promethia does tv wrong: Dracula
9 Jan 2020 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
promethia_tenkSo, I'm on my final week of work hell *cries*, I'm running on fumes, living on hot dogs, and Doctor Who is finally back and is actually good again. And yet I am on my third viewing of Moff and Gatiss' Dracula because I need Steven Moffat's writing like I need oxygen.
Of course Tumblr hates it, lol.
Is it Moff's strongest work? Heck no. I'd call it solidly uneven. There are writers who can make truly dark content sing, but I don't think Moff is one of them (Gatiss might be; I don't know enough of his writing outside Who). I think Moff doesn't quite know how to focus properly when he doesn't have a redemptive element to build around. That said, there was something sickly satisfying about watching him roll out every one of his magical alchemy tropes and systematically destroy them because, look, sometimes caring about something hard enough just doesn't fix things.
I've actually read Dracula, like it a lot, was looking forward to a relatively faithful adaptation. I rather thought, going into this, that the novel already had a ton of elements that seemed right in Moffat's usual wheelhouse. This wasn't a faithful adaption, however, so much as our intrepid writers ransacking the book for parts and then diving cheerfully off the deep end. I was fine with this once the initial shock wore off.
What they did write, however, was basically Hannibal with Dracula trappings. From the shift in focus to a central, mutually obsessive relationship, to Dracula smugly dropping vampire puns into conversation with unsuspecting humans, to the opening credits which, frankly, are a complete rip-off/homage. Was it as good as Hannibal? Of course not, but few things are.
Claes Bang is an immensely watchable Dracula. Just endless fun. I have a huge annoyance with most modern vampire stories (the 'vegan vampires,' I call them). Reading Dracula was massively refreshing because here was a vampire of an whole different sort: entirely monstrous, deeply inhuman, and perhaps most importantly, a shadowy, unknowable figure. Most often glimpsed out of the corner of your eye rather than hogging the spotlight . . . So the show got the monstrous part right, at least. I'm not mad about it: this Dracula is stupidly entertaining and is basically Hannibal, as I said before. Still, I await the truly faithful Dracula adaptation of my dreams that omits Dracula himself as much as possible.
I'm not going to argue with anybody that episode three wasn't a hot mess: by far the worst of the three. However, this definitely goes a long, long way towards making me like it anyway (warning: actual spoilers and hard-core Moff-style metaphors). Watching episode one again with this in mind and knowledge of where it's all going is fantastic.
Everything I've just said scarcely matters, however, because omg, Sister Agatha. omgomgomogmomgomomgomgomgomg I love her so much. Nobody writes like Moffat. Nobody. Oh god, she's so great, I can't.
Anyways, Tumblr hated it. If any body knows the location of some thoughtful, substantive, mostly positive writing on the subject, please, please point me towards it.
Of course Tumblr hates it, lol.
Is it Moff's strongest work? Heck no. I'd call it solidly uneven. There are writers who can make truly dark content sing, but I don't think Moff is one of them (Gatiss might be; I don't know enough of his writing outside Who). I think Moff doesn't quite know how to focus properly when he doesn't have a redemptive element to build around. That said, there was something sickly satisfying about watching him roll out every one of his magical alchemy tropes and systematically destroy them because, look, sometimes caring about something hard enough just doesn't fix things.
I've actually read Dracula, like it a lot, was looking forward to a relatively faithful adaptation. I rather thought, going into this, that the novel already had a ton of elements that seemed right in Moffat's usual wheelhouse. This wasn't a faithful adaption, however, so much as our intrepid writers ransacking the book for parts and then diving cheerfully off the deep end. I was fine with this once the initial shock wore off.
What they did write, however, was basically Hannibal with Dracula trappings. From the shift in focus to a central, mutually obsessive relationship, to Dracula smugly dropping vampire puns into conversation with unsuspecting humans, to the opening credits which, frankly, are a complete rip-off/homage. Was it as good as Hannibal? Of course not, but few things are.
Claes Bang is an immensely watchable Dracula. Just endless fun. I have a huge annoyance with most modern vampire stories (the 'vegan vampires,' I call them). Reading Dracula was massively refreshing because here was a vampire of an whole different sort: entirely monstrous, deeply inhuman, and perhaps most importantly, a shadowy, unknowable figure. Most often glimpsed out of the corner of your eye rather than hogging the spotlight . . . So the show got the monstrous part right, at least. I'm not mad about it: this Dracula is stupidly entertaining and is basically Hannibal, as I said before. Still, I await the truly faithful Dracula adaptation of my dreams that omits Dracula himself as much as possible.
I'm not going to argue with anybody that episode three wasn't a hot mess: by far the worst of the three. However, this definitely goes a long, long way towards making me like it anyway (warning: actual spoilers and hard-core Moff-style metaphors). Watching episode one again with this in mind and knowledge of where it's all going is fantastic.
