Ep. 22.5: Follow Up on 'Frankenstein': Everything is Gothic since 1764
Release Date: 11/18/2025
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Hosts: Nate Day, Chris Anderson
Producer: Nate Day
"Adaptation Theme"
- Written by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow
- Performed by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow, Nate Day
*****
00:00:11 - Nate
Welcome to Lightning Round, an adaptation mini episode. Today we're talking about Gothic literature, Gothic fiction, Gothic film, expanding a little bit on Frankenstein, which we talked about very recently on the main pod. So if you haven't caught up with that one, be sure to listen to that one first. Chris has some interesting stuff to tell us about Gothic fiction and Gothic literature. But before that, how are you, Chris? Mr. New York, since the last time I talked to you like two days ago.
00:00:38 - Chris
I am concerned. I'm a little sick. I am pounding vitamin C and I think I was asleep at 8.42 PM last night.
00:00:50 - Nate
Wow. Tough break for a teacher on his third day at work.
00:00:55 - Chris
Exactly. I was like, I don't get to call in on my third day. I can't be sick yet. How have you been doing, Nate?
00:01:03 - Nate
I'm good. Things are are stabilizing at my work a little bit.
00:01:09 - Chris
Good.
00:01:10 - Nate
No, I'm fine. I just need some frigging, we need some moisture out here before I get sick and shrivel up and die.
00:01:17 - Chris
Oh yeah, I bet. I bet. I think we could use the same. I can't imagine it's as bad as there though.
00:01:21 - Nate
But why don't you tell me a little bit about what the heck are we doing here today, Chris?
00:01:26 - Chris
Yeah, so this was kind of a culmination idea that bubbled in my mind. This might have been one of the ideas that sparked our discussion of many episodes. I cannot remember now. We just had enough books on the slate that we'll kind of mention later that were real specific about Gothic literature. And for me, it was pretty similar to... Like that idea of anti-heroes that we talked about, and some of these themes that are like, I don't know if anyone else is like me, but I've heard the word a thousand times, and I don't actually know what it means, right?
00:02:07 - Nate
Gothic lit.
00:02:08 - Chris
Yeah. Yeah. We've all heard about it, but what the heck does that actually mean? And so I thought, if I'm wondering this, because this is what I tell my students all the time, if you have the question, someone else does too, just ask it.
00:02:20 - Nate
Yep.
00:02:20 - Chris
So here I am answering my own question and hopefully at least one person out there.
00:02:25 - Nate
Probably for me, at least.
00:02:27 - Chris
I mean, it was, it was actually really interesting to dig into. So I hope, I hope everyone agrees. Um, so this is like brief, brief, kind of how we always do not a full history, very mini. Sure. And then some of the authors that it applies to that we've discussed for any fans of the pod, that'll recognize them all. And then some really cool news that kind of tipped it into, okay, we have to have this talk now.
00:02:50 - Nate
Yeah. Okay, great.
00:02:52 - Chris
Yeah, so super fast. Pretty widely considered the first Gothic book ever was 1764 publication, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. I've never heard of that in my life.
00:03:07 - Nate
No, me neither.
00:03:08 - Chris
So that's cool. I mean, I definitely want to read it now, but had never heard of it. The, the genre, what it means really what I was looking for, it's built around tenants of an unsettling setting as a genre it's named after the crumbling Gothic castles. I think everyone probably has a picture in their head immediately. Right.
00:03:28 - Nate
Totally. Yeah.
00:03:29 - Chris
In modernity, like initially it was kind of stringent to an extent it seemed and it's spread into disturbing, uh, any, any content that makes the reader in some fashion uncomfortable. Okay.
00:03:43 - Nate
Okay.
00:03:44 - Chris
The theme has shifted a bit over time and now typically will include supernatural forces of some kind occurring and there's really a wide range. Some form of battle between good and evil again. to different extents and pretty much always evoking these emotions of fear and terror uh maybe some dark hidden secrets and uh sort of sub genres have evolved from there but there's our sure there's our genesis okay many modern subgenres are seemingly attributed to when gothic lit met the kind of victorian romanticism uh that seems to have been a big evolutionary turning point yeah yeah i can see that it makes sense right Yeah, just because when you say that gothic lit is like, or gothicism, I guess, I don't know, is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable.
00:04:45 - Nate
I'm like, what? I don't know. I mean, those line up frequently, but that doesn't seem like a genre-defining one for me. And I think it's because my mind sort of goes to that Victorian romanticism.
