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gatoraid · 1 year ago

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Happy 801 day to those who celebrate! I’m honoring this day by talking about one of the most amazing, memorable BL manga I’ve read this year.

Sleeping Dead by Asada Nemui is a deeply unsettling, melancholy, sometimes almost cozy and sometimes quite brutal horror BL story about science, zombies, trauma and obsession. It is thoroughly laced with black humor, and also manages to pose some tough questions about ethics and how far we’re willing to go in order to live, to survive. A French manga book club described the story as ”what if Mary Shelley had been a fujoshi” and that is not too far off either.

Content warnings for the story include gore, torture, cannibalism(?), rape, dismemberment, suicide.

Full text under the cut, includes spoilers.

Sada is a well-liked high school teacher who gets brutally killed when he’s out at night, making sure his students are not loitering out too late. His body is picked up by the ”mad scientist” Mamiya, who has devoted his life to researching resurrecting the dead. To him, Sada seems like the perfect test subject in more ways than one.

When Sada wakes up, he finds himself tied to a laboratory bed in an unknown location, his life altered forever. He is now a zombie-like living dead, whose body is resistant to injury but can only survive on a strict diet of human meat. What’s even worse, Mamiya subjects him to torturous scientific experiments day after day. When he tries to escape, it only makes it clearer how trapped he really is in this situation. For a long time, the only friend and companion Sada has is a living dead laboratory monkey whom he hangs out with and names Monkichi.

Little by little, Sada is able to win back some autonomy and gain more equal footing with Mamiya, shifting the power balance in their relationship. As they live together in their own secluded world, cook for each other or hunt for the next victim for Sada’s human meat smoothies, they slowly start to build a mutual understanding, even affection. And as we learn more about their pasts and motivations, it becomes even easier to understand why the characters act the way they do.

Asada Nemui is known for their unique, often quite dark BL stories. Sleeping Dead is definitely no exception, giving its own twist to the genre we know and love. It is definitely a BL story through and through, but the way it approaches romance, sex and relationships is pretty exceptional and thoughtful. Mamiya, who was raped by his bullies in high school, is deeply traumatized and his understanding of sex and relationship is very skewed.

This means that Sada and Mamiya start navigating sex and intimacy in a situation where one of them doesn’t even want to be touched. Even later on, Mamiya can only ever have sex while fully clothed. Mamiya’s trauma is treated as something deep and real that can’t be easily healed or dismissed, and I appreciate that. In romantic fiction of almost any kind, penetrative sex is often seen as the end goal or the only ”real” sex, but that type of attitude is not present in this story at all.

Sada is able to accommodate and understand Mamiya’s needs in a way that feels very touching. Even though Sada has a lot more experience in sex with men, he also confesses that he prefers after-sex cuddling to actual sex. He also prefers friendships to romance and doesn’t actively need to have a romantic partner, even if he understands that the society around him gives more value to romantic and familial bonds rather than friendships.

It feels like Sada and Mamiya are both outcasts in their own way: Mamiya visibly strange and ostracized by his peers, willingly withdrawing from the world around him, while Sada looks at the rules and conventions of society from an outsider pov while trying to live in it, enjoys being alone while understanding the benefits of human connection but also feeling like he’s different from others. With each other, Sada and Mamiya are able to carve out their own rules when it comes to sex and romance, just like they do with their whole existence on the outskirts of society.

Even with all the affectionate and domestic parts, Sleeping Dead is also very much a horror story. Since we are dealing with zombies, murder and eating humans, there are some gory bits, but the art does not dwell on the gore that much. There are many other levels and layers to the horror elements throughout the story instead.

At first, there is the quiet, existential horror of Sada’s new, undead life. He is forcibly brought back to a life he did not ask, made to eat fellow human beings, and can never go back to his old life or meet the people he once knew. There is a profound loneliness that you can see in his every expression and movement, the way he seems to be detached from everything around him, trying to understand why this is happening to him. This existential horror of being doomed to loneliness comes a full circle at the end, for a very chilling effect.

Then there is the horror of pain and torture, of Sada being treated as a test subject, stripped off of his humanity and agency. Just like Monkichi, the monkey that Mamiya has brought back from the dead, Sada is also locked in a lab and treated as an object, rather than a living being with feelings and needs. Through Monkichi and Mamiya’s various comments, the story explicitly links Sada’s horrific, inhumane treatment to the horrors of what non-human animals go through in the name of science and food production every day all around the world.

I personally really appreciated how hard Sleeping Dead goes when it comes to morality and ethical questions. When Sada expresses that he doesn’t want to eat human meat, Mamiya says that it’s not so different from killing cows or pigs for food, unless Sada was a vegan while he was alive. Sada has to admit that he wasn’t. They also ponder about whether it would be better to kill someone who’s an easy target, like someone living on the streets or an elderly person, or if it’s better to go after violent criminals who cause harm to society. These discussions between Mamiya and Sada give the story an almost philosophical air and make it a very memorable experience.

Even with all the serious topics and horror elements, the manga does not feel too heavy to read, thanks to all the black, deadpan humor that points out how absurd many of the situations the characters find themselves in are.

All in all, Sleeping Dead is a very exeptional story and it stayed with me for a very long time. The ending is especially haunting, especially when you think about how it relates to the title of the story, but talking about it would probably require its own post…. Let’s just say that I could barely get any sleep after finishing the story.

Unfortunately the manga has not been licensed in English yet, but it’s available in French at least.

Japanese version is available wherever jp books are sold, I read it on Ebookjapan.

#asada nemui #sleeping dead #cannot stress how important this story is to me #or how important asada nemui in general is #bl manga #bl talk

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dearorpheus · 2 years ago

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hello, your blog's vibes are absolutely impeccable! I was wondering if you could recommend me some nonfiction reading on eroticism, religion or fear? I'd love to read about any of these topics, but I never really know where to start looking for good theory books or essays, so I usually end up reading fiction instead. any nonfiction recs would be deeply appreciated (and on other topics too if you have particular favorites). have a nice day!

hello! thank you for the kind words♡

hm! some reading might be: - Erotism: Death and Sensuality + Visions of Excess, Bataille - Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs, Deleuze - The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, Angela Carter - Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose, Leigh Cowart - Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson - A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes - Uses of the Erotic, Audre Lorde - A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953 - Foucault's Histor[ies] of Sexuality - Being and Nothingness, Sartre - The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson - Aesthetic Sexuality: A Literary History of Sadomasochism, Romana Byrne - Pleasure Principles: An Interview with Carmen Maria Machado - "The Aesthetics of Fear", Joyce Carol Oates - Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing, Isabel Cristina Pinedo - "On Fear", Mary Ruefle - "In Search of Fear", Philippe Petit - Female Masochism in Film: Sexuality, Ethics and Aesthetics, Ruth Mcphee - Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva - Hélène Cixous' Stigmata (i am thinking esp of "Love of the Wolf") - Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis - anything from Caroline Walker Bynum.... Wonderful Blood, Fragmentation and Redemption, Holy Feast and Holy Fast - excerpts of Letter From a Region in my Mind, James Baldwin - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche (re: Christian morality, death of God) - Waiting for God, Simone Weil - The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus - Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung - "The Genesis of Blame", Anne Enright

do know as well that Lapham's Quarterly has issues dedicated entirely to these subjects you've mentioned: eros, religion, fear ! there's also this wonderful ask from @rotgospels on biblical horror theory

other non-fic i will always rec: - "On Self-Respect", Joan Didion - Illness as Metaphor + Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag - The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Maggie Nelson - "The Laugh of the Medusa", Hélène Cixous - Ways of Seeing, John Berger - The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit - The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry some non-fic things i've read lately: - "Mary Shelley's Obsession with the Cemetery", Bess Lovejoy - "Horror Lives in the Body", Megan Pillow - "The Cruel Myth of the Suffering Artist", Patrick Nathan - "The Rub of Rough Sex", Chelsea G. Summers - "The Lost Art of Memorizing Poetry", Nina Kang - "The problem with English", Mario Saraceni

#i hope you have a wonderful day too!#asks

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male1971 · 2 months ago

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The Origins of The Invisible Man

The 1933 film The Invisible Man by Universal Studios, directed by James Whale and starring Claude Rains, was based on H.G. Wells’ novel The Invisible Man, published in 1897.

