Gothic cinema, as explored by David Thomas and Gary Gillard, cannot be considered a genre of a category of classification as it infiltrates through a “broad range of cultural literacies”. Within these streams the concept of “gothic” is constantly evolving and changing with times, people, and places. “Threads of Resemblance in New Australian Gothic Cinema” investigates the idea that “gothic” is a cultural characteristic of Australian cinema, and while seemingly impossible to actually determine what Australian cinema is in a definition, gothic elements are recognized as running rampant through many Aussie productions. The ordinariness and ugliness that is popular in projected Australian culture stands as the foundation upon which narratives of discomfort and disorder can be realized. The “unsettling” and the “terrifying” in common everyday spaces creates stylistic opportunities to establish eeriness and curiosity. Many Australian films use these conventions to create intrigue by introducing familiarity to the audience and then drawing them in through their own anxiety and inquisitiveness as to why they feel something is not quite right. These feelings of perversion of the senses is what drives gothic cinema and the opportunity to create “the remarkable out of the unremarkable”.
Immanuel Kant, an 18th century German philosopher, identified a split in perception between the seen and the unseen. Integral to this study is the concept of the “phenomena” as a complex sensation that is accepted through the perception of objects as we see them and its relationship with the noumena as something understood as the sensory feelings that are attributed to things that are beyond our visual capabilities. Embedded in the characteristics of Gothic culture, Kant’s exploration of both phenomena and noumena relate to the eccentric, perverse, uneasy, and uncanny-ness that is often implied through cognitive understandings that can be known to, or completely independent of the senses.
Gothic cinema plays with sensations that are derived, seemingly, from no physically sensory source. Eeriness and dark undercurrents flow through many gothic films providing audiences with a sense that something is wrong, unusual, or about to happen. Perversion is a very popular word in gothic discourse, and I am under the impression that gothic phenomena and noumena are merely that: perversions of what we feel and sense. They are perversions because often times they are feelings that are beyond our rational cognitive understanding. Such sensations could easily be compared to a “gut-feeling”; a feeling that we recognize but do not yet understand.
Muriel’s Wedding is an Australian film that is very contested as to whether it is an example of gothic cinema or not. In my opinion, the film does not project an entirely gothic narrative, but it does have gothic threads within the narrative that aid in the evolution of the story and the construction of the characters. The mother’s dark emotions in the very familiar family home are a subtext to Muriel’s story; however, they intensify in order to alter the course of events that impact Muriel and the rest of the characters. The unease and the anxiety of her mental state is something we as an audience can physically see, but also feel on an emotional level. The mother is a mystery that the audience feels unsatisfied not knowing about until the end of the film.
There are far more examples of suspenseful feeling within Muriel’s wedding as well as in Australian cinema as a category. The sensation of feeling unsatisfied or unquenched of information or reason for feelings of uneasiness is a common denominator in many Australian films. Whether or not it is embedded in all classically Australian films depends on the definition of what is understood to be Australian as well as what is classified as gothic. Too many distinctions and categories contradict the essence of the “gothic” itself as it is something that we cannot define or put a finger on… it’s just a feeling.
- “Noumenon is distinguished from phenomena, the latter being an observable event or physical manifestation capable of being observed by one of the five human senses. The two words serve as interrelated technical terms in Kant's philosophy. As expressed in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, human understanding is structured by "concepts of the understanding", or innate categories that the mind utilizes in order to make sense of raw unstructured experience.”-
