Analyse du mouvement gothique, LELE Terminale L

LELE Anglais

        The world of imagination is a source of inspiration for most artists, it is a really wide domain and can open the doors to many original plots. It inspired the Gothic movement, created at the end of the 18th century, mostly inspired by themes such as decay, death, terror and mystery; this literary movement explored frightening scenarios with ambivalent characters and split morals that seem controversial. How can this ambivalence be portrayed with the characters?

        Ambivalence can be used to foreshadow the unfold of a story or the plot’s twist, just like in Bram Stocker’s novel Dracula published in 1897, where we see that Harker is clearly uneasy around Count Dracula. The latter is described with contrasts in his appearance and actions : he is polite although he emphasises the fact that Harker must “enter freely” his house, almost as if it was a threat; he is pretty strong for an old man and moves impulsively while being completely still; he is eager to welcome Harker and acts lively but his hand is compared to the hand of a dead man, he is compared to a statue either. With this strange first impression, the readers cans sense that there is something off with this character and that Harker might be in danger, a feeling that is further enhanced when Harker does not see the Count’s reflection on the mirror and by his strange behavior around Harker when he cuts himself.

        It can be also be used to reflect reality with unrealistic scenarios, such as Angela Carter’s rewriting of Little Red Riding Hood, The Werewolf published in 1979, where she asks us readers to have a negative judgement on the people in her short story : they are primitive, live with their bare necessities and are cruel, as showcased by the little girl who does not hesitate on injuring the wolf and in having her grandmother stoned to death. The author attracts the reader with a bleak atmosphere and a more exciting story than the original tale, but she also urges us to feel repugnance towards those uncivilized people who blend pagan and christian religion, and have a primitive behavior by being scared of witches and give offerings to keep the devil away. Carter wants in fact to show us that even if we think we are better than these people, we can be as cold hearted and cruel than them, our nature hasn’t changed, we just learned how to hide it better.

 Furthermore this trait can also be used to make a character more appreciated by the public, as it was the case for the movie Joker directed by Todd Phillips and released in 2019, where the viewers see a different side of the DC Comics character the Joker. He is often depicted as a mad man, a villain that uses people to achieve his goals and would do anything to fight against Batman, however in the 2019’s movie we see a Joker named Arthur Fleck, he lives with his mother who needs to be taken care of, and we can also see that he is mentally ill, having a disorder that causes him to laugh at inappropriate moments. He is not only a villain that is evil and takes his revenge on people, he is above all a broken man, misunderstood by society and bullied by everyone. The viewer is led to pity the main character, not only to just hate him for being “evil”, but to truly understand what could lead a man like Arthur to become the iconic figure of the Joker.

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