Wells' novel is often considered the definitive work on invisibility in fiction, exploring the scientific and moral consequences of invisibility. The novel's protagonist, Griffin, discovers a way to become invisible but gradually descends into madness, using his power for evil.

Wells was a prolific writer and is often credited with pioneering modern science fiction, and The Invisible Man was part of his larger body of work that included other influential novels like The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Earlier Stories of Invisibility:

The story of The Invisible Man is one of the most famous early science fiction narratives, but it has roots in much older traditions in mythology and folklore.

Greek Mythology: One of the earliest references to invisibility is in the myth of Perseus, who used a cap of invisibility (the Helm of Hades) to avoid being seen by Medusa before he killed her. This motif of an object granting invisibility recurs in various myths.

The Ring of Gyges (Plato’s The Republic, 4th century BCE) – In this story, Gyges finds a magical ring that makes him invisible, allowing him to commit immoral acts without being detected. This ancient story touches on themes similar to those in The Invisible Man, especially the idea that invisibility can lead to a loss of moral restraint.

Medieval Folklore: The idea of invisibility also appears in medieval romances and folklore. Various magical items, such as cloaks or rings, were often used to grant characters the ability to become invisible.

"The Invisible Girl" by Mary Shelley (1833) – Mary Shelley, famous for writing Frankenstein, also explored the idea of invisibility in this short story. It is less about scientific invisibility and more about mysterious circumstances, but it is an early example of invisibility in literature.

"The Crystal Man" by Edward Page Mitchell (1881) – This short story, published in The Sun newspaper, features a man who becomes invisible due to his body’s molecular transformation, one of the first uses of science fiction to explain invisibility. Mitchell’s story predated Wells’ The Invisible Man and touched on some similar ideas.

Earlier Films about Invisibility:

While The Invisible Man (1933) is the most famous early film about invisibility, it was not the first to explore this concept:

"The Invisible Thief" (1909) – A silent short film by the pioneering French filmmaker Georges Méliès, who often used early special effects to create fantastical stories. In this film, invisibility is a key plot device.

"L'homme invisible" (1909) – Another early French silent film, translating to "The Invisible Man," which involved a character using an invisibility potion. These early films mostly involved simple camera tricks and were often comedic rather than serious explorations of the theme.

"The Invisible Ray" (1920) – A silent German film that centers on a scientist who uses rays to become invisible. This is one of the early examples of invisible characters in cinema, though it was more of a science fiction thriller than a horror movie.

Universal's The Invisible Man (1933)

The Invisible Man (1933) was not the first movie to tackle invisibility but was the first to fully embrace it in the context of science fiction horror. It became the most influential film on the subject, setting the template for how invisibility is portrayed in popular culture, much like Universal's other monster films.

#The Invisible Man #Universal Horror

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justiceforplutoo · 2 months ago

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pro tip: feeling overwhelmed when you're trying to get your grades back up because you're scared that somehow you're making 7-year-old you in the gifted & talented program disappointed? yeah well first of all she's just a figment of your imagination, so don't worry about her. second, MAKE A LIST? I swear it looks like 20 missing assignments, it is eight.

stop procrastinating.

8 November 2024

Currently trying to get caught up on a lot of my Spanish procrastination… I had a D+ in that class, and right now it’s a C, and with the 10 assignments I just turned in, I hope it’ll be an A-, since that’s a lot easier to manage.

I also got caught up on AP Psychology, and although that class does still make me want to gouge my eyes out with a whiteboard marker (tw: body horror lol), I do still need to carry on with it.

I’ll post my grades at the end of the trimester on here, just as a personal achievement. Hopefully they’re presentable…?

🌟📚🌟 : It’s a surprise to no one! I’m still reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein! (I’m usually a fast reader, I swear. I just haven’t had the time.)

🌟🎧🌟 : ‘Efterskalv’ by Vargkvint - I’m learning to play this one on the piano!

#study tips #study motivation #studyblr #high school studyblr #study blog #blogging

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nitrateglow · 4 months ago

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Spooky Season 2024: 2-5

Mystery of the Wax Museum (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1933)

Bodies are disappearing from the morgue and it's up to lady reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) to crack the case! Her investigation leads her to a new wax exhibit, opened by artist Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill). She notices that some of the figures on display resemble the missing corpses. And soon, Igor is eyeing up Florence's beautiful roommate Charlotte (Fay Wray), who happens to resemble a wax Marie Antoinette he lost in a fire long ago...

Mystery of the Wax Museum is overshadowed by its '50s remake, House of Wax, but the two films are distinct enough to be enjoyed on their own terms, even if I do think the later version is stronger. Mystery is set in the (then) present and has a pulpy detective feel to it. The characters make wisecracks and dirty jokes-- very typical of the pre-code era. There are even allusions to other horror movies of the time, like Frankenstein.

What strikes most viewers about the film today is its use of two-strip Technicolor, a color process that captured images with green and red dyes. The result is a muted but not unpleasant color range. I often associate this process with late-era silent films like The Black Pirate, which have a watercolor illustration look to them. Here, the colors are somehow both muted and a touch garish, suiting the pulpy tone of the story well.

House of Wax (dir. Andre de Toth, 1953)

It's the Gay Nineties in New York City, but nastiness is running amok. Wax sculptor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) is hoping to secure lucrative patronage for his beautiful but failing museum, but his impatient business partner burns the place down with Jarrod inside, intent on collecting the insurance money. However, Jarrod survives, reappearing injured but alive over a year later. He opens a new exhibit, this one focused on the cruelty of humanity rather than its beauty. At the same time, corpses start disappearing from the city morgue... and many of the wax exhibits resemble the deceased!

What an enjoyable movie! House of Wax is great, unpretentious old-school horror at its most crowdpleasing. The story is packed with skillful suspense and just the right amount of campy humor-- enough to keep things fun, but not enough to deflate the threat of the villains.

This is a rare remake that improves upon its predecessor. As entertaining as Mystery is, it lacks the remake's tighter, more focused script and more memorable characters of this version. And of course, this movie has Vincent Price in the role that made him the horror icon he remains today.

I forgot how great a villain Jarrod is, a disturbed but poignant figure. He's so charming that part of you kind of wants him to get away with his nefarious deeds. That first sequence where he speaks to the figures like old friends does such a great job making your sympathy for him linger on just a bit, even after he starts killing people.

I don't want to forget Phyllis Kirk as the heroine Sue Allen though. Kirk's character is smart and persevering. While not the wisecracker Glenda Farrell's reporter was in the original, she has her own sweet charm and quiet resolve that make her very endearing.

Frankenstein (dir. J. Searle Dawley, 1910)

This twelve-minute silent film is the earliest cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel. Like all the other movie Frankensteins, it has little to do with the book whatsoever.

The film has a lot of interesting elements to it despite the limitations of the one-reeler format. The director plays up the psychological duality of Frankenstein and his creation, and the use of mirrors throughout is clever, both in extending the stagey spaces we see onscreen and highlighting the aforementioned duality.

Also the creation scene is AWESOME. If I remember correctly, they set a dummy on fire, then played the footage in reverse, making it appear as though the creature were emerging from the Promethean fire. A super old-school effect, but a cool one!

Cape Fear (dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1962)

Attorney Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is stalked by Max Cady (Robert Mitchum), a rapist he helped put away eight years ago. Now free, Cady is set on avenging himself by targeting Bowden's wife and teenage daughter. Cady initially wages psychological warfare, the kind that cannot get him charged for any crime. Terrified for his family, Bowden and his wife conspire to set a trap for the ex-con, but will Cady bite? And if he does, will they survive?

I hadn't seen this film in a while, so I forgot how intense it is! You can definitely tell this was influenced by Hitchcock's brand of thriller filmmaking, though it does lack Hitch's dark humor. Still, there is a lot going on here beyond mere suspense. Gregory Peck isn't just playing yet another noble father figure-- he's increasingly willing to play dirty to protect his loved ones. The ending even has him echoing Cady's desire for sadistic revenge.

Mitchum is certainly best in show here. Cady is one of the great movie villains, boasting a potent blend of intelligence and savagery that makes him feel genuinely threatening. That scene with him attacking Polly Bergen on the boat never fails to give me chills. It goes to show you don't need explicit violence to keep an audience suspended in dread.

As enjoyable as the Scorsese remake is, this one is far more sinister to me. The setting feels more grounded and the stark black-and-white cinematography gives the story a southern gothic vibe. It would make a great double feature with another gothic Mitchum movie, The Night of the Hunter.

#thoughts #mystery of the wax museum #house of wax #frankenstein 1910 #cape fear #spooky season 2024

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himehikoshrine · 1 year ago

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Mary Jane and Frankenstein

In honor of Spooky Month and the imminent arrival of Mary Jane Day, I have done the scariest thing imaginable, returned to tumblr dot com to write a meta/analysis post.

[image description: images side by side of the top of the Mary Jane poster, showing Mary looking down sewing Jacob, next to the 1831 edition front panel illustration of Frankenstein, showing Victor looking down on his creature in horror]

This is a mostly informal attempt to collect my thoughts on the fact that Neji’s little spooktacular, in addition to being a very pointed exploration, as all of his plays are, of art and theater, the school, himself and his classmates (without their permission, the menace) and just, a lot of fun, is perhaps one of the best piece of Frankenstein related media I have EVER seen in relation to the original novel.

This is pulling a lot of things from the Stage Script rather than the in game version, which summarizes a lot of the things I'm mentioning specifically. You can find the full Stage Script in the game menu, or

[ here ]

because I love this play so much that I needed a searchable version.

Caveat Emptor here is that it’s been a long time since I’ve read the novel in its entirety. If this game gets me to read it again, I may have to revamp things. But again, largely informal. But very long, somehow.

Oooops.

If you're curious about anything in here and want to expand on it more, or hear my thoughts on it, please feel free to reblog, send an ask, or message. Or ask me elsewhere if we're already connected there. There's a lot I glossed over, especially at the end of this. I have a lot to say, and if we're back to writing metas on tumblr dot com the chances of stopping at one are slim.

Mary as Frankenstein, Mary as Mother

Mary’s name is acting as several allusions at once. I mean, there are at least 3 Mary’s in the bible one could point to - Mary, Mother of Jesus is absolutely at play. But Lazarus’s sister is also a Mary. And while technically Mary Magdalene is often misrepresented and amalgamated with other characters in retellings, the idea of “purifying” her has canon precedent - having had seven demons driven out of her.

Of course, Neji’s twisting all of it, in his Neji way.

(Interestingly enough, these are the Three Marys of the Quem Quaeritis - widely considered a point of "rebirth" of theatre in Europe during the middle ages.)

But Mary is also the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein. And this, this is a Frankenstein story. It is, in fact, a beautiful inversion of so much about the book that gets left out in most far more serious attempts at a Frankenstein story.

The original book is about motherhood and its inversion. Much could be said about when during her life she wrote it, or her own mother’s death shortly after she was born, or any number of things that have been hashed and rehashed a thousand times from AP English to the ivoriest of towers. But, fan of Death of the Author that I am, I posit you don’t need any of that to see in the text.

Victor creates a person with science, rather than by ‘nature’. It is an unnatural birth. And Victor is just about the shittiest possible parent. The Creature spends a good deal of time explaining to him, when they meet up again, that Victor is his father, and that he was literally abandoned as a newborn, and maybe that was kind of the worst possible thing he could have done. It’s not a mantle Victor has any desire to take up, the role of a parent. He wanted to create life, but he didn’t want to be a parent. But that’s what it means to create life.

By gender swapping the role, you’re already inverting the inversion - but Mary’s creation is no more “natural” than Victors. But it is different. Neji, ever witch-coded himself, has Mary put one of her own hairs into every doll. It’s returning the shared body to the act of bringing these creations into being.

But even without that. Mary considers herself a mother. She considers herself a mother despite having no memory of one herself - Mary knows lots of things she shouldn’t, and doesn’t know many things she should. But she calls herself a mother. Even before any of the dolls move, she is their mother. A motherhood she wants to desperately share with others. She considers the act of selling a doll a kind of ‘adoption’. These are her children. And they know it. It’s stitched into every stitch in their doll bodies. They know Mary is their mother. And they know she loves them.

[image description: screenshot of Mary in her workshop. The text shows Mary's line saying "I'm back, dear dolls. Mommy's home."]

The Creature comes to think of Victor as a father - an absentee one at that, and craves that love, a love he is never shown. Mary averts this spectacularly. She creates out of love.

Names

Mary takes great care in naming Jacob, and ends up doing so, though she doesn’t say it, after a biblical pun (Jacob, in the bible, is explicitly named such as a pun on the word “Heel”). But names are important to Mary, and she is sure to give one to Jacob as soon as he’s fully formed, even before she sees him wake up. Victor very particularly does not name his creature. Instead, he tends to throw around insults, many of which are demonic or satanic. When they finally meet again, the Creature says to him “I should have been thy Adam.” Mary averts this mistake, among so many others, spectacularly. Being called by her name is important to her, and she extends that offer to Jacob even before he’s fully “born.” Like a good mother.

[image description: a screenshot showing Fumi and Kai dressed as Mary and Jacob, as seen from the stage with the audience in the background. Kai is saying Jacob's line "I did, Mary. You are Mary Jane. My mother."]

Not only does she give him a nice biblical pun of a first name, she shares her last name with him, again before he’s even more than a doll. That’s her boy, that’s her best friend. That’s her family.

The song here, which is only sung and dance AFTER Mary has given him a name is called "A Friend Without A Name" Almost as if specifically calling attention to this fact. Mary is as much the friend without a name as Jacob, if not more. She is the one that has never heard another voice say her name, where as Jacob is called his before he's even awakened by the Island's magic and Mary's love.

[image description: the screen from just before A Friend Without A Name showing Mary and Jacob's CG of Mary Stitching Jacob.]

Mary as a Good Mother

Some of the weirder moments in the play actually make a lot more sense when you look at them through this light. Jacob randomly saying he hates Mary in a fit of jealousy? It’s because he’s a child. He’s a baby. That’s a baby boy. Mary, herself quite childish, forgetting so much of what’s important, as the Island is known for, reacts incorrectly, but understandably. This is her first friend - and far more of one than the others she thinks she’s made, in terms of mutual respect, compassion, and small acts of kindness. But this level of connection and emotional reciprocation is still new to her. She’s hurt. She runs.

