The Gothic’s ‘Others’ on the Screen: Variants, mutations, connections
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Dată
2022Autor
Mateescu, Violeta Cristina
Abstract
This paper looks at some of the most famous and successful Gothic cinematic
productions that belong to the horror genre, analyzing the work of several worldwide
acknowledged directors, many of whom dared to take the challenge of adapting different types
of written discourse, from comic books to great pieces of classic literature, into films.
The research was carried out in order to study some of the most representative archetypes
standing out from their environment as outsiders and the ways in which they are depicted as
“the other”, not in the strict sense of social constructions of race, gender or others, but using this
term in order to refer to the elements that originated from the Gothic style, i.e. supernatural
entities (vampires, werewolves and zombies) and variants of them. Furthermore, the present
article also presents the mutations and connections that are found between the variants
chronologically, in order to underscore the evolution of the main templates.
Taking the view that there is a lot of ground to be covered on this subject matter, the
findings are presented in the light of various theoretical materials that range from reviews to
encyclopedias.