This is a VERY rough draft of the first paragraph from the essay I am currently working on regarding Like Minds being a part of the Gothic tradition. It's going to be a while before I can get the essay finished because I'm super rusty at this writing thing, and because I only have so much brainpower left outside my job. But here's a teaser anyway.
The literary Gothic tradition encompasses a wide variety of texts, evolving over time to reflect the shifting unease of audiences in each new era but maintaining a set of core concepts that unite these diverse stories under one umbrella. Gothic fiction is often considered formulaic, incorporating certain story arcs, plot points, and tropes in a predictable way–the reader can surmise where the text is headed and supposed plot twists come as no surprise. Despite this predictability, Gothic texts are paradoxically focused on veiling, cloaking, unknowability, and ambiguity. The reader is presented with a battle between opposing forces: simplicity/complexity, knowable/unknowable, tradition/transgression, overt meaning and unspeakable subtext. The true narrative at the heart of the text is revealed in the tension between these opposing forces and in the author’s refusal to resolve this tension within the text itself. The audience is left in the discomfort of their own uncertain conclusions or plagued by the anxiety of irresolution. From its inception in the 18th century, the Gothic tradition has used the armor of this ambiguity to explore subversive subjects such as feminist and queer narratives which society does not allow to be openly addressed. The 2006 film Like Minds, written and directed by Gregory Read, is a faithful continuation of the Gothic tradition, evoking this conflict between what can and cannot be known or said and offering the audience a transgressive queer subtext couched beneath the story beats of a purported heteronormativity.
[Like Minds Masterpost]
