I feel torn about tumblr’s love of southern gothic. There’s a lot of cool stuff in that genre to be admired, but I feel like sometimes those posts (especially when made by people who don’t live in the south- and hey, neither do I) come across as “aren’t poor people spooooky?”
As a born-and-raised southerner, I was surprised to discover this literary convention because a lot of modern southern gothic fantasy written by southerners focuses on old-money families who turn out to be [witches/werewolves/vampires/etc]. I didn’t encounter the “scary redneck mountain people” variant in non-fantastical media until later, and it baffles me because the modern southern elite are TERRIFYING.
Endlessly smiling hypocritical senators in tacky palatial houses with wives who espouse “traditional values” while being poisonously sweet and cutthroat? Those make much more frightening antagonists for gothic heroes/heroines to fight. If you live in the south you will probably never meet backwoods demon sibling-spouses but you’ve definitely seen the void staring out of a “Live, Laugh, Love” picture frame.
ACCURATE
Tumblr inherently misunderstands the function of Southern Gothic literature and has appropriated it for its pervasive almost supernatural poetic style. They don’t understand its themes, why it was written, or how to properly write it. Actual Southern Gothic literature is not as melodramatic as one might think and it isn’t about aesthetic style points. It’s style is actually scathingly sarcastic in a nearly caustic way, and it’s meant to amplify structural violence by turning upstanding members of society into villains. It does make the poor grotesque at time, but in the same novel also redeems them by showing how societal ills have painted an unfair picture.
Southern Gothic is a genre for the poor, the colored, the queer; it’s not about signs that say “Hell is here” or forcing tired stereotypes that fundamentally misunderstand poverty, racism, and homo-/transphobia onto the South in a sweeping sensationalist way. Appropriated Gothic Americana aesthetic takes the voice from Southern authors who want to talk about real systemic wrongs and evils in a way that provides accurate social commentary.
That’s not to say that the neo-gothic Americana style that Tumblr has no merit; it’s just difficult as a southern writer to watch people play around with serious topics for the sake of dramatic aesthetics and not realize that they’re being harmful and sort of mocking a tradition that they haven’t bothered to really study.
30k comments in and somebody finally understood what I was getting at.
DIE HARD was an adaptation of the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, the sequel to another book called The Detective. That one had already been made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra, and when he declined to return for the sequel, the plot was initially reworked to become a sequel to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie COMMANDO instead. Only when he too passed on the project did it get rewritten again into its final form.
DIE HARDER was an adaptation of the novel 58 Minutes, which is by a different author and is entirely unrelated to Nothing Lasts Forever. Characters and plot details were reworked in adaptation so that the movie could function as a DIE HARD sequel.
DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE began life as an original script called Simon Says. It went through several iterations, including one where it was a LETHAL WEAPON sequel, before eventually being reworked to be the third DIE HARD.
(There had earlier been a script specifically written to be the third DIE HARD movie, but Bruce Willis rejected it as too similar to the first movies. That one was later reworked to become SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL.)
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD began as an original script called WW3.com. It too was purchased and rewritten to be a DIE HARD film.
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, the latest movie in the series, was actually written specifically as a sequel. However, its original title was Die Hard 24/7, and it was intended as a crossover with the recently-ended television show 24. When that plan fell apart, the Jack Bauer character was rewritten to be John McClane’s adult son.
Anyway, the moral of the story is to never let yourself get discouraged! Despite unlikely beginnings and early setbacks, you too could someday be rewritten to be a DIE HARD film.
shoutout to @penhales for giving me shared credit on her MASTERPIECE fanfiction for fixing typos and hollering like some kind of large stupid bird whenever she sends me wips
This is me crying at you bc I Love You.
Jade has seriously put in just as much work with this thing as I have and has been super involved in the planning process as well as responsible for all of an upcoming chapter. Also she sometimes illustrates scenes for me and the very first time she did it I actually thought I was having a stroke, but I was just overwhelmed by how rad it was.
I think what sums it up best is just looking at the covers most editions the book and the films have, because Dolores is so sexualized.
What was written as a complex psychological horror novel is still being billed as erotic romance, and I’m sure Nabokov is repeatedly rolling over in his grave like a rotisserie chicken over it.
What comments did Nabokov ever say about the book anyway? I hear the book portrays a pedophile in a sympathetic view and that the author never commented on the book.
It was the book Nabokov was most proud of, but also the most difficult for him to write. He’d been trying to tell a story about pedophilia in a number of ways beforehand with a few shorter pieces, but felt like he needed to write a full novel. It took him over five years and his wife actually helped to convince him not to abandon it.
Because the book is narrated by the abuser and not the victim, we get him as the main character. Even though it’s made clear that he’s an evil main character and a very unreliable narrator, a lot of people think that just because he’s the protagonist readers are meant to sympathize with him.
Also you don’t necessarily sympathize with Humbert, in Nabokov’s defense. Understand him? Sure. Sympathize? Probably not really because even with his weak justifications for things, he’s still an abuser, and you can easily recognize him as such.
Penhales 