Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- PART I GOTHIC FILM HISTORY
- 1 Gothic Cinema during the Silent Era
- 2 ‘So why shouldn’t I write of monsters?’: Defining Monstrosity in Universal’s Horror Films
- 3 Film Noir and the Gothic
- 4 Transitional Gothic: Hammer’s Gothic Revival and New Horror
- 5 Gothic Cinema from the 1970s to Now
- PART II GOTHIC FILM ADAPTATIONS
- 6 Danny’s Endless Tricycle Ride: The Gothic and Adaptation
- 7 Jekyll and Hyde and Scopophilia
- 8 Gothic Parodies on Film and Personal Transformation
- 9 The Gothic Sensorium: Affect in Jan Švankmajer’s Poe Films
- 10 Dracula in Asian Cinema: Transnational Appropriation of a Cultural Symbol
- PART III GOTHIC FILM TRADITIONS
- 11 The Italian Gothic Film
- 12 Gothic Science Fiction
- 13 American Gothic Westerns: Tales of Racial Slavery and Genocide
- 14 This Is America: Race, Gender and the Gothic in Get Out (2017)
- 15 ‘Part of my soul did die when making this film’: Gothic Corporeality, Extreme Cinema and Hardcore Horror in the Twenty-First Century
- Filmography and Other Media
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
8 - Gothic Parodies on Film and Personal Transformation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- PART I GOTHIC FILM HISTORY
- 1 Gothic Cinema during the Silent Era
- 2 ‘So why shouldn’t I write of monsters?’: Defining Monstrosity in Universal’s Horror Films
- 3 Film Noir and the Gothic
- 4 Transitional Gothic: Hammer’s Gothic Revival and New Horror
- 5 Gothic Cinema from the 1970s to Now
- PART II GOTHIC FILM ADAPTATIONS
- 6 Danny’s Endless Tricycle Ride: The Gothic and Adaptation
- 7 Jekyll and Hyde and Scopophilia
- 8 Gothic Parodies on Film and Personal Transformation
- 9 The Gothic Sensorium: Affect in Jan Švankmajer’s Poe Films
- 10 Dracula in Asian Cinema: Transnational Appropriation of a Cultural Symbol
- PART III GOTHIC FILM TRADITIONS
- 11 The Italian Gothic Film
- 12 Gothic Science Fiction
- 13 American Gothic Westerns: Tales of Racial Slavery and Genocide
- 14 This Is America: Race, Gender and the Gothic in Get Out (2017)
- 15 ‘Part of my soul did die when making this film’: Gothic Corporeality, Extreme Cinema and Hardcore Horror in the Twenty-First Century
- Filmography and Other Media
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
The link between parody and the Gothic is a familiar one. In 1968 D. N. Gallon emphasised how Catherine Morland's exaggerated fantasies in Northanger Abbey (written in 1803 but not published until after Austen's death in 1817) contrast with the author's ‘moral purpose’ of appealing to readers ‘for whom Gothic fiction of the Romantic era is dead. To give the burlesque side of the novel its relevance the critic almost has to resurrect a mode’ (804). That process of resurrection, however well-intentioned, is ripe for parody. Janet Beer and Avril Horner offer a less stark vision of the Gothic parody through Edith Wharton's short stories which, ‘while engaging with a target text or genre, exhibit … a keen sense of the comic, an acute awareness of intertextuality and an engagement with the idea of metafiction’ (2003: 270). The art critic and television personality Andrew Graham-Dixon claims that Gothic remains perennially popular in all media whether in straight or parodic form. We reflect ontologically on what separates the human from the non-human, while giving full rein to the imagination. Through exposure to the genre we might experience a therapeutic process of transformation by viewing our lives in a new and more positive light.
Writing with specific reference to parody Westerns but including the Gothic within his theoretical analysis, Matthew R. Turner argues that, while invoking familiar codes and conventions, we reflect critically on the artificiality of the films’ construction – for example, the trope of the haunted house in the dead of night whose corridors echo to the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning (2003: 54). This chapter develops Turner's claim through a discussion of four well-known Gothic parodies – Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995); Stan Dragoti's Love at First Bite (1979) and Gene Wilder's Haunted Honeymoon (1986). All of them consciously reference the classical Hollywood era of studio production, when Universal, RKO and a host of smaller outfits churned out a production-line of adaptations, remakes and original work using specific repertory companies of actors and a raft of familiar stylistic conventions. The parodies appear interested in consistently making fun of an outdated genre through the exaggerated use of dialogue and gesture, thereby distancing viewers from the action taking place on screen.
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- Gothic FilmAn Edinburgh Companion, pp. 112 - 122Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020