Mapping Settler Gothic : Noir and the Shameful Histories of the Pākehā Middle Class in The Bad Seed

Abstract

This chapter addresses the ways in which the New Zealand television series The Bad Seed (2019) narrates intersections between settler-colonial identity and social class. It makes the case that The Bad Seed sits within a line of storytelling in New Zealand settler Gothic which serves to secure innocence by presenting the relatively privileged Pākehā family as ‘middling’, vulnerable and at risk. The chapter progresses through an analysis of traumatogenic spaces, culminating at the isolated farmstead locale that is so generative to the settler Gothic imaginary. Ultimately, The Bad Seed employs mixed and hybrid genres to tell a story of Pākehā middle-class self-exculpation.