about a young woman with everything ahead of her

Before her fresh green eyes a whole forest of opportunities burst from the earth and she had only to find her way among them. What is it like to grow up and take so many opportunities for granted?

 

something about the novel "Dracula"

I saw and loved 1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula." The movie, as its name suggests, was supposed to stay true to the 1897 novel. It's pretty close!

And, still, I was pleasantly surprised recently as I read Dracula for the first time.

Stoker's way of telling the story through letters, diary entries, memos, notes, transcripts, and newspaper articles worked better than I expected. It provides instant insights into the the characters and gives the story a sense of motion and authenticity.

I noted some comparisons between the book and '92 movie.

In the book, Dracula proudly describes to Harker his bloodline's warrior tradition, repelling and waging insurgencies against invaders over the centuries. Now he seems contemptuous of peace. I enjoyed this part of the novel. The ’92 film acknowledges Dracula’s identity as a warrior but portrays him as a Crusader (while also inventing a fateful connection to Mina). Very few other depictions of the character ever hint at the Dracula warrior tradition.

I was surprised at how scary the original Dracula is. He makes the Christopher Lee/Hammer films' Draculas look pretty tame. The '92 film captures a lot of what is frightening about the monster. But it also makes him sympathetic—Mina loves him in the movie; in the book, aside from a moment of pity, she hates him.

I also enjoyed some of the prose. The novel has a few exceptionally beautiful descriptions of the outdoors (see below). I really enjoyed reading it.

I once heard that the novel Dracula was comment on a dying aristocracy, offering a kind of critique of the past, whereas Frankenstein expressed a fear of the future and technology. Dracula’s way of conducting business is pretty conspicuous in the novel—Dracula contracts directly with different service providers so that no single office or person knows what other business he has going. His hunters eventually realize this strategy helps Dracula avoid scrutiny. And there is a weird scene in which Harker slashes at Dracula, the vampire jumps back, and the knife rips Dracula’s pocket and he freaks out as a bunch of money and gold falls out. His hunters later even comment about how he must really love and need money.

Notes:

• I re-watched the film. Gary Oldman is perfection—the centuries-old lust that stirs when he scolds, "We Draculs have a right to be proud! What devil or witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?!" And then the derision when he regains composure, "Blood is too precious a thing in these times. The warlike days are over. The victories of my great race are but a tale to be told. I am the last of my kind."
• I noted that American actors Ryder and Reeves played British, and British actors Hopkins and Oldman played Dutch and Romanian. I also like that Dr. Seward is a secret morphine addict.
• Here are two examples of solid prose:
  

... I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road—a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of night.

• Second example:

The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.

 

Note: Dracula and vampires are ubiquitous in the culture; vampire hunters, too, get star treatment. For a while, though, zombies have been ascendant.

something about “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates

American author Richard Yates gives voice to friends of loneliness. He made an extraordinary debut in 1961 with Revolutionary Road. The novel’s aching pulse beats loudly, softens, then redoubles louder than before. Characters struggle to make sense of the feeling that they will never live the life they imagined. Yates once said, "If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."

Revolutionary Road plays out in East Coast suburbia, 1955. Frank and April Wheeler think they are in a rut. Frank, a charismatic intellectual in his college years, no longer finds ironic amusement in the nine-to-five workaday office life; April, an attractive, artistically inclined woman, is home with the kids and a growing sense of desperation. April persuades Frank to relocate their young family to Paris, where the promise of real life now awaits. This promise of change gives new spark to their relationship—but the spark dissolves in a thread of smoke.

One dampening force is the neighbor’s adult son, whose borderline personality and candidly delivered, jaded insight depicts the Wheeler's problems plainly. Then April discovers she is pregnant, conceiving reckonings. The desperation buried in the Wheeler’s unsatisfied lives surfaces for air, and change comes.

Yates once described Revolutionary Road’s subtext:

I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the fifties, there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price.

This quote surprises me in a way, though, because Yates sounds like he is criticizing people like Frank Wheeler because he could not leave the security of the suburban life and office job; but in reading Revolutionary Road, I thought Yates was criticizing Frank because he thought he deserved anything else.

Notes:

• Quotes from Boston Review, October 1999, and Ploughshares, Winter 1972.
• Revolutionary Road, the 2008 movie directed by Sam Mendes, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, but Michael Shannon owns it, of course, with his performance.
• Previous posts: something about Richard Yates and something about "The Easter Parade" by Richard Yates

something about the film, “Joker”

In the movie "Joker," Arthur Fleck ekes out a miserable living as a party clown in Gotham City, 1981. Crime is up, unemployment is up, and poverty is up. Violent events lead Arthur to become a folk hero in a rapidly intensifying class struggle. The movie is an unofficial imagining of the origin story for the Batman villain, the Joker.

The New Yorker published a piece titled “'Joker' Is a Viewing Experience of Rare, Numbing Emptiness,” which says the following:

“Joker” is an intensely racialized movie, a drama awash in racial iconography that is so prevalent in the film, so provocative, and so unexamined as to be bewildering. What it seems to be saying is utterly incoherent, beyond the suggestion that Arthur, who is mentally ill, becomes violent after being assaulted by a group of people of color—and he suffers callous behavior from one black woman, and believes that he’s being ignored by another, and reacts with jubilation at the idea of being a glamorous white star amid a supporting cast of cheerful black laborers. But, unlike the public discourse around the Central Park Five, and unlike the case of Bernhard Goetz, and unlike the world, the discourse in “Joker” and the thought processes of Arthur Fleck are utterly devoid of any racial or social specificity.

I do not know what this means or how the film would be different if the racial iconography were more examined or if the movie had more racial or social specificity. I agree that “Joker” does not reinforce a politically left-leaning perspective on race, but I do not see how that makes the movie bad. I think the movie is good.

“Joker” is a sick person’s fantasy about meeting real-world conditions that allow the fantasy to become reality. Arthur thought he was a victim.

I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it's a fucking comedy.

He was nice to people, but they responded with indifference or cruelty. He discovered the power of revenge and began leading a class war.

What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fuckin' deserve!

Arthur's story and dialog gradually allude to a populist and class-oriented politics, which can be manipulated by demagogues and made dangerous. But this movie dwells in the origins of the discontent that allows a populace to accept demagoguery and then turn dangerous and to fascism. Arthur, during a serendipitous turn as a guest on a late-night talk show, asks his celebrity host, Murray:

Have you seen what it's like out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don't. They think that we'll just sit there and take it, like good little boys! That we won't werewolf and go wild!

Notes:

• "Joker" was released in 2019, was directed and produced by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker.
• I do not know if the concept started out as such, but I drew lines to Trump’s political rise leading into the 2016 election.
• The New Yorker also published a formal review of “Joker,” which was also critical. That review is fine.
• "All I Have Are Negative Thoughts."