I Bid You Welcome

Welcome to this, the inaugural posting on the House of Dracula blog.

I have been thinking much about the aesthetics of the Gothic as Halloween approaches.  As I coast into my 54^th year, I continue to be amazed at how adults have successfully co-opted the holiday.  When I was a boy, Halloween was primarily a children’s holiday, and when most adults thought about it (if they did at all), it was as a nuisance.

All of that has changed.  For 2016, the National Retail Foundation (NRF) predicts that 69.1 percent of Americans will celebrate the Halloween holiday this year.  To do so, they will spend $8.4 billion (billion!) – with 44.4 percent of them starting their Halloween observance in the first two weeks of October.

This figure has been steadily increasing; for 2007, for instance, Halloween spending was “only” $5.1 billion.  This year, we will spend more than $350 million on costumes … for our pets.

People of my generation remember that Halloween was quite a big deal to us as children, but we were mostly on our own.  Halloween costumes from the Ben Cooper company arrived in October, along with some plastic pumpkin satchels and some cardboard window decorations – and that was it.  Today, each and every retail store (from card shops to food stores) has some kind of Halloween selection.  The broad array of choice and quality in Halloween products is remarkable.  These include candelabrum, snow globes, coffin-shaped jewelry boxes, plaster gargoyles and gnomes, monster bookends, dining and bedroom sundries, let alone more perishable items, like black plastic curtains and crepe paper wall coverings.  If anyone were seriously interested in spooky décor, one could furnish their home during the Halloween season and be set for the year.

Obviously we love Halloween here in the House of Dracula, and eat all of this up.  But seekers after Halloween kitsch will be disappointed in upcoming posts.  We have a connoisseur’s interest in the Gothic, and you will find more about Varney the Vampire or Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823) here than you will the latest splatter film.  For us, the Gothic is a mood and sensibility; and we’ll be tracing the aesthetics of the Gothic that is more in line with Poe’s Roderick Usher than someone like Rob Zombie. 

The “Goth” subculture will also get little coverage, as we think this a vulgarization of Gothic sensibilities.

We will touch upon the literature and the graphic arts, and cover film as well -- though most of the Gothic Cinema we will examine starts around 1920 and ends with the lesser Hammer Films of the early 1970s, with obvious outliers.

So, Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.

After all … the Master is waiting.

Go to Your Local Big Lots! Store to Find the True Meaning of Halloween!