This book is an original and innovative study of how Gothic nostalgia and toxic memory
are used to underpin and promote the ongoing culture wars and populist politics in
contemporary popular culture. The essays collected here cover topics from the spectral to
the ecological, deep fakes to toxic ableism, Mary Poppins to John Wick to reveal
how the use of an imaginary past to shape the present, creates truly Gothic times that we
can never escape. These ‘hungry ghosts’ from the past find resonance with the Gothic
which speaks equally of a past that often not only haunts the present but will not let it
escape its grasp. This collection will look at the confluence between various kinds of toxic
nostalgia and popular culture to suggest the ways in which contemporary populism has
resurrected ideological monsters from the grave to gorge on the present and any possibility
of change that the future might represent.