3 thoughts on ““Is This Gothic?” #2”

  1. Jonathan Williams

    Notwithstanding the generalized nature of ‘gothic’ that I know you are pursuing, I can’t go so far as to call these statues gothic. I think horror, even in the loosest or least conventional senese, is essential to gothic: The horror of terrible creatures, horror vacui, the fear of age/death, the peculiar horror evoked by the liminal (quasi-human, quasi-recognizable, etc.).

    The statues’ good cheer could become gothic if placed in a subversive setting, or if there was the hint of something deeper lurking behind the facade, but as it is I find them entirely too innocent. The baby blue / pink bases, the retro-look of the metal highlights on the shirt collars and motion lines, the sense of wholesome community fostered by reference to the bowling alley and by having the man and woman presented as a set piece… I don’t find anything to fear. If there’s an element of age in these statues, it’s only in its ’50s-esque styling, and mainstream America in the ’50s (I’m not talking about the Ginsberg/Burroughs vibe) doesn’t strike me as gothic.

  2. Dan C.

    I have to agree with Jonathan that these cheery tsotchkes could not be less haunting. Far from announcing the return of the historical repressed, objects like these make the past feel quaint, settled, and slightly embarrassing. Of course, I suspect that you will point out that the model youths atop these trophies tread precarious ground, like to be cast down from the very balls they blindly presume to bowl, just the sort of inverted power structure that you have been using to extend the gothic genre beyond its main period and its characteristic stock of images (blasted trunks, turbid skies, monastic ruins). Still, isn’t the whole point of a trophy to show that one is “on the ball”? I stand ready to call shenanigans.

  3. connor

    I’m glad to see that nobody took the bait! Yes, even under the most lenient definition of “Gothic” that I can think of, these trophies are *not* Gothic. A definition that encompassing would not be useful.

    Jonathan, you are right that the trophies could be Gothic if used in a subversive context, and you are both right that there is nothing of an inverted power-structure here unless it is supplied by the audience or put into context by the artist.

    I did notice, Jonathan, your emphasis on “horror,” and I do disagree with this. An element of fear, perhaps, is essential to the Gothic, and writers became more or less partisan to two strategies: horror (as inspired by Matthew Lewis) and terror (as inspired by Ann Radcliffe). It is my belief that the Gothic “brand name” became associated with horror while essentially Gothic elements continued to quietly influence and modify the use of terror and the sublime down to the present. It’s the basis of my argument that the Gothic is bigger than we think it is.

    That point, however, doesn’t have much to do with the trophies. After all, if they don’t inspire, than neither do they inspire fear or terror.

    They are not Gothic.

    They are cute, though.

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