And The Order of Shadow’s duo is quick to tell her that that’s just the nature of ghosts, telling themselves a little joke about how they have been lying to her from the start, and fully intend to stab her in the back, far more than any ghost. Victor’s instinct is to consider his creature a monster, a fiend, a demon. Mary is told by characters positioned as far more knowledgeable about the world than her that he must be exactly that.

And how does Mary react? She refuses to believe it. Even hurt as she was, even with someone who just said this is their entire expertise telling her it’s in his nature to be cruel, Mary refuses to accept it. She still loves him. She makes the right choice. That’s her best friend. That’s her family. That’s a (un)life she brought into this world, and she stands by him. No matter what. She would risk her life to rescue him. She will fight for him.

This is why that scene has to be there. Because she has to be given that temptation, that trial. And she passes spectacularly in a way Victor will not, to the end.

It’s also a thematic explanation for the garbage scene, which is probably there as much to be silly as anything. I mean, it’s also there to show many other things — Mary’s eccentricity is ingenious in its own quirky way — the islanders who hated her, who she didn’t understand, give her the tools to save Jacob and the others — Mary not even considering the same level of violence — it being a moment of empathy between Mary and the islanders who never showed her even a shred of it back — she understands that they couldn’t tell which food was rotten. She sees things from their point of view. And many more besides.

But, from the point of view of Mary as a Mother, Mary succeeding brilliantly where Victor failed… Mary is literally willing to coat herself in filth to rescue Jacob. Parenthood is messy. It involves a lot of gross things. Even Victor's, sanitized of the normal processes and cloaked in science, was made of corpse parts. But the play actually brings back a part of parenthood that Mary had been able to avoid thus far - the mess. Mary, once again, doesn’t hesitate. For Jacob? She’ll do anything.

Jacob is shown love and kindness, and he responds with the same. He has the same unnatural strength as Victor’s creature, but he’s only ever shown using it to rescue himself and others. When Mary asks for a handshake, he replies that he can’t, because such would be an invitation for a duel. And that they should hug, instead. Mary didn’t even know what that was. Far from disgusted by the lack of warmth she feels from his skin, she looks beyond that, to the emotional warmth and connection.

Frankenstein’s creature, famously, lashes out in violence. While Victor views this as his responsibility only in so far as he brought a demon into the world, he doesn’t understand, even when the Creature eloquently explains it, that the Creature was a being who had only known cruelty.

Jacob knows love. He knows kindness. He knows sadness and loneliness and pain. And refuses to engage in any form of touch that could even be considered violence. They hug.

Which is not to say Mary’s creatures can’t kill. But they do only to protect their mother, and only after Mary has risked everything to protect Jacob. They are Mary’s children, not Victor’s. Even their violence is an act of love. And in another inversion - they are the ones telling Mary to run. Something she does not want to do. She doesn't want to leave them behind. After all, they are her children. She departs from them only at Jacob's literal tug away, and with an apology and a thanks.

[Image description: screenshot of Fumi, dressed as Mary Jane, shown from stage view, with the audience behind, while a Doll's lines "Protect Mommy, let mommy run away." are shown below.]

Boats and Framing

But the parallels are not only in the most famous part of the novel - consider this - Frankenstein, the novel, is written as a series of nesting framing narratives. The bookend narrative, the one we open and close on, is a boat. Most Frankenstein adaptations cut the boat trip frame, but Mary Jane very specifically opens and closes on a boat at sea, and its ending is EXACTLY the reverse of Frankenstein’s. If for some reason you’re this far in and don’t want more spoilers for a 200 year old book, now’s the time to click away, I guess.

The boat is on a course to the Arctic. Victor is on board, telling his story, because his creature has fled there, away from humanity. Victor intends to pursue him endlessly, to kill him, fully aware that he is almost certainly going to die, frozen and alone, in the process. We don’t get to see this happen - the story ends merely with the certainty that this is what is coming. Victor, on a boat, intending to go to the ends of the earth alone to kill the Creature he brought into the world, treating it like some burden and punishment.

[image description: a screenshot from Mary Jane, with the CG of Mary and the Ghosts on the ship, with the summary text overlayed on it reading "Friends together, fun forever."]

How does Mary Jane end? With Mary, and Jacob, and a cast of playful characters — her friends — sailing off for the ends of the world, together, in pursuit of life and happiness - even in death.

Ghost Party ends the play because its a triumph. Neji throwing out Horace’s Ode to Cleopatra in there because he can’t not do silly things like that — but Frankenstein famously contains many references to classics — many made by the Creature himself, who was forced to educate himself via books, lacking a parent to help him.

Mary Jane takes a section of sheer joy out of a poem of complex mixed emotions, and says them repeatedly. This is a party. This is a triumph. Mary leaves on a boat for the ends of the world a success, a good mother, a friend. And a human.

Humanity, Connection, Isolation

The play deconstructs so wonderfully this question of humanity. Mary doesn’t find any joy in it, despite barely understanding it herself - until she is able to use it to help others. The first time in her life she’s been glad to be human - something she only really understands as “needing to eat food” - is when it gives her the ability to save her ghost friends. If that’s what humanity is, the ability to care for others, the ghosts of the chapel, the play is telling us, are far more human.

One of my favorite exchanges in the play is after Charles and Figaro explain to Mary that the corpse parts used to make Jacob were their friends. Mary is not malicious in the least. She has no concept of this act as sacrilege or desecration. She is genuinely childishly innocent in most of what she does. And she can’t understand it.

Mary says “If you can love unmoving corpses so much… How can you not feel for living ghosts...?"

[image description: Mary in front of the burning town. She's saying "How can you not feel for living ghosts...?"]

Charles responds that she must be completely off her rocker. But she’s correct. Mary sees life in front of her, even undead life, and wants to protect it. Even the Islanders, who only ever treated her with distain, who only ever made her miserable — she doesn’t want them to die, even knowing they are already dead.

Outside of Mary, her oddball eccentric self, in this play, the more human someone is, the crueler they are. Figaro and Charles are only ever here to mess with her before dragging her off to be killed. They have no willingness to even try to understand anything outside their world view. The Islanders, who think themselves human, revile Mary, and make up terrible rumors about her.

Both of these groups do so, in part, for similar reasons. Because to have empathy would force a realization on them they cannot bear. The last thing Figaro realizes, before he’s dragged into the most poetic of justices, is that the dolls have SOULS. They are ALIVE. It’s a moment of anger and madness, but it’s a last minute realization that he’s been wrong now that it’s too late. Of course it’s not a revelation he’ll remember. You tend to forget what’s important on Kakuriyo Island.

If Mary averts all of Victor’s mistakes, Charles and Figaro make many of them. Seeing the Creature as a collection of corpses, as demonic, as an abomination against God. Reacting only in anger, in cruelty, in violence. Chasing something they view, wrongly, as an abomination to the ends of the earth, until it kills them. Mary has Victor’s role, but Victor’s actions and outlook are given to the antagonists.

It’s fascinating to me, then, that there are two of them. In the version of the play that gets performed, they’re twins - doubles. Two halves of one whole, who egg each other along in their cruelty. But they also exist to show that even these two are capable of empathy and connection. They do in fact understand the thing they tease Mary with. They have the ability and understanding to extend that to Ghosts, or to Mary. They simply refuse to. Figaro really does love his brother - his grief at his death is genuine. It’s a clever way to show that.

In the book, Victor is extremely isolated, by his own choice. He withdraws from everyone in order to work on his creature, and after he runs from it, he keeps to himself just as much, now blaming the idea that he can tell no one what he’s done. Even when he’s surrounded by family, he is utterly alone. By choice. The Creature eventually lashes out and kills the woman Victor intended to marry. In Victor’s mind, he cares about this girl, but it is not in his actions. Like much else, she exists more as a creation of Victors mind than something in the world for him to interact with and care about. Until she dies. Then he’s furious. And decides to spend the rest of his life chasing down the Creature to kill him for it.

