Prose

Writing that isn’t poetry. Though it can and might be poetic.

NOSFERATU: Monster Metaphor goes Viral

January 8, 2025 — Leave a comment

Going into Robert Eggers’ latest work, NOSFERATU, I was eagerly expecting Eggers’ most explicity violent and sexually charged film. Having now watched it fully, I have to look back as his previous works as such. Which is to say, Director/Screenplay writer Eggers’ retelling of the 1922 silent, german-expressionist film of the same name, itself an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula, creeps as close to mainstream sensibilities as any of his films thus far. With an alluring cast of horror veterans including Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgard, foregrounding a star-making and skin-crawling performance by newcomer Lily-Rose Depp, the casting itself will surely serve as seduction upon the masses. Even the act of remaking what is likely one of horror’s most well known and popular IPs, Eggers intentionally seeks to enthrall a wider audience than ever before. Which isn’t a nefarious thing. Eggers’ oeuvre thus far has been original works that delve into horror archetypes, with a mind more towards subtext and a post-modern psychoanalysis of characters who exist in the past, themselves tragically lacking such information and perspective. Eggers is keenly aware of this, and so too does Nosferatu, in this retelling, become more than just a monster movie, but vehicle of warning to us in A.D. 2025, while delivered primarily as a gothic story of a survivor of sexual assualt. Eggers trusts his audience to pick up on this, and even one of my Twitter (I refuse to call it X) follows @Hoodanakarta mentioned in a post that “The movie is about a woman being forced to confront her abuser because all of the men in her life are too fucking stupid to be of any help whatsoever or actually effectively protect her from him.” Indeed, it is Ellen, (Mina Harker is Stoker’s version) who must endure the blessing/curse of spiritual “conductivity” that initially draws the beast to her, as well as the resultant horror of her reccurring, trauma induced night-terrors. From this perspective, Nosferatu has an important message to inculcate in modern audiences that rings sadly ever truer with accumulating headlines of men in celebrity abusing their power: believe survivors and pursue abusers. Even if they are made seemingly untouchable by wealth or position, lest their plague of violence decay the very social order, before at last, reaching your doorstep.

Teeming, plague-spreading rats among the populace are in fact one of many dark tools of the Nosferatu’s oppression. One of the ways this monster resembles contemporary leaders of today. Contemporary audiences will be familiar with the world-stopping power of COVID-19, a globally experienced plague that may have resulted in record profits & consolidation of power by already ultra-rich corporations. Nosferatu is an outsider, exotic and intriguing, but European enough to understand and even manipulate the bureuacratic machinery of our society to his advantage. Reminds me of another populist ghoul, Elon Musk. Unlike the comparitively genteel and and respectability minded leaders of old like Count Dracula, Count Orlok is more forcefully monstrous, barbaric, nakedly rapacious. Indeed, his characterization in this version is that of a wealthy, but musty, entitled aristocrat, who lacks the self-consciousness to chuckle at the irony in calling the vampire-slaying villagers at the foot of his mountain “filthy.” Reminds me of Donald Trump’s gasbaggerie. Characters throughout the film intimate Orlok’s undead-ness to originate from un-christian black magick; the word “solomanic” is used, referring to “Soloman’s Goetia,” a throng of demons from Hebrew mysticism said to bestow power to those willing to sacrifice salvation. Is Orlok a pre-modern occult sub-reddit trawler? Maybe. The point Eggers is trying to make, I believe, is that we live amongst Orloks today, and that we would do well to inoculate ourselves against their soul-rotting influence by questioning and calling out people in powerful positions. Unlike the humans in the film whose motivations are bandied about by misogyny, pursuit of economic security and good old fashioned societal niceties, we need to remain firm in those values sometimes lost in, as Dafoe’s Eberhart puts it, “the gaseous science of our age.” Plainly it is those simple Roma folk, and nuns in age-old churches clinging to tradition and folk wisdom who seem most prepared to deal with such devilry.

