EPIC RANT: Creepy Portaits Edition!
Okay, so I'm kinda the biggest Oscar Wilde fandork ever. Seriously. I'm grinning like a maniac as I write this in the school cafeteria because that's what happens when I just THINK about him. So when I heard about the Dorian Gray movie several months ago, I was simultaneously super excited and deeply distrustful. Movie adaptations of books have screwed me over before, k? And The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my all-time favorite novels by my all-time favorite author - and all time favorite person in the history of forever - so its kinda near and dear to my heart. Plus, when I saw the trailer and started to read about it, I was reminded of the other times The Picture of Dorian Gray came to the silver screen.
MOVIE: So like, this guy Dorian, is supposed to be, like, attractive? But creepy?
JENKAVY: Well, not exactly. He's supposed to be pretty, ya know? And not creepy, because his not-creepiness is exactly what MAKES him creepy.
MOVIE: Um...so, what about this actor?
JENKAVY:...I guess he's good-looking, but...did you read the book?
MOVIE: Yeah, I mean, of course I did. Definitely.
JENKAVY: Then you would know that Dorian is exhaustively described as blond and blue-eyed. You know, angelic-looking? I mean, the point is that his physical appearance is completely at odds with his corrupted soul. There's really no point if he looks like a total creeper - albeit a dark, tall, handsome creeper - the whole time. Not to mention pretty blonds were Oscar's type. I gotta represent, yo.
MOVIE:...
JENKAVY:...?
MOVIE:...
MOVIE:...So how about this magical ancient Egyptian artifact, huh? That's pretty cool, right?
JENKAVY: WHAT
JENKAVY: YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT
MOVIE: ???
JENKAVY: SERIOUSLY I am so sick and tired of movies employing Ancient Egyptian gods as ~magical plot devices~ while giving NO consideration to the ACTUAL FUCKING MYTHOLOGY
JENKAVY: That is a statuette of Bast. THE GODDESS OF CATS. CATS. WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE GODDESS OF CATS BE GRANTING A WISH FOR ETERNAL YOUTH FROM SOME RANDOM ENGLISH MANSLUT? I DON'T CARE IF HER LIKENESS IS IN THE PAINTING THAT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE
MOVIE: But..how else do we explain...
JENKAVY: BITCH THE BOOK NEEDS NO EXPLANATION THAT SHIT JUST HAPPENS OKAY
MOVIE: But that doesn't mean the whole thing's bad! I mean, look at how faithful we are to the book otherwise! And we've got a really young Angela Lansbury!
JENKAVY:...Did you say Angela Lansbury? I do love Angela Lansbury...
MOVIE: And look at this bitching painting that is the only thing in the movie shot in color!
JENKAVY: HOLY CRAP THAT IS AWESOME
(Srsly, u guise. AWESOME.It’s at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I’ve gotten to see it in person. It is HUGE and RIDICULOUSLY DETAILED and kinda the best thing ever.)
JENKAVY: Movie, I’m sorry I said anything bad about you. I’m sold.
So that was a summary of my relationship with the 1945 movie The Picture of Dorian Gray. Despite my nitpicky fannish problems with it, its actually a pretty sweet movie, and definitely the film adaptation truest to the book.
But there’s another movie, one that although it does not aim to adapt the book, merely to use the titular character, it manages to fail spectacularly at that as well as epic-failing the entire fucking movie. THAT’S RIGHT, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, I’M FUCKING CALLING YOU OUT
A caveat: I have only seen the movie. I have not read the graphic novel, I know nothing about it, and have no idea if the problems I have with the movie are applicable to it. I’m just talking about what I saw, folks.
MOVIE: Okay, so what if there were like, all these awesome old-school literary characters that formed, like an elite team of awesome and saved the world?
JENKAVY: BEST PREMISE EVER :D
MOVIE: IKR? So it’ll include Allen Quartermain...
JENKAVY: Don’t really know and don’t really care.
MOVIE:...adult Tom Sawyer...
JENKAVY: Um, okay...
MOVIE: ...The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo...
JENKAVY: So far so good...
MOVIE:...Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde...
JENKAVY: WAIT A MINUTE WHY THE FUCK DOES MR. HYDE LOOK LIKE A NON-GREEN HULK IN A TOP HAT
MOVIE:...Mina Harker...
