From book to stage to screen: semiotic transformations of Gothic horror genre conventions

ABSTRACT

This paper adopts a multimodal social semiotic approach for exploring the semiotic changes involved in the transformation of a novel into stage and screen productions. It examines how semiotic resources are deployed in each medium through elements of mise-en-scène, such as speech, music, sound, lighting, props, staging, and cinematographic techniques, and the viewing perspectives that are thus established for audiences. The genre of Gothic horror is selected for this purpose, given how this form of performance has transfixed audiences for centuries and has been adapted for both the stage and the screen. In order to demonstrate how each performance medium has produced its own unique set of foregrounding devices to enthral and captivate audiences, a comparative analysis of excerpts from the novel The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, a videotaped theatrical performance, and the 1989 British television film of the same name is undertaken. The paper discusses the implications of the multimodal semiotic approach for developing a better understanding of the semiotic transformations that horror genre conventions undergo in different media and the viewership positions that are thus re-drawn for audiences. The paper concludes with a view of multimodal recontextualisation processes which form the underlying basis of human sociocultural life.

KEYWORDS:

• Multimodal
• social semiotic
• resemiotisation
• Gothic horror
• The Woman in Black

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sabine Tan is a Research Fellow in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. Her research interests include critical multimodal discourse analysis, social semiotics, and visual communication. She is particularly interested in the application of multidisciplinary perspectives within social semiotic theory to the analysis of institutional discourses involving traditional and new media.

Peter Wignell is a Research Fellow in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. Peter’s current research interests are in Systemic Functional Linguistics, especially in its application to the analysis of multimodal texts. His research has also focussed on the role of language in the construction of specialised knowledge.

Kay O’Halloran is Associate Professor in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. Her areas of research include multimodal analysis, social semiotics, mathematics discourse, and the development of interactive digital media technologies and visualisation techniques for multimodal and sociocultural analytics.

Notes

1. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/jun/11/woman-in-black-mousetrap.

2. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/23/ghost-stories-victorians-spookily-good.

3. http://multimodal-analysis.com/products/multimodal-analysis-video/

4. http://filmmakermagazine.com/76622-so-you-want-to-make-a-horror-film-on-jump-scares-and-other-basics-of-fright/#.VihHW2QrLxo.