In which the protagonist does not necessarily win as we expect but their character or spirit prevails against the darkness. Take the movie Coraline - and book - it really is marvellous but also chilling in some ways.
I know what you might say :] , it's just a kids' story Scarlett. Well if so we maybe should freak out a bit more at how devious the stories kids hear are. Nah I don't really believe that, perhaps if we tried to cotton ball and protect everyone less things would be better in this world. Where's the good old fun of playing in the woods and coming back all scratched and bleeding? It was kids fun, and it's a shame it doesn't really still happen.
But stories...ahm, the Coraline one I mentioned, if you haven't watched it (and PLEASE do!!), is about this girl with blue hair who discovers a small door in her new house where she finds a better version of her own world: in which she is neglected. She is seduced into this other world by 'the other mother' and it just gets creepier as the movie goes on. How the other mother wants to take Coraline's soul by sewing buttons into her eyes.
Gothic tales, rather are my favourite. :D Another example is the movie, The Fall, which is one of those odd tales that are extremely violent, bloody but at the same time marvellously beautiful and colourful and fantastical. A grown-up tale disguised in a children's tale. Same as Pan's labyrinth.
There's this...tune that plays in the latter movie, a lullaby, which is so very haunting. A world of strange creatures and dark ghosts and legends backed with a setting of the then-war. It is a hard ending but still satisfying.
What is life without it's downs? It makes the highs so much more sweeter and thrilling.
Oh my twitchy, witchy girl. I think you are so nice. I give you bowls of porridge. I give you bowls of ice... cream. I give you lots of kisses. I give you lots of hugs. But I never give you sandwiches with grease and worms and mung... beans.
(Sung by Coraline's father in said movie, seriously, it stayed with me for weeks!) (The rhyme that is :])
So if you are as enamoured with Gothic Tales as I find myself lately then I shall recommend a new small list of suggestions for you to sample and ponder:
Coraline (movie and graphic novel), The Angel's Game (Carlos Ruiz Zafon: novel), The Fall (movie), Frankenstein, Great Expectation (novels, you know them)
I know there's a lot more Gothic type material out there, and I really have only just discovered a love for it. I also find that most Johnny Depp movies have a very Gothic theme. Take Edward Scissorhands, Secret Window, Alice in Wonderland, Sweeney Todd etc...
But nonetheless I've taken up enough of your time and here is the next instalment of The Beginning of an End.
Much love Darlings,
Miss CLScarlett xx
P.S. There was one time when I was working on one of my novel's and I spent the whole day at a library a few years ago, and hey maybe it was just because I was so immersed in the world I was designing - you know, head off in fairyland and whatnot - and I was sitting in this corner and through the edge of my eye I could have sworn there was an old door built into the wall beside me. It so surprised me that I swung to look, but nothing was there. Maybe I was just imagining it but my gosh it was unnerving.
Hey, maybe our lives aren't complete unless we start seeing doors and windows where they shouldn't be. Like the phrase from the above Coraline Poster:
The braver you are, the more you'll see.
Not to say I'm brave, far from it. However I think that to be brave is not necessarily the absence of fear but the ability to keep walking down that dark road. To keep going, that's bravery.
To be continued...
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