Rouben Mamoulian: Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1931)

The thing with Hyde's personhood is that from the moment it's revealed he's not "real", he as a character becomes more blurry. Is Hyde a person because at his core he's still Jekyll despite wearing a disguise, or is Hyde a person because he's trascended his original purpose of being Jekyll's disguise and has, ultimately, become Jekyll by virtue of occupying all his physical and mental space?

Enfield said Hyde "carried on...like Satan" in the first chapter, and then the maid says he "carried on... like a madman" when he killed Carew. The way it changes connotation from "this guy isn't human" to "this guy is one of us gone wrong" at the exact time the boundaries between Jekyll and Hyde started to blur. The way that seemingly insignificant change of words completely changes the nature of what Hyde is-- from satanic spawn to regrettably human. I hate you robert louis stevenson you make being an author look easy.

OK but the fact that Henry’s name literally means The Self Killer. that he makes his life’s work splitting the self into two, implicitly killing the original. and then he succeeds in doing that to himself. and then he indirectly kills one of his selves. and then the remaining self commits suicide. The Self Killer.

Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S.

VS

Abraham Van Helsing, M. D., D. Ph., D. Lit., etc., etc.

VS

Patrick Hennessey, M. D., M. R. C. S. L. K. Q. C. P. I., etc.

FIGHT!

I just saw a post saying that Stanford's "willingness to let Stan be treated by their parents that way" (paraphrased) makes him a failure of a brother or some shit. I was so mad lol

The sheer number of posts blaming Ford for the way Filbrick treated Stan makes my eye twitch so. bad.

What a way to make it the child's responsibility for how their parents treat them and their siblings. Like, they know that Ford ALSO grew up in an abusive environment and was abused too, right?? Apparently not oml

Don't even get me started on the science fair incident. Like, he had every right to be mad, and it wasn't Ford that threw Stan out. Blaming a child for not standing up to their abusive parents for their sibling seems to be rampant in the Gravity Falls fandom these days

How the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury

I’ve been wanting to make a post about this for a while, even though I might be the only person invested in this, but anyway, here we go. I’ve seen mentioned several times, in posts about the movie and in fics that the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury through the window of Steve’s apartment, and every time it makes me groan in frustration because no.

The Winter Soldier didn’t shoot Fury through a window, he shot him through a wall, and I don’t know about you, but it seems like a pretty big difference to me.

(bullet hole in the wall!!)

When I saw the scene the first time, I remember thinking holy shit??? that’s crazy, and for me that’s when the Winter Soldier really became a real, terrifyingly good assassin, that’s when his image as a serious threat solidified.

Read about the blogger getting carried away under the read more.

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And as she so sat she became aware of an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come within speech (which was just under the maid’s eyes) the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman.

This bit is sticking with me in a way it didn't last year.

We'll see Jekyll's explanation for what he says is the cause of Hyde committing this murder. Maybe he believes it, maybe he's guessing, maybe he'll somehow believe there's a last fig leaf that needs hiding behind, even in the wretched condition he'll be in by the time of his confession. But looking at the details of poor old Carew laid out like this, I think I can spy a shortcut to a pretty good reason without just his word on it:

Edward Hyde saw in Sir Danvers Carew everything that Dr. Henry Jekyll could only pretend to be.

At least he leaps to that assumption. This is a story in which the impression of someone's character is always somehow visible at a glance--dreary but beloved Utterson, jovial Lanyon, respected but sly Jekyll, loathsome Hyde, odious housekeeper, et cetera--and we're to take the maid's opinion at face value. Carew was a stately old pinnacle of natural politeness and kindness. Aged, distinguished, self-content.

The point of Hyde's existence is to let Jekyll hide. To wear his own worst impulses as an outer disguise, free of inhibition or blame. Repression as physical manifestation, because he's so certain of his need to distill himself into two selves, the better to keep Jekyll 'pristine'--at least as presented to the world. Now here's Carew. Carew, who seems to radiate an intrinsic goodness. Carew, a happy old man. Carew, who is serene, who is at peace with himself.

No need of a 'Hyde' for him.

No shame.

Nothing to bury or let run wild.

Carew, for as much as we and Hyde get to know him, is only himself. Good. Kind. Needing nothing but directions, if you could point him along, sir.

Another strike. Sir Danvers Carew bowing and smiling to a loathsome little nobody like Hyde. This, when surely he has to have been disgusted like anybody else with sense..! Hypocrite! Liar! Fraud!

I think it's that very sterling regard that broke the dam in Hyde and let out the flood of verbal bile and violence. Insults and bludgeoning and a great childish fit--the kind of senseless viciousness of someone desperately flinging mud at the proof that they are Wrong, they are Lesser, they will Never Be Up to the Level of the Person Before Them.

Worse, Carew looks hurt even before the first blow lands. Not angry, not shocked. Just hurt. A final proof-positive (in Hyde's eyes) that he is as untainted and innocent as he looks.

So down comes the cane.

Striking the old man the way someone else might smash a mirror in frustration.

and what if I said Jekyll and Hyde isn’t about splitting yourself in two but about stretching yourself so thin you barely are a person anymore

🦋👁️

Thinking about the birth imagery and pregnancy horror themes in Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde. How they’re going on opposite directions.

Frankenstein desiring to “birth” through unnatural ways out of spite, out of a need to prove a point. Jekyll being forced to continuously “birth” and simultaneously ”be birthed” as the aftermath of a choice which was to indeed birth the separation of good and evil.

Frankenstein creating an unnatural person, designed and expected to be perfect, through an unnatural conception with no pregnancy. Jekyll becoming an unnatural person that was never conceived, unwittingly made perfectly monstrous, through a process that is described as painful, something being ejected from his subconscious like a womb.

Frankenstein makes the perfect male body which is described as “wrong-looking”, Jekyll gives himself a “wrong”-looking male body which comes with a “wrong” mind to pair.

Creation = pregnancy and birth. Mad scientists are often characterized as fathers, being mostly men- but they’re still being the mother or taking such a role since the creation on itself is their doing- as life, or a distortion of it, or a perversión of its laws, an impossible thing is what they make.

And what more perverted an impossible -in the eyes of cishet society- than a male pregnancy?

One man wants pregnancy, dreams of it- wishes to attain it even though he knows it is impossible and suffers the consequence when a “pregnancy” with no woman ends badly, because he just wishes so; the other fears becoming pregnant, comparing the distress he suffers as he transforms as the “horror of childbirth”, as if he knew, as if he knew what it is like or felt it could be possible after all. Bodies. “Perfect” bodies, “wrong” bodies, pregnancies that end badly, men being metaphorically pregnant. I don’t know what it all could mean, frankly.

I don’t know.