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Transmedia Terrors in Post-TV Horror Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2024
Abstract
This chapter advances what is post-TV horror. This begins with Netflix releasing its first original TV horror series Hemlock Grove in full that encourages binge-viewing, bluring cult and mainstream viewership. The chapter explores horror film-to-TV transmedia using three case studies – Ash vs Evil Dead, The Purge, and Scream – evidencing myriad transmedia memories. The chapter analyses online streaming and portal interfaces employing televisual discourse: YouTube Premium's Fight of the Living Dead combines micro-celebrity influencers with reality TV generics. Twitch.TV allows audiences to watch others play horror videogames, evoking traditional TV liveness and ephemerality. Shudder documentaries interpellate cult fans, creating what I term ‘emic authenticity’, however, the portal loses its broadcast feature when reconfigured into a ‘channel’ on Amazon Prime's aggregational app.
Keywords: SVoD, binge-viewing, transmedia, social media, live streaming, apps
Charting the spread of types of horror previously confined to cinema, Chapter 1 argued that the genre's employment and location within existing channels and portals’ branded catalogues sought quality status, cult appeal, and/or mainstream popularity through various textual and paratextual attributes. Chapter 2 continues examining horror television content that is industrially contextualized but does so by analysing how portals’ technological designs and delivery systems shape twenty-first century horror television and expands what is considered post-TV horror. Technological advancements in the delivery have long impacted on televisual form. In the US, for example, a switch from mass appeal least-objectionable network TV to diverse content targeting specific quality/niche demographics was brought about with the introduction of cable television and VCR technology (Reeves et al., 1996); a move from a TVI (approximately 1950s–1970s) to TVII epoch (approximately 1980s–1990s). The introduction of digital delivery at the turn of the millennium gave further choice to an increasingly fragmented viewership as industry tailored content to target audiences, taste cultures, and fanbases. Additionally, this TVIII era saw a ‘move towards multi-platform forms of distribution and storytelling, but […] always [keeping] […] some […] link with the technology, branding and programming strategies, and social connotations television traditionally carries’ (Jenner, 2016, p. 259).
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