00:04:56 - Chris
Yes, yes. I think especially to a modern... consumer of media that's become the focal point, at least to an extent. And I think that's actually an interesting point. I hadn't thought about it from this perspective until you said it that way. Think about some of these tales that we're so familiar with, Beauty and the Beast, Like the moral and ending, the conclusion is so well known that we kind of look past as a bare bones list of details. These would be unsettling details.
00:05:31 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:33 - Chris
You know, if you read a headline that was just those plot points, but happening in real life in Cincinnati in 2025, you'd be like, oh, that's kidnapping slash Stockholm syndrome, right? I don't know why that was the first city. Yeah.
00:05:48 - Nate
But no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean.
00:05:52 - Chris
So this was interesting because I knew we had touched on a couple and Frankenstein was just the final straw to say, let's kind of do a little compendium. It included a lot of what we've done. Beloved by Toni Morrison.
00:06:04 - Nate
Southern Gothic.
00:06:06 - Chris
Yes, exactly. Exactly. And we can all picture that, right? The creepy plantation house. The supernatural, but subtly influences. Yeah. very much a battle of good versus evil, right? From what I was reading, a lot of Southern Gothic, Gothic in particular, has developed in its own right because slavery in the American South is such an immediate, vivid, and pronounced example of that big overarching battle, right?
00:06:38 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. There's some cool movies about that too.
00:06:41 - Chris
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I mean, reading it, I absolutely at no point thought this is wonderful. Gothic lit.
00:06:49 - Nate
Yeah.
00:06:50 - Chris
Right. But then you read, you read all of those things and you go, yeah, it checks all the boxes.
00:06:54 - Nate
Check, check, check. Yeah.
00:06:56 - Chris
Oscar wild.
00:06:58 - Nate
Really?
00:07:00 - Chris
Not the importance of being earnest.
00:07:02 - Nate
Oh, okay.
00:07:04 - Chris
Uh, famously the author of Dorian gray. Yes, exactly. Arguably a more famous publication of his.
00:07:12 - Nate
Oh. I guess maybe depending on- I don't even know if that's arguable. I think that's pretty definitive.
00:07:17 - Chris
Okay. I mean, it's comparing apples and oranges, right? But so funny. I really felt good about putting that in there and then waiting for people to go, the importance of being earnest? Well, yeah, just like I did. And then Frankenstein, obviously.
00:07:33 - Nate
Yep.
00:07:33 - Chris
So this was where the idea came from. Very old, sort of credited with a shift in the genre where instead of one clearly specific evil villain, although, you know, based on our discussion, we both are clearly not fans of Victor Frankenstein. But what Mary Shelley did that really became canonized, it became... a consistently used tool of the genre was having the evil side as this moral quandary where here, instead of just an individual villain, the idea of the folly of man and his hubris represents the evil, right?
00:08:13 - Nate
Okay. Yeah.
00:08:14 - Chris
So that was very cool. There's also this later drawing on of Gothic themes that's been interwoven into books that I think we otherwise would not consider the genre, right?
00:08:25 - Nate
Okay.
00:08:26 - Chris
And a lot of these are going to come up. Two that I enjoyed and will end up covering are, of course, Wuthering Heights.
00:08:32 - Nate
Yeah, very soon. A couple of months we'll be covering that.
00:08:36 - Chris
Uh-huh. And I'm very glad for the opportunity. This will be my first reread of that. And exactly as I suggested here, in no way was I reading that thinking, oh, this is Gothic literature. But as I read Borrowing of Themes, I can see it. And Jane Eyre also, which surprised me.
00:08:58 - Nate
Oh. Okay. Yeah.
00:09:02 - Chris
And we'll talk about why those fit here. Also, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.
00:09:10 - Nate
Really?
00:09:12 - Chris
No, I'm kidding. Nope, nope, nope. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase.
00:09:18 - Nate
Okay. I don't know that one.
00:09:20 - Chris
Yeah, never heard of it. We didn't talk about it. I... once again thought that would be super funny.
00:09:26 - Nate
Yeah. Haha.
00:09:29 - Chris
But crazy, crazy that two authors we've already covered have a book that's it's I guess I'm trying to illustrate how much more widespread it was. And in this case, all three of these fall under what's considered female Gothic. Okay, where it is a female protagonist as the theme of good fighting against each of their own versions of the evil, typically just absolutely unfair treatment of women historically in society, right? You know, usually they're in these confined, almost claustrophobic settings. That's a big part of it too. And this need to subvert culture to promote the good.
00:10:12 - Nate
Okay.