This contradiction in Victor has always read as intentional to me. The book is calling out his hypocrisy here. He doesn’t actually desire connection - the connection his Creature eloquently explains his longing for. But if it is denied him, he acts like he’s been affronted, painted with a shallow layer of sanctimoniousness or justice. Murder is bad, of course, and the Creature shouldn’t have killed an innocent young woman to get at Victor, of course. But the discrepancy between the way Victor reacts to her in death and the way he does when she’s alive is intentional.

Victor has every chance for human connection. Time and time and time again he’s given that chance and refuses it. Even to the very end, on that boat. He could stay with the crew. Sail back home. Let it go. The Creature has run away from humanity which it has come to despise as much as its absentee father disdained it. There is no need to keep chasing. But Victor cannot let it go.

The Creature longs for connection and is denied it. Victor disdains and refuses it, even when it’s available to him.

Mary as The Creature

Contrast this with Mary — It is Mary, rather than Jacob, that is in the Creature’s situation here. Mary is constantly chasing connection. Constantly trying to find something to reflect humanity (compassion, life, emotions — rather than the matter of blood and flesh that Figaro and Charles always talk about it as) back at her. And she can’t get it. She, like the Creature, hides in the bushes and watches it from afar. She, like the Creature, chases after it only for people to run away, to treat her with cruelty. Mary is Frankenstein, but she is also a reflection of the Creature. She is both in one, in this sense.

[image description: screenshot of summary text over the church and figures of the church ghosts. it reads "The friendless Mary dreamily watched the ghosts as they sang a happy song.]

Her costume specifically makes her look nearly as much the doll as the ones she makes - in the world of the story, because she's sewing both - but thematically, it ties her to them not only as their mother, but as a reflection of the Creature, herself.

Like the Creature, Mary is an odd mix of naivety and childishness, with startling gaps in her knowledge, and extreme skill and adult abilities. She knows what she knows well. Like the Creature, Mary has no memory of kindness, of family, of parents. She has only ever seen it in the way the Islanders interact with each other. She is the Creature here - raising herself, learning of the world through watching it, being reviled for every attempt she makes to reach out.

One thing the Creature explains to Victor is that he didn’t even understand, at the time, why he was being treated this way. He had no awareness of his own nature and what he looked like in the eyes of others. Only that they ran in fear and chased him away, and reacted with violence.

Mary Jane inverts this. Mary is human, but the humans around her are something she cannot understand. Like the Creature, Mary doesn’t understand why people react this way. The book expects you to come to the same conclusion as the play - the fault lies not with the Creature anymore more than it does with Mary, at this point. It is those around him, those around her, that are at fault, that are a thing neither can understand. Human’s are cruel. Ghosts who think they’re humans are cruel. It is a disconnect between themselves and the world around them they don’t understand, and desperately try to bridge over and over.

Even Mary, as quirky and childlike as she is, is on the verge of giving up, of being consumed by the Lonely Darkness. We don't know what her fate would have been if the Order of Shadows had not come. Victor's Creature, far more morose than Mary, gives up on connection, as well. He is denied the most basic of needs, and eventually, he learns the violence and hatred being directed at him, and, newborn that he is, lashes out.

But, ultimately, companionship and connection are the Creature’s goals, and it is that that he requests of Victor, who refuses to provide it himself. Make for me a mate. Mary is the Creature, and she is Frankenstein. She makes a friend for herself. Her motivation in creating Jacob is not science, it is not in defiance of death or God — very pointedly — it is out of loneliness - the same motivation that the Creature gives for his desire that Victor make him another like him. And when Mary does so, she’s a good mother, and a good friend.

Religion

Frankenstein’s full title is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus - it is about forming people, but it is also about stealing fire from the Gods. The question of if creating life out of death the way Victor does is an affront to God is something that Victor himself thinks about, but the book is much more interested in exploring it as the way characters view it. Victor punishes himself, it is not the Divine that punishes him. The Divine acts not as a force, but as an idea. One that both Victor and the Creature end up grappling with and trying to find their place within.

So that Mary herself seemingly has no concept of it, is fascinating. She goes to watch a chapel every night, but I don’t know she knows what a chapel even is. She mentions God once herself, saying that the smell of the garbage would be enough to affect even God, but she also talks to the Moon as a companion and a friend. Her worldview is uniquely hers, in relation to all things. As I said, the idea that making the dolls the way she does, or using corpse parts to do it might be sacrilege does not even occur to her.

Rather than go the route of the novel, Mary Jane twists this around too. In the world of Mary Jane, religious objects hold not only the power of an idea but an actual force. And it is a force that is completely, within the world of the show, amoral and nonsensical. The blessed weapons and fire the Order of the Shadows use are “holy” as a property, but that gives it no moral weight within the world of the play. And the play is messing with it the whole time. Holy wood or water can destroy a ghost, but they live in a church. Something that Charles and Figaro comment on, but cannot interrogate in terms of what it means for their conviction. But they’re split on how to proceed - the fact that ghosts can live in it doesn’t shake their faith, though. Sister Ghost is there largely for this joke. A nun who is constantly evoking the divine, who would be killed by a consecrated item.

[image description: the summary text over the chapel backdrop with the text of "the chapel where Jacob and the others were left behind was being filled with the scent of holy water.]

If I could add something to Mary Jane, I would have loved for Mary or Jacob to ask Sister Ghost what “God” means (this is a conversation that happens in bonus material for Tokyo Ghoul once, actually). I would have loved to have that brought up more explicitly. But it’s also very funny that it never is.

The first definitions for a God we get are them being applied to Mary herself, with plenty of ambiguity on if the Order’s faith itself has a mother figure at its center or not. And either way it’s a fascinating play on the idea, and the themes of the novel.

Closing Thoughts, Other Connections and Ideas "Beyond the Scope of this Essay"

Anyway, all of this while playing around with everything else going on in this play, Neji’s totally, without permission, commentary on Fumi, on Tsuki’s legacy (please read the stage script, somehow the game thought it was a good idea to cut that whole specific reference even when making Kisa pick between an “erase Tsuki” option) and on Kai. On himself as an artist. ("I am the one who is strange. With my changing moods, with my hobbies. That is why everyone thinks I'm strange and avoids me.”). As with several other plays, a commentary on authority, and on creation, and on isolation and friendship and connection.

And, of course, what I’ve been holding back this whole little essay is that Mary Jane is, thematically, at its core, playing off the exact same situation as I Am Death. Like — both of these plays center around a woman pouring her emotions into an undead creature. I see you Neji. You can’t hide from me. Reading I Am Death as a Frankenstein Story remixed into an old Japanese mytho-history is a LOT of fun to do, but is, as the academics say, beyond the scope of this essay.

(and, I Am Death itself is about Neji and Chui, and the twisted, messy love-hate revenge drama they are acting out across all the routes in the game. Neji writes the plays that introduce Chui to the world. Then he runs. And spends the whole game trying to beat him (affectionate.). “Make me another like me” you say…

Literally the only thing I’ve come up with to make the “bad end” CG more compelling to me, is that this is what it’s riffing on. I like my I Am Death costumes way weirder.)

Mary Jane is a Frankenstein Story, I Am Death is a Frankenstein Story, Jack Jeanne is a Frankenstein Story. The other, other thing I’m leaving out here is that the Order of the Shadows are OBVIOUSLY pulled from Tokyo Grand Guignol, aesthetically. And the most famous TGG play is Litchi Hikari Club, which is, say it with me, a Frankenstein Story. Also one that takes the themes of the novel (gender, love and sexuality, childhood, genius, violence, blind pursuit to the point of madness, god complexes) harder than most, but runs with it in nearly the exact opposite direction. But again, very much beyond the scope of this essay.

