Surveying the widespread appropriations of the Gothic in contemporary literature and culture,Post-Millennial Gothicshows contemporary Gothic is often romantic, funny and celebratory. Reading a wide range of popular texts, from Stephenie Meyer'sTwilightseries through Tim Burton's Gothic film adaptations ofSweeney Todd,Alice in WonderlandandDark Shadows, to the appearance of Gothic in fashion, advertising and television, Catherine Spooner argues that conventional academic and media accounts of Gothic culture have overlooked this celebratory strain of 'Happy Gothic'.
Identifying a shift in subcultural sensibilities following media coverage of the Columbine shootings, Spooner suggests that changing perceptions of Goth subculture have shaped the development of 21st-century Gothic. Reading these contemporary trends back into their sources, Spooner also explores how they serve to highlight previously neglected strands of comedy and romance in earlier Gothic literature.
Introduction
1. Consuming the Edible Graveyard: Gothic Lifestyles and Lifestyle Gothic
2. 'The images, for me,arethe story': Tim Burton's Gothic Aesthetics
3. 'Forget Nu Rave, We're Into Nu Grave!': High Street Style and the uses of Gothic Romance
4.Gothic Charm School, or, How Vampires Learned to Sparkle
5. Pretty in Black: The Goth Girl and the Whimsical Macabre
6. 'Happy Nights Are Here Again': Having a Laugh with Vampires and Other Monsters
7. 'I'm the Shoreditch Vampire': Making Over Goth Masculinities in Television Comedy
8. 'Swishing about and spookiness': Whitby and Gothic Literary Tourism from Bram Stoker'sDraculato Paul Magrs'sNever the Bride
Conclusion: Gothic Celebrations
Works cited
Index
Spooner is especially persuasive in her argument that the rise in the fusion of comedy and Gothic needs not to be viewed as on the fringes of what is quintessentially Gothic, but rather a turn towalt
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