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Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic
Once we've terrified ourselves reading Anne Rice or Stephen King, watching Halloween or following the O. J. Simpson trial, we can rely on the comfort of our inner child or Robert Bly's bongos, an angel, or even a crystal. In a brilliant assessment of American culture on the eve of the millennium, Mark Edmundson asks why we're determined to be haunted, courting the Gothic at every turn--and, at the same time, committed to escape through any new scheme for ready-made transcendence.
Nightmare on Main Street depicts a culture suffused with the Gothic, not just in novels and films but even in the nonfictive realms of politics and academic theories, TV news and talk shows, various therapies, and discourses on AIDS and the environment. Gothic's first wave, in the 1790s, reflected the truly terrifying events unfolding in revolutionary France. What, Edmundson asks, does the ascendancy of the Gothic in the 1990s tell us about our own day?
And what of another trend, seemingly unrelated--the widespread belief that re-creating oneself is as easy as making a wish? Looking at the world according to Forrest Gump, Edmundson shows how this parallel culture actually works reciprocally with the Gothic.
An unchecked fixation on the Gothic, Edmundson argues, would result in a culture of sadomasochism. Against such a rancorous and dispiriting possibility, he draws on the work of Nietzsche and Shelley, and on the recent creations of Toni Morrison and Tony Kushner, to show how the Gothic and the visionary can come together in persuasive and renovating ways.
Nightmare on Main Street depicts a culture suffused with the Gothic, not just in novels and films but even in the nonfictive realms of politics and academic theories, TV news and talk shows, various therapies, and discourses on AIDS and the environment. Gothic's first wave, in the 1790s, reflected the truly terrifying events unfolding in revolutionary France. What, Edmundson asks, does the ascendancy of the Gothic in the 1990s tell us about our own day?
And what of another trend, seemingly unrelated--the widespread belief that re-creating oneself is as easy as making a wish? Looking at the world according to Forrest Gump, Edmundson shows how this parallel culture actually works reciprocally with the Gothic.
An unchecked fixation on the Gothic, Edmundson argues, would result in a culture of sadomasochism. Against such a rancorous and dispiriting possibility, he draws on the work of Nietzsche and Shelley, and on the recent creations of Toni Morrison and Tony Kushner, to show how the Gothic and the visionary can come together in persuasive and renovating ways.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 27, 2018
For someone who begins by insulting horror fans as “losers,” Mark Edmundson has produced a work that is surprisingly as insightful as it is presumptive. Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic (1999) is essentially a long essay, broken into three related sections. His premise is bold: that we live in a culture saturated by the Gothic. The problem with his argument is glaring: his definition of “Gothic” is extremely broad.
“America is a nation of extremes,” he wrote, where the pessimistic and the optimistic, in equally unrealistic forms, constantly battle over the hearts and minds of the American public. On one hand stands A Nightmare on Elm Street and Oprah, and on the other side stands Forrest Gump.
It might surprise you to find Oprah Winfrey and Freddy Krueger in the same category. According to Edmundson, the single most important aspect of the Gothic is the hero-villain who does wrong, but is, in the end, internally conflicted. Since the guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show often satisfy that description, Oprah joins the ranks of the Gothic. So did news stories about the O.J. Simpson case, for that matter.
Therein lies the problem with Nightmare on Main Street. Edmundson considers any portrayal of a duel nature in humanity to be Gothic. Never mind the elements of setting, mood, or the supernatural that make Gothic literature and film so unique. Those are all pushed aside in favor of the broadest possible characterization.
This problem seems so glaring I’m surprised that neither Richard Rorty nor Michael Pollan, two scholars who Edmundson credited for helping to shape his argument, didn’t catch it right away. Just because something shares an aspect with Gothic literature and film doesn’t make it Gothic as well. If you made a Venn diagram, and on one side you had the Oprah Winfrey Show and on the other you had Gothic novels, the overlapping part would be comically small.
Aside from that glaring problem, Nightmare on Main Street is an entertaining and engaging work. Edmundson’s observations occasionally made me laugh out loud. Describing Scar, the main villain of the popular ‘90s cartoon The Lion King, he wrote, “Scar’s voice, courtesy of Jeremy Irons, is that of a cultivated, world-weary, gay man. He sounds like Gore Vidal with a significant hangover.”
His description of our therapeutic culture is dead on, beginning with Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump, a movie that rewarded sweet and innocent ignorance, was, ultimately, our answer to Nightmare on Elm Street. “Forrest Gump played large in America because it worked as a vacation, a few hours away from more pressing Gothic fears,” he explained. In a culture so saturated with death, destruction, and fear, Forrest Gump reassured baby boomers that despite all the tumult, everything would work out in the end, as long as you viewed everything through a detached, sentimental lens.
