Fashioning Gothic bodies

Spooner, Catherine

doi:10.7765/9781526125590

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Wheatley summarizes Farber's framework as "a tension between a glossy surface and degraded interior " (2006: 9) and Catherine Spooner's (2004) work on Goth fashion also emphasizes the tension between surface and depth (through fabric that is ripped or layered or contains contrasting surfaces such as fishnet, PVC, chiffon, leather and so forth). Misty's dramatic page layouts also emphasize surface over depth, where acute angles and circular panels disrupt the implied grid of the comics page as identified by Groensteen, and broken borders exploit the illusion of depth.…”

Section: Gothic Style and Aestheticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misty, Spellbound and the lost Gothic of British girls’ comics

Round

2017

Palgrave Commun

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This article is a case study of the 1970s British girls' comics Spellbound (DC Thomson, 1976Thomson, -1977 and Misty (IPC, 1978-1980. These mystery anthology comics followed the more famous American horror comics from publishers like EC Comics -but were aimed at pre-teen girls. The article situates these comics with respect to Gothic critical theory and within the wider landscape of British girls' comics. Firstly, it closely considers and compares the structure and content of their stories with respect to theories of the terror and horror Gothic. It discovers that both comics offer similar fare, with a subversive streak that undercuts established horror archetypes. The article then looks closely at both titles' aesthetics and their use of the page to draw comparisons. It uses comics theory and Gothic cinematic theory to demonstrate that the appearance of Misty is more strongly Gothic than the aesthetic of Spellbound. Finally, it considers a selection of stories from both comics and analyses their common themes using Gothic critical theory. It argues that both comics rework Gothic themes into new forms that are relevant to their pre-teen and teenage readers. It concludes by summarising the study's findings and suggesting that these comics offer a "Gothic for Girls" that is part cautionary tale and part bildungsroman. This article is published as part of a collection on Gothic and horror.

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Section: Gothic Style and Aestheticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misty, Spellbound and the lost Gothic of British girls’ comics

Round

2017

Palgrave Commun

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“…Harvey's costume as authenticating process constructs her White Chalk persona in line with Spooner's (2004) model for Gothic bodies in that the dress casts her as a historically specific subject. Forming part of this process and thus enriching the performance of the Gothic, explained the dresses were adapted from late eighteenth-century patterns and constructed from second-hand materials, and the images for WHITE CHALK, THE DEVIL and WHEN UNDER ETHER were photographed using long exposures, resulting in Harvey having to sit still as would have been the case in early portrait photography.…”

Section: Performing the Gothicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If Harvey's costume and the marketing images are gothic texts, then both can be framed as 'the emptying out of meaning into surface… countered by a pull towards interiority' (Spooner 2004). As Spooner states, gothic garments articulate gothic concerns such as insanity, haunting and spectrality, styling the body as Gothic subject.…”

Section: Performing the Gothicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sleeve notes: PJ Harvey’s Gothic world

Gardner

Flint-Nicol

2016

Studies in Costume &Amp; Performance

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Leg-of-mutton sleeves, Victorian mourning feathers, stiff, white governess dresses; Harvey’s costumes for her performances on stage and in music video for the three albums White Chalk (2007), Let England Shake (2011) and The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016) position her as English Gothic. Referencing literary and cinematic readings of the term, this article argues that Harvey performs an English, Victorian Gothic. We argue that she recuperates the female Gothic for contemporary times allowing it resonance beyond its literary and cinematic beginnings. Drawing on some of those literary and cinematic debates on the Gothic and the eerie, we consider how her costumes across these albums showcase ‘remnants’ both of the past and, of the forgotten. Harvey stitches those stories into her performances, allowing her to present spectres of both the past and present in the form of the forgotten, excluded and misunderstood.

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“…As the corsets expanded in a horizontal way, women were restricted to great extent; the only way for women to go through the door was to go sideways (Glasscock, 2004; Victoria&Albert Website, 2016). Catherine Spooner (2004) argues that in the late eighteenth century (1790s) women fashion in Europe was revolutionized by the sudden decline of corset as Marie Antoinette introduced the "Chemise Dress" for her daywear. It was a loose long undergarment usually worn as underwear; however, she wore it as outside dress without any corsetry.…”

Section: Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cultural History of the Corset and Gendered Body in Social and Literary Landscapes

Erkal¹

2017

Eur. j. lang. lit. stud.

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This study centers on the significance, uses and changes of the corset in the Western culture and literature through a study of body politics, culture and fashion. The emplacement of corsetry in the West as an undergarment goes back to 1600s. Research shows that the study of corsetry is important as the corset has been a permanent, pervasive, popular object preferred mostly by women from different classes, sometimes by men and even children since the Middle Ages. Moreover, it is important to notice how the corset has gone beyond its use value and has become first a symbol of rank and elegance, then of female oppression and victimization and finally a symbol of sexual empowerment and feminine rebellion in contemporary time. Popular critics of the field state that the corset today is far beyond its earlier restrictive usages and negative meanings as the garment today has become a favored item in fashion industry and preferred by celebrity icons all around the world. The corset at present is an outerwear, art object and ideological construct. So, what makes the corset so popular and everlasting? The study on corsetry yields to a critique of Western culture from socio-political perspective as well as through body politics and gender studies. In that respect, this work aims to explore how corsetry in past and contemporary time exists as an essential part of patriarchal ideology, influencing social and literary landscapes and borrowing from the beauty aesthetics, thus creating the idealized feminine of each century.

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Fashioning Gothic bodies

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Misty, Spellbound and the lost Gothic of British girls’ comics

Misty, Spellbound and the lost Gothic of British girls’ comics

Sleeve notes: PJ Harvey’s Gothic world

The Cultural History of the Corset and Gendered Body in Social and Literary Landscapes

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