Customer Reviews

Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

Edmundson has got hold of a powerful idea here: that strategies and characters of Gothic literature have burst out of the realm of fiction and infiltrated our public life. While he sometimes pushes his broadly defined notion of the Gothic too far (it sometimes it seems as if everything belongs to the realm of the Gothic depending on his say so), for the most part he does stick to his original definition of a hero/villain, haunted structures, seduced and screaming heroines and the occasional heroic rescuer.

He suggests, quite believably, that the powerful Gothic themes, have been used by Marx (the capitalist as vampire), and by Freud (humanity haunted by the past, in the grip of infantile memory which dooms us to behavior we can never fully escape except with the help of modernist magicians like Freud). Moving from the talk show (where families reenact Gothic scripts wherein hero/villains describe their inexplicably destructive behavior without understanding or regret as their families hurl abuse at them), to movies (pick just about anything including Disney films), Edmundson strikes at the root of the malevolent vine of the Gothic, a vine which snakes through our political life - Gothic monsters such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, through our social life - our collective perception that we are in danger even in the most benign circumstances.

He does see hope for using the Gothic the way it was intended: to throw off the dead hand of the past, originally the aristocratic, then the plutocratic, or therapeutic, now bureaucratic hand of power and discipline. His writings on Freud are particularly incisive on the therapeutic hand. Here's a quote: "Freud, in his most resolutely Gothic moods, believed that we never forget anything, so that every past moment is stored somewhere in the psyche... He also thought, at least at times, that *any* negative event that befalls us -- no matter how apparently contingent -- is in some measure the result of our guilty need for punishment, our wish to self-destruct. Edmundson also notes that Foucualt and Derrida and other "new" critics favor the Gothic as well. And if you think of Foucault's evocative prose style, and Derrida's "terrorism," Edmundson has a point, a minor point, but a point nonetheless.

The Cold War Gothic has now been replaced by the Terrorist Gothic, the apocalyptic version of Gothicism. George W. Bush whips up the external apocalyptic Gothic, while at the same time we're being terrorized internally by the second variety of the Gothic - the "terror" gothic - in this case, the recession terror gothic. The Gothic can be a powerful tool for critiquing the status quo. The problem is, it has become the status quo, and, unlike "healthy" Gothic horror, it never opens out into new territory now. Instead, we're all doomed, doomed, doomed!. Edmundson notes a few exceptions: the first Nightmare on Elm Street by Wes Craven for one. I heartily agree on that score!

Mark Edmundson has created a book (really a series of intertangled essays) on angels, sadomasochism and the culture of gothic (as goes its sub-title). Nightmare on Main Street is a fascinating look at a dark, disturbing, interesting subject. The joy in this book, and sometimes its frustration, is the wide range from two centuries old gothic novels to Forrest Gump, Oprah and Iron John/Women Who Run With Wolves. The connections are not always clear but the writing will carry the reader along this weird academic roller coaster ride as they nod along in agreement (for me particulary the Forrest Gump section) or they shake their head in exasperation or frustration. Either way it will get the reader thinking of everything around them in terms of gothic or angel (and these words are very loosely defined in order to create a net big enough to catch all of Edmundson's concepts). This book was an intelligent read.

In his deceptively concise work on "angels, sadomasochism, and the culture of the gothic," Nightmare on Main Street (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997), Mark Edmunson argues that, pace the late, great Carl Sagan, we do indeed live in a "demon-haunted world," albeit one haunted perhaps by demons of our own making. Edmundson's seductively convincing claim is that, two centuries down the line from the genre's origins, we have come to narrate our world through the conventions of gothic fiction. Not only our literature (horror, but also such works as Nobel laureate Tony Morrison's Beloved), our cinema (the slasher film, legitimated by the Academy Award given The Silence of the Lambs), but even our news is generically gothic (l'affaire O.J. Simpson). We--individually, socially, culturally--are haunted by psychology, ideology (cf. Terry Castle's "Phantasmagoria" in The Female Thermometer (NY: Oxford UP, 1995), as well as her claims for Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho as a source of modern subjectivity, e.g., her introduction to the recent Oxford World Classics edition), and our resurgent gothicism is as much an epiphenomenon of millenial anxiety as its emergence was of the Terror of the French Revolution. Interestingly, however, Edmundson's own narrative takes typically gothic twist, doubling this evil twin with the "facile transcendence," as he quite rightly names it, of new age spiritualism, exemplified by the recent mania for angels and such middlebrow feelgood productions as Forrest Gump. While such tail-biting is somewhat problematic, Nightmare on Main Street is nonetheless an ambitious, suggestive, and, provisionally, convincing work of cultural analysis. Related works of interest include Harold Bloom's Omens of Millenium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (NY: Riverhead, 1996); Teresa Goddu's Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation (NY: Columbia UP, 1997); and the collection of essays/exhibition catalog, Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth-Century Art, edited by Christoph Grunenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).

For someone who begins by insulting horror fans as "losers," Mark Edmundson has produced a work that is surprisingly as insightful as it is presumptive. Nightmare on Main Street is essentially a long essay, broken into three inter-related sections. His premise is bold: that we live in a culture saturated by the Gothic. The problem with his argument is glaring: his definition of "Gothic" is extremely broad.

"America is a nation of extremes," he wrote, where the pessimistic and the optimistic, in equally unrealistic forms, constantly battle over the hearts and minds of the American public. On one hand stands A Nightmare on Elm Street and Oprah, and on the other side stands Forrest Gump.

