Halloween, with its mix of the macabre and the playful, provides a moment to reflect on how closely life and death are interwoven – especially in the COVID era.
Firefighters walk past the remains of a Catholic church that was on fire, in Morinville, Alta. in June 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
A new Netflix adaptation of Rebecca stars Lily James and Armie Hammer. The novel on which it is based, first published in 1938, explores domestic entrapment.
Australia has a long history of gothic storytelling in literature and cinema. A new podcast series shows how ordinary life can have an edge of malice.
The ‘gothic’ genre was once thought to be inapplicable to Australia. But there is a strong gothic tradition in Australian literature and film, seen in examples like Picnic at Hanging Rock.
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Gothic texts are not all bloodsucking vampires and howling werewolves. An Australian Gothic tradition took root alongside colonisation, influencing writers from Marcus Clarke to Alexis Wright.
The ruins of a church in Belchite, Zaragoza, which was devastated during the Spanish Civil War.
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BBC One’s The Living and the Dead revels in the Victorians’ obsession with the supernatural and the limits of science.
From Horace Walpole to Steven King, Shakespeare has inspired centuries of supernatural Gothic terror.
Macbeth And Banquo, Théodore Chassériau, 1855. Via Wikimedia Commons
Hamlet begins with a ‘night of the living dead’; Banquo turns into a ghost . The Bard had a supernatural streak and it was crucial to the genesis of Gothic literature.
A still from the music video for Lazarus.
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It’s been seven years since Kevin Rudd delivered his apology to Indigenous Australians. On Australia’s stages dramatists continue to explore the ramifications of that apology and colonial history.
Alexander McQueen, It’s Only a Game, S/S 2005.
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