Re: the "female gothic" (2 responses)

From: Angela Smith <[email protected]>

I'm not sure if you're trying to avoid the supernatural, but most contemporary vampire narratives play with some version of this trope - in film, most obviously right now, the Twilight series (not exactly film art, but a good example of the continuing power of the female gothic in the popular imagination); on TV, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and more current successors/imitators such as True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. The woman often doesn't initially know that the man to whom she is attracted is a vampire, but when she learns his identity she still desperately wants to be with him, even as he acknowledges he may be unable to control his blood-lust and thus may hurt or kill her.

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From: "Lubelski, Lance Ray" <[email protected]>

Hi, 

All of the Twilight films 
Donnie Darko 
In Time 

Lance Lubelski 
Univ. of Illinois 

> From: [email protected]
> 
> One inflection of the "female gothic," in which the young heroine falls in with - or in love with - an attractive but menacing and mysterious man, has been extensively analyzed by feminist critics who use it as a way of exploring female subjectivity  . . . films in this genre became very popular in the forties, although its cinematic ancestors go back at least as far as hitchcock's 1926 LODGER   . . .
> 
> but i'm having trouble [no doubt a memory lapse] thinking of more contemporary films that might fall into this category . . . since i want to use these films in a course,  in which students consider anything released before last thursday as ancient history that has nothing to do with their own much more enlightened world, i'd welcome suggestions for VERY  recent films that i might use
> 
> thanks in advance for any suggestions
> 
> mike