Analysis of “Dark Shadows” as a Gothic Masterpiece

Analysis of â€Å"Dark Shadows† as a Gothic Masterpiece To most, when asked to define what Gothic is, they will state that it is similar to any other story, just with more â€Å"darkness. † This is because Gothic stories all have a classic story line. First, there is the main character’s back story, if any is then told. Next, there are events that lead up to a horrible incident that is the climax of the story. Lastly, the character finds some way to fix the situation or free him- or herself from it. They might go insane, commit suicide, run away, or watch other characters perish. However, readers would be greatly mistaken if they thought that this was all that there is to a Gothic story; there is much more to the Gothic than meets the eyes. There are Gothic tropes that define this type of Literature from the rest, such as murder, groans, blood, or even an apparition. Even today, there are video games that have these Gothic tropes. According to Kirkland, games such as Silent Hill have â€Å"gloomy settings with a sense of forthcoming violence, spaces such as a haunted house, tombs and prisons, the contaminating influence of family curses, and revenge-driven ghosts† (107). These tropes have endured across time due to their effect on the human mind. And this can be seen no more than in Burton’s film, the 2012 version, Dark Shadows. Humans have a natural fear of the dark that has existed since the beginning of time. Centuries ago, people feared the dark because that was the time when they were most likely to get attacked by robbers. Some people even went so far as to capture starving, wild dogs and have them fenced in to help protect the house. Even today, people are wary of going outside at night due to the fear of getting robbed and/or killed. In Burton’s film Dark Shadows, it was filmed almost entirely at dusk or at night. Although he didn’t update the use of darkness in this Gothic story, he did use it very wisely. For example, in the film he made sure to have candles low to the ground to illuminate people’s faces from the bottom, causing them to appear ghoulish. He also made particular scenes more dark and dreary than others; while it would be sunny at the fishing docks, it was cloudy at the castle. This affected the audience by making them feel that the castle had something sinister hidden within it. Death is a huge fear for countless, as it has been for centuries. Long before embalming, people had no knowledge of what happened during or after death. At one point in history it was so common for people to be accidently buried alive, that next to every grave they put a bell with a string attached that reached down inside the coffin. If the person was alive and woke up, they would pull the string and someone would come to rescue them. Throughout the ages, death and its meaning has slowly changed. In Aikinari’s story, â€Å"The Chrysanthemum Vow,† death is portrayed as a way to free oneself from the confinements of life. When Akana was captured and imprisoned, he committed suicide in order to be able to travel to Samon as a ghost and fulfill his vow with him. In Dark Shadows, death was modernized by the use of the vampire named Barnabas Collins. Vampires have been a part of our society for generations. When someone dies, it is common for the body to bloat and for blood to leak out of the mouth, due to its decomposition. According to Gee, â€Å"a body decomposes in such a way that human teeth protrude like fangs† (8). Not being able to comprehend this, people would tell horror stories of vampires to try and explain what was going on. In Dark Shadows, Barnabas not only updated vampires, but also death. Unlike the original vampires, Barnabas became this monster not by the bite of another vampire but from the curse of a jealous witch, who also killed his fiance. This changed the view of death because death was something that Barnabas could not attain. Unlike his predecessors, he was immortal and couldn’t die. This caused him great pain since he could never be with his beloved again. Death became that which could free him and end his suffering. This also changed the anatomy of vampires. Classic vampires could be harmed with garlic or the light. While the light hurt him, he was able to merely wear a hat and cloak and not be harmed. However, there is still much more to Gothic Literature. According to Baldick, â€Å"For the Gothic effect to be attained, a tale should combine a fearful sense of inheritance in time with a claustrophobic sense of enclosure in space† (xix). A story can have Gothic tropes but not be Gothic. There are loads of books that have murders and ghosts that aren’t considered Gothic at all, like Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling. His parents were killed and there was a ghost trapped in the girl’s bathroom, but it isn’t Gothic at all. What makes a story Gothic is how it is told or portrayed. Sometimes, the scenes that are used are to make the viewers question what is righteous and what is wicked. Burton shows this with how he introduces his characters and their personalities. For the vampire Barnabas, he is portrayed not as monster but as an unfortunate soul who has a curse that he is trying to rid himself of. Instead of wanting to stay a vampire, he joins up with a local physician to try and find a cure to make him human again. However, he still kills humans and drinks their blood. This makes the audience question whether Barnabas is an evil vampire or a poor man with a curse due to this hidden identity. This is also shown with the witch Angelique. For her character, they portrayed her as being jealous that Barnabas chooses to marry someone else, instead of her. She curses him to become a vampire but later on states that she didn’t kill him because he only wanted his love and attention. Before she dies, she rips out her own heart and offers it to Barnabas. Showing this makes the audience debate on whether she is innocent deep down in her actions, or merely empty and insane. Insanity is another classic trope of the Gothic. Traditionally, insanity was shown as a way to become stronger or to become free. In â€Å"If You Touched My Heart† by Allende, Hortensia is caged by her lover. At first, they are in love