THAT KIND OF REVIEW IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS HOPING THAT MOVIE WOULD GET AND IT MEANS EVEN MORE COMING FROM YOU (ONE OF MY TOP GOTH LIT/MEDIA SENPAIS) I AM SO PSYCHED!
YOU’RE ONE OF MY GOTH LIT/MEDIA SENPAI THOUGH SO I CAN’T BE YOURS!!!!
BUT OH MY GOSH. IT HAS THE SAME ELEMENTS OF THE WITCHING HOUR BUT SET WITH A LOT MORE OF A IWTV TONE, AND A PANDORA VOICE. IF THAT EVEN MAKES SENSE.
ITS CAMPY AND RIDICULOUS AND MAKES LITTLE SENSE BUT ITS THE MOST VICTORIAN GOTH THING I’VE SEEN IN A LONG TIME
WE CAN ABSOLUTELY BE – WE ALREADY ARE – MUTUAL SENPAIS WHY THE FRACK NOT?!
In actuality, you really do know Goth lit/media much more thoroughly than I do but I am definitely more entrenched in vampire lit/media, which is really kind of a branch of Goth, sooooo… WE EXIST ON THE SAME TREE OF DARKNESS
I SHALL WATCH THE PEAK OF CRIMSON THIS WEEKEND AND LESTAT AND I WILL SHARE OUR OPINIONS OF IT TOGETHER, WILL INFORM YA.
IT’S WITCHING HOUR + CAMPY + RIDICULOUS + VICTORIAN GOTH + IWTV TONED + PANDORA VOICED? YOU HAD MY CURIOSITY BUT NOW YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION.
THO REALLY YOU HAD ME AT “FUCKED UP ENOUGH FOR ANNE RICE TO HAVE WRITTEN IT.” ;D
THAT KIND OF REVIEW IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS HOPING THAT MOVIE WOULD GET AND IT MEANS EVEN MORE COMING FROM YOU (ONE OF MY TOP GOTH LIT/MEDIA SENPAIS) I AM SO PSYCHED!
I don’t know what post it was, but if its any help, horror is more of an element while gothic is a genre/mode/mood (scholars like to butt heads on it), horror would be a madman breaking into your house and slaughtering you–it scares you, its dark and grim, but it doesn’t effect you beyond the scare.
A Gothic would have you anxious over the madman, questioning your belief in such a story, and possibly in God and superstition as a whole, while wearing something elegant in a gracefully lit room, with overtones of love running through that anxiety–the madman still shows up and there may still be a slaughter but there is a chase, there is hiding, there is terror instead of horror.
Compare Crimson Peak to Halloween, or Jane Eyre to any lifetime movie where a girl marries a person with a dark secret. Hammer Horror films were very good at treading the line between Gothic and Horror, as was the original Dracula novel. For another book comparison: Frankenstein is a Gothic, but IT is a horror.
Tragedy is common but not a necessity in the Gothic, it often comes as the price for including the terror. Crimson Peak ends in tragedy (and opens with it, as most Gothics do), but the terror and suspense and questions overpower the tragedy–if you haven’t seen it yet, I’ll tell this much: you leave it excited rather than depressed, there are a handful of questions like melting snow in your hand that drip away between your fingers before you can fully form them, ethereal and haunting visuals wash away the last of the nightmare, and then the credits roll–this is the Gothic, as opposed to pure tragedy where we see Horatio speaking of Hamlet’s nobility as he stands over the corpses of the last of his friends.
I would describe Guillermo del Toro as compassionate because he sees the good in everyone even his monsters. (x)
Yes, I’m on (another) Crimson Peak posting spree, but I wanted to specifically point out what Tom Hiddleston says: “beauty in places that many of us would fear to look.” That sounds VERY familiar to me, as my definition of goth/gothic is looking for “beauty and wonder in dark or unsettling places”.
I-want-my-IWTV 