JOSHUA COLLINS: AN 18TH CENTURY AMERICAN FATHER

Barnabas Collins was born a 19th century romantic trapped in the 18th century, unable to to win the respect of his his ultra-rational foundations-of-capitalism American revolutionary-war-veteran father.

Too bad for him that he spent the 19th century chained in a coffin.

When he emerges in 1967, instead of being 100 years ahead of his time he is now 100 years behind, able to wow romantic Victoria Winters with rhapsodic monologues on the beauties of the night, hoping she will willingly choose to become his lost Josette & share his undead existence.

Joshua did not respect him, as he was certainly not a "chip off the old block," ready to eagerly devote his  life to whatever the family business is profiting from, currently the shipyards. But he loved him.

Louis Edmonds as Joshua Collins gave an amazing performance in Collection 6. Nathan Forbes, a scoundrel hoping to benefit from the Collins fortune, persuades him to go to the old house, stirring up hopes that he will find Barnabas living there.

http://www.collinwood.net/features/interview/edmonds.htm

One of my favorite things for an actor to do is show more than what's in the script.  When Joshua Collins goes to the old house as Lt. Forbes urges, and sees Barnabas emerge from his coffin at dusk, he says things expressing shock at all the murders so far committed & the admission that there will be more, & his intention to turn Barnabas over to the authorities. But he shows that Joshua's joy at seeing his son (apparently) alive outweighs everything else.

His hands long to touch and embrace his son, after having laid his lifeless body to rest in the secret room in the mausoleum. You can see this longing in the actor's hands, though at first they are held back by Joshua's native Yankee restraint. In a subsequent scene he is unable to resist moving toward his son, who says Father, don't touch me.

Why was Barnabas's coffin put in the secret room? Because Joshua feared that what Barnabas actually died of after having been bitten by a bat was the plague. If word got  out that the proprietor's son had died of the plague & was buried in the family mausoleum, it would destroy the business of the shipyard. Or so Joshua feared.

Conflict between the nature of a character and what is happening in the story is perhaps the essence of drama. It is in Joshua's nature to put business before personal relationships, causing his wife Naomi to ask "Do you think of me at all?"

I think conflict between Barnabas and his father is portrayed in scenes where they argued about Barnabas not being terribly interested in the family business as he waited for his fiancee Josette to arrive by ship. Clearly the marriage was an alliance between two wealthy families, the Collinses & the duPres's. Those scenes are in Collection 4, so I can see them again without having to order a disk. But the conflict is clear. For Barnabas, love comes first, for Joshua business.

But that doesn't mean Joshua doesn't love. It just means that the people he loves don't always feel loved.

This makes me think of novels that take place in the 60's in which young characters express dismay at their parents' "middle class values," thinking they only love stocks, bonds & annuities, not their children.

When I worked in a law office that created disabled needs trusts I saw hidden in the legalese laying out how parents provