And so I watched her move on in life without me. She grew old. Got married to a man who could give her what she needed, and had three children just like she said she would. I already knew what she would name her children, she told me long ago. It was seeing her happy and at peace, which caused me so much turmoil and grief. For I was not apart of that happiness.
Sharp Objects Online: How Fans Have Redefined and Reframed The Southern Gothic Genre
Disclaimer: Please watch the clips of the show provided to get a better sense of what the show is like. Video essays and music given as examples do not need to be watched unless you want to. Some photos do have explanations if you hover over the image and click "ALT"
Synopsis of Sharp Objects
Sharp Objects (2018) is a psychological thriller miniseries based on Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name. The story follows Camille Preaker, a journalist recently released from psychiatric care, who returns to her small hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to report on the murders of two young girls. Camille’s return forces her to confront the traumatic environment she fled, including her emotionally abusive mother, Adora Crellin, a respected socialite obsessed with appearances and control.
As Camille investigates the killings, she becomes entangled in the town’s culture of secrecy, denial, and rigid gender expectations. Her half-sister Amma, outwardly angelic but privately rebellious, embodies the contradictions of Southern girlhood, while the community’s refusal to acknowledge violence enables further harm. Camille’s own history of self-harm and addiction resurfaces, revealing how personal trauma mirrors the town’s moral decay.
The investigation ultimately exposes Adora’s long-standing abuse of her daughters through medical poisoning, leading to her arrest. However, the final revelation reveals that Amma, not Adora, committed the murders as an expression of jealousy and internalized cruelty. The series concludes with Camille recognizing that survival does not equal healing, leaving Wind Gap with a deeper understanding of how cycles of maternal control, silence, and violence are reproduced across generations.
What is the Southern Gothic Sub-Genre?
The Southern Gothic genre is mostly known as a literary genre that uses gothic and American gothic elements such as the decay, grotesque, and supernatural. The gothic genre was applied to the America's South's unique cultural landscape, this explored its complex history of racism, class divides, and traditions after the civil war, often romanticizing the south and it's issues. The goal of this genre was to critique societal ills and delve into darker themes which had been set by writers in the 19th century like Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain. These writers were known to include gothic elements into their writing that took place in the South. This genre was rooted in poverty, religious hypocrisy, and slavery's legacy. This varies from today's view of this genre due the media, people of color and women reinterpreting the southern gothic genre for themselves.
The genre at the time was mainly written by men which omitted women as sinful, and obedient to male counterparts. The genre was typically written in the patriarchal lens of the south, and in the eyes of a man. However, seemingly in modern times women have come to reclaim this genre for themselves, portraying women as the agents, narrators, and disruptors to a story. Women are often seen as confronting the very systems that once confined them, and the meaning of elements like the grotesque, morality, and darkness that were once written in the lens of men has begun to shift it's meaning due to media portrayal like Sharp Objects.
Digital Media and its Effect's on the 'Aesthetic'
With the digital media tools and web distribution platforms we now have, this changed how we control and how others perceive certain aesthetics or texts. Today any line, flaw, imperfection, frame, face, or body can be edited to achieve this desired "aesthetic" effect. Manovich argues that new media aesthetics emerge from how media is structured and presented. Before film and television were only viewed in black and white film which traditionally marked the Southern Gothic aesthetic with themes like decay, haunting histories, and the supernatural. This has now been transformed by digital media. For example, Night of The Hunter (1955) a classic southern gothic haunting, had to rely on physical performance, sound recorded in real time, and the evil being embodied and seen in the actor due to the lack of digital manipulation that was accessible.
Today with all the technology that is available to use, narratives don't rely only on just the performance but with layering techniques and post production effects. The southern gothic theme was seen mostly as "hillbilly horror" or just decay of traditions from the Civil war. Today with TV shows like Sharp Objects it is used as a critical lens for exploring deep-seated issues like racism, trauma, and psychological systematic issues.
Older southern gothic films like I mentioned treat the South as a continuous environment, the viewer enters and endures. Sharp Objects has changed that with meaning emerging through accumulation rather than progression. The town of Wind Gap is not just seen as a small town in the south it is understood through multiple motifs such as the heat, cicadas, blood, teeth, and dolls. Below is the final scene where Camille finds out the truth about what Amma has been doing. As you notice the teeth are symbolically placed in the house for a reason. Audiences have speculated and created meaning from this scene which is connected to the South.
