Frankenstein’s Blogster: I’m So Lonely

Happy Halloween, everyone! Blogslave Keith Hock back again to share some more spooky scary horror thoughts with you before the Halloween Bell rings and I turn back into a pumpkin […right? My personal mythology is getting a little muddy -KH] and have to go back to talking about staging and lighting and direction and all that, you know, actual theatre stuff on this blog I write for a theatre company.

But before that happens I have one last horror trope discussion that I want to squeeze in, one that each of our three shows touches on differently: solitude. I’ve touched on this topic once before, but only in passing, and it was a LONG time ago. I think it’s about due for a deeper exploration, wouldn’t you say? Ordinarily I would invite you to join me on this journey for a little while, but it would be counter to my theme this time. So instead I will ask you to focus on the fact that you’re reading this by yourself. No one is with you. If you’re at work, everyone else is at their own desks, working on their projects or goldbricking like you, by themselves. If you’re on the train or the bus, even if you’re pressed in with people, each and every one of them, yourself included, is alone. Headphones crammed in both ears, eyes locked on your phones, willing away the sensation of being surrounded by strangers. Maybe you’re at home, sequestered from the dark chill outside, turning on all the lights so you don’t get sad and desperately clinging to whatever Netflix show you half-watch for company and noise, any noise to hide from the cold, mechanical tick-tock of that old-fashioned clock that you don’t remember buying or hanging up [whoa, lost the thread a little bit there. Let’s rein this back in. -ed.] Anyway, meditate on the intense loneliness that permeates modern life while we explore isolation in horror.

Scott Whalen, from WHF’s 2018 production of Frankenstein. Photo by Mark Williams Hoeschler

Let’s start from the same place I started oh those many moons ago, when we were adapting our first Poe story. At the time I called out how uncommon it was that Poe would write a horror story that could so easily be rendered as a dialogue, because it suited our purposes from a staging perspective. And I had some, frankly, pretty stupid and poorly-written ideas about what made horror such a solitary genre. If I somehow had even less integrity than I already do I would have secretly edited that paragraph so that I sounded less dumb and had a halfway-coherent thesis. But instead I will leave it as a monument to the ignorance of youth, and will make some more bold and poorly substantiated claims here which certainly I will not be embarrassed to look back upon in another three years. Only this time, instead of broad generalizations about horror as a whole (which I have saved for my dramaturgy notes) I will observe solitude through the lens of our three adaptations, to see how different authors interpret this necessary facet of their genre.

In Dracula, solitude equals vulnerability, straight up-and-down. Lucy, Mina, and Jonathan are in the most danger when they are alone, separated from their allies. This should not be surprising for a book that is more transparently about the power of friendship than Harry Potter, a book series so transparently about the power of friendship that the seventh book opens with a quote about how the bonds of friendship are so powerful that they transcend death itself. Dracula prides himself on his hunting prowess, comparing himself to a wolf. But his wolf-lore is lacking, because he failed to notice that wolves hunt in packs. Once his prey are able to join together and work as a team they quickly turn the tables on the Count. The message is clear: while the world may be full of mystery and danger, there is no challenge that cannot be overcome with friends.

L-R: Kerry McGee, Jon Reynolds, and Meg Lowey, ready to hunt some vampires.

Poe seldom used isolation as a theme in and of itself. He often used it as a symptom of sorrow, as in The Raven or Annabel Lee, or simply as a condition, a necessary precursor to the story he wanted to tell; for The Pit and the Pendulum to work the protagonist must be by himself, but his solitude doesn’t MEAN anything ulterior to the text. But most frequently for Poe, loneliness was closely associated with madness, though which one led to the other is not always necessarily clear and varies from story to story. Considering that Poe’s personal life was rife with personal tragedies, loss, and betrayal, it makes sense that he would be both desperate for, and suspicious of, companionship. Perhaps the best example is The Tell-tale Heart. Our murderous ‘hero’ at first seems to be driven mad by the mere presence of his elderly roommate, and then, if possible, driven even madder by his absence. Unable to tolerate either companionship or isolation, his unraveling mirror’s his author’s, and the reader’s, struggles to find their place in the human community.