Everything I've just said scarcely matters, however, because omg, Sister Agatha. omgomgomogmomgomomgomgomgomg I love her so much. Nobody writes like Moffat. Nobody. Oh god, she's so great, I can't.
Anyways, Tumblr hated it. If any body knows the location of some thoughtful, substantive, mostly positive writing on the subject, please, please point me towards it.
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2020 05:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 01:49 am (UTC)I shall be requiring all of your D/s based thoughts about nuns who taunt vampires by slinging blood in their faces.
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2020 10:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 01:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 07:09 am (UTC)There are writers who can make truly dark content sing, but I don't think Moff is one of them (Gatiss might be; I don't know enough of his writing outside Who).
Gatiss is very very good with dark, but more on the disturbing & absurd side. (You should watch some League of Gentlemen.) See The Crimson Horror, that's very him. When I re-watch I'll try to remember that he's a writer too. ;)
If you want DoWntime's take, here's the first post (there are links to the others):
https://downtime2017.wordpress.com/2020/01/02/dracula-1/
(Spoiler: He didn't like ep 3...)
(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 12:54 pm (UTC)All week I've been going "I need podcasts about this stuff" because no matter what else is going on in my day, no matter how crazy, I always have default podcast-listening time built in and all my brain wants to think about is Dracula right now. But it can be hard to find podcast content about limited-run shows.
But Moff and Gatiss did a whole podcast discussion on each episode:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0742833
Oh, it's Christmas!
I SHALL REPORT BACK.
(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 08:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11 Jan 2020 12:19 am (UTC)I've listened to all three episodes and am probably going to do it again.
I think my number one take away is that I could not quite entirely get my head around why they thought all of Dracula's hang-ups where explained by death? Like, they tried to say, see, it all hangs together! and I just went . . . I want you to be right, but does it tho?!? So when they said that Dracula refuses to live like a scurrying rat desperately trying to survive but that is, in fact, what he is. He is lying to himself that he is not that rat, and that is why he doesn't want to face the harsh light of day, why he wants to be invited in, etc., etc. it was like ok, that actually lines up.
(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 01:46 pm (UTC)I lol'd at Downtime's comment about Moff continuing his obsession with violent middle-aged women. Look, I try to be open-minded, but if you're not obsessed with violent middle-aged women, what are you doing with your life?
Gatiss is very very good with dark, but more on the disturbing & absurd side. (You should watch some League of Gentlemen.) See The Crimson Horror, that's very him.
Yeah, a lot of the tone of this whole thing reminded me strongly of Crimson Horror--that campy, glib sadism. Every time I knew in my gut that things were about to go very badly with a sort of . . . definitive dismissiveness, I figured that was Gatiss's influence. It works wonderfully well.
When I re-watch I'll try to remember that he's a writer too. ;)
*burries face* I knowwwww . . . . it's so awful, but . . . who can be bothered?
If you want DoWntime's take, here's the first post (there are links to the others):
Thank you. You'd mentioned and then I never bothered to go look. I'd entirely forgotten about that website.
[Of some YouTube rant tearing apart Sherlock] There’s a completely unnecessary six-minute tangent about, of all things, fucking Jekyll.
Look, I'm not going to be watching an hour-plus YouTube rant about Sherlock, but as someone who is very explicitly trying to produce a unified theory of Moffat, if you think that Jekyll is an irrelevant tangent, ever, no wonder you are having difficulty . . .
There’s a strong and neglected argument to be made that the only seriously problematic thing Moffat has ever done is continually work with Gatiss.
*chokes on laughter* Oh the shade, the shade of it all . . .
In this case, you think that this is a playful remix of the novel, but it turns out to be an essentially original story that only uses the original novel as raw material for its own goals.
I guess they played me like a fiddle. Fair do's.
This isn’t to say that Bang isn’t conventionally handsome but, as my friend
Ooooo, this! There's something very weirdly distinctive about him that is almost entirely impossible to put your finger on, which is great.
Bad news for nun fetishists: Moffat and Gatiss don’t seem to be among your ranks. Dracula stands naked before them and flirts a bit, but for the most part, you’ll have to make do with those 1,031 videos. This is probably for the best. It would be a stupid error to hit Sister Van Helsing with the male gaze when she’s such a win for the show’s burgeoning feminist politics.
