Dracula 1x02: "A Whiff of Sulfur"

[cleolinda]

@InterestingLit: Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, was born on this day in 1847. In early drafts of the novel, Dracula was named ‘Count Wampyr’.

@particle_p: Count Wampyr just made my morning.

@cleolinda: People in "Count Wampyr" really should know they're in "Count Wampyr."

So I'm just in time, it sounds like.

Comments

[uldihaa]

And then Daniel and Lord Laurent agree, significantly, to meet later, and I was like, "Well, they probably have some nefarious father-son stockholding WAWAWA to attend to." Oh my God.

I had to stop reading here so I could laugh and laugh and laugh. I laughed until my stomach ached, my ribs were sore, and my throat kind of raw from my raucous, honking laughter.

The thing about the mother covering her daughter's eyes amused me because she only covered her daughter's eyes. She didn't even bother with her son's. How very Victorian.

Now, since the two seers have working-class London accents, rather than something ~exotic,~ what I hope happened is that this is attempted diversity in casting that tripped and fell into some really, really unfortunate tropes, rather than Magical Brown People, considering that this is also the show that racebent a cool, capable Renfield.

That the opium den was set in a clearly Asian store had some unfortunate implications itself.

Forget the coin--Am I a terrible person for expecting that coin to be

[cleolinda]

That the opium den was set in a clearly Asian store had some unfortunate implications itself.

That itself is fairly accurate, as I understand it--while there was a hell of a lot less opium smoking in London than everyone at the time liked to think there was, most of the opium dens in, say, San Francisco and Manhattan were Chinese-run. But among the smokers themselves, "all nationalities seem indiscriminately mixed." Wikipedia's most convenient to link to, but there's a lot more about all of it in a fairly interesting book I picked up. Unless there's a different implication I'm missing...

[uldihaa]

I think what bothered me about it was that the opium den was completely unnecessary and when combined with the seers themselves seemed to come across as 'Bad Minorities'.

[jubilantia]

yeeeeah I definitely picked up on that. This show needs to take a leaf out of the Hannibal book. And really, aren't the writers, like, a cubicle or two over? Go for lunch, pick their brains on how not to be racist in your casting. I would say Sleepy Hollow, with their fabulously diverse main cast, but they've also made some uncomfortable missteps with their minor characters. (Honestly, though, points for trying. It's better than most shows manage.)

[uldihaa]

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers, but with episode three's 'Mind Altering Adventures' the opium den is even more clearly a poor decision.

[jubilantia]

*facepalm* Oh noooooooo. I'll probably watch it tomorrow (got to get thesis work done first!).

Attention all visual media purveyors- a show or movie being set in the past does NOT give you carte blanche to cast non-white people in stereotypical side roles. If you're going to be inaccurate about clothes and the way people face in carriages, you might as well be "inaccurate" about races of people (although I'm pretty sure there were more non-white people running around Victorian London than the old white guys that decided what classics were would have us believe). Imagine how cool a black Mina would have been! Or, Heavens preserve us, a black Dracula! Or make his origins be Mongolian or something. Have him actually be Genghis Khan (shit, I should write that- dibs!).

Seriously, just don't be racist.

[cleolinda]

I try not to set Hannibal too much on a pedestal, because someday someone's going to mess up, because we all mess up (even Sleepy Hollow, yeah), and I feel like it's more important to give people credit for what they do right and point out what's not so great as sort of an ongoing process. (Mostly I am saying this right now because I feel like we ought to be knocking on wood or something.) Like, the Sleepy Hollow episode with the Mohawk "shaman" was just omg what, whaaaat. (And I was kind of side-eyeing the whole Arthur Bernard thing last week. It's okay that I died because now the white people can meet and seek their destiny!) But SH's core cast is so great and so diverse that they have a lot of good faith built up, you know? So I look at Dracula and go, okay, they invented a major new female character and racebent a pretty famous literary character. So, you know, let's point out what looks pretty bad about the situation with the seers, but for now I'll hope that it was just super thoughtless and not the kind of thing they plan to do

[jubilantia]

Oh, I hope your headache feels better. Weather/storm related? Are you getting mutant powers??I still love Sleepy Hollow to death (headless, horseless death), and even the Shaman stuff didn't bother me as much as it could have? It could have been done better, but it's been done way worse. It would have been way cool if the person confronting Ichabod was a descendant of Bernard, who's now a member of the Masons, but whatever. They're still doing pretty well

[mistress_infy]

Late to this party!

As an NDN, the shaman bothered me, but it's to be expected... Honestly, what bothered me more was Ichabod's comments about powwows, like, "Oh gee, I really liked those, they were so colorful!" like they existed just for his entertainment. The fact that he got to see what were very likely very private, very significant ceremonies and dances could've been handled way, way better.

[cleolinda]

Ah, yeah. Really, it was "Magical Brown People Who Are Also Lazy And On Drugs," which is even worse. So I don't think the opium den being in a Chinese store was the problem per se. (Wait--well, now I see what you're saying about "Bad Minorities," yeah.) The real problem, I guess, was them living in an opium den at all. I mean, it'd be one thing if it was explicitly like, "We're tormented by our visions so we smoke all the time to shut them out," that'd be one thing, but the seers are portrayed as just lazy and doing whatever they can lay hands on (since Jayne also mentioned snuff). I don't know, the whole thing was just--that's what I was referring to when I tweeted that I dreaded having to explain the whole thing. Not because I didn't understand the thing with the mirror.

[uldihaa]

They could have turned the whole sequence into a pointed blast at expectations by having one of the seers say something like, "We are always where you expect us to be." With the other giving a slightly mocking smirk.

When Lady Jayne leaves, they suddenly start acting much more focused, blatantly hinting that the whole 'drugged and lazy' thing is an act. You could still keep their need for a stimulant for their visions, but make it clear they only use them for that purpose.