Visual Studies Commons^™

Hogarth To Monster Wheels : A Grotesque Connection, Christopher Ridley

Theses : Honours

When an audience is exposed to deformed, altered and abnormal entities, their interpretation relies on some form of cultural awareness of both the expected and the altered shape to stimulate a reaction. I maintain that the stimulus for this reaction has its roots in a dark and terrifying primal force, the manifestation of which we regard as the grotesque. This thesis looks for a commonality in a satirical interpretation afforded to this grotesque force. By using the caricatures in William Hogarth's engravings and the altered cars in three contemporary films. I search for a correlation between the way Hogarth and …