Popular Culture Review 30.2 • Summer 2019
Dante , the Gothic , the Abject , and the Grotesque in Mathieu Missoffe ’ s Thriller-Crime Drama Black Spot
by Richard Logsdon
“... we have no hope , and yet we live in longing .” Canto IV , Dante ’ s Inferno
ABSTRACT
Set in the fictional French village of Villefranche , Mathieu Missoffe ’ s Black Spot offers both a contemporary version of Dante ’ s Hell and a microcosmic , Gothicized caricature of contemporary Western society . Upon a first viewing , the episodes of this televised crime drama may seem randomly arranged . However , closer inspection reveals three elements that hold the series together while sustaining the terror , dread and horror typical of traditional Gothic fiction . One of these is Missoffe ’ s selection of details that steadily build upon what Gothic-horror writer H . P . Lovecraft refers to as “ cosmic dread ,” in this series the cumulative effect of the graphic depiction of the corpses of murder and suicide victims , of the often barbaric behavior of the townspeople , and of the continued sightings of the Wendigo . A second unifying element is the repetition-compulsion disorder that drives protagonist Sheriff Major Laurene Weiss ’ search for Mayor Steiner ’ s missing daughter Marion . According to Freud , this mental disorder “ compels one to consume the same stories , experience the same jolts , behold the same devastating sights ” over and over . However , the most significant element is the graphic depictions of the corpses of people who have been murdered or have committed suicide . These depictions are rendered according to an aesthetic that combines the grotesque with
209 doi : 10.18278 / pcr . 30.2.9