loncinawookie

[loncinawookie]

[loncinawookie]

Spoilers: Eggers' Nosferatu

There's a lot of debate right now on if Count Orlok represents Ellen's shame/trauma/abuse, or if he represents her repressed erotic desires, and in turn there's debate on whether or not viewers who find the Ellen/Orlok dynamic alluring are "missing the point." Eggers and Lily-Rose Depp have both said in interviews that there's a mutual pull between Ellen and Orlok, and even that there's a love triangle element, but obviously the experience is terrifying for Ellen. How can we reconcile the sexual tension and the horror?

I think the broader theme is that Orlok represents everything in a woman's inner world that men refuse to acknowledge and accept - fear and shame and trauma, yes, but also our appetites . After the prologue, the story starts with Ellen begging Thomas to stay in bed with her; she says "the honeymoon was yet too short" and tries to pull him in and kiss him (obviously trying to start some nuptial bliss). But Thomas is anxious to meet with his boss and get his promotion, because he has a narrative he's going to fulfill: he's going to pay Friedrich back, buy a house, and then start having kids (he and Friedrich touch on this a bit later. Notably, Friedrich discloses Anna's pregnancy to Thomas before Anna has made it public.)

It's the start of Ellen and Thomas' married life and she just wants him to prioritize her sexual desire, but he chooses to focus on his ideal of success, which sets him on this path to confronting Orlok. We know Ellen doesn't care about having a house or fine things and she begs him not to go, but Thomas listens to Herr Knock and Friedrich, who tell him that as a husband he has to provide materially. He ignores Ellen's stated desires, and so fails to provide sexually and emotionally. When Thomas gaslights her about her nightmares and calls them childish fancies, he shuts down her vulnerability, which kills the intimacy she was enjoying in the literal honeymoon phase.

On a related note, there's a defence in here for Aaron Taylor Johnson's performance, which I've seen a few male critics call "over acting." In this story Friedrich represents the masculine ideal of the time, he's a rich business owner with a beautiful wife and kids. Thomas clearly looks up to him and wants to emulate him - he wants to give Ellen the life "she deserves." But Friedrich's elevated masculine status is why he refuses to listen to Ellen's "hysterical, sentimental" worries, he's too rational for all that of course. And his stubborn "rationality" leads to the death of his entire family. Friedrich IS the patriarchal ideal that crumbles when confronted with nuance and uncertainty. Some people see Friedrich and assume that a character like him is meant to come across as dignified, and that Aaron Taylor Johnson is messing up by making him look annoying, but really he is giving a great portrayal of a really common, annoying kind of guy. The kind of guy who melts down and has childish tantrums whenever they lose control of a situation, or their manly skills and values are shown to be irrelevant.

The men in the movie (excluding Professor von Franz) frame Ellen as childish for speaking about her dreams candidly, but their own childishness is revealed when her dreams manifest in the form of Orlok and become unavoidable. Ellen (partially? possessed in the moment by Orlok) tells Thomas how "foolish and like a child" he was in Orlok's castle. In the literal context that's cruel, and obviously that shit was scary as hell, but it hits on Thomas' failure in the metaphorical reading. He was a child playing house: 'I'll be the husband and make money, you be the wife and make babies.' When it came time to confront his wife's inner world and all the scary, traumatized, lustful complexity of it, he was completely inept. The message isn't that Orlok is what Ellen really needs, or that Thomas is a wimp, but he's not a perfect husband either. I think "the point" is that a real healthy marriage with sexual, emotional, and spiritual mutuality is impossible in that society with Thomas/Friedrich's ideals. In that kind of society, a spiritually and sexually potent woman like Ellen ("in heathen times you might have been a Priestess of Isis") will always be caught in a "love triangle" with her husband and her own inner world.

[loncinawookie]

NOSFERATU 2024 | dir. Robert Eggers

[loncinawookie]

I really enjoyed Nosferatu 🥹

[loncinawookie]

Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers // Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich

[loncinawookie]

good evening to everyone deranged over a piece of vampire media

[loncinawookie]

𝕹𝖔𝖘𝖋𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖚 (𝟤𝟢𝟤𝟦) — 𝙍𝙤𝙗𝙚𝙧𝙩 𝙀𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙨

[loncinawookie]

Spoilers: Eggers' Nosferatu

There's a lot of debate right now on if Count Orlok represents Ellen's shame/trauma/abuse, or if he represents her repressed erotic desires, and in turn there's debate on whether or not viewers who find the Ellen/Orlok dynamic alluring are "missing the point." Eggers and Lily-Rose Depp have both said in interviews that there's a mutual pull between Ellen and Orlok, and even that there's a love triangle element, but obviously the experience is terrifying for Ellen. How can we reconcile the sexual tension and the horror?

