Eoghain Hamilton
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Edited by Eoghain Hamilton The Gothic - Probing the Boundaries Critical Issues Critical Issues Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Daniel Riha Advisory Board Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris Mira Crouch Professor John Parry Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul Reynolds Professor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig Owen Kelly Professor S Ram Vemuri Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E A Critical Issues research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ The Ethos Hub ‘The Gothic’ 2012 The Gothic - Probing the Boundaries Edited by Eoghain Hamilton Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom © Inter-Disciplinary Press 2012 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087 ISBN: 978-1-84888-088-7 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2012. First Edition. Table of Contents Introduction vii Eoghain Hamilton Part 1 Gothic Sets the Stage The Paradox of Horror: The Dark Side of Gothic Aesthetics 3 Maria Antónia Lima From Gothicism to Transcendentalism: The Birth of a 13 Nation’s Culture Jean-Baptiste Dussert ‘Ken’s Mystery’: Blending Gothic Foundations with Gaelic 21 Folklore Eoghain Hamilton The Walking Dude: Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s 29 Post-Apocalyptic Epic The Stand Cornelia Lippert Dopo Notte Atra e Funesta: Handel’s Ariodante: 39 A Forerunner of the Gothic Novel? Angela Fodale Part 2 Lights! Camera! Action! Representing European Identities in Classic Hollywood 51 Cinema and 18th-Century Gothic Literature Niall O’Donnell James Whale’s The Old Dark House: Classic Gothic Cinema 61 as the Origin of The Rocky Horror Show Armando Rotondi Evil Against Evil: Demonic Sexuality in William Friedkin’s 71 The Exorcist Gord Barentsen Gothic Cinema: Horror on Screen and the Perils of 79 (Over)Interpretation Dagmara Zając Part 3 Got(h) Sex? Do Gothic Lolitas Just Wanna Have Fun? An Examination 89 of the Goth-Loli Style Tribes in Hong Kong and Tokyo Anne Peirson-Smith Chick-Fangs, Power Relations, and Being Human 101 Yvonne Leffler Un/queering the Gothic: Demi-Haunted (2002) 109 Shuen Chan Transcended Bodies, Confused Genders. Some Perspectives 119 on the Portrayal of Sexuality in American Horror Film Dorota Wiśniewska Part 4 Spectacles of Gothic Platonic Critique of the Vampire 129 Jonathan H. Nelson Panic on the Streets of Stockholm: Sub/Urban Alienation 137 in the Novels of John Ajvide Lindqvist Kevin Corstorphine Food, Blood, Body and Knowledge in Frankenstein and 145 Dracula Maria Parrino Part 5 Death Haunted Castles and Premature Burials: The Cure’s Faith, 157 Goth Subculture and the Gothic Literary Tradition Anna Milione Pagan Death: Lovecraftian Horror and the Dream of 171 Decadence Jesse Norford Tell-Tale Deaths and Monstrous Quests: Being Human and 179 Visions of Death in Millennial Gothic Fictions Jacqueline de Giacomo Introduction Eoghain Hamilton ‘Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!’ - Bram Stoker In May of 2010, a group of scholars with various academic backgrounds from all corners of the world met in Prague to discuss the Gothic, including its sub-genres and expanding definitions. It was the first global conference of its kind and it brought about a number of interesting submissions which have consequently added to the body of knowledge and understanding perceived to be ‘Gothic.’ Within this eBook you will find a representative sample of the work that was presented then. Since the 1960’s ‘the Gothic’ has increasingly interested academics. As a genre, it remains difficult to define, since the term is constantly expanding to include areas of film, music, fashion and other factions of popular culture. Both Gothic’s history and its current status show the flexibility of applying the term in a variety of media. Gothic literature developed as a branch of Romanticism in the 18th century, coinciding with both the social dislocations caused by industrial revolution and an increasing emphasis on science and reason that questioned the role of God in the world. This shifting of the ground beneath society led to an ontological questioning that gave rise to a general unease and in doing so, the first defining feature of the Gothic was born, it being that the Gothic arises at times of societal upheaval or threat. Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Lewis’s The Monk, and Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian are early examples of the Gothic novel. One could say, that from this point onwards, the Gothic crystallised into a form that, at its heart, was an expression of fear or anxiety at man’s place in the world. Of course fear can be expressed in many ways; as the Gothic novel grew in popularity, so did many of the ways in which it expressed human fears and anxieties. Very quickly these expressions became common place within Gothic literature and changed into what can be described as recognisable conventions - a brooding atmosphere of fear, female oppression, corrupt aristocrats, family decay, immurement, journeys in weird and exotic locations, old buildings, graveyards, deviant clergy (particularly Catholic clergy) - all of these expressions of anxiety within the human psyche. Today ‘the Gothic’ is much more than a set of the late eighteenth-century tropes. It has expanded into all aspects of popular culture, cinema, fashion, music, and even since the 1980s, as the manifestation of the new and at times maligned ‘Goth’ culture. These essays demonstrate the sheer diversity of subject matter on which the Gothic now touches. In addition to the prerequisite musings on Vampires, Demons and the Supernatural, you will find more exotic examples of the Gothic, which range from the fashion of Gothic Lolitas in Hong Kong, to insightful comments on cult classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, to comparisons of Gothic music of the 1980s with classic Gothic literature and film. viii Introduction __________________________________________________________________ Part one of this volume sets the stage for the conference with an exploration of the different features within Gothic literature. Maria Lima examines Gothic aesthetics in their darker forms. Lima’s paper argues that Gothic aesthetics may mask more perverse influences which each one of us can, at times, possess. Jean- Baptiste Dussert examines different articulations of the Gothic tradition through the lens of the American Gothic. Starting with the novel Wieland (1798) by Charles B. Brown, Dussert traces the transposition of the Gothic aesthetic into the American wilderness. Dussert argues that this transposition is one of the contributing factors to the growth of the transcendentalist movement. Cornelia Lippert explores Gothic themes such as liminality, moral choice and rites of passage in Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Stand (1978). In particular, Lippert compares King’s villain, Randall Flagg, to the traditional Gothic villain of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Eoghain Hamilton explores Gothic features in a Gaelic context in the short story and minor vampire classic ‘Ken’s Mystery’ (1887). Hamilton’s paper also examines the Gothic features of ‘Ken’s Mystery’ through a post-colonial lens. In this respect, his paper identifies a new and interesting portrayal of Irish identity that is a refreshing antidote to nineteenth century stereotypical depictions of the Irish. Finally, in part one, Angela Fodale explores the gothic elements in Haendel’s opera Ariodante (1735). Fodale argues that Ariodante written and performed almost 30 years before Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), can be read as an earlier example of gothic novel. Part two examines representations of the Gothic in cinema. Niall O’Donnell compares representations of North-Western European identity as contrasted with Southern and Eastern European identities (as well as nationalities from further afield) in the Gothic literature of the late 18th century and classic Hollywood horror cinema of the 1930s. His comparison is notable for its interpretation of early 1930s horror cinema including such works as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932). Armando Rotondi looks at the effect of classic Gothic cinema on the highly entertaining and humorous Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Rotondi particularly investigates the influence of James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932) on the creation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Gord Barentsen explores the shattering tension of adolescent sexuality in William Friedkin’s film The Exorcist (1973). In his paper, Barentsen focuses his attention on the demon ‘Pazuzu’ and his role in the character Regan’s possession in an attempt to shed light on the shattering nature of demonic sexuality constituting the hermeneutic core of The Exorcist. Dagmara Zając continues the examination of Gothic cinema when she investigates the perils of over interpretation of onscreen horrors. Zając argues that the films which primarily should be considered and analysed as Gothic are the early Hollywood horror classics. Accordingly, Zając’s paper attempts at identifying the parallels and connections between early Gothic literature and the Gothic cinema of 1930s. Eoghain Hamilton ix __________________________________________________________________ In part three the role of sex and sexuality in Gothic popular culture is examined. Anne Peirson Smith investigates Gothic Lolita culture in Hong Kong. Smith, a professor at the City of Hong Kong University, has spent several years researching Gothic Lolis and their customs.