Stories of Haunted Houses: Female Subjects and Domestic Spaces in Contemporary Gothic Films and TV Series

The video addresses those contemporary narratives – films and TV series - that assume the stylistic elements of the female gothic genre to ponder on the conflicting nature of the relationship between women and a domestic space often presenting uncanny, threatening connotations, but which nonetheless seems to reveal a symbiotic relationship with the female subject. The work focuses on three different contemporary versions of the haunted house topos: The Haunting of Hill House, Sharp Objects and Hereditary. In all the case studies the domestic space becomes the scene of the return of the repressed, a space marked by mourning and trauma, and the embodiment of a maternal authority that prevents the protagonists to establish their own relational and affective identity.