#Aaron and Robert

[flawswelove]

I don’t know what’s going on but if Robert Sugden does come back, it will be the greatest day in television history.

[hylemorph]

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.

[dailyflicks]

NOSFERATU 2024, dir. Robert Eggers

[houltsworld]

Nosferatu now playing in theaters.

[madeleineengland]

Nosferatu (2024), dir. by Robert Eggers

[men-in-4k]

AARON TAYLOR JOHNSON as Friedrich Nosferatu · 2024

If you like the content, follow me on TWITTER as well <3

[tuserlivia]

WILLEM DAFOE as ALBIN EBERHART VON FRANZ in NOSFERATU (2024), dir. Robert Eggers

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

“Nosferatu” (2024) and the Female Gothic Genre, Paganism and the Occult

The Gothic novel genre is deeply connected with female authors like Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Brontë sisters, Mary Robinson, and Charlotte Dacre, because it allowed them to explore themes that were “off limits” to women at the time (19th century) especially sexuality and women’s place in a patriarchal society. Hence the “Gothic female” genre was created, as a way for female authors and readers to digest their mixed feelings about these topics. This is the world Robert Eggers transports his audience in “Nosferatu” (2024).

This film checks every box of the Gothic genre: claustrophobic atmosphere, environment of fear, the threat of the supernatural, ruined buildings (usually from the Medieval ages), dreamlike states, nocturnal landscapes, demonic possession, blend of “high culture” and “low culture” (folklore), superstitious rituals, melancolia, melodrama, decay, fate, the macabre, the intrusion of the past into the present, stories of persecution, imprisonment and murder as metaphors for social conflict.

Indeed, the audience can’t analyze this story through contemporary lenses or bias, because it’s suppose to be an immersive experience into the Gothic genre and the Victorian era. The terms “gothic” and “romantic” exist in their historical context; “gothic” as in the literature genre (gothic novel), and “romantic” as in the 19th century artist movement (Romanticism).

No, this is not a story about grooming nor abuse... it can be, but not in the way many are interpreting it. Folks also need to let go of previous adaptations and their meanings, because this is Robert Eggers take on this story. And, it’s everything a remake (or retelling) should be, because its not a rehash, it’s a new interpretation of a old story, “Dracula”.

Robert Eggers tells us that the themes of sex and death are at the core of his story, it’s a “demon lover story”, and it’s Count Orlok and Ellen psychosexual connection that makes his adaptation different from the rest.

Ellen is our female gothic protagonist, and, like similar characters of the genre, she’s a persecuted heroine fleeing some a villainous outside force, personified by Count Orlok, the archetypal Death. Metaphorically, she’s a young woman haunted by her own mortality, by Death itself. She also has a sense of Doom looming over her, the heavy hand of Fate; can we outrun our destiny? “Providence!” Herr Knock screams throughout the film; as in a supernatural force, commonly God, guiding humanity destiny.

Ellen is no typical young woman, though. As she tells Von Franz, she had occult powers since childhood, being able to perceive glimpses of the future and suffering premonitions (knowing the contents of her Christmas gifts and when her mother would die). Her father called her “his little changeling girl”, as in the European folklore of human children kidnapped by supernatural creatures (fairies, demons, etc.) and a substitute being left in their place. Herr Knock also compares Ellen with a “sylph”, when he informs Thomas he’s to travel to Transylvania. “Sylphs” are air spirits from 16th century Germanic folklore and alchemy, a sort of nymph connected to air element in hermetic literature; throughout the centuries they have been culturally associated with fairies, too. We have two characters in the story connecting Ellen with a fairy-like creature. Interestingly enough we, the audience, see her floating in the opening scene.

“You are not for the living. You are not for human kind”, Orlok tells her, and calls her “enchantress”. Von Franz also said Ellen could have been a priestess of Isis had she been born in pagan times. Isis is one of the major Egyptian deities, considered the goddess of magic and healing. She was also connected with the Dead and funeral rites, since she was the sister-wife of Osiris, ruler of the Underworld. Pagan priestesses also entered trancelike states as Ellen “hysterical seizures” or “epilepsies” when communicating with the spiritual world, which is what Von Franz, the occult and alchemist student, recognizes in her. Ellen is a supernatural force, too.

