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Gender politics in a high-camp, lowbrow musical

Ramalho, Joana Rita; (2020) Gender politics in a high-camp, lowbrow musical. In: Bloom, Clive, (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. (pp. 745-763). Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.

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Abstract

In The Devil’s Carnival (2012) and Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival (2015), director Darren Lynn Bousman and co-composers Terrance Zdunich and Saar Hendelman merge the musical genre with the gothic mode in order to reinvent Judeo-Christian myth(olog)ical spaces – Heaven and Hell – as allegories for the failings of contemporary socio-political systems in their treatment of women, sexual minorities and misfits of all kinds. The notion of ‘carnival’ becomes here a metaphor for social interaction and integration, functioning as a discourse through which to critique social ruptures, political control and ingrained fear. My investigation focuses more closely on the second instalment and analyses how it deploys gothic tropes to externalise the convoluted dispute between an official culture and its rejects. In so doing, it inquires where the distinctive appeal of the films resides, along with the meanings and affects that subcultural audiences invest in them.

Type: Book chapter
Title: Gender politics in a high-camp, lowbrow musical
ISBN: 978-3-030-33135-1
ISBN-13: 978-3-030-33136-8
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_44
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_44
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: carnival, cult, camp, film musicals, gothic, heaven and hell, surveillance, non-heteronormativity, patriarchy, dolls, cosplay, subcultural audiences, sexual minorities
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10199243
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