Craven, Allison (2025) The magical morality of the happy dead: Streaming the afterlife and post-secular gothic. In: Nairn, Angelique, (ed.) Depicting the Afterlife in Contemporary Film and Media: Morality religion and death. Routledge, London, UK, pp. 117-131.

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Abstract

With imaginings of "happy death," Afterlife of the Party and After Life present wish-fulfilling trajectories of the protagonists toward the attainment of moral virtue. Both shows project secular perspectives on death, bereavement, and the afterlife, yet evoke a certain consciousness of religion through imparting the moral discourses with Gothic or magical realist effects that instill a magical secularism. Compared with a religious imagining of happy death in an historical progenitor, the eighteenth-century moral tract The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, this chapter considers the public sphere impact of afterlife fantasies and, as After Life and Afterlife of the Party are both streamed on Netflix, the power of streaming television as a platformed public sphere. Jurgen Habermas's concept of post-secularism, with its "cognitive burden" on secular citizens, offers a way to interpret magical secularism in the public sphere.

Item ID:	90197
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	9781003438403
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri...
Copyright Information:	© 2026 selection and editorial matter, Angelique Nairn; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Angelique Nairn to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Sensitivity Note:	Article contains references to suicide.
Date Deposited:	23 Jun 2026 02:30
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