Monday, August 16, 2010

still promising a post about hollywood monsters!

Eventually I will post, as promised, my comparison of the sad monsters of Hollywood as archetype and presence.
"Gothic" directed by Ken Russell 1986




at Byron's manor the Villa Diodati:
"A menagerie, with eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon: and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were masters of it."
— Percy Blythe Shelley 1816


image found: website link
quote found on frankenstenia blog: website link

Please send me your suggestions for your favorite sad monsters. If I use it I will cite you.

5 comments:

Jim said...

From your house Faulkner appreciator-- Don't know how you want to frame this, but the bear--who I think gets named Old Ben--and the couple of different dogs--(one named Lion) from Faulkner's "The Bear" might work in somewhere--There's also that wonderful scene at the end of Boon sitting under a tree full of squirrels trying to get his broken gun to work and hollering "They're all mine, they're all mine"

Jim said...

The other piece from "The Bear" which might make it sad (or maybe not) is the scene where McCaslin read Ike the stanza from "Ode on A Grecian Urn"-- I can't copy it in this box for some reason, but what he reads is the stanza that ends "She cannot fade though thou has not thy bliss, forever wilt thou love and she be fair"--I'll post the whole passage on your wall

Eve Scherr said...

Thanks for the help- I always just thought The Bear was a long boring story that you had to read because it was Faulkner -because you couldn't think of any other reason to read it.

Jim said...

If you leave out the last part, which got added when the story got folded into the novel "Go Down Moses", "The Bear" is both shorter and more coherent--There's no doubt that the animals--especially the various hunting dogs and Old Ben the bear--have their own moral presence and something of a moral code. I vaguely remember one dog being described as something like "he had to be brave or stop being a dog". I don't know if this fits your definition of a "sad menagerie" or not

Jim said...

Another senior moment--there are five parts to the version of "The Bear" that's in the novel; the story is in the first three--the next two go off in another direction entirely