Toward an Aesthetic of the Post-Industrial Gothic
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Date
2020-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
This paper seeks to establish the genre of the Post-Industrial Gothic as one wherein gothic tropes are utilized to express the personal and environmental trauma that comes as a result of deindustrialization. To establish this genre, I outline the core tropes of the Post-Industrial Gothic through an examination of the history of the literary Gothic, America's industrial past and post-industrial present, and several films and video games including Kentucky Route Zero, Night in the Woods, Alien, and Annihilation that fall under this genre. This work suggests that media that falls within the Post-Industrial Gothic may afford us new ways of examining America's industrial past in light of the ways in which its inherent trauma still haunts the present.
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Keywords
gothic, deindustrialization, video games, narrative, film