In his third section, Edmundson proposed that naked sadomasochism is what results when the culture of Gothic goes uncontested. “At the core of every Gothic plot is the S&M scenario: victim, victimizer, terrible place, torment,” he wrote. The growth of S&M culture in America is therefore the direct result of our inability to effectively counter the Gothic.
Edmundson concludes on a down note, with no prescription for countering the Gothic, other than that Forrest Gump and religion won’t suffice. He left it to his readers to discover a culturally redeeming art form. As a fan of the Gothic, I hope he has to wait for a long time.
“America is a nation of extremes,” he wrote, where the pessimistic and the optimistic, in equally unrealistic forms, constantly battle over the hearts and minds of the American public. On one hand stands A Nightmare on Elm Street and Oprah, and on the other side stands Forrest Gump.
It might surprise you to find Oprah Winfrey and Freddy Krueger in the same category. According to Edmundson, the single most important aspect of the Gothic is the hero-villain who does wrong, but is, in the end, internally conflicted. Since the guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show often satisfy that description, Oprah joins the ranks of the Gothic. So did news stories about the O.J. Simpson case, for that matter.
Therein lies the problem with Nightmare on Main Street. Edmundson considers any portrayal of a duel nature in humanity to be Gothic. Never mind the elements of setting, mood, or the supernatural that make Gothic literature and film so unique. Those are all pushed aside in favor of the broadest possible characterization.
This problem seems so glaring I’m surprised that neither Richard Rorty nor Michael Pollan, two scholars who Edmundson credited for helping to shape his argument, didn’t catch it right away. Just because something shares an aspect with Gothic literature and film doesn’t make it Gothic as well. If you made a Venn diagram, and on one side you had the Oprah Winfrey Show and on the other you had Gothic novels, the overlapping part would be comically small.
Aside from that glaring problem, Nightmare on Main Street is an entertaining and engaging work. Edmundson’s observations occasionally made me laugh out loud. Describing Scar, the main villain of the popular ‘90s cartoon The Lion King, he wrote, “Scar’s voice, courtesy of Jeremy Irons, is that of a cultivated, world-weary, gay man. He sounds like Gore Vidal with a significant hangover.”
His description of our therapeutic culture is dead on, beginning with Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump, a movie that rewarded sweet and innocent ignorance, was, ultimately, our answer to Nightmare on Elm Street. “Forrest Gump played large in America because it worked as a vacation, a few hours away from more pressing Gothic fears,” he explained. In a culture so saturated with death, destruction, and fear, Forrest Gump reassured baby boomers that despite all the tumult, everything would work out in the end, as long as you viewed everything through a detached, sentimental lens.
In his third section, Edmundson proposed that naked sadomasochism is what results when the culture of Gothic goes uncontested. “At the core of every Gothic plot is the S&M scenario: victim, victimizer, terrible place, torment,” he wrote. The growth of S&M culture in America is therefore the direct result of our inability to effectively counter the Gothic.
Edmundson concludes on a down note, with no prescription for countering the Gothic, other than that Forrest Gump and religion won’t suffice. He left it to his readers to discover a culturally redeeming art form. As a fan of the Gothic, I hope he has to wait for a long time.
February 9, 2021
Interesting book. I disagree with most of what the author says or concludes, and overall the arguments don't hold up (I don't think revenge stories in horror movies are representations of S&M culture for one), however, it was nice to think of "Carrie" as "Rambo" meets "Pretty in Pink."
September 23, 2023
This is an overly conceptual work of "scholarship" that is laughably clueless at times (particularly from the vantage point of pre-9/11 America) and occasionally insightful. An academic who tries to tackle horror is always a mixed bag. And Mark Edmundson REALLY wants to write a Leslie Fielder-style volume on how gothic tropes have invaded all points of American culture. He is absolutely right to point to examples such as Nixon as a Gothic figure in Robert Coover's THE PUBLIC BURNING and how Cohn is similarly so in ANGELS IN AMERICA. But he is also a pathetic snob who misreads Stephen King and Thomas Disch as genre hacks. He also has a blind spot for how 1990s-style postmodernism emerged as a device with which to reconcile the horrors of real life with Gothic storytelling and completely shits on WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE rather than understanding WHY Craven shifted to the postmodern mode in this underappreciated installment of the NIGHTMARE film series. Many of his other observations about Gothic elements in Toni Morrison are often superficial. So this is a missed opportunity to examine a vital part of American culture. You're better off listening to this thoughtful episode of IMAGINARY WORLDS on the Gothic, which is far smarter than anything that Edmundson has to offer, than reading this silly book:
https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.or...
https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.or...
May 14, 2021
An excellent, insightful commentary on American popular culture that holds up remarkably well over twenty years later. To be clear, this book is deeply grounded in 1997 and steeped in cultural references from that specific time. But the principle argument of the book has held up far better than I'd expected it would.
