Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology

¶ … Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monstrosity by Judith Halberstam

The Gothic Tradition

Judith Halberstam discusses many different facets of the Gothic tradition in the first chapter of her book entitled Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monstrosity. For the most part, this chapter is extremely dense and fragmented. The author spends the bulk of it discussing several different aspects of the Gothic, and telling the reader about things that she "will" discuss. As such, she covers a range of topic, yet none of them are done so in an amount of depth that will help the reader to understand the significance of these points.

Still, there are some basic points which she manages to make clear. She pinpoints the Gothic tradition as stemming from 18th century literature, and believes that this tradition has gone on to change media and reproduce itself within the medium of film. In writing about such a transition, the other makes a number of prudent observations about the differences between the type of Gothic tales that are told in each respective media. For instance, she alludes to the limitations of the imagination that film presents, while also implying that in literature there are no limits or there are only those that the reader's imagination can produce. This is a crucial distinction between these media, and one which the author does well to point out.

Another fairly important motif that she writes about in this chapter is the significance of skin to the Gothic tradition. Moreover, this aspect of the Gothic tradition is one of the many which have spanned different media as well as several centuries (when one considers that we are in the 21st century now). However, she explains the fact that skin is one of the central components of Gothic horror because it is used to veil monstrosity, and that there is an eventual erosion of it so that "slowly but surely the outside becomes the inside and the hide no longer conceals" (Halberstam, p. 7). The discerning reader will agree with the author that this wearing away of the skin so that the true monstrosity found in the Gothic horror -- which is in certain tales within the monster -- is revealed is one of the most enduring aspects of this genre.

It was also extremely interesting to read about the role of women in the Gothic tradition, especially in the contemporary variety of gothic films and books. One of the most elucidating statements that the author made was the fact that historic gothic literature prior to the 20th century encompassed a variety of points of deviations such as race, class, religion, sex/gender, whereas contemporary Gothic film focuses almost exclusively on gender issues. Specifically, contemporary Gothic films routinely exploit women as weaker beings who are murdered by monsters who are largely monsters only because of their desire to terrorize and kill women.