Abstract
Many have noted the relationship between Penny Dreadful, with its coterie of Victorian (or Victorian-adjacent) monsters, and the “monster mash-ups” that made Universal Studios one of the major studios of the 1940s. However, in its depiction of the Grand Guignol, I argue, the series goes further to pay homage to its theatrical predecessors and their own link to film. Though the Grand Guignol is relegated to the first season, other examples—the Wild West show, the wax museum, the séance, photography, and so on—contribute to the series’ overarching emphasis on the idea of cohabitation and mutual inspiration between “high” and “low” art forms. In assuming many of its artifices and excesses, the series positions itself as the inheritor of this tradition of theater for the masses.
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Notes
- 1.
The series supposedly begins in 1891, and though there was a British version of the Grand Guignol theater, it existed in London in the 1920s—and indeed began in Paris in 1897 (Gordon 18).
- 2.
I will be referring to the character as Caliban and not his later name John Clare, both for brevity’s sake and because this moniker better suits this study of the theatrical.
- 3.
As Bazin writes, “There are no wings to the screen. There could not be without destroying its specific illusion, which is to make of a revolver or of a face the very center of the universe. In contrast to the stage the space of the screen is centrifugal” (105).
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Wells-Lassagne, S. (2023). Penny Dreadful and the Stage: Lessons in Horror and Heritage. In: Grossman, J., Scheibel, W. (eds) Penny Dreadful and Adaptation. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12180-7_9
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