Having last read the book in 2003, I was a bit shocked how well Edmundson's quasi-dialectic of Gothic/"pop transcendence"/S&M culture still applies. The landscape of American popular culture has shifted enormously since the late 1990s, as of course it would. But Edmundson's thesis anticipates the torture fetish of the post-9/11 era, the learned-helplessness of the public policy response to 2008, right through the brutal, transactional, callousness of the Trump era. The references may be extremely dated, but the points they're meant to illustrate remain quite relevant.
Edmundson's argument necessarily involves a hard critique of pop culture, but this is not a book that slides easily into a Left or Right take. Nor will a book from 1997 ever reflect current concerns or preferred ideological frameworks of the current moment. Edmundson is plumbing deeper depths here, and as the book goes on, his references move away somewhat from ephemeral '90s call-outs to engage instead with Shelley, Freud, Blake, and eventually Nietszche. Nightmare is a rambling essay from start to finish, not a rigorous work of academic research, but this shift in focus puts Edmundson's argument on steadier ground, and it's allowed the book to age better than it would have otherwise.
Not that it matters--the book has to be considered obscure now by any measure--but for those readers who do come across it and can look past the dated references to the perspectives that underlie them, there is still a lot here worth pondering.
Having last read the book in 2003, I was a bit shocked how well Edmundson's quasi-dialectic of Gothic/"pop transcendence"/S&M culture still applies. The landscape of American popular culture has shifted enormously since the late 1990s, as of course it would. But Edmundson's thesis anticipates the torture fetish of the post-9/11 era, the learned-helplessness of the public policy response to 2008, right through the brutal, transactional, callousness of the Trump era. The references may be extremely dated, but the points they're meant to illustrate remain quite relevant.
Edmundson's argument necessarily involves a hard critique of pop culture, but this is not a book that slides easily into a Left or Right take. Nor will a book from 1997 ever reflect current concerns or preferred ideological frameworks of the current moment. Edmundson is plumbing deeper depths here, and as the book goes on, his references move away somewhat from ephemeral '90s call-outs to engage instead with Shelley, Freud, Blake, and eventually Nietszche. Nightmare is a rambling essay from start to finish, not a rigorous work of academic research, but this shift in focus puts Edmundson's argument on steadier ground, and it's allowed the book to age better than it would have otherwise.
Not that it matters--the book has to be considered obscure now by any measure--but for those readers who do come across it and can look past the dated references to the perspectives that underlie them, there is still a lot here worth pondering.
November 25, 2020
This is an excellent introduction to the sub-text of sado-masochism spread far and wide in contemporary America. Humiliation, disrespect, abjection. It's all here. Not that it began with the trial of O.J. Simpson, because it didn't. What Simpson's scandal brought to light is just how far gone we are now as a society. Edmundson unearths the meaning of Sade's dungeon for the next generation.
October 17, 2016
Edmundson's book is wide ranging look at how the Gothic, in a broad cultural sense, informs American culture and society. He has original and unusual ideas about gothic culture.
"Around 1975 slasher film to begin proliferating in America: Texas chainsaw massacre, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth." 3
"Most of these productions, whether their creators know it or not, are descendants of the Gothic novel, the terror fiction that took off in England while the French revolution was unfolding across the channel." 4
"This book begins with a survey and a diagnosis of the 1990s American Gothic, but it does not stop there. In the pages to come, I also consider a mode that appears to be entirely antithetical to the guy, a mode I call facile transcendence. The ethos of facile transcendence, epitomized as it is by the various New Age panaceas, by the fixation with Guardian Angels, and by the pervasive attraction to idealized celebrity images, is that you can transform yourself into a higher being with little or no exertion required." 6
"One of the major resources of this Gothic mode is the double. The idea of a second self-of a horrible other living unrecognized within us, or loosed somehow into the world beyond-is central to the vision of terror Gothic and active in the other modes as well." 8
"The first big wave of American slasher films ran from about 1975 to the late 1980s, until the genre went mainstream and expensive with silence"The first big wave of American slasher films ran from about 1975 to the late 1980s, until the genre went mainstream and expensive with Silence of the Lambs." 17
"A deep ambivalence about authority lines near the heart of our culture of Gothic." 21
"But most disturbing is the discourse of AIDS, surely our major public occasion for indulgence in apocalyptic Gothic. And AIDS does lend itself readily to Gothic depictions. It's a condition that inhabits its victims, haunts them, often for more than a decade before making itself manifest. It is associated with something in the distant past, often a socially stigmatized act." 28
"But the most intriguing exponent of Gothic theory is surely Michel Foucault, Who is also, arguably, the 1990s most influential thinker for both the social sciences and the humanities. He's haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook, is called Power." 41
