nothing's gonna change my world
Nov. 21st, 2015 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI'm not planning on seeing Crimson Peak myself, despite my lasting love for del Toro, because it just doesn't look like my sort of thing (also because i walked out of Mia Wasikowska's Jane Eyre and i might still be bearing a bit of a grudge). But the talk around it has been helpful for me in clarifying something about my gendered investments in the gothic.
I love one particular vein of the gothic with an almost supernatural intensity, but am left cold by just about all of its other incarnations. I'm not interested in ghost stories or commandeering alpha lovers or curses that are the effect of empire. What I like, what I really like, are stories about characters who are frustrated, who feel ordinary, and who will walk up to the gothic, sneer in its face, dominate the fuck out of it, and come out on top because ultimately they are the most gothic bitches around.
Thornfield Hall is pretty gothic, but it's not more gothic than Jane Eyre the Queen of the Fairies, she who is disliked by so many of her early caretakers for her fey and defiant character, and she leaves the house in ashes in her wake. The Goblin King is glamorous and compelling, but Sarah already knows the words that can defeat him, knows them by heart long before she enters the gothic realm. Rebecca, god, Rebecca is the tragic iteration of the trope, because while like Jane she comes to the gothic house as a powerful force and successfully rules it as its queen, it does eat her in the end - though even then she has her final revenge on both house and husband.
It's why I was so in to the early "psychic Sam" plotlines in Supernatural. And it works for Sirius Black, too, the unwilling true heir of the Blacks; and for the Pevensies and Bran Davies and all the other "really royalty at heart" characters. It's what I always liked about Cimorene; she's as much a dragon in her heart as Kazul, she fits right in. Faith, and Buffy. It's why I do kind of like Bella Swan's ending in Twilight, the way that she gets to become the monster. You can, of course, also read it as her getting murdered. These are the drawbacks of Twilight. It's why I like French feminism so much, in spite of all the weird essentialism.
The thing that I disliked so strongly about the Wasikowska Jane Eyre was that it positioned Jane as an outsider/victim in relation to the gothic; I understand where the reading comes from, but I don't think the text fully supports it, and anyway I dislike it for the dull horror-romance version of the story it produces. Jane should be drawn to Rochester because he, like Bertha, is her like, her equal; she doesn't have to play nice with him, or make herself smaller for him, or be obedient for him. Not because he's a Sexy Bad Boy Heathcliff. IRT Crimson Peak - if Wasikowska's character was the one running the curse, or if the siblings ended up having to beg her for rescue from it - I would watch that. Based on what I've seen/read, though, it doesn't look like Chastain's character would satisfy me either; it looks like she's one of those characters, like Bertha, like Maxim, who is the gothic, personified and embodied.
I love one particular vein of the gothic with an almost supernatural intensity, but am left cold by just about all of its other incarnations. I'm not interested in ghost stories or commandeering alpha lovers or curses that are the effect of empire. What I like, what I really like, are stories about characters who are frustrated, who feel ordinary, and who will walk up to the gothic, sneer in its face, dominate the fuck out of it, and come out on top because ultimately they are the most gothic bitches around.
Thornfield Hall is pretty gothic, but it's not more gothic than Jane Eyre the Queen of the Fairies, she who is disliked by so many of her early caretakers for her fey and defiant character, and she leaves the house in ashes in her wake. The Goblin King is glamorous and compelling, but Sarah already knows the words that can defeat him, knows them by heart long before she enters the gothic realm. Rebecca, god, Rebecca is the tragic iteration of the trope, because while like Jane she comes to the gothic house as a powerful force and successfully rules it as its queen, it does eat her in the end - though even then she has her final revenge on both house and husband.
It's why I was so in to the early "psychic Sam" plotlines in Supernatural. And it works for Sirius Black, too, the unwilling true heir of the Blacks; and for the Pevensies and Bran Davies and all the other "really royalty at heart" characters. It's what I always liked about Cimorene; she's as much a dragon in her heart as Kazul, she fits right in. Faith, and Buffy. It's why I do kind of like Bella Swan's ending in Twilight, the way that she gets to become the monster. You can, of course, also read it as her getting murdered. These are the drawbacks of Twilight. It's why I like French feminism so much, in spite of all the weird essentialism.
The thing that I disliked so strongly about the Wasikowska Jane Eyre was that it positioned Jane as an outsider/victim in relation to the gothic; I understand where the reading comes from, but I don't think the text fully supports it, and anyway I dislike it for the dull horror-romance version of the story it produces. Jane should be drawn to Rochester because he, like Bertha, is her like, her equal; she doesn't have to play nice with him, or make herself smaller for him, or be obedient for him. Not because he's a Sexy Bad Boy Heathcliff. IRT Crimson Peak - if Wasikowska's character was the one running the curse, or if the siblings ended up having to beg her for rescue from it - I would watch that. Based on what I've seen/read, though, it doesn't look like Chastain's character would satisfy me either; it looks like she's one of those characters, like Bertha, like Maxim, who is the gothic, personified and embodied.