Also also also leaving out the fact that Tokyo Ghoul is... kind of ... not not a Frankenstein story. It certainly riffs on the motif quite a bit. Even if you've never read it, you've seen the mask design (an in universe riff on the joke.).

Even just one dimension of this play, and look how many words you've made me write Neji-senpai.

[image description: image from the bottom of the Mary Jane poster, with the cast list, showing the chapel ghosts with a focus on Ushinoko, Neji's character, looking towards the 'camera'.] Some little Halloween Spooktacular you’ve got there. Bravo.

#jack jeanne meta #jack jeanne #Mary Jane #frankenstein #lit crit #doing lit crit of stories within stories - what a trip #meta

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grantaireble · 8 months ago

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Tortured Poets & "The Bride of Frankenstein"

To a new world of gods and monsters!

Alright this is soo long now and I came about this revelation the weirdest way (while watching world class color guard) but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. All of my ttpd thoughts were rattling around in my brain as we were watching videos and one group put out a Bride of Frankenstein show last year and they used this quote as a V.O:

“What do you expect? Such an audience needs something more than a pretty little love story. So why shouldn’t I write of monsters?"

And, man, something about that got the neurons firing, especially because I had already been thinking a lot about the connections between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and TTPD. Here are some of those:

Frankenstein visuals in the Fortnight MV

“The 1830s” Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was originally published in 1818, but she made some edits for an 1831 edition

Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron were sort of their own little TPD, writing horror stories together one rainy summer.

TTPD and Frankenstein seem to reference many of the same things

Both Taylor on TTPD and Mary Shelley in Frankenstein reference the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the albatross

“I am going to unexplored regions, to “the land of mist and snow;” but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety, or if I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the “Ancient Mariner?” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Both Taylor and Mary Shelly reference Greek Myth

Frankenstein: “The Modern Prometheus” (often compared to the Christian story of Christ)

Cassandra: gifted the power of prophecy but cursed to never be believed

Does the headpiece above not give Medusa?

Both Taylor and Mary Shelley reference the Bible

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel...” (Frankenstein) / “I got cursed like Eve got bitten,” etc.

Both Taylor and Mary Shelley reference principles of Alchemy!

"The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera." (Chimera = lion's head, goat's body, and a serpent's tail, more Greek mythology)

Some lyrics from TTPD also feel like direct references to Frankenstein quotes or themes

“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein / “I was tamed, I was gentle ‘til the circus life made me mean.” – Taylor Swift, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?

“I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein / “Down bad like I lost my twin.” – Taylor Swift, Down Bad

“I am malicious because I am miserable” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein / “Because I’m Miserable!” – Taylor Swift, I Can Do It With A Broken Heart

“One wandering thought pollutes the day” ― Mutability, Percy Blythe Shelley (Quoted in Frankenstein) / “One bad seed kills the garden” – Taylor Swift, The Albatross

“This feels like the time she fell through the ice” – Taylor Swift, The Bolter / In Frankenstein, ice is symbolic of isolation and alienation.

“Wretch” or “Wretched” is a huge word in Frankenstein / “That I’m fearsome and I’m wretched and I’m wrong.” Taylor Swift, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?

“In the streets there’s a raging riot” / In the story, the Monster gets chased by angry mob of townspeople

The First Two Pages of Frankenstein by The National (The Alcott appears on this album and The National toured it with Patti Smith)

Bonus: Dr. Frankenstein is something of an anti-hero. He, along with his monster, are also sometimes referred to as Tragic Heroes. Greek philosopher Aristotle first laid out the attributes of a Tragic Hero.

So all of this to say, I had originally only been thinking about TTPD only in the context of Mary Shelly’s original Frankenstein, even though that Fortnight imagery was definitely inspired by the films. But then that quote just really felt like it had Taylor written all over it.

So I googled Bride of Frankenstein.

It's basically an "everyone lives" AU sequel to Frankenstein lol. It's the 2nd of a trilogy (...hmmm?) although the third film Son of Frankenstein has a different director. The line I heard in the guard show is said by a fictionalized version of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, who "appears" in the Bride of Frankenstein movie, along with poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelly.

In the scene, Mary Shelley explains that she wanted Frankenstein to show its audience the consequences of mortal man trying to play god. She then reveals that there is more to the story than everyon thinks. This, of course, got me thinking about the term "playing god" and the Mastermind of it all, along with all of the religious/worship imagery Taylor uses on the album. Bride of Frankenstein also uses Christian/crucifixion imagery to convey this theme.

The movie picks up right where the original Frankenstein left off. Both the doctor and the monster somehow make it out of the original story alive. Dr. Frankenstein, despite wanting to step away from his experiments after his horrific first attempt, gets pressured/blackmailed by his mentor to create a mate for the monster. While this is happening, Frankenstein's original monster is sort of bumbling around out in the world trying desperately to make a friend. This never works, as everyone is too afraid of how different he appears on the outside.

This is around where the queer reading of "The Bride of Frankenstein" comes in. I'm getting most of my info from this video, which definitely clicked things into place for me.

youtube

The queer reading is based on a few things:

The relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius (two men creating life together)

The monster as a figure that does not fit into the norms of society and the effects of that on his search to find someone "like him"

The director, James Whale, having been one of only a few openly gay men in Hollywood at the time

The character, Dr. Pretorius', "campy" queer coding

The Bride of Frankenstein was subjected to censorship from the Hay's board while in production and by censorship boards once released

"In the decades since its release, modern film scholars have noted the possible gay reading of the film. Director James Whale was openly gay, and some of the actors in the cast, including Ernest Thesiger and, according to rumor, Colin Clive, were respectively gay or bisexual." (Wikipedia)

This reading focuses on Dr. Frankenstein's inability to stay away from his "experiments," despite having a new wife and a potential regular life waiting for him at home. He is rejecting "the natural" in favor of "the unnatural.”

This reading also looks at the monster's deep desire and inability to find belonging in a world that fears otherness. The Monster tries multiple times to make a friend, but is always rejected.

He saves a woman from drowning but she screams in fear at his appearance.

He does befriend a blind hermit and they bond and become friends! But soldiers find the Monster there and they are separated. (At this point in the story the Monster wishes he were dead again.)

Finally, the Monster gets to meet the the Bride, who was literally made for the Monster. Unfortunately, the Bride, horrified at having been brought alive for the sole purpose of being a companion, also rejects him.

Here are some connections that relate to the Frankenstein/ Bride of Frankenstein films:

"Such an audience needs something more than a pretty little love stories" / "Are you not entertained?"

Safety Pins, Bride of Frankenstein / Hairpins, Fortnight video

“Strings tied to levers"? –Taylor Swift, Robin / At the end of Bride of Frankenstein, the Monster pulls the “self-destruct” lever, killing himself, the Bride, and Dr. Pretorious (might be a stretch, but this movie is the origin of the "mad scientist self-destruct lever")

In Son of Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein's grandson is named Peter (definitely a stretch?)

In Bride of Frankenstein a maid character, Minnie, tries to warn the town that the Monster is still alive, but no one believes her and she says "Nobody'd believe me! All right. I wash me hands of it. They can all be murdered in their beds." (It's giving Cassandra)

In Bride of Frankenstein the Monster saves a young shepherdess from drowning / "She almost drowned in frigid water" -Taylor Swift, The Bolter

Frankenstein freaks out and accidentally burns down the hermit's cottage (the only place he found human connection, hidden away from judgmental eyes) when they are found there by two hunters

Anyway this is so so long and and doesn't even include any real analysis (I might save that for a more cohesive post) but once I got started I just kept noticing things.

