Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Humanities and Cultural Studies

Major Professor

Amy Rust, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Todd Jurgess, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Daniel Belgrad, Ph.D.

Keywords

American, Black, Capitalism, Female, Neoliberalism, Ruin

Abstract

Within the past decade, a string of notable horror films set within the Steel Belt has emerged. These works collectively invoke the specter of the ‘Rust Belt’ in their narratives: the industrial Midwest’s derelict urban and suburban sprawls in the wake of the economic decline and white flight of the USA’s once-mighty manufacturing sector. Scholarship has commented upon the subtext of these works individually but fails to observe their collective nature as an emergent subgenre in horror fiction, centered upon directly confronting the Steel Belt’s twentieth-century history of stagnation. In this paper, I examine films which share clear aesthetic and thematic traits, built around the neglected landscapes and sociohistorical context of the Rust Belt, particularly the human consequences of deindustrialization: It Follows (David Mitchell, 2015), Don’t Breathe (Fede Álvarez, 2016), Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021), and Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022). Moreover, I contend that these films represent an extension of the Gothic mode, particularly the Female Gothic and Black Gothic, using those traditions’ affective forms and narrative tropes to contribute to a distinct regional variant, one which expresses and processes the scars of the Great Lakes states’ abandonment: the Rust Belt Gothic. Lastly, I examine how these films’ potential political readings evolve over time in response to the Steel Belt’s changing landscape, and accordingly how the films contribute to the discourse over the value of ruin fascination in media.

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