In the Shadow of the Monster: Gothic Narratives of Violence Prevention
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In the Shadow of the Monster: Gothic Narratives of Violence Prevention Sara Skott1 · Sara Nyhlén1 · Katarina Giritli‑Nygren1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This article examines narratives by professionals working on preventing gender-based violence in Sweden through a Gothic lens. It draws on interviews with authorities responsible for preventing gender-based violence in one region of Sweden and explores the way national policies are translated into regional action. Our analysis shows how the “reel” is adopted by the professionals and becomes a part of the “real,” resulting in implications for policy. By looking at the participants’ narratives through a Gothic lens, this article argues that local-level professionals working to prevent violence frame gender-based violence as a problem of two “othered” groups: the “Immigrant Other” and the “Rural Other.” Through a narratological strategy of illumination and obscurity, these groups of offenders are rendered both uncanny and monstrous by the respondents—a monstrosity that obscures any violence occurring outside this framing. The problem of gender-based violence is relegated from the site of the mundane to the sphere of the monstrous.
Introduction … just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him. (Brothers Grimm 1812: 51) In this study, we use a Gothic lens to explore narratives of professionals working to prevent gender-based violence among youth. While previous studies have examined the narratives of people engaging in violence (see, e.g., Brookman et al. 2011; Fleetwood 2016; Sandberg et al. 2015), fewer studies have considered the narratives of victims of violence (for exceptions, see, e.g., Cook and Walklate 2019; Hourigan 2019; Ievins 2019; Pemberton et al. * Sara Skott [email protected] Sara Nyhlén [email protected] Katarina Giritli‑Nygren Katarina.Giritli‑[email protected] 1
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Holmgatan 10, 851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden
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2018; Rogers 2019; Walklate et al. 2019), and fewer still have explored the narratives of violence constructed by those working to prevent violence. This has led to a fundamental lack of understanding of how violence is constructed, storied, and perceived among the authorities tasked with preventing it. So, why a Gothic lens? Contemporary society has been permeated by the Gothic. As Sothcott (2016: 432) suggests, the “Late Modern Gothic not only refers to fanciful creations, artistic endeavors or fashionable apparel, it is also a mode by which transgressive behavior is ‘storied’, rendered into discourse and hence both directly and indirectly experienced as real and not merely improbable possibilities.” In reality, crime victims and offenders do not always fit with our conception about the “perfect victim” or “perfect offender,” as seen in “reel” worlds (Picart and Greek 2007). Such portrayals are clearly visible in newspape
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