I. Origins & Evolution of the Gothic in Film
The gothic is a quintessentially European aesthetic. Moreover, it
pertains and appeals more specifically to those of North-West European
descent and is to be found in various modes and tropes throughout
North-West European culture and contrasts with the Classicism of
Southern Europe. Gothic as a term was first applied to medieval art and
particularly architecture by Renaissance critics in similar propagandist
fashion to how the term Dark Ages was also used to describe the period
following the collapse of the Roman Empire. In both cases, the terms
were coined to denigrate Germanic ascendancy in culture as unenlightened
and barbaric in relation to the culture of Greco-Roman Classical
Antiquity and its Renaissance.[1]
