Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear: : Critical Conversations in Horror Studies Filipa Antunes Lehigh University Press

Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear

Description

Focusing on programs from the 1970s to the early 2000s, this volume explores televised youth horror as a distinctive genre that affords children productive experiences of fear. Led by intrepid teenage investigators and storytellers, series such as Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and Are You Afraid of the Dark? show how young people can effectively confront the terrifying, alienating, and disruptive aspects of human existence. The contributors analyze how televised youth horror is uniquely positioned to encourage young viewers to interrogate—and often reimagine—constructs of normativity. Approaching the home as a particularly dynamic viewing space for young audiences, this book attests to the power of televised horror as a domain that enables children to explore larger questions about justice, human identity, and the preconceptions of the adult world.

Section One: Youth Horror and What Matters to Adults
Chapter One: “And Whenever They Catch You, They Will Kill You”: Martin Rosen’s Watership Down (1978) as Horror
Brandon R. Grafius
Chapter Two: “The Sooner We’re All One Big Happy Family, the Better”: Children of the Stones as a Cautionary Tale
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
Chapter Three:Abject Horror in Courage the Cowardly Dog
Katherine Ridolfi-Lizza

Section Two: Youth Horror and Imagining Differences
Chapter Four: Green Men, Literate Worms, and Swamp Monsters—an Ecocritical Reading of Select Goosebumps Episodes
Barbara Katharina Reschenhofer
Chapter Five:Everywhere and Nowhere:Pastiche and the Uncanny in Courage the Cowardly Dog
Kimberly Plaksin
Chapter Six: Developing in the Dark: Confronting Fears through Supportive Storytelling in Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Michael Jacob

Section Three: Youth Horror Reaches Its Adulthood
Chapter Seven: “I Call This Story the Tale of . . .”: The Hosts and Narrators of Children’s Horror Television
Merinda Staubli
Chapter Eight: “We’ve Been Teenagers Forever”: Reference and Self-Reflexivity in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated
Stacey Anh Baran
Chapter Nine: “Don’t Let Your Parents Watch It Alone!”: Cautionary Tales and Family Horror in R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour
Filipa Antunes

Product details

Published	24 Sep 2024
Format	Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition	1st
Extent	170
ISBN	9781611463422
Imprint	Lehigh University Press
Series	Critical Conversations in Horror Studies
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Anthology Editor

Kyle Brett

Anthology Editor

Ethan Robles

Contributor

Filipa Antunes

Contributor

Stacey Anh Baran

Contributor

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns is Professor in the…

Contributor

Kyle Brett

Contributor

Brandon R. Grafius

Contributor

Michael Jacob

Contributor

Kim Plaksin

Contributor

Barbara Katharina Reschenhofer

Contributor

Katherine Ridolfi-Lizza

Contributor

Ethan Robles

Contributor

Merinda Staubli

Reader, beware! The kids who grew up sitting too close to the television or peeking through their fingers to watch Goosebumps and Watership Down have grown up, and they are here to mine their childhood nightmares to frighteningly satisfying ends. Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear unites the most exciting new and established voices in the field to give long overdue attention to this fascinating area of study.

Catherine Lester, University of Birmingham
Youth Horror Television and the Question of Fear elevates the unmediated yet communal experience of watching TV to a source of both joyful reminiscence and satisfying critical intervention. It recognizes how ‘televised youth horror’ spawns horror-loving adults, exposing them to the haunting powers of narrative from a young age. This is a neglected area of contemporary horror’s origin story.

Laura R. Kremmel, Niagara University