Eggers Orlok was a sorcerer in life, a practitioner of Black Magic. He was one of the Solomonari, wizards from Romanian folklore, believed to be students of the Devil, who learned to ride dragons, and control beasts and the weather. In Eastern European tradition, the Solomonari were believed to be recruited among common folk and disguise themselves as beggars, Orlok is a Romanian nobleman who sought to achieve immortality, to conquer Death. As the abbess tells Thomas, the Devil preserved Orlok’s soul that his corpse may walk again in blasphemy, as a vampire feeding off the blood of the living and spreading plague.

However: who was it who awoke Orlok in “Nosferatu”? The Devil or Ellen?

At the prologue, we see Ellen crying and begging for companionship. She prays for a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort, a spirit of any celestial sphere, anything, to hear her call and come to her. She’s summoning some occult force and inviting it into her life. Orlok answers her call. And why is she doing this? She feels lonely, isolated and misunderstood by those around her. As she tells Von Franz, she’s no longer her father’s “little girl” and he recoils from her touch, because she’s no longer a child. As she grows older and enters womanhood, she starts to feel ostracized and put aside by 19th century society who has rigid gender expectations of her.

According to Orlok, it was Ellen who awoke him: “O’er centuries, a loathsome beast I lay within the darkest pit… ‘til you did wake me, enchantress, and stirred me from my grave. You are my affliction.” Which Ellen later confirms to Thomas: “I have brought this evil upon us” because she sought companionship and tenderness. This is a belief Von Franz also shares: it’s Ellen who “wills it”, and she’s the one who unleashed this plague upon the world.

This is very fitting with the Gothic female novel, where the supernatural connects with female societal status of this time period, generally women’s discontent with patriarchal society, difficult and unsatisfying maternal position (in “Nosferatu” we see this with Anne’s character, where she equals being pregnant with being drained of her life force) and their role within society (fear of entrapment in the domestic sphere, their bodies, marriage, childbirth, etc.).

Eggers’ Orlok is a combination of several Romanian folklore creatures, associated with vampirism: strigoi, moroi (these two are the “classic” vampires) and zburător (a ghost-like creature, usually handsome, and only visible to young women, attacks at night, usually newly-wed ladies and does “indecent” things with them). The influence of this legend in Ellen and Orlok story is evident.

Ellen tries to summon a spiritual companion in her teenage years, most likely when she reached puberty and her sexuality was starting to awake. A demon who’s a personification of appetite, devourance, sex and death is the one who answers her calling. They end up in a sexual spiritual connection, as Ellen experiences her sexual awakening with him, as shown in the prologue and later confirmed how Orlok took her as his lover. She also reveals to Thomas it was “sweet” and she “had never known such bliss” at first, until it turned into torture (seizures and nightmares), when her father found her laying unclothed and called her a sinner and it’s implied she might have been institutionalized, as she tells Von Franz. This episode might be a metaphor for masturbation and the historical shame associated with it. Hence her connection with Orlok being her “melancholy” (depression) and her “shame”, symbolic for the sexual urges 19th century society forced women to repress.

Count Orlok is the archetypal Death; which culminates with the “Death and the Maiden” motif at the end. This was a very popular Art History archetype around the so-called “Plague years” (14th to 16th century) in Europe, and it’s often connected with other motifs like “Danse Macabre” and “Memento Mori”. It has several meanings depending on the author intent, usually a reminder of our mortality, but also a meditation on sex and death, as in the French “la petite mort” (“little death”), the post-orgasm sensation, sexual release potentially causing temporary loss of consciousness (fainting) or dizziness. In the Medieval Ages, physicians believed orgasms could lead to death because they drained the “life force” from the body. This was when the term “petite mort” was created, and this belief persisted into the Renaissance and beyond. In “Nosferatu” this probably translates in the sexual pleasure that Orlok imprints on his victims as he drains their life force.

