doctor-q:

oliviajewels:

marzipanandminutiae:

forthegothicheroine:

I feel torn about tumblr’s love of southern gothic.  There’s a lot of cool stuff in that genre to be admired, but I feel like sometimes those posts (especially when made by people who don’t live in the south- and hey, neither do I) come across as “aren’t poor people spooooky?”

As a born-and-raised southerner, I was surprised to discover this literary convention because a lot of modern southern gothic fantasy written by southerners focuses on old-money families who turn out to be [witches/werewolves/vampires/etc]. I didn’t encounter the “scary redneck mountain people” variant in non-fantastical media until later, and it baffles me because the modern southern elite are TERRIFYING.

Endlessly smiling hypocritical senators in tacky palatial houses with wives who espouse “traditional values” while being poisonously sweet and cutthroat? Those make much more frightening antagonists for gothic heroes/heroines to fight. If you live in the south you will probably never meet backwoods demon sibling-spouses but you’ve definitely seen the void staring out of a “Live, Laugh, Love” picture frame.

ACCURATE

Tumblr inherently misunderstands the function of Southern Gothic literature and has appropriated it for its pervasive almost supernatural poetic style. They don’t understand its themes, why it was written, or how to properly write it. Actual Southern Gothic literature is not as melodramatic as one might think and it isn’t about aesthetic style points. Its style is actually scathingly sarcastic in a nearly caustic way, and it’s meant to amplify structural violence by turning upstanding members of society into villains. It does make the poor grotesque at times, but in the same novel also redeems them by showing how societal ills have painted an unfair picture.

Southern Gothic is a genre for the poor, the colored, the queer; it’s not about signs that say “Hell is here” or forcing tired stereotypes that fundamentally misunderstand poverty, racism, and homo-/transphobia onto the South in a sweeping sensationalist way. Appropriated Gothic Americana aesthetic takes the voice from Southern authors who want to talk about real systemic wrongs and evils in a way that provides accurate social commentary.

That’s not to say that the neo-gothic Americana style that Tumblr has coined has no merit; it’s just difficult as a southern writer to watch people play around with serious topics for the sake of dramatic aesthetics and not realize that they’re being harmful and sort of mocking a tradition that they haven’t bothered to really study.