Why the age-old motif is making such a comeback
Despite only being five years into the decade, some interesting trends have begun to emerge, with perhaps none being as intriguing as the comeback of the motif of the Gothic double. This motif, a staple of 18th and 19th-century Gothic literature, manifests in the unsettling experience of a character perceiving themselves as “other,” a split symbolic of internal turmoil.
In an era defined by cultural, political, and economic fragmentation, the return of said motif may not be all that surprising. Three notable works exemplify this phenomenon: Apple TV+’s Severance, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, and Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. (This article includes spoilers for all three.)
Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson’s Severance is among the most compelling television series in recent years. The show’s central conceit—the severance procedure—spatially bifurcates employees' memories, effectively creating two selves: the ‘innie’ who exists only at work and the ‘outie’ who navigates the outside world.
Lumon Industries, the shadowy employer, justifies the procedure by arguing that the work on the severed floor is too sensitive for external knowledge, reinforcing an opaque corporate hierarchy. The recent cliffhanger of the second season’s third episode sees Mark Scout, or rather his fragmented personas, undergo reintegration, suggesting that wholeness itself may pose a greater threat than division.
Credit: Instagram/@trythesubstance.
Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance follows Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood star who takes a miraculous drug to revive her career. The drug generates Sue, a younger, more desirable version of herself. The mysterious salesman for the substance constantly reiterates that Elisabeth/Sue must ‘respect the balance’ and ‘remember that you are one,’ advice that is quickly discarded as the two disown their other half despite their shared consciousness.
The two personas engage in escalating acts of self-harm, culminating in Elisabeth killing and shortly after reviving Sue, who in turn murders her. Elizabeth/Sue cannot function without their other half, and Sue’s attempt to further divide herself by once again using the substance results in the creation of the grotesque ‘Monstro-Elisa-Sue’. Her existence, as containing just a quarter of the essence of the original Elisabeth, is unstable, and quickly falls apart in the film’s gruesome finale.
Similarly, in Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, we follow the life of Owen (along with his friend Maddy) from awkward child to depressed and alienated grown man whose fascination with the young adult television series The Pink Opaque blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality.
Credit: Instagram/@isawthetvglow.
The film’s most haunting moment, Maddy’s monologue in the planetarium, articulates this existential split. For her, the world of The Pink Opaque is more real than the so-called ‘real world.’ She states that the finale of the show, in which Isabel and Tara, it’s two leads, were drugged and buried alive by the villainous Mr Melancholy actually happened. Owen and Maddy’s entire existence is artificial; they are divided from their true existence as Isabel and Tara respectively by the screen of the TV itself. Unlike Maddy, who bravely crosses the threshold into her true self, Owen remains caught in limbo.
The film ends ambiguously, leaving viewers to wonder whether he will ever escape his half-life. Gothic doubling is used to explore and subsequently deconstruct the thin veil between what is fact and what is fiction; allowing the characters to grapple with their fractured identities, interrogating their (and our) fear of what lies beyond our own constructed realities.
What unites these narratives is their shared motif of instability and repression. Severance externalizes the modern corporate worker’s compartmentalized self; The Substance literalises the pressures of bodily control and self-erasure; I Saw the TV Glow explores the alienation of those who struggle to integrate into a prescribed reality.
Each of these works interrogates a key anxiety of the modern era—whether through the corporate dystopia of Severance, the body horror of The Substance, or the existential dread of I Saw the TV Glow. All three expose, despite our apparent obsession with the self, such constructs are inherently unstable. In a time of social, economic, and political division, the resurgence of the Gothic double serves as a striking reminder that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Comments