NGL, this took me by surprise and I want to pick it apart in so many ways but I have to leave soon. Mostly I'm trapped between feeling that is such a limited, male interpretation of that scene and needing to point out that Moff and Gatiss are men and yet they managed to write it! Also the #1 thing I have to note about his post about the third ep is that he says literally nothing about anything except Lucy. Which is fair in that Lucy is the #1 problem with that episode but is also entirely failing to take into account over half of what the episode actually was. And I kind of feel like . . . the two are linked? Lucy's storyline is entirely explicitly about The Gaze and Laherty gloms onto that and gets totally lost in it? Whereas I'd argue that everything about Agatha/Zoe's casting/presentation/writing is wholly resistant to The Gaze, and that is very much the point and I feel like Laherty is missing the point because he can't see around The Gaze, somehow? Not that I'm sure I can articulate the point myself at the moment, but it's like it's not even a deconstruction of the male gaze, but a complete elision of it.
(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2020 08:29 pm (UTC)[insert face like 'O' going 'Hm' when the Doctor asks why he'd say he's not good at running... a sort of puzzling things out face]
Dracula - does NOT employ The Gaze. At all. He might appreciate the finer things in life, but he's emphatically not concerned with looks, just substance. See how he wants Jonathan to stay with him, how he tells Lucy that he couldn't care less what she looks like (and he means it, both times, looks are of zero importance).
Damn. This is very interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 11 Jan 2020 12:11 am (UTC)He does say he's obsessed with youth and beauty, so you'd need to figure out how to square that, but I really liked the bit on the podcast where Moff and Gatiss talk about how he uses sex because it's the thing that makes people the most crazy. He uses sex because it makes him an effective predator, but that doesn't mean that that's what he himself is interested in.
Which is just a very interesting dynamic.
(no subject)
Date: 17 Jan 2020 12:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Jan 2020 12:48 pm (UTC)I'll admit, I think Jekyll is basically perfect and was rather hoping to feel similarly about Dracula. But no: it's all more complicated. That said, I've never actually read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so maybe I'd not think so well of that if I had.
Like you, I'm still waiting for a faithful adaptation (apparently the BBC 1970s series was very faithful according to Gatiss's documentary on Dracula adaptations?).
Indeed. The pocasts I linked elisi to above (which are fabulous if you enjoy listening to Moff and Gatiss blather) he mentions it as well. I guess I'll have to seek it out sometime.
As I haven't watched Hannibal, I missed all the references, haha.
I'm not entirely certain if they're strong enough that I can say definitively that they are references, but the overlap is mighty strong. The credits, though, those are just shameless: https://youtu.be/FVbWCv49_Xo
I think the second episode was probably the strongest?
I tend to agree. Just as a piece of television I think it's the most solidly watchable. But on rewatch I find that episodes one and three both have a lot more going on underneath and two is mostly entertainment.
The third was definitely a mess (really seems like there should have been four episodes, not three).
That's an interesting suggestion I've not seen anybody else make. Everybody just tends to write the whole thing off after the second episode. I mostly just wonder how Moff and Gatiss didn't realize that asking an audience to invest in a whole new set of characters in the last third was a bad idea, so maybe giving the modern crew an equal amount of screen time to the Victorian one would fix that? That said, I have to wonder if Jack and Lucy really have enough going for them as characters to support any more story about them. Zoe, though, definitely could have benefitted from getting the time to be fleshed out as her own person, because I don't think she's uninteresting, but why replace a sparkier version of a character with a more insipid one who's only going to lose by comparison and, indeed, basically gets erased by the story itself? I'd totally watch an episode that focused on Dracula being held by the Harker foundation and having lots of sparky clashes of wits with Zoe, though (speaking of Hannibal-esque touches . . . )
(no subject)
Date: 17 Jan 2020 06:09 pm (UTC)That's true, but it also has the most chess and that barnstorming ending. 8D
That's an interesting suggestion I've not seen anybody else make. Everybody just tends to write the whole thing off after the second episode. I mostly just wonder how Moff and Gatiss didn't realize that asking an audience to invest in a whole new set of characters in the last third was a bad idea, so maybe giving the modern crew an equal amount of screen time to the Victorian one would fix that?
Exactly. As I said to elisi, if you're going to introduce new characters, you need to give them some time to develop, or what's the point in having them? *looks pointedly at Chibnall Who*
I have to wonder if Jack and Lucy really have enough going for them as characters to support any more story about them.
Jack and Lucy would have been better if they'd been swapped around - Lucy as Zoë's protegée, Jack as the one falling in love with Dracula. Lucy can be a promiscuous young woman AND a brilliant scientist, it's the 21st century. :)
Zoe, though, definitely could have benefitted from getting the time to be fleshed out as her own person, because I don't think she's uninteresting, but why replace a sparkier version of a character with a more insipid one who's only going to lose by comparison and, indeed, basically gets erased by the story itself? I'd totally watch an episode that focused on Dracula being held by the Harker foundation and having lots of sparky clashes of wits with Zoe, though (speaking of Hannibal-esque touches . . . )
Exactly. Zoë deserved more time and attention, if nothing else. She's dying! We could have had some scenes where she's living with cancer, going about her life, refusing to be signed off, being bloody minded and amazing. (I love that they gave her a name that means "life", THE SYMBOLISM, I'VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH MOFF.) Also the fact that he was creating an army of undead and had recruited Renfield as his acolyte was just... left there? Is Jonathan Harker going to take them on? Is Renfield going to argue that they constitute an endangered species?? I NEED ANSWERS.
