Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:57:44.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Science, Madness, and the Gothic in American Horror Story's ‘Asylum’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2024

Richard J. Hand
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Mark O'Thomas
Affiliation:
University of Greenwich
Get access

Summary

The archetypal fears of the horrors of the madhouse always linger just below the surface in our collective unconscious […] a symbolic and practical threat to the very fabric of the social order. The distress and the disturbance of the unhinged remind us all too clearly of the fragility of the rule of reason.

(Andrew Scull from Madhouse)

Horror myths establish social patterns not of escape, but entry

(James B Twitchell from Dreadful Pleasures).

Introduction

The opening of AHS: ‘Asylum’ takes place in the ‘present day’. In this first scene, ghost-hunting newlyweds visit the fictional, infamous and dilapidated Briarcliff Asylum. As they attempt to navigate the labyrinthine corridors of this disused mental institution, looking for signs of the paranormal, their timeline dissolves into the hospital of forty years ago. The orderlies and patients appear to walk over the couple as each group overlaps visually. This adjacency of past and present leads to an entanglement not across space but instead across time. Acting as a cornerstone of the narrative, the drawing together of two chronologies in an exterior and visible movement likewise establishes both an interior displacement of rationality and an existential dilemma. According to Michel Foucault, admittedly, there is no perfect perception. However, the viewer is at this moment nonetheless offered a privileged insight into both the historical world of the hospital's heyday and the present world of what the asylum has become. Through this heightened awareness, the spectator is likewise implicated in their confluence. Much like Foucault's madman who denies delineation, under the influence of this aberration in logical linearity, the narrative, the characters and the location come to function as symbolic palimpsests. Indeed, as the temporal continuum increasingly folds upon itself, exi sting outside of time, increasingly divorcing itself from the possibility of past memories or present knowledge, this madness becomes as infectious as it is invasive. In other words, if identity is based upon a discrimination of difference, and knowledge based on an awareness of one's distinct identity, as Foucault suggests, then the contagion of the irrational let loose in Briarcliff draws things together within a fluidity that both obfuscates and effaces first perception, then knowledge and finally subjectivity.

In an attempt to locate these mechanisms of irrationality that underpin ‘Asylum’, and to understand their effects, this chapter will analyze the second installment of this long-running televisual series both textually and extra-textually.

Type
Chapter
Information
American Horror Story and Cult Television
Narratives, Histories and Discourses
, pp. 79 - 94
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×