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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Europe was convulsed. The "ghosts" of the French Revolution toured European consciences sow illusions that the Napoleonic wars would eventually collapse. Europe was struggling in poverty, unemployment, and hunger. The industrial revolution began its unstoppable momentum, increasing and decreasing the quality of life of people in all places where he spent a railroad.
Social injustice, low wages, human exploitation emerged alongside the first steps of positive science: in the factories the workers working in sweatshops using technology. It was a time of terrible contradictions. Ideas Enlightenment , Which had been so well received, begin their decline, first in England, and then the rest of Europe, due in part, by the prescriptive nature they had taken.
Romanticism was a cultural movement opposed the Enlightenment. Front rationalism and enlightened unification, opposes an exalted idealism and individuality exacerbated. Although remote origins Is in the last decade of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries when it has its peak: the time of Byron, Shelley, Keats, in England, Goethe, Schiller in Germany, and extend for a century.
The Romantic movement shook all cultural and geographical went further than any previous cultural movement. Ideologically, Romanticism rebelled against classicism illustrated, especially against the French, literally, is opposed to the precepts as Boileu Horace, Pope, Muratori, and Luzán Gottsched. Although Romanticism, especially in England Was a psychological rather than doctrinaire movement, responded more to the internal demands rather than a desire for denial. For this very reason, Romanticism was more of a vision. Literally, had many strands, of which, for practical purposes of this study, only interested in one: the Gothic novel.
The Gothic novel, a form which developed Alongside the domestic novel Particularly Which Also associated with Women Writers, Rather Than invite silences the representation of erotic or aggressive Wishes.
Although the maximum representative of the gothic novel is Ann Radcliffe, the most recognized is certainly Mary Shelley And Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus, is the most recognized and famous. In it, M. Shelley has a particularly complex and elaborate critique of female education of his time, taking advantage of the genre and was paid:
And yet, as Judith Wilt has Pointed out, Tyrannical implicitly the relation of (male) teacher and (female) student, the "Exercise of power by the Knowing over the ignorant", is a "pure Gothic" convention and Recognized As Such events in the domestic novels of Austen, troubling such "charming young man / young women naïve Relationships" ...
Furthermore, "Within the" spectral sand of the Gothic castle ", as Poovey writes, women Novelists of the Romantic era [in this case M. Shelley] could "dramatize the eruption of psychic material Ordinarily controlled by the inhibitions of bourgeois society".
M. Shelley introduced into F. the ideas of W. Godwin (his father) and mother (Wollstonecraft) on the "despotism" and the idea of a well-established male hegemony and continuous education of the time. Also, and perhaps more interesting is the criticism of Rousseau. It is often equated with the Monster "natural man", however, the arguments given by Alan Richardson in the sense that Victor Frankenstein is built on the figure of Rousseau Can be very interesting, compelling, and allow us to understand the figure of the Monster: for Rousseau, the woman should be (and is) subject to man by the physical differences, the "female weakness", the ability to give birth and above all, by their moral differences, unlimited desires, reactionary, exaggerated, dependents, "in perpetual battle with themselves," etc. , Ie, a woman is physically and morally deformed:
The monster, as Poovey writes, is "double like" woman by patriarchal construe as Ideology: Formed as a subordinate vehicle for "someone else's desire", and yet exiled as the "deadly essence of passion itself".
Second moment
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, began to be felt in the UK signals the breakdown of hegemony, and some even dare to criticize the "undeniable superiority" of Victorian culture, or to warn the decline or the futility of the British political greatness .
The industrial revolution passed to a new stage, and the other side of the Atlantic: the overcrowding. Within the empire, claimed nationality: Welsh, Highlanders, and especially Irish. Parnell is present in the works of Joyce, Yeats, Martyn and many others, with a striking force.
The Gothic also entered a new phase, much richer and transgressive than in previous years: no longer castles, malformed beasts, or the gloomy darkness, which create fear, now is a yellow paper on a wall, or the willows bordering the Danube. The supernatural horror comes in the grounds of the Gothic novel, before being felt in full force: if the first Gothic was a criticism of the customs, the last Gothic, before mutating, there will be a political weapon.
Among the last great flashes of English gothic novel, Dracula is Bram Stoker . Generally, this work is studied from a psychological perspective: not only read Dracula from psychoanalysis, but gender studies tend to regard this work as an example of the misogyny and the declining morality of the Victorian era .
However, there has been a mindset change and has begun to be studied and Dracula in its true dimension: political protest. The work of Stephen Arata Terry Eagleaton , And Michael Valdez Moses have shown that Stoker's Dracula is built on the figure of Parnell, and the many contradictions and confrontations between the Irish and English . At the same time, can be detected fears the British colonization in reverse: the Earl travels the same path as Harker.
Third moment
The first years of the thirties were encouraging for American and world intellectuals, and fatal to all. The "black Thursday" did not leave to be present in the consciousness. The economic downturn, despite government efforts had not ceased, and much of the world population was in poverty.
Everywhere in the world with groups emerged exclusive and totalitarian ideology (Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, etc. .) Poverty forced people to move from their places of origin, and there were great migrations. A wave of exiles began arriving in the United States, mostly Irish and Italian, as many of their territories still devastated from the Great War.
Socialism is presented to people as the answer to many conflicts, but ended up generating a lot more, especially in North America: the Socialists (and Communists) began to be perceived as threats, and were often repressed.
And in this context that the monster's movies. While horror films were worthy representatives since the days of silent films, is in the early thirties when Warner Brothers creates a new film genre: the monster movies. The old Gothic horror tales, new tales of supernatural horror, Amazing Such stories are taken up and adapted for a specific purpose: the ideological education of the American people. As in the stories of HP Lovecraft, in the monster's movies is presented to a foreigner who speaks English with an oriental, the dark, or Irish as the assistant to the monster, or as the bringer of evil to the quiet American city. The mad scientist reads books in German, or has a Hispanic name.
There are many films of this genre, The Mummy , The Wolf Man, White Zombie, Dracula, and Frankenstein, among others. Particularly interesting are the latter two. F. James Whale and Dracula with Bela Lugosi. Perhaps because readings of two representative works of the Gothic, or because the burden of both ideological was too strong to be eliminated at a stroke, but the film adaptations of these works are separated somewhat from the genre.
In F. we can observe the Whale critical to the oppression of the dominant culture to marginal groups. The Monster silent, unable to articulate words to express, you should bring to mind the very fact Whale: a homosexual in a homophobic society. Unable to reveal his sexual preference, Whale was tormented and imprisoned most of his life, until he was exiled from the world.
In Dracula (1931), there are fears of a society that frowns government's dealings with the Eastern regimes. The great migrations of Gypsies, Bulgarians, Hungarians, etc., To the United States put at risk the stability of WASP. Dracula particularly emphasize the anxiety felt by Americans because the government preferred to hire foreign workers than their own countrymen. The scenes of gypsies working, Irish shippers transporting the Count, etc., Are examples.
Certainly this has been a very superficial view of the phenomena of the Gothic novel and the monster's movies, but I hope at least it has shown the focus of this work: to show that the horror and terror, are used as forms of ideology, as well as Antiquity you used the pain and suffering to educate, we now use fear and horror.
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