#THEME. Instead of saying that the two parts of human behaviour are good vs evil. AUGH | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

15hont1c · 5 years

Text

Week 5: The End

Our reflective essay should:

Discuss set text and how your screenplay was inspired by it.

Draw specific links between screenplay + source text.

Show familiarity with relevant aspects of book (period, themes, genre, location, etc)

Discuss writing process and the creative decisions you made.

Reflect on your journey from first idea to finished script.

Use quotes/evidence from screenwriting texts to explain and support your decisions.

Refer to any other books, films, images, etc that influenced your writing process.

Discuss how film would be like?

Discuss animation style, aesthetics, material, color palette, lighting, soundtrack.

Think about intended audience for film.

The tone and style of the reflective essay should follow the appropriate academic tone with citations and bibliography. The reflective essay can also use first person as it is meant to be discussing and analysing our own experiences.

The Last Night - Strictures of Victorian Society

Utterson is annoyed at the servants who are “huddled together like a flock of sheep.”

Upkeep of the Victorian calm and self-contained attitude.

The housemaid breaks into “hysterical whimpering.” -> Mass Hysteria

“A rather wild tale.”

Utterson stands for the audience as he expresses the same doubt/questions the readers ask.

“This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir.”

Depiction of drug addictions.

Victorians can buy over-the-counter heroin; frequented to opium dens and even babies who were born drug-addicts.

Stevenson himself is also a drug addict who was reliant on hallucinogens.

Poole seeing the masked man who was much smaller than his ‘master.’

Referral as a symbol of something hidden/concealed (like door).

Description is evocative and deepens the mystery.

Upon breaking the door, there was no big reveal; no dramatic scene.

Instead, they found a mirror with their own reflection reflected instead, showing the “evil” duality of themselves.

The scene also utilises the uncanny -> we expect the extraordinary, but is actually overwhelmingly ordinary in the scene, even though things are not ‘quite right.’

There is a duality/juxtaposition in the description of the scene: The twitching corpse and a defaced book as opposed to the boiling kettle.

Prompts the idea of “To what extent did Utterson cause the death of Hyde/Jekyll.”

The final two chapters were written in first person narrative:

Dr Lanyon revealing the core of the mystery.

Jekyll telling the chronological story that happened over the course of the novella through his perspective.

First Letter (Lanyon):

Lanyon receives a strange message, begging to carry out a series of specific and peculiar requests.

Jekyll/Hyde begs Lanyon for help.

He goes to fetch a drawer containing powders and a test tube from his lab and goes to wait for the mystery man.

Hyde’s too desperate for the drugs, and gives him the option to leave to watch him ingest it.

Dr Lanyon is bound to secrecy - bound by the Hippocratic oath.

He is unable to reveal what he knows.

Even in a vulnerable state, Hyde presents himself as more superior than Lanyon.

The format of an ‘objective’ third person narrative + ‘subjective’ first person accounts was a trope of Victorian fiction, but was also similar to the medical literature of that period. Anne Stiles (2006) observes that the book’s structure reflects the medical case studies of that period, but also subverts them. Jekyll’s character is both the physician and patient in the story.

Jekyll’s observation states that “man is not truly one, but truly two.” This reflects a Victorian theory that ‘each brain hemisphere might house a separate personality or a separate soul.’ It can be imagined that when a Victorian reads this, they may become afraid of their inner “Hyde” taking over.

An example of this could be the case study of an injured French soldier called Sergeant F which was discussed in the medical Cornhill magazine. According to Stiles in her book Popular Fiction and Brain Science in the Late Nineteenth Century on page 43, Sergeant F developed “two distinct personalities upon a gunshot injury in the left brain hemisphere.” His first state is known as intelligent and kindly, while his second state displayed “animalistic and automatic qualities along with impaired sensory impressions.” He is also resilient to pain in this second state.

Even though Sergeant F was male and his condition was caused by an external factor (gunshot), the ‘multiplex personality’ was almost overwhelmingly a female condition. Felida X was an example of a female patient that was also discussed in the Cornhill magazine. Felida’s condition was natural occurring, exhibited hysteria and has another ‘peculiar secondary state of mind.’ She felt pain when transitioning between the two states. While she felt better in this second state, it had “unfortunate moral consequences,” such as when she got herself pregnant with a man whom she had no romantic interest in the first mind state. Her subconscious base instincts made her chase after the man and impregnated herself due to it.

