The Gothic Today

Examples of the gothic in contemporary culture can be found in many different television shows today; The Vampire Diaries, Sleepy Hollow, Bates Motel, The Walking Dead, and American Horror Story. The difference between using gothic styles now vs. back then is it’s a whole new ball game. Nowadays people don’t want to see the typical vampire or the old Frankenstein story. Do we enjoy them? Yes but now we want more. We want a new plot line, a new dramatic twist, a new background story, a new way to kill the monster etc. A new theme in T.V. shows is, understanding how the monster came to be a monster. The audience loves a good juicy background story that helps us sympathize with the monster. Bates Motel would be a good example of this, in this show we explore the origin story of psycho killer Norman Bates. I think it’s interesting how we see the transformation from a normal boy into a psycho killer, who kills for the fun of it. A big change with gothic style is this idea of how a human can become a monster too. A monster isn’t simply created in a lab or created by a werewolf bite.

Sometimes a person chooses to become a monster, in American Horror Story we see this theme a lot. Ryan Murphy explores this idea of how people’s everyday choices can be evil & monster like as well. Ryan Murphy also likes to use creepy settings for the seasons, circus, bayou of new Orleans, haunted house, asylums and hotels. The most recent season was freak show, the evil monster in this show was a clown and a human. The clown became a monster because everyone made fun of him, the human was also treated in a way that was not respectable. This is how Ryan Murphy explore the gothic by showing us what creates a monster.

Overall gothic themes are presented in many different television shows today in contemporary culture. The traditional monster story has changed quite a bit over the years.