When I started looking into areas of research, I began to look at something related to literature and possibly think about the horror genre, as it was the most interesting topic I could think of. I had begun thinking about slasher films, but scratched that as there was minimal literature related to it. I had then moved on to trying to correlate real life true crime to how crime was shown in literature, but I lost interest while trying to start research. In the midst of this brainstorming, I thought about analyzing Frankenstein to its many remakes, but looking at it from a horror aspect. This is when I focused in on psychological horror, at first wanting to look at its evolution over time from the original Frankenstein to its many remakes but it was difficult to decide which remakes to work with as well as wether it would be able to be generalizable. So I decided to look into more classical novels that fell into that genre, which led me to gothic revival and the re-introduction of gothic literature. I started to hone down into gothic and decided to look into 8 of the novels so that I could cover most areas of gothic literature.
Beginning with the choosing of the novels, I had used the following parameters:
The novels chosen had to be described as a gothic novel on multiple sites (ie. good reads) and had to be from the 1800s
The movies had to follow the general plot of the books they originate from, had to be released after 1990 - now, must be streamable (as in available through Netflix or Hulu or any other main streaming service)
Leading to the selection of the 8 novels; Frankenstein, Picture of Dorian Grey, Wuthering Heights, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Hunch-Back of Notre Dame, Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey, and Dracula. And their movie translations; Victor Frankenstein 2015, Dorian Grey 2009, Wuthering Heights 201, Sleepy Hollow 1999, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996, Jane Eyre 2011, Northanger Abbey 2007, Dracula 2000. These movies were chosen with disregard of their ratings.
I will be looking to code each book to a certain set of themes including the following: Catharsis, Gender Socialization Theory, Excitation Transfer, Curiosity and Fascination/Para-normal, Sensation Seeking, Romanticism. I plan to track the themes by using different colors per theme to take note of specific scenes in each movie through time stamps, so that I may analyze the repetition of each theme. Besides this quantitative aspect, I will be analyzing each instance I find these themes in my own words, which I will use qualitatively to analyze the themes and how they are presented and drawing conclusions based on that.
While looking at gothic as a genre isn't an new concept, I hope to show how ideas of fear shown in psychological horror themes has changed over time and how that shows a change in society as a whole. The information I hope to find is mainly qualitative, so that I may be able to discuss the implications of the possible changes or continuities I may find while researching. Overall I hope to utilize what I find to further look at how this affects society and gothic as a whole.
Furthermore, this is relevant to the world of literature and film, showing how modern adaptations properly represent the ideas that are being presented in their source material, helping to create a better appreciation for the work of authors and film-makers to recreate the gothic genre accurately.
As I start to conduct my research, I know that I will be able to answer many questions and hopefully be able to find the conclusions I hoped to investigate and answer through my research.