The southern gothic becomes a curated archive of sensations with the digital media we have access to. In todays age of technology and software we have fan edits that often take different clips and remix them with different music enhancing the meaning of what the Southern Gothic genre is understood as today. People take to apps like Pinterest, editing the perfect photo of a mossy swamp that portrays the decay of the south. They may add filters or even remove certain objects from the original source. Digital media tools have allowed fans to push their own interpretations of how they view this aesthetic, which is why their are certain variants of the southern gothic aesthetic all rooted in the same themes. Below are two Pinterest boards that contains images from the Souther Gothic aesthetic but are widely different interpretations of the genre and aesthetic. This is a good example of how differently people view things and interpret them for their own use.
(You will have to log in to a Pinterest account to view all photos)
Nov 16, 2025 - Explore 𝒜𝓂𝒶𝓃𝒹𝒶 𝒥𝑜𝓎's board "Southern gothic" on Pinterest. See more ideas about southern gothic, gothic, american gothic.
Jun 22, 2017 - The spooky grandeur of the old South. See more ideas about southern gothic, gothic, cemetery statues.
Using Stuart Halls encoding/decoding framework we understand how and why audiences have reinterpreted new media within the genre. Media messages are encoded or created by producers and then decoded by its audiences. He argues meaning is not fixed but instead people understand media based on their own experiences. He describes three possible decoding positions dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. Some audiences may accept Sharp Objects as Southern Gothic and its updated encoding, some audiences may only agree with some aspects of its encoding but appreciate the aesthetic, and other audiences may completely reject Sharp Objects as part of the southern gothic genre altogether, labeling it a show that romanticizes trauma. Majority of audiences accept the dominant reading, accepting the "new" southern gothic aesthetic and messages being produced. Which is why the genre of the Southern Gothic has changed from horror, decay and sensationalizing Southern flaws to being appreciated as a power to critique society under consistent systematic and societal issues, while still honoring its roots of the grotesque and decay.
Sharp Objects Feminist Message and Critique Of The South
Sharp Objects does not only serve as entertainment for a murder mystery journey of "who done it?" The novel written by Gillian Flynn uses her work as a critique to gendered expectations and norms put on women. Susan J. Douglass's feminist approach to media studies emphasizes how media simultaneously gives women visibility while also disciplining, containing, or punishing them. "... a new, sneaky, subtle form of sexism that seems to accept female achievements on the surface, but is really about repudiating feminism and keeping women in their place" (Douglass, 2017). Majority of films pre and post antebellum period within the Southern Gothic sub genre were patriarchal and enforced gendered norms that isolated women. Sharp Objects differs from traditional backlash narratives though, because Flynn exposes the exact system in which creates these outcomes. While the patriarchal aspect is usually explored in this particular genre and how women are used as symbols or objects, rather than narrative agents, Sharp Objects views the south through the southern matriarchy. The media acts as a critique on the very society who police and judge women harshly for their behaviors. Douglas goes on to explain "that such shows both engage with genuine, everyday challenges women face and, more to the point, assume and cultivate particular viewing repertoires that are complex and add to women’s pleasures in the text” (Douglas, 2017). One of the many reasons women in particular took to the TV show and novel was because of how it didn't portray women as docile creatures that are incapable of violence or autonomy. It explores the darker side of femininity and the consequences of keeping women in prescribed gender roles. For example, Sharp Objects male counterparts, like the detective of Wind Gap consistently doubt that a woman could have caused the murders in Wind Gap due to the Souths ingrained sexism and gender biases.
As Douglass explained women are more likely to take in media texts that are genuine and complex in its portrayal of women. Other films and television that have taken feminism into account within the Southern Gothic genre are Stoker (2013), The Beguiled (2017), and True Detective (Season 1, 2014).
Feminist media analysis is one of the reasons why the Southern Gothic genre is interpreted so differently from the past. More and more women have been using this genre in particular to critique the world they live in and the South in general. Black women in particular, like Toni Morrison, have decided to tell stories of the South in their own perspectives reclaiming what past media have erased from the true systematic issues of the south. Women are able to visualize themselves as the women that are being portrayed giving them time to relate to the media. This, leads me into Uses and Gratifications within digital media. Uses and Gratifications is a theory that views audiences as active participants who consciously choose specific media to satisfy personal needs such as information, relaxation, social connection, or personal identity (Pearce, 2009). This can explain why women in particular are more drawn to watch the Southern Gothic genre. Over the years, it has been painted in a new light which empowers women and makes them feel seen. Some audiences may want to feel empowered or personally identify with the media being presented. The Southern Gothic genre is not just a genre anymore but a tool to be used that portrays complex and taboo subjects that allow women to articulate their own experiences.
