The Monster Show (David J. Skal, 1994)

David J. Skal. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. London: Plexus, 1994.

"A good deal of this book has dealt with the long shadow of war reflected and transformed in the shared anxiety rituals we call monster movies. Wars tend not to resolve themselves , culturally, until years after the combat stops. The same is true of economic depressions, fatal epidemics, political witch-hunts -- the traumas can linger for decades." (p.386)

"World War I found a persistent symbolic expression in horror entertainment, a tendency that never really ended, and was only replaced by the symbol-distillations of World War II. The American nineties are still haunted by the Vietnamese seventies; the belief in the survival of Vietnam-era MIAs remains a powerful fixation in many quarters, a tenet of faith that psychologically concretizes at least one truth: that the Vietnam War was never really resolved, not in the world not in our minds" (p.386)

"She [Diane Arbus, photographer] saw that 'monsters' were everywhere, that the whole of modern life could be viewed as a tawdry side-show, driven by dreams and terrors of alienation, mutilation, actual death and its everyday variations. Working-class families, through Arbus' unforgiving lens, emerged as denizens of an existential suburban sideshow. Society dowagers were close cousins to Times Square transvestites. Caught at the right moment, almost anyone could look retarded. america, it seemed, was nothing but a monstershow. It was a revelation, a cause and a creed" (p.18)

"There are four primary icons on this carousel, which turns to a calliope dirge: Dracula, the human vampire; the composite, walking-dead creation of Frankenstein; the werewolfish duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and, perhaps most disturbing, the freak from a nightmare sideshow - armless, legless, twisted or truncated, now shrunken, now immense - it changes every time we look, a violation of our deepest sense of human shape and its natural boundaries. The carousel turns slowly, but steadily; if one looks long enough, one monster eventually blurs into another." (p.19)

"Caligari was derivative, no doubt, but it shared one honest source of inspiration with the new art movements, namely the Great War just past. The war had a tremenduous influence on the expressionist, dadaist, and emerging surrealist artists during the 1920s. In her recent book Anxious Visions, art historian Sidra Stich links the surrealist preocuppation with deformed and desfigured bodies to the sudden presence, following the war, of a sizeable population of the crippled and mutilated. Modern welfare had introduced new and previously unimaginable approaches to destroying or brutally reordering the human body." (p.48)

"Horror has always had a certain affinity for modern art movements and has often quoted their manneirisms, possibly because, at root level, they are inspired by similar cultural anxieties." (p.55)

"Dracula is a story about a particulary destructive and compulsive form of drinking; in the ensuing decades vampire stories would be colored increasingly by the metaphors of addiction." (p.124)

"By the time the MMPDA had the chance to view the finished version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Universal's Frankenstein had just opened to astonishing business, leading the industry to realise the Dracula was not a fluke, and 'horror movies' (the term was not widely used previously, and was in many ways an invetion of 1931) formed an important and profitable new category." (p.144)

"With Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the psychic landscapes of castle, crypt and laboratory were definitively mapped." (p.145)

THE MONSTER SHOW uncovers links between horror entertainment and the great social crises of our time, as well as horror's function as a pop-cultural counterpart to surrealism, expressionism, and other twentieth-century artistic movements. Ultimately focusing on film, the predominant art form of the modern world, Skal examines the many ways in which this medium has played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control engendered by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children and mutants that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in body-transforming special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the rise of the AIDS epidemic and a renewed fascination with vampires. The author looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, a thought-provoking inquiry into America's continuing obsession with the macabre.

Skal also offers the reader some insights into the struggles that the rival studios faced during the horror film boom of the 1930's and the effects of the demarcation enforced by the Production Code. In addition the author explores Hitler's fascination with the symbol of the wolf, E.C's vastly popular and extremely graphic comic books and the works of Stephen King.Interestingly Skal reinforces the theory that the public appetite for horror movies seem to grow in proportion to actual horrors experienced at the time. The biggest booms in the horror product occured during the Depression of the late 20's, the advent of World War II, the Red Scare, the growing threat of nuclear war and finally to the AIDS epidemic of today.

The Monstrous-Feminine (Barbara Creed, 1993)

Barbara Creed. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge,1993.

In this book the author challenges the patriarchal (woman-as-a-victim) view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female reproductive body. Against Freudian theories, which claim that women are terrifying because they are castrated, she claims that women terrify because they might castrate. From a feminist and psychoanalitical perspective Barbara Creed discusses seven faces of the Monstrous Feminine (woman-as-a-monster) 1. the archaic mother, 2. the monstrous womb, 3. the vampyre, 4. the witch, 5. the possessed body, 6. the monstrous mother and 7. the castrator or female castratice. The declared intention of the book is to explore the representaion of woman in the horror film and to argue that woman is represented as monstrous in a significant number of horror films. * Women monstrous in relation to her mothering and reproductive function. * Women's monstrousness linked to sexual desire.

Creed draws on Kristeva's concept of "abject" - the place where meaning collapses (p.9)-. The horro film is an illustration of the work of abjection (p.10). Kristeva sees the mother-child relationship as marked by conflict: the child struggles to break free but the mother is reluctant to release it. The mother's body becomes abject to the child. A function of Religion is to purify the abject. Horror film is a confrontation with the abject ( a form of modern defilment rite, reconciliation with the mother's body). Abjection both repels and attracts.

Rational Fears (Mark Jancovich,1996 )

Mark Jancovich. Rational Fears, American Horror in the 1950s. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

PREFACE

"The 1950s, it is assumed, constitues a period of conservatism with horror, whether this conservatism is conceived of in aesthetic or political terms, and critics usually establish their owns ares as worthy of study by defining them as different from the horror of the 1950s." (p.1)

He takes issue with Robin Wood: "However, far from being 'all the same', even the 1950s invasion narratives are often markedly different from one another. They may share particular patterns and features, but they deploy them in very different ways." (p.2)

Shift from the relying on gothic horror towards a preoccupation with the modern world. The book is divided in three parts 1] invasion narratives (complex responses to condition of post-war america, internal changes and fear of Soviet agression) 2] the outsider narratives (an alternative to existing norms or feelings of alienation, isolation, estrangement or how American normality has become strange) and 3] narratives concerned with 'crisis of identity' (people unable to rely both on rationality or irrationality, emotion, intuition).

" this situation also helps to account for the fact that many 1950s horror texts have not only acquired the status of classics for horror fans, but have also been so important to contemporary popular culture. 1950s horror not only lives as vital points of reference within popular culture, but many of the key practioners of contemporary horror (and indeed popular culture in general) often refer to 1950s horror text as the most significant and formative texts within their appreciation of horror in particular, and popular culture in general" (p.4)

Conclusion

Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers (1993) is a remake of a 50s horror classic. So is Attack of the 50 foot Woman, The Blob, The Fly, Invaders from Mars, Little Shop of Horrors, The Thing. Furthermore, Alien (1986) borrows from Them!, The Stepford Wives (1974) replicates elements of the Body Snatchers; Jaws takes visual images from the Creature from the Black Lagoon; the opening of It Came from Outer Space reappears in Starman (1984).

"As a result, it is important to note that while the contemporary horror genre has changed since the 1950s, it has not simply broken with the past. As was shown in the case of Psycho, these attempsts not only tend to ignore the processes which culminated in specific transformations, but also tend to ignore the ways in which earlier periods are constantly available for reworking and reinterpretation, and are not simply dispensed with, or rendered redundant" (p.303).

"Indeed, the importance of 1950s horror is that it established many of the preoccupations which are central to contemporary horror. It was the 1950s horror, for example, which moved the genre away from its concerns with exotic locations and began to place it firmly in the context of modern American society" (p.303-4).

It is also important because writers and filmmakers, such as Spielberg and Stephen King, were influenced by them.

"unlike many other areas of 1950s popular culture, 1950s horror has occupied a central place within the development of 'cult' ot 'trash' audiences, an important and well-established section of contemporary popular culture" (p.304) .

