Henty, Dylan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8853-5765 (2026) Capitalist Realism and the Death Drive in Analog Horror and “The Nixonverse”. Humanities, 15 (6).

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Abstract

‘Analog horror’ is a subgenre of internet and media horror, beginning c.2015. Its texts use late 20th‑century analogue technology as a locus of horror, both narratively and aesthetically, expressing contemporary technophobia and existential anxieties of the first quarter of the 21st century, using a deliberate and anarchic a‑historicity to represent concerns surrounding techno‑capitalism and its attendant ‘polycrisis’. This irreverent attitude to historical cause and effect, and technological progress, in subgenre texts such as “The Nixonverse” by creator Eve Casanas represents our modern‑day conflict between the digital, techno‑capitalist online world, and the corporeal crisis events affecting the real world. This diametric in analog horror expresses the central tenet of Mark Fisher’s concept of ‘capitalist realism’, the idea that capitalist ideology makes it appear that there are no viable alternatives to capitalism. In analog horror narratives, analogue–digital hybrid technologies channel techno‑organic monster‑figures, with the helplessness of the individual and/or groups to defeat these monstrosities being expressive of this capitalist realist impression that capitalism cannot be overcome, and its polycrisis avoided, enacting fantasies of societal destruction to alleviate this suspended state of anxious helplessness, in the tone of Freud’s ‘death drive’ wish fulfilment fantasies.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.3390/h15060078
Subjects:	E History America > E11 America (General) E History America > E151 United States (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Films
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/15243

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