Two questions today:
1. What is a flim/play/art object that you believe to be “hidden” or “submerged” Gothic? By this I mean that the Gothic is present, but its elements are obscured by another, more conspicuous, genre.
2. What is a film/play/art object that you consider to be thoroughly “not” Gothic, but of which you would be interested in seeing a Gothicized version?
I think An American Tail (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090633/) has elements of gothic, while still remaining under a different genre. There is a dark quality, not only in the animation and street scenes, but also in the predicament into which the mice are forced. They are powerless, caught in a sea of politcal turmoil, and are rarely given a respite. The way in which the cats are presented as evil intellects instills a fear that takes awhile to die down.
Regarding Adventures in Babysitting, I think it has gothic qualities, but not in the same manner, or intensity, as AAT. AIB finds the dirt and gritiness of Chicago, but these are merely difficulties that must be side-stepped to the eventual goal: getting the children back and in bed (in suburb-ville) before the parents get home. In the end, they will be able to go to their school, hang out at the mall, and reminisce about “slumming” it that one night. Feival, on the other hand, is ensconced in the mire – at least until the sequal.
After having finished watching all of “Seinfeld” with Catherine, I can now wonder how the four would react had the episode been more surrealy bizarre, ambiguously mysterious, and built on the premise that the characters’ actions do actually have consequences.
1. America’s Next Top Model (for its themes of haunting and hysteria, for generating a world in which the lingering presence of one retired woman manifests in the bizarre suffering of the next generation, for the stark separation of embodied life and spectral image, for the horror and madness and gnashing of immaculate teeth) .
2. Twilight. Seldom have the themes of obsession and subterranean passion achieved such utter hygienic flatness.