It might surprise you to find Oprah Winfrey and Freddy Krueger in the same category. According to Mark Edmundson, the single most important aspect of the Gothic is the hero-villain who does wrong, but is, in the end, internally conflicted. Since the guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show often satisfy that description, Oprah joined the ranks of the Gothic. So did news stories about the O.J. Simpson case, for that matter.

Therein lies the problem with Nightmare on Main Street. Edmundson considers any portrayal of a duel nature in humanity to be Gothic. Never mind the elements of setting, mood, or the supernatural that make Gothic literature and film so unique. Those are all pushed aside in favor of the broadest possible characterization. This problem seems so glaring I am surprised that neither Richard Rorty nor Michael Pollan, two scholars who I greatly respect and who Edmundson credited for helping to shape his argument, didn't catch it right away. Just because something shares an aspect with Gothic literature and film doesn't make it Gothic as well.

Aside from that rather glaring problem, Nightmare on Main Street is an entertaining and engaging work. Edmundson's observations occasionally made me laugh out loud. Describing Scar, the main villain of the popular `90s cartoon The Lion King, he wrote, "Scar's voice, courtesy of Jeremy Irons, is that of a cultivated, world-weary, gay man. He sounds like Gore Vidal with a significant hangover." (pg. 45)

His description of our therapeutic culture is dead on, beginning with Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump, a movie that rewarded sweet and innocent ignorance, was, ultimately, our answer to Nightmare on Elm Street. "Forrest Gump played large in America because it worked as a vacation, a few hours away from more pressing Gothic fears," he explained. (pg. 76) In a culture so saturated with death, destruction, and fear, Forrest Gump reassured baby boomers that despite all the tumult, everything would work out in the end, as long as you viewed everything through a detached, sentimental lens.

In his third section, Edmundson proposed that naked sadomasochism is what results when the culture of Gothic goes uncontested. "At the core of every Gothic plot is the S&M scenario: victim, victimizer, terrible place, torment," he wrote. (pg. 133) The growth of S&M culture in America is therefore the direct result of our inability to effectively counter the Gothic.

Edmundson concludes on a down note, with no proposition regarding how to counter the Gothic, other than that Forrest Gump and religion won't do. He left it to his readers to discover a culturally redeeming art form. As a fan of the Gothic, I hope he has to wait for a long time.

Professor Edmundson's book explores some of the darker issues in our culture and the various ways some artists and others have tried to cope with gothic "forces". For an academic book, it is very clearly written and witty. I learned a lot from it and found it very thought provoking. Edmundson notes that a few years ago he went on a prolonged horror movie binge, so his "culture" is probably slanted in a direction others may not find so familiar. However, I think that readers interested in horror and of an intellectual bent will love the book. I also think that psychotherapists might find this book quite worthwhile. There are some exceptionally clear presentations of some of Freud's concepts and, in my view, the book also is a meditation on trying to deal with human suffering and our attempts to find hope and redemption as individuals, both psychologicly and spiritually. I found this to be a rewarding book and highly recommend it.

Thought-provoking, if you can handle the academic style--but like most academic books that wander into the field of popular culture, the references to highfalutin stuff aren't totally matched by a thorough familiarity with the "low end" material. Mneh. Too many sweeping claims.

I asked myself why this fine book generated so many negative reviews on Amazon, and I have concluded that the answer is - because it is an academic book. It is a book on critical and literary theory (although it deals with horror and Gothicism).
Unfortunately the title of the book has misled people to believe it another Joe Bob Briggs type of book, which it definitely isn't. Having said that you will find comments on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween in "Nightmare on Main Street" but those comments deal with what's under the surface in these films (hidden meanings).
Some people (mostly non-academics) will find some of those comments labored and dry, but hey I am a big horror buff and an academic and I love Edmundson's book. He makes some incredibly intelligent observations about Romanticism, Gothic literature and horror films. Also if you ever wanted to understand Freud, Derrida and Nietzsche, Edmundson offers some of the best summaries I have come across on these great thinkers.
This is a great mind at work, and the connections may sometimes seem stretched but Edmundson will always tie things up (often with a twist) and leave you gasping for more.

This is a book I would recommend to be left on the shelf. Edmundson sees a society hurtling toward overt sadomasochism ans completely obsessed with the Gothic. His view is very narrow, and poorly supported. His opinion that Scar, from Disney's The Lion King, was a gay child molestor who killed Mufasa because of Simba's Oedipus complex is evidence that he does not truly know what he is talking about. If you are interested in a book full of pessimistic ideas and obscure references, by all means read this. If you would prefer a more complete explanation of a valid idea, try something else.

I only made it up to p. 45 for a paper I was writing on "Carrie." Along with a pompous tone, I didn't find this added anything concrete to what I know about horror flicks. The author might have found the Main Street and nightmare metaphors personally powerful for some reason, but they were idiosyncratic and I didn't find them in any of my other horror movie secondary sources. Not interested in having a conversation with myself, I moved on. Also, I'm put off by the author's need to see violence, sex, and greed in almost every detail of these films. Even Carrie and other horror movies have their moments of reflection and thoughtfulness that the author was too quick to suppress.

The first exasperating aspect of this book is its overambitiousness. Through some divine insight, it purports to explain ALL of American culture (almost) through the trope of the gothic. Forrest Gump, Tonya Harding, Walt Whitman, Wordsworth. They're all in there. Moreover, it uses broad brush strokes that hide more than they reveal. Its second offensive characteristic is a tone that's self-righteous. It stands far above the foibles of all these pathetically mortal characters.