JENKAVY: WAIT WHY IS SHE A VAMPIRE THEY SPENT THE WHOLE BOOK PREVENTING MINA FROM BECOMING A VAMPIRE
JENKAVY: ALSO SHE IS NOT AT ALL EXTRAORDINARY
JENKAVY: OR A GENTLEMAN
JENKAVY: I MEAN, I CAN SEE WHY HAVING DRACULA WOULD BE TOO CLICHE, BUT WHAT ABOUT MOTHERFUCKING RENFIELD? SERIOUSLY, THINK ABOUT IT. THEY’D PROMISE HIM RATS FOR BEING A GOOD BOY AND GOING BATSHIT CRAZY WITH KNIVES
JENKAVY: IT’D BE AMAZING
MOVIE:...
MOVIE:...and Dorian Gray.
JENKAVY: OMG SERIOUSLY? \o/
MOVIE: Yeah! See, he’s this suave badass with a sword who is like, immortal and immune to guns and stuff and can never look at his portrait otherwise he’ll become like he is in the painting and since he’s super old he’ll turn into like a shriveled-up skeleton thing. Isn’t that awesome? :D
JENKAVY: ...
MOVIE: Oh, and him and Mina will get it on.
JENKAVY: ...
MOVIE: ...Is that a good silence?
JENKAVY: SO. MUCH. RAGE. *HYDE!SMASH*
That movie is just so frustrating. I mean, the idea is so amazing and wonderful and I totally love it, which is why I’m so disappointed in the actual movie, because it could have been the most awesome movie ever. I have a lot of problems with the character portrayals, though I don’t know if those originated in the comic, I suspect they did. Mina just seems like a token character, like the writers were like, oh hey, we need a chick in here, and we should probably have a vampire, cuz everybody likes vampires. What if we had a female vampire? That’d be super hot! I mean, Mina in the book Dracula is not particularly interesting or badass. And she isn’t a vampire. And like I said, if they wanted a vampire who wasn’t Drac himself, Renfield would have been an awesome, insane, non-traditional vamp to add to the team.
Another major annoyance for a Victorian Lit geek like me is the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde character. There is no basis in the source material for a hulk-ripoff!Hyde. It’s nit “you won’t like me when I’m angry,” it’s “you won’t like me when I’m completely rid of the moral shackles imposed upon me by this repressive society”, which I personally think is a lot more interesting. Also more interesting? Instead of a brainless brute, a hairy little deviant who acts on all of his selfish, impulsive desires and BEATS PEOPLE WITH HIS CANE FOR NO REASON. It’s like, hey, are you looking at me funny? You are, aren’t you! *excessively violent beating ensues* In my opinion, that would have been way better than “HYDE NO LIKE VICTORIAN MORALS! HYDE SMASH!”
Of course, there are other problems with League that are apparent to average viewers who aren’t well-versed in nineteenth century horror. The plot makes NO SENSE. Seriously, I’ve seen it like three times, and I still don’t understand the whole blowing-up-Venice thing. (The weird thing is, whenever its on, I always end up watching it, even though I know its a bad movie and it frustrates me.)
But on to the main attraction: my issues with their portrayal of Dorian. Geeze, don’t get me started. (But I already have; there is no hope! Muahahaha!) First, Dorian is never supposed to be immortal. The painting does not confer him with eternal life, but eternal youth. Dorian doesn’t wish to live forever, but to remain young and attractive for as long as he lives. Therefore, you can’t even hypothesize that had he not killed himself, he would have lived past a normal lifespan. There’s no textual basis for that. And there’s definitely no reason for him to be immune to gunshots, I mean, what?! And he’s a spoiled, bitchy, vain, English dandy. Not a sword-fighting mofo. I’ve noticed that the misconceptions about the portrait itself seem to not be confined to just League. Most people, with their cursory knowledge of the story, seem to be under the impression that Dorian cannot look at the portrait, for then its magic will be broken. I have no idea why this is. Also, people seem to think that the portrait just shows him getting older, and then, as time goes on, decaying into a skeleton. Seriously, I have no idea. So, for anyone who has not read the book and is wondering about the actual deal with the portrait, here’s a summary.
So, Dorian Gray is this pretty boy who gets his picture painted and is all like oh, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if the portrait aged instead of me and I remained youthful and unspoiled? So exactly that happens. (Explanations are for less awesome people.)
