Flatting Together in Really Small Countries: Teaching Clement and Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows as Kiwi Gothic

This chapter addresses the ways in which Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, set in Wellington, New Zealand, recasts globalized figures of the vampire within a highly local idiom. As commentators such as Alison Rudd and Misha Kavka have noted, regionalism is strong in New Zealand Gothic literature and cinema—a feature which is particularly remarkable for a nation of just five million people, where a tradition of Gothic horror is still emergent. The chapter equips both teachers and students with tools for mapping intertextual connections through an appreciation of the specific brand of deadpan humor, faux urbanity, and bathetic masculinity that characterizes Wellington Gothic. More broadly, the chapter discusses the cultural politics involved in designing a syllabus and assessment options for a senior undergraduate survey course on the Gothic mode in a context where “decolonization of the curriculum” is under active debate. As the product of collaboration between two Māori filmmakers that draws on distinctively New Zealand styles of humor to rework the established modes of international horror, What We Do in the Shadows is uniquely situated as a case study in the “glocalization” of horror.