Aesthetics and their Influence on Literature
Picture a dark room with wood panelling. The scent of coffee wafts through, along with distant strains from a piano. Old books lay open on the vintage table; their pages yellowed with age and stained from use. Their spines are broken; the mark of a well-worn and well-loved book.
Shift.
Soft, muted sunlight pools into a small cottage. Dried herbs and flowers hang on the door, along with a small crystal that sends broken rainbows dancing across the floor. Leafy boughs gently shake their arms against the bright blue sky as a girl with white ribbons in her hair runs past, her bare feet moving soundlessly on the grass.
Shift.
Purple lights pulse through the room as dark, shadowy bodies of strangers move around to a mind-numbing beat. Words screamed out are lost in the bedlam, unheard. Drunken movements, wavering smiles, glitter-stained eyes, tear-tracked cheeks.
Shift.
A movie. A song. A book. A taste, a colour, a feeling.
An Aesthetic.
An overused word, aesthetics are more than just a pretty filter on Instagram. A thousand little aesthetics exist, ranging from Light Academia and Baroque, to the lesser known Bubble Goth and Cartooncore. Each of these has their own niche, and have created umbrellas under which hundreds of people find shelter, camaraderie and long-awaited recognition. Knowing certain settings, certain colours, certain little nuances of life that make others feel the same way they do you is a blessing comparable to few others. It’s a feeling that cannot quite be expressed by mere words, but under that aesthetic umbrella, the words seem to come a little closer.
These aesthetics are slowly but surely bleeding into literature and cinema. More often than not, you’ll find a moody Spotify playlist titled ‘Dark Academia’, or an Instagram picture with ‘Cottagecore’ in its tags. These aesthetics have become a form of self-depiction, and a way to find a community and a sense of belonging.
Multiple movies and shows have delved deep into specific aesthetic subcultures, which not only helps attract a specific community as their audience, but helps with the stylisation of the film. Movies with such aesthetic elements are a visual treat, and often an auditory one as well. Music and dialogue add to the overall ambience, carrying the viewer to a world that, for the longest time, existed solely in their headspace.
One example of an aesthetically pleasing movie is the 2005 version of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, which almost feels like reading the book. Starting from the dresses to the set pieces to the film setting to the music, everything bleeds Dark Academia. Some more movies that fall into the Dark Academia category are ‘Dead Poets Society’, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ and ‘Maurice’.
Movies, however, aren’t where the influence of aesthetics stops. Books such as ‘The Secret Garden’, ‘Little Women’, and ‘The Stranger in the Woods’ are drenched in a Cottagecore-themed sunlight. Reading them gives you the same feeling that taking the first bite out of a pie baked with apples from your fresh harvest would feel like.
Music, too, hasn’t been left untouched. Sufjan Stevens’ and Hozier’s music usually has a Cottagecore or Cabincore aesthetic, while songs like ‘Temple of Love’ by Sisters of Mercy and ‘A Forest’ by The Cure have strong Gothic roots.
Long before these subcultures even had names, creators were borrowing from the feelings different aesthetics churn out in us. Ranging from poetry to architecture, to cinema to dressing, aesthetics have always played a big role in creative works. And now, even though roaming barefoot down a forest, or gliding down the stairs of a Victorian mansion might not be possible, getting a feeling incredibly close to that is. Aesthetics have brought people closer to experiences they have craved, and its use in Movies and Literature has made it all the more accessible.
