Overview

The creative output encompasses the two fields of research on horror fiction and children’s fiction and is hence an amalgamation of both studies in order to create a story that helps comprehend the nuances of women and children’s portrayal in horror stories. The site of conflict becomes the trauma that affects children, and in this case, impacts on the protagonist’s coming-of-age. The aim is to create an Audiodrama that comprises four episodes telling the story of a girl named Luci Mathew and her Youth Pastor, Mary who is approached as a guiding force by her mother. The story unravels to show Sakhi, Luci’s friend and her influence on Luci in mysterious ways as the audiodrama progresses. The objective is to work on a creative piece that is a feminist horror text and at the same time analyse the need for exposing children to texts that could help deal with trauma. The psyche of a child is affected by trauma, who comes of age in the narrative enmeshes various psychoanalytical themes of the horror genre. Horror is not the most enjoyable category in entertainment, but it proves to be a site worthy of study, and one of the only genres where the marginalization of the ‘Other’ is made visible. Defined by words like ‘fear’ and ‘trauma,’ horror is present in women and children and their bodies. Menstruation, pregnancy, puberty, etc., are ‘abjections.’ According to Julia Kristeva, the abject is the source of horror, as it destabilizes identity, order, rules, and borders. The abject body of a teenage girl is the source of horror, and her response to the taboo, abuse and trauma threaten the order of things. Children’s narratives are viable tools that can be used to depict concepts of trauma in order to expose children to ideologies that are considered to be taboo. Horror as a genre generally portrays nuances that can be associated with fears and trauma that have evolved from childhood experiences. Horror can also look into a person’s state of mind giving it the aspect of psychology which helps give an allegory of how it is possible to convey taboo topics such as death, abuse and such through children’s narratives and depicting a stance of how a person’s mind can be affected by the same. The audiodrama focuses on the life of a 12 year old girl who is dealing with her parents divorce and sexual abuse from her step father. The manner in which she overcomes this in a certain way sees how trauma builds a person and their character and how it is possible to lift oneself up from such a situation. All this is deemed possible only through the portrayal of a ‘monstrous feminine’ named Sakhi. We see how parents seem unaware about the manner in which they should deal with such situations and how children need to find a safe space to relate to content if by chance they have had to deal with such scenarios. The intersectionality of a girl child and the trauma she faces is the reason for choosing a character who is female and her representation is done from a feminist perspective as well as keeping in mind that if a child were to consume this content, what could they possibly take from this. It is important to assess the question of whether this is suitable content for a 12 year old keeping in mind that the protagonist is a 12 year old and whether an ‘adult’ would deem it to be appropriate.

Choice of medium & reasons

The aural medium of story-telling hearkens back to the time in our childhood, when the elderly of the family would share bed-night stories with us. Tradition of story-telling with your kin is ancient, for as long as we have been able to speak, create shadows with our hands, or even draw stick figures. These stories, told to children, are a way of teaching them about fear and being cautious against danger. Folklore endemic to each culture is the basis of such stories.

Listening to the radio sounds like an outdated activity but in the 1940s and 1950s, radio was all the rage, and a source of news, music, and immersive storytelling. As the 21st century ushered in many technological breakthroughs in digital media, podcasting emerged as the new wave of broadcasting, but on the internet. Audiobooks and radiodramas also gained parallel recognition. In the recent few years, audiobooks have soared in popularity, coming out as an independent creative artform. The boom in audiobooks and podcasts goes hand in hand, as there is a higher demand for audio content right now. Audiodramas are original audio contents, independent of any associated published literature. Hence, audiodramas can be a breath of fresh air when it comes to aural fiction.

The limitations of the visual medium for this project are too many, in addition to being expensive. We acknowledge psychological thriller/ horror as the most creative genre for story-telling and one of the most ancient ones. The medium for our story must showcase our passion for horror media, children’s media, coming-of-age stories of women, girls, monstresses, and so on. Since our individual research overlaps at the representation of children in horror, we aim to explore themes of child abuse, trauma through the horror of the loss of selfhood and innocence. For such a cerebral and psychologically rich topic, horror fiction is the best site.