“Cycles upon cycles, stories upon stories” — contemporary audio media and podcast horror’s new frights, Hancock & McMurtry, 2017

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🍃 Branches (key topics): Horror, Audio Fiction, Podcast, Rutgers MCM capstone, Gothic
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🌰 Source: Hancock, D., McMurtry, L. “Cycles upon cycles, stories upon stories”: contemporary audio media and podcast horror’s new frights. Palgrave Commun 3, 17075 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.75

'Cycles upon cycles, stories upon stories' Contemporary Audio media and podcast horror's new frights

"If you have ever heard a footfall when you were sure of being alone, or a strange sound in the dead of night, or a voice with no discernible source, then you know the horror that sound can bring." (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

"'horror podcasting' is a pre-recorded, audio horror fiction form, which is available for on-the-go download and listening through mobile audio devices such as iPods and Smartphones. It is one of the fastest-developing horror forms, representing a dramatic shift from a supposedly visually dominated culture and entertainment industry and opening up new potentials and meanings of Gothic and horror fiction" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 1)

"This article seeks to generate awareness of, and encourage critical attention to, this fascinating new field. Primarily, this article argues for podcasting's novel means of horror and Gothic distribution/consumption to create fresh, unique and potent horror forms. It does so by investigating how horror podcasts alter, reanimate or innovate upon the horror traditions which have come before it" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 1)

"We would argue four main( though not exhaustive) points: consumption; visibility; community; and new media-identity" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 1)

"Just as horror represented one of Old Time Radio (OTR) drama's earliest and most popular genres, so too did early narrative podcasting generate a rapidly proliferating Gothic horror genre" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 1)

"How a podcast is typically listened to innately charges the horror podcast form with new aspects of intrusion upon the everyday. From Freud's Unheimliche on, the Gothic has been recognized to implicitly disrupt and engage with the 'ordinary' world. Podcast horror is a Gothic mode, which permeates the everyday experience in a manner arguably more effective than any other Gothic form." (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

"Unlike other Gothic forms, the horror podcast moves with us, occludes the external aural world, and speaks to us wherever we may go: a companion for traversing a mundane world" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

"When we alter our acoustic environment, we alter our perspective upon, and perceived place within, the surrounding physical space: we alter the everyday" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

"'Geographical space becomes recessed, as the speaker inhabits 'another space,' yet it also becomes charged with the mood or thematic of the mobile listener's audio content'" ( Bull, 2007, qtd in Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

In a Discord conversation with two friends, one friend shared this image of an NYC subway ad for Spotify Premium (which can also be found here: Hear Things You Can't Unsee (Ad))

SubwayAdPaigeAllen.png

"the horror podcast offers 'refuge' from the real around us, yet also potentializes a Gothicization of that world from our perspective" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

"While we cannot see the environment evoked here, we can hear a budding technostalgia. Technostalgia is a preservation and resurrection of 'dead' technology" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 2)

"Mobile audio-players travel with the listener, nearly weightless, perfectly mobilized and updating podcast content seamlessly, suggesting immediate and direct intimacy between user and content" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 4)

"Thus, whereas radio horror (albeit certainly influenced by fan response), must adhere to sponsor and broadcaster censorship and artistic vision, these horror podcasts offer (at present) a less restrictive means of oral and acoustic horror production and dissemination in which any story may be told, by any voice" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 5)

"The notion of collectivity is paramount to these programs, emerging both through the shared, listener-led development of an audio-horror corpus and group discussion of the shows, and also in the aesthetic suggestion of physically co-present group listening" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 4)

Unlike arguments that new audio media is individualistic / anti-social, "horror podcasting often reveals a starkly connective, social and traditionalist interiority wherein listeners leave one, perhaps less inviting, social environ and enter another" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 5)

"Thus, we find a unique development of more traditionally collective oral horror modes, which transforms new audio media's supposedly isolating and anti-social properties into a polyphonic, organically-developing 'campfire' space" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 5)

"In the shared voices, stories and forum-comments of these podcasts, speakers and listeners may engage with one another, if not face-to-face, then mouth-to-ear-to-eye" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 5)

"From the beginning, Gothic has dealt in fragmentary and often contradictory narratives" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 6)

"While the multi-vocality of Gothic literature has become a hallmark of its aesthetic untrustworthiness (Chaplin, 2011: 181–182), such uncertainty is measured, both through textual codification of quotation, and the inability of text to allow multiple voices immediate, visceral, co-presence. Audio-form is different, its voices 'whisper in our ear, like a friend at the end of the telephone,' and these intimately co-present voices can swiftly become discordant and unclear (Hand and Traynor, 2011)" (Hancock & McMurtry, 2017: 6–7)

"Transparency is key to docu-drama horror podcast's style..." the hosts "speak to listeners as companions on their journey, whispering quick observations into their dictaphones, and relating their later reflections from their bedrooms and offices. As these hyper-innocents wander into ever darker, dangerous situations, the Poe-esque madmen are replaced by wide-eyed, earnest but potentially naive Radcliffean heroes, figures with whom we may identify, and fear for" (Hancock & McMurtry, 7)

References of interest: