Since the protagonists try to gain a voice within their own home, the notion of space in general and the domestic space in particular is an important point of discussion. Foucault’s concept of space is especially useful when defining the home of the academy, which frames the action of the TV show, as a ‘crisis heterotopia,’ a space separated from society in which individual developments take place such as. In contrast, a ‘heterotopia of deviation’ encompasses institutions where individuals are placed whose behavior is outside the norm (cf. Foucault 24-25). Interestingly enough, the academy combines both directions of heterotopias and presents the consequences of this combination for the individual protagonists. The home, as a Gothic space in which the homely and the unhomely merge into the Freudian uncanny, is the central force in Umbrella Academy since it is the site of child-abuse, the site of coming-of-age, the site of emancipation, and the site of voice. These paradoxes make the home sublime in the sense that it bears potential for growth and destruction, beauty and horror. While the domestic space, traditionally speaking, has female connotations, the home of the academy is male-dominated. Female voices are most of the time suppressed and actively muted here, however with dire consequences.
The four papers tackle these concepts in different ways. In Gothic Academy: The Horror of A Crooked Household, Kathleen Shaughnessy shows the comics’ literary relevance by placing it in the field of Gothic research. Her focus is on the uncanny side of the home and the self by having a look at Ben Hargreeves, i.e. Number 6, who transgresses the boundaries between living and death and who gains power through death. Kathleen will offer some insight into the body as a site for Gothic forces and discuss how death is used as a necessary force for the character to grow up.
In Miranda Johnson’s Liminal Spaces in The Umbrella Academy: Being Alone In a House That Isn’t Home, it is the uncanniness of home that is discussed. Here, the space of the home as a site of trauma and trauma processing due to child abuse is shown in the characters of Number 1 and Number 4. Due to their difficult relationship with their father and their childhood home, the Umbrella Academy must create their own liminal spaces to survive a world they were unprepared to participate in, or else end up destroying the liminal space that they grew up in. The space of the home is thus described as a site and force of destruction, suppression, and violence.
Jeorg Ellen Sauer picks up the topic of the violent home by looking at the patriarchal aspect of the domestic sphere. Her paper, Dissonance in The Umbrella Academy: Striking a Chord through the Silencing of Women’s Voices, focuses on women’s voices in a male-dominated world in. The two sisters in the story (Number 2 and Number 7) represent the core motif behind the current #metoo movement—that of not believing women and/or of silencing women’s voices. The paper looks to explore the visual violence, neglect, and suppression that both characters encounter as their “voices” represent that which is feared most by the patriarchy—power.
Similarly, Maria Angelica Lopez Gonzalez is also interested in women's voices but she takes the series into the realm of social media and political implications of rumor in Number Three, The Rumor: the Wish as a Double-edged Sword. In a post-truth world where rumors and lies spread like never before, and celebrities can have more influence on their audiences than truth and facts themselves, the power of Number 3 is less of an improbable superpower and more of a reflection on the way our society creates the facts that conform reality.
So far, Umbrella Academy has been neglected in academic discussions even though it raises awareness on politically charged problems – from #metoo to drug abuse and trauma processing. This panel aims at exploring different questions and forces on identity, violence, and feminism addressed by the show within the space of the home and the narrative. It will be shown how the series examines, challenges, and potentially reinforces stereotypes of the home as uncanny and destructive and of women who are silenced out of fear.
The papers will be 12-14 minutes in length with 15 minutes of open discussion at the end of the session. By discussing the different social, political, and literary forces The Umbrella Academy presents, this panel serves as an inception to an academic discussion of the comics and the TV show alike and leads the series into the academic canon of critical comic book series and their adaptations.