As far as I can remember, a scientist in this book invented something based on mescaline and the result was that he - and others who followed this procedure - recognized that people are being exploited by energetic monster creatures.
Going for thematic resonance, would Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead be better paired with Henry's Crime or Stranger than Fiction?
Either would highlight existentialist themes of the value of choice even in a non-determinist world; the Henry's Crime pair would emphasize responsibility for unintended consequences while the Stranger than Fiction pair would focus on wrestling with the nature of identity and responsibility when choice is removed.
I'm not sure which is a stronger double feature though--Henry's Crime for the contrast, or Stranger than Fiction for two ways of exploring/responding to the same situation. Thoughts?
Because I don't want to use Waiting for Godot.
I've got a list of movies I want to show some friends, and I'm pairing them up to create interesting resonances between the double features.
So whichever film I don't use, it'll go back into the list and find a different pairing later.
Sometimes it's obvious stuff like pairing Get Out with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, sometimes it's a bit more obscure like Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and Predator.
...or Ian McKellan's Richard III with Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.
(Aside from the obvious Darth Vader joke at the beginning of Richard III, Richard is the template around which we draw our scheming evil villains and Darth Sidious is an excellent example of that cultural gestalt.)
@BESW Henry's Crime may be useful for a relaxation from absurdism (or at least, seems to be one from my reading about these films) and into... maybe... fun jackanapery?
We watched it in pairing with the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer film, partly because vampires and partly because they were both clearly cases of egregious executive meddling with what was probably originally a very good concept.
(The Buffy TV show exists because Whedon hated what happened to his film script so much.)
There are a lot of vampire movies in my list, because there are a lot of fascinating vampire movies out there and I make kind of a hobby of studying the vampire's progression through pop culture.
Eh. That's an invention of the film industry and was seriously optional until filmmakers realised how dramatic and symbolic it looked.
Dracula's supernatural powers were diminished in daylight, but he got around just fine. Carmilla and Lord Ruthven didn't have any problem with sun at all. Varney the Vampire... well, arguably he may have just been a wretched man suffering from horrible delusions.
Before Dracula hogged the spotlight, Lord Ruthven, Varney, and Carmilla were the famous pop culture vampires of the 19th century, but they were standing in a large crowd.
Vampires became very popular after an unscrupulous publisher released The Vampyre as the work of Lord Byron rather than of Lord Byron's doctor.
Not really. Vampires, to my eyes, are reflections of the neurotic societal undercurrents of the time in which they live. They have some common qualities, but they're generally more thematic than literal.
In older movies, vampires are regularly indulgent recluses in great manors. In current modern depictions I often see them in secluded, sorta-slummy back-alley locations, often dealing with drugs in some form.
The vampire is a fear of what lies hidden in society, which changes over time; Lord Ruthven literally exposed the corruption of the elite and degraded the poor. Dracula was an Eastern European man coming to take English land and women. Carmilla fed on the blood of the peasantry but took real sustenance from her emotional bond to the nobility. Vampires were external monsters preying on what was good in society, with no chance of redemption or sympathy.
Louis and Lestat reflected a very different kind of societal paranoia: Anne Rice was writing in a time when American society was being forced into some self-reflection, so her vampires are human. Monstrous, but horrified by their own monstrosity, and ultimately a pathetic, sympathetic portrayal of flawed humans struggling with overwhelming desires thrust upon them.
We see the same kind of progression in the Phantom of the Opera, from horrific monster who is literally killed by having someone show him a moment of compassion, to Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical hunk who Just Needs To Be Loved.
So in terms of physical features it makes a lot of sense, historically, that Edward Cullen can go into the daylight but he sparkles in it: like Dracula, he's exposed in the daylight. And his crystalline beauty is a reflection of historical vampiric charm, updated through a century of film casting handsome actors as shorthand for animal charisma.
To my eyes, though, Edward Cullen is not thematically the vampire in Twilight. That role is Bella's.
She's the embodiment of middle-class anxiety over its own privilege, paralyzed between being convinced she deserves nothing and being upset that she doesn't have everything.
Her toxic neurosis is the driving force of much of the plot, and infects her relationships with everyone she meets--much like Carmilla's emotional bond with her prey sucked the life from them.
Edward's own neuroses match Bella's like right and left gloves, and Twilight would be a most excellent story if it were not presented as a touching romance but rather as the horrific tale of two toxic personalities who enable each other to inflict their combined influence on the world.
I recall being disappointed in high school to learn that Edward's sparkling skin was not from, say, frost crystals from undeathly cold skin, but actually just literally diamonds. Chances of redemption via actually being hardcore & cool lost.
Left to themselves, both Bella and Edward would've quickly shriveled up and died, emotionally if not (at least in Edward's case) literally. But they support and enable each other by justifying and reinforcing their respective self-esteem problems, making them functional enough together that they can bring a world of hurt down on everything around them.
It reminds me of themes in The Hunger, which was in turn loosely based on Carmilla but with fewer lesbians (which might surprise anyone who's seen The Hunger).
I have recently asked a few questions about reconstructing Sappho. I have been told that they would "get better exposure" on Latin.SE. For the future one, I will definitely move to asking them over there, but what about those I have already asked? There are currently four of them:
Ode to Anacto...
@Shokhet I wasn't all that pleased with it, tbh - some of my other answers here have been much more satisfying. It's not much more than a long list of quotes with little explanations stuck between.
(I am a bit curious why someone downvoted this other answer so quickly. But I guess I shouldn't worry about a single DV.)
@Randal'Thor That's true, but it's thorough, and you needed those quotes. You identified the most crucial turning point, but then went above and beyond and showed the many steps of TenSoon's development. I thought it was good.
Inspired by What is the significance of "Jonathan" in Strange and Norrell?
In the book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, "Strange" immediately strikes the reader as a rather ... well, strange name. Even in Britain, the country which produces such wackily wonderful names as Pogglethorpe, Higginbo...
As far as I can remember, a scientist in this book invented something based on mescaline and the result was that he - and others who followed this procedure - recognized that people are being exploited by energetic monster creatures.
Inspired by What is the significance of "Jonathan" in Strange and Norrell?
In the book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, "Strange" immediately strikes the reader as a rather ... well, strange name. Even in Britain, the country which produces such wackily wonderful names as Pogglethorpe, Higginbo...