But the portrait just doesn’t age (that would be boring and take forever for him to realize) it also shows any corruption of his soul. For instance, he does a very bad thing and when he looks at the portrait, he finds it’s gained a cruel smirk. As the novel progresses, Dorian falls further into iniquity, and the portrait becomes more and more monstrous. Yeah, it also shows him aging, but only eighteen years pass in the novel between the painting of the portrait and his death. and the signs of aging are mostly overshadowed by the horrors of his corrupt soul. So, at the end of the novel, Dorian is middle-aged, not unspeakably old or some shit like that. And for the whole can’t-look-at-the-portrait-thing, in the novel its kind of the opposite way round. The horror doesn’t come from not knowing what the portrait looks like, but that Dorian knows exactly how the portrait is affected by his behavior. In fact, he develops a strange fascination with the painting, noting each little change with morbid curiosity. His destruction is caused by his not being able to unsee the portrait, to hide it from his mind. And in the end, its not the portrait itself that kills him, but his own hatred of the portrait, and by extension, his own soul.
...Now to move away from that strange, English-class-essay throwback. WTF, self? BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT. *ahem* So, now we have a new movie adaptation. That once again, has a dark-haired actor no one would describe as angelic playing Dorian. I just - I don’t understand why nobody can get this right. I mean, even the illustrations on the covers of various editions of the book don’t do it. I JUST DON’T GET IT. IT’S LIKE WITH HARRY POTTER; JUST GET THE KID SOME DAMN GREEN CONTACTS, IT’S NOT THAT DIFFICULT. Its kind of a tiny thing to get mad about, but...it just annoys me. YOU GUYS, OSCAR WOULD HAVE WANTED A PRETTY BLOND, YOU KNOW HE WOULD,YOU NEED TO ~HONOR HIS MEMORY WITH PRETTY BLOND BOYS, COME ON. But as I’ve read, the movie commits a far greater atrocity: it INVENTS A NEW MAJOR CHARACTER. yeah, that’s never a good thing. Apparently, they give Lord Henry an adult daughter, who I fear becomes Dorian’s love interest. WHY THE FUCK IS THIS NECESSARY? REALLY?!?
Of course, despite all my bitching, I really want to see this movie. I have to, as a Oscar Wilde superfan. The film was released on 9/9/09 in the UK; it never came to theaters in the US. Oh, and it will come out on DVD in the UK. Which thanks to the whole DVD region dealio, means my American DVD player won’t be able to play it. And I have found no indication of a DVD coming out in the US, or of any other way for Americans to see this movie. Its not like I’m the only American who wants to see it; google “dorian gray movie 2009” and you’ll find numerous people asking when it’ll come to theaters, if it’ll be released on DVD, and where they can download it/watch it online (for which they should feel no shame! They were forced to! Forced!) So now I’m rather depressed about all this; I was sooo excited to see this movie, but I’m being shut out. Le sigh.
(Oh, and I tried to find it online. I looked for hours. No luck.)
MOVIE: So like, this guy Dorian, is supposed to be, like, attractive? But creepy?
JENKAVY: Well, not exactly. He's supposed to be pretty, ya know? And not creepy, because his not-creepiness is exactly what MAKES him creepy.
MOVIE: Um...so, what about this actor?
JENKAVY:...I guess he's good-looking, but...did you read the book?
MOVIE: Yeah, I mean, of course I did. Definitely.
JENKAVY: Then you would know that Dorian is exhaustively described as blond and blue-eyed. You know, angelic-looking? I mean, the point is that his physical appearance is completely at odds with his corrupted soul. There's really no point if he looks like a total creeper - albeit a dark, tall, handsome creeper - the whole time. Not to mention pretty blonds were Oscar's type. I gotta represent, yo.
MOVIE:...
JENKAVY:...?
MOVIE:...
MOVIE:...So how about this magical ancient Egyptian artifact, huh? That's pretty cool, right?
JENKAVY: WHAT
JENKAVY: YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT
MOVIE: ???
JENKAVY: SERIOUSLY I am so sick and tired of movies employing Ancient Egyptian gods as ~magical plot devices~ while giving NO consideration to the ACTUAL FUCKING MYTHOLOGY
JENKAVY: That is a statuette of Bast. THE GODDESS OF CATS. CATS. WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE GODDESS OF CATS BE GRANTING A WISH FOR ETERNAL YOUTH FROM SOME RANDOM ENGLISH MANSLUT? I DON'T CARE IF HER LIKENESS IS IN THE PAINTING THAT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE
MOVIE: But..how else do we explain...
JENKAVY: BITCH THE BOOK NEEDS NO EXPLANATION THAT SHIT JUST HAPPENS OKAY
MOVIE: But that doesn't mean the whole thing's bad! I mean, look at how faithful we are to the book otherwise! And we've got a really young Angela Lansbury!
JENKAVY:...Did you say Angela Lansbury? I do love Angela Lansbury...