00:10:12 - Chris
Some others, I thought this was also fascinating because I wasn't prepared for this long a list and never considering what would I call this genre. So some that I've read, Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, Turn of the Screw, Henry James, Gothic Horror. So leaning into that side, very spooky. Apparently Great Expectations is considered a Gothic novel.
00:10:37 - Nate
Okay. I can kind of see it because of how, uh, what's her name is, is described and portrayed. Cause she's so freaking weird looking, you know, she's like a monster kind of physically.
00:10:49 - Chris
And that claustrophobic unsettling setting. Yeah, I can see it. Not my favorite book. I kind of would be okay if we never cover that, but don't tell David Anderson.
00:11:00 - Nate
Oh, okay.
00:11:01 - Chris
Oh, he got so mad at me once when I said I didn't like that book, his, his far kinder way of essentially saying you uncultured swine, take that back a very good one. If anyone likes any of what I've presented so far and is thinking I should try and dabble in this series secret history is by Donna Tartt, the author of the gold Finch. Incredible book.
00:11:25 - Nate
Okay.
00:11:25 - Chris
Phenomenal book. And some that we've also talked about that are leaning toward what is now considered modern Gothic, really gotten away from the tenets in their truest sense, as we've discussed them. But if you examined, kind of peeled back the layer of modernity, I think it would make sense. Neil Gaiman. Oh, we haven't discussed him yet, but Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Bret Easton Ellis.
00:11:52 - Nate
Oh yeah, sure. Modern Gothic. Yeah, that does track for American Psycho.
00:11:57 - Chris
Yeah, exactly. And now this was the crazy part. This is why this came up right now. Mexican Gothic is obviously a Gothic novel, which any keen listener... Actually, you probably don't even have to be that keen a listener to recall. In our Frankenstein episode, I recommended if you like Frankenstein, you might like this. So crazy, the day after we recorded the Frankenstein episode, a New York Times article came out by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author of Mexican Gothic, talking about Frankenstein.
00:12:36 - Nate
Yeah. Kind of an op-ed. It was actually hours later. It was not the day after that you texted me. And yeah, she wrote an op-ed.
00:12:44 - Chris
Yeah so cool and um first of all brilliant article so if you haven't read it go find it yeah very well written article very interesting also and i mentioned this to you just briefly she really seemed fond of guillermo del toro's treatment of the monster and i was very very curious to hear your thoughts on her thoughts it was a really interesting piece super validating you know we make a lot of jokes on this podcast about my inability to read i studied literature theory in college.
00:13:17 - Nate
Super validating to hear that she had the same, at least core ideas as me. I don't know that it changed my opinion at all, but knowing that somebody who's operating in the space of Gothic storytelling at the capacity that she is. That book, Mexican Gothic, was a huge hit, if I'm not mistaken.
00:13:37 - Chris
Massive, massive. Yes, contender on lots of lifts when it came out.
00:13:41 - Nate
So knowing that she has such an appreciation for what Guillermo del Toro did with his version of Frankenstein, I think even though it doesn't make me like the movie anymore, it does provide sort of another pathway into the movie. and the way that it allows me to sort of hold an appreciation for maybe this evolution of Gothic storytelling. And, you know, I mentioned in that episode that GDT had been working on that movie for roughly 20 years. And I think that that maybe sort of fried some of the ideas that he was putting forward. Maybe that comes from the fact that this idea, this theme of gothism, that sounds like a stupid word. Is that really the word?
00:14:21 - Chris
I haven't, you know what, let me double check now. I'm not convinced one way or the other. Yes, it is. Wow.
00:14:28 - Nate
Anyway, maybe that comes from, because it's evolved so much over history, you know, so what felt wrought in this product that came out in 2025 might have, or does have, decades and decades of evolution and lineage informing it.
00:14:46 - Chris
Yes, yes. Her quote here from the article that is essentially what you just said, the mutations are inevitable, for we are human.
00:14:54 - Nate
Yep.
00:14:55 - Chris
Yeah, I was, I mean, obviously, as... your friend here to toot your horn was very shocked to read this, you know, figurehead of Gothic writing, essentially giving in different words, the same thoughts that you had on the movie. So that was cool.
00:15:10 - Nate
Yeah. I'm glad she enjoyed it.
00:15:12 - Chris
Yeah. Again, if you needed a bigger push, absolutely, you should read Mexican Gothic, incredible book. I know she has others. Unfortunately, that's the only one of hers I've read. But I really liked her take on essentially not that any of the movies that you talked about far more in-depth had a right or wrong interpretation. But the very realistic interpretation that this was exactly what I alluded to, not a strict, you know, if you walked away from that movie and think the monster is the villain, you, you yourself are a villain. You are a bad person.
