Televisual Horror: Teddy Perkins

For decades, genre theory has rested on textualist assumptions. Whether a show has a generic narrative fitting into a well-entrenched category or a series of aesthetic tropes (like Arizona’s Monument Valley becoming a symbol for the American West), film and television programs have been identified by a limiting methodology that assumes genres are timeless essences. However, a new wave of academics and critics across media are advocating for the decentering of narrative tropes from the larger forces that determine genre.
Among these new theorists is Jason Mittell of Middlebury College, whose essay A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory argues for a cultural approach to genre analysis where external variables such as industrial practices and cultural circulation could offer a more comprehensive understanding of where any given media text is situated within a genre. The cultural approach is an innately discursive practice which “necessitates that we decenter the text as the primary site of genre” — a more appropriate model for contemporary media texts like Atlanta’s Teddy Perkin’s episode.
Released on April 5, 2018, Teddy Perkin’s is the sixth episode of the second season of Donald Glover’s phenomenal Atlanta — a critically-acclaimed American comedy-drama following an aspiring rapper (Brian Tyree Henry) and his cousin (Donald Glover). Their daily routines are menial and uneventful, and episodes often explore tangential and unimportant narratives. Teddy Perkins is one of those tangents, as Donald Glover experiments with a new genre and style of television separate from the typical routine. This episode is no interlude, however. Darius — played by Lakeith Stanfield — an unsuspecting black man who visits a large Victorian home to pick up a piano. His seller is Teddy Perkins, an older black man with bleached skin and an eerie aura — an allusion to Michael Jackson. In short, Darius manages a frightening escape as Teddy’s brother Benny murders him and then commits suicide, leaving Darius grateful to escape with his life, but regretful for being unable to save them either of his sellers.
Grotesque and off-pace, Teddy Perkins is the latest installment in a lesser known lineage of American television blending 18th century Victorian literature and Gothic televisual horror. Helen Wheatley, professor at the University of Warwick, is the foremost living expert on Gothic Television and has written extensively on the subject, notably the emergence of a few key sitcoms and soap operas: The Munsters, The Addams Family, and Dark Shadows.

Gothic television in the 1960s was a response to the emergence of the “family sitcom” in the late 1950s (Leave It to Beaver (1957–63), Dennis the Menace (1959–63), etc.). An over-saturation of family sitcoms paired with an increasing cultural idealization of the nuclear family informed the creative productions of these Gothic sitcoms, which sought to depict the ordinary American life as malformed. Gothic imagery became a commentary on the intrusion of murder, abuse, or other violations borrowing from 18th century Victorian literature which similarly explored darker elements of America’s culture and history. Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Toni Morrison’s Sula are foundational American Gothic reads commenting on slavery, genocide, and the destruction of the wilderness.
They are among some of the foundational literature narratives that Wheatley argues informed the rise of Gothic television, following early adaptations of Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931), the radio channels that accelerated their proliferation, and eventually the televisual texts themselves. Her cultural approach for her genre analysis of American Gothic television serves a basis for understanding the cultural implications of Gothic televisual horror in Teddy Perkins.
The Michael Jackson allusion is poignant. As a child, the pop star endured abuse from his father. There’s one rumor that Joe Jackson used to electrocute his scrotum so as to prevent puberty from affecting his voice. As the episode points out, MJ’s family history is rooted in pain, resentment, and is cyclical, as Teddy Perkins tries to pass on to Darius what his father gave him — a gesture that suggests Teddy has internalized the physical and psychological abuse to the point of believing it’s necessary and even an act of love. How does Atlanta comment on the family toxicity that underwrites the legacy of MJ and other black cultural icons (Marvin Gaye, Serena Williams, etc.) referenced in the show? Gothic architecture and macabre.
Gothic imagery and characterizations offer the creators of Atlanta’s Teddy Perkins episode a way of commenting on the state of family as it relates to Michael Jackson’s own and the sense of family he disrupts (more on that later). The gothic Victorian architecture of Teddy’s mansion is a metaphorical chamber of secrets with dark memories behind every doorway, room, and passageway. The home produces a sense of anxiety, fear, and suspense which is purposeful for the commentary of the episode. Additionally, the macabre elicits Gothic themes of problematic family ideals in the featuring of an oversized ostrich egg which Teddy calls “an owl’s casket.” Ostriches are native to Africa, and Teddy demonstrates the grotesque transformation of something with huge potential by eating it out of the shell. This small macabre alludes to the eating of one’s own young, which MJ’s father is considered to have done in effort of pushing his son to succeed. The Gothic themes of the episodes are successful in reflecting the haunted childhood abuse of an international pop star. However, that problematic abuse has resulted in consequences for the black community who saw him as a family member of their own as well.
Beyond Michael Jackson’s personal family trauma, the popstar occupies a household status within the black community. MJ’s efforts to “whiten” himself so as to distance himself from his black identity triggered grief akin to leaving the family. MJ publicly defended the skin bleaching as a result of vitiligo, while many attributed the decision as both racial self-loathing and an abused child’s wish to obliterate any trace of his old self. In writing an episode that deviates from the Atlanta’s typical comedy routine, Donald Glover can lament the legacy of Michael Jackson and the childhood abuse he endured.