Applying to Jekyll and Hyde, we can see that Hyde was wrestling against the approaches of hysteria. Hysteria is a centuries old illness that no one really understood at the time. It was usually diagnosed when no other cause could be found for its exaggerated symptoms. Examples include:

Salem Witch Trials

Occurred in 1692, over 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft.

20 people were hung upon accusations from mass hysteria.

Neighbours and friends turn against one another.

Started because a group of girls exhibited convulsions and weird spastic behaviour -> epilepsy.

Most of them were girls and women.

Anneliese Michel

A German woman who was supposedly ‘possessed’ by a demon after a complicated series of illnesses early in her life.

Suffered a seizure and diagnosed with psychosis of temporal lobe epilepsy.

Took a lot of medication, but her condition worsened (as well as her mental health.)

Began to hear voices and became intolerant to sacred Christian sacred places and objects.

Stiles (2006) theorised that the small, puny, right-brained Hyde has something of the Victorian femininity about him; emotionally unstable, physically chaotic and somehow ‘lesser’ than his male counterparts. In the novella, Poole describes Hyde as “weeping like a woman.”

The nocturnal setting, theme of monstrosity and embedded narratives (i.e fragments, manuscripts and letters.

Key Features of the Gothic

Wild landscapes vs imprisonment

Hyde was constantly ‘imprisoned’ by the duality in Jekyll’s personality.

Other characters were also imprisoned by the Victorian society’s rules.

The re-emergence of the past within the present (often represented by ghosts - the thing you thought was dead.)

Exploring the limits of what it is to be human.

Internal desires or forces outside our control.

Perverse, weird and dangerous kinds of sexuality - incest, abduction, violence.

The vulnerable of women in 19th century - the ‘triumph’ of young women over seemingly impossible force.

The Uncanny

Figures that are not quite ‘human’ (dolls, was works, automata)

May feature ‘evil’ doubles.

“Somebody who seems unfamiliar and strange in fact has an identity you already know.”

No one in the novella could really describe what Hyde looked like; an uncanny physical description.

We can harness the power of the uncanny to enhance the story in our writing.

Less is More

Planting the seeds and letting the readers’ imagination flow.

Stay Close

Use all senses when writing, stay close to the protagonist and allow the audience to feel their fear.

Make it personal

Use your own fears/phobias to make the scene more realistic.

Give the reader time to feel the fear

Place hints that something disturbing is going to happen.

Create a mood of tension/horror before it actually happens.

Provide something uncanny that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

Allow the sense of underlying unease to intensify over time.

E.g A radio turns on by itself, a child toy changes position.

The Birth of Urban Gothic Horror

Jekyll and Hyde is usually considered as the first ‘urban gothic’ novel. Gothic revivalists of the 19th century believe the threat is no longer an external force, but rather an evil that is curled inside the very heart of the respectable middle class person. This scared the readers at the time even more, as to some extent, the evil was inescapable. The progressive society with the advancement of the Industrial Revolution caused the dark progress of social and psychological effects. Moral decay was an obsession of the Victorians. By identifying and analysing that fear, they seek to control and contain it.

How to Write Dialogue

Unnatural is natural

Not real speech, but a representation of it.

Aim to capture the flavour of speech (without the boring stale bits)

“Natural speech is full of hesitation, repetitions, omissions... when we’re listening to it in real life, our brains filter this out and extract the essential parts (Pierre, 2011).

The S.A.D method

Dialogue is a function of character. Know the character well so their dialogue flows easily.

Status - Who was the upper hand?

Agenda: What is the purpose of the conversation?What do they hope to gain from it.

Desire: What do they want? (What is their ultimate goal/super objective.)

Inhabit their physical space

Listen to how differently different people talk.

Our physical bodies affect our voice. Spend time imagining yourself as the character.

E.g. Timid & trembling? Broad & bold?

Silence is gold

What people don’t say is just as important as what they do.

