thumb|300px|[[Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).]]

Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, music, film, theatre, and television that is heavily influenced by Gothic elements and set in the American South. Southern Gothic fiction highlights violence and cruelty as features of Southern culture, often through characters whose place in the social order exposes them to such treatment. Common motifs include racism, gender and sexual difference, poverty and disability. Where Gothic literature depicted the intrusion of the barbaric past into the Enlightenment, Southern Gothic depicts the persistence of social trauma in the reconstructed South. The genre arose in reaction to romantic portrayals influenced by Lost Cause myths and the ideology of American exceptionalism.

History

Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South first appeared during the ante- and post-bellum 19th century in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and in the sardonic representations of Mark Twain. The genre was consolidated, however, in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged in a new and powerful form of social critique. Like the original artistic term "Gothic", the term "Southern Gothic" was at first pejorative and dismissive. In 1935, Ellen Glasgow critiqued the writings of Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, and the "Southern Gothic School", stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares". The connotation was at first so negative that Eudora Welty said: "They better not call me that!"

The images of Great Depression photographer Walker Evans are seen to evoke the visual depiction of the Southern Gothic; Evans claimed: "I can understand why Southerners are haunted by their own landscape". Another noted Southern Gothic photographer was surrealist Clarence John Laughlin, who photographed cemeteries, plantations, and other abandoned places throughout the American South (primarily Louisiana) for nearly 40 years. A resurgence of Southern Gothic themes in contemporary fiction has been identified in the work of figures like Barry Hannah, Joe R. Lansdale, Helen Ellis, and Cherie Priest.

  • Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
  • This Property Is Condemned (1966)
  • Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973)
  • Macon County Line (1974)
  • The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
  • Southern Comfort (1981)
  • Swamp Thing (1982)
  • Angel Heart (1987)
  • Edward Scissorhands (1990)
  • The Reflecting Skin (1990)
  • Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
  • Storyville (1992)
  • Flesh and Bone (1993)
  • Interview with the Vampire (1994)
  • Heaven's Prisoners (1995)
  • A Family Thing (1996)
  • The Apostle (1997)
  • George Washington (2000)
  • Red Dirt (2000)
  • The Accountant (2001)
  • Big Fish (2003)
  • The Ladykillers (2004)
  • Undertow (2004)
  • The Skeleton Key (2005)
  • The Reaping (2007)
  • That Evening Sun (2009)
  • The Killer Inside Me
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
  • Jayne Mansfield's Car (2012)
  • Lawless (2012)
  • Mud (2012)
  • Jug Face (2013)
  • Beautiful Creatures (2013)
  • Jessabelle (2014)
  • Little Accidents (2014)
  • Nocturnal Animals (2016)
  • The Beguiled (2017)
  • Mudbound (2017)
  • The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
  • The Dark and the Wicked (2020)
  • The Devil All the Time (2020)
  • What Josiah Saw (2021)
  • Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
  • Appalachian Dog (2025)
  • Sinners (2025)
  • Violent Ends (2025)
  • Is God Is (2026)

Television series

  • Justified (2010–15)
  • Rectify (2013–16)
  • True Detective, seasons 1 (2014) and 3 (2019)
  • Preacher (2016–2019)
  • Outcast (2016–2018)
  • True Blood (2008–2014)
  • Sharp Objects (2018)
  • Call of Juarez (2006)
  • South of Midnight (2025)

Music

Southern Gothic (also known as Gothic Americana, or Dark Country) is a genre of American music rooted in early jazz, gospel, Americana, gothic rock and post-punk. Its lyrics often focus on dark subject matter. The genre shares thematic connections with the Southern Gothic genre of literature, and indeed the parameters of what makes something Gothic Americana appears to have more in common with literary genres than traditional musical ones. Songs often examine poverty, criminal behavior, religious imagery, death, ghosts, family, lost love, alcohol, murder, the devil, and betrayal.

Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (1982) was influenced by the writings of Flannery O'Connor. Athens, Georgia–based alternative rock band R.E.M. displayed a Southern Gothic influence with their third album, Fables of the Reconstruction (1985). J.D. Wilkes, frontman of the band Legendary Shack Shakers, described Southern Gothic music as "[taking] an angle that there's something grotesque and beautiful in the traditions of the South, the backdrop of Southern living." Johnny Cash's American Recordings series, produced by Rick Rubin, a producer best known for working with hip hop and heavy metal artists, was described as having a gothic country sound and image; amidst covers of songs by non-country artists such as Depeche Mode, Danzig and Nine Inch Nails, as well as traditional and World War II-era songs, Cash's album series lyrically derived from haunting, despaired themes such as death, and recurring religious themes in the form of dark gospel recordings. Ethel Cain's music has been described as "Southern Gothic Pop."

See also

References

  • The Southern Literary Trail website features the major fiction writers from the South during the 20th Century