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Elements of gothic literature
Elements of gothic literature
The influences that gothic literature
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Elements of gothic literature
Elements of gothic literature
The influences that gothic literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Gothic can be described as contemporary horror distilled into its simplest and earliest form. The many tropes the gothic possesses allow it to be familiarly recognized as a genre that relates to contemporary Western horror. Some of these tropes are the angle in the house, grotesque, historical, and a hint of romanticism, as all involve the disruption of what was once considered stable boundaries but are now also used to have a wide range of effects on the viewers. In Jordan Peels Get Out he engages with these ideas and tropes, specifically in terms of its intense romantic and historical notions. However, the primary source of horror in Jordan Peele’s Get Out is the use of the historical trope in gothic literature; Because of the visual
Alfred Hitchcock successfully performs suspense and shock in a number of ways. One way was when he reveals that the cop is following her, making us think that he found out concerning the money she stole. Another way is when we see Norman staring through the hole, examining her as if he is waiting to make his move. The last technique that Hitchcock constructed suspense is when we identify a shadowy character gazing at her take a shower, making us wonder who it could
Stonehearst Asylum is roughly based on a short story short story "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" by Edgar Allan Poe. In this period piece the cinematography is employed to support the gothic theme of the era the film finds itself in. The Gothic theme is supported by four Gothic elements present in the film namely the isolated setting, entrapment/ imprisonment of the characters, the violence and insanity. According to the Oxford dictionary (2015:) can gothic be explained as belonging to or suggestive of the Dark Ages; significantly gloomy or horrifying.
To the unknown eye, Hitchcock has carefully and skillfully used Mise-en-scene to his advantage, causing the audience to feel fear and a sense of caution towards the character of Norman Bates. It isn’t until we reflect back on the scene and notice how intelligently Hitchcock uses the positioning of props and the characters, lighting, camera angle and staging, that we notice how he has added meaning to his characters but has also to the film, creating suspense and fear from one scene to the end of the film. Ultimately proving the point that Hitchcock “the master of suspense” uses Mise-en-scene to not only help make a brilliant film but also uses it as his disposal to add meaning in his
In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it is the second category of women portrait that is represented: the mother figure, the main female character identifies with. The movie follows the story of John Ferguson surnamed "Scottie", a detective who is hired to follow his client’s wife Madeleine. The client is worried for his wife because she is obsessed with the life of one of her dead ancestor who killed herself. He fears that she is going to repeat the same mistakes. The portrait of Carlotta embodies the ghost of the dead woman and Madeleine’s obsession with her.
The Film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, effectively presented the ideas of murder and schizophrenia through the use of characters, with the double-sided Norman Bates in particular, and visual techniques as well as sound techniques. The ideas of murder and schizophrenia were presented well in the movie "psycho" through the use of characters. The character of Norman Bates was the central character in the film and had a complex and differing personality. One moment he was shy, kind, lonely Norman Bates, a mother's boy, and the next he was a deadly jealous Mrs. Bates, his deceased mother.
Alfred Hitchcock was a standout amongst the most influential directors ever in cinema’s history. An expert of suspense and film technique master, when all is said in done, he is regularly replicated and rarely duplicated. He created numerous critical motion picture minutes utilizing extraordinary true to life "tricks" and styles that are still utilized today (and referenced as being "Hitchcockian") however the most renowned and persuasive of these moments is without uncertainty, what is regularly alluded to as just the "shower scene" in Psycho. Everybody knows it, and everybody cherishes it. Who does not?
Captivating gothic elements indulge the reader in “The Woman in Black” by Susan Hill. Gothic elements are supernatural effects that create a feeling of dread and mystery. In the novella, Hill uses precise details to add a gothic atmosphere with the London Fog, Crythin Gifford, and the scene at the park. The first chilling detail that gives the novella a gothic element is the London fog.
