Knives Out and the American Gothic

I know what I said - that last essay was going to be the last Rian Johnson for some time. But you know how it is…

Anyway, if you follow some of my other channels or outlets, you’ll know I’m in the middle of doing a large study of Gothic Literature and it has now bled over to here. So strap in for some Gothic content on the horizon.

Now that we’ve spent some time here with the Knives Out series, I want to examine it more on the genre level. I want to examine out this series works as a study of the American Gothic. The American Gothic spans a lot of different forms of media, including novels, movies, music and art. Despite all this, I will be focused more the novel side of things. Yes, these are films and not novels, but Rian Johnson has made no secret about his deep inspiration from novels, and the various ways novels are written or referenced is present throughout the movies. Therefore, I think focusing on the novel aspect is still on track.

I will be primarily referencing Wake Up Dead Man today, but will occasionally dabble in the other movies. While the other Knives Out movies still fit the genre from a more functional point of view, Wake Up Dead Man as a special vibe and appearnace to the film which I think also helps to connect it to the American Gothic genre.

But what is that we’re actually talking about? We should start with discussing what the Gothic actually even is. For those who have been around this channel for some time, you’ll know what I’m about to say: defining the Gothic isn’t easy. However, I won’t spend a large amount of time trying to define it as different than or similar to other aesthetic movements, nor trying to parse out all the lurid details of different thoughts about it. Instead, we’ll do a brief summary of some of its most basic ideas. Just know, any literary scholars listening, that I am aware that things are a little more complicated.

As we’ll be talking about here, the Gothic is a literary movement most associated with literature from the 18th and 19th century. The most cited first Gothic novel is The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, written in 1764. Other notable Gothic novels include Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and the works of Ann Radcliffe. Typically, Gothic novels dive into horror and terror, sometimes differentiating the two, and have tinges of the supernatural. Writers such as Ann Radcliffe eventually explain the supernatural, while writers like Bram Stoker embrace it. The genre is also defined by its two primary ideas of the uncanny and the sublime.

We’ll spend a bit more time talking baout the uncanny and the sublime in a bit, but as these terms will pop up frequently I figured it worth at least explaining briefly before we complicate it later on. The Uncanny is based on an essay Freud, who defined it as a form of “unhomeliness”. Essentially, the uncanny is something which seems massively familiar and yet it’s not - it’s off, different, and unfamiliar. The sublime is a term taken from Edmund Burke, who saw the sublime as the fact that greatness and awe are tied to beauty, though these things are not always necessarily pleasurable. The Gothic as a genre tends to involve one, if not both, of these concepts.

The Gothic has its noted origins in England, but it has spread to multiple places and areas of the world throughout the centuries which have followed the publication of the Castle of Otranto. Each region put its own stamp on the genre, following their own history, politics, culture and anxieties. The American Gothic is no exception, a genre which really came to flourish in the 19th century with authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Washington Irving.

The American Gothic has a few more or less unifying themes and ideas. It plays with the idea of rationality versus irrationality, has commentary or relationships with Puritanism and guilt (not always directly related), the uncanny, ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.

Knives Out has a lot of direct connections with the Gothic. Aesthetically, we can see traces of the Gothic’s inspiration in the setting, with the Gothic mansion of Knives Out and the Gothic architecture of the church in Wake Up Dead Man. Both are directly discussed as facades. The mansion does not have grand lengthy origins of familial wealth and connection, but was bought in the 80s. The church was built in a medieval style but in the nineteenth century. These more traditional Gothic appearances are heralded as just that - a mockery of what they may have one been in a different setting. This is America, at the end of the day, not England, where these kinds of mansions and castles and churches are far more frequently found.

But there is more that is owed to the Gothic, and that’s in the genre of the detective story itself. The Gothic has had a close relationship to mysteries more generally, and the first modern detective story is often cited as “Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allen Poe. Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle are also writers who have walked this combined line between the Gothic and the mystery. The mystery is often a kind of mixing of the Gothic. Like Ann Radcliffe who tried to explain the supernatural, detective fiction gives us a strange almost supernatural-like scenario which is then slowly untangled and explained by our detective.

