The Villain-Effect: Distance and Ubiquity in Neo-Victorian Popular Culture

TY - CHAP

T1 - The Villain-Effect

T2 - Distance and Ubiquity in Neo-Victorian Popular Culture

AU - Poore, Benjamin

PY - 2017/6/21

Y1 - 2017/6/21

N2 - Nineteenth-century ideas of villains and villainy have cast a long shadow over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In part, this is because, as neo-Victorianism attests, we are still dealing with the complex cultural, political, economic and moral legacies of the Victorians. In part also, as this chapter will explore, their continued significance is a reflection of technology: both the Victorians’ own technological breakthroughs, and the ways in which modern digital culture shapes and reshapes our engagement with villains from the Victorian era. In this chapter, I aim to set out some key themes of the ¬Neo-Victorian Villains collection, and to advance my own theory of the ‘villain-effect’, the sleights-of-hand of emplotment and performance that create the aura of a villain, yet which leave him or her tantalisingly out of reach (and hence, reuseable).

AB - Nineteenth-century ideas of villains and villainy have cast a long shadow over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In part, this is because, as neo-Victorianism attests, we are still dealing with the complex cultural, political, economic and moral legacies of the Victorians. In part also, as this chapter will explore, their continued significance is a reflection of technology: both the Victorians’ own technological breakthroughs, and the ways in which modern digital culture shapes and reshapes our engagement with villains from the Victorian era. In this chapter, I aim to set out some key themes of the ¬Neo-Victorian Villains collection, and to advance my own theory of the ‘villain-effect’, the sleights-of-hand of emplotment and performance that create the aura of a villain, yet which leave him or her tantalisingly out of reach (and hence, reuseable).

M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)

SN - 9789004322240

T3 - Neo-Victorian Series

BT - Neo-Victorian Villains

PB - Brill

ER -