Frankenstein is more explicit about the theme of solitude than Poe, for whom its meaning varies depending on the demands of the story, and more nuanced than Dracula, where it is directly refuted by demonstrating the importance of friendship. For Victor Frankenstein solitude brushes perilously close to solipsism. He needs to be alone while he works, he cannot bear Clerval’s presence or respond to his father’s letters. Even his wedding night he spends by himself, scorning his bride in a misguided attempt to outwit his far more cunning Creation. Frankenstein erects countless barriers between himself and the people who care about him, in the name of keeping them safe from his ‘tortured genius’. Contrast this with the Creation himself, an actual tortured genius who would love nothing more than simple human contact but is stymied by the cruel accident of his birth. Victor scorns the love that is heaped upon him at every turn in his arrogant pursuit of solitude, while his Creation, cursed to an eternity of isolation, hunts desperately for any sort of companionship or, indeed, attention.

 

If you would like to have friends to help keep you safe and sane from the encroaching darkness that typifies the human condition, why not invite someone to come with you to see one (or all) of our shows? We are running until the 10th of November, and tickets, though going fast, are still available! I hope to see you there!

Why Are Vampires So Sexy?

Monsters are gross. That’s their whole point, is to be unpleasant and horrifying to behold. Your mummies and wolfmen and Creatures from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein[‘s Monster]s and g-g-g-g-ghosts are all designed to be hideous and repugnant. To go old school here for a second, their vile outward appearance is meant as an external reflection of their monstrous inner nature. Its how we know Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees are bad news and why we burned gross-looking old ladies as witches; because their appearance told us that they were trouble. I don’t mean to imply that the only kind of horror story is the kind with supernatural monsters (our own experience staging Poe would put the lie to that claim) but in those kinds of horror stories the villain is grotesque and wants to kill the heroes, and the heroes are right to fear them for their appearance.

Yet not so for Dracula. Dracula is a refined and sophisticated gentleman with an indefinable and foreign magnetism and he has a castle full of beautiful and nubile women. Sure, he starts off as a decrepit old man with bad breath and hair on his palms, but after a few midnight child snacks he turns into a STONE COLD FOX. And the Brides? Presumably their regular consumption of babies keeps them looking Fresh to Death as well, cuz, damn. Harker decries them time and again because Harker is a prude engaged to someone we are universally assured is the World’s Greatest Woman, but even he is ensnared by their beauty and must be saved by the Count. Lucy Westenra is so gorgeous she turns down an engagement to a cowboy so she can marry a lord (please take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of this actual plot point from Dracula). But even she gets hotter, in a dangerous, ‘wanton’ way, after the Count gets his teeth, and blood, and [EXPURGATED FOR REASONS OF PROPRIETY -ed.] into her. And, lest we assume that hotness is a newly added facet to accommodate the perverts and sex-starved teens and, ugh, “Millennials” who consume our pop culture, I must inform you that Dracula and his Brides have been super sexy from the jump. If anything, earlier interpretations on film UNDERplayed their attractiveness.

Looking at you, Orlok.  Max Shreck as Count Orlok, from W. F. Murnau’s Nosteratu, 1922.

A cursory glance through other, later vampire fiction bears out this odd inversion of the monster trope. It seems like the only argument in the Buffyverse is whether Angel or Spike are hotter. True Blood and the Southern Vampire Mysteries novels it was based on might as well be grouped in the “Vampire Erotica” section of your local library, and I assure you they would not be the only books on those shelves. I probably shouldn’t admit in a public forum how much I know about the lesbian-vampire subgenre of Italian Giallo films of the 1970s. Vampires are almost universally the Hot Monster, to the point that when they aren’t, like I Am Legend or Stakeland, the very fact of their ugliness becomes part of the point of the piece.