MOVIE: And look at this bitching painting that is the only thing in the movie shot in color!
JENKAVY: HOLY CRAP THAT IS AWESOME
(Srsly, u guise. AWESOME.It’s at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I’ve gotten to see it in person. It is HUGE and RIDICULOUSLY DETAILED and kinda the best thing ever.)
JENKAVY: Movie, I’m sorry I said anything bad about you. I’m sold.
So that was a summary of my relationship with the 1945 movie The Picture of Dorian Gray. Despite my nitpicky fannish problems with it, its actually a pretty sweet movie, and definitely the film adaptation truest to the book.
But there’s another movie, one that although it does not aim to adapt the book, merely to use the titular character, it manages to fail spectacularly at that as well as epic-failing the entire fucking movie. THAT’S RIGHT, LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, I’M FUCKING CALLING YOU OUT
A caveat: I have only seen the movie. I have not read the graphic novel, I know nothing about it, and have no idea if the problems I have with the movie are applicable to it. I’m just talking about what I saw, folks.
MOVIE: Okay, so what if there were like, all these awesome old-school literary characters that formed, like an elite team of awesome and saved the world?
JENKAVY: BEST PREMISE EVER :D
MOVIE: IKR? So it’ll include Allen Quartermain...
JENKAVY: Don’t really know and don’t really care.
MOVIE:...adult Tom Sawyer...
JENKAVY: Um, okay...
MOVIE: ...The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo...
JENKAVY: So far so good...
MOVIE:...Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde...
JENKAVY: WAIT A MINUTE WHY THE FUCK DOES MR. HYDE LOOK LIKE A NON-GREEN HULK IN A TOP HAT
MOVIE:...Mina Harker...
JENKAVY: WAIT WHY IS SHE A VAMPIRE THEY SPENT THE WHOLE BOOK PREVENTING MINA FROM BECOMING A VAMPIRE
JENKAVY: ALSO SHE IS NOT AT ALL EXTRAORDINARY
JENKAVY: OR A GENTLEMAN
JENKAVY: I MEAN, I CAN SEE WHY HAVING DRACULA WOULD BE TOO CLICHE, BUT WHAT ABOUT MOTHERFUCKING RENFIELD? SERIOUSLY, THINK ABOUT IT. THEY’D PROMISE HIM RATS FOR BEING A GOOD BOY AND GOING BATSHIT CRAZY WITH KNIVES
JENKAVY: IT’D BE AMAZING
MOVIE:...
MOVIE:...and Dorian Gray.
JENKAVY: OMG SERIOUSLY? \o/
MOVIE: Yeah! See, he’s this suave badass with a sword who is like, immortal and immune to guns and stuff and can never look at his portrait otherwise he’ll become like he is in the painting and since he’s super old he’ll turn into like a shriveled-up skeleton thing. Isn’t that awesome? :D
JENKAVY: ...
MOVIE: Oh, and him and Mina will get it on.
JENKAVY: ...
MOVIE: ...Is that a good silence?
JENKAVY: SO. MUCH. RAGE. *HYDE!SMASH*
That movie is just so frustrating. I mean, the idea is so amazing and wonderful and I totally love it, which is why I’m so disappointed in the actual movie, because it could have been the most awesome movie ever. I have a lot of problems with the character portrayals, though I don’t know if those originated in the comic, I suspect they did. Mina just seems like a token character, like the writers were like, oh hey, we need a chick in here, and we should probably have a vampire, cuz everybody likes vampires. What if we had a female vampire? That’d be super hot! I mean, Mina in the book Dracula is not particularly interesting or badass. And she isn’t a vampire. And like I said, if they wanted a vampire who wasn’t Drac himself, Renfield would have been an awesome, insane, non-traditional vamp to add to the team.
Another major annoyance for a Victorian Lit geek like me is the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde character. There is no basis in the source material for a hulk-ripoff!Hyde. It’s nit “you won’t like me when I’m angry,” it’s “you won’t like me when I’m completely rid of the moral shackles imposed upon me by this repressive society”, which I personally think is a lot more interesting. Also more interesting? Instead of a brainless brute, a hairy little deviant who acts on all of his selfish, impulsive desires and BEATS PEOPLE WITH HIS CANE FOR NO REASON. It’s like, hey, are you looking at me funny? You are, aren’t you! *excessively violent beating ensues* In my opinion, that would have been way better than “HYDE NO LIKE VICTORIAN MORALS! HYDE SMASH!”