I think the broader theme is that Orlok represents everything in a woman's inner world that men refuse to acknowledge and accept - fear and shame and trauma, yes, but also our appetites . After the prologue, the story starts with Ellen begging Thomas to stay in bed with her; she says "the honeymoon was yet too short" and tries to pull him in and kiss him (obviously trying to start some nuptial bliss). But Thomas is anxious to meet with his boss and get his promotion, because he has a narrative he's going to fulfill: he's going to pay Friedrich back, buy a house, and then start having kids (he and Friedrich touch on this a bit later. Notably, Friedrich discloses Anna's pregnancy to Thomas before Anna has made it public.)

It's the start of Ellen and Thomas' married life and she just wants him to prioritize her sexual desire, but he chooses to focus on his ideal of success, which sets him on this path to confronting Orlok. We know Ellen doesn't care about having a house or fine things and she begs him not to go, but Thomas listens to Herr Knock and Friedrich, who tell him that as a husband he has to provide materially. He ignores Ellen's stated desires, and so fails to provide sexually and emotionally. When Thomas gaslights her about her nightmares and calls them childish fancies, he shuts down her vulnerability, which kills the intimacy she was enjoying in the literal honeymoon phase.

On a related note, there's a defence in here for Aaron Taylor Johnson's performance, which I've seen a few male critics call "over acting." In this story Friedrich represents the masculine ideal of the time, he's a rich business owner with a beautiful wife and kids. Thomas clearly looks up to him and wants to emulate him - he wants to give Ellen the life "she deserves." But Friedrich's elevated masculine status is why he refuses to listen to Ellen's "hysterical, sentimental" worries, he's too rational for all that of course. And his stubborn "rationality" leads to the death of his entire family. Friedrich IS the patriarchal ideal that crumbles when confronted with nuance and uncertainty. Some people see Friedrich and assume that a character like him is meant to come across as dignified, and that Aaron Taylor Johnson is messing up by making him look annoying, but really he is giving a great portrayal of a really common, annoying kind of guy. The kind of guy who melts down and has childish tantrums whenever they lose control of a situation, or their manly skills and values are shown to be irrelevant.

The men in the movie (excluding Professor von Franz) frame Ellen as childish for speaking about her dreams candidly, but their own childishness is revealed when her dreams manifest in the form of Orlok and become unavoidable. Ellen (partially? possessed in the moment by Orlok) tells Thomas how "foolish and like a child" he was in Orlok's castle. In the literal context that's cruel, and obviously that shit was scary as hell, but it hits on Thomas' failure in the metaphorical reading. He was a child playing house: 'I'll be the husband and make money, you be the wife and make babies.' When it came time to confront his wife's inner world and all the scary, traumatized, lustful complexity of it, he was completely inept. The message isn't that Orlok is what Ellen really needs, or that Thomas is a wimp, but he's not a perfect husband either. I think "the point" is that a real healthy marriage with sexual, emotional, and spiritual mutuality is impossible in that society with Thomas/Friedrich's ideals. In that kind of society, a spiritually and sexually potent woman like Ellen ("in heathen times you might have been a Priestess of Isis") will always be caught in a "love triangle" with her husband and her own inner world.

[loncinawookie]

Keep your heart to yourself, give your soul to the night… Come to me when you're lonely… Come to me when you need something new… — Fright Night (1985), Come to Me

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (2022—) NOSFERATU (2024)

[loncinawookie]

Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers

[loncinawookie]

karmazov cover for class...

[loncinawookie]

Every family has THE ATHEIST (???), THE MONK, THE SLUT, AND THE BASTARD WHO MAKES SOUP IN THE KITCHEN

[loncinawookie]

Crime and punishment fanart in my very very old and unusually cute artstyle

[loncinawookie]

I pray the next book you pick up & begin reading, engulfs you in the best way possible

[loncinawookie]

go go gadget talk about the speech patterns and mannerisms that the brothers have (Alyosha, Ivan, Mitya, and Smerdyakov)

And to think I had made a post about this but never posted it and deleted the draft because I thought nobody would care, sigh.

I don't know if it's just me due to some sort of déformation professionnelle (I study theater among other things and sometimes I recite lines from books out loud to help with both memory and acting skills, and also because it's fun), but by the way Dostoevsky writes his characters speaking I can perfectly picture what they might sound like in my mind and that's insane (he's an insane writer all around) and not only that: you can tell what kind of person the character is not by what they say, but by how they say it. Again, insane stuff.

I'd say the brothers are the perfect example of this: they're the main characters so they talk enough for us to pick up on each individual's speech pattern and they have very distinct personalities that get to shine during the entirety of the book.

