No Fade To Black

Everyone was shocked by the way Bear answered the real Nikki when she begged him to kill her: “What would be so bad about being with me?” But I’m sorry — did that answer really come out of nowhere? Bear is speaking exactly the language pop culture has been teaching its “nice guys” for decades. For many years, the plots of films, books, and other products of popular culture were built in such a way that the main character was always a guy, a boy — most often the kind with whom the average male viewer could identify. The only exceptions were probably works deliberately created for a female audience. It was through the eyes of this very “nice guy” that we were supposed to watch the story, to trust him, and to sympathize with him. We were trained to believe that this very “nice guy” wins in the end.

For many years, respectable viewers, without asking too many questions, were on the side of the “nice guys” — however toxic they behaved. Ross from Friends became one of the most convenient images of this type: an offended good guy who treats a woman’s love as a prize for prolonged emotional presence. And the show behaved as if Rachel was eventually obliged to choose him. Ross made hurt little faces every time Rachel — a free adult woman — went on a date, and it was framed as though he was the victim, while naive viewers were even expected to sympathize with him. Just be a supportive, sweet guy, and eventually the girl will become yours. And if she still doesn’t choose you — well, of course, she is a slut and a complete idiot. Because you are such a good guy! Not like some toxic demonic gothic lover women usually fall for…

I have given only one example; in reality, there are countless shows like this. Shows loved teaching women whom they were supposed to choose. No wonder Bear is so confident in his own righteousness.

What was done to Nikki is what was done to Princess Allura in season 8 of VLD. After flushing kilotons of carefully written dynamic and expensive animation down the toilet, the showrunners handed her over to Lance — simply because some important producer decided to make a cartoon about giant robots more oriented toward boys and their dads. The dangerous, mysterious Lotor was far too unsuitable for boys to identify with.

What was done to Nikki is literally the ending of Tanz der Vampire, when Alfred takes Sarah away from Count Krolock’s ball against her will, even though Sarah had truly chosen the Count.

What was done to Nikki is what was done to Lili in Legend. According to the creator’s intention, Lili was supposed to have sex with Darkness. But the studio said that “the villain cannot fuck the princess.”

What was done to Nikki is what the mainstream understanding of Nosferatu does to Ellen Hutter: presenting her as a helpless victim, stripping her of agency and of the complexity of her character.

Common Raven Corvus corax

Gothic began with absurdity: on the day of his own wedding, the son of Prince Manfred dies because an enormous helmet falls on his head out of nowhere. This very event becomes the premise of the novel that is generally considered the first example of Gothic prose.

One of the critics would later wonder: how could such a talented man as Horace Walpole write such a clumsy novel? But to us, people of the twenty-first century, it is precisely this clumsy theatricality that seems charming. After all, it is high time to admit it: Gothic was born not only out of horror, but also out of play. Out of the pleasure of staging the impossible — a giant helmet, an underground passage, an ancestral curse, portraits that seem to move from their places, and servants who see now the hand, now the leg of a giant in the castle.

It would seem that Gothic prose is no place for unseriousness. But Walpole shows exactly the opposite: the marvellous can be frightening and ridiculous at the same time, solemn and funny. His novel came out in 1764, in an age when literature still lived under the sign of reason, morality, and good taste — and suddenly, into this neat enlightened interior, an enormous iron helmet crashed in. The time had come for a touch of light madness.

The action of the novel develops rapidly. Something happens at every moment: Prince Manfred tries to forcefully marry the bride of his dead son, although he himself is already married; a girl runs through an underground corridor; the servants notice in the castle now the hand, now the leg of a giant; an ancient prophecy begins to come true with such speed, as if the plot itself had tripped over its own cloak and rolled down the stairs… The novel pretends to be a moralizing manuscript of the twelfth century — but it keeps winking all the time.

In the dungeon, a Hero appears, who helps the girl escape — but is himself taken prisoner. But as a hero he is also comic: when Manfred’s daughter saves him, their farewell looks so drawn-out that it literally tests the reader’s patience: just run already, for heaven’s sake! And this creates an almost comic effect — to the delight of those readers who love layers of meaning upon layers of meaning upon layers of meaning. Postmodernism in the eighteenth century?

And nevertheless, behind all this mad theatricality there stands a fully conscious dramaturgical construction. In the preface, Walpole — under the mask of the translator of a found Italian text — emphasizes that the rules of drama are “almost observed” in the novel: the plot is built according to Aristotelian principles of unity of place and time, and does not simply rush along on the wings of inspiration.

I would separately like to speak about Manfred as the first Gothic tyrant: he is repulsive, his power over the fates of the characters seems, at first glance, infinite — but even he is powerless against the forces of fate that have doomed his line to destruction.

And there is something comic in this powerlessness. Manfred is constantly acting, commanding, pursuing, threatening, trying to outplay the prophecy — and only accelerates its fulfilment. Patriarchal power here produces a lot of noise, but little real control: the more fiercely it asserts itself, the more obvious its helplessness becomes.

Manfred pursues Isabella not even because he desires her — but exclusively in the hope of getting an heir. His passion is not erotic, but dynastic. Gothic does not yet suspect how powerful its romance will become; pursuing men still only frighten and irritate the reader — without yet awakening a reciprocal forbidden attraction in the Gothic heroine. And Manfred would hardly have made a decent Gothic lover anyway — especially with his meek, no-longer-young wife in the background.

Very little time will pass, and Gothic will learn to turn threat into seduction, flight into self-knowledge, and morality into ambiguity. In The Castle of Otranto this is not there yet — but that is precisely why it is so interesting to read today: in it, one can see the moment of the genre’s birth. Here is the haunted castle, here is the persecuted girl walking with a candle in the dark. Here is the past that does not wish to remain the past.

Gothic as a literary style emerged as a response to the reductionism of the Enlightenment, when the world was being reduced to simple formulas and rationality was being placed above everything else. But the world turned out to be far more complicated.

#nosferatu 2016 script

(Eggers said the both movies had the same meaning)

I think no further comment is needed. This post is dedicated to everyone who loves talking about “Ellen as a martyr who sacrificed herself.”

And yes, please note: it says here that this was the first time she had ever felt such ecstasy. Which means Orlok had never groomed her.