Free Public Lecture - Children’s TV horror in the streaming era: the case of Netflix’s Dead End: Paranormal Park

This Free Public Lecture, delivered by A/Professor Catherine Lester from The University of Birmingham, is part of the 'What is Children's Content in the Streaming Era' Symposium.

The intersection of children, horror and television continues to attract worry and derision from the adult world: on the one hand, TV horror is often seen as not safe or good for children, amplified by its domestic viewing context that makes encountering horror all the more likely, and which is no doubt amplified by online streaming. On the other hand, TV horror for children is, for some, too safe to be ‘real’ horror. However, an emerging scholarly consensus sees safety and its precariousness as a feature, rather than a bug, of children’s television horror that facilitates children’s engagement with the horror genre on their own terms, to both thrilling and comforting effect. Parallel to this, children’s horror has made significant gains in diversity and inclusivity, with streaming platforms such as Netflix leading the charge with programmes and films like The Vampires vs the Bronx (2020), Wendell & Wild (2022) and Dead End: Paranormal Park (2022).

This paper will focus on Dead End to connect these gains in diversity to aforementioned concerns about safety. Based on comics by Hamish Steele, Dead End is a short-lived but groundbreaking animated series that centres trans, ethnic minority and neurodiverse characters for whom the horror genre is both a refuge and a source of danger. However, due to Dead End’s premature cancellation after two seasons, and its situation in a political climate in which trans rights are increasingly under attack, the programme raises questions and concerns about the safety of inclusive children’s texts in the streaming era.

Dr Catherine Lester is Associate Professor of Film and Television at the University of Birmingham, UK, whose research centres on the intersections between children’s culture and the horror genre. Her publications in this area include the monograph Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema (Bloomsbury 2021) and the edited collection Watership Down: Perspectives On and Beyond Animated Violence (Bloomsbury 2023). She is currently Principal Investigator of the Youth & Horror Network, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. With Co-Investigator Dr Kate Egan (Northumbria University), this international, interdisciplinary network seeks to impact scholarly and public understandings of the relationship between youth and horror.

A/Professor Catherine Lester appears as part of the symposium "What is Children's Content in the Streaming Era". If you have already registered for that symposium, you do not need a separate registration for this lecture.