Gyula Somogyi
IN: Partitúra Irodalomtudományi folyóirat, Volume: X , Issue 1, 2015, p. 3-18., ISSN 1336-7307
DOI: 10.17846/PA.2015.10.1.3-18
Abstract:
Ever since the middle of the 19th century, the metropolis has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for gothic and horror stories. The present essay is devoted to an analysis of two of these stories: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” and Clive Barker’s “The Midnight Meat Train” thus the trajectory of the paper ranges from the first example of urban horror to a near-contemporary vision of the gothic within the metropolis, to conclude with an examination of Ryȗhei Kitamura’s The Midnight Meat Train, an adaptation based on Barker’s tale. Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” shows us the irrational forces at work within the city of London, which converge around the mysterious figure of the man of the crowd. While doing so Poe appropriates the genre of the city sketch, but severs its ties with social commitments, and becomes the “father” of urban horror. Barker’s New York is no less a pastiche of other representations of the metropolis than Poe’s London, and his textual appropriation seems to encompass the whole tradition of horror stories depicting the gothic city, Lacanian psychoanalysis, or even the critique of patriarchy, which mixture results in a carnivalesque celebration of violence. Although Kitamura’s film mutes the semi-serious Oedipal drama involved in “The Midnight Meat Train,” the movie lays bare the ideologies and ambiguities involved in the relationship between the flaneur-photographer, his themes, and his audience.
