Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#61

Post by hax0ron3 »

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

I'm old enough to have been in spaces like that, but the aesthetic illusion still works for me if I look at an image that is supposed to depict one.

Also, the infinite corridors is only part of the appeal. There are other ways in which such spaces can become eerie. I remember how I used to often be the only person still working in an open floor plan office in the evening. There was no sense of infinite corridors, but the dimness with one area alone illuminated by motion-detected light was spooky, and so were the sounds of the HVAC system and of doors and elevators somewhere in a different part of the building. There was also an uncanny empty feeling of seeing all the chairs and desks with no humans at them.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#62

Post by stronglikedan »

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Even a regular, non-sprawling office building is creepy as fuck when you're the only one in it, no matter the time of day.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#64

Post by fer »

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Where I grew up, it happened to me with (primary/middle/high) schools.

During the 60s and 70s, in order to accommodate baby boomers, new buildings were built on existing school grounds, and while they were not cookie cutter copies of each other, they followed the same architectural and civil engineering principles: identical ceiling height, same fixtures, same walls, same classroom door arches, same bathroom stalls, toilets, similar fire exit paths, identical heavy steel and steel wired glass external doors, staircase layouts...

But given every location had its own available surface and urban/terrain/attendance needs, they were anywhere from 1 to 4 floors, straight corridors, or in L, or rectangular with inner courtyard, with and without basement, and overall significant practical deviations from some common standard blueprint (though I never found the common denominator) but keeping everything else the same. It was extremely eerie and disorienting visiting a different school, or getting used to another school when you moved, especially after hours when they're empty.

It's probably similar to the khrushchyovki/stalinki residential buildings in post-Soviet countries, though I've only visited them well after the collapse and they've evolved on their own. Meanwhile these schools I mention, look actually frozen in time.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#65

Post by Wojtkie »

amiga386 wrote: post #17

The article has a screenshot of the Stanley Parable, but misses an opportunity to reference Control (2019) which is much more directly influenced by the "liminal space" concept, and imagines a non-euclidian space called The Oldest House at 34 Thomas Street (a reference to the brutalist, windowless AT&T Long Lines skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, New York City). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74LLDhAhhI It also very…

I am also going to call out House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's a really interesting book that explores a house that is slightly larger on the inside than the outside. It explores a lot of liminal spaces and has a really interesting format in print.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#66

Post by alex_c »

wishfish wrote: post #29
nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Day vs. Night are what makes the difference. The sprawling suburban office complex from the 70s was, like you said, just boring and a bit oppressive during the day. At night though, a sea of cubicles. Endless hallways. Nothing but blackness outside the windows. Lights are all on motion detectors so only your area is lit. And only lit for a time. Eventually you'd have to stand up to make the lights switch back on. And…

>For me, I've always called it the "school at night" phenomenon.

It's funny, I've always loved that kind of environment. Quiet high school hallways after everyone's left, empty university buildings late at night, offices after hours, even empty offices that haven't been moved into yet. For me it evokes feelings associated more with watching a rainy day from inside, or lofi-girl with headphones studying.

I understand why it can evoke horror or unsettling feelings for people, but for me the first word that comes to mind is just "peaceful".

Even the environments in the Backrooms trailer - minus the obvious horror elements - look like they would be a lot of fun to explore!

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#67

Post by bigbuppo »

wishfish wrote: post #29
nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Day vs. Night are what makes the difference. The sprawling suburban office complex from the 70s was, like you said, just boring and a bit oppressive during the day. At night though, a sea of cubicles. Endless hallways. Nothing but blackness outside the windows. Lights are all on motion detectors so only your area is lit. And only lit for a time. Eventually you'd have to stand up to make the lights switch back on. And…

The smell of old cigarettes, stale coffee, Certs, and urinal cakes wafting through the air.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#68

Post by nlawalker »

Wojtkie wrote: post #65
amiga386 wrote: post #17

The article has a screenshot of the Stanley Parable, but misses an opportunity to reference Control (2019) which is much more directly influenced by the "liminal space" concept, and imagines a non-euclidian space called The Oldest House at 34 Thomas Street (a reference to the brutalist, windowless AT&T Long Lines skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, New York City). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74LLDhAhhI It also very…

I am also going to call out House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's a really interesting book that explores a house that is slightly larger on the inside than the outside. It explores a lot of liminal spaces and has a really interesting format in print.

>House of Leaves

And then from there back to another game: MyHouse.wad, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyHouse.wad

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#70

Post by nonameiguess »

whateveracct wrote: post #7

The Backrooms have always reminded me of House of Leaves and the Navidson Record within specifically. (I think maybe that's a deliberate influence in the lore?) So I like how the movie's plot seems to be similar as well.

I was thinking of House of Leaves reading the other comments here, mostly because something like an infinitely long tunnel to nowhere hidden in the walls of your house would actually be scary to me, whereas normally occupied spaces being empty and long winding indoor hallways are far more mundane. My wife has gotten into backrooms lore quite a bit in the past few years and it's always struck me as a strange thing to find eery. I've been an early morning runner for much of my life, worked overnight shifts at a theme park, closing at a mall, been in the tunnels beneath Disneyland and downtown Dallas. Worked in stores that hadn't opened yet and had nothing in them. There was nothing scary or eery about any of those things. It seems like an effect of the photographs and presentation more than the reality of the physical places. House of Leaves is scary specifically because it can't be real. Another example is something like the wormhole to 1987 and 1954 at the end of a cave in Dark. Yeah, that's scary, because nothing like that exists and you have no idea what to expect going into it.

Ironically enough, I first read this book when I worked at Disneyland, at an attraction with tunnel access, that no longer exists, and I no longer have the book because I loaned it to a girl I worked with there who never gave it back. She and I hung out in those tunnels during breaks.

Also interesting to me seeing other responses about found footage, given the guy who first recommended this book to me was a friend from college who covered his dorm room in bizarre free-form prose that switched between play style and novel style during a manic episode, then tore it all down later, set it on fire, and pieced together what survived as the strangest pseudo-poetry that somehow still had a lot of real words in it, kind of nature's "found poem." This book was probably written around the same time Blair Witch Project first came out and this guy also lived next to the real Greenway Trail in Burkittsville, which was also not particularly scary to see in person. I kind of doubt that was really the first example of a found footage film but it's the first I'm aware of. Wikipedia is saying The Connection from 1961 is the first.

Post reply on HN