Ellen’s “hysterical seizures” miraculously stop once she meets and marries Thomas Hutter, our tragic romantic hero. This can also be a nod to Gothic Bildungsroman (“coming of age”) genre; where the female protagonists grow from adolescence to adulthood in the face of the impossibility of the supernatural, and come to the conclusion there’s a rational explanation. In Ellen’s case, it’s medical, as she’s diagnosed as a melancholic somnambulist hysteric (in another words, a depressive hyper-sexual sleepwalker).

At the beginning of the story, Ellen and Thomas are newly-weds fresh out of their honeymoon, which means sex (historically necessary to consummate marriages). With Thomas, Ellen is “free of her shame”, as she says so herself. Because, her sexuality is safely contained within marriage, as it’s socially acceptable. But Thomas dismisses her concerns about his well-being, and doesn’t believe her until he experiences the supernatural first-hand, having an homoerotic encounter with Orlok himself, which also causes him great shame. This is probably a Easter egg for Bram Stoker possible closet homosexuality and “Dracula” being a metaphor for that.

Thomas’ main concern, throughout the story, is to fit into the patriarchal ideal of his genre, as a provider for his wife, and he aspires to be like his long-time friend, Friedrich Harding, the “perfect patriarch” with the perfect religious and dutiful wife, Anna, and their precious children. The Hardings are the perfect Victorian family; they are everything society expects them to be. Friedrich even chastises Ellen for her nature, and it’s clear he resents her for what she represents: “otherness” and “deviance” to societal norms.

However, soon enough, Ellen’s seizures return, symbolizing Thomas cannot sexually satisfy her. She’s “too ardent” as Harding calls her. “More! More!” She begs Thomas when they have sex to scorn Orlok. Not only her sexuality is too strong, but Thomas also shares with Friedrich his desire to wait to have children with Ellen because he wants to gain financial stability first. This in a time period when contraceptives weren’t widely spread, meaning abstinence.

Symbolically, Ellen’s seizures can also be connected with her fear of childbirth. Her “epilepsies” return while she’s staying in the Harding household, where they are children and Anna is pregnant. Children is what is expected of Ellen next, after all. But it’s sexual pleasure that Ellen seeks, and this causes her great shame and torment, because 19th century women weren’t suppose to known “such things”. “Sin! Sin! Sin!” as Ellen’s father screamed at her when he found her naked.

Fear of entrapment represented as Ellen tries to rip off her corset and “free herself”: this happens during one of her Orlok induced seizures.

As Robert Eggers tells us, Orlok both disgusts and attracts Ellen, she loves and hates him at the same time. He’s repulsive, rotten, animalistic and lustful, both literally and metaphorically. His character design is meant to invoke contradictory feelings in the audience: overall he’s foul and monstrous, but he appears almost handsome in some shots. This is intentional. Not only he’s a personification of Death, but of Ellen’s repressed sexuality by 19th century society. He represents the monstrous and dangerous female sexuality the Victorian era sought to contain. He’s the transgression and taboo theme in this Gothic story, as well: necrophilia. Which is probably Eggers “gotcha” moment to “vampire lovers” everywhere, as he forces his audience to confront their own bias.

Ellen herself is a medicalized character, as we see her being institutionalized, drugged, bound to her bed, forced to wear a corset to bed, and used as a scientific experiment by physicians. She’s not in control of her own body, and has little agency over it, overall. We see her being contained, literally and metaphorically, too. This is probably meant to symbolize women as a whole in 19th century Western European societies. The “disability of being female” is one major theme in Gothic female novels, after all.

And if Ellen unleashed Orlok unto the world and he’s connected with her what does this mean for this story? The obvious interpretation of the ending it’s Ellen sacrificing herself to save Wisburg from Nosferatu’s curse, like every other adaptation. But this appears to be somewhat disconnected from the overall themes of this particular retelling. Here, it’s Ellen who unleashed the curse, and only her can put an end to it.

We see Ellen summoning Orlok in two occasions: at the beginning and at the end of this tale. At first, she did it unconsciously, she dabbled with the occult and wasn’t aware of what she was inviting into her life. However, does this indicate Ellen has some degree of control over him? Orlok himself says she’s “his affliction”, and they are bound to one another. She’s not only a seer, she’s compared with a priestess of a Goddess associated with funeral rites and with the ability of resurrection and looking after the Dead (Isis). We can almost interpret her as a necromancer.

