From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory
Examining the ambivalent place of the sideshow and the laboratory within Victorian culture and its reimaginings, this essay explores the contradiction between the narratively orchestrating role and peripheral location of the sideshow in Leslie Parry’s <i>Church of Marvels</i> (2015) and...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2022-01-01
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| Series: | Humanities |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/11/1/10 |
| _version_ | 1797479546900971520 |
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| author | Elisavet Ioannidou |
| author_facet | Elisavet Ioannidou |
| author_sort | Elisavet Ioannidou |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Examining the ambivalent place of the sideshow and the laboratory within Victorian culture and its reimaginings, this essay explores the contradiction between the narratively orchestrating role and peripheral location of the sideshow in Leslie Parry’s <i>Church of Marvels</i> (2015) and the laboratory in NBC’s <i>Dracula</i> (2013–2014), reading these neo-Victorian spaces as heterotopias, relational places simultaneously belonging to and excluded from the dominant social order. These spaces’ impacts on individual identity illustrate this uneasy relationship. Both the sideshow and the laboratory constitute sites of resignification, emerging as “crisis heterotopias” or sites of passage: in Parry’s novel, the sideshow allows the Church twins to embrace their unique identities, surpassing the limitations of their physical resemblance; in <i>Dracula</i>, laboratory experiments reverse Dracula’s undead condition. Effecting reinvention, these spaces reconfigure the characters’ senses of belonging, propelling them to places beyond their confines, and thus projecting the latter’s heterotopic qualities onto the city. Potentially harmful, yet opening up urban space to include identities which are considered aberrant, these relocations envision the city as a “heterotopia of compensation”: an alternative, possibly idealized, space that reifies the sideshow’s and the laboratory’s attempts to achieve greater extroversion and visibility for their liminal occupants, thus fostering neo-Victorianism’s outreach efforts to support the disempowered. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T21:47:26Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-dd5ff8595630466c9c49d42fd75bcf4c |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2076-0787 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T21:47:26Z |
| publishDate | 2022-01-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Humanities |
| spelling | doaj.art-dd5ff8595630466c9c49d42fd75bcf4c2023-11-23T20:13:11ZengMDPI AGHumanities2076-07872022-01-011111010.3390/h11010010From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the LaboratoryElisavet Ioannidou0School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, GreeceExamining the ambivalent place of the sideshow and the laboratory within Victorian culture and its reimaginings, this essay explores the contradiction between the narratively orchestrating role and peripheral location of the sideshow in Leslie Parry’s <i>Church of Marvels</i> (2015) and the laboratory in NBC’s <i>Dracula</i> (2013–2014), reading these neo-Victorian spaces as heterotopias, relational places simultaneously belonging to and excluded from the dominant social order. These spaces’ impacts on individual identity illustrate this uneasy relationship. Both the sideshow and the laboratory constitute sites of resignification, emerging as “crisis heterotopias” or sites of passage: in Parry’s novel, the sideshow allows the Church twins to embrace their unique identities, surpassing the limitations of their physical resemblance; in <i>Dracula</i>, laboratory experiments reverse Dracula’s undead condition. Effecting reinvention, these spaces reconfigure the characters’ senses of belonging, propelling them to places beyond their confines, and thus projecting the latter’s heterotopic qualities onto the city. Potentially harmful, yet opening up urban space to include identities which are considered aberrant, these relocations envision the city as a “heterotopia of compensation”: an alternative, possibly idealized, space that reifies the sideshow’s and the laboratory’s attempts to achieve greater extroversion and visibility for their liminal occupants, thus fostering neo-Victorianism’s outreach efforts to support the disempowered.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/11/1/10<i>Church of Marvels</i>crisis heterotopiaheterotopia of compensationidentitylaboratoryNBC’s <i>Dracula</i> |
| spellingShingle | Elisavet Ioannidou From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory Humanities <i>Church of Marvels</i> crisis heterotopia heterotopia of compensation identity laboratory NBC’s <i>Dracula</i> |
| title | From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory |
| title_full | From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory |
| title_fullStr | From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory |
| title_full_unstemmed | From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory |
| title_short | From Crisis to Compensation: Reinventing Identity and Place in the Sideshow and the Laboratory |
| title_sort | from crisis to compensation reinventing identity and place in the sideshow and the laboratory |
| topic | <i>Church of Marvels</i> crisis heterotopia heterotopia of compensation identity laboratory NBC’s <i>Dracula</i> |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/11/1/10 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT elisavetioannidou fromcrisistocompensationreinventingidentityandplaceinthesideshowandthelaboratory |