Southern Gothic literature viewed through the lens of Angel Heart

Historical background

The origins of Southern Gothic as a literary genre can be traced back to American Gothic, which itself arose from the European Gothic popularized in the closing years of the 18th century.

Gothic literature uses settings such as remote, ancient, and gloomy environments -old manors, graveyards, haunted castles, and the like- to convey fear, isolation, and dread. Arguably, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto: a Gothic Story was the first purely Gothic work. The supernatural and a sense of repressed sexuality also imbue many Gothic novels.

Across the Atlantic, Gothic literature came to be known as American Gothic or Dark Romanticism, with Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and William Faulkner among the genre's most prominent authors.

Southern Gothic can be classified as a literary subgenre of American Gothic, as it inherits some of the genre's defining themes, such as a naturalistic depiction of human misery and a fixation with the grotesque, while adding a Southern flavour to them. Issues like post-slavery racial discrimination, disparity, and prejudice, social and moral decay, post-war poverty, the lingering effects of the South's defeat during the American Civil War, religious zealotry, and, importantly, the figure of the outsider. He or she who does not belong -and is not welcome to snoop around- in small communities with long-hidden secrets or traditions. Folk magic and syncretic religions like voodoo (or vodou) feature heavily in Southern Gothic, as do mythical creatures dwelling in hostile environments like swamps and the bayous.

We'll use this setting, New Orleans, and its association with voodoo practices, to analyse Southern Gothic from the perspective of Angel Heart, which is set, for the most part, in and around New Orleans.

Angel Heart, a piece of modern Southern Gothic

How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise, Johnny.

Thus spoke Louis Cyphre (Robert de Niro) to a terrified Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) when the latter finally realizes who he really is, and always was, in the 1987 neo-noir horror film Angel Heart. Based on the 1978 book Falling Angel, by American novelist and screenwriter William Hjortsberg, Angel Heart is a prime example of the modern Southern Gothic genre.

The line paraphrases the one spoken by the blind prophet Tiresias in Sophocles' play Oedipus the King, and it means that knowing the truth will not bring relief or solace for one's grim and appalling reality. That's why Cyphre -who's actually the Devil- speaks it to Angel, for whom he's come to collect a debt.

Though the plot begins in the grimy streets of New York City, it soon moves to the suffocating, swampy bayous of Louisiana and the arch-lined streets of mid-1950's New Orleans. Amidst these exotic settings, we embark on the Southern Gothic experience.

As Angel pursues the truth about crooner Johnny Favorite ('quite famous in his way,' Cyphre says of him), he encounters voodoo rituals, embodied by Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), a local girl whose mother had been Favorite's lover before he vanished. The deeper Angel delves into the mystery, the weirder things get, and he's soon facing the supernatural, and dead bodies begin to pile up before him. The film's atmosphere becomes as humid and stifling as the sweat-soaked shirts that Angel wears.

The character of Angel fits the 'outsider' category. He's a New Yorker through and through ('I'm from Brooklyn,' he proudly retorts, twice). Deep-rooted Southern traditions and communities are completely anathema and quite hostile to him, and when we find out Angel's true identity, we can infer that he was trapped in a Southern purgatory from which he cannot escape any more than he can escape the truth, hence why Cyphre uttered that terrible line.

Harry Angel's journey grows darker and more desperate as time goes on. His character evolves from a cynical, small-time gumshoe to a vulnerable and ultimately broken human being, for whom the appalling and inescapable truth of his deeds becomes a millstone around his neck. This is also a common theme in Southern Gothic stories, trapping characters in situations which they cannot avoid or escape from.

Considered as a whole, Angel Heart is a fantastic film and a great example of modern-day Southern Gothic storytelling. The atmosphere, settings, characterization, and the themes presented all fit the mould.

Angel Heart did not fare well at the box office at the time of its release, but has certainly -and deservedly- attained cult status through the years.