Therefore, all detective fiction has in some form, an intimate connection to the Gothic. The use of these Gothic settings in Knives Out helps to paint a connection to the genre’s ancestors, while also showing the story as facade - a falsity that we must look path in order to see the truth.

Early detective fiction hosts a narrator who is not the detective themselves. I’ve talked about this elsewhere in a few places now, and especially in terms of Knives Out, but it bears repeating to show its connection to the literary genre. Knives Out follows in this pattern. While not really having a “narrator” per se (although it is more directly this in the first third of Wake Up Dead Man), the movie centres us on a primary character who is never Benoit Blanc. The closest to this we get is Glass Onion, where our “narrator” is Helen/Andy, though hidden through the pretense of Benoit.

What is also worth mentioning is that these characters we do centre on are often outsiders to the primary narrative or setting in some fashion. Marta is both employed by the family, as well as being a Hispanic immigrant. Helen is not as rich as the rest of the cast, and works as a school teacher, while also being the only Black woman. Judd is new to the community, and counters many of the established religious practices of the church. He also has a background of being homeless, a stark contrast to some of the large houses of the congregation.

This has a double effect. The first is that it directly connects the narrative to notions of outsider-ship in early detective fiction. Sherlock Holmes, for example, typically had cases brought to him by outsiders who often were found as victims of the case in some fashion - the murder has been brought to them rather than them seeking it out. This is often the result of their outsidership. This is also what we see happening to both Marta and Judd, who are deeply affected by the murder in different ways, with the murder being pinned on them due to their outsider status. The second effect, though, is that it has a direct connection to important themes and components of the American Gothic tradition.

American Gothic has a particular haunting of the past. Well, all Gothic in some ways has a haunting of the past. Even in the Castle of Otranto, the current lord of the castle, Manfred, is haunted by the last rightful lord of the castle Alfonso, whose incredibly large statue is seen moving about the castle. However, the American Gothic’s past is directly tied to the bloody history of the United States. The American Gothic is haunted by the past - not so distantly for some writers - of slavery and the near genocide of the native population. Therefore, the American Gothic has a particular voice for the Other.

Rian Johnson is also haunted by this past, and imbues it in his work. The script does not shy away from talking directly about issues of race and finances. Marta’s inherently different race is a major point of discussion in Knives Out. The family tries to manipulate her through the knowledge of her mother’s illegal status, and a running joke throughout the film is how none of the characters seem to know what country her family is from. This joke is both a statement of how little the family care to learn about Marta, and also how white Americans often see these various and diverse countries as all being the same in their non-whiteness. Both Glass Onion and Wake Up Dead Man openly demonstrate the erasure of Black women’s voices. Andy’s own intelligence and influence is quite literally silenced and destroyed in the face of a rich white man who was able to use her until he had no use for her anymore. In Wake Up Dead Man, Vera’s own wishes and desires in her life are put as less important than Monsignor Wicks, who forces her to raise his illegitimate son as her own. These are not the only Others who haunt Rian Johnson’s work. Issues brought to the front are also topics such as the manipulation of the disabled.

Historcally, the Gothic used the uncanny as a way to hide narratives which show the real horrors of life. It frequently uses that which is familiar, and twists it, to demonstrate the way society often treats people who do not hold positions of power. In the short story “The Grey Woman” by Elizabeth Gaskell, the woman who ends up haunting the narrative is the very woman who centers the narrative, driven to madness by being oppressed and abused by her husband, forced to wander, a grey and withered version of herself. Even as early as the Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole dissected the role of women and their lack of agency in their own lives and choices. American Gothic does the same, but with America’s troubled past.

