1. There Will Be Blood
1.1. Combination of greed, religion, and family
1.1.1. Eli Sunday - portrays this arrogance and superiority, taking the authority of being the “chosen” to get his way, even calling his father “lazy and stupid”, “Do you think God is going to save you for being stupid? He doesn’t save stupid people.” Negotiating with William Bandy, Daniel is forced to become a member of Eli’s church and must submit to the cruelty of declaring that he has abandoned his child. Daniel brings H.W. back, but Daniel never returns to the man he once was.
1.1.2. Daniel tells H.W. that he is in fact an orphan that he was using to get sympathy. Enter Eli Sunday - to save him or to cement his destruction? Daniel finally gets revenge on Eli, making him confess to being a false prophet. and telling him that Paul was the good son. Dark scene. Movie ends with Daniel saying, "I'm finished" reminiscent of God after creation, "It is finished."
1.1.3. After H.W. loses his hearing, Daniel changes. Before he was tolerant of the church and even Eli was just an annoyance to him. After, he becomes hardened and angry. He wonders if Eli or God has cursed him for not allowing the rig to be properly blessed. H.W. sets the fire intentionally, so Daniel sends him away to school, but it breaks him further and he becomes paranoid, emotional, mean, and unreasonable. When H.W. comes back, he is able to communicate with his teacher and Mary through sign language but Daniel never bothers to learn to “flap his hands about”.
1.1.4. Daniel is trying to allow his newly found brother, Henry, to become a real part of his family, but when he finds that Henry is an imposter, and that his real brother is dead, he feels abandoned and betrayed again. After killing the imposter, he has access to his brother’s diary.
2. Presentations
2.1. Jordan
2.1.1. women being another "other" used in Gothic Literature. I've always found it funny/odd that women were always portrayed this way either an example of sinful temptation or a timid, weak being who is always screaming, crying, and fainting. This implies that the only control women have over men is the access to their bodies. Even in modern literature and movies this is often the case and sometimes these characteristics are attached to homosexual men. It creates a stereotype that should be challenge
2.2. Frida
2.2.1. historical horror relating to marginalized groups, I'm at a loss. I'm not really a fan of horror and so I don't know for sure, but I have heard that Antebellum is definitely an example
2.3. Serina
2.3.1. communal scapegoating. By blaming him, they don't have to take responsibility for their own sins. The idea of demonic possession is the same. It allows them to say - 'the devil made me do it'. I think you will find that the 'fleeing female' is still much to common, even in the stories we have studied this semester. In Hill House, it was always the father and the oldest son (Hugh and Steven Crain) that went into the house to protect the women.
2.4. Ryan
2.4.1. easy to overlook Ireland and Scotland as colonized countries. The lack of a racial differentiation between Ireland and Scotland created a different experience than the colonialism of many other regions. Their proximity to Britian gave them a unique experience, combining the struggles of colonialism with the 'brother vs. brother' experience of a civil war. These walls that were built increased the regional gothic distinction. The different countries' cultures continued to develop separately instead of melting into a single culture.
2.5. Steven
2.5.1. I prefer Anne William’s argument. The human instinct to organize makes us want to classify these stories, but other than library organization, all it does is give the reader a preconceived notion about the nature (and often the ending) of the story. We know that in a romance two characters will fall in love and that at the end of the mystery story, we will discover the culprit. I went to the Austin book fair a few weeks ago and I bought a book wrapped in brown paper labeled “Blind Date with a Novel”. I was so excited that for once, I had bought a book without judging it by the title, the cover, or even the author. No idea what I was getting. As far as the regional genres, one can be Irish whether they live in Ireland or China, and I was still Texan when I lived in Montana. (Between my accent and my shivering, everyone could tell). For a book to be considered ‘Southern Gothic’, I feel that the characters should embrace the attitudes and characteristics of the region. The question isn’t whether they are eating at a restaurant in Manhattan or at grandma’s house in Alabama – the question is do they know what collard greens are and how to cook them with lard?
3. Let The Dead Bury Their Dead
3.1. 1. “In her world she had been expected to be tearless, patient, comforting to other members of the family . . . Magisterially she had done her duty” page 57. Maggie knows the expectations of her community and doesn’t want to fall short of her designed role
3.1.1. Representative of many of the women in the book, ‘expected’ is a theme
3.1.2. Refers to Mable too
4. Readings
4.1. Grit Lit Poetry
4.1.1. “The Day Andy Griffith Died” – I remember when he died. I also remember watching the show (on reruns, I’m not that old) My mother from Alabama, my father from Texas and my great-grandparents with a farm in Missouri where we spent each summer. The loss of Andy is representative of the loss of that lifestyle, but its not truly gone. I still check the cattle every day and harvest, cook, can, butcher and freeze. I still read my books down by the creek and fish barefoot. It’s less common now, and I also know that “this century’s all about city speed”, but I, too, “claim allegiance to rural plots”
4.2. Magnolia Gothic
4.2.1. aggressive protection – a strange way to describe Munchausen syndrome
4.3. Cholo Gothic
4.3.1. the past meets the present – what has changed? War, murder, violence – these things are not new. Humans have never been civilized, that’s a gothic myth.
4.4. Indian Gothic
4.4.1. “Why not pause for an eternity where there is reason to pause? Why stay an extra minute when there is reason to leave?” Words to live by – we spend to much time just stumbling along, accepting what we come across. Everything you do should be an intentional choice – everywhere you go, everyone you spend time with, etc.
4.5. Suburban Gothic
4.5.1. I would love to see this image at night under a full moon.
4.5.2. Pictures like this remind me of the book 1984
4.6. Gothic in Multimodel Media
4.6.1. “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” Clay/dirt is the most primal beginning of the human body
4.7. I See Your Regional Gothic
4.7.1. “You know it is breathtaking and beautiful, so striking that you are not sure you believe it even though you’ve never known your senses to lie. It is beautiful and yet there is something creeping at the edge of your vision, floating behind you and twinkling like a distant star, always blinking out of existence as soon as you turn your head.” The gasp of beauty and the sadness that envelops you when you miss it or it disappears. You know there’s so much beauty in the world and you want it all, but then you look around you and only see concrete and litter.