Dark Soaps, Horror Tropes, and Gay Audiences (Then and Now)

Please engage at least one of this week’s authors (Benshoff or Owens) and at least one of the week’s “suggested screenings” (Dark Shadows, “Episode 212” or Dante’s Cove, “The Beginning”) to craft an organized and coherent 300-500 word response to the week’s material. You may choose to address anyone or multiple of the below prompts and/or pose your own questions, critiques, and assessments. Please address specific and relevant aesthetic/thematic/narrative details about the episode(s), though, and use direct quotes or substantive paraphrases of the readings. You may start with some summary but a synopsis should not comprise the bulk of your post. Please note that you will NOT be able to view your classmates’ writings until after you have submitted them. I encourage you, though, to interact with/respond to your classmates’  posts – this discussion could factor into your class participation assessment! Some questions you might choose to consider (you do not need to answer all of them):

• How do Benshoff and/or Owens situate and contextualize the audiences/fandoms for Dark Shadows and/or Dante’s Cove? What do you feel is the social/political purpose of exploring camp/queer engagement with these programs?
• How do conventions of soap opera and/or horror anthology programming inform Dark Shadows’ and/or Dante’s Cove’s narrative or aesthetic sensibilities? Why and how do these authors consider the horror genre as particularly suited to queer subjectivity and camp reading? Do you agree or disagree with their assessments?
• How do our authors understand Dark Shadows and/or Dante’s Cove as operating through their networks’ (ABC’s and Here! TV’s) industrial branding strategies? Do these network logics seem to restrict or enhance the proliferation of camp/queer discourses?
• Why does Owens argue for an industry studies approach to analyzing queer-themed programming like Dante’s Cove? What evidence does he use to substantiate his formal analysis of the show? Do you find this method effective or limiting? How does this article differ from Benshoff’s reception study of Dark Shadows?
• How does either program’s camp stylization differ from or complement the modes of performance, gender-play, and/or social allegory evident in Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick van Dyke Show, Batman, or An American Family? 

   

  For the dark shadows,” Episode 212” please find by yourself. Thank you!