Right now I think the question I'm currently trying to answer is: Frankenstein Taylor Swift the Monster or the Doctor? The Bride? The drowned girl? The almost drowned girl? The Author??

#unhinged Frankenstein posting #frankenpost?#gaylor #friends of dorothea #this is why employment is secretly good for me #please share thoughts if u have them I feel like i'm missing so much #taylor swiftenstein and taylor swiftenstein's monster #take me 2 florida fr

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oasis-nadrama · 6 months ago

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Media analysis and misconceptions

Oasis Nadrama, 30/06/2024

[ Illustration: Both Sides of the Soul, by Wojtek Siumak ]

AUTEUR THEORY An angle of analysis postulating the director as the main and most significant creative force behind the movie. By extension, auteur theory is interesting in the declarations, actions, positions and previous trajectory of this one artist, as well as the possibility (explicit or not) that they may have a larger aesthetic project a single movie is only a part of. Example: Film director John Carpenter is generally understood to be the main force behind the 1982 movie The Thing. He wanted to direct a remake to the eponymous 1951 story since a long time. He reworked the screenplay, chose the actors, worked closely with them as well as the creature designers and special effect specialists, and focused on the editing stage as well. Furthermore, John indicated the movie was part of his "Apocalypse trilogy", a thematic triptych continued with Prince of Darkness (1987) and concluded with In the Mouth of Madness (1994). What Auteur Theory is not: Auteur theory never says that the director is the sole entity behind a movie, nor does it oppose entirely different approaches. It also does not mean the word of the main creator should always be trusted and constitutes the alpha and omega of intradiegetic truth and extradiegetics themes. On the contrary, auteur theory encourages you to think of artists as human being, who can lie, who can fail, who can forget things, etc.

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR An angle of analysis warning against considering the author and their decisions as the main and only key to understanding the work (see auteur theory above). The term was coined in an essay by literary theorist Roland Barthes, who proposed we should instead consider the perspective of every reader as paramount and fruitful by itself. Example: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a horror story and it expresses humanist themes, mostly exploring traditional philosophical and spiritual matters, in gothic and christian tradition. However, it is now considered as one of the first works of modern science fiction and countless analyses have been done with other perspectives. One could envision the creature as an incarnation of miscarriage, a subconscious expression of budding proletarian revolution, a symbol of freedom, of art itself. Any interpretation is possible, and all are valuable. The fact a lot of analyses may develop themes the author knew nothing of, or did not wish to talk about, is not important: what's important is the construction of new points of view and cross-section concepts which can then enrich the larger cultural conversation. What Death of the Author is not: The idea the creator should be entirely dismissed as a factor. In fact, a lot of Death of the Author analyses do include a model of the artist's intent, or at least trajectory and experiences. Some hybrid approaches advise to consider the author as first and foremost a vastly unwilling and inconscious relay of larger cultural developments.

MALE GAZE The specific ways in which cultural objects in current Western cultures (paintings, statues, books, comic books, video games, movies, plays, music etc) present the feminine body in a process of hypersexualization and fetishization. In movie theory we are mostly talking about the composition of the picture (the way rule of thirds is used to targed chests and butts), in video games the focus is more on character design, etc, etc, but it's all about the way women are understood as objects of desire first and foremost (or exclusively). Example: In the 2010 video game NieR, Kainé walking around in fetishistic underwear and the camera longing on her butts and boobs is textbook male gaze. As are the assertions that there's "a reason" behind the hypersexualization (there's ALWAYS "a reason", there's also "a reason" for Quiet's outfits and dancing scenes in MGS5, etc). What the male gaze is not: It describes the approach in the cultural product itself, not the behavior of people towards the cultural product… and even less the behavior of people in daily life! People are ALLOWED to be horny at women's butts. Looking at someone's ass when invited, or noticing it in mundane situations (as long as the person is not focusing on it), is NOT male gaze.

#auteur theory #death of the author #male gaze #politics #writing #various articles

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adventure-showdown · 1 year ago

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What is your favourite Doctor Who story?

ROUND 2 MASTERPOST

synopses and propaganda under the cut

Scherzo

Synopsis

Once upon a time...

There were two friends, and together they travelled the cosmos. They thwarted tyrants and defeated monsters, they righted wrongs wherever they went. They explored the distant future and the distant past, new worlds and galaxies, places beyond imagining.

But every good story has to come to an end.

With no times or places left to explore, all the two friends have now are each other. But maybe that's one voyage too many. Maybe they'll discover things they'd rather have left undisturbed... hidden away in the suffocating, unfeeling, deafening brightness.

Once upon a time. Far, far away.

Propaganda

It’s a great and fucked up dissection of the Doctor and Charley’s relationship, with a healthy dose of body horror (anonymous)

you will never look at the handshake emoji the same way again (october)

Really creative concept. Puts 8 and Charley into a situation where they have to confront their relationship and what they mean to each other while dealing with an incredibly engaging creature. I can't name an audio that suits the medium better and Ive been consuming Big Finish at an alarming rate. Also noises™️ (anonymous)

Absolutely INSANE episode back when big finish was allowed to get WEIRD weird it has everything: heartfelt discussion about the doctor/companion relationship, love, cannibalism, body horror, the exploration of a very alien world. All of this while making full use of the audio medium in a story that could simply never have been done anywhere else. It's a must listen for everyone. (@gnougnouss )

The Company of Friends: Mary’s Story

Synopsis

Switzerland, 1816: at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron's house guests tell each other tales to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart. With a monster on the loose outside, young Mary Shelley isn't short of inspiration.

Propaganda no propaganda submitted

#round 2

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horrorvillaintourney · 7 months ago

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HORROR'S NEXT TOP GENDER, ROUND TWO MATCH EIGHTEEN: Warren/Emily (Homicidal) vs. Adam/The Monster (Frankenstein)

PROPAGANDA FOR WARREN/EMILY:

"this is basically a Psycho knock-off, complete with a """killer cross-dresser with a split personality"". what's interesting to me here, however, is how convoluted it all is, meaning Warren/Emily is simultaneously (evil) transmasc and (evil) transfem. i kind of love that"

PROPAGANDA FOR ADAM:

"Isn't their whole story about being brought into this world anew, fully formed, and then near immediately scorned by his creator because of one minute detail within, that he couldn't change? Isn't there something to be said about having to go out into the wilderness, only because of the consequences of your birth? I mean, i could go on about the inherent transgenderism of making a body in the first place but DAMN there is something to be said about the OG "making a body" story."

"While Frankenstein uses male pronouns for the creature, viewing the creature as a reflection of himself, the creature does not and the authors note from mary shelley refers to the creature with it/its. In addition, the creature is repeatedly paralleled with the female characters. Justine and the creature share similar experiences of having a same-sex creator who rejects them, neglects them, and insults them, but while Justine is able to find a home and recover the creature never is. They’re additionally tied together through Justine being blamed for William’s murder despite the creature being the real killer. Then later, the creature parallels itself to Safie. We call it the creature because that’s how it refers to itself, and while he refers to other people as “humans” to place distance between it and them, it takes a special liking to Safie and refers to it as a “creature” aswell. It takes this fascination to mean its attracted to women and should have a female companion and while that may be true i think theres a level of identification through the other it doesnt realize. Also something something base theme of the creature wants love and acceptance but cant get it because its society and creator are intolerant of it and view it as being agaisnt both nature and god. [...] TLDR I think if you brought Frankensteins monster into modern day it would choose to be some flavor of transfem or demigirl because it naturally relates to women while its masculine identity was forced upon it by its creator"

#warren/emily homicidal #warren homicidal #emily homicidal #homicidal #the creature #frankensteins monster #mary shelley #frankenstein #horror villain tourney #horror's next top gender #trans

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thenightling · 5 months ago

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Horror movie tropes that aren't as old as you may think

Vampires burning in the sun. The very first time vampires burned in the sun in fiction was in the 1922 German expressionist film, Nosferatu. Even the 1931 Dracula never said he would die via sunlight however the sequels to the 1931 Dracula movie did start using the idea that vampires would die in sunlight even though the Dracula novel and Carmilla novels had the vampires walk about by day but they were just weaker and could not shapeshift by day.