Nosferatu is, as well, dreadfully beautiful to gaze into. An especially haunting sequence occurs when Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter (Stoker’s Jonathan Harker) reaches a crossroads in a shadowy forest, buffeted by falling snow and blowing wind. The black, horse-drawn carriage approaches, surreally slowed, as if we are experiencing it in a dream-like intoxication. The horses disappear, the carriage instantly opens, and Hutter is levitated inside before being spirited away towards Orlok’s ominous castle abode. Even the sequence inside the castle, where Hutter slices open his thumb, becomes terrifying to behold, as Orlok literally flips us, and him upside down before closing in on his helpless prey. Watching the film, it’s hard believe that the total budget ranges only around 50 million USD. Eggers deserves praise for assembling a phenomenal team of sound, costume and productions designers, as the film is consistently a wonder to behold. Truly an immersive and hypnotic remake of the 1922 film. But there were points during my watch when I had to laugh despite the grimness on screen. The lack of background of some of the main characters and the acting choices of others, at times, left most of the work of “doing horror” to the world around them. Lily-Rose Depp mentioned in an interview that her physicalities, while possessed, were inspired by a form of Japanese theater that emphasizes the grotesque. I suspect she was referring to “Butoh,” a post-WWII performance style of dance that uses playful and distressing imagery. An appropriate motif for Nosferatu’s expressionist origins. I respect her as an actor for making interesting artistic choices, and commend her for her boldness on screen. Maybe it was the script, or just the reliance on spectacle, but I am more excited to see where her acting career leads next. She obviously has taste and talent. I am less impressed by her scenes where she is to portray a more grounded, human performance. She obviously has a flare for the dramatic, much like her father, and will no doubt become a star in her own right. As for the others, they deserve their flowers for all around solid performances. Willem Dafoe does what he does so well–eccentric and entertaining character acting–which by all means I hope he keeps doing forever! Special kudos to Bill Skarsgard who has the onus of portraying Orlok himself. His tonations and growlings and thick accent reverberate through every scene he’s in. Skarsgard delivers a scary, if not nearly as sympathetic, version of the ghastly Nosferatu/Dracula we’ve been exposed to thus far. As actors it must’ve been a task to affect, with the scenery so nearly chewing on them.

The Marketing for this film deserves acclaim, as burgeoning memes, takes, analyses and pop-culture appeal are doubtlessly trailing Orlok’s coat-tails as we squeak. Nosferatu has, even in its early run, become the latest talk of the virtual tonne. I admit I may have gotten too wrapped up in the hype before watching, and may have expected something much hornier and bloodier than what I got. But much like our hapless Hutter, getting far more than he bargained for once within the depths of the Count’s crumbling mausoleum, I have in reviewing, found much less a gore fest than a film whose ambition is to enrapture a wider swathe of bodies. Much more than just the filmicly nerdy among us. In his by now signature psychological take on classic horror, Eggers’ bite should sink more than skin-deep, and will hopefully engender many an audience as they horror and delight in succumbing.

Student Loans and Anxiety

January 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

Why is it so hard for me to do the student loan thing? I understand that there is a way for me to pay them without having that payment drastically affect my income. I’m having a lot of real anxiety about it. Was just remembering my trip to Oklahoma and my Mom asking me about the whole deal with that. This is something that she has been constantly reminding me of for years. Reminding is also perhaps a bit of an understatement. Whenever my Mom talks to me about the loans, she gets this tone, the pitch of her voice gets really high, and she insists that I need to handle paying them back, but in a way that makes me anxious, as if the fate of my future hinges on paying back the loans. I’ve actually avoided paying them for more than a decade by continually taking jobs where I was paid under the table, or working for non-profits temporarily enough to where my income information was just not obtainable in time for wage garnishing. Until I was at IKEA for more than two years. I have a very sad story about my ex during that time.

Mom’s emotions have a way of coloring my own. I’m sure this is not uncommon for children, especially those who are close to their parents. In a way, after visiting my mother again this year, and seeing her reaction to me finally paying the nearly $500 a month bill, and to hear her say how unfair that amount of money is, and that she can’t believe that I have to pay that much money for school, and for the subject to be just a casually moved on from, as we sit in the Pho restuarant and eat our soup, rather galls me.

Was it that I never could articulate how unfair the who situation feels? My parents never told me about any other options besides going to college, paying for university. My mom said she tried to convince me to go to community college, but if she did I don’t remember her insisting on such with as much bile as she does when she tells me to pay back big uni. Maybe it was lost among the anxiety I was feeling while walking on eggshells in my home around dad, or that I couldn’t wait to get away from him and be queer in a place I knew would be safe(r) than Carson. The constant finals, the hormones and madness of unrequited crushes,hurtling toward the looming abyss of independence and adulthood, heady with dreams of a bright future. Maybe it was the fact that she was five states away, living out her post middle age with her sister and nieces and mother in an apartment, which came with its own conversations, probably more of what we talked about when we spoke on the phone every week.

She has basically one foot in the grave at this point, and she went to school in a time when it was mostly paid for. She didn’t even finish college until 3 years after dropping out because she needed one credit to earn her degree, and didn’t even know.

Speaking to her about the circumstances in my life, sometimes feels fruitless. Helping her understand won’t take away the years I spent dodging the subject because I may have felt too frustrated to explain how I felt my life had been shunted down a pre-scheduled path. I even lied to them for years about wanting to be a veterinarian, because I saw how people beamed with admiration when I said it. But the truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I did know that adults tended to shower just that much more praise and support on children who said as much, and because the earliest parts of my life had been traumatizing and painful and lacking real comfort and safety, I knew that saying so felt safer than not. I think maybe I thought that it didn’t really matter so much, that I would find something eventually. One of those things that seems more like an issue for the older people in my life. I was more concerned with navigating child society, or rather, reinventing myself for the dozens of social changes that occurred during that time.

