Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Bedevilling paternal discipline: fathers from American Gothic to Point Pleasant
2. Looking for daddy: Carnivàle, Supernatural and Millennium
3. Latchkey hero: the horrors of class in Eric Kripke's Supernatural
4. Gothic foundations: "The Pest House," "Hell House," and "The Murder House"
Conclusion: gothic conspiracy and the eyes of Lara Means
Episodes discussed in detail
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Julia M. Wright is Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University

Reviews

‘For fans and scholars of the series like Supernatural… the book is a delightful exploration into one aspect of what makes these series so resonant.’
Bridget Kies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, January 2018

‘Men with Stakes is not always about masculinity per se. Chapter four deals with American Gothic television’s subversion of Enlightenment concepts such as science and progress and its postmodern blurring of the line between the ‘world of signs’—including the televisual medium—and the ‘world of the “real”’ (p. 124). However, as Wright indicates, many of these dynamics can be understood in gendered terms; she makes an especially fascinating contention that the first season of American Horror Story (2011– present) represents the film and television industry ‘as a conventional [patriarchal] gothic villain’ (p. 150). Hence, even when Men with Stakes apparently strays from its theme, Wright is in fact adding weight to her central argument that Gothic TV’s ‘interrogation of masculinity is intertwined with larger examinations of social institutions, cultural assumptions, and established forms of knowledge’ (p. 5).’
Eve Bennett, Universite´ Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies
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