This repetition and haunting of the past is also something which is increidbly important in detective fiction. The past of the murder haunts the narrative of the current, and often also the primary character. In Knives Out, Marta is haunted by her last experiences with her friend, Thronby. Helen is haunted by her sister. Judd by his guilt surrounding Monsignor Wicks. Even though none of these people are guilty, they are still haunted by the event itself, and often the solving of the crime does not make them feel any better.

The past also haunts the narrative itself in the Knives Out series. There is a great question of the past in Knives Out, tied to the relationship the family has with one another and their connection to the material goods around them such as the Gothic mansion itself. There is a question to the history of the company and its founding in Glass Onion, a haunting which plagues the characters. There is a question of the history and meaning of Christianity in Wake Up Dead Man, an argument which haunts the church. They are also haunted by the memory of Wicks’s mother Grace.

As I mentioned before, there is a great import levied on the uncanny and the sublime in Gothic literature, so much so they oftne become markers of the genre. The murder mystery relies heavily on the uncanny. The nature of the idea of it is inherently uncanny - a familiar comunity and fmaily suddenly shifted and contorted to something more strange, unfamiliar, suspecting and feared. It is no longer a safe harbor, but a place of suspicion and discomfort.

In Wake Up Dead Man, Judd talks about the strange performances of belief in the church, and asks an all important question: is this story convincing us of a lie? Or something deeply within us that is true? I think this question can be asked of the Knives Out series more generally. There are elements to the story which are inherently not true - the story is, of course, a fiction - but so many of the elements within it are full of truths that are fundamental to the humans writing, acting, and watching it. And like the performances of belief, there are so many interlacing narratives to these stories: the story of the murder, the story of the solving, the story one person tells over another, the competing narratives of eye witnesses, the myths of the past - these all lay on top of each other to create a complicated and uncanny reality we must face. The story itself, as Rian Johnson plays with it, becomes uncanny itself.

Now, there’s a lot I can say about the sublime, especially in terms of horror and religion. This is perhaps best saved for another time with another case study, but its defintely worth considering here. The sublime is a complciated conception, tied to the ideas of beauty and awe that are not always inherently positive fluffy feelings. Fear and horror can also be beautiful and trigger feelings of the sublime. There is a beautiful aspect of this in Wake UP Dead Man, where the sublime is found within the structures and architecture of the Gothic church, but also in each of the characters and their attitude and relationship to religion itself. THere is something strangely fascinating about the way Monsignor Wicks preaches, a rapt awe that is fearsome and horrifying. This is a direct contrast to the quiet beauty of Judd, whose awe and beauty and smaller, quieter, and harder to see. I bring attention specifically to Wake UP Dead Man here because there is a special connection to the sublime and religion, through a shared reference in Rudolf Otto - but, as I said, I’ll save that for another time.

I think there is also a strange feeling of sublime tied to the murder mysteries more generally. There is an enjoyment, beauty and relevance in something so grisly. It is horrifying and yet inticing, exhileratiting and terrifying all at the same time.

But, what are we to do with all this? It’s all nice and good to sit here highlight elements of the movies in order to show its connection to the Gothic. It sure is fun to do, but what of it?

The Gothic comes around often through time. It comes in waves of popularity before dying out again and then coming back once again. Right now, we are experiencing a new Gothic revival, with new Gothic books, movies and shows all capturing a sense of the medieval, the supernatural, and the sublime. The Gothic will continue to arise again, always coming up in new places, new times, new culture, which see something in it to connect to and think about.

The Gothic doesn’t just come up out of nothing. It has a habit of hsowing up during times of social and cultural anxiety, tied to feelings of inherent social failure. We turn to it when things are so terrible and wrong, when the oppression and fear haunt us, when we look at the past when we look in the mirror. It’s no surprise it’s happening again now.

Rian Johnson’s position as aligned and echoing the Gothic makes sense. He’s echoing all of our own anxieties about our contemporary society, feeling a sense of failure and yet a yearning to change it. Like all of us, Johnson is haunted by the past, but brings it in front of us in uncanny and uncomfortable ways. The American Gothic continues, simply adding more historic traumas to those we are already haunted by.