Andrew Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera:
Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." You might disagree about this one, but I see it as being Gothic, especially in its darkness and the ghost imagery at the end. Another Demon Lover here? What do you think? Any other examples from pop culture?
Thunder Road
ReplyDeleteThe screen door slams
Marys dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what Im here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we aint that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You aint a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
You can hide `neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now Im no hero
That's understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow
Back your hair
Well the nights busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heavens waiting on down the tracks
Oh-oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh-oh thunder road, oh thunder road oh thunder road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late we can make it if we run
Oh thunder road, sit tight take hold
Thunder road
Well I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my cars out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The doors open but the ride it aint free
And I know you're lonely
For words that I aint spoken
But tonight well be free
All the promisesll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road
In the skeleton frames of burned out chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they're gone
On the wind, so mary climb in
Its a town full of losers
And Im pulling out of here to win.
Here are the lyrics because I know they might be helpful.
I think the persona definitely can be interpreted as a demon lover of sorts. It's more interesting to me to look at where that conclusion is coming from and if there are any other implications that might need accounted for.
The persona is trying to draw Mary away with him. He's under the impression that there's some point of relation between the two of them, some kind of unfulfilling past that needs evading. Mary is associated directly with a series of past lovers that are, in one way or another, ghostly. (They have either been killed or she's still somehow haunted by experiences with them.) Regardless, she's no longer with these lovers. The persona is equally uncanny. He's "no savior" except for, in paraphrasing Springsteen's choice, a much more grotesque even sexual representation of a car's engine.
We also have their rather elusive destination. As humans, we automatically grow suspicious of the persona's heavy emphasis on Mary's readiness to leave, the "long walk," and the "doors open," without revealing her reasons to go, his reasons to go with her, and any of the consequences of their departure: "the ride it aint free."
What the persona does reveal about where the two are to escape only elevates our suspicion. They are "riding out to case the promised land," which directly relates to the uncanny notions of spirituality.
So my point is that the persona is very aloof, which makes him seem seductively demonic. I think ultimately Springsteen is writing a half anti-religious song here, by portraying the hot-rod American stud-muffin who's trying to elusively seduce a Madonna figure.
I do not read Thunder Road as a Demon Lover story per se; however, I can definitely see the Gothic here- if for no other reason than The Boss's employment of ghostly imagery at the end, as you mention above. There is something unsettling, or uncanny, about a lingering presence that is felt but not seen or able to be grasped, and Freud would attribute this to the feeling that something that was once known and thought to be forgotten is still present and eerily familiar. Additionally, and on a more simplistic level, Sprinsteen's word-choice is overtly Gothic-ghost,eyes,haunt,skeleton. Whether the referents of these descriptions are Gothic or not, the words themselves certainly carry Gothic connotations.
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