I resent how my mom got to make me feel anxious because she was too ignorant to know that she didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I must also realize that the reigns are somewhat more in my grasp at the moment. And that maybe that is the most anxiety dispelling realization of all.

Jan. 17th 2023: Lifeshapes

January 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

Was just thinking about what I wanted to call the shape of my life. And how I was thinking about how lives are shaped. What twists and subterranean paths, and sudden stops the shapes of lives can take. People have been living out strange and amazing lives, whose shapes to an outside observer, make take on something that may resemble a knotted, pile of offal. stinking and deplorable except for its tedious conceivability. A life that may feel watery, as if it weren’t material in the sense of something having its own distinctive edge, as liquid flowing in the easiest path. Some lives may shine brightly, and burn so violently as to extinguish the lives of those around them. Some lives may appear to have all the qualities of a known sum, and remain as such for the duration, save for the very last moment, when some lacuna in the foundation is uncovered, peered into, and understood to be a branch into entirely different sections, and must therefor re-contextualize the whole thing, dizzyingly, astonishingly, completely.

Humans develop a sense for grasping and palpating a life’s shape. But as long as humans have been living, they have been finding novel ways to live. Novel feelings that come from experiencing radically alien circumstances, providence of an ever more unfurling and complex world. As we have created habit, formed routines, and consolidated traditions that have laid out familiar paths for humans to inhabit, these life shapes take on patterns, and perhaps even lend themselves to be ascribed tangible value, and possibly even meaning. But as our ancient ancestors may have perceived, as they clawed meager subsistence into life shapes so abbreviated but nonetheless striking in their temerity and overwhelming pathos, there’s always something you may not have expected, unseen, and headed directly towards you. All the planning and reading of signs, and carefully executed maneuvers, are but sophistry, perfectly suited for our entertainment, and none the potenter. Being alive means living with the plausibly deniable knowing that most things are beyond our control.

Sometimes I wonder about what my life shape will be. And how I can use my talents to make it at least try and resemble something that I could call…meaningful. I don’t thing what I’ve done with my life would make me very proud to explain it to someone else. Other people’s lives seem so much more interesting and meaningful to me. More graspable because they feel more familiar than my own, which upon waking most mornings, tends to feel more and more inscrutable. Maybe changing a few of my daily circuits could do the trick. I would like to be more involved in trying to create beautiful things. Moments of humanity that I can look back at and hold in my palms, like they were proof that I did something that made a positive difference, instead of feeling like my burning daylight is so much flash in so much pan.

#lifeshape#lacuna#meaning#plausible deniability

12/27/2023

January 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

I’m going to try and start writing a journal a little bit everyday again. I didn’t feel like I need to before but now I am starting.

I have been in Oklahoma the past few days. I arrived on the plane on December 20th. It’s been a week. I’m already starting to get bored. Mom is losing her memory more than before. She stays with Oran now most of the time. He’s about 12 years her senior, and she’s only 78. They spend most of their time in between eating out at local restaurants, and mom’s apartment that she doesn’t stay at very much anymore. They are off to check the mail as I write this on Oran’s dining room table.

My mother was in a car accident a few months ago. She was on her way to drop off a few things from her apartment to a goodwill or a salvation army or something. She’s gotten the idea to throw away a lot of things. I remember when I was growing up and living with her she would accumulate so much crap. There were always stacks of newspapers laying around our apartment. When I was a little kid, I used to try and organize some of them. But there were always too many, and they would always find a way to move around and come apart. So many papers my mom had. She was never very organized with her personal documents. At this point in her life, it has become clear that if she had spent more time organizing…she may have a lot easier time with many things. But my Mom was not parented so kindly by her own mother, Nonni. Nonni was a mostly depressed divorcee who’s husband left her to raise four children by herself. Nonni did get a chance to remarry, but Pappi wasn’t the greatest man in the world. In fact, I don’t believe he even loved her much. She was a convenient person to care for him, while he philandered, after his second wife left him or whatever. The details are all rather murky as my family doesn’t discuss those things very often, and the whole story will probably never come together, as the disparate threads held by my aunts and uncle could only ever come together if they did, and pieced it all into a family tapestry thru amicable conversation. There’s very little chance of that happening now. They all seem to harbor bitterness towards one another. As an only child, I remember fantasizing about how great it would be to have a sibling. Someone who you could be close to in age, whom you could rely on in dangerous scenarios, who would always have your back, who you could abandon rationality for in favor of that hot, innervating clannish camaraderie that looked like bloody fights and obscure secrets and understandings that only the most hermetical of siblings know.