Here, we can have a different interpretation of Orlok unleashing a plague upon the society who ostracizes Ellen for her nature. Symbolically, he’s her reckoning, her vengeance upon society norms and expectations of gender. He’s the “plague carrier” and brings a “blood plague” transmitted by rats (symbolic of the Black Plague; the medieval ages terrorizing the modern world of science and rationality) upon Wisburg, and the “good Christians” who contain and shame “Pagan” Ellen.

Orlok’s most notorious victims are the Hardings, the perfect patriarchal Christian family model Ellen can never fit into; the patriarch Friedrich, the pregnant Anna and the two children. This also fits the Gothic female genre of the supernatural menace as a metaphor for women’s status in 19th century society. Ellen doesn’t want to be married to a patriarch like Friedrich, she doesn’t express any desire to become pregnant nor have children of her own. Consequently, we see Orlok killing all of these archetypes in the narrative.

Interestingly enough he spares Thomas and saves him for last when he should be his first victim once he arrives at Wisburg, because he’s the husband. However, Thomas is a character Ellen loves and cherishes, as he somewhat accepts her nature and represents her chance at a “normal life”. He’s also determined to save her from Death/Orlok, but is unable to. Symbolically, Ellen chooses death over conforming to gender norms and expectations.

However, we can’t forget Ellen’s supernatural nature, nor her connection with Orlok. She weds Death at the end, she’s no longer terrified of him, and she fulfills their covenant, and her dream premonition of marrying Death: “standing before me, all in black… was… Death. But I was so happy, so very happy. We exchanged vows, we embraced, and when we turned round, everyone was dead. Father… and… everyone. The stench of their bodies was horrible. And - But I never been so happy as that moment… as I held hands with Death.”

A “covenant” is a pact, both a religious and a occultist practice. This is a “blood covenant”, as their flesh becomes one and he drinks from her. “Blood is the life” is a quotation from the Bible, where “blood covenants” are also mentioned, because a “blood covenant” has the power to either destroy or redeem. For instance, Christ’s sacrifice redeemed humanity according to Christians. “Redemption” as Von Franz says, because only Ellen, like Christ, can redeem the habitants of Wisburg. He uses the expression “with Jove’s holy light” before dawn redemption will come to them: “Jove” is Jupiter, the “King of the skies”, and its energy neutralizes Saturn’s, connected with “melancholy” (depression).

However, that’s not what’s happening here, because Orlok is a servant of the Devil, and a literally un-dead “warlock”. So, what is Ellen pledging herself to here, exactly? Her covenant with Orlok has nothing to do with God or Jupiter, for these are forces of good, when Orlok is a force of evil and darkness.

Ellen also fulfills her role as “priestess of Isis” at the end, as she guides the un-dead Orlok to his physical death; like Isis, she resurrected him, and is now taking him into the Underworld with her. Because, like Orlok also told her, she’s “not for the living”, that’s her fate, the destiny she accepts at the end; she’s meant for Death, as Isis for Osiris.

“Our covenant is fulfilled. Your oath re-pledged.” Orlok tells her. But what was Ellen’s oath? We have to look into the prologue scene “You shall be one with me ever-eternally. Do you swear it?” And in the ending “As our spirits are one, so shall be our flesh. You are mine.” They fulfill their pact both in the physical and the spiritual worlds, and both make the ultimate blood sacrifice, by physically dying for “self-renunciation” is essential for blood covenants.

And a deity is always summoned to bless such a pact… but who was blessing this one? Ellen and Orlok indeed, died in the physical world, but are joined in the spiritual world forever, as decreed by their covenant, so where did their spirits go?

They are also surrounded by lilacs, their signature flower throughout the narrative, which symbolizes first love, yes, but also renewal and rebirth. Orlok conquered Death and immortality once before, because the Devil kept his soul. Now that Ellen is joined with him in spirit, what does this mean for her, and for them both?