About Edward D. Wood's 'excentricity': " His films do no really conform to the dominat tendencies within the period, although he does draw upon certain elements of 1950s horror. Indeed, Wood's contemporary importance is not a product of his significance within the 1950s, but of the specific strategies of interpretation which contemporary 'cult' audiences have brought to the period. His significance is a product of the ways in which the period has been reinterpreted within the present" (p.304)

Pressing need to study the ways in which the readings of contemporary cult audiences are the product of differential distribuition of cultural capital and the struggles between different tastes formations. (Pierre Bourdier. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge,1984)

The Horror Genre, from Beelzebub to Blair Witch (Paul Wells, 2000)

Paul Wells. The Horror Genre, from Beelzebub to Blair Witch. Wallflower, London, 2000.


Introduction

"Like many people interested in the horror film, or indeed comedy, its allied genre, I view its analysis as something which should not strain too far after meaning for fear it might undermine the sensation created" (p.1)

"Thankfully the effects of horror or humour initially by-pass the inhibitions and intrusions of the intellect so the thrill can precede the theory" (p.1)

In the first section, Configuring the Monster, Paul Wells explores the key themes of the genre, the main issues and debates raised, and engage with approaches and theories that have been applied to horrors texts. The theoretical background is presented via the modernist context within which early horror texts evolved. Review of fundamental preoccupations, especially through psychoanalytical and gendered readings. Also includes case study that reviews indicative patterns of readings of horror films across different age groups (audience and reception studies). In the second section, Consensus and Constrain 1919-1960, and in the final section, Chaos and Collapse 1960-2000, he addresses the chronological evolution of the horror film, looking at how it reflected and commented upon particular historical periods. His analysis considers myth and gothic literature in early cinematic representations of horror. Post-war developments are reviewed in terms of revisiting this formulae. Contemporary gore and pathological states are considered through a discussion of auteurs reworking the genre field's of operation and its constant recycle.

Configuring the Monster

"The history of the horror film is essentially the history of anxiety in the twentieth century." (p.3)

"As the nineteenth century passed into the twentieth, this prevailing moral and ethical tension between the individual and the socio-political order was profoundly affected by some of the most significant shifts in social and cultural life. This effectively reconfigured the notion of evil in the horror text -soon to be a cinematic as well as a literary form - in a way that moved beyond the issues of fantasy and ideology and into the realms of material existence and overt challenge to established cultural value systems." (p.3)

* 19th century transformative discourses = political and economical theories, Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto (1848). "Arguably the horror film embraces the leftist critique of this process, consistently invoking the 'monster' of the alienated and disadvantaged as the key protagonist against the bourgeois middle-class orthodoxies" (p.4)

"the genre has been used to explore modes of social 'revolution' in which naturalised ideas about bourgeois orthodoxies are transgressed, exposing how the 'working class' in Weimar's Germany, Depression-era America, Franco's Spain and so on have been oppressed and socially manipulated to maintain those advantaged by the late capitalism status quo." (p.4)

* 'Natural selection' as transformative discourse= Darwin's On the Origins of the Species (1859). Mankind artificially imposes itself upon the conditions of material existence, while nature changes the world slowly. Jekyll and Hyde, Birds would be films that address the 'revenge of nature'. Nature pitted against humankind's will to power.

* Friedrich Nietzsche's = " will to power" , humanity subject to degeneracy and spiritual crisis. He insists that humankind id nihilistic and Christian piety is the worst evil of all (as it does not come into contact with the reality of the world). Collapse of spiritual values echo in horror films.

* Sigmund Freud = emergence of psychoanalysis, structures of consciousness revealed at primal level. In the horror film this is usually linked to madness, dysfunctionality and psychosis, the monsters of the mind.

"Horror films have been analysed within a range of theoretical paradigms and discourses. The genre has been addressed in the light of its theological and moral perspectives, its sociological and cultural dimensions, its politics of representation, and its configuration as a set of texts particularly conducive to psychoanalytical approaches. Problematically, the horror genre has no clearly defined boundaries, and overlaps with aspects of science fiction and fantasy genres. Also, in recent years, many of its generic elements have been absorbed into the mainstream thriller. Arguably, there is no great benefit in attempting to disentangle these generic perspectives. It may be more constructive to proceed on the basis of addressing the distinctive elements of any on text within a particular historical moment.

It may be noted that the horror genre is predominantly concerned with death and the impacts and effects of the past, while science fiction is future-oriented, engaging with how human social existence could develop and dealing with humankind's predilection for self-destruction. While science fiction is potentially utopian (although often critically grounded), the horror genre is almost entirely dystopic, and often nihilistic in outlook". (p.7)

Devils and Doubles (sub-chapter) "Psychoanalyst Otto Rank wrote 'Der Doppelgänger' in 1914, suggesting that the double was essentially the way in which the soul or ego sought to preserve itself, ensuring against destruction by replicating itself. Bound up with a narcissistic self-love which is self-protecting and strongly predicated to the denial of death, this act of 'doubling' can work in reverse. Once the double is cleaved or threatened, it heightens the degree by which mortality and the signs of death are enhanced. It is of no surprise, therefore, to see the prominence of the motive in the horror text". (p.9)

On Ann Radcliffe opinion about Horror vs Terror = "Radcliffe's definition is enabling in the sense that texts maybe viewed in the light of 'terror' and its potential radicalism, or 'horror' and its creation of a seemingly reactionary position". (p.11)

Horror Films in Content (sub-chapter) "Arguably, if the horror text is to be culturally and historically pertinent, film-makers have to engage with an aesthetic space free from the moral and ethical obligations of the social paradigm in which they live - only then they can comment upon, and critique the conditions of, the material world. If the social concern about violence in the horror film is to be properly addressed, for example, it is crucial that such issues be treated responsibly, looking at violence as a reality and not the tilitatory experiences of the adventure spectacles which passes uncensored into cinemas every week. The horror text does this in a variety of ways, and this is why, as a genre, it remains subversive and challenging because it foregrounds, through the comparative safety of fiction, the very agendas humankind needs to address in 'fact'. While it remains contentious, and subject to considerable opposition, the horror film makes us confront our complex 'darker' agendas, and in this it serves an important function as progressive and sometimes radical genre, in the face of reactionary stances". (p.24)

"Although seemingly nihilistic in outlook, the horror film can continually remind an audience of the things that about which it should neither be complacent nor accepting". (p.35)

Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)

Playing drag and racing, a group of boys "accidentally" push another car off a bridge. The car, which had three girls in, quickly sinks and disappears into the river. Soon after the town people are at the spot in attempt to withdraw the car from the bottom of the river. As three hours have passed by since the accident everyone assumes the girls must be dead but a survivor unexpectedly creeps out the river.

Apparently a few days later but still not quite recovered from the shock, the survivor Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) decides to leave the town not to be seen again. She accepts a job as a professional organist in a church in Utah to start anew. As she is driving there alone, she begins seeing a ghostly apparition reflected in the side car window.

The figure seems to reside in an old run-down pavilion, a spooky abandoned amusement park to where she is strangely attracted. It is the abandoned Saltair Pavilion outside Salt Lake City. There is a shot of her in front of a promotional poster for the Pavilion and, on the poster there is a look-alike blonde with the same hairstyle. Saltair had been a family swimming, recreational facility and it looks like a cross between an Eastern Orthodox church and an Arabian Nights palace. The falling lake level doomed the swimming feature but the place operated as an amusement park until abandoned five years before the filming of "Carnival of Souls" (a story structure adapted to fit sets and locations to which Harvey had free access). Anyway, it is here that Mary must confront the personal demons of her spiritual insouciance. It is a quite scary movie but not the kind of scary that exploits blood and violence to make you jump. The plot is incredibly simple, all the haunting comes from the simple visual craft. The dead man seems to echo some German Expressionism, which I think is great, but the soundtrack and the sound itself lets down.

