6 - Terra Somnambulism : Sleepwalking, Nightdreams, and Nocturnal Wanderings in the Televisual Australian Gothic

Summary

Abstract

Sleep disturbance has a rich textual history, one that predates the Australian Gothic. However, in the Antipodean context, episodes of deranged and disordered sleep – from daymares and nightdreams to somnambulistic trances – cannot be read as simple restagings of early gothic concerns such as demonic activity or possession. Rather, sleep disturbance in the Australian Gothic brings to light more ordinary horror: the horror of embodied automaticity, the horror of blind complacency, and the horror of discovering the mechanical processes that hide behind the self. The televisual texts examined in this chapter can be linked thematically as a way of working through this horror, a necessity that demands female vigilance but which often culminates problematically in monstrous behaviour or monstrous transformation.

Keywords: Australian Gothic; gothic television; sleepwalking; nocturnal wandering; The Cry; white vanishing

Since the global outbreak of COVID-19 – ‘the most crucial health calamity of the century and the greatest challenge that humankind has faced since the Second World War’ (Chakraborty and Maity 1) – a number of sleep neurologists have reported an increase in sleep disorders associated with the pandemic. From insomnia and hypersomnia to recurrent nightmares and abnormal dreams, this surge in sleep disturbance has been coined ‘COVIDsomnia’ (Geffern qtd. in Goldfarb), a new epidemic of sleep pathologies that, according to one study, ‘could be short-lived […] abating once the pandemic subsides, or it could become, in some cases, a chronic condition’ (Taylor et al. 713). Initially linked to a fear of infection, including a fear of infecting others, reported declines in sleep quality have been reconceptualized through the development of multi-factorial measures of pandemic-related distress. For example, a recent study of COVID Stress Syndrome identified five correlated facets of the syndrome's severity: (1) fear of the danger of COVID-19, including a fear of coming into contact with contaminated objects and surfaces; (2) concern about socioeconomic impacts, such as stress on finances; (3) xenophobic fears that foreigners are spreading the virus; (4) traumatic stress symptoms associated with direct or vicarious exposure to the virus, such as nightmares and intrusive thoughts or images; and (5) compulsive news checking and reassurance seeking from family and friends (Taylor et al. 707).