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Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, country music, film, theatre, and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic elements and the American South. Common themes of Southern Gothic include storytelling of deeply flawed, disturbing, or eccentric characters sometimes suffering from physical deformities or insanity; decayed or derelict settings and grotesque situations;[1] and sinister events bred from poverty, alienation, crime, violence, forbidden sexuality, or hoodoo magic.[2]
Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South first appeared during the ante- and post-bellum 19th century in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and in the sardonic representations of Mark Twain.[3] The genre was consolidated, however, in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged in a new and powerful form of social critique.[3] The themes largely reflected the cultural atmosphere of the South following the collapse of the Confederacy in the Civil War, which left a vacuum of cultural and religious values as well as economic devastation. The poverty and bitterness during the post-war Reconstruction era exacerbated the racism, everyday violence, and religious extremism endemic to the region.[citation needed]
Like the original artistic term "Gothic", the term "Southern Gothic" was at first pejorative and dismissive. In 1935, Ellen Glasgow critiqued the writings of Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, and the "Southern Gothic School", stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares". The connotation was at first so negative that Eudora Welty said: "They better not call me that!"[4]
The setting of these works is distinctly Southern. Some of these characteristics include exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities.[4]
Southern Gothic particularly focuses on the South's history of slavery, racism, fear of the outside world, violence, a "fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements".[4]
Similar to the elements of the Gothic castle, Southern Gothic depicts the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South.[4]
Villains who disguise themselves as innocents or victims are often found in Southern Gothic literature, especially stories by Flannery O'Connor, such as "Good Country People" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own", giving the reader a blurred line between victim and villain.[4]
Southern Gothic literature set out to expose the myth of the old Antebellum South with its narrative of an idyllic past that covered over social, familial, and racial denials and suppressions.[6]
A resurgence of Southern Gothic themes in contemporary fiction has been identified in the work of figures like Barry Hannah (1942–2010),[10] Joe R. Lansdale (b. 1951),[11] Helen Ellis (b. 1970) and Cherie Priest (b. 1975).[11]
A number of films and television programs are also described as being part of the Southern Gothic genre. Some prominent examples are:
Southern Gothic (also known as Gothic Americana, or Dark Country) is a genre of country music rooted in early jazz, gospel, Americana, gothic rock and post-punk.[28] Its lyrics often focus on dark subject matter. The genre shares thematic connections with the Southern Gothic genre of literature, and indeed the parameters of what makes something Gothic Americana appears to have more in common with literary genres than traditional musical ones. Songs often examine poverty, criminal behavior, religious imagery, death, ghosts, family, lost love, alcohol, murder, the devil, and betrayal.[citation needed]
Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (1982) was influenced by the writings of Flannery O'Connor.[29] Athens, Georgia–based alternative rock band R.E.M. displayed a Southern Gothic influence with their third album, Fables of the Reconstruction (1985).[30] J.D. Wilkes, frontman of the band Legendary Shack Shakers, described Southern Gothic music as "[taking] an angle that there’s something grotesque and beautiful in the traditions of the South, the backdrop of Southern living."[31] Ethel Cain's music has been described as "Southern Gothic Pop,"[32] often focusing on themes such as intergenerational trauma, Christianity, grotesque violence, poverty, and abuse, and she often credits inspiration to the works of Southern Gothic writers such as Flannery O’Connor.
The Southern Gothic genre comes to the stage in many different ways.
Southern Gothic fiction writers like Carson McCullers and Zora Neale Hurston adapted their own work for the stage in language-heavy productions of The Member of the Wedding and Spunk.
Playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Beth Henley, and Jacqueline Goldfinger translated elements of Southern Gothic aesthetic to the stage and added theatrical elements such as stylized movement, dialogue, and design. Examples of Southern Gothic plays include the Pulitzer Prize winner A Streetcar Named Desire (1948), the popular The Jacksonian (2014), and the Yale Prize winner Bottle Fly (2018).
In addition, many Southern Gothic novels and short stories have been adapted for the stage by artists who are not the original authors. The Tony Award winning musical The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a prime example of this approach to theatricalization of the Southern Gothic genre. The Color Purple is an adaptation of the novel with music by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen Bray, and Marsha Norman which has been performed around the country constantly since its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2004.
The images of Great Depression photographer Walker Evans are seen to evoke the visual depiction of the Southern Gothic; Evans claimed: "I can understand why Southerners are haunted by their own landscape".[33]
Another noted Southern Gothic photographer was surrealist Clarence John Laughlin, who photographed cemeteries, plantations, and other abandoned places throughout the American South (primarily Louisiana) for nearly 40 years.[citation needed]
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