Derek Johnston
I was awarded my PhD by the University of East Anglia based on my thesis 'Genre, Taste and the BBC: The Origins of British Television Science Fiction'. Major elements of this thesis have been presented at conference and published as articles and book chapters building on that material. I have taught various aspects of the media, primarily film and television but including radio and the press and social media, at the University of East Anglia, the University of Portsmouth and now at Queen's University Belfast. At Queen's I am the convenor for the MA in Broadcast Literacy in the School of English. I published my first monograph in 2015, entitled 'Haunted Seasons: The Seasonality of Television Gothic' for the Palgrave Gothic series.
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Supervisors: Mark Jancovich and Christine Cornea
Phone: 02890973814
Address: 2 University Square,
Belfast,
BT7 1NN
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This paper will outline the shifts that take place in this narrative tradition as it moves from oral to literary, then to broadcast forms. This encompasses its movement between audiences and contexts. What was once a way of bringing community together with local tales becomes something that is national but still personal, as readers enjoy the latest Victorian Christmas annual and read the ghost stories to their family. The broadcast version of the tales professionalises this telling still more, by removing the interpretation of the reading by whichever member of the family is reading aloud to the rest. The domination of British broadcasting by England and English traditions also means that this Christmas ghost story tradition is maintained and spread at the expense of local traditions, such as those of Scotland and Ireland which would place the telling of scary stories at Halloween.
This paper will argue that these productions mark a stage in the domestication of social rituals and events, particularly in terms of the marking out of the year through particular events. Where at one point the calendar was punctuated by celebrations amongst the community, there has been an increased domestication of this demarcation of the year, accelerated by the spread of literacy and of domestic media such as radio and television. This is connected to the privatisation of culture, both in the sense that it has moved away from the public to the private, and also in the influence of business and capitalism and the associated changes in culture upon social practices. Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ has been described as marking, and defining, the change of the social celebration of Christmas to a domestic, familial one that retains concerns about wider society.(Hutton, 1997: 113-114) Seasonal television horror takes this further, by emphasising the domestic nature of the medium through the domestic nature of the narrative, and moving further away from the supernatural tale as social commentary by containing and naturalising it. Not only that, but elements of the horror aesthetic become retained as an aspect of the season, with even the supernatural elements removed, as can be seen by the BBC Dickens adaptations appearing each Christmas since 2005, which have taken on a distinctly Gothic appearance of deep shadow surrounding innocent characters being menaced while surrounded by oppressive and ornate architecture.
While elements of social concern may be present in these texts, they are thus often distanced from the contemporary in time, completing the domestication of the seasonal horror story. Where once the calendar was marked out by communal activities which included engagement with supernatural elements which related to social concerns, now the domestication of these narratives through television means that they are presented as less significant, typically distanced from us in space and time, or they are normalised and contained by their presence in ongoing series, where the continuing nature of the narrative demonstrates that these forces cannot influence us in any lasting manner. In essence, we are left only with the ghosts of our past fears, retained as aesthetic and trappings and nostalgic recurrences, played out because that is what is expected of the time of year, rather than to serve a particular purpose.
In 2009, BBC Controller of Drama Ben Stephenson stated that ‘Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a ghost story for the adults to watch in front of the fire when the children are in bed.’ This seminar outlines the origins of this tradition in literature, considering how it was translated from oral tradition, through literature, to broadcasting. The cultural specificity of the tradition becomes important, not only in understanding the significance of the ghost story at Christmas, but also in contrasting it with different seasonal horror traditions, and interpreting what these tell us about the movement and development of cultural practices across time and space.
Through the 1970s, and with a couple of revivals in the 2000s, the BBC ran a series of annual programmes known by the umbrella title The Ghost Story for Christmas. These were mostly directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, and mostly adapted from the work of M.R.James. These productions draw on aspects of season and identity in a number of ways, which will be explored in this talk, with a particular consideration being given to the role of landscape and nature in the productions.
With Melinda Snodgrass, Roz J.Kaveney, Nick Lowe, Stefan Rudnicki