"The traditional vampire tales played out the theme of modern revolution, the overthrow and death of the aristocracy was dramatized once more." 43
"Fin-de-scowled American Gothic is often motivated by a drive to turn back the clock to get the uppity women, blacks, and the young back into their place...like 18 Century Gothic, current Gothic displays anxiety over that vast transformations The she has witnessed." 65
"But where is American Emerson now? Where is our counter weight to Poe? Poe's Gothic Genius lift on through Hawthorne and Millville and enters the present in a myriad of forms, from Anne Rice's novels to the daytime talk shows of Oprah Winfrey and company. Emerson befit Whitman and Thoreau; Frost; and, in certain regards, Wallace Stevens. But where is that influence now?" 73
"As the Olympian gods look down on the doings of puny humans, so we are invited to look up on the players on sitcom TV." 86
"Lionel Trilling famously call the 1960s cultural rebellion modernism in the streets, but it had far more to do with the movement that's been called romanticism." 108
"A ghost is a form of repetition, a form of guilt." 177
"Around 1975 slasher film to begin proliferating in America: Texas chainsaw massacre, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth." 3
"Most of these productions, whether their creators know it or not, are descendants of the Gothic novel, the terror fiction that took off in England while the French revolution was unfolding across the channel." 4
"This book begins with a survey and a diagnosis of the 1990s American Gothic, but it does not stop there. In the pages to come, I also consider a mode that appears to be entirely antithetical to the guy, a mode I call facile transcendence. The ethos of facile transcendence, epitomized as it is by the various New Age panaceas, by the fixation with Guardian Angels, and by the pervasive attraction to idealized celebrity images, is that you can transform yourself into a higher being with little or no exertion required." 6
"One of the major resources of this Gothic mode is the double. The idea of a second self-of a horrible other living unrecognized within us, or loosed somehow into the world beyond-is central to the vision of terror Gothic and active in the other modes as well." 8
"The first big wave of American slasher films ran from about 1975 to the late 1980s, until the genre went mainstream and expensive with silence"The first big wave of American slasher films ran from about 1975 to the late 1980s, until the genre went mainstream and expensive with Silence of the Lambs." 17
"A deep ambivalence about authority lines near the heart of our culture of Gothic." 21
"But most disturbing is the discourse of AIDS, surely our major public occasion for indulgence in apocalyptic Gothic. And AIDS does lend itself readily to Gothic depictions. It's a condition that inhabits its victims, haunts them, often for more than a decade before making itself manifest. It is associated with something in the distant past, often a socially stigmatized act." 28
"But the most intriguing exponent of Gothic theory is surely Michel Foucault, Who is also, arguably, the 1990s most influential thinker for both the social sciences and the humanities. He's haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook, is called Power." 41
"The traditional vampire tales played out the theme of modern revolution, the overthrow and death of the aristocracy was dramatized once more." 43
"Fin-de-scowled American Gothic is often motivated by a drive to turn back the clock to get the uppity women, blacks, and the young back into their place...like 18 Century Gothic, current Gothic displays anxiety over that vast transformations The she has witnessed." 65
"But where is American Emerson now? Where is our counter weight to Poe? Poe's Gothic Genius lift on through Hawthorne and Millville and enters the present in a myriad of forms, from Anne Rice's novels to the daytime talk shows of Oprah Winfrey and company. Emerson befit Whitman and Thoreau; Frost; and, in certain regards, Wallace Stevens. But where is that influence now?" 73
"As the Olympian gods look down on the doings of puny humans, so we are invited to look up on the players on sitcom TV." 86
"Lionel Trilling famously call the 1960s cultural rebellion modernism in the streets, but it had far more to do with the movement that's been called romanticism." 108
"A ghost is a form of repetition, a form of guilt." 177
March 4, 2018
I read this book years ago, when it was published, and liked it. Now I've read it again, more closely, and like it even more.
May 19, 2009
A fun read about the gothic element of American culture during the late 90s. There's plenty of pop-culture stuff with Freud and the Romantic poets both playing central roles as well as cameos by angels, serial killers and Forest Gump!
February 23, 2008
Picked this up for school. Still come back to it for ideas.
April 21, 2012
Excellent treatment of the Gothic.
March 30, 2017
A lot of good stuff here in the way of illustrations, though many of Edmundson's examples are pretty dated (he wrote in the 90s). Some of the analysis at the end approached real insight, but ultimately, I had a hard time understanding what solution he was offering.
This book just solidified my belief that the three classes I'm enrolled in this semester (Gothic, Renaissance Revenge Tragedy, and New Media) are all interrelated and all about the search for transcendence - and how frustrating that search can be.
This book just solidified my belief that the three classes I'm enrolled in this semester (Gothic, Renaissance Revenge Tragedy, and New Media) are all interrelated and all about the search for transcendence - and how frustrating that search can be.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews