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Transatlantic terror! French horror theater and American pre-code comics
journal contribution
posted on 2015-10-02, 15:13 authored by Richard J. Hand, Michael WilsonMichael WilsonAt first glance it may seem farfetched if not ludicrous,draw a parallel between French theater of the modern period
and American comics of the 1950s. In the case of the Theatre
du Grand-Guignol (1897–1962), however, and the pre-code EC comics
(1950–55), there are not merely a number of formal and thematic
parallels to be drawn but several points where the Grand-Guignol
can be seen to have had a direct influence on EC’s titles. This influence
can be detected in EC’s direct reference to the Grand-Guignol’s
legendary status as the “The Theatre of Horror,” but there are also
instances where EC makes use of Grand-Guignol archetypes or “borrows”
storylines from the French repertoire.
This article will investigate the hitherto neglected link between
two specific examples of French theater and American comics both of
which came to share a monumental significance—and notoriety—in
their respective fields of popular horror culture. The article will give
an overview of their respective legends before looking at the parallels
between their formal structures, theme and content.
History
School
- The Arts, English and Drama
Department
- English and Drama
Published in
JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTUREVolume
45Issue
2Pages
301 - 319 (19)Citation
HAND, R.J. and WILSON, M., 2012. Transatlantic terror! French horror theater and American pre-code comics. Journal of Popular Culture, 45 (2), pp. 301 - 319.Publisher
© WileyVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2012Notes
This article is closed access.ISSN
0022-3840Publisher version
Language
- en