[littlemsdelulu]

me when i find a new celebrity crush to overly obsess about

[flawswelove]

Imagine the slow burn of Robron reuniting once again.

Fuck!

[the-quiet-trash-can]

doodle page!!

[hylemorph]

Anna and Friedrich in Nosferatu (2024)

In a previous post I mentioned how important I think Friedrich is in the story as a representation of the patriarchal ideal, and how it/he crumbles when confronted by everything that has been suppressed in Ellen (manifested in the unavoidable, terrifying form of Orlok). I also think he is a mirror to Orlok in some ways: he says twice how he just cannot resist Anna, he subtly frames his desire for her as an unwilling "affliction." He also defiles Anna's body and his sacred marriage vows by engaging in necrophilia, because his appetite for her is so consuming - he can't resist her even when she's not even there anymore. Ellen's necrophilic act with Orlok represents her unification with the parts of herself that are suppressed/rejected by the men in her life, good and bad. It's dark and fucked up but metaphorically transformative, and consent is absolutely central. Friedrich's necrophilic act involves no consent, no Anna, and it lacks any metaphorical power. He didn't accomplish anything, he just succumbed to his own horror and amplified it.

Friedrich's unhealthy approach to his relationship with Anna consumes them both, and I think this theme is especially evident in the way Anna's pregnancy is discussed. Friedrich tells Thomas that they are expecting but doesn't want it mentioned in front of Anna or Ellen, probably because it wasn't supposed to be public yet. In victorian times people would rarely confirm a pregnancy before the woman was "showing" both because it was considered a private matter and because miscarriage was way more common. But Friedrich tells Thomas early anyways, because he is excited and proud, which is understandable but also selfish in this context. Furthermore, Anna says that "little Friedrich" is "very hungry, just like his father" and later on after Orlok has fed on her, she passes it off as feeling drained by the baby. Even though she seems happy and loves her family, she associates pregnancy with being drained.

This alienated way of understanding parenthood is also evident in the way Friedrich and Anna treat their girls (Louise and Clara I think?) They obviously both adore the girls, but they ignore their terror and assume the monster they see in their room is totally unrelated to all the other scary shit going on, because they're just silly little kids imagining things, right? One girl literally says "I can hear him breathing under my neck!" and they beg Anna not to leave them alone at night, but they are just hushed and told that they're totally safe. It's exactly the kind of dismissal Ellen has been getting her whole life, and so it's not surprising that the girls are haunted by Orlok before anyone else. It's not enough to adore little girls, they will never be safe until they are heard and believed.

Anna as a character apart from her role as wife and mother is a bit harder to parse out, but I think she is also a mirror for Ellen. Ellen's spiritual power is the catalyst for everything that happens, and von Franz says that "in heathen times you might have been a Priestess of Isis." Anna's spiritual inclination is less obvious, but it's there: she seriously listens to Ellen and believes that she is perceiving something real, she just assumes it must be God. Later when she lets Ellen stay with her for the night, she says "God is with us Lenny, I know it." On some level Anna is also in touch with that supernatural, suppressed feminine truth, and she seems to see through the patriarchal facade that Friedrich represents to some degree. But ultimately Anna wants to convince herself and Ellen that the night terrors were just caused by Thomas' absence, and that Ellen just needed her husband back and all would be well. When Thomas does return and Ellen has her faculties again, Anna is very eager to put it all behind them; 'no more talk of demons please, let's just focus on Christmas and being a happy family'. Anna's downfall is that she puts all her faith in the Christian patriarchal narrative even when she can clearly see that there's more going on. Her faith in the Christian God contrasts Ellen's "heathen" spirituality - both women have an innate spiritual sense, but one is more willing to make it fit into the values of their society. Ultimately Anna was consumed by the horror of their alienated position in society just like Ellen was, she just died with less agency.

[eefos]

Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Emma Corrin in Nosferatu.

[jbwashere]

Doodling the SM cast comment down who I missed, I want to doodle everyone^^

[fanofspooky]

Nosferatu

2024 • R • 2h12m

A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman, and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her causing untold horror in its wake.

[men-in-4k]

AARON TAYLOR JOHNSON as Friedrich Nosferatu · 2024

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