Suburban Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction, art, film and television, focused on anxieties associated with the creation of suburban communities, particularly in the United States and the Western world, from the 1950s and 1960s onwards.
Criteria
It often, but not exclusively, relies on the supernatural or elements of science fiction that have been in wider Gothic literature, but manifested in a suburban setting.
Description
Suburban Gothic is defined by Bernice M. Murphy as "a subgenre of the wider American Gothic tradition which dramatises anxieties arising from the mass urbanisation of the United States and usually features suburban settings, preoccupations and protagonists".[1] She argues that a common trope of the suburban Gothic is the danger within a family or neighbourhood, rather than an external threat.[2] Teenagers and children are often major protagonists or sources of threat, and characteristic conflicts often focus on issues of individuality and conformity.[3]
Australian visual artist Tanja Stark explores themes of Suburban Gothic and the Sublime Divine, drawing from a background as a social worker, domestic violence counsellor and upbringing in the Baptist church.[16] She approaches her creation through a symbolic lens, and sees the genre of suburban gothic as influenced by psycholanalytical ideas of the Jungianshadow, and the parts of domestic life that lie beneath conscious awareness. Her art explores these unconscious desires and feelings and their powerful influence on waking life, particularly when they are associated with serious psychological trauma. In accordance with Jungian ideas, where the 'shadow' is not acknowledged or integrated, but is repressed, projected or inflated, the darker aspects of the psyche may emerge in ways that can be dangerous or destructive to mental or physical well-being of the individual and those around them, a key tension in Suburban Gothic art. [17][18]
^J. E. Hogle, The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), ISBN0-521-79466-8, p. xxv.
^B. M. Murphy, The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), ISBN0-230-21810-5, p. 4.
^ abThe Anadromist (2012) American Gothic Films: An Incomplete List. The Anadromous Life, [blog] November 7, 2012, Available at: [1] Accessed: December 9, 2012.
^K. I. Michasiw, "Some stations of sub-urban Gothic", in R. K. Martin and E. Savoy, eds, American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative (University of Iowa Press, 2009), ISBN1-58729-349-8, p. 240.