Its Angel. I will die on this hill.   David Boreanaz as Angel, from The WB’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

It seems clear from this evidence that sexiness is an integral part of the vampire’s identity. But what purpose does it serve in a horror story, seeing as it directly contradicts what I said in the first paragraph about monsters?

The difference is the intention of the story, and of the monster. Most monsters and monster stories represent a physical attack: wolfmen and zombies want to eat you, ghosts want to drive you away, slashers want to punish you, usually for having sex. But vampires represent a psychic assault. Vampires do not aim to kill, their desire is to corrupt. Despite being entirely in his power throughout the opening the Count doesn’t kill Harker, though it would have been the tactically sounder move. And it is significant that the only targets of vampirism we see are young women and innocent children [the doomed sailors of the Demeter are driven mad, not fed upon]. Dracula has no interest in Arthur or Seward or Morris, because they aren’t beautiful unmarried women that he can ruin. Dracula’s sexuality is a weapon, just like Jason’s machete or Leatherface’s chainsaw, and it is used for the same purpose; to destroy his victims. Make no mistake, the vampire is just as monstrous as the ghost or the serial killer.

Perhaps even more so, for they make their victims complicit in their own destruction. Observe the victim’s reactions to the attacks in the book. Men, women, children, all are drawn in despite themselves. Both Mina and Jonathan describe being disgusted by the Count and the Blonde Bride, respectively, but unwilling to resist. They both mention part of themselves actually being eager for the vampire to bite, kiss, and corrupt them. Vampires are so appealing that upstanding ladies and gentlemen have no choice but to surrender their self-control to them, knowing full well the consequences will be the victim’s ruination, death, and transformation into another agent of evil and corruption. The reason we fear the vampire, despite their beauty, is that they represent the wilful sacrifice of innocence and agency in favor of our baser desires.

Lucy and the Count. From Fernando Fernandez’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1984

If you want to surrender YOUR self-control to the sexiness of We Happy Few’s Dracula, performed by Kerry McGee, Meg Lowey, Jon Reynolds and Grant Cloyd and directed by the sexiest one of them all, Bob Pike, come to the Shed tonight and/or tomorrow! I’d recommend you bring cash and a drink, though you will find a complementary drink there with your ticket. See OUR WEBSITE for details. If you can’t make it this weekend, we’ll sure miss you, but never fear! We will have more showings spread out in the city through September and October. I hope to see you at one of them soon!

Poe and the Halloween Tradition

Today I want to talk to you about a historic and time-honored Halloween tradition. Something that everyone above a certain age associates with Halloween and Halloween parties. Something you’ll see in many, many Halloween movies. Something that our dear friend Edgar Allan Poe was very familiar with, which he wrote about on more than one occasion. Something that, for many of us, life Halloween would feel incomplete without. I am speaking, of course, of alcohol. So on this spookiest of days, me and this adorable bottle of absinthe I found at the liquor store last week want to share some thoughts about drinking, Poe, our newly adapted Poe piece “A Midnight Dreary”, our upcoming Durham performance thereof, and the way in which those things might be related.

Look how little and cute it is!

As I alluded to when last we spoke, Poe had an unfortunate relationship with alcohol. He was unable to control himself in its presence and so he endeavored to teetotal. Unfortunately, the culture of the time regularly found him attending social gatherings where drinking would be expected and he fell from the wagon more than once. While attending these events Poe had a tendency to drink to excess and make a fool of himself, an attribute that he and I share. I can fortunately say that my propensity for blacking out over-imbibing at parties has not seriously damaged my life or prospects, but Mr. Poe cannot say the same, as his drinking problem cost him at least two jobs and twice as many friendships. It is to his credit that he, unlike me (and, hopefully, you), hated the habit and its effect on him and routinely attempted to abstain and distance himself from alcohol, an effort which is no less noble for it having been unsuccessful. I have every confidence that my fine readers can hold their liquor better than poor Edgar, however, and as our upcoming performances are thematically paired with a variety of wines, I encourage you to put the thought of Poe drinking himself to death on the cold autumn streets of Baltimore out of your minds. Contemplate instead how delicious these wines sound, and how appropriately they have been matched by We Happy Few’s Bartender-in-Residence Kerry McGee.