What are they avoiding to talk about?

Actions speak louder than words.

Explanation kills drama

Characters should talk to each other, not the audience.

“Good dialogue is a manifestation of behaviour, not an explanation” (Yorke, 2013, p150).

Dialogue is not just a Q & A

Good dialogue is surprising and unpredictable.

Promises excitement, but keeps us waiting for it.

Drip-feeds information but withholds answers.

Be ruthless

Dialogue should either move the story forward or reveal something about the character.

If it does not, take that out!

Always read the dialogue aloud.

Make sure the dialogue can actually be spoken/performed realistically.

Reference:

Stiles (2006) - https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KyFrjbezjSgC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=sergeant+F+brain+study&source=bl&ots=XgsrEFdmxR&sig=ACfU3U0cTzmOzIkZPnboQKh4FeOQA41Zzg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiC5dm7t4LgAhVho3EKHTYRAJcQ6AEwA3oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=sergeant%20F%20brain%20study&f=false

#story adaptation #year 2

2 notes · View notes

nerdylittleshit · 7 years

Text

Thoughts about Spn 13x06

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Yee-haw! So, did we get the promised Brokebacknatural? Cowboys? Check. Super gay? Double check.

Once again we got an episode, and I know I keep repeating myself here, that left no room for subtext. Everything was spelled out in neon letters. Which is weird, from a meta perspective. We are so used to look out for the subtext, and codes and hidden messages, and again it feels like the subtext just became plain text. And again, I don’t feel like this makes the episode better or worse, just different, and of course it leads to the overall question: WHY? And to me it feels like, or at least makes sense, like we are heading to the finish line here. I’m not saying the current season is the last, but maybe the next one. From a writer’s point it would make sense then to address themes that have been part of the subtext for a long time, and the only way to resolve them is to put them in the actual text of the show. (And yes, before you ask: Destiel. All the Destiel.)

Overall I liked the episode a lot. The actual case was kinda… there, they could have made more with it, I dunno. But I loved the Western theme and of course it was a big character episode. I think this week the focus was on Jack, and his relationship with Cas. We had a lot of great Dean moments as well, which brought the episode a light and fun atmosphere, and worked especially in contrast to last weeks episode, to make a big statement what or rather who made Dean so happy. The characters and their relationships were the selling point of the episode.

Let’s have a closer look.

Jack vs Evil Dead

There was a lot of Jack in the episode, and in the beginning he seemed to be in a relative happy place. He is obviously still trying to find out who he is, but it seems like hunting gave him some purpose, at least for a moment. We learned in 13x04 that he still thinks in terms of “good” and “bad” and that, through the influence of Sam and Dean, hunters are to him the good guys. They kill monsters and help the innocent.

Jack trying to be a hunter was of course meant to remind us of all the times Cas tried to act like a hunter. They both even use the same approach by watching what Sam and Dean do and try to copy it. Though I have to admit, with all my love for Cas, I think Jack has got the hang of it a bit faster. He found them a case, he found footage of zombie!Dave and identified him as Athena’s boyfriend. Top of his class, indeed.

I loved the relationship/interactions between Cas and Jack. I always like it when they add new characters to the team, to see new dynamics, not just Cas and Jack, but of course also the birth of team free will 2.0. Cas and Jack do balance out Sam and Dean in a way; they are both not human and outsiders of their own. And similar to last season where Cas could teach Mary about her sons now we have him teaching Jack how to handle a Winchester properly.

I’m not sure the show is ever going to address the “Did Jack brainwash Kelly and Cas?”-issue more than they did now. Jack confirms that he trusted Cas because his mother trusted him, that Cas made him feel safe and the fact that Cas is surprised Jack remembered that implies they talked about the events in 12x19. I have a feeling Dean won’t bring up the issue again – whatever Jack did with bringing back Cas he is forgiven. I’m not sure of either Cas or Jack were aware of the brainwashing. Every episode so far has shown us that until lately Jack had no control over his powers. Choosing Cas as his protector probably did happen unconscious, based on the feelings of his mother, who had become one with him at some point (probably when he resurrected her).

