The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortune Events

[General Mostly Electrified Steel]

First, let me ask you one of those tricky, snide, and underhanded rhetorical questions: "What did you like about A Series of Unfortunate Events?"

Now, don't answer! That was rhetorical.

However, chances are that it was brutally sinister. Msr Lemony Snickering Snicket (yes, an authored author) seemed to take great pride in torturing the orphans (late warning: spoilers).

"But no," he might say, "I am simply researching them!"

Yes, Snickering Snicket, you are. But there's a man behind that typewriter. And he's the on-

My apologies, a diversion.

My point (there was one!) is that, in the spirit of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Gothic Archies have done it again.

Done what? Well, sirs, it's another diversion! Over yonder, American Gothic.

This picture [http://history.tamucc.edu/images/american-gothic-large4.jpg], my English teacher assured me, is a prime example of this mysterious cloud of definition of "Gothic".

On the surface, we have a pretty normal picture of some dude with a pitchfork and his wife. Deeper down, we still have a .

So, in short, I'd like to give my teacher a F for not explaining to me what the hell "gothic" is.

Thanks for your time!

 

[Melty Blood]

lolwut

(Entertaining, though lacking a review flavor required of this palette of foods)

 

[Larenxis]

Incoherent in the extreme. Just what are you getting at?

 

[Spinwhiz]

Okay...trying to remember the very boring and not very useful art class I took back in college. I actually took it to become more "cultured" and hopefully impress some artist ladies, but at the end of the class I actually came out thinking it was all really BS...but I digress. Now, remember, don't quote me on any of this stuff (yes, you the artistic asshole that will follow this discussion and blow it to bits, that means you).

Gothic art is supposed to be, as you put it, a picture of something "normal" at that time, but with intricacies in color, expressions and still movement (the ability of something that looks like it would be in motion, yet trapped in time). So, you actually answered your own question. The painting itself is most ordinary, until you look further into the painting and try and find the artist is trying to display through symbolism and parts of the painting (hence, that is Gothic).

This is what farmers from Iowa said about the painting as it was becoming popular: When the picture finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, real Iowa farmers and their wives were not amused. To them, the painting looked like a nasty caricature, portraying Midwestern farmers as pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers.

You can read more about this painting (which I found very interesting and I wish MY teacher could have explained it this way) here: http://www.slate.com/id/2120494/

Now, I must leave to get a double mocha frapachino, call Buffy, snap my fingers to an old 14th century poem in which I think holds the key to human emotion and refasten my ascot.