It’s not always like that. The way parents raise their children has a lifelong impact on the way the children relate to each other. And from what my mother has shared, it sounds like they were mostly on their own to figure out the world, each other, themselves. Not only that but Nonni, to me, at least from my mothers stories, sounded like a sad, broken woman. Perhaps clinically depressed, but also shit on by the world. She was one of five children, and my great grandmother Mimi, was a hardworking farm mother. Apparently Cozette (Nonni) didn’t feel the most affinity with rough, heavy physical labor. She had dreams of becoming a movie star, as she was exceptionally beautiful as a young debutante. Somehow she found Earnest DeSoto, a military man who had flown in WWI. But after two children, they divorced. I don’t think Cozette wanted to be a mother.

There’s a strange abiding of misery in my family. My mother seems to sit in her abjection as if it were immutable, or rather, that she’s helpless. I wonder how many times she watched her own mother spend weeks in such a state. It may have seemed so natural, that air of despondence, that she may have breathed it into her bones. Sometimes I think about the way she speaks, my mom. She really is quite careless with her own feelings. She has belittling pet names for herself: ding-dong, silly, airhead, goofus. She’s like a child with worn out toy, berating it when it does or doesn’t do things like a worn out toy would, but all the time never thinking that it could somehow be special in a different way, or that a new one could be better, or that anything but this one could suffice. But it isn’t a toy, it’s her worn out heart. So mishapen and small from a lifetime of neglect and disappointment, broken and patched over with newspaper and scotch tape, dusty and sticky and pathetically meek. Maybe thats how Nonni made her feel when she was just a little girl, learning about the shape love takes in the world. My poor Mom. She may have never felt what it was like to experience a truly happy moment, unclouded by gloomy tragedy, or some other turgid sadness thru which she’d most recently slogged. I imagine that my mother’s life has indeed been a rather long, and uneventful trudge through a world morassed in fearful disarray in the wider globe, and tricky, prickly, perhaps even dangerous forays with men. All the while a nagging lonelines that only people who grew up in broken families know, telling her that she was both the cause of and only resource for all the endless, stultifying tribulations that found her through the gray decades of the middle of this 20th century in America.

I wonder sometimes if I am one of the things in her life that made her truly happy. She always said that she wanted a baby and when I was born that may have been a moment of unfettered joy. But humans are complicated by design. And now as I sit here writing all of this down I wonder if my own boredom, and resentment towards her are more of the same inherited legacy of depression that grows like hair and fingernails from us as a bloodline. After a couple years of therapy, the unconscious part of my mind that worked so hard to keep me caged inside my own head has become less of a solid imprisonment, and more like a foreboding primeval forest where scary animals, and toxic plants live. Navigating it is still harrowing, and sometimes it takes my full attention simply to not allow those animals that live in the shadows to devour me, but at least I can move around. At least I have names for such creatures, at least there are paths that I know lead to spots in the trees, where the canopy receeds, and the sunshine can reach the floor, and there are some flowers and soft grass where I can feel safe, and like life has some modicum of of that quality that makes it worth enduring.

Mother is at a place in her life where she doesn’t know what to do next. Honestly, she’s kind of been that way most of her life, or least for the time that I have known her. Blown this way and that, she’s never really been the most determined of souls, but again, I don’t think she was instilled with that inner confidence that attentive parents are wont to instill in their offspring. It’s as if she’s spent most of her life, living inside that worrying, nattering head of hers. I don’t think she may know how to live in the moment, without anxiety revving her thoughts up to a distracting maelstrom. She doesn’t seem very happy. And I’ve tried to tell myself multiple times that she is an adult and is now responsible for her won emotions. But I still cant help feeling sorry for her. She didn’t get a fair brake, and in so many ways she was betrayed by her family. By so many people. Just the other days she mentioned staying here with Oran for the remainder of her days. Then just the other night, she was saying she was sure Portland was her next destination, so she could spend it with me. Then just today she said it’s Colorado where she’s going, so her neice Laurie can care for her. She doesn’t know. I’m wondering if she’s hoping death will come soon, and release her from any obligation to make any life-altering decisions about her future, maybe she’s even hoping for that. Again, I have to remember that she’s a woman who has lived long enough to make her own decisions, and that I have a responsibility to myself to live my own life the best way I can. I don’t know. Regrets and disappointments grow fat and heavy like stone fruit on our family tree. As if it were meant to, genetically, like ourselves too are inherently disappointments, regrets, the saturnine harvests of an execrable branch of humanity.

#Oklahoma#family#dysfunctional#depression#mothers#grandmothers#sons#journal