strange_complex (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strange_complex) wrote2020-01-03 10:59 pm
strange_complex) wrote2020-01-03 10:59 pm
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Initial thoughts on Dracula episode 3
Hahhh, yeah... I was up for a modern setting. It's worth remembering that Stoker's novel departed from the early Gothic tradition in using what for him was a modern setting complete with all the latest technology (wax cylinders, telegrams, Kodaks, etc). And of course my love for Dracula: AD 1972 knows no bounds (and was appropriately recognised here in Bob the disposable boyfriend, the boarded-up church outside the night-club and the sign reading "AD|072 Oncology" in the hospital where Zoe Van Helsing lies). In practice, though, and wholly inevitably, this felt almost indistinguishable from an episode of Sherlock featuring the Torchwood Institute, complete with the inevitable Mark Gatiss self-insertion.
Equally unsurprisingly, here comes the misogyny. Poor Lucy seems to have been designed wholly to be made a fool of for her vanity, and I am just tired of that story. Even worse, what for plot purposes should have been her main note - no fear of death - was under-developed by contrast. Yes, it was there in their conversation in the graveyard when she didn't really care about the sentient dead knocking on their coffin lids and was quite happy to wave hello to the zombie child. But all of that came across to me as more of a naive disbelief in death than a genuine, open-eyed absence of fear. That could have been developed and sustained so much better. Imagine, for example, if she'd been an undertaker or a grief counsellor or something like that. Someone who had faced and come to terms with the realities of death. Or indeed a member of the armed forces or the police or fire service, who had accepted the risk of death in action, just like (as Zoe points out) all Dracula's relatives had done. Imagine showing her as more curious about the process than anything else when she realises she is on her death-bed, followed by us seeing her in the mirror after she has died fascinated with her own changing body, instead of screaming for help as she actually did. It could have been really dark, poignant and unsettling. But no - instead we got the Torchwood Institute and the misogyny. Of course we did!
I was also disappointed that after the strong emphasis on the construction of stories used in the first two episodes, this seemed to have been completely dropped for the third. Jack Seward, for example, was in a position to witness personally or hear at second hand about almost everything which happened throughout the entire narrative - so it could have been book-ended as his attempt to compile and make sense of everything that had happened during those strange few months, maybe even as a report to the Torchwood Institute if necessary. Though I'd prefer to just cut out the Torchwood Institute altogether, and I may watch again to see if there would have been a way to do that while still fulfilling the key plot points of explaining how Dracula was reawakened from the ocean bed and giving Zoe a phial of his blood to think about and eventually decide to drink. That's all it really achieved in the end, and removing the rest of the scenes involving it would have freed up a lot of time for Lucy the undertaker and Jack the narrator.
That isn't to say I hated all of it. I still love Claes Bang's approach to the character. And actually for once I thought the final pay-off about the true reason for his fears and curses worked really well. I had no hopes for that at all when Sister Agatha began picking away at it in the first episode, but her great-great-niece Zoe's (and I love that their names went from A to Z, alpha to omega) revelation that he is really just afraid of death, and ashamed of that, wholly made sense and sat beautifully within the extended Dracula mythos. Lucy's role as his supposedly perfect unafraid bride may have been botched, but in the closing moments the way Claes Bang and Dolly Wells played their confrontation with his central vulnerability was beautiful, and did a great deal to redeem the rest of the episode.
In the end, seen in toto, I think this is where this version of Dracula sits for me:
1. The whole Hammer opus (including The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula)
2. Stoker's original novel
3. The Northern Ballet version
4. The Mystery and Imagination version
5. This version
And you know, that's not bad going given how many versions there are. Not bad going at all.
Equally unsurprisingly, here comes the misogyny. Poor Lucy seems to have been designed wholly to be made a fool of for her vanity, and I am just tired of that story. Even worse, what for plot purposes should have been her main note - no fear of death - was under-developed by contrast. Yes, it was there in their conversation in the graveyard when she didn't really care about the sentient dead knocking on their coffin lids and was quite happy to wave hello to the zombie child. But all of that came across to me as more of a naive disbelief in death than a genuine, open-eyed absence of fear. That could have been developed and sustained so much better. Imagine, for example, if she'd been an undertaker or a grief counsellor or something like that. Someone who had faced and come to terms with the realities of death. Or indeed a member of the armed forces or the police or fire service, who had accepted the risk of death in action, just like (as Zoe points out) all Dracula's relatives had done. Imagine showing her as more curious about the process than anything else when she realises she is on her death-bed, followed by us seeing her in the mirror after she has died fascinated with her own changing body, instead of screaming for help as she actually did. It could have been really dark, poignant and unsettling. But no - instead we got the Torchwood Institute and the misogyny. Of course we did!
I was also disappointed that after the strong emphasis on the construction of stories used in the first two episodes, this seemed to have been completely dropped for the third. Jack Seward, for example, was in a position to witness personally or hear at second hand about almost everything which happened throughout the entire narrative - so it could have been book-ended as his attempt to compile and make sense of everything that had happened during those strange few months, maybe even as a report to the Torchwood Institute if necessary. Though I'd prefer to just cut out the Torchwood Institute altogether, and I may watch again to see if there would have been a way to do that while still fulfilling the key plot points of explaining how Dracula was reawakened from the ocean bed and giving Zoe a phial of his blood to think about and eventually decide to drink. That's all it really achieved in the end, and removing the rest of the scenes involving it would have freed up a lot of time for Lucy the undertaker and Jack the narrator.
