Neo-Victorian Oceanic Depths in Netflix’s 1899

Abstract

Keywords:  Oceanic; 1899; Neo-Victorian; Gothic; Spatiality

This article dives into the oceanic waters beneath the steamship Kerberos in the neo-Victorian Netflix drama, 1899. It considers water as an elemental force, as an oceanic vastness and as a shifting surface beneath which lie unfathomable depths. It explores how water interacts with people and state-of-the art steamship technology at the close of the nineteenth century, facilitating long-distance travel and immigration to the United States. It examines the mystery and multi-dimensionality of water and its role as a metaphor for sunken memories, human displacement in time and space, and cartographic anxiety. It is about the freedom afforded by water which acts as a buffer to the conventionality of landlocked life. It is about the agoraphobia-inducing sight of seemingly endless waves and the claustrophobia of onboard existence. It positions water mutating from unthreatening conduit to aggressor, rising up to overwhelm a vessel with crashing waves or else bursting through its sides to drive out any air. It presents water as a lurking menace waiting to drown passengers in its deathly embrace. It is about lost ships and ghost ships and floating phantoms and how they play out on the television screen.

This article adopts a spatially inflected methodology influenced by Spatial Studies, the Nautical Gothic, Ocean Studies, and historically informed neo-Victorianism. It posits that 1899’s ocean constitutes more than mere scenery, and it argues that water is not limited to a function as the show’s aquatic backdrop but swells to influence plot; become a leading character; and is indeed indispensable to the entire production.