As much as a pervading sense of disquiet is enhanced by the efficient use of locations (a church, a vast ballroom, a decrepit and deserted amusement park at the end of a pier), the organ music is a bit irritating, however it brings in some disturbing religious images and undertones. There are, though, nice angular shots with the huge organ pipes in the foreground and the diminutive figure of Hilligoss far below. As a church organist, she is also "possessed" by her instrument, her playing alternates between the spiritual and the profane, and that deeply disturbs her wrapped-too-tight minister. There is the moment when she is alone on the highway and her radio will only pick up organ music.

Mary lodges in a boarding house and fends off the aggressive advances of her across-the-hall neighbor. The man is named John Linden, he is an alcoholic and very persistent in his attempts to seduce Mary. But those strange vision have not been left behind and she is still being haunted by the apparition of a ghastly-looking stranger. Mary is very indifferent to her job and to those around her. She is kind of "passive" and completely detached from the ordinary life situations. "I don't belong in the world….something separates me from other people" says Mary Henry. Quite lyrical! There is the isolation theme going on here, the drama of someone who feels they no longer belong.

I also liked the way Mary went from real life to "limbo", where people couldn't hear or see her.The two occasions where Mary Henry suddenly becomes invisible to everyone are much more vivid because Hilligoss is so beautiful. Unlike a person of average appearance, an especially beautiful woman walking down the street is used to drawing stares from virtually everyone. The director throws in some symbolism and the viewer has to fill in the gaps. Not much explanation is given, it seems just the supernatural at work. I thought it was excellent, very atmospheric but not truly spooky. The visions of the phantom man became more often, Mary goes to the abandoned carnival pavilion in the afternoon an experiences a surreal, dreamlike moments of sensual necro-beauty. All the phantoms come out of water to be reborn.

Gothic in the Horror Film 1930-1980 (David Punter, 1996)

David Punter, 1996. The Modern Gothic: Gothic in the Horror Film 1930-1980. In: David Punter. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present day. Longman, London, 1996 (p. 96-119).

The international history of the horror film to 1980 may be seen in three principal phases: the German masterpieces of the silent era; the developments in America between 1930 and the late 1950s; and the largely British-centered product of the 1960 and 1970s." (p.96)

"In this chapter, I want, as with the fiction, to restrict myself to American and British work, but it worth nothing from the outset that behind all subsequent horror films there lurks, in a curiously resonant parallel with eighteenth-century Gothic fiction, a German presence. It manifests itself in theme, in content, in a specific set of photographic styles, indeed in an entire mis-en-scene which runs from the range of Universal studios films of 1931 and 1932 to the Hammer cycle of the 1960s" (p.96)

"The horror film thus has a complexly twisted provenance: out, originally, of a body of legendary which owes much to real or fake German and central European sources and 'Transylvanian' settings, via English nineneenth-century fictional developments, but then mediated again through the directional styles of the great German directors, Wegener, Wiene, Murnau and Lang." (p.96)

"This is by no means to assume that all horrifying films are Gothic; but at the same time it is true that the fundamentally formulaic model which isconventionally known as 'the horror film' hs indeed many Gothic aspects." (p.96)

"... still the forgers of the most culturally prominent images of Frankenstein's monster and Dracula respectively." (p.96-97)

"In one sense at least the horror film is very similar to eighteenth-century Gothic fiction, in that, while being a popular form, it demonstrates on closer inspection both a surprisingly high level of erudition, actual on the part of its makers and also imputed to its audience, and also a very high level of technical virtuosity." (p.97)

"To connect the thematic and the technical, one might perhaps say that what the 1930s horror films essentially possessed were content to be unrushed, to allow space and time for their conceptions to emerge on the screen, and in doing so they managed to create a series of works which posessed a genuinely tragic quality, at least insofar as they realised a sense of powerful forces, forces of destiny, operative in human life." (p. 98)

"He is a splendid mixture of the diabolical and the gentlemanly..." (p.100)

"danger usually brings out not the best but the worst in people, and where it does bring out the best, that best is generally unrecognisable to the world outside. " (p.103)

"... Gothic act of divine defiance, and thus necessarily entailing its own defeat." (p.105) Promethean defiance

"... who is indeed a bourgeois character, trying to impose a schema of rationalism on the events with which he is confronted" (p. 106)

"... deliberate vulgarisation, which is presumably in itself a significant element of an attempt to deal with historical problems." (p. 107)

"Corman's films - and Price's acting - demand audience collusion, and it is this structural sense, and not merely because of the extent of their appeal, that they can most fairly be called 'cult' films. They permit their audience to asknowledge its own intelligent and reasonableness before deliberately abandoning. It has often been said that only a secure avant-garde can afford seriously to affront or abandon good taste, and certainly Corman's films afford intellectual relief - not scape - of a kind which cannot be far distant from the esxitement ladies in the late eighteenth century derived from observing the wickedness of an Ambrosio. Corman's cinema is neither realist nor psychological: it is, in a sense, a cinema of pure formalism, and only because it is so reliant on fixed form can it afford the gross excess of colour and dialogue which typify it." (p.107)

"When The Course of Frankstein first appeared, it was rapidly condemned on the grounds of explicit sadism, a criticism which seems to us now rather surprising, for the kinds of ritualised violence which occur in Hammer films seem very much bounded by assumptions of the form." (p.108-109)

"... Fisher shows him simultaneously capable of cruelty and disinterested kindness, and brings him into close proximity with the stereotype of the victimised pioneer." (p.109)

"That all the vampires, male and female, in Hammer's films are sexually attractive, sometimes to the point of caricature, recalls precisely scenes in Stocker like that of the three female vampires..." (p.110)

"For it is not enough to say that horror motifs have lost their bite because we no longer 'believe in' them: we have never believed in them as simply existent, but more as valuable and disturbing fictional images which gain their vitality, when they do, from the underlying truth which they represent." (p.118)

Horror (Mark Jancovich, 1992)

Mark Jancovich, 1992. Horror. In: Mark Jancovich. Horror. B.T. Batsford, London, p. (p.7-25).

Introduction

On censorship:"they claimed that 'video nasties' were a new category of media products, and that they had dangerous effects on viewers, especially young viewers. No clear definition of the video nasty existed but it was generally accepted that they were examples of pornography and horror" (p.7)

"the language which is frequently used to describe these genres is one of disease and contagion. They are referred to as as 'sick' and 'perverted', and their diffusion is described in terms of corruption and contamination" (p.7-8)

"the study of horror is important, if only because claims about it have had political effects - effects which extend far beyond the limits of the genre itself. However the social unacceptability as a genre has meant that there has been, as with the study of pornography, little real investigation of its forms and effects." (p.8)

Post-structural psychoanalytic criticism = shifts the focus of study from the individual artist or text to the system of signification itself. "they stress that all cultural activities have rules and codes, whether of language or visual imagery. Not the individual author who should be the source of meaning, but these rules and codes. They maintain that: our sense of ourselves as individuals (or our subjectivity) is not we who speak language but language which speaks us, the very way we think is determined by the structures of language" (p.9)

"In the case of horror it is claimed that the pleasure offered by the genre is based on the process of narrative closure, in which the horrifying or monstrous is destroyed or contained". Structure order- disorder- order re-established. The audience's pleasure is supposed to be based upon the expectation that the narrative will reach this particular type of conclusion, and the eventual fulfillment of this expectation."

This narrative structure is claimed to have specific ideological effects. Post-structuralism presents itself as a political project in offering an analysis of the se type of ideological effects.

Ideological effects: Post-structuralism presents itself as a political project in offering an analysis of these effects. "The narrative closure of horror texts is not only claimed to contain the elements which are disturbing dominant order, but to produce psychological effect in the audience" (p.9). It suppresses conflicts which might threaten their subjectivities (sense of self). This process is referred to as 'the positioning of the subject within ideology' and is considered undesirable regardless of the ideology within the subject is positioned" (p.10)

"the reasoning behind this argument is that while we appear to express our own thoughts through the use of language, the very way in which we think is determined by the structures of language. The subject, or the sense of identity is made to appear natural and inherent. It makes what is social, constructed and historical to be individual and natural" (p.10)

Therefore: the very way we think is determined by the structures of language. The subject is a product of ideology. In positioning the subject within ideology, this sense of identity is made to appear natural and inherent.