Dmitri is a mess and the way he speaks perfectly mirrors his behavior and Dostoevsky makes sure of showing that by writing his lines with lots of exclamation points and ellipses: he often jumps from topic to topic with no resemblance of coherent thought and speech pattern and has a tendency to ramble with passion for quite a long time. Even his insane amount of crying gets written down and integrated in his speech pattern; our Mitya has a lot of feelings and is not afraid to show them (good for him!). Given these little hints through the pages, I picture him as someone who speaks with lots of emotion (he's a dramatic person indeed and that definitely influences the way he speaks) but with no fixated pacing, volume and intensity because I feel like his voice and speech mannerism would shift a lot depending on his mood in a rollercoaster-like up and down motion if it makes sense, even though I do picture him as talking fast for the most part.

Ivan's feels similar but also completely opposite: he's dramatic and passionate and he feels a lot, but in a way more controlled manner and his voice is pretty much always described as being firm (which is shown by there being fewer ellipses and exclamation points in his lines), so I've never imagined it as showing much emotion, not even while talking to the devil; I feel like no matter what Ivan feels, his voice never fully shows it (his language might though, it's rude as hell). While his speech pattern can be all over the place because he is all over the place, it always remains coherent with who he is as a character and as a person (I've kinda talked about it somewhere in my bipolar Ivan Karamazov series) and never really gets rambly: even his spiral into madness is controlled. On that note, I've always found the way Ivan's lines are written in Pavel's confession's bit striking: our guy here is definitely going through a lot, this is the most important part of his arc, and yet he doesn't lose it completely. Lots of short sentences, lots of periods, little emotion: his voice is still as firm as ever. This leads me to think of him as someone who speaks in an effortlessly powerful manner and in a fixated pattern (not too fast but not too slow, not too loud but not too quiet; perfectly even and neutral) and with a voice that's almost monotone, except for when it doesn't have to be; he's used to speaking in public after all.

Alyosha is sweet, we all know that, and I think it reflects on the way he speaks as well: the use of punctuation and the length and pacing of his sentences suggest he speaks calmly, and personally I think sometimes it resembles the way Ivan speaks a little. His lines are written to never have any hint of hostility in them even in contexts where that would be expected (like when interacting with Rakitin) and even his sarcasm is written to sound soft; I'd say his speech pattern, while not as fun as Dmitri's or not as cool as Ivan's, is probably my favorite out of all four brothers': it's clear, straightforward and easy to follow and it feels fresh and balanced (no rollercoaster-like motions for example). He seems like someone I'd like to hear talk y'know, or a character with a way of speaking I'd like to be able to emulate; there seems to be a comforting and soothing element in it. Also, one thing that's lost in English translations is that Alyosha talks to children using the formal second person, which in my opinion is very indicative of his character and is also something I really like about him.

As for Pavel, I find his speech pattern interesting because it has a strange pacing, with lots of commas and longer sentences that suggest he speaks calmly just like Alyosha does or even slowly, but unlike Alyosha's lines, Pavel's are written in a way that conveys an almost ominous undertone due to the placing and frequency of the commas. One thing that stuck with me is how somewhere at the start of the novel Pavel's singing voice is described as "sugary" because honestly that's how I would describe his speech pattern as well: similar to Alyosha's somehow though not sweet but instead sugary, insincere, like a way of speaking that was fabricated with the sole purpose of fucking with someone's mind. And succeeds at it. I mean, most of the times we "hear" Pavel speak he's talking to Ivan, which I think is quite important because you can tell he articulates himself in a similar way Ivan does, but at the same time it seems his speech pattern has developed in a completely different direction, like mirroring Ivan's but not quite right. I feel like he's a person who knows what specific inflection is just right to use for a particular situation and I read his lines like that, without a fixated inflection but with the same constant slow cadence and smoothness. Also he's the only character we canonically know the vocal range of and not only do I appreciate Dostoevsky for giving me the chance to imagine what his voice might sound like, I also think specifying that he sings in falsetto instead of using his modal voice was a clever choice; it's kinda like a wordplay in a sense y'know.

I hope I made myself clear in this one lmao; it's just that when I think about this stuff I often have images in my mind that it's hard for me to put into words (like a particular speech pattern can be described with just one straight line while others can move in circles or have curves, or the rollercoaster-like thing I said earlier), but I couldn't just draw four different graphs and post them with no explanation so I just skipped the graphs part. Just know that in my head this is very clear and that if I could talk through pictures I would.

[loncinawookie]

The Brothers Karamazov as tarot cards 🃏✨

Dmitri Karamazov: The Hanged Man "The Hanged Man suggests an ultimate surrender, sacrifice, or being suspended in time. A letting go at the face of what is inevitable."

Ivan Karamazov: The Devil "The Devil card represents the worst parts of ourselves, the ones we struggle with the most; our shadow and vices, likewise, a state of being trapped and giving away our power."

Alyosha Karamazov: The Fool and The Star 🌟🕊 "The Fool represents a new beginning, taking a leap of faith, naivety yet enjoying beginners's luck and having an optimistic outlook, while The Star signifies hope, and a renewal of spirit."

[loncinawookie]

Silly boy