Joss Whedon vs. the Horror Tradition

Kristopher Karl Woofter teaches on the American Gothic, horror and the “Weird tradition” in literature, cinema and television at Dawson College, Canada.Lorna Jowett is Reader in Television Studies at the University of Northampton, UK.

• List of Illustrations xAcknowledgments xiiIntroduction Whedon Studies and the Ghost of Horror 1Kristopher Karl Woofter and Lorna JowettPart I (Under)Groundwork: Horror Concepts and Conventions in the Whedonverse1 The Slasher Template: Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs. John Carpenter’s Halloween 17Clayton Dillard2 The Sonic Horror of “Hush” 34Selma A. Purac3 “The Body” That Will Not Sit Up: Shock, Stasis, and the Negative Space of the Horror Genre 53Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare4 The Melancholy Musical: Horror and Avant-Garde Strategies in “Once More, with Feeling” 73Anne Golden5 Angel’s Dreams, Our Nightmares: Oneiric Horror in Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer 92Cynthia Burkhead6 Dollhouse’s Terrible Places: Hauntings, Abjection, and the Repressed 105Bronwen Calvert7 Inscription and Subversion: The Cabin in the Woods and the Postmodern Horror Tradition 123Stephanie GravesPart II Mutant Enemies: TV Horror, Industry, and Influence8 “For All I Know, It Could Be Hilarious or It Could Suck”: Situating the Film Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) in Period Vampire Comedy 143Jerry D. Metz Jr.9 Monstrous Puppet Masters: Negotiating Violence and Horror in the Whedon Tele-verse 163Stacey Abbott10 Forever Knight, Angel, and Supernatural: A Genealogy of Television Horror/Crime Hybrids 181Erin GianniniPart III “It’s About Power”: Revisiting Whedon’s “Revisionist” Horror11 Whedon, Feminism, and the Possibility of Feminist Horror on Television 201Lorna Jowett12 Weird Whedon: Cosmic Dread and Sublime Alterity in the Whedonverse 219Kristopher Karl Woofter13 “All the Better to Know You”: Investigating the Hybrid Monster and Allegories of Self/Other inBuffy the Vampire Slayer 243K. Brenna Wardell14 Horror and the Last Frontier: Monstrous Borders and Bodies in Firefly and Westworld 261Karen Herland15 The Half-Lives of Horror: The Differential Embodiments of Dollhouse 281Alanna ThainAppendix I The Work of Joss Whedon and the Horror Tradition: A Selected Bibliography 298Compiled by Alysa HornickAppendix II Foundational Works in Horror and Related Scholarship 308About the Contributors 313Index 317

Exposes both his deep affection for the horror genre and the complexity of the horror genre itself ... Provides a solid addition to study of the horror genre on both television and film, and in popular culture more generally.