This essay investigates a significant illustration of American network television’s mediation of queer occultism during the 1960s and 1970s through sociocultural, industrial, and textual analyses of ABC’s Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. During and even after its original run between June 1966 and April 1971, I argue that Dark Shadows’ (oc)cult popularity was reinforced by the series’ narrative journeys into fantastic pasts that assembled a genealogy of supernatural “otherness.” By fashioning what Scott Bravmann has called such “queer fictions of the past,” meditations on the non-normative politics and pleasures of historical discourses, Dark Shadows introduced, and even made palatable, queer occultism to mainstream broadcast audiences.
ABC Department of Broadcast Standards and Practices Memo.1967. Dan Curtis Productions Records (Collection PASC 1). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
2.
AllenRobert C.1985. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
3.
AlveyMark. 2004. “‘Too Many Kids and Old Ladies’: Quality Demographics and 1960s US Television.” Screen45 (1): 40–62.
4.
BarthelJoan. 1967. “Out in Detergent Land: A Hard Day’s Fright.” New York Times, July30: 85.
5.
BenshoffHarry M.1993. “Resurrection of the Vampire and the Creation of Alternative Life: An Introduction to Dark Shadows Fan Culture.” Spectator13 (3): 50–61.
6.
BenshoffHarry M.1997. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
7.
BenshoffHarry M.2011. Dark Shadows. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
8.
BlochRobert. 1965, The Skull of the Marquis de Sade. London: Robert Hale.
9.
BodroghkozyAniko. 2001. Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion. Durham: Duke University Press.
10.
BradburyRay. 1962. Something Wicked This Way Comes. New York: Simon & Schuster.
11.
BravmannScott. 1997. Queer Fictions of the Past: History, Culture, and Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12.
DotyAlexander. 1993. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
13.
EdelmanLee. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press.
14.
Elliott-SmithDarren. 2014. “‘Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik’: Unearthing Gay Male Anxieties in Queer Gothic Soaps Dante’s Cove (2005-2007) and The Lair (2007-2009).” In Melodrama in Contemporary Film and Television, edited by StewartMichael, 96–113. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
15.
EvansArthur. 1978. Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. Boston: Fag Rag Books.
16.
FeuerJaneKerrPaulVahimagiTise. 1984. MTM: “Quality Television.”London: British Film Institute.
17.
FiedlerLeslie. 1966. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein & Day.
18.
FoxGeorge. 1968. “Can a 172-Year-Old Vampire Find Love and Happiness in a Typical New England Town?” Saturday Evening Post, November 30: 40-41, 80-81.
19.
GilbertSandra M.GubarSusan. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.
20.
GoldsteinMarilyn. 1971. “Strange Things Are Happening in the Occult.” The Washington Post, July25: G2.
21.
Gwenllian-JonesSara. 2002. “The Sex Lives of Cult Television Characters.” Screen43 (1): 79–90.
22.
Gwenllian-JonesSaraPearsonRoberta E.2004. “Introduction.” In Cult Television, edited by Gwenllian-JonesSaraPearsonRoberta E., ix–xx. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
23.
HamrickCraigJamisonR. J.2003. Barnabas & Company: The Cast of the TV Classic Dark Shadows. New York: iUniverse.
24.
HansonEllis. 2007. “Queer Gothic.” In The Routledge Companion to Gothic, edited by SpoonerCatherineMcEvoyEmma, 174–82. London: Routledge.
25.
JenkinsHenry. 1991. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” In Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fiction, edited by PenleyConstanceLyonElisabethSpigelLynnBergstromJanet, 171–203. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
26.
JowettLornaAbbottStacey. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London: I.B. Tauris.
27.
KolsrudPenny. 1971. “Aquarian Alternatives: Search for the Self Leads Youth to Witchcraft, the Occult.” The Baltimore Sun, February25: B1.
28.
LachmanGary Valentine. 2001. Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
29.
LevineElana. 2007. Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television. Durham: Duke University Press.
30.
ModleskiTania. 1984. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. New York: Methuen.
ParkerLara. 1990. “Out of Angélique’s Shadow.” In The Dark Shadows Companion: 25th Anniversary Collection, edited by ScottKathryn Leigh, 14–21. Los Angeles: Pomegranate Press.
35.
ParkerLara. 1995. “Fans.” In Dark Shadows Almanac: 30th Anniversary Tribute, edited by ScottKathryn LeighPiersonJim, 39–42. Los Angeles: Pomegranate Press.
36.
SconceJeffrey. 2003. “Dickens, Selznick, and South Park.” In Dickens on Screen, edited by GlavinJohn, 171–87. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37.
SelbyDavid. 1995. “Foreword.” In Dark Shadows Almanac: 30th Anniversary Tribute, edited by ScottKathryn LeighPiersonJim, vii–viii. Los Angeles: Pomegranate Press.
38.
SmithPatricia Juliana. 1999. “Introduction: Icons and Iconoclasts: Figments of Sixties Queer Culture.” In The Queer Sixties, edited by SmithPatricia Juliana, xi-xxvi. New York: Routledge.
39.
SpigelLynn. 2001. “From Domestic Space to Outer Space: The 1960s Fantastic Family Sitcom.” In Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs, 107–40. Durham: Duke University Press.
40.
SteigerPaul E. 1969. “Big Business: Practitioners of Occult Enjoy a Rich Heyday.” Los Angeles Times, May28: A1.
41.
Television Age. 1965. “Younger and Older.” Television Age, January18: 55.
42.
Time. 1969. “Astrology: Fad and Phenomenon.” Time, March21: 51-60.
43.
UrbanHugh B.2006. Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
44.
Variety. 1966. “Television Reviews: Dark Shadows.” June29: 31.
45.
Variety. 1968. “‘Dark Shadows’ Reprieve a WBRC-TV Horror Tale; Five Segs in One Sitting.” July31: 28.
46.
WheatleyHelen. 2006. Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