Fan Culture Redefining the Genre
Axel Bruns argues that contemporary culture is shaped by produsers. These are users who both consume and produce content. Fan activities includes fan edits, fan fiction, or fan art. These activities acts as Produsage, where audiences don't just consume the aesthetic but actively rework and extend it. Bruns states thats "In the first instance, this gradually strengthens the feedback loop from
consumers back to producers, and in the process undermines
producers’ control of the overall production value chain." We can connect this statement to fan edits or fan cams, which take copyrighted content and cut scenes out, recolor, and add their own musical interpretations to make it their own. Rather than a director or producer of a film or show having final say in what everything is supposed to mean, fans have full control to restructure the narrative how they please. Fans of Sharp Objects have reframed the way the Southern Gothic genre is perceived, by associating it with gendered violence, mental health, and female rage. Instead of treating Sharp Objects as a passive adaption it has become a participatory hub for fans. Fan edits are huge part in this reframing of genre, fans have focused in on Camille's scars and complexity as a character and treat her as the narrative. Fans have instantly become co-authors with Gillian Flynn and the Producer of the TV show. (Examples of fan edits are below).
There are even numerous fan theories, explanations, analytical video essays, and reddit thread discussions that have contributed to the perception of the Southern gothic genre as well and how people are interpreting the media themselves.
Examples include;
There are also countless mood boards on Tumblr, TikTok, and Pinterest which have used visuals to represent how they view the South and this particular genre. People now view the southern decay as feminine decay due to years and years of repression. Women are reclaiming the south and the once patriarchal genre to fit their own standards and meanings.
Even with artists like Ethel Cain who have become extremely popular due to their music fitting in with the Southern Gothic genre, many can argue that her music has also contributed to this feminist reframe of the Southern Gothic genre. Her album 'Preachers Daughter' is rooted in the South of Florida, where a young girl is in an abusive home and runs away only to meet a violent end of her own. She uses religious motifs and gothic references in her music. Her music is very popular with fan made playlists of revolving around the world of Sharp Objects. (Linked below is her album, so you can see the visuals and how this relates to the overall picture).
George Lipsitz states in his essay that "Memory is institutional as well as individual. It may be perceived personally, but it is created collectively" (Lipsitz, 2017). The fan edits, reddit threads, video essays, and fan art which are all sites for collective remembering. Fans pitch their own critiques or praises to each other, which makes meanings become more stabilized over time as everyone agrees on one theory or explanation proposed. For example, the dollhouse revelation in the show and novel becomes communal knowledge and what it supposedly represents for Camilles sister, Amma and her.
In conclusion, fans, and particularly women have significantly reframed and redefined the Southern Gothic genre/aesthetic as their own. Today, fans have centered female agency, and inferiority instead of Southern decay as a spectacle. They have taken Southern Femininity and treated it as a horror rather than a virtue people should live by. Fans have stripped away the confederate nostalgia, romanticization of plantations and the "old south" myth making and have embraced a mood shift in the genre that focuses on societal issues many still face today in the South.
Works Cited
Primary Source:
Noxon, M., Flynn, G., Metcalf, A., Calandra, V., Brown, S. (., Kamoche, D., Blejer, A., Vallée, J., Auge, D., Adams, A., Clarkson, P., Messina, C., Scanlen, E., Craven, M., Czerny, H., Smith, T. J., Davenport, M., Sandoval, M., Chase, W., Hurst, J., Lillis, S., Wilson, L., & Perkins, E. (2018). Sharp objects. Home Box Office.
Secondary Sources:
Manovich, L. (2017). Aesthetics. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for Media Studies (Vol. 5, pp. 9–11). NYU Press.
Hall, S. W. (1980). Encoding/Decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies (pp. 63-87). London: Hutchinson.
Douglas, S. J. (2017). Feminism. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for Media Studies (Vol. 5, pp. 68–72). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gk08zz.24
Schrøder, K. C. (2009). Audience Theories. In S. W. Littlejohn, & K. A. Foss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Communication Theory (Vol. 2, pp. 61-67). SAGE Publications.
Bruns, A. (2008). The future is user-led: The path towards widespread produsage. Fibreculture Journal, 11.
Lipsitz, G. (2017). Memory. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for Media Studies (Vol. 5, pp. 121–123). NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gk08zz.41
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