00:15:50 - Nate
Yeah.
00:15:51 - Chris
Right. Um, which again is juxtaposed with the fact that yes, Frankenstein's monster did like murder two children with his bare hands. But it's such a, it's ignoring so much. And she kind of alludes to how each film did not incorrectly interpret that, but did it their own way. So that was so cool. Go read the article, read some Gothic lit. I think maybe you've got some other ideas of Gothic movies along those same veins.
00:16:21 - Nate
Yeah, I just wanted to give a shout out because it's kind of similar in nature to Gothic literature. There is no like definitive Gothic genre. And often, in fact, something is considered Gothic because it's an adaptation or inspired by some sort of Gothic quote unquote parent, be that a book or some other form of media that came beforehand.
00:16:43 - Chris
Yes.
00:16:43 - Nate
But like you said it's it's been spun out into a lot of sort of sub-genres the most prominent gothic movies these days come from guillermo del toro obviously he's got frankenstein crimson peak i think is maybe a comic book series or something like that um here i'll pull it up okay thanks i think you're even more correct than you thought it says it is not only not an adaptation this is um the one you just referred to crimson peak del toro intentionally crafted the film as his own take on the gothic genre itself oh it's not an adaptation no that's what it says oh i really thought it was wow that's crazy nightmare alley is another novel that he's adapted that i think maybe we should we'll get to someday very gothic even his adaptation of pacific rim his movies about monster fighting military men like hellboy too he does the hellboy movies.
00:17:39 - Chris
I totally forgot about that.
00:17:40 - Nate
Yeah, those are all very gothic as well. So he's definitely the most prominent guy operating in that space in cinema. But a few other names I wanted to throw out there. One that I think a lot of people will... feel comfortable identifying is Tim Burton. He's got a little bit more of like a cartoony family twist, which is where that subgenre comes in. Sweeney Todd is a musical, sort of a horror musical. Sleepy Hollow, very much a gothic movie. Edward Scissorhands sort of has that comedy element and is a movie that we actually discussed super briefly in the Frankenstein episode because it plays on that you know, creating life trope. Frankenweenie, obviously a spin on Frankenstein, is an animated Gothic movie from Tim Burton. So he's played into that a lot. Robert Eggers is a big name in this genre as well. He just had Nosferatu last year. Dracula, of course, is another story that we referenced in that episode. And he also did that movie, The Northmen, that I made you watch, which I think will come up in a later episode when we discuss Hamlet. But then I wanted to diversify the list a little bit here and think of some people that don't necessarily fit the standard Gothic mold. The first name that kept coming to mind was Sofia Coppola, who's sort of known for this modern Gothic feel to all of her movies. The Beguiled is a movie that she remade, actually, and is very quite literally a Southern Gothic movie. And that brought me to Francis Ford Coppola, who has actually adapted Bram Stoker's Dracula to film. But a lot like Sofia Coppola, I think this family, just because they are such a grandiose family that has existed for generations in American history, they've been significant forever. they have a lot of these Gothic sensibilities in their work. It's sort of just that sort of like overbearing weight that's on their shoulders and pressure to create and be incredible. I think that comes out through their work. And even the Godfather films are very Gothic, visually speaking. They're known for shadows and imposing figures and things like that. So really interesting how it comes out that way in those movies as well. Speaking of Southern Gothic, Casey Lemmon's Eve's Bayou, fantastic. I wish it was an adaptation. so that we could talk about it. But it's amazing. I believe it's just an original movie. And Casey Lemons does a great job directing it. And then I think the most recent example in modern cinema is probably Sinners from Ryan Coogler earlier this year, which of course we talked about being the sort of relative of Beloved. So it's interesting how all of these are so tied together and all act as stepping stones for one another too, as we talk about the evolution of Gothic storytelling.
00:20:31 - Chris
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And they're all, I mean, now looking back, it feels like this clear trail of these, like the tenets of these films that you brought up as we discussed each one. Yeah. And it was almost like, like just reading Gothic lit Gothic, Gothicism was the, was the tie to bring it all together.
00:20:57 - Nate
That had been meant. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:58 - Chris
Oh, very cool.
00:21:01 - Nate
Thank you for joining us for this conversation about Gothic literature, Gothic film, Gothic fiction, Gothic storytelling in this episode of Lightning Round. We look forward to our next full-length episode. Bye-bye. Bye.
00:21:12 - Chris
That's the show for today.
00:21:17 - Nate
Thanks for tuning in. Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you're watching, and what adaptations you'd like us to cover. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at adaptation underscore pod and on Twitter at adapt pod. See you next time.