Exploring Gothic Fantasy

As both of us are English Literature students, we felt we could apply our knowledge of the subject when creating our artists' image. Our A level English Literature focuses on Gothic Literature, we looked at our texts Wuthering Heights, Dr Faustus and especially The bloody chambers for inspirations.

We looked at the position of women specifically in the Gothic.

In Wuthering Heights we focused on the older Catherine and their position within the novel. The first time the reader meets Catherine in the novel is as a ghost. We adapted this idea by having our artist Georgia appear everywhere throughout the video but not always seen by the other actors in the video. Furthermore, Catherine is described as a passionate character, we thought we could try to portray this through her lyrics as they discuss her strong desires for her 'Fantasy boy'. Moreover, like Catherine and Heathcliff, our character is unable to be with the man she wants to be with.

Dr Faustus only contained two women one of which was used as a victim of the male gaze. We subverted this idea by not showing women as sex objects but illustrating them in two ways of which we believed were more plausible characters. Our subversion was also due to the modern interpretation we took for our music video. We had one artist in brighter and with more or a 'girly girl' image, this was done by using a huge emphasis on the colour pink. Our other artist was shown as a darker side through the use of dark colours to show a contrast between the two. This idea was influence by the aforementioned music video by Paramore for their song Misery Business.

The Bloody Chambers had a wider exploration on women. The women in the fairytales were often the desires of men however, with the modern interpretation we approach our music video with and the lyrics, we made the man the object of desire. In the stories ' The Lady of the Love House', 'Werewolf' and 'The Bloody Chambers' are the only three stories within the book in which the female is able to take control and become more powerful than the male. In the other stories though, (also in parts of the Bloody Chamber story) the women is a victim or a spectator to other acts of heroism or violence. This suggests that the woman is powerless and inferior to the males. Our protagonist does not act or win over the man she wants, but watches him and sits on the side lines throughout.