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Review of Penny Dreadful S01E04 "Demimonde," in Which Women Are the True Horrors

6/2/2014

16 Comments

 
Every week I think I might have something interesting to say about Penny Dreadful, and every week I find that my thoughts turn to other and better dramas that manage to have more—and more interesting—things to say about horror, monsters, and the Victorian period.
This week Penny Dreadful (S01E04 “Demimonde”) supposedly intends to examine the highs and lows of Victorian society in search of the dark heart that hides beneath the veneer of the Gilded Age. To that end we see men in evening clothes stealing away to slum it with commoners and get splashed with blood while watching a dog kill rats, a bloody scene that contrasts with the audience at the Grand Guignol, where commoners and aristocrats alike engage in more sanitized bloodlust as they enjoy a werewolf play, complete with copious amounts of stage blood pumped from below by the Frankenstein’s Monster.

The supposed theme is hit hard enough that A.V. Club reviewer Scott Von Doviak marked it explicitly in his episode review: “Thematically the episode is about its characters confronting the darkness within themselves…” Except, of course, that it isn’t.

I remarked two weeks ago that the show seems to be fighting its own material, and here again the writers don’t seem entirely in control of their own theme. There was really very little of the “dark heart” except, ironically, on the episode’s surface. Instead, the episode delved into some disturbing territory that seemed to heavily imply that men could finally be happy if they could get over those wretched, evil women and find their love and comfort with one another.

Each of the main plot threads reinforces that theme. In the most “shocking” reveal, Dorian Gray and the apparent werewolf cowboy Ethan Chandler decide to forsake the love of women altogether and have sex with each other. (I presume this, along with Dorian’s haircut, is a nod to Oscar Wilde.) This comes about because Billie Piper’s prostitute explains more or less directly to Josh Hartnett’s Chandler that there can be no chance for a real relationship between them (she has tuberculosis and is a whore) and therefore their sex can only be transactional. Gray tries making eyes at icy psychic Vanessa Ives, but she is too busy ruining everyone’s lives by falling prey to Dracula’s manipulations and therefore bringing grief to Sir Malcom Murray’s house. There, in turn, Murray tells Victor Frankenstein that he loves the young man as a replacement son, and the implication is quite clear: If only his whorish daughter Mina hadn’t given herself to Dracula, maybe Murray could build a healthy father-son relationship with Frankenstein and live happily ever after. (He is apparently more devastated by the death of his son than his daughter as a vampire bride.) But Frankenstein (who does not express any interest in women, even to acknowledge their mere presence) is also denied healthy male relationships because his Monster is terminally horny and demands an immortal bride—and a “beautiful” one at that. His unquenchable need for female companionship threatens to undo Frankenstein. Had Frankenstein taken the precaution of neutering his Monster, he might have also enjoyed a happy existence free from the polluting influence of women. To summarize: Women are (a) whores, (b) prey for monsters, (c) fickle, and (d) the cause of every man’s ruination.

I do not believe this was the intended message, but how else are we to read at least three (!) separate plot lines that all remark on how men may be better off without women?

The show’s creator, John Logan, is openly gay and has explicitly said that he likes horror monsters because of his sexuality, as he told Slate magazine: “I realized what really attracted me to them was the very deep kinship I felt that has to do with growing up as a gay man.” The idea of horror monsters as allegories for the gay experience is nothing new and is a potent theme for horror. True Blood and In the Flesh have both made the subtext into text, but the theme goes back in film at least to gay directory James Whale’s brilliant Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Prior to this, similar themes can be found in literature, such as the lesbian seduction in J. Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla and, to an extent, the attraction of the male narrator to the vampire Lord Ruthven in Polidori’s “The Vampyre.” But what troubles me about Penny Dreadful is that Logan seems to have nothing to actually say about this important horror theme and quite possibly isn’t quite aware that he has foregrounded it since he gives nominal attention to the poorly-drawn female figures who are repeatedly claimed to be the center of the show but are in fact bejeweled decorations navigating the Madonna-whore complex.

Contrast that with a thematically similar show, the BBC’s Ripper Street, which also attempted to explore the highs and lows of Victorian society in the wake of the Ripper murders. This past season that show did a sensitive and quietly devastating episode about homosexuality in late Victorian London that had something useful to say about the hypocrisy of the old order and the inhumanity of a legal system that systematically rendered some people non-human. Even NBC’s abysmal Dracula made an effort to explore the theme in a more heartfelt way, culminating in tragedy and suicide. Surely a show about monsters could find a wealth of material here, and yet the narrative betrays not the slightest hint of depths beyond its surface.

But Logan himself said that he intended the queeny fop Sir Ferdinand Lyle (the Egyptologist) to be the show’s gay figure, as though he conceptualizes homosexuality as a performance: “The London of 1891 was not a time when gay men could be celebrated for their displays or affectations—as Oscar Wilde would be the first person to comment. So Lyle is in one way my attempt to grapple with the many complex sexual mores in the Victorian era.” It strikes me as uncomfortable to reduce the gay experience to lisping, decorating, and theatrical hand gestures (which are how Lyle is defined: characters comment explicitly on his interior decorating skills), so in that sense having the traditionally masculine Chandler having sex with the Byronic Gray at least moves us forward from there in terms of exploring the complexities of sexuality.