Modern gothic, a reader (Allan Lloyd Smith, 1996)

Allan Lloyd Smith, 1996. Postmodernism/Gothicism. In: Victor Sage and Allan Lloyd Smith (ed). Modern gothic, A reader. Manchester University Press, Manchester, p. (p. 1-19).

Introduction

"This essay attempts to interpret the unmistakable presence, through structural or verbal allusion, or wholesale rewriting, of the Gothic in some of the fictions of the postwar period." ( p.1)

"The Old Gothic, however, as the backdating of Stevenson's own tale suggests, doesn't stand still as a point of reference: even in the eighteenth-century, it was itself anarchic, popular, an indeed 'camp' recycling the past, long before Sir Walter Scott sought to transform and rationalise it into an official literary genre, the so-called 'historical romance'." ( p.1)

"Evidently, the Gothic is not merely a literary convention or a set of motifs: it is a language, often an anti-historicising language, which provides writers with the critical means of transferring an idea of the otherness of the past into present." ( p.1)

"As these essays demonstrate, there is no point in thinking of the Gothic as 'pure'; it is an apparent genre-badge which, the moment it is worn by a text, becomes an imperceptible catalyst, a transforming agent for other codes: the uncanny, a form of Gothic fantastic effect quite central to modern fictions of screen and novel, is not one code but a kind of gap between codes, a point at which representation itself appears to fail, displace, or diffuse itself." ( p.2)

"But these Gothic black spots, lurking like the sites of past road accidents in so many contemporary contexts, are not simple deconstructive aporias transformed into spatial metaphors; they form in themselves textual negotiations with history, and the corollary of this critical preoccupation of the Gothic's latest history of itself is a description of a present whose very presentness is diminished and vitiated by disruptive images of the past." ( p.2) Interference of the past into the present.

"The anxiety of influence is not a pattern for the authors and critics represent in this book - the Gothic, it seems, is a language that, by definition, belongs to no one; with its air of pastiche - only made, never born - it forms a ready-made language for the aesthetic and cultural politics of our time. ( p.3-4)

"The Gothic is perfect anonymous language for the peculiar unwillingness of the past to go away" (p.4)

"Reiteration is the modern form of haunting; reiteration of narrative manouevres and motifs, unholy reanimation of the deadness of the past that has the power to make something new" ( p.4)

"But whereas early Gothic proposed a delightful excursion through the realms of imaginary horror, contemporary use of the Gothic register strikes a darker and more disturbing note. It is the horror now that is real, and the resolution that is fanciful. Hence the peculiar effect we sometimes find, akin to the dropping of a stone through a spiders's web, when the actuality or realisations of the horrors of the contemporary life strikes through the web of highlighted representation with an effect that may be comic, or grotesque, or uncannily chilling." ( p.5) Although the popular evocation of horror is itself significant, the mode does not simply 'reflect' a modern condition by a form of inverted mimesis.

Modern Gothic- be it the "barbarous vitality of the Past, the Alien or the Other to erupt, and threaten the familiar plot, an accepted environment, the repeated pattern allows us first to glimpse, and then to reflect critically upon, the changing processes at work in our imaginings, and even in our theories, of our own contemporaneity." ( p.5)

American Gothic (John Hough, 1988)

Six young and wealthy friends from Seattle decide to go on a camping trip but they get stranded on a remote American island after having trouble with their hydroplane's engine. They spend the night in the woods and next day they find a Victorian-like house occupied by a strange family. Initially they are hosted by Ma, Pa only but soon they get to know their three middle-aged children and it becomes clear that they are among very demented people. The family are self-righteous, God-fearing American Puritans who lead their lives as if their still were in the 1920s'. (The dvd frontispiece is a parody)

They are skeptical of science and averse to mundane vices, such as smoking or having sex outside marriage. One by one the visitors start to get viciously murdered by the psychotic family members eventually only Cynthia (Sarah Torgov) alive. The fragile girl has a past trauma (she feels guilty of letting her own baby drown) and her experiences on the island are enough to snap her already fragile hold on reality. As she he is then incorporated by the family a reverse of fortune takes place and the victim becomes a monster.

The film addresses themes like: madness, incest, secrets from the past, rape, basically those features established by 18th century Gothic literature. A warning for the blood-thirst seekers: there is actually very little blood and gore. If I was to drawn on a general theme for this film it would have to be the fear of arbitrary forces from the past, the play of modern values against old brutal ones.

Although the production is fairly good (opening sequence with the plane, the woods scenes on the island) the film is really campy. The title was what attracted me the most but the film is a bit disappointing. As much as "everything has been done before" some horror films are actually capable of innovating those well-known aspects of terror. Enormously overacted the horror flick becomes increasingly risible towards the end. The presence Rod Steiger and Yvonne DeCarlo, as Pa and Ma, is enough to make this a good film. Though I think Fanny (Janet Wright) delivers a creepy performance which kind of saves the show.

Tropical Gothic (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2006)

O trabalho destaca a presença de imagens góticas no romance brasileiro O Guarani (1857), de José de Alencar, enfocando o que há de sexual, sublime, violento e demoníaco na obra. A abordagem propõe um novo ângulo de interpretação para este romance tradicionalmente entendido pela crítica literária como manifestação indianista, rousseauniana e épico-histórica, utilizando o gótico como estratégia de leitura.

Tropical Gothic faz aproximações específicas entre O Guarani e os romances ingleses The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) e The Italian (1797), ambos de Ann Radcliffe, e The Monk (1796), de Matthew Lewis, estabelecendo ligações através de imagens (o abismo, a montanha, o castelo) presentes nas narrativas e por meio da forma literária labiríntica que organiza os romances. De modo que se argumenta por um modelo intertextual entre a ficção gótica inglesa e o romance de Alencar. O objetivo da dissertação foi estipular alguns aspectos teóricos e temáticos a partir dos quais uma leitura comparativa pudesse ser feita. A tarefa parecia ser antagônica a princípio, mas não contraditória. O desacordo estaria nas discrepâncias histórico-culturais, políticas, religiosas e geográficas que se interpõem entre ingleses e brasileiros.

De um lado havia os romancistas ingleses situando seus romances em nações católicas e mediterrâneas. A crítica literária contemporânea já definiu plausivelmente o fundo político, de afirmação nacional e anti-revolucionário que orienta as origens do gótico inglês (1764-1820). Assim, ao ambientar suas histórias em castelos e igrejas e, ao referir-se aos costumes medievais, tais romancistas estavam apontando para as iniqüidades da Europa continental e reafirmando o projeto político inglês. De outro lado havia Alencar escrevendo de uma realidade diferente, pronunciando-se de um recém-independente país tropical, uma ex-colônia em busca de voz própria, onde a Idade Média se apresenta (se é que) como fragmento reminiscente da religião católica. No Brasil, os castelos, enquanto construções físicas, são referências inexistentes. A proposta de um gótico tropical parecia implicar um antagonismo, até terminológico, entre o “sombrio” e o “solar”, como associar essas duas literaturas aparentemente tão distintas à primeira vista?

