‘“Boo” to Taboo’: Cultural Tourism and the Gothic

Abstract

In this chapter I will be thinking about Gothic in cultural tourism, looking at the Gothic content that was to be found at a sample of English arts festivals between 2009 and February 2015. Of the three festivals I focus on, two are publicly funded: the Norfolk and Norwich Festival and Showzam! (‘Blackpool’s Annual Festival of Circus, Magic and New Variety’).¹ The third, Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts,² is not a publicly funded event, though it has a specific remit in terms of charitable giving. I will be considering the kind of content offered at these festivals, the genres favoured and the audiences aimed at. En route, I will be considering the status of certain kinds of Gothic, and its use by the great and the good: charities, educators, arts funders, councils and other spenders of public money. The way these festivals employ Gothic content, I argue, can tell us about the place of Gothic in a wider public psyche, and in the cultural politics of contemporary England (and the UK more generally). In the following sections I will be considering family-friendly Gothic at the Norfolk and Norwich, municipal Gothic at Showzam!, and Gothic consumption (and Gothic redemption) at Glastonbury.