Cas supports Jack and believes in him, and I think he fulfils a role here neither Sam and Dean could. He is the one Jack chose as his father, as his mentor, he is the one who was supposed to be there for him. I don’t believe Jack still controls Cas in some ways, but rather that the affection is genuine. Cas repeats what Kelly told her son – that he is meant to do great things and that he has the power to make the world a better place. This very thing though puts a lot of responsibility on Jack. It is clear that he wants to do good, that he wants to prove to others and himself that he is not a monster, but it backfires horrible. It is clear that killing the security guard was a horrible accident, and Cas, Sam and Dean reassure him that in their line of work things like that keep on happening, but that it doesn’t mean he is bad, or that he should stop trying to do better. Each of them has done horrible things in the past, because the world is more complex than “good” and “bad”. It is part of being human, and we talk so much about Jack’s powers that we forget at times that he is half human too.

Especially in that aspect I think Jack mirrors Dean a lot. There is an early parallel when Jack tells Cas how much he missed him, how he begged for his return, or basically when he tells Cas everything Dean couldn’t. The Jack we see at the end of the episode, the one who decides to leave because he is afraid he is going to hurt his found family, is the one who reminded a lot of Dean in 9x10, who decided to leave because he thought of himself as “poison”. Dean is still the one who is the most honest with Jack – when he asks if the security guard had a family only Dean gives him a direct answer. Dean is the one who never tried to sugarcoat what he thought of Jack, but he is also the one who admits here that he was wrong about Jack. We saw a first small step in that direction at the end of 13x04, after Jack saved Sam, but it is clear that the turning point is Jack bringing Cas back.

Also, Jack refers to Cas, Sam and Dean as “all he has”. This and that he asked about the family of the man he killed shows how important family and family ties are to him, and that he thinks in categories of family the way we know Dean does as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if we end the season with Jack addressing the Winchesters (including Cas of course) as his family.

Something else I found interesting are Jack’s powers. By now he can control them in some ways. It is clear it is a learning process. What I am curious about though is what specifically are Jack’s powers. We know that one day he will be more powerful than his father. We know he has some angelic powers – he can teleport, bullets and knifes don’t hurt him etc. Unlike angels though you can’t banish him. He sleeps, even if he doesn’t sleep as much as humans. He eats and he seems to enjoy food. It is a mix between angelic powers and human needs. Then again he asked Cas to heal the security guard, even though we know that Jack can technically heal people, after all he saved his mother in 12x19, so we might see him exploring more powers in the future.

The most interesting part though is his power to open portals to other worlds, and the fact that he had the power to reach Cas in the Empty, a place where even God had no power. This made me wonder if the Empty perhaps exists outside of reality? And God’s powers only have access in places in our reality – earth, heaven, hell, purgatory, the veil. Could it be that every universe/reality has their own God? If there are different versions of the archangels, why not God? We know that Lucifer from our universe still has his powers in the AU world. But what if there is only one Empty, existing outside of all those realities? And only Jack, Death and the reapers have access to it? Does that make Jack more powerful than God?

Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other

(What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?)

So, after Dean said “I do” under a giant neon cross, I think it is fair to say that travelling to Doge City and dressing up as cowboys was Dean and Cas’s honeymoon?

I’m still in awe and wonder how obvious all the Destiel stuff was. Not just in this episode, during the whole season so far. It is the main topic with all my meta peeps here, because we still can’t believe that after years of digging deep through the subtext the show is now so blatant about Destiel. After 13x05 everyone and their mother said that Cas was presented as the win Dean so desperately needed, and now he textually confirms it, calling Cas even a “pretty big win”. Dean’s whole attitude and behaviour has changed, in the way that 13x05 and 13x06 almost work as a pair to show is exactly what the main difference is between the two episodes and Dean’s emotional state. I mean their mom is still trapped and Jack is still a potential danger, and this episode marks the first time he killed someone, even if it was only an accident. We expected to hear the “I told you”-speech from Dean, instead he is reaching out to Jack and takes care of his mess. Why? Because of Cas. Because Jack brought back Cas, and for the first time Dean can acknowledge the effort Jack applied.