Of course, there are other problems with League that are apparent to average viewers who aren’t well-versed in nineteenth century horror. The plot makes NO SENSE. Seriously, I’ve seen it like three times, and I still don’t understand the whole blowing-up-Venice thing. (The weird thing is, whenever its on, I always end up watching it, even though I know its a bad movie and it frustrates me.)
But on to the main attraction: my issues with their portrayal of Dorian. Geeze, don’t get me started. (But I already have; there is no hope! Muahahaha!) First, Dorian is never supposed to be immortal. The painting does not confer him with eternal life, but eternal youth. Dorian doesn’t wish to live forever, but to remain young and attractive for as long as he lives. Therefore, you can’t even hypothesize that had he not killed himself, he would have lived past a normal lifespan. There’s no textual basis for that. And there’s definitely no reason for him to be immune to gunshots, I mean, what?! And he’s a spoiled, bitchy, vain, English dandy. Not a sword-fighting mofo. I’ve noticed that the misconceptions about the portrait itself seem to not be confined to just League. Most people, with their cursory knowledge of the story, seem to be under the impression that Dorian cannot look at the portrait, for then its magic will be broken. I have no idea why this is. Also, people seem to think that the portrait just shows him getting older, and then, as time goes on, decaying into a skeleton. Seriously, I have no idea. So, for anyone who has not read the book and is wondering about the actual deal with the portrait, here’s a summary.
So, Dorian Gray is this pretty boy who gets his picture painted and is all like oh, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if the portrait aged instead of me and I remained youthful and unspoiled? So exactly that happens. (Explanations are for less awesome people.)
But the portrait just doesn’t age (that would be boring and take forever for him to realize) it also shows any corruption of his soul. For instance, he does a very bad thing and when he looks at the portrait, he finds it’s gained a cruel smirk. As the novel progresses, Dorian falls further into iniquity, and the portrait becomes more and more monstrous. Yeah, it also shows him aging, but only eighteen years pass in the novel between the painting of the portrait and his death. and the signs of aging are mostly overshadowed by the horrors of his corrupt soul. So, at the end of the novel, Dorian is middle-aged, not unspeakably old or some shit like that. And for the whole can’t-look-at-the-portrait-thing, in the novel its kind of the opposite way round. The horror doesn’t come from not knowing what the portrait looks like, but that Dorian knows exactly how the portrait is affected by his behavior. In fact, he develops a strange fascination with the painting, noting each little change with morbid curiosity. His destruction is caused by his not being able to unsee the portrait, to hide it from his mind. And in the end, its not the portrait itself that kills him, but his own hatred of the portrait, and by extension, his own soul.
...Now to move away from that strange, English-class-essay throwback. WTF, self? BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT. *ahem* So, now we have a new movie adaptation. That once again, has a dark-haired actor no one would describe as angelic playing Dorian. I just - I don’t understand why nobody can get this right. I mean, even the illustrations on the covers of various editions of the book don’t do it. I JUST DON’T GET IT. IT’S LIKE WITH HARRY POTTER; JUST GET THE KID SOME DAMN GREEN CONTACTS, IT’S NOT THAT DIFFICULT. Its kind of a tiny thing to get mad about, but...it just annoys me. YOU GUYS, OSCAR WOULD HAVE WANTED A PRETTY BLOND, YOU KNOW HE WOULD,YOU NEED TO ~HONOR HIS MEMORY WITH PRETTY BLOND BOYS, COME ON. But as I’ve read, the movie commits a far greater atrocity: it INVENTS A NEW MAJOR CHARACTER. yeah, that’s never a good thing. Apparently, they give Lord Henry an adult daughter, who I fear becomes Dorian’s love interest. WHY THE FUCK IS THIS NECESSARY? REALLY?!?
Of course, despite all my bitching, I really want to see this movie. I have to, as a Oscar Wilde superfan. The film was released on 9/9/09 in the UK; it never came to theaters in the US. Oh, and it will come out on DVD in the UK. Which thanks to the whole DVD region dealio, means my American DVD player won’t be able to play it. And I have found no indication of a DVD coming out in the US, or of any other way for Americans to see this movie. Its not like I’m the only American who wants to see it; google “dorian gray movie 2009” and you’ll find numerous people asking when it’ll come to theaters, if it’ll be released on DVD, and where they can download it/watch it online (for which they should feel no shame! They were forced to! Forced!) So now I’m rather depressed about all this; I was sooo excited to see this movie, but I’m being shut out. Le sigh.
(Oh, and I tried to find it online. I looked for hours. No luck.)