and can’t be separated. However, Peralta soon forces her into a cage and keeps her there for several decades. In order to deal with the psychological trauma, Hortensia becomes insane to free herself. This is shown when she was â€Å"surrounded by hallucinatory spirits who lead her to other universes†¦ [traveling] through starry space† (523). By creating these illusions in her mind, she was able to free herself from the pain of growing old and hideous in that cage. In Poe’s story â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart,† the unnamed main character goes insane due to his own thoughts. In the beginning of the story, he states how he is obsessed with this old man, but not insane. He states that, â€Å"it was not the old man that vexed me, but his Evil Eye† (498). This quote shows that the character originally had no aggression towards the old man, only his one pale blue eye. After he kills him and hides the body under the floor, he starts to hear a heartbeat. He concludes that it must be the old man’s heart. This is frightening because the reader is unsure what he is actually hearing. He could simply be hearing his own heartbeat, or imagining it all due to his guilt. In Dark Shadows, insanity is shown in a similar, yet different way. The film actually had two characters that were insane, the witch Angelique and Victoria. Angelique is depicted as going insane after her pure heart was broken by Barnabas. She only turned him into a vampire because she couldn’t stand to see him with another woman. Her insanity allowed her to become strong and have the strength to, in a sense, imprison the man who caused her pain. Victoria, on the other hand, was only considered insane by society. Due to her psychic ability in being able to see spirits, her family feared how others would view them and sent her away to be â€Å"fixed. † This demonstrates how insanity is not simply mental, but also what society deems as insane. However, not everything is clearly stated. Within Gothic Literature, there are hidden messages or symbolisms throughout the entire story. Knowing this allows the reader to think and look more deeply into each action and event that is occurring. For example, in Edgar Allen Poe’s â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher,† when Roderick dies at the end of the story, the house crumbles to ruins. The house doesn’t crumble because it’s ancient; it symbolizes the end of the Usher’s bloodline. In â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† by Stetson, the main female character is moved to a house in the country for â€Å"bed rest. There, she is forbidden to write, think, and sometimes even speak. She starts to see a woman trapped in the wallpaper, shaking it at night and creeping around outside during the day. This symbolizes how the narrator feels trapped and wants to escape. At the end, she â€Å"releases† the woman from the wallpaper and becomes her. The narr ator could only be free by creating an alternate personality. In this story, her insanity helped set her free. Dark Shadows also has some symbolism of its own. When Angelique is dying, they show her breaking as if she is a porcelain doll. This demonstrates how even though she was evil she was also extremely delicate in her true nature. As her face broke, pieces fell and exposed a small hole into oblivion. This signifies how she was truly empty on the inside, nothing more than a doll. Although she was once a human with supernatural powers, her jealousy and obsessive love for Barnabas slowly took over and, over time, left her an empty shell of what she once was. She was unable to truly love Barnabas, because she was literally filled with both darkness and nothingness. At the end of the film, Barnabas finds Victoria standing on the ledge of cliff. She tells him that they are both different, and that she can only be with him if they are the same. He tells her that he can’t turn her into a vampire, so she jumps off the cliff. This symbolizes the difficulty and societal rejection of dating someone who is of a different class or race. For her, she couldn’t see how their relationship could work unless they were both vampires. She also felt that if she couldn’t be with him, then she had no reason to live and must die to free herself from the suffering. Gothic literature is not something that can be defined in a few simple sentences. As Rintoul points out, â€Å"Gothic coincides with an important interrogation of the cannon as a site of power, and with equally important work that links social and political conditions† (701). Gothic literature has tropes that have endured across time and can still be found in modern stories and games. However, these tropes don’t always stay the same; some have been modernized over the centuries. This can easily be seen in Burton’s 2012 film, Dark Shadows. Death was transformed from something terrifying to that which could set one free. The vampire changed from a wicked corpse to a miserable man who was cursed. Insanity also went through some changes. At first, it could set one free from pain. In Dark Shadows, insanity morphed into something that was not only mental, but what society deemed as insane. The symbolism throughout the movie also added depth to seemingly simple scenes. Dark Shadows is a perfect example of how the Gothic has changed through the ages and thrived. Works Cited Allende, Isabel. â€Å"If You Touched My Heart. † The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. Ed. Chris Baldick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 519-526. Print. Baldick, Chris. â€Å"Introduction. The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. Ed. Chris Baldick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. xi-xxii. Print. Gee, Joshua. Encyclopedia Horrifica. Hong Kong: Scholastic, 2007. Print. Kirkland, Ewan. â€Å"Gothic Videogames, Survival Horror, and Silent Hill Series. † Gothic Studies14. 2 (2012): 106-122. Print. Rintoul, Suzanna. â€Å"Gothic Anxieties: Struggling With a Definition. † The Journal of Eighte enth-Century Fiction. 17. 4 (2005): 701-709. Print. Sova, Dawn. â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart. † The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. Ed. Dawn Sova. New York: Barns Noble, 2006. 498-501. Print.