The Gothic’s ‘Others’ on the Screen: Variants, mutations, connections

Abstract

This paper looks at some of the most famous and successful Gothic cinematic productions that belong to the horror genre, analyzing the work of several worldwide acknowledged directors, many of whom dared to take the challenge of adapting different types of written discourse, from comic books to great pieces of classic literature, into films. The research was carried out in order to study some of the most representative archetypes standing out from their environment as outsiders and the ways in which they are depicted as “the other”, not in the strict sense of social constructions of race, gender or others, but using this term in order to refer to the elements that originated from the Gothic style, i.e. supernatural entities (vampires, werewolves and zombies) and variants of them. Furthermore, the present article also presents the mutations and connections that are found between the variants chronologically, in order to underscore the evolution of the main templates. Taking the view that there is a lot of ground to be covered on this subject matter, the findings are presented in the light of various theoretical materials that range from reviews to encyclopedias.