1. Engagement with a concept central to horror, but one which has not yet seen this kind of focused academic attention. 2. A distinct shift in the examination of said concept, moving away from existing paradigms grounded in the study of the victim as a conduit / reflection of the audience, and towards an examination of the victim as a distinct entity. 3. A focus on interdisciplinary and cross-media contributions from authors, so as to demonstrate the ubiquity and scope of the topic within the genre. Despite its necessary centrality within the genre, the concept of the victim has not received much direct attention within the field of horror studies. Arguably, their presence is so ubiquitous as to become invisible—the threat of horror implies the need for a victim, whose function never alters, often becoming a blank slate for audiences to project their desires and fears onto.
This volume seeks to make explicit the concept of the victim within horror media and to examine their position in more detail, demonstrating that the necessity of their appearance within the genre does not equate to a simplicity of definition.
The chapters within this volume cover a number of topics and approaches, examining sources from literature, film, TV, and games (both analogue and digital) to show the pervasiveness of horror’s victims, as well as the variety of their guises.
Introduction: Theorizing the Victim, Marko Lukic,Opening the Gate:
Reconfiguring the Child Victim in Stranger Things, Lindsey Scott,Black Death:
Black Victims in 1980s Teen Slashers, Todd K. Platts,Beyond Binaries: The
Position of the Transgender Victim in Horror Narratives, Irena
Jurkovic,Through the Looking-Glass: The Gothic Victim in Jordan Peele's Us,
Ljubica Matek,Postmortem Victimhood: Necrovalue in Phantasm and Dead and
Buried, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns,The Sad Killer, Perpetuating Spaces,
Trauma and Violence Within the Slasher Genre, Marko Lukic, If this is the
last thing you see... that means I died: A Taxonomy of Camera-Operating
Victims in Found Footage Horror Films, Peter Turner,Victimhood and Rhetorical
Dialectics within Clive Barker's Faustian Fiction, Gavin F. Hurley,Pain
Index, Plain Suffering and Blood Measure: A Victimology of Driving Safety
Films, 1955-1975, Michael Stock,Biolithic Horror: Stone Victim/Victimisers in
Resident Evil Village, Merlyn Seller,The Potential Victim: Horror Roleplaying
Games and the Cruelty of Things, Ian Downes, Bibliography, Filmography.
Dr. Madelon Hoedt is an independent scholar based in the Netherlands. Her research into horror and the Gothic focuses on narrative and embodied experiences, specifically in live performance and video games. Previous publications include Narrative Design and Authorship in Bloodborne: An Analysis of the Horror Videogame (McFarland, 2019); Gothic Drama and the Uncanny Stage and Immersive and Pervasive Performance (Palgrave Gothic Handbook series, 2020). Marko Lukic is a professor in the English Department at the University of Zadar, where he teaches various courses in American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory. His research interests include the contemporary horror genre and its connection to human spatiality. Recent publications include Geography of Horror: Spaces, Hauntings and the American Imagination (Palgrave 2022), and chapters Heterotopian Horrors and Dark Urbanity (Palgrave Gothic Handbook series, 2020).
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