Happy Death Day - trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NTaDm3atkc 

I chose Happy Death Day as my connection to Song of Myself Section 49 because they share the theme of the cycle of death and rebirth. In SOM Whitman talks about the corpse turning into manure which would sprout new life which is more of a physical representation of rebirth. He also says life is the leavings of many deaths. This tells the reader that his belief is that the existence of living things is cyclical and infinite and that death is only a transition into a new life. The movie Happy Death Day uses this theme in a more literal sense. The main character keeps dying and going back to the day she has to relive until she figures out what she has to do to break this cycle, which is by figuring out who keeps killing her. This involves the gothic trope of mystery and suspense with the repeated murderer, leavin the audience wondering who it is and when the main character will finally figure out the identity. Both share the gothic trope of the metonymy of gloom and horror. In Happy Death Day, her murders always take place in dark corridors or dark unpopulated areas outside or in buildings. SOM personifies the gloom and horror by talking about life in the dreadful and undesirable parts of nature such as swamps and grass in graveyards. In essence, you could connect Happy Death Day’s literal theme of death and rebirth to the spiritual connotation of SOM’s theme.

The Raven: 

Slipped Away by Avril Lavigne, Lyrics: https://genius.com/Avril-lavigne-slipped-away-lyrics 

The Raven and Slipped Away are about the speaker losing someone important to them and having to endure the grief it has caused. In The Raven, we can imply Poe lost a lover because he refers to her as a “rare and radiant maiden”. Avril Lavigne’s song, “Slipped Away”, is about the loss of her grandfather. Lavigne makes the weight of her grief very straightforward in her song with lyrics such as, “ I miss you Miss you so bad”, “The day you slipped away was the day I found out it won’t be the same”, etc. Poe’s business with grief seems to bring a whirlwind of emotions. He begins by contemplating why the Raven is present and when he thinks the bird is mocking him about his grief for his lost lover, he gets upset and accuses the raven of being sent by the devil to taunt him. His anger and grief escalate and he wants the raven to leave, and in the end, he realizes he was imagining it, so we see that the Raven serves as a symbol of the grief Poe is wrestling with. The Raven and Slipped Away both share the gothic trope of high/overwrought emotion. In this case, the emotions stem from the grief from the loss of a loved one, and the contemplation of how they can carry on without them.