The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence

The imagination of the early twenty-first century is catastrophic, with Hollywood blockbusters, novels, computer games, popular music, art and even political speeches all depicting a world consumed by vampires, zombies, meteors, aliens from outer space, disease, crazed terrorists and mad scientists.

These frequently gothic descriptions of the apocalypse not only commodify fear itself; they articulate and even help produce imperialism.

Building on, and often retelling, the British ?imperial gothic? of the late nineteenth century, the American imperial gothic is obsessed with race, gender, degeneration and invasion, with the destruction of society, the collapse of modernity and the disintegration of capitalism.