Review Of The Art Of Gothic Documentary 3

In this third episode of 'The Art Of Gothic' documentary, Andrew Graham- Dixon starts off once again by reminding us of the basics of the gothic, the desire to revive something that was dead, and a style of medieval architecture. He goes on to explain how the gothic grew and developed into many other forms such as art, literature and film. In this episode he discusses further how it is still affecting us even now.

He continues and begins the body of the episode by referring to, and researching, one of the most famous gothic characters, 'Dracula'. He starts off by saying that 'in the Gothic all roads lead to Dracula'. He visits a fictional cross roads in Essex, an area which novelist Bram Stoker knew well and in the story of Dracula named his Essex estate 'Carfax', and it is there that the story, 'moves to its conclusion'. He goes on to explain the storyline of Dracula further and explain how Dracula managed to 'enthral us all'. He says it is because he looks forwards and backwards; backwards to dungeons and haunted castles, but forwards as it has 'infused our culture' with novels and TV series. I found this interesting as I was familiar with the Dracula story but had never fully studied it, as well as enlightening me in how he still quite clearly influences our culture.

He also discusses a previous vampire story by the author Carl Marx, 'Das Capital', written thirty years before Dracula. In the story Marx used Gothic imagery but very cleverly created a modern storyline, with a real life vampire, Capital, 'which drains a drop of the workers' blood every second of the working day'. He focused the story on capitalism to show the power of the forces of production and labour. He presents capitalism as 'predatory and ghoulish'. I thought that this was really interesting as it is a very clever way of presenting the modern day issues in a gothic and concealed way.

He also talks of another gothic novel by Joseph Conrad, 'Heart Of Darkness'. It tells of a trader in African Ivory. 'The novel builds up a picture of the horrors bought upon Africa by Europeans along the banks of the Congo'. Graham- Dixon goes on to discuss that this story makes out the Europeans are all in it together and responsible, 'for the atrocities of empire'. I found this interesting as I thought that Conrad was clever in using humans and their errors as inspiration for his gothic novels.

I thought this was a good episode but I however did not enjoy it as much as the previous two. I did not think that the content was quite as interesting or fascinating and I also found it more confusing and did not quite comprehend or understand all that was being said.