Towards a Pacific Northwest Gothic...?
So back in 2013 I attended what would turn out to be my last academic conference (specifically, the 11th Biennial Conference of the International Gothic Association at the University of Surrey). I was there to present a paper entitled ‘“The Mystery of the Woods”: (Global)Gothic Cultural Production in the Pacific Northwest’. It was well received, and I went away feeling confident that I was on to something. But I was also, around that time, feeling (a) increasingly frustrated with Gothic Studies as a field of knowledge production, and (b) overwhelmed by my constantly expanding doctoral thesis (on American Gothic in the context of globalization). The material on the Pacific Northwest was only supposed to be the focus of the second chapter – but if I’d known then what I know now, I would’ve made it the focus of the thesis. In 2014 a perfect storm of personal and domestic crises led me to conclude my academic career. Though I don’t regret leaving academia, those years I spent buried in research have left me with a number of itches I’d like to find some creative ways to scratch.
Below is the abstract I wrote, which gives the gist of the conference paper. I’m posting it here because, after re-reading it for the first time in four years, it strikes me as being a lot better than I remember it, and I also thought it might serve as an effective secondary introduction to this tumblr. It gives a sense of some of the material I’ll be covering and some of the different themes I’ll be exploring.
‘Taking Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990-1991) to be the catalyst, this paper will address the increasing ubiquity of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) in American supernatural fiction. Briefly considering the PNW’s historical status within, and in relation to, the rest of the United States, the paper highlights the difficulties of defining the PNW Gothic as something distinct from the dominant East Coast traditions. In so far as there is such a thing as a PNW Gothic, it is indebted to the New England Gothic of H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Shirley Jackson, and to Transcendentalism. Nature, and the porous boundary between nature and technology – most explicit in The Ring (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2002), the US remake of the J-Horror classic – are recurring themes. Increasingly the “face” of contemporary American supernatural fiction, the PNW has been largely (though it can never be completely) effaced from the works in which it appears: Fox’s The X-Files (1993-2002) and the CW network’s Supernatural (2005, ongoing), productions based in Vancouver, Canada, supposedly range across – and in The Cabin in the Woods (dir. Drew Goddard, 2011), are meant to encompass the totality of – the continental United States. Whilst emphasising the importance of visual media, I also address the growing body of prose supernatural fiction set within the PNW: in the work of small press writers like Laird Barron and Barbara Roden; in gothic-horror e-books; and in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2005-2008). Videogames employing PNW settings are also considered; Remedy’s Alan Wake and Access Games’ Deadly Premonition (both 2010) were a testament to Twin Peaks’ continuing influence in its twentieth-anniversary year, while Konami’s Silent Hill drifted from the Northeast to the Northwest in Vatra Games’ Silent Hill: Downpour (2012). Produced in Finland, Japan and the Czech Republic respectively, these games confirm the PNW’s status as a centre for “globalgothic” cultural production: not only is the region rich in the necessary materials – featuring sublime landscapes, picturesque settings (small towns and isolated cabins) and some of the deepest, darkest woods in North America – it is also home to many of the companies (Amazon, Microsoft) that help to distribute and promote these works.’