Inicialmente foi necessário apresentar o romance gótico, discutir sua formação e os seus significados históricos. Traçam-se diferenças entre o gótico inglês e as narrativas irracionalistas, fantásticas que se praticavam em outros países da Europa, principalmente na França e Alemanha. A disposição mais lúgubre que encontrou sumarização em certas imagens literárias fez parte de um espírito de época mais sombrio que se abateu sobre a Europa no final do século XVIII. Os romances góticos fizeram um uso específico de tais imagens, refletindo seus desassossegos com os acontecimentos revolucionários iniciado nas Américas (1776) e posteriormente na Europa continental (1889), entretanto, deslocando-os para outro tempo e contexto. Além da simbologia das imagens, esses romances organizavam suas histórias através de interpolações narrativas, o que ficou conhecido como enredo labiríntico, cristalizando na ficção esses aspectos de desorientação política, demonstrando a ligação entre Literatura e História. Entendido não como um gênero literário, mas como um momento narrativo no qual se dá um desafio da Razão, o gótico representaria nos romances ingleses inquietações políticas e culturais em busca de resolução. Tais aspectos do romance gótico foram objetos de apropriação/aclimatação e se encontram presentes no O Guarani, manifestos na Casa de Mariz, na Natureza tropical, na tribo canibal aimoré e no vilão italiano.

Diante desse quadro de histórico-cultural, selecionei passagens nos romances góticos tradicionais, as quais continham imagens de abismos, montanhas e castelos, com o intuito de discutir em maior detalhe as inquietações e o éthos do século XVIII na Europa. Procuro demonstrar como as interpretações dessas imagens variavam de acordo com as inclinações políticas dos autores, do radicalismo filosófico do Marquês de Sade, do republicanismo de Mary Wollstonecraft ao monarquismo de Edmund Burke. Ao examinar os terrores sutis de Radcliffe, o horror explícito de Lewis e a paródia gótica de Austen, argumento que, apesar das particularidades nas abordagens, o século XVIII “canonizou” uma tradição gótica que destacou o antagonista estrangeiro como um objeto central para discutir assuntos de conotações políticas e nacionalistas, que esses romances invariavelmente continham. Ao fim dessa parte, a idéia foi passar ao leitor uma leitura de como as convenções góticas foram estabelecidas e, de como elas estão profundamente imbricadas com questões de identidade nacional.

Em seguida procurei isolar a relação de Alencar com essas convenções góticas que se formaram antes. Minha leitura “gótica” da obra busca apontar traços específicos da presença cultural britânica na literatura brasileira. Novamente, inicio esta parte com uma passagem contendo imagens similares do abismo, da montanha e do castelo, tentando demonstrar como Alencar as aborda na sua fundação imaginária do país. Ao explodir o solar do fidalgo português D. Antônio de Mariz (emblemático do império), juntamente com os ferozes aimorés (simbolizando a nação primitiva) e queimando o vilão italiano (representando a presença estrangeira), Alencar não desloca o debate dos problemas, como era comumente feito no romance gótico inglês, mas aborda as questões nacionais in loco. O autor utiliza a representação estereotípica dos vilões para designar uma rejeição do estrangeiro mercenário que vem ao país em busca de lucro fácil.

Tropical Gothic relê o romance O Guarani utilizando o gótico enquanto grade de leitura. A intertextualidade com o modelo inglês foi estabelecida através de imagens, símbolos e por meio da forma labiríntica recorrente nos romances. Ao longo da pesquisa apontei para as semelhanças e discrepâncias entre as narrativas mencionadas, focando aspectos relativos à percepção e descrição da Natureza, à representação de vilania e questões de identidade nacional e ao uso de um discurso gótico para purgar elementos não desejados nas narrativas. A definição “romance indianista” dada para O Guarani provém de uma sistematização literária posterior, porém Alencar não o pensava assim, por isso deu-lhe o subtítulo de romance brasileiro, destacado-lhe o caráter da nacionalidade como seu foco principal. Salienta-se que a maneira como apresentamos ou classificamos um determinado texto conduzirá a leitura que fazemos do mesmo. Porém, uma mudança de perspectiva pode renovar uma obra, revelado-lhe aspectos que se encontravam obscurecidos pela classificação.

Tropical Terror: subversion in the films of Coffin Joe (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2006)

My next project aims at pursuing theoretical and thematic features of Terror in the horror films of Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe). The idea is to focus on the subversive connotations, rather than on its exploitation elements, highlighting the cultural significance of these films both in their time of production and at present, when they unfold as ‘cult’ items for niche consumption.

Although the boundaries are not always clear, Terror is understood here as a broader category which encompasses, among others forms, Horror, Murder-Mystery, Thriller and Gothic-Supernatural narratives. [1] Critics have plausibly established the terms Terror and Horror to distinguish between two distinct types of Gothic fiction, with Ann Radcliffe and Mathew Lewis being respectively the prime examples of each. The conventions (images, symbols, plots, discourse, etc.) set by the former Gothic narratives still linger strongly in contemporary books and movies, those in which some aspect of fear is celebrated. According to Radcliffe herself, [2] Terror is characterised by ‘obscurity’ or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events – it is this potentiality which leads to the effect of Sublime. In contrast, Horror ‘freezes and nearly annihilates them’ with its unambiguous, explicitly blunt displays of atrocity. One might think that what Horror does is to materialise the worst that Terror could make one imagine. If that is the case, despite the exchange of the mind's eye for the actual sight of the dreaded (perhaps a modern audience would feel disappointed in the absence of it), Horror should not be seen as an inferior category, but rather as specialisation of Terror. The underpinning concept here is to see Terror as wide-ranging model which can open the mind to possibilities that could never be physically actualised.

From this angle, Terror emerges as a response to disquietude, in other words, feeling “terrified” is a reaction that takes place when we are pushed beyond familiar limits. It is noteworthy how this uneasiness frequently stems from cultural matters and how it unfolds questions related to political and national identity. [3] Although Terror is a trans-cultural and trans-historical phenomenon, its significance can only be recognised in a defined space and time. That is to say, the meanings and implications of these conventions have to be culturally and historically observed.

If not the first true horror movies made in Brazil, the films of Coffin Joe are certainly a landmark in the country’s filmmaking. Inhabiting the realms of horror/comic, as Jack Morgan approaches the genre, [4] the character Coffin Joe is the invention of José Mojica Marins, who is also the writer, director and star of the films. The present historical moment brings about a renewed interest for these films shot almost half a century ago. Revisited by a contemporary perspective, namely the boundaries cult/trash, Marins’ films and character are currently paving the way to become an international classic. The antihero Coffin Joe is first appears to the public in 1964, in the film A Meia Noite Levarei sua Alma (At Midnight I will take your Soul). His figure is most distinctive: top hat, flowing black cape, chiselled beard, piercing eyes and nails like talons – perhaps anticipating Freddy Krueger. The character is the cruel and evil undertaker of a small village who terrorizes the citizens with extremely violent behaviour. His goal is to find a perfect woman to bear him a child. Having left his former wife, who he considers inept for the task, his desire befalls on his best friend’s spouse, who becomes the depositary of his thirst for Perfection.

Filmed in black and white, the desolate and impoverished village is photographed in a stylish manner, resembling, to a certain extent, the images of primitive cinema but, in fact, it was a way of concealing the limited budget. This crudeness has rendered Marins’ filmmaking an analogy with the works of Edward D. Wood Jr. (1924-1978), who has recurrently been called the worst director that has ever existed. Wood believed having an aptitude for filmmaking and he attempted his talent chiefly at Terror and Sci-Fi movies, working with hardly any budget and with collaborators who had very little charisma. His films are frequently considered “trash” or “naïf”, but he became more famous and cherished after his death. This sudden conversion into an icon is greatly due, not only by his work, but by the film Ed Wood (1994), in which the he was treated with respect and deference by Tim Burton. But can the films of Marins be compared to the works of Ed Wood? In part, perhaps. If the production’s low expenditure in Coffin Joe’s films suggest a “trashy” aesthetics, the quality of his nightmares offer more than enough material for constructing arguments in defence of a non-trashy art, but rather a vigorous, intuitive production stemming from the margins of the alleged official cinema.

