[Commlist] CFP: Return of the Gothic 1980s: Sequels, Trilogies, Multiverses & Beyond

*CFP: Return of the Gothic 1980s: Sequels, Trilogies, Multiverses & 
Beyond is expecting you (for adventures in sci-fi, fantasy & horror)! *

Conference: 20-21 June 2024, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

CFP: Return of the Gothic 1980s: Sequels, Trilogies, Multiverses & Beyond

20 – 21 June 2024, Manchester Metropolitan University

This two-day conference aims to re-evaluate the gothic proliferation, 
duplication, and industrial (over-)reliance on sequelisation that 
emerged from the 1980s studio system. This conference seeks to open and 
build upon significant discussions on sequels stemming from existing 
scholarship (Klein and Palmer, eds. 2016) to examine the modal act of 
‘retelling’, ‘re-entering’, and extending the particular purchase of 
science fiction, fantasy and horror and utilised the sequel often by 
including gothic elements and conventions. According to Stephen Prince, 
sequels gained a particular purchase in the age of the blockbuster, 
documented through the sheer number of titles featuring Roman numerals 
(Prince, 2007: 2-3). They have subsequently informed, and often 
troubled, the fan reception and scholarly legacy of the 1980s in 
contemporary gothic, science fiction, and horror studies. While many 
critics disparage the 1980s as the decade of soulless commercialism, 
avid consumerism and a time that fashion forgot, the extended new 
commercial appreciation for gothic, science fiction and horror texts 
from the 1980s has been a significant point of return and recapitulation 
in contemporary times and is often rooted in recall and citational 
nostalgia. More generally, the seeds of discontent in our contentious 
and fractured present were broadly sown or amplified in the 1980s, from 
which a gothic ‘mirror world’ (Klein, 2023) of replication, 
technological reproduction, if not infinite extension and overwriting 
and ‘correcting’ the past, can be traced.

The gothic mode informs many of the decade’s rich and iconic screen 
materials and aesthetics; thus, it serves as a significant starting 
point for the contemporary expansion (and occasional sentiment of 
exhaustion) with multiverse world-building and the overwhelming 
advancement of intra-textual material culture that continues 
profitability beyond the box-office to include toys, collectors’ 
ephemera, dedicated conventions, publications, and more. How has our 
mode(s) of consuming media (from VHS to collecting to streaming) led to 
these distinct cycles of reproduction? And what of uncanny replications 
and duplications of these texts and products under different 
creators/show-runners? With sequelisation, trilogies, and the 
ever-expanding parameters of (para-)textual prolongation, the inevitable 
factioning of ‘canon’ and the rewriting of ‘authorised’ histories 
through sequels/prequels/requels becomes significantly contested. This 
conference seeks to explore how sequels work, what rules and anomalies 
they produce, audience and fan expectations and exhaustion, the 
formulas, conventions, triumphs and failures, world-building and 
mythology through sequels, the industrial reliance upon sequels and 
franchises, and the uncanny notion that we may, still, be living in a 
historical sequel of the 1980s ourselves.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  * The 1980s and industry reliance on sequels
  * The postmodern sequel
  * Replicating or returning to 1980s styles, practices, casts and products
  * The ‘darker’ sequel (/The Empire Strikes Back/; /Return to Oz/ etc)
  * Remaking (and revisiting) 1980s films and aesthetics today
  * Genre shifts/focus in sequels
  * 1980s film and TV industry practices (sequels, returns, film-to-TV
    adaptations etc)
  * The end of the trilogy?
  * Transmedial Gothic Sequels or Adaptation as sequels?
  * Sequels as commercial failures
  * The direct-to-video sequel
  * Lost Sequels/ Lost histories/ Unwritten sequels
  * Nostalgia for 1980s gothic programming (the Retro 1980s)
  * Sequel theory
  * Analogue vs digital gothics (including VHS culture) and/or as
    sequelisation space
  * Film franchises/reboots/remakes as cycles of production
  * 80s Dark Fantasy and their 21st-century returns (/Dark Crystal/,
    /Willow/, etc)

Please submit your 300-word abstracts to conference organiser Dr Sorcha 
Ní Fhlainn at (_gothic1980s /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(gothic1980s /at/ gmail.com)>_ by 
Friday, 23February 2024, or for any conference queries.

*Contact Information*

Please contact the conference organiser - Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn - at 
(gothic1980s /at/ gmail.com) to submit abstracts and/or for any queries.

*Contact Email*
(gothic1980s /at/ gmail.com)


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