Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction in American literature that takes place in the American South.
Common themes in Southern Gothic literature include deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime, or violence.
Origins
Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South were first apparent during the ante- and post-bellum 19th century in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and in the de-idealized representations of Mark Twain. The genre was consolidated, however, only in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged in a new and powerful form of social critique. The thematic material was largely a reflection of the culture existing in the South following the collapse of the Confederacy as a consequence of the Civil War, which left a vacuum in its cultural and religious values. The resulting poverty and lingering bitterness over the issue of slavery in the region during Reconstruction exacerbated the racism, excessive violence, and religious extremism endemic to the region.The term "Southern Gothic" was originally pejorative and dismissive. Ellen Glasgow used the term in this way when she referred to the writings of Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner. She included the authors in what she called the "Southern Gothic School" in 1935, stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares." It was so negatively viewed at first that Eudora Welty said, "They better not call me that!"
Characteristics
The Southern Gothic style employs macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South. Thus unlike its parent genre, it uses the Gothic tools not solely for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South – Gothic elements often taking place in a magic realist context rather than a strictly fantastical one.Warped rural communities replaced the sinister plantations of an earlier age; and in the works of leading figures such as William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor, the representation of the South blossomed into an absurdist critique of modernity as a whole.
There are many characteristics in Southern Gothic Literature that relate back to its parent genre of American Gothic and even to European Gothic. However, the setting of these works is distinctly Southern. Some of these characteristics are 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.
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".
Similar to the elements of the Gothic castle, Southern Gothic gives us the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South.
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 us a blurred line between victim and villain.
Southern Gothic literature set out to expose the myth of old antebellum South, and its narrative of an idyllic past hidden by social, familial, and racial denials and suppressions.
Authors
- Dorothy Allison
- Ambrose Bierce
- Poppy Z. Brite
- Larry Brown
- Erskine Caldwell
- Truman Capote
- Fred Chappell
- Brainard Cheney
- Harry Crews , who has been called "the Hieronymus Bosch of Southern Gothic"
- James Dickey
- William Faulkner
- Tom Franklin
- William Gay
- William Goyen
- Davis Grubb
- Joe R. Lansdale
- Charlaine Harris
- Harper Lee
- Cormac McCarthy
- Carson McCullers
- Michael McDowell
- Flannery O'Connor
- Walker Percy
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Cherie Priest
- Anne Rice , particularly The Feast of All Saints and The Witching Hour
- Frank Stanford, specifically The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You
- Caspar Vega , particularly The Pink Beetle and Southern Dust
- Eudora Welty
- Tennessee Williams
- Thomas Wolfe
A resurgence of Southern Gothic themes in contemporary fiction has been identified in the work of figures like Barry Hannah, Joe R. Lansdale and Cherie Priest.
Film and television
A number of films and television programs are also described as being part of the Southern Gothic genre. Some prominent examples are:Films
- Haunted Spooks
- Swamp Water
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- The Night of the Hunter
- The Young One
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte
- The Beguiled
- Deliverance
- The Legend of Boggy Creek
- Macon County Line
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
- Eaten Alive
- Ode to Billy Joe
- The Town That Dreaded Sundown
- The Evictors
- Wise Blood
- A Day of Judgment
- The Beyond
- Southern Comfort
- Crimes of the Heart
- Angel Heart
- Near Dark
- Pumpkinhead
- Flesh and Bone
- Sling Blade
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
- George Washington
- Frailty
- Big Fish
- Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
- The Skeleton Key
- Black Snake Moan
- In the Electric Mist
- Winter's Bone
- Killer Joe
- Mud
- Beasts of the Southern Wild
- Jug Face
- Beautiful Creatures
- Joe
- Stoker
- Jessabelle
- Cold in July
- Nocturnal Animals
- The Beguiled
- Mudbound
- The Peanut Butter Falcon''
Television series
- In the Heat of the Night
- American Gothic
- Justified
- The Heart, She Holler
- Rectify
- The Originals
- True Detective, seasons 1, and 3
- Bloodline, seasons 1 and 2
- Preacher
- Outcast
- Ozark
- Hap and Leonard
- Outsiders
- True Blood
- Sharp Objects
- Cloak and Dagger
- The Act
Music
Artists
- 16 Horsepower
- Big John Bates: Noirchestra
- Bonnie Prince Billy
- Brown Bird
- Calexico
- Johnny Cash
- Vic Chesnutt
- Dorthia Cottrell
- The Cramps
- Delta Rae
- Johnny Dowd
- Dr. John
- Drive-By Truckers
- Drivin N Cryin
- Bob Dylan
- Tav Falco
- Bobbie Gentry
- The Gun Club
- The Handsome Family
- Two Gallants
- Iron & Wine
- Jason Isbell
- Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter
- Cotton Jones
- Katie Dee & The Quaking Aspens
- Kid Congo Powers
- Legendary Shack Shakers
- Mark Linkous
- Julie Mintz
- Jay Munly
- Murder by Death
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- Old Crow Medicine Show
- Will Oldham
- David Rawlings
- James Ray
- R.E.M.
- Dax Riggs
- Thayer Sarrano
- Slim Cessna's Auto Club
- Smog
- Southern Culture on the Skids
- Sparklehorse
- Poor Man's Poison
- Tav Falco's Panther Burns
- Dan Tyminski
- Adia Victoria
- Mirel Wagner
- Gillian Welch
- Jim White
- Hank Williams III
- Tyler Childers
- Uncle Sinner
- Wovenhand
Photographic representation
Another noted Southern Gothic photographer was surrealist, Clarence John Laughlin, who photographed cemeteries, plantations, and other abandoned places throughout the American South for nearly 40 years.
Postmodern pastiche
took an ironic look at the cult of "Southernness" in his novel Virtual Light. Rydell, the stolid, southern antihero, is looking for a job at an LA shop called Nightmare Folk Art—Southern Gothic. The owner says he finds Rydell unsuitable: "What we offer people here is a certain vision, Mr. Rydell. A certain darkness as well. A Gothic quality....The Mind of the South. A fever dream of sensuality".Put out by finding himself not southern enough for this New Englander, "'Lady,' Rydell said carefully, 'I think you're crazier than a sack full of assholes.' Her eyebrows shot up. 'There,' she said. 'There what?' 'Color, Mr. Rydell. Fire. The brooding verbal polychromes of an almost unthinkably advanced decay.'"