Despite its technically poor production, some of the nocturnal graveyard sequences in this film seem to dialogue with the feats accomplished by Mario Bava in Black Sunday (1960). It also brings about scenes apparently influenced by Surrealism, as in the films of Buñuel, an atmosphere similar to that present in Terence Fisher's earlier Hammer films, not to mention the classic Universal horrors which crop up in numerous little “homages”. The comparisons here are not meant to exalt Marins’ films in the light of renowned productions, as he is original in his own rights. The point here is to show them as part of a world wide film production, of Terror making in particular, which was quite prolific in the 60s and 70s.

Against the odds (the country’s Catholic audience, unfamiliar with horror movies), At Midnight I’ll take your Soul becomes a small hit and its success encourages Marins to attempt newer productions. The initial black and white template gives way to further experiments and an unexpected, full-blown Technicolor scene of a frozen Hell can be seen in Esta Noite Encarnarei no teu Cadáver (This Night I’ll posses your corpse, 1967). The people trapped there are being tortured by means of branding and whipping, some are being gored with forks while chained to each other, while other are physically imprisoned by being plastered to the wall, etc. This multi-coloured sequence concerns a nightmare Coffin Joe has (his real life is portrayed in black and white), conveying in images an aesthetic of excess which complements textual aspects. The discussion about the existence of god is certainly an axis which orients the film.

There is a fleeting philosophical discussion in At Midnight I will Take your Soul, implying a conception of god as Nature, in which blood and genes are the only hope of immortality (there are stated Sadean references in his theory), or god as Supernatural force, whose transcendent power is manifested in the immorality of the spirit. In this film, Coffin Joe’s biological or materialistic belief is subdued after his Dantesque vision of agonising souls in Hell and, in death, he fearfully conforms to the existence of an after-life. In posterior films the character undergoes meaningful changes, concerning its power and influence, becoming more of a demigod, a dweller of the shadows and nightmares. Possessor of ghostly powers, Coffin Joe professes from the Limbo his evil and demoniac philosophy. However primary in technique Marins’ films might be, (sometimes naïvely, and even clumsily) due to its shocking scenes and excruciating themes, such as torture, mutilation and blunt violence, there is a dark side which emerges in these films suggesting a curious relationship with the brutal practices of the 64 dictatorship.

Although the finest of his production was made in the 60s and 70s under the state-controlled media of the military system, his fame subsisted the years of censorship and, in the 90s, stormed into the international market. Its up rise seems to have most noticeably begun with the release of a Coffin Joe Trilogy in the American market, turning his films into offbeat products. Since then the character has gained international projection as a horror film classic. This was followed by a high-tech six DVD box set updating Coffin Joe’s films to the digital era. The interest for the subject and character is booming as recently two journalists from São Paulo have written Marins’ biography, celebrating the originality and importance of the Brazilian horror filmmaker.

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[1] In the 70s Todorov established a structural division for what he called Fantastic Literature, proposing four categories according to the development and dénouement of the narratives, they are: L’étrange pur, le fantastique-étrange, fantastique-merveilleux and le merveilleux pur. This interesting analysis, however, fails to consider the cultural aspects of the narratives, reducing the question to a dichotomy between Realism v. Fantastic. See: Tzvetan Todorov. Introduction a la Littérature Fantastique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970.

[2] See: Ann Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry”. IN: The New Monthly Magazine 7, 1826 (pp. 145-52). This essay, published posthumously, is itself a revision of the ideas about the sensual effects which lead to the sublime feeling, as proposed by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).

[3] I am using here Said’s definitions of culture: First, meaning all the practices “like the arts of description, communications, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms and that exist in aesthetic forms”. Second, meaning “culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevation element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought …In time, culture comes to be associated often aggressively, with the nation or the state; this differentiate “us” from “them” …Culture in this sense is a source of identity…” IN: Edward Said. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. (pp. xii , xiii)

[4] Using the image of a “double helix” or a DNA like spiral, the author argues there is a fine line between the horror and the comic and, still according to him, the excessively grotesque frequently provokes laughter. See: Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror. Illinois: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.

Alguns pressupostos burkeanos (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2006)

O pensamento conservador começou a se desenvolver no século XVIII e foi sensivelmente influenciado pelos acontecimentos revolucionários ocorridos na França, em 1789. O conservadorismo no Reino Unido surgiu das idéias contidas no livro Reflexões sobre a Revolução em França, do parlamentar Edmund Burke. O livro foi publicado inicialmente em 1790, sendo escrito pelo o político no calor dos acontecimentos ainda insurgentes. Nesse texto, que constitui um argumento de classe do conservadorismo, Burke se posicionou contra o levante popular. Ele procura desqualificar o discurso revolucionário, se antecipando para que este não atravesse o canal e ganhe adeptos na Inglaterra. Na sua argumentação anti-revolucionária, Burke arrisca previsões de grande violência e desfechos adversos para as propostas libertárias da Revolução Francesa. Para a reputação de Burke, parte dessas previsões viriam realmente a se confirmar, sobretudo durante a época do Terror, a mais violenta da Revolução Francesa. Burke defende a superioridade do sistema político britânico, sustentando que a liberdade do cidadão inglês é uma herança nacional e que estaria mais segura em um governo que balanceasse igualmente no tripé: democracia, aristocracia e monarquia.

“Nem todos os sofistas do seu país poderão produzir nada melhor para garantir um liberdade razoável e generosa que o método que nós adotamos; nós que procuramos seguir a natureza ao invés de nossas especulações e que preferimos confiar a conservação de nossos direitos e privilégios aos sentimentos de nossos corações ao invés de entregá-las a à sutileza de nossas invenções”. (Burke, 1977: p.70)

Burke via na Revolução Francesa um projeto malsucedido, porque seus líderes tentaram subverter um sistema político coeso e colocar outro em seu lugar de imediato. No seu entendimento não houve processo gradual de mudança mas um corte bruto, onde um fluxo natural fora interrompido, e a ordem deixou de ser perpetuada. Segundo o autor, quando a monarquia absolutista que vigorava no França sofreu o “golpe”, e o feudalismo fora declarado extinto, comprometeu-se toda a sociedade organizada. A revolução destituiu e destruiu as instituições religiosas, executivas, legislativas e judiciais que haviam se formado ao longo de séculos.

Na avaliação de Burke a monarquia absolutista francesa era a melhor na Europa, ainda que estivesse necessitando de algumas medidas corretivas para diminuição de abusos. Segundo o autor, tais reformas já estavam engatilhadas porém não houve tempo hábil de colocá-las em prática, antecipando a revolução. Se por um lado o autor procura defender a aristocracia francesa, por outro culpa-a por não ter evitado o rumo dos acontecimentos. Em sua crítica há uma oposição de interesses entre: o landed interest, representado pela nobreza e o moned interest, representado pelos burgueses. Para Burke, se a nobreza, proprietária de terras, tivesse aberto as portas da sociedade para burguesia, detentora de capital, a revolução poderia ter sido evitada. Por não ter feito as reformas contra os abusos e as concessões de classe necessárias, a aristocracia não conseguiu evitar a aliança entre os intelectuais e os burgueses que, unidos, acabaram por mobilizar o descontentamento popular, desencadeando a Revolução Francesa.

A crítica burkeana aos idealizadores da revolução, conhecidos também por racionalistas políticos, consistia em denunciar a metodologia doutrinária que apregoavam. De acordo com Burke a abordagem proposta pelos revolucionários não passava de uma série de máximas, sem cuidado pelo detalhe e pouco condizente com a realidade. Na ocasião do seu lançamento, Reflexões sobre a Revolução em França foi um livro extremamente popular, em nenhum do pontos que levantou faltou controvérsia, porém independente de toda a polêmica, se a análise de Burke foi acertada ou não, os acontecimentos revolucionários ocorridos na França o estimularam a conceber e escrever sua filosofia política.

