«All monsters are human»: the cultural imaginary and the creation of contemporary bestiaries in American Horror Story

• Main Author: Patricia Trapero Llobera
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2015-12-01
• Series: Brumal: Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico
• Subjects: otherness, cultural pastiche, gothic, horror, contemporary mythologies, monstrosity, ryan murphy, television.
• Online Access: https://revistes.uab.cat/brumal/article/view/210

<p>On November 7, 2011, FX aired <em>American Horror Story</em> (2011 to present). Instead each one of the seasons develop some independent plots by breaking the seriality of current television fiction, the show can be considered as a unitary whole so as a aesthetically hybrid cultural product. This paper analyses the concept of Monstrosity in<em> American Horror Story</em> whose underlying idea is extremely related to the contemporary new horror as well as to the postmodern horror. Thus, the show will recur to the cultural and collective imaginary of terror and fantasy in order to build a constellation of characters dealing with the depiction of a contemporary bestiary.</p><p> </p>