Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The CW channel’s “Riverdale” is a beautifully pulpy and uncanny reimagination of the “Archie Comics” universe. Archie, Betty, and Veronica are the same vintage teenagers, now exploring a lurid world of sex and danger teeming right below their town’s sunny exterior, while sipping milkshakes and traversing their classic love. What makes the excessive lust and violence of “Riverdale” so compelling is creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacassa’s delight in unsettling and rejuvenating myths of Americana. Aguirre-Sacassa engages myth-making in a mode recalling a matryoshka doll; the citizens of Riverdale are hopelessly, incestuously, enfolded within a landscape of memory and trauma. This conceptualization of myth-making is darkly taken to task in the current season (season two), with the appearance of the murderous Black Hood. The Black Hood is a self-appointed “savior” obsessed with cleansing Riverdale of its “sins” and takes special interest in Betty, in whom he finds a kindred spirit. He taunts Betty with coded messages alluding to her childhood—stories only she would know. But Betty soon discovers that she can gain the upper hand in the Black Hood’s psychopathic seduction by learning Riverdale’s brutal history, unearthing the secrets of its sordid past, which the town wishes to forget. Demonstrating that Betty defeats the Black Hood with the same legends upon which he builds his fearsome reputation, I evaluate how such an ouroboros model of myth-making presents the potential to challenge complacency in our current, volatile cultural moment, when the legacies of structural oppression are loudly announced under the banner of “fake news.”