It was in character that we didn’t get a great speech of Dean talking about his feelings (like I said, Jack already expressed what Dean felt). We are not at the point of the story yet where Dean is ready to use his words, though sooner or later he has to. Instead we got the car scene and the usual bickering between Cas and Dean, and it is only then that Dean admits how happy he is that Cas is back. It was very lighthearted and sweet and it again confirmed that Dean and Cas have a relationship off-screen (the movie Dean made Cas watch, the fact that Cas knows that Dean is an angry sleeper etc). Also, my new headcanon is that Metatron didn’t like Western movies, so they weren’t part of all the popculture knowledge he gave Cas. Dean might missed his chance to introduce Cas to Star Wars, but he will do his best to show Cas his favourite Western movies. All of them.

Wild Wild Dead

The case of the week was rather simple. There was a recurring theme of “things that look like other things”. In 13x02 we had with Asmodeus a shapeshifting demon, in 13x03 we had a wraith who looks human and 13x04 featured two actual shapeshifters and an ancient cosmic entity that took the form of our favourite angel. And we started this episode with Dean asking Cas if it is really him. It doesn’t take a big step to figure out that identity will be a big theme this season. Jack of course still struggles with his own, trying to find out who he is. And then of course we have the AU world or maybe even worlds, with a potential infinite amount of doppelgängers of characters we know.

We also have two characters coming back from the dead – Cas literary, and the ghoul who impersonates someone who died a long time ago. Both lose the one they wanted to protect – Cas loses Jack, Dave loses Athena. I’m not sure if this parallel was on purpose because Dave and Athena’s relationship wasn’t anything like the one between Jack and Cas. The first one was romantic and quite unhealthy, the second a parent-child-relationship, based on support. I also wonder if Athena was aware that her boyfriend was a ghoul? She seemed to know about the grave robberies and I thought for a moment she provided him with food, but she was surprised to find out he wasn’t exactly human, so.

Another character that was somehow paralleled/ associated with Dean was the Sergeant. The officer who was killed was his nephew; not his actual so, but still someone very close to him. Getting revenge for him was family business, to make it even more obvious. And he stated twice that he would kill the one responsible for his nephew’s death. And that is somehow problematic. I think it was perhaps part of the Western theme to show people who take the law in their own hands, with blazing guns and only one of them surviving. Still he was an officer of the law, and unlike Dean and the others he didn’t know at first that a monster was responsible for his nephew’s death. The show morally justified that hunters can kill monsters, if they have killed, because there is no monster prison. But there is no justification for humans to kill other humans, especially not officers of the law who should know better. The first monstrous humans though on the show have all been killed by officers of the law though (Pa Bender by Deputy Kathleen Hudak in 1x15 and Pete Sheridan by Detective Diana Ballard in 2x07). Sergeant Phillips is portrayed as a hero by the narrative, that he kills the monster in the end feels justified, but it shouldn’t.

Dean seemed also very calm when the ghoul aimed his gun at his head. Perhaps because he knew that Billie would bring him back, because he is important? Interesting though “stabbed by a ghoul in a graveyard” was one of Dean’s potential deaths (I wonder if we will also get to see almost burned by a red haired witch and almost died by a heart-attack). After the ghoul is dead Dean takes care of Jack’s mess and is back to his usual “we were never here and we lie about what we do”-attitude. In contrast to 13x01 where he openly told the Sheriff that he is a hunter, because he no longer cared about anything. Now that Cas is back he does.

Some other things:

- Did nobody in town recognize Dave Mather? Did they all think it was just a great coincidence the undertaker’s new boyfriend looked exactly like the old west dude?

- Speaking of, why is nobody ever suspicious about their aliases? Texas ranger Val Kilmer? Seriously?

- Nina Lopez-Corrado, the director of the episode, smuggled herself in the episode twice: with Athena’s last name (Lopez) and again with the giant “Lopez” on top of the mausoleum in the graveyard.

- Does Sam like Amanda Palmer? He seemed interested. Adding this to my (very short) list of music Sam likes.

- The episode had great soundtrack choices.

- I’m still worried about Jack though. I hope he packed some lunch.

Until next week <3

#supernatural #spn 13x06 #thombstone #spn meta #spoilers #my meta

69 notes · View notes