A idéia subjacente à Reflexões sobre a Revolução em França compreende a sociedade como algo vasto e complexo, um organismo natural que se constituiu através de evolução histórica, não podendo ser interrompido abruptamente. Esse fluxo intermitente é depositário das experiências humanas, de sabedoria adquirida, e por isso deve ser reverenciado. De modo que, qualquer proposta de reforma para a sociedade deve ter em devida consideração a continuidade das tradições. Entende-se que o desejo conservador de manter “as coisas como estão” revela um entendimento da História como um fluxo contínuo, sem lugar para rupturas ou câmbios de direção. O fio condutor que supostamente uniria o passado ao presente, e ainda, teceria o futuro, seria urdido pela experiência e a tradição. No entendimento socio-político de Burke temos que uma comunidade de homens é fruto de laços históricos, e, tão antiga e intrincada são essas ligações que não podem ser racionalizadas. Sua visão organicista propõe que somente na ascendência histórica e na ordem natural o governo livre se faz possível.

Sobre igualdade entre os homens e ascensão dentro dessa sociedade, Burke é taxativo. Para ele o organismo social possui diferentes classes, e a desigualdade que existe entre os homens é inerente ao organismo. Assim, temos uma sociedade auto reguladora, que seleciona a sua própria “aristocracia natural”, cabe aos os homens comuns entender, aceitar e respeitar essa ordem estabelecida. Na concepção política burkeana, princípios abstratos, metas utópicas e regras gerais não são da ordem natural. Essa oposição pelos princípios abstratos promulgados na França, vinha da crença que os homens deveriam procurar no passado as repostas para suas questões do presente.

“Acredite-me, senhor, aqueles que tentam nivelar nunca igualam. Em todas as sociedades compostas de diferentes classes de cidadãos é necessário que algumas delas se sobreponham às outras. Os niveladores, portanto, apenas mudam e pervertem a ordem natural das coisas; sobrecarregando o edifício social ao colocar no ar o que a solidez do edifício exige ser posta no chão” . (Burke, 1977: p.81)

Além da sua crença em uma aristocracia natural, Burke era convicto de ser o cristianismo a única e verdadeira fé. Homem religioso que era, fundamentava o seu argumento último e inapelável na Providência. Sua tese advoga que o homem é um animal social e cortado das suas raízes não passaria de uma besta. Esse organismo social é sustentado pelo costume e a tradição. A reverência à Deus e à ordem social devem ser os dois maiores pilares do homem pois é em última instância um propósito de divino.

“Sem condenar violentamente nem a crença grega, nem a armênia, nem, desde que os rancores não existem mais, a crença romana, preferimos a crença protestante, não por que ela tenha menos do Cristianismo em si, mas sim porque, segundo o nosso julgamento, ela tem mais. Somos protestante não por indiferença, mas por zelo” (Burke, 1977: p.112).

A aparente intransigência de Burke em relação à mudanças era suavizada com o argumento da “mudança controlada”. Procurando dar certa relatividade à questão, Burke aceitava que às vezes as mudanças se fazem necessárias. Entretanto, advogava que essas deveriam ser ínfimas e que deveriam almejar ao máximo a preservação da ordem estabelecida. Tendo em vista que os limites e a natureza dessas mudanças não são devidamente mencionadas, talvez trate-se de uma saída retórica dentro de uma argumentação tão elaborada. Uma brecha por onde ele poderia escapar de uma posição sectária e rebater possíveis acusações de intransigência e passadismo.

Apresentando o romance gótico (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2006)

Há uma relativa consistência nas convenções narrativas que fazem do romance gótico uma literatura reconhecível como tal, mas que não chega a constituir um gênero. O romance gótico é uma manifestação essencialmente híbrida, um elo entre o romanesco e o romance no qual uma atmosfera de mistério, aflição e terror prevalece. Chamados de “góticos” por retirarem sua inspiração de construções medievais, em parte, pode-se dizer que tais romances representaram uma volta ao passado feudal, provocada pela desilusão com os ideais racionalistas e pela tomada de consciência individual frente aos dilemas culturais que surgiram na Inglaterra a partir da metade final do século XVIII.

Por este ângulo, o romance gótico representa uma mescla de tradições distintas, uma mistura entre o mitológico e o mimético, entre imaginação e realidade. A proposta subjacente seria o retorno a uma época de sonhos, contra o materialismo burguês e de encontro ao Iluminismo. Nesses romances aquelas convicções mais simples do pensamento cartesiano, racionalista são postas em dúvida em detrimento de um discurso do sentimento, o qual, ora choroso ora violento, é freqüentemente exagerado na sua representação das emoções. À luz de uma filosofia da literatura, o romance gótico levantou questões que desafiaram o projeto das Luzes ao expor, até certo ponto, a natureza caótica do mundo e a contingência da vida. Ao se encarregarem de uma disposição existencial mais lúgubre, tais romancistas estabelecem um caminho para o surgimento da psicanálise do século seguinte, apresentando em suas narrativas a divisão ontológica do ser humano em duas grandes matrizes constitutivas: às vezes equilibrado, racional, harmônico (clássico) e às vezes exaltado, sentimental, excessivo (então gótico, ou possivelmente barroco).

Em oposição à filosofia neoclássica, de procedência aristotélica, os autores góticos investiram na criação de imagens obscuras e representações simbólicas. O medo e o anseio pela morte foram temas centrais nessas narrativas cujos enredos oscilavam entre a realidade verificável e a aceitação de um mundo sobrenatural. O romance gótico catalisou imagens que reaparecerão, devidamente adaptadas, no romance histórico do século posterior. Alguns exemplos recorrentes dessas imagens iniciais são: abadias decadentes habitadas por clérigos maléficos, castelos sinistros onde aristocratas tirânicos vivem isolados da sociedade como um todo. Dentro desses cenários é possível que portas que se fechem misteriosamente e velas se apaguem com uma súbita rajada de vento ao se caminhar em corredores escuros. Enquanto isso, pessoas se locomovem através de passagens secretas ou se escondem em úmidos recintos subterrâneos. Contrapondo-se a essas ambientações internas, geralmente tensas e claustrofóbicas, também são freqüentes nesses romances as representações da Natureza, mas o interesse por tais temas naturais não foi exclusividade da narrativa gótica.

O culto à Natureza, que já estava presente nas obras neoclássicas, foi uma característica comum a diversas obras do período, supostamente gerada pelo desenvolvimento científico e pelo crescimento das cidades.[1] Todavia, no caso específico dos romances góticos, além do habitual cenário pitoresco, as paisagens externas traziam visões sublimes, ou seja, o arrebatamento pelo poder e pela grandiosidade dos elementos naturais. A Natureza nos romances góticos freqüentemente se reveste do sublime, ou terror, cujo efeito é alcançado por uma retórica do excesso, uma linguagem hiperbólica com ênfase adjetival que torna o cenário intimidante: vastas paisagens, montanhas, abismos, vulcões, tempestades, mares revoltos, cachoeiras trovejantes, florestas escuras nas quais bandidos cruéis espreitam e as heroínas perseguidas temem (e leitores desejam) que o pior lhes aconteça.

