Abstract
This paper develops a Cultural Criminology of the Late Modern Gothic. It discusses how representations of criminal justice today are often framed by and narrated through a Gothic imagination. Often, and especially by those who have already noted its criminological significance, this trend is considered a cultural support for Punitive Populism and the demand for vindictive sanctions especially against ‘sensational’ offenders. Although such interpretations are partially valid they do not fully address the entire scope of the Late Modern Gothic—especially when it is invoked as a cultural support for transgression or resistance against the situated structures of (Late) Modernity. By discussing a number of recent media representations but particularly an episode from a popular TV serial, the paper indicates that the contemporary Gothic is now as much a source of subjective identification as it is an imagination of the cultural other: an identification with and not just against that which transcends cultural borders and the culturally ambiguous. Cultural Criminology is here employed to question assumptions that the ‘public mind’ is uniformly punitive and unable or unwilling to tolerate any form of criminal transgression. In responding to popular demands framed by the Gothic imagination, formal criminal justice interventions need not, therefore, necessarily assume a vindictive tone. A Humanistic Cultural Criminological approach to Late Modern Gothic transgressiveness can help reveal cultural complexities too easily ignored by conventional models of criminological analysis.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I refer to the murder of Alice Gross by Arnis Zalkains on August 28th 2014 in the Brent district of London.
The murder of Gunner Lee Rigby on May 22nd 2013 by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.
Examples are too numerous to fully reference but I refer to the genre first popularised by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-offs, subsequent TV series such as True Blood and the novels of Charlaine Harris upon which it is based or Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan novels and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. A common theme to all these is the pursuit and defeat of supernatural forces engaged in ‘crime’ by characters who themselves have supernatural powers—the Witch, Vampire, Werewolf—and inhabit a distinctly Gothic world. These narratives are sometimes described as examples of ‘Candy Gothic’ (Botting 1996) but they, nonetheless, exemplify the continuing popularity and transformation of the Late Gothic imagination.
The hugely successful Twilight novels and movies, for example, show that today’s vampire is no longer necessarily an amoral killer but can attend High School, fall in love and sparkles!
First released 6th October 2014 by Primrose Hill Productions, DC Comics, Warner Bros. Television.
A further example in the Batman canon (also introduced in episode nine of the series) is the character of Harvey Dent who begins as an ambitious attorney driven to rid his city of vice, corruption and immorality through wholly legal means but, after having acid thrown on his face, becomes the schizophrenic villain ‘Two-Face’.
Gothic anti-modernism, for example, can easily elide with reactionary political and cultural forces also opposed to modernity. It is, for example, difficult to defend the homophobia, quasi-fascism and church burnings by some fans of Black Metal whose rejection of modernity adopts distinctly Gothic forms. But this does not imply that such behaviour is any the less a ‘sub-cultural’ deviant style made meaningful as a response to shared lived experiences.
Contemporary depictions of the serial killer are invariably ambiguous. The popularity of another TV series, Dexter, whose lead character and ‘hero’ uses his own transgressive skills as a serial killer to investigate and capture others, provides another example of the Gothic theme explored in this paper. It appears to distinguish between the ‘good’ serial killer whose murderous arts are contrasted with the ‘bad’ serial killer whose death is deserved…a fundamentally ambiguous narrative arc which our Late Modern culture appears willing to tolerate. The cultural complexity by which the Gothic serial killer is imagined in today’s culture is, however, a topic requiring its own discussion and is only hinted at here.
References
Arrigo, B. (2008). Crime, justice and the underlabourer: On the criminology of the shadow and the search for disciplinary identity and legitimacy. Justice Quarterly, 25(3), 439–468.
Botting, F. (1996). The Gothic. London: Routledge.
Edmundson, M. (1997). Nightmare on main street: Angels, sadomasochism and the culture of Gothic. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Hayward, K. (2009). Visual criminology: Cultural Criminology style. Criminal Justice Matters, 78(1), 12–14.
Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2004). Cultural Criminology: Some notes on the script. Theoretical Criminology, 8(3), 259–273.
Hogle, J. (Ed.). (2002). The Cambridge companion to Gothic fiction. Cambridge: University Press.
Hutton, N. (2005). Beyond populist punitiveness? Punishment and Society, 7(3), 243–258.
Katz, J. (2008). Seductions of crime: Moral and sensual attractions in doing evil. New York: Basic Books.
Kelley, H. (2002). British Gothic fiction 1885–1930. In J. Hogle (Ed.), The cambridge companion to Gothic fiction. Cambridge: University Press.
Linnemann, T., Wall, T., & Green, E. (2014). The walking dead and killing state: Zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology, 18(4), 506–527.
Miles, R. (2002). The 1790s: The effulgence of Gothic. In J. Hogle (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Gothic fiction. Cambridge: University Press.
Moore, A., & Bolland, B. (1988). Batman: The killing joke. New York: DC Comics.
O’Brien, M. (2005). What is cultural about Cultural Criminology. British Journal of Criminology, 45(5), 599–612.
Picart, C. J., & Greek, C. (2007). Monsters in among us: Toward a Gothic criminology. Maddison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Pratt, J., Brown, D., Brown, M., Hallsworth, S., & Morrison, W. (Eds.). (2005). The new punitiveness: Trends, theories, perspectives. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (2014). Narrative criminology for these times. British Society of Criminology Newsletter, 75, 7–10.
Punter, D. (Ed.). (2000). A companion to the Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell.
Punter, D., & Byron, G. (2004). The Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rafter, N., & Ystehede, P. (2010). Here be dragons: Lombroso, the gothic and social control. In M. Deflem (Ed.), Popular culture crime and social control (Vol. 14, pp. 263–284). Sociology of crime, law and deviance. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Seltzer, M. (1998). Serial killers: Death and life in America’s wound culture. London: Routledge.
Spooner, C. (2007). Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion Books.
Valier, C. (2002). Punishment, border crossings and the power of horror. Theoretical Criminology, 6(3), 319–337.
Valier, C. (2008). Punishment as hate crime. Criminal Justice Matters, 48(1), 30–31.
Walpole, H. (2008, first published 1764). The castle of Otranto: A Gothic story. Oxford: University Press.
Warwick, A. (2007). Feeling Gothicky. Gothic Studies, 9(1), 5–15.
Webber, C. (2007). Background, foreground, foresight: The 2rd space of Cultural Criminology. Crime, Media, Culture, 3(2), 139–157.
Young, J. (2007). The vertigo of late modernity. London: Sage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sothcott, K. Late Modern Ambiguity and Gothic Narratives of Justice. Crit Crim 24, 431–444 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-015-9287-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-015-9287-2