Meaning of Grand Guignol | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A Parisian theatre which specialized in grotesque and grisly horror shows.
   historical
2. That which thrives on grotesquery and gore.
   broadly

Equivalents

Examples

“I may remark, in passing, that I did not go to see any bullfights... . But if I had preferred a Grand Guignol thrill to a great experience of a great nation,... .”

“Hence the incomparably strange reincarnation of the cultural figure of the male homosexual as a predatory, determined invert, wrapped in a Grand Guignol cloak of degeneracy theory, and casting his lascivious eyes-and hands-out from the pages of Victorian sexology manuals and onto "our" children, and above all onto "our" sons.”

“Everything quickly gets impossibly sensitive, aesthetic, ethereal, and opaquely lovely, yet there is a Grand Guignol thread running through it all that results in constant ominous tension, as though something dreadfully beautiful is going to happen at any moment-i.e., the author is going to turn queer.”

“Should we be surprised? It is not as though we haven't seen this stuff before in glossy, grand guignol crime series such as Luther and Ripper Street, with their artful depictions of lady corpses, all alabaster skin and wonkily splayed limbs, as men stand over them stifling their erections.”

CEFR level