Description
Unlike lots of literary genres, like satire, tragicomedy, myth, or graphic novel, all of which tide in and out of popularity depending on the decade, the Gothic novel has seen publication in nearly every year since the mid-1750’s! You’re probably familiar with Gothic horror pieces like Frankenstein and Dracula: but have you ever thought about Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a Gothic novel, or even the adolescent series, Goosebumps? The Gothic genre relies above all on mood and feeling: a combination of foreboding and drama. Gothic works from Dracula to Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find do not centralize upon fantastical characters (i.e., figures whizzing about on brooms) but instead upon the darkness of humanity: the murky struggles that people face daily, within themselves, and within their communities. Whether it be the unexpected challenges of falling in love with a vampire or the deeply-rooted, sorrowful twistedness of a dysfunctional family, the Gothic pulls from the everyday and makes it somber, dramatic, …and monstrous. In this Challenge, your team is asked to create the basic parameters of a Gothic novel – you will write and present the opening paragraphs of your proposed Gothic story – then write and shoot a scene, as based on three tenets of the genre, set in your fictionalized Gothic universe.