(no subject)
Date: 18 Jan 2020 02:17 pm (UTC)That is true too, I cannot deny it. *sigh* Bless Steven Moffat and his addiction to chess metaphors. It's basically a complete cliche and yet so great.
Exactly. As I said to elisi, if you're going to introduce new characters, you need to give them some time to develop, or what's the point in having them? *looks pointedly at Chibnall Who*
*snerk* I don't understand how Chibnall of all people is missing so hard on that front. IT'S THE ONLY THING HE'S GOOD AT.
Jack and Lucy would have been better if they'd been swapped around - Lucy as Zoë's protegée, Jack as the one falling in love with Dracula. Lucy can be a promiscuous young woman AND a brilliant scientist, it's the 21st century. :)
Hmmmmm. Could work. Though at least Lucy has some personality and motivation at all. Jack is such an utter blank; I was at a complete loss for why he cared about Lucy at all, what he wanted from anything . . . they just gave us nothing there. And Lucy I can at least buy into on a thematic level; Jack was beyond cardboard.
Exactly. Zoë deserved more time and attention, if nothing else. She's dying! We could have had some scenes where she's living with cancer, going about her life, refusing to be signed off, being bloody minded and amazing.
I put several jokes into the vid about Zoe being a non-character (my name's forgotten) because . . . geeze, show her a bit of respect maybe?
(I love that they gave her a name that means "life", THE SYMBOLISM, I'VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH MOFF.)
I DID NOT KNOW THAT. THANK YOU I LOVE IT.
I've been geeking out over the symbolism of Dracula's abodes. The castle, an endless labyrinth that serves as Harker's prison, and yet is it not Dracula who is ultimately seeking to escape it as a metaphor for his endless, blank life? He does not realize there is a map because he doesn't understand his own symbolic condition but he knows he needs Johnny to get out (bride #1). Harker, in contrast, intuits the existence of the map (that leads to the sunlight) because he has Mina. Compare to Dracula's flat in England where we have on a very straightforward axis, the doorway (invitation) with a piece of art in the shape of a crucified man above it across from the window (sunlight) and connecting them the long table (food, but also communion, coming together) which also serves as a mirror on top of which Dracula and Zagatha die.
I have missed this shit so much I could weep.
Also the fact that he was creating an army of undead and had recruited Renfield as his acolyte was just... left there? Is Jonathan Harker going to take them on? Is Renfield going to argue that they constitute an endangered species?? I NEED ANSWERS.
From the podcast it sounds like they left some of the modern stuff deliberately vague in case anybody wanted a second season, so who knows. It is all very Jekyll, which naturally I approve of.
(no subject)
Date: 24 Jan 2020 10:24 pm (UTC)True. But he was very PRETTY cardboard. 8D
The castle, an endless labyrinth that serves as Harker's prison, and yet is it not Dracula who is ultimately seeking to escape it as a metaphor for his endless, blank life? He does not realize there is a map because he doesn't understand his own symbolic condition but he knows he needs Johnny to get out (bride #1). Harker, in contrast, intuits the existence of the map (that leads to the sunlight) because he has Mina. Compare to Dracula's flat in England where we have on a very straightforward axis, the doorway (invitation) with a piece of art in the shape of a crucified man above it across from the window (sunlight) and connecting them the long table (food, but also communion, coming together) which also serves as a mirror on top of which Dracula and Zagatha die.
Mina as Harker's sunlight, the thing he keeps chasing until he can see her one last time (I think the leap to his death was probably his last fully free act)?
(no subject)
Date: 17 Jan 2020 12:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Jan 2020 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18 Jan 2020 02:01 pm (UTC)That reviewer completely flummoxed me because he was like 'fans of sexy nuns will have to look elsewhere' and it was like . . . WERE WE NOT WATCHING THE SAME SCENE?!!? Because I think what I saw was a nun effectively restraining an assbutt naked, feral vampire and feeding him her own blood while she taunted him, and it happened to be one of the hottest things I've seen committed to film. But then everything that is sexy about that scene is about Agatha doing exactly what she wants, the way she wants to, and the camera never even gets close to trying to objectify her, so there we are . . .
(no subject)
Date: 24 Jan 2020 10:02 pm (UTC)