From Extraordinary Tales, 2013. Directed by Raul Garcia.

First on the docket is The Masque of the Red Death, which is, appropriately for a party, matched with a sparking wine. But not just any sparkling wine. This is a SPECIAL party, to celebrate the end of the world, so ordinary champagne or prosecco would never do (also, there’s nothing scary about champagne, unless you’re exceptionally prone to hangovers). This is an almond-flavored sparkling wine, to give it that extra special decadence, that rich little kick of marzipan. But marzipan isn’t the only thing you can make out of almonds, is it? The more morbid of my readers will recall that the taste or smell of bitter almonds is a telltale sign of cyanide, a popular poison you might recognize as the one that brought down Jonestown but failed to kill famed Russian necromancer Rasputin. While the titular Red Death did not manifest as poison in the wine, but rather as a plague on the countryside, we felt the surprise of the almond flavor in the wine makes a fitting match to the uninvited guest who gate-crashes Prince Prospero’s party.

Next up is The Cask of Amontillado. I will give you three guesses as to what wine we chose for this story.

That’s right. T-Bird.

Nah, we went with the obvious for this one. Amontillado is a Spanish sherry with a sweet nose that does not exactly translate to the taste, which is much drier than you might expect. The variance between the scent and flavor means that this drink comes with an unexpected surprise, just as the sparking wine did. Similar to the sort of surprise you might encounter if a dear friend had told you about a cask of sherry he had purchased and wanted you to verify the quality of, but then instead he got you drunk and walled you up in his basement. Above all I would say Amontillado tastes like revenge, and much like revenge it is best served cold.

For The Tell-Tale Heart we decided to keep up the bait-and-switch flavor profile we used for the other stories, though the third drink is better known and therefore the twist is less surprising than the others. Our wine of choice for this story is Velvet Moon Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe’s, the #1 store for the wino on a budget. [Trader Joe’s sponsor us please! -KH] Velvet Moon, in the nature of Cab Sauvs everywhere, is fruity and full bodied with a hefty dose of tannins. It has the rich color of arterial blood, the full profile of a satisfied obsession, and the bitterness of regret. That is not to say that you will be left unsatisfied by either the drink or the story, merely that the way something starts is seldom the way that it ends. Sometimes your wine turns bitter on your palate, and sometimes the motiveless murder of a dear friend because he had cataracts results in you shrieking your guilt to the police in an effort to expiate yourself and silence the ceaseless pounding of his impossibly-still-beating heart.

The Tell-Tale Heart, by David G. Fores.

If these wines sound interesting to you, especially in connection with these chilling stories, brought to the stage by Raven Bonniwell, Kerry McGee, and Jon Reynolds under the direction of Bridget Grace Sheaff, then please join us for “A Midnight Dreary”, to be performed at Spectre Arts in Durham, North Carolina the evenings of November 11th and 12th. For my thousands of readers in the Raleigh-Durham area this should be an easy trip. For those in the greater DC metro area it is a scant four hour drive, and for those of you in the rest of the country and world, I say to you a journey of ten thousand miles would be a small price to pay to see a show of this caliber. If that travel seems a little much for you, however, then fear not! Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, we will have additional performances of this show in January, here in our nation’s capital. Keep an eye on this space and our website and twitter for additional details as they develop. Honestly it would probably be better to just come down to North Carolina on the 11th or 12th, though.

Until next time, I hope you all have a spooky and responsible-drinking good time tonight. Keep your cell phones charged, be sure to check the back seat for killers, and whatever you do, don’t split up.

Keith Hock