As Halloween looms, we are surrounded by Gothic artefacts; plastic skeletons, decorative tombstones, and pumpkins are scattered across suburban lawns, and the boundary between what is real and what is not seems to grow thinner. But ‘the Gothic is a means not so much to escape from everyday realities as to transmogrify them and confront them in different guises.’ This observation, by Dr Jarlath Killeen, perhaps goes some way towards explaining our fascination with all things spooky – they hold up a funhouse mirror of sorts to our actual lives.
In other words, we use the Gothic to explore anxieties, that, for whatever reason, we are loath to confront directly. Sometimes these anxieties are personal (fear of rejection, entrapment, or the abject), but it’s the cultural and historical anxieties which emerge from many Gothic narratives that preoccupy scholars of the Gothic. The Irish contemporary Gothic will be the focus of Haunted Hibernia, a conference taking place from October 28th – 29th in Carlow College and VISUAL Carlow. Over two days, academics, writers, visual artists, and members of the public will gather to explore the question ‘what is the contemporary Irish Gothic, and what realities might it help us confront?’
A look at some recent Irish horror movies may provide some insight into prevailing cultural and national anxieties of our time. Perhaps it is unsurprising, given our history, that many of our horror stories feature mothers who are grieving, mothers who are searching for their children, and mothers who feel that the world is conspiring to punish and silence them.
2019′s The Hole in the Ground, directed by Lee Cronin, features Sarah, a single mother who has recently moved to rural Ireland with her young son Chris. Not long after the move, Chris briefly goes missing and, after his return, seems different somehow. His dietary habits have changed, and he is unfamiliar with their favourite games. Sarah grows convinced that Chris has been replaced by an identical imposter. Her paranoia only intensifies as she grows increasingly alienated from her child, and eventually sets out to rescue the ‘real’ Chris. This contemporary variation on the changeling tale emphasises Sarah’s dislocation; she is patronised and reassured by the men around her even as her certainty that her son has been taken grows.
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A Dark Song, directed by Liam Gavin and released in 2017, similarly focuses on the loss of a son. Sophia, whose seven-year-old son was abducted and murdered some years ago, seeks the help of Joseph, an occultist, to find her son’s killers and hold them accountable for their crime. She is told that in order to achieve this, she must commit to months of physical, psychological and sexual degradation at the hands of Joseph. The two barricade themselves into a country house and assume their roles of prisoner and warder, with Sophia’s perception of reality growing increasingly warped as she endures his abuse. As in The Hole in the Ground, Sophia’s alienation is clear – she has been advised by the people around her to move on from her loss, to let go of her unresolved pain, and to forgive.
Both films are haunted by the spectre of a missing child; both women searching for respite from feelings of maternal anxiety; both mothers seeking someone who will validate their pain and doubt. Given what we now know about our institutional history of refusing to acknowledge the profound pain and loss suffered by generations of mothers, these films seem prescient reminders of an unresolved national grief and anger.
The Church and anxiety about home and homelessness also loom large in many of these contemporary Irish horror stories – films like The Devil’s Doorway (2018) centre on institutional violence, sexual abuse, and corruption, while 2016′s Without Name and 2017′s The Lodgers use the Gothic to unpack the nation’s preoccupation with property ownership, inheritance, and the metastasisation of the Irish suburb. It seems clear that the contemporary Irish Gothic will continue to transmogrify our reality and shed light on the things that go bump in the night.
Haunted Hibernia on Eventbrite