Entram em cena as transgressões sociais em suas formas hediondas: incestos, parricídio, fratricídio, sodomia, estupros, torturas, assuntos pelos os quais a Europa do século XVIII parecia sentir uma atração inconfessável e experimentava um estranho prazer em vê-los insinuados ou realizados, ainda que somente na imaginação. Como regra geral, o romance gótico inglês do século XVIII, ou pelo menos aquela ficção considerada mais refinada e moralmente correta, ou ainda, aquela que caiu no gosto da burguesia e se tornou “canônica” (sendo fundamentalmente uma literatura marginal), primou pela cautela e suavidade no trato dos temas hediondos. Nas narrativas inglesas o terror e os crimes eram sugeridos, mas quase nunca levados a cabo. O auge dessa expressão “sutil” do modelo inglês são os romances de Ann Radcliffe, os quais, apesar da admirável prosa poética, não cumpre a contento as possibilidades mais radicais abertas pelo romance, seu foco obviamente era outro. A primeira exceção a essa afirmação geral sobre a cautela do gótico inglês é o romance The Monk, de Matthew Lewis, todavia, é sabido que este preferia as narrativas alemãs, as quais não eram conhecidas por “góticas”, mas por Ritter, Räuber und Schauerroman, sendo histórias mais incisivas e violentas na abordagem das transgressões.[2]

Joyce Tompkins [3] afirma que não é necessária a distinção entre os diferentes góticos que proliferam na Europa, devido à influência mútua entre os países. De fato, houve uma grande interação literária nesse período, o rompimento com o Iluminismo promovido pelos dramas alemães, conhecidos por Sturm und Drang, o romance Die Räuber (1781) de Schiller contém algo dos elementos de terror gótico, abordando o zeitgeist rebelde e atormentado da época. As obras de Goethe, mais especificamente, Die Lienden des jungen Werther (1774), Die Braut von Corinth (1797) e Faust (1808,1832) foram extremamente populares no período. Os alemães leram e se apropriaram de Shakespeare, Rousseau, James Mcpherson, o forjador de Ossian, e Edward Young, um dos graveyard poets, e por sua vez influíram nas obras de Coleridge, Wordsworth e Byron. Na França, o roman noir de Abbé Prévost foi extremamente popular na década de 1730. O romance Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescau (1731) foi apreciado por Richardson, que ao mesmo tempo em que se apropriou dos incidentes extraordinários, do tratamento dado ao amor, dos elementos melodramáticos, suavizou a sexualidade mais visível para o leitor inglês. Os romances libertinos do marquês de Sade, da metade final do século XVIII, representam o extremo mais radical de uma sexualidade brutal, do irracionalismo das paixões e dos monstros da natureza humana. Do ponto de vista da filosofia, a exploração dos limites do racional/moral promovida pelos romances sadianos faz os terrores do gótico inglês parecerem meros contos da carochinha. A École Frénétique, assim cunhada por Charles Nodier em 1820, a qual tematizou o ateísmo, a exumação de cadáveres pra assustar os vivos, o insano e o horror presente nos sonhos, também capturaram essa atmosfera “gótica” que pairava sobre a Europa. Extrapolando a fronteira da literatura, pode-se citar a pintura de Goya como entretenimento para um público que gostavam de fantasiar com as possibilidades mais terríveis, embora não planejasse vivê-las ou senti-las na pele.

Entretanto, ainda que as obras mencionadas acima possuam elementos em comum com o romance gótico, principalmente aqueles que fazem parte do espírito de uma época, nenhuma delas é estritamente “gótica”, já que no contexto histórico que estamos tratando aqui esta é uma nomenclatura que se refere somente às narrativas inglesas. De modo geral, a ficção inglesa possui certas peculiaridades, como o gosto pelo thrill, ou frisson, que não ultrapassa as fronteiras de uma certa compostura, ou quando mais raramente o faz desloca ação para outro país, de modo a questionar os costumes das nações estrangeiras. O foco dessas obras obviamente não era inflamar as controvérsias diretamente, mas principalmente entreter o leitor e, ao final, confirmar a ordem burguesa. Creio que a proposta de Tompkins pertence a um outro momento e necessita ser revista à luz da crítica atual. Entendo que a unificação achata as características individuais de cada país, pois confere ao gótico inglês características que não são suas e impõe uma definição inglesa a obras que pertencem a tradições diferentes. Podemos tomar como exemplo de uma narrativa fantástica que faz parte de uma tradição diferente da gótica, Le Diable Amoreaux (1772), de Jacques Cazotte, uma história necromântica na qual o protagonista, don Alvare Maravillas, invoca o diabo em um ritual de magia. Este o atende na forma de uma monstruosa cabeça de dromedário, a qual Alvare pega pelas orelhas, subjugando-a e fazendo o diabo se transmutar em um cãozinho. O demônio, supostamente enamorado, passa então a obedece-lo e segui-lo por toda parte, agora transformado em Biondetta, uma ninfeta loira que se passa por mancebo escudeiro. Entre transmutações, confusão mental e distorção da realidade, a atmosfera onírica prevalece durante todo o texto. Os paradigmas estabelecidos por esta narrativa pertencem à outra vertente de histórias irracionalistas a qual ecoa na obra de autores como E.T.A. Hoffman, e o seu Der Sandmann (1816), e Die Verwandlung (1912), a metamorfose de Kafka.

Enquanto fenômeno comercial o gótico, essa ficção pré-romântica e pseudomedieval, foi intensamente produzida e avidamente lida na Inglaterra do final do século XVIII até o começo do século XIX. Durante o período os romances góticos haviam se tornado voga e obsessão entre um público leitor que não se cansava de consumi-los. A publicação desses romances havia virado um negócio rentável para livreiros e escritores profissionais constantemente ocupados em suprir a demanda de um número crescente de leitores e em prover lançamentos para os gabinetes de leitura.[4] Mas o ciclo de prosperidade teve curta duração. O romance gótico alcança seu auge na década de 1790, com a publicação das obras que consolidam suas características principais.[5] Todavia, ao final da próxima década esses romances já eram tido como um produto literário “obsoleto”, criticado em seus aspectos mais extravagantes. O grande sucesso de público deu início a uma série de lançamentos do mesmo formato. O furor desencadeado pela ficção gótica ocasionou uma produção enorme, em sua maioria direcionada para venda e com pouca preocupação por inovação literária. As imagens e símbolos usados pelos autores para a criação de efeito (ruínas, monastérios, castelos, labirintos, igrejas), as ambientações em países distantes e católicos, a donzela em perigo, seriam exemplos desses lugares comuns. Primeira literatura pré-fabricada da História, a saturação da produção, a complexidade e previsibilidade dos enredos seriam os motivos para o declínio desse gótico passível de formularização, em função de uma literatura vitoriana de aspectos mais referenciais e contemporâneos. Esse gótico reaparecerá no romantismo do século seguinte fornecendo (1) quase uma cartilha para uma estética de efeito, (2) um inventário de objetos e situações e (3) a relação psicológica do homem com aquilo que ele considera o mundo exterior, embora o entendimento da cultura e da História já tenham mudado.

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[1] Em meados do século XIX Ruskin afirma que o culto setecentista à Natureza provém da urbanização e do desenvolvimento tecnológico ocorrido no período. De acordo com o autor, as pessoas passaram a idealizar ou “romantizar” a Natureza quando foram moram em cidades. Ver: John Ruskin. The Stones of Venice. 3 vols. London: George Allen,1905.

[2] Segundo Hans-Ulrich Mohr o termo “gosticher Roman” só foi aceito recentemente por acadêmicos alemães trabalhando na área de literatura inglesa e norte-americana. Ver: Hans-Ulrich Mohr. “German Gothic”. IN: The Handbook to Gothic Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1998. (pp.63-8)

[3] Ver: J.M.S Tompkins. The Popular Novel in England, 1770-1800. London: Methuen & CO LTD, 1961.

[4] Ciculating libraries, bibliotecas circulantes, ou gabinetes de leitura foram negócios montados para atender aqueles leitores que não podiam comprar livros (artigos caros na época) mas podiam alugá-los. A Minerva Press (1791), de William Lane, foi a principal editora desses romances “genéricos”, freqüentemente criticada pelo seu catálogo composto por obras menores e por usar em seus livros material de baixa qualidade. Potter traça uma diferença entre os romances escritos com intenção artística e aqueles romances feitos somente para vender (a grande maioria), chamando os dois tipos respectivamente de “arte e comércio”, art and trade. Ver: Franz Potter. Twilight of a Genre: Art and Trade in Gothic Fiction 1814-1834. Tese de Phd, University of East Anglia, 2002.

[5] Estes são os principais romances da década: A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), Castle of Wolfenbach (1793), Caleb Williams (1794), Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Montalbert (1795), The Mysterious Warning (1796), The Monk (1796), The Italian (1797), Clermont (1798), The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) e St Leon (1799).