Gothic 2012

The following is a short feature I wrote for JRN 500- Journalism and the Arts

Gothic 2012: Horror makes a comeback as we worry about the world ending

Gothic literature may seem like a long-outdated form of entertaining writing, yet it has actually made a come back lately in relation to 2012 apocalyptic, end-of-the-world fears.

In the past few years, there have been numerous shows and movies with the theme of religious apocalypse and world-ending disasters. Horror has also crept into many popular book-series-turned-film-series, whether that is the vampire-filled Twilight series or dystopian world of the Hunger Games trilogy (which made $214 million in its opening weekend as a film).

Gothic, horror, supernatural fiction, dark fantasy and dystopian literature–whatever the exact name, they all have Gothic horror elements–have always been a way for people to live out their worst fears. “Gothic is one of those genres that crosses boundaries,” says Sarah Henstra, an English professor at Ryerson University who specializes in Gothic literature. Because of this cross-genre aspect, Gothic is almost always popular and is ever-present in pop culture.

“It’s really popular during transitional states in society,” Henstra says. While Gothic is ever-present, it tends to become even more popular at times of social change and collective anxiety about the future, such as at the turn of each century and around the time of huge scientific break-through.

Each wave of Gothic fiction explores and plays-out current social anxieties. Just as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explored fears of new pharmaceuticals and Frankenstein played out society’s fear of technology, the most recent Dexter season explores our worries about religious apocalypse and uprising and the film Contagion plays on society’s extreme anxiety surrounding disease and superbugs.

“But it’s not just about 2012. It’s just a worry about new technologies and such. These anxieties are already in society,” Henstra says. Exploring our fears about the future is easy to do through fictional films and books. “It’s safe and at a distance. It’s a vicarious playing-out,” says Henstra. Seeing our fears become real on a screen or reading about the destruction of the world is a way of releasing our tension about it.

Society’s fascination with its own demise does sound a little morbid, but often getting these fears out in the open is the only way to work through them. “Fear can be both repulsive and attractive,” says Gemma Files, Canadian horror author. “Anything which allows you to explore your fears is healthy.”

“Gothic isn’t a genre at all, it’s an emotion,” says Toronto-based author and journalist David Nickle. Fear and anxiety about the future, about the state of the economy and the earth, about political uprising and natural disasters are all valid feelings. Gothic pop culture simply uses these feelings to entertain us, all the while helping us explore and work through complicated and heavy emotions.

In Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe and Japan, John R. Hall questions what is so appealing about gothic horror. “Apocalyptic images bring focus to anxieties and suspicions about a world undergoeing dramatic change,” he writes. “But what is the appeal of their seemingly fantastic, almost legendary stories?”

The answer to this question is simply the fact that fictional stories help society’s real problems. “Take the thing you want least to happen, the worst thing you can imagine, and play it through. If you do, it may possibly make your fears far easier to deal with...but even if it doesn't, there's still something to be said for exploring the whys and wherefores of those fears,” Files says. “Horror and Gothic helps with that, too: You play out that consummation in fiction, so it doesn't overtake you in life.”

Gothic may be a popular movie style and many television show nowadays has some sort of end-of-the-world theme, but the rise horror-fiction mirrors society’s wide range of real political, economic, and environmental fears and anxieties.

“We're blundering through the first twenty years of another thousand, with absolutely no idea where we're all headed,” says Files. “But I'll tell you this much--as of right now, the prospective future looks a lot more like Panem than it does like Star Trek.”