Gothic films are at once very easy and very difficult to categorise. Within the wider context of the “horror” genre, gothic films are linked directly to the literary gothic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Horror film fans would counter that the Goth genre bravely faces issues such as death, mortality, mystery, cruelty, violence, insecurity, guilt and loneliness head on. Films from the post punk moment in the 1980s and 1990s include Edward Sissorhands, The Hunger and The Howling. Following a long tradition of Romantic art and literature,melodrama, phantasmagoric theatre and expressionism, gothic films have a recognisable mise-en-scène based around characters, settings, familiar visual signifiers.
The term Gothic is expressed in various ways throughout chapters nineteen and twenty of The Picture of Dorian Gray. One example used in the novel is hysteria as Dorian asks “What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?” (203). Lord Henry laughs and responds with a statement that murder is too vulgar for a man like Dorian. Dorian seems to be having a nervous breakdown in this scene, almost like he wants to be told that he is not responsible for Basil’s death and Lord Henry is catering to his want to be complemented.
With all the extraordinary characters and controversial details in Mary Shelley’s original 1818 edition of Frankenstein, sometimes Robert Walton and his letters are overlooked. Despite being one of the most easily ignored characters in the story, a little explication of his letters can uncover extreme and bizarre behavior. Interestingly enough, his behavior is befitting of the entire story’s gothic mood (or at least befitting of Mary Shelley’s parodic tone, an exaggeration of the gothic mood employed by her male counterparts in the Romantic movement). By using some oddly coded language as well as some more overt interactions, Mary Shelley paints Robert Walton as a man of extreme psychological complexes comparable to Victor Frankenstein himself
Hollywood has always done a terrible job of depicting real women in film, and although his work has a somewhat misogynistic reputation, Alfred Hitchcock has done so much involving the progression of female roles in Hollywood cinema. Although many of his female victims wind up dead, the survivors have lots of power – and without reliance on their male counterparts. Women remain the central focus in many of Hitchcock’s films, not just because of their beauty, but because the narrative is dependent on them. When you look at his work in the context of this specific Hollywood era, Hitchcock’s female characters are very much out of the ordinary. Looking past the obvious presence of gender roles (male and female) that just so happened to be a part of the social norm during that time, Hitchcock sought to represent women with having more depth, realism, and independence than ever before in women in Hollywood.
Because of the attention it received in America, the portrayal of psychopaths in film was channeled into this nearly separate and exclusive film genre. The actions and details of the Ed Gein case, including cannibalism, necrophilia and grave robbing, became a pattern for the characteristics and activities of what was considered psychopathic behavior. Then two variations on the usual presentation of the psychopath emerged: the socially functional misfit often with a sexual obsession to kill, and the violent, dysfunctional mass murderer with idiosyncratic mannerisms and appearance. Norman Bates of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho redirected the entire horror genre, and in doing so dismantled the prudent 1950’s societal barriers of cinema. Although unseen for its potential by the large studios of the time, Psycho became one of the crowning achievements of film history. While based partially on a true story of murder and psychosis from Wisconsin, the widespread viewing of this tale made way for a new era of film and ushered in a new audience of movie goers. The use of violence, sexual explicitness, dramatic twists, sound, and cinematography throughout this film gave Hitchcock his reputable name and title as master of suspense.
However, film critic, Robin Wood, argues that ‘since Psycho, the Hollywood cinema has implicitly recognised horror as both American and familial’ he then goes on to connect this with Psycho by claiming that it is an “innovative and influential film because it supposedly presents its horror not as the produce of forces outside American society, bit a product of the patriarchal family which is the fundamental institution of American society” he goes on to discuss how our civilisation either represses or oppresses (Skal, 1994). Woods claim then suggests that in Psycho, it is the repressions and tensions within the normal American family which produces the monster, not some alien force which was seen and suggested throughout the 1950 horror films. At the beginning of the 60’s, feminisation was regarded as castration not humanization. In “Psycho” (1960) it is claimed that the film presents conservative “moral lessons about gender roles of that the strong male is healthy and normal and the sensitive male is a disturbed figure who suffers from gener confusion” (Skal, 1994). In this section of this chapter I will look closely at how “Psycho” (1960) has layers of non-hetro-conforming and gender-non conforming themes through the use of Norman Bates whose gender identitiy is portrayed as being somewhere between male and female