The current edition of Gothic Studies is available, Volume 15, No. 1 (May 2013), published by Manchester University Press. It focuses on vampires and the undead in popular culture, and several essays caught my eye for download in PDF for later reading. I recently finished reading the first of them, and it is David McWilliam’s essay titled “Perfect Enemies: Neoconservative Hunters and Terrorist Vampires in Joe Ahearne’s Ultraviolet (1998.)” Ultraviolet is a series that ran on the BBC, and given McWilliams’ discussion it’s one I need to track down for viewing on Hulu.
The abstract for this essay reads as follows:
A consideration of the way sin which the discourse of monstrosity, once deployed against a political enemy, closes off open debate and undermine the values of those who argue that the ends needed to defeat them justify any means used. This article explores the parallels between the neoconservative rhetoric of the War on Terror with that of the vampire hunters in Joe Ahearne’s television show Ultraviolet (1998), as both deny their enemies the status of political subjects. It offers a reading of the show in light of Slavoj Žižek’s call to evaluate the arguments of both sides in such moralised conflicts.
McWilliam’s essay makes for a very interesting study, adding another layer of interpretive sophistication to an older monstrous icon, and provides food for thought in reflecting on the neoconservative prescription for a post-9/11 world, carried on by progressives now and for the foreseeable future.
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