As Logan knows, Oscar Wilde, the creator of Dorian Gray, was imprisoned in 1895 for being gay (but only because he sued a man for calling him a sodomite); but it seems difficult to envision reality intruding on the show in such a way. I don’t get the sense the Penny Dreadful intends for any of its characters to actually live in the Victorian world so much as in an ersatz Victorian fantasia composed of horror movie clichés and the detritus of costume dramas. It’s a postmodern reflection of twentieth century critiques of Victorianism and fetishism of the same, rather than an actual attempt to grapple with the period on its own terms.

The best horror is grounded in a reality from which the monster is a shocking departure; Penny Dreadful is all departure and no grounding. As such, it can reach the grotesquerie of the Gothic in form but not the true depth of horror in its function. There are four episodes left, and there may be changes ahead, but at the halfway point in the series, it would seem an odd time for weight and consequence to enter this pseudo-spooky confection now.

16 Comments
Night Watcher
6/2/2014 09:12:24 am

Frankenstein has to be the greatest gothic movie of all time

Reply
Dave Lewis
6/2/2014 04:56:26 pm

And now for something completely different....

Jesus and Brian

A conference exploring the Historical Jesus and his Times, via Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Friday 20 June to Sunday 22 June 2014
Edmond J Safra Lecture Theatre, King's College London

This conference includes presentations from some of the foremost scholars of the historical Jesus and the first-century Judaea today, including: Martin Goodman, George Brooke, Joan Taylor, Bart Ehrman, Amy-Jill Levine, James Crossley, Philip Davies, Helen Bond, Steve Mason, Adele Reinhartz and Paula Fredriksen.

I'm sure that Bart Ehrman will state that as a historian he cannot determine if Brian Cohen actually was the Messiah.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/trs/events/jandb/about.aspx

Reply
666
6/3/2014 03:28:49 am

"Foremost scholars of the historical Jesus" - let me guess, Ben Hur...

Reply
Rodrigo the musician
6/3/2014 09:26:52 am

Ben Hur was played by Jesus Christ - Charlton Heston

Oannes
6/3/2014 10:58:29 pm

Witness the water of life in my container and the tree of life
https://apologista.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/oannes3.jpg

666
6/3/2014 11:00:42 pm

Water of Life - that explains dressing-up in the fish suits

Logical Larry
6/4/2014 12:18:19 am

You won't find historians or New Testament scholars commenting freely about this sort of stuff. You'll read about it in books by scholars - but by scholars who are expert in other fields.

A.C.
6/4/2014 12:38:43 am

The story of Eleazar the commander of Masada as given by Josephus shows the Zealots held Gnostic beliefs

Edward's bugle
6/4/2014 12:42:44 am

Historians claim that the Cathars rejected the eucharist and sacraments - yet a passage in The Life of St Louis by Jean de Joinville shows they clearly believed in the ceremony of the mass

A.C.
6/4/2014 12:44:11 am

A. E. Waite was one of the few who referred to that passage in Jean de Joinville about the Cathars

Shawn Flynn
6/3/2014 02:04:11 am

I knew from the second they introduced Grey that he was going to bang one of the other guys. Mostly because he did remind me of Oscar Wilde and I actually feel kinda stupid for not knowing he was creator of Dorian Grey. I had actually figured Dorian would get shacked up with Frankenstein. I'm just waiting for the reveal that the cowboy dude isn't a werewolf, but a werebear, haha.

Reply
Drew
6/4/2014 01:26:36 pm

I'm enjoying the various meditations on immortality in the show. Caliban is cursed and isolated by it, Dorian is bored by it, Dracula is loving it, Sir Murray seeks it at the birth of the Nile, etc.

Reply
Larry b
6/8/2014 06:07:42 am

The Ethan/Dorian hook up made no sense to me. There was nothing in Ethan's character development up to that point that foreshadowed he would do that. It seemed forced and gratuitous.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
6/8/2014 08:04:18 am

You expect logic on this show?

Reply
Sarah S.
6/10/2014 02:04:43 am

Yeah, I've been googling "Penny Dreadful jumped shark" since I saw that scene between Chandler and Gray. It just seemed out of character. I found this post and the questions you asked about the portrayal of women very interesting (I must disclose I am a feminist). I'm all for titillation including of the homo sort if it makes sense. But it just felt shoehorned in, to me. Things didn't get any better with Vanessa's backstory this week. I'm sad to say it because I think the production quality and the cast are amazing but this show might have lost me.

Reply
JaredMithrandir link
7/6/2014 08:19:46 am

Are you familiar with an obscure book that came out the same year as Dracula called "Blood of The Vampire.
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2013/04/classic-literature-blood-of-vampire.html

The introduction to the main available modern edition talks allot about what was called "Hysteria" and how that played a role in Victorian fears of Female Sexuality.

Also I think you might find my latest Tumblr post interesting.

Reply

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    • Miscellaneous Documents >
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