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Grand Guignol is a term I only learned in recent years, yet it’s something I’ve been aware of for years. It may have been the beginning of modern horror with its theatrical attempts to shock and splatter.
The term comes to mind when I think of the series; Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. This went beyond the gothic thrillers I enjoy, dipping into gore and shock, disturbing me, yet it was peppered with cozy moments. As dark as this series got, it never lost sight of heart, family, or friendship. Humor often tapped a beat out in time amidst the horror tropes, as the characters subverted those tropes as part of their journey.
Much of the cozy involved Sabrina’s aunts, Zelda and Hild, whom I came to enjoy as much as Sabrina. They were living out a stereotype of witches as Satanists in the Church of Night, yet their strength and love of family wouldn’t allow them to stay that way. They found a way to be witches serving Hecate, abandoning Lucifer as their dark lord.
Not that Lucifer liked it or the men in the Chuch of Night. Satanism forced witches into a submissive position, under their dark lord. Witches found they wanted far more than what the Church of Night had to offer.
Trope after trope from a girl in a white dress forced to sign her name in the devil’s book to a vampire overwhelming a girl’s will to bite her was introduced and challenged.
I marveled at the carnival of Grand Guignol (and yes, there was an actual carnival) which made an appearance, only to be subverted in some fashion, being exactly what I expected, and yet not what I expected at all.
Somehow this felt very traditional, and yet there was an arc, leading the cast away from tradition.
It’s intriguing to watch and very cleverly played out. It makes me think about the way we can play with tropes and subvert them. There’s a lot of love for these tropes, yet an acknowledgement expressed in the characters’s growth that you can go far beyond them. A label does not express the whole truth of a person or a community. More can seethe within that community than the trope can contain.
This has given me a lot of food for thought.
The term comes to mind when I think of the series; Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. This went beyond the gothic thrillers I enjoy, dipping into gore and shock, disturbing me, yet it was peppered with cozy moments. As dark as this series got, it never lost sight of heart, family, or friendship. Humor often tapped a beat out in time amidst the horror tropes, as the characters subverted those tropes as part of their journey.
Much of the cozy involved Sabrina’s aunts, Zelda and Hild, whom I came to enjoy as much as Sabrina. They were living out a stereotype of witches as Satanists in the Church of Night, yet their strength and love of family wouldn’t allow them to stay that way. They found a way to be witches serving Hecate, abandoning Lucifer as their dark lord.
Not that Lucifer liked it or the men in the Chuch of Night. Satanism forced witches into a submissive position, under their dark lord. Witches found they wanted far more than what the Church of Night had to offer.
Trope after trope from a girl in a white dress forced to sign her name in the devil’s book to a vampire overwhelming a girl’s will to bite her was introduced and challenged.
I marveled at the carnival of Grand Guignol (and yes, there was an actual carnival) which made an appearance, only to be subverted in some fashion, being exactly what I expected, and yet not what I expected at all.
Somehow this felt very traditional, and yet there was an arc, leading the cast away from tradition.
It’s intriguing to watch and very cleverly played out. It makes me think about the way we can play with tropes and subvert them. There’s a lot of love for these tropes, yet an acknowledgement expressed in the characters’s growth that you can go far beyond them. A label does not express the whole truth of a person or a community. More can seethe within that community than the trope can contain.
This has given me a lot of food for thought.
