Story was received by female audiences in Greece, the role of the house and the home in Supernatural and iZombie, gender and the narrative arcs of characters in The Walking Dead, and gender in Bates Motel.