Why We Love the Haunted Mansion
19th Century Appropriations and the Topic of Death in Modern Gothic Narratives: Edward Gorey, Walt Disney, and Tim Burton
We love the Haunted Mansion as an entertaining dark ride, but does it also resonate with us for deeper reasons? K. R. Bailey suggests that it answers a fundamental need to approach the topic of death in a manner we find comfortable in what has been termed a "death-denying" culture. The author reaches into the Victorian era and its Celebration of Death to identify symbols that are close enough to have a dark meaning, but distant enough not to threaten, and discusses their use in the works of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, and Disney's Haunted Mansion ride.
References to WWLTHM
The conversation continues . . .
Since defending my dissertation in 2012, I’ve heard the conversation about confronting death grow apace, in philosophy, in medicine, in the arts, in popular culture. The breadth and depth of the discourse is astonishing. The USA is shifting into a greater willingness to accept and discuss death and its effect on life.
Some of the discourse is direct, grounded in philosophy. Todd May refers to death as “the most important fact about us” due to its ability to “negate every other aspect of our lives” -- a reality that structures how we relate to everything else.
Courses, scholarship, symposiums, and conferences on death and dying, as well as on Gothic, have continued to increase in number.
And popular culture reflects a growing interest in the topic of death as well as various expressions of Gothic. I don’t believe it will ever be truly mainstream; it would burn like a vampire exposed to sunlight. But it is unquestionably more popular as time goes by, in literature, film, and television.
Enjoy perusing these subjects for recommendations, discussions of old and new Gothic expressions, and various types of the charmingly macabre.
Gothic
Death and Culture
Dracula
