Baudrillard’s cultural theory focuses on the birth and particularities of US culture and its relation to the rest of the Western world as Maria Beville underlines, “From a perspective influenced by the theories of Baudrillard, Gothic post-modernist works may be seen as manifestations of ‘the spirit of the terror’ and their metonymical structures, as the symbolic ‘event’ of terror which has the potential to destabilize hegemonic systems of order” (199). In order to fully grasp why America loves to reproduce Gothic architecture, we might find a starting explanation for this enthusiastic response to the European Gothic by Americans in the writings of Jean Baudrillard. The Gothic architectural challenges to Europe, such as the Cathedral of Learning and the Heinz Chapel on the University of Pittsburgh campus, became a common sign of extreme wealth, but this trend also affected the construction of private homes. Why would a country, with no Gothic building ever constructed on its land during the Middle Ages, show such a tremendous dedication to the partial loss of the Parisian cathedral? In the United States, this strong sentimental connection to-and fascination for-what is essentially Medieval art and architecture embodied in the Gothic complexity started in the 19 th century, once the Neo-Classical preference of the Founding Fathers started to fade out in the construction process of the American metropolis. Within hours, millions of dollars in donations had been wired to the French government for reconstruction of the Medieval roof. When the wooden roof of the World Heritage Cathedral Notre-Dame of Paris burned accidentally in the spring of 2019, a deeply shocked American public, amongst other Western audiences, rushed to display on social media their personal and emotional attachment to this historical Gothic French landmark. At the same time, it is the only territory in which such society can function. This house is more than a Neo-Gothic building in decay rather, it is the headquarters of an entire social minority. ![]() This article seeks to explore from the theoretical perspectives of reconstitutions, displacement, and social estrangement how this phenomenon translates to the narrative continuum of the ‘old Neo-Gothic house on the hill’, a collective imaginary shared by and projected in The Addams Family and Hitchcock’s Psycho, as well as its recent prequel Bates Motel. Unlike European Gothic, American Neo-Gothic from the Gilded Age finds many of its expressions in isolation. Renaissance castles, fossilized elephants, Indians on reservations, sequoias as holograms, etc.”. Jean Baudrillard claims in America that: “One of the aspects of good faith is this stubborn determination to reconstitute everything of a past and a history which were not their own and which they have largely destroyed or spirited away. Since its independence from Britain, US culture has established a clear connection to Gothic architecture thanks to its tendency to reconstitute Gothic landmarks on its land. The Old House on the Hill: an American Gothic Landmark of Social Displacement and Estrangement in The Addams Family and Psycho/Bates Motel
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