devendrabanharts

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Assortment of Vivienne Westwood lighters

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in an ideal world i would have 8 beverages with me at all times and i would just be able to pull them out of my pocket like an animal crossing character

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I'm trying to avoid people's dumb takes on Nosferatu but I keep being exposed to the tip of the iceberg and am annoyed enough about it to rant about it.

There's nothing in there that implies she was a kid. She lived in her family home, in the room she had lived in her whole life-- very typical for an unmarried adult woman at the time, especially in a well off family. Everyone determined that this had to be Orlok "grooming" a "child" are just fixated on that interpretation because it's nasty-sounding enough that they can condemn the relationship as "irredeemable" and "problematic" without sounding like pearl-clutchers. It's the magic word that lets them look vindicated in writing the whole thing off. She's not played by a child, she is dressed and styled as an adult, and the needs she's expressing, for attention, for recognition, for physical and emotional intimacy, are in no way limited to children. She's a young woman yearning for things that everybody wants and she's been denied. Ellen having been neglected, lonely, and starved for affection doesn't negate her adulthood. Her walking into a bad situation as a result of all that doesn't make her "groomed." Plenty of grown adults wind up in bad relationships because they're naive and desperate for love.

Similarly, everyone determined that one side of the triangle here wasn't "real" or that she "actually" only felt a connection with one of them and nothing for the other is similarly ridiculous. Thomas is the relationship Ellen chooses intentionally and conscientiously and which provides her the future she wants while satisfying her physical and emotional desires in a safe, secure, loving environment. Orlok is the first love, the first major relationship that she fell into because she was reckless and desperate for affection, that at first satisfied her needs but turned sour and dangerous-- that relationship becoming scary, unpleasant, coercive, doesn't erase the good things they had together once. Ellen and Orlok is the bad breakup between people who's freak matched too well. In the normal world it'd be a bad breakup with a toxic partner; in hers he's unfortunately also a an amoral inhuman manifestation of consumption.

And as for "Orlok doesn't love Ellen blah blah he's only an appetite blah blah." Love is an appetite. Need is an appetite. Loneliness is an appetite unmet. It's all hunger!! Why the FUCK is a zillion year old ghoul aristocrat holed up in a ruin in Eastern Europe tuned in enough to immediately respond to the random calls of some nameless unimportant woman he's never met a thousand miles away?? Because he's as desperate as she is, and for similar things. He was already listening, was already looking for someone-- he was desperate and searching first. His needs are twisted because he's a literal monster, but they still echo hers. The freak is matched, the freak in this case being deep emptiness and desire to be wanted and embraced. Unfortunately for him, Ellen can look elsewhere to satisfy those desires when he no longer makes her happy and find people who will-- and she does. Orlok can only go where he is called, must be chosen under special circumstances, which, seemingly out of everyone within his considerable reach, only she has offered. If what Orlok feels isn't love, its the survival in his mockery of life of what would have been love. But what ends in real love with union, ends for him with destruction and a return to lonely solitude-- that's his curse.

Ellen saves the man she chose by rejecting their future together, by breaking their marriage vows, and by sacrificing herself. She chooses the sacrifice as an act of autonomy, but one that subverts her own desires and victimizes her. It's a tragedy, but it's also a victory. It's a succumbing to the predations of the lover who wouldn't let her go, but its also making peace with him, taking into her embrace a figure she hates and fears but still feels connected to. It's fulfilling the monster's insatiable need, granting him the union he craves the only way it can be: through his death. Orlok is loved, and betrayed, and saved. Thomas is loved, and betrayed, and saved. Ellen chooses love for both of them, betrays them both, saves them both, betrays and saves herself. All of those things can be happening at once, just as tenderness, rejection, repulsion, evil, and love can all be happening at once. Is it comfortable? No. That's the point! But expressing your discomfort with that story as "I will willfully misinterpret this movie and dismiss its themes in whatever most easy to excuse way I can because I feel uncomfortable" is the path of the hack and the coward, and I think that's the what the majority of these "takes" are really about.

[devendrabanharts]

bed fish

tip jar so i can draw more

bed fish prints

[devendrabanharts]

a take on ‘death and the maiden’ by egon schiele, originally titled ‘man and girl’ and ‘entwined people’ <3

[devendrabanharts]

Yeah

INPRNT

[devendrabanharts]

Cinematic paintings in Robert Eggers’ ‘NOSFERATU’.

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Bravo also to Robert Eggers for probably the least bad depiction of Transylvania in Western vampire cinematic history:

1. Having actual Romanian actors doing the dialogue in Romanian. You'd think this is a low bar to clear but nope.

2. High quality costume design that looks pretty accurate to 19th century Romanian and Roma peasantry, even down to specific braided hairstyles from the Transylvanian region.

3. Depiction of Roma people but refrains from having them as some typical Hollywood exoticizing role like a magical fortune teller etc. They're in like half a scene, just chilling and playing music in front of an inn.

4. Use of the word "strigoi" which are actual spirits in Romanian folklore, unlike the term "vampire" which didn't exist in Romania.

5. Sorry to the Nosferatu moustache haters, but a Romanian nobleman would have had that exact facial hair.

6. Depiction of religion (nuns, churches) that actually looks like Eastern Orthodoxy and not some vaguely spooky goth Christianity.

[devendrabanharts]

Mean Girls (2004) // Conclave (2024)

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parallels <3

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john galliano spring/summer 18

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twinning

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snoopy in the criterion closet

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Take this 🦇