American Gothic Culture An Edinburgh Companion Edited by Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam is a boo
But...Is there Gothic in a new country as the USA is? The answer is yes, and a lot. Authors will examine in this book various aspects of the American Gothic and what it means in the New World, from art, to movies, from tv series to books.
Starting with...Disneyland seeing as maybe the most gothic place of all the USA. I would want to add, personally an explanation for the gothicity of a park, as Disneyland or another one can be. Disneyland, when a person enters in its park means a ral state of complete happiness a moment of break with the common life and real world. Collodi portrays it well also when Pinocchio and Lucignolo enters in thein the Paese dei Balocchi; all that joy, all that happiness, that games...It was all fake, and the return to the normality could prove it.
The fake world built for the joy of the people is the dreaming land everyone would want forever, because no responsibilities, no unhappy moments. Once out of the park there is the melancholy for a dream gone too soon, for the dream of another parallel world in grade to donate that happy moments that sometimes the existence is not in grade of giving; the return to the normality is much more grey and depressing, but real. That's why Disneyland is gothic.
Disneyland represents the success, realization, as explained the authors, the richness of a nation, hiding all the dirty aspects that there are behind that society.
What kind of reception the gothic presents to people? It is the most diversified because some people fall fascinated with gothic, while other ones run away, because this genre is a mixture: a mixture of terror, fascination, grief. Gothic remembers us how life can be terrible sometimes, it put our existences in discussion; Gothic teaches this: of not taking for granted anything: existence, future, present. Gothic means also haunted houses, terrorized victims, terrible acts.
The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald is a gothic tale for the drama experienced by his character. Failure.
American is not Disneyland. The appearance of innocence, of enchantment that the park can donates hides all the rest: a violent history with a heavy, heavy story of racism, misunderstanding, fight with Native Americans and blood, wagons of blood and terror during the centuries.
Gothic is not just this but also the fight with the unknown or a subject, without winning. Let's see what happen with Melville and Mody Dick, the white whale; nothing to do, the white whale needed to be killed but no one will and thesame protagonists will succumb just because searching for a most powerful character in grade to make the difference in the existence of others. Someone unknown, hidden in the obscurity of the Oceans, in that profoundity where human souls and bodies cannot reach with tranquillity.
We musn't forget Henry James, Gothicity is also the behaviour kept by people, the obscurity of souls, lies behind existences and what it means for the social or familiar tissue all of it. If you read one of James's book, you'll notice it with great intensity.
Religion thanks to Puritan, tried to let see a world driven by goodness or vice-versa evil. Religion brought with it also sexual thematic.-
An exploration of this dimension can be found in The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James.
Slavery, colonialism, are thematic not just gothic, but part of the social tissue of the America and with the time developed their "fruits."
Toni Morrison wrote Beloved, but expressed herself also in a meditation on whitness, Teresa Goddy on slavery. Many writers wrote about slavery. Poe composed Black Cat, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, are clear representation of sufferance and the irrationality of the world.
The dialogue born thanks to these play caused various fronts.
The identity of various character, as it happens with Gatsy and his personal story are not linear, but broken, and dramatically suffering. There is the mirage of a different existence but failure can't help to realize it.
Of course gothic, in recent times have inundated every possible corner of the existence of people with books, movies, tv series, video games, visual arts, architecture and much more
The book will take in consideration cannibalism associated with Native Americans, but at the same time slavery and its profound connection with gothic world seen as drama,
D.H. Lawrence remarked a characteristic: the anger, fear and destructiveness of the American imagination.
Variour authors fought for seeing recognize their rights: Leslie Fiedler, Toni Morrison, Teresa Goddu, and Eric Savoy. Gothic literature meant to them an answer against anxiety and an unfair condition.
The South is the most Gothic part of the USA. Why? Because of the memory, often traumatic and violences associated with slavery.
Television supported and amplified Gothic vision of the world with sunny tv series like The Addams Family, where surely weird characters are around, then the Munster and Bewitched. Zompies, Vampires main characters of past and recent decades.
Serial killer meant also a lot in the imagination of people. Everything started with a case, the first one of the Harpe Brothers in the 1790s Tennessee. Recently a lot of productions involved horrible serial-killers. One of them was Hannibal.
Beautiful book, interesting, you can read it for sections.
For everyone.
Highly recommended.
I thank Edinburgh University Press for the copy of the book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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