That isn't to say I hated all of it. I still love Claes Bang's approach to the character. And actually for once I thought the final pay-off about the true reason for his fears and curses worked really well. I had no hopes for that at all when Sister Agatha began picking away at it in the first episode, but her great-great-niece Zoe's (and I love that their names went from A to Z, alpha to omega) revelation that he is really just afraid of death, and ashamed of that, wholly made sense and sat beautifully within the extended Dracula mythos. Lucy's role as his supposedly perfect unafraid bride may have been botched, but in the closing moments the way Claes Bang and Dolly Wells played their confrontation with his central vulnerability was beautiful, and did a great deal to redeem the rest of the episode.
In the end, seen in toto, I think this is where this version of Dracula sits for me:
1. The whole Hammer opus (including The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula)
2. Stoker's original novel
3. The Northern Ballet version
4. The Mystery and Imagination version
5. This version
And you know, that's not bad going given how many versions there are. Not bad going at all.
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Which versions do you recommend for their takes on Lucy?
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That is neat! I have seen retellings point out the transfusion problem, but I don't think I've seen one where she chooses and Dracula regrets her death.
I really like your idea of Lucy as a grief counselor, counterpoised to Dracula's ultimate fear of death.
For a completely different take—you may have been pointed toward this story already, but with great synchronicity it just turned up on my other friendlist: Gwendolyn Kiste, "The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra's Diary)."
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Thanks hugely for the link to the story, which had not crossed my radar in fact. I need to go to bed shortly, so will save it for now, but that looks like a nice treat to save up for tomorrow.
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I have not, although I like Saberhagen. (It can't have been in the house when I was growing up or I would have at least seen it.) I will check it out.
Thanks hugely for the link to the story, which had not crossed my radar in fact.
You're welcome!
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Yay!
(It reminded me of the Aickman also, not just because of the title, but I agree with you about the payoff. I hadn't seen that end before.)
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Aww, that's pretty good going for a shaky b&w TV version! (I haven't seen the new one yet; it may be a bit gory for me. Also there'll be such a fuss in fandom over it being the worst ever, much better in a few years if I ever do.)
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It is indeed a bit gory from time to time. I had to turn my head away once or twice when things to do with fingernails came on the screen!
I think my biggest sadness about it is that the weaknesses in episode 3 have given the joyless purists (the one who always judge every adaptation by how precisely it adheres to Stoker's novel, without realising that a wholly straight adaptation would come across as boring and ridiculous to modern audiences) the excuse they needed to pan the whole thing. In fact, episodes 1 and 2 were bold, creative, exciting and well-produced - but it will be hard for people who saw those qualities to defend them now, because the purists can always whip out episode 3 as evidence that the whole thing was rubbish.
Anyway, yeah - if you're a bit unsure anyway, it's probably best to wait until the angsting over it has died down and you can view it with some distance. And to set your expectations low for the final episode!
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If anyone's going to do something like that it'll be Mark Gatiss.
And I'm not worried about book purists (they have my sympathies really; the last time anyone tried was 1977 and that was excellent, so no reason the BBC in particular couldn't do a reasonably faithful effort again, it's their thing). It's just that since DW and Sherlock people go out of their way to find out about and scream about everything relating to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, usually without even watching it or caring about whatever it is they've done evil things to now, and I've had enough of that over the last 10 years as it is. As Dracula's not a continuing thing, that'll die down relatively quickly, I trust. But even my innocent gifs of the 1977 have been hijacked on occasion as soon as we got into the lead of it, because God forbid you don't warn people about the evil of the two of them in case people might watch it or something.
It sounds a bit gory for me, though! I don't know if I'll be entirely able to avoid it, but I doubt I'll ever like it. It's a shame - if Mark Gatiss had done his own Dracula, it'd have been straight-forward and gory and dark and full of references to all the Draculas and I could have happily avoided it entirely, and if Steven Moffat had done a Dracula it's have been metaphorical and stolen my soul again while everyone else complained, but I bet I'd have loved it, even if it was weird, but both of them together is just no good at all. And this one is probably more Gatiss's baby, anyway. It's his sort of thing, and therefore not mine. /o\
Anyway, at some point I'll see if I can dare gif Bram Stoker's Dracula for tumblr, and finish off my Six What I Have Watched. But I don't really want any more warnings that Dracula is non-consensual and therefore homophobic!
I mean, I was going to go out and find a vampire to bite me against my will if they hadn't said something, but now I know it's Bad. /abuses sarcasm.
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Anyway, have you heard that Mark Gatiss will be starring in a Big Finish audio play called Dracula's Guests, out in February? Maybe that will be more to your tastes, as the audio medium is bound to limit how much gore they can convey (and also Gatiss didn't write the script for it anyway). I'm certainly going to check it out.
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I hadn't heard of the BFA, but they do a lot of interesting side things as well as DW, so I'm sure it'll be good.
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What.
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Or they just want to lecture people about hating the source material for being non-con, because obv. if those two like it, it's got to be plain evil to start with.
(I don't do FB and the oldschool aargh, no PC brigade don't do tumblr, so I get a different brand. Most of the book lovers are just sighing again and pointing to the 1977. Which is where me and my gifs inadvertantly came in.)
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Poor Lucy, nothing but a bloofer lady.