Grotesque is one of the oldest aesthetic categories, and its various works can be found in different periods of art. It is also present in various fields of contemporary art, including film art. Grotesque appears in both independent avant-garde works and high-budget Hollywood productions. One of the film directors using grotesque as a form of artistic expression is the American Tim Burton. His recognisable style characterised by, among others, a subversion of genres through transforming existing genre conventions and giving them a new context and a new meaning. Burton applies this strategy most often to horror, which, in his films, combines elements of horror and comedy. This article presents examples of grotesque transformations of horror genre conventions in the movie Dark Shadows. The film analysis is preceded with an attempt to define the theoretical concept of grotesque.
Keywords: grotesque, horror, terror, humour, Tim Burton, Dark Shadows
10.25312/2451-2737.14/2019_05ts
Tomasz Safjanowski
tomasz.safjanowski@uni.lodz.pl
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5093-9943