2. The first time werewolves changed during the full moon in media was in The Wolfman franchise started in 1941. In most folklore werewolves could transform at will. They were just more likely to be more wolf-like and wild on the full moon.

3. Werewolves in traditional folklore took on actual wolf form. The bipedal man-wolf was popularized from the 1941 Wolfman movie.

4. The first time zombies were NOT under a Haitian Voodoo Curse was in the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. This was also the first Zombie Apocalypse movie.

5. The first time Zombies ate brains and the zombism was portrayed as a spreadable condition was in the 1985 film Return of The Living Dead.

6. "Vampires die from drinking dead Blood." this one started as a misunderstanding of a line from the novel Interview with the vampire. "You must stop before the heart stops lest the death takes you down with it." In the sequel novel The Vampire Lestat you learn that drinking dead blood won't actually kill a vampire, just make him really dizzy. Lestat describes it as a rolling delirium. No vampire in the world of Anne Rice actually dies from drinking dead blood and yet after the film adaptation of Interview with The Vampire (1994) suddenly you started to see the "Drinking dead blood will kill a vampire." everywhere. From The Queen of The Damned (2002) to the TV show Supernatural.

7. Vampires not showing up on camera. Vampires not showing up in mirrors dates back to the 1897 Dracula novel by Bram Stoker and may have its origin with some old Irish Ghost stories but the idea that vampires don't show up on camera is more recent and started in Hollywood.

8. Frankenstein's Monster on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel was intelligent, literate, and articulate within two years of his creation. Yet thanks to the 1931 film starring Boris Karloff most people think of the Frankenstein monster as having a flat head (he did not have a flat head in the novel, in fact he had long black hair), is child-like (He was actually very well-spoken once he learned how to talk in the novel), and he did not have bolts (or electrodes) in his neck int the novel. All of those things come from the 1931 movie Frankenstein.

Even the notion that the moral was not to play God mostly comes from the 1931 film and it kind of diminishes the accountability of those who mistreated The Creature. Also Victor Frankenstein (in the novel) wasn't even a doctor. He was a student of Metaphysics and he never graduated.

9. The Frankenstein monster being afraid of fire started with the 1931 Frankenstein movie. Bride of Frankenstein is where you first hear him exclaim "FIRE BAD!"

10. The 1943 film Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman is where we first get the idea of the Frankenstein monster walking around with his arms out stretched and stiff. This is actually because the film was heavily edited after test audiences who hadn't seen the previous film (Ghost of Frankenstein) were confused as to why the Frankenstein monster now spoke like Bela Lugosi's Ygor and was blind. Most didn't realize it was now Ygor in the body of The Creature. All scenes of The Creature talking were removed as well as reference to him being blinded. But him walking around with his arms out stretched because of the blindness were left in and so started the notion of The Frankenstein monster walking around stiff with his arms out stretched.

11. Igor the hunchbacked assistant didn't exist until the comedy Young Frankenstein. The Ygor of the Universal Monster movies had a twisted neck (not a hunchback) from a botched hanging attempt. He was played by Bela Lugosi in Son of Frankenstein and Ghost of Frankenstein. Dracula's assistant (who wasn't hunchbacked) was the bug eating mad man, Renfield. And Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant was Fritz (ironically played by Dwight Frye, who was also Renfield). Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) in House of Frankenstein had a hunchbacked assistant named Daniel. And of course there was Quasimodo in The Hunchback of NotrDame. It was the Zeitgeist combining of all these characters that created the Igor trope now popular in comedies and films like Van Helsing (2004).

12. The Warrens were infamous con artists known in paranromal research communities as charlatans who knew how to tell a good story but after several books, TV movies, and then the Conjuring franchise, the zeitgeist notion of them is paranormal heroes instead of carnival-style con artists who charged admission to look at a Raggedy Ann Doll they kept in a glass case.

13. Annabelle was actually a Raggedy Ann doll, not a wooden doll. The version we're used to now started with the Conjuring film franchise.

14. Until the 1973 film The Exorcist you didn't hear that many "Ouija boards invite demons into your house!" stories. Or "I heard from a friend who heard from a friend..." Most legitimate paranormal researchers will tell you that the majority of ghostly encounters with the Ouija board are the result of something called the Ideomotor effect but because of what our pop culture has taught us, almost everyone now thinks of them as demon invocation devices and the subconscious convinces them that they are interacting with demons. Try to find a "the board summoned a demon" story from before 1973's The Exorcist movie or the Exorcist book. You won't find it.

15. An odd one is the Pentacle. The pentacle (five pointed star in a circle) is an old protection ward AGAINST evil that dates back to Ancient Greece and later used by Neo Pagans and Wiccans. in The Wolfman franchise the pentacle could warn you who the werewolf is, show who the next victim is likely to be, and even prevent the werewolf transformation if worn as a talisman.

The idea that it is something sinister and Evil has no roots in reality or even its first cinematic depictions. It was used as protection against werewolves as recently as An American Werewolf in London in 1981 (That was a free floating pentacle outside of the circle). It was even a protection symbol in Sleepy Hollow (1999 movie).

16. This one is debatable. There are people who claim that the idea of ghosts being translucent was the result of the Pepper's Ghost stage effect created in 1862, which used a pain of glass and a reflection to create the illusion of a ghost on stage for plays. The same effect is used today for Disney's Haunted Manion ride. However I am pretty sure that ghosts being described as whispy or cloud-like could indicate that translucent ghost descriptions do pre-date the Pepper's Ghost effect.

17. The first killer doll was in a 1960s episode of The Twilight Zone. Her name was Talky Tina.

18. The first blatantly possessed killer doll was Chucky in Child's Play (1988).

19. The idea of Dracula walking around in a tuxedo and cape started with Bela Lugosi's Dracula in 1931. If we went by the novels the Frankenstein Monster was the one more likely to wear a cape.

20. The idea that vampires and werewolves hate each other is a Hollywood invention mostly popularized by The Underworld franchise though it was depicted earlier in Tales from the Crypt. Dracula, in his novel, actually loved wolves and could turn into a wolf himself. This is described in the 1931 Dracula movie but his transformation into a wolf happens off camera and so is often forgotten.

21. Van Helsing as an action hero may have its roots with Peter Cushing in Hammer's Dracula franchise where Dracula kept coming back like a modern serial killer but this notion was mostly the result of Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing in 2004. Until then Dr. Van Helsing was usually an old man who beat Dracula using his intellect and knowledge of Dracula's weaknesses. "You are a wise man, Van Helsing, for one who has not yet lived even a single lifetime."

22. The sexy fem vampire hunter is mostly the result of Buffy The Vampire Slayer but you also see it in Van Helsing and Syfy's Vanessa Helsing. For once I'd like to see a woman vampire hunter dressed like Peter Vincent, and not a sexy variation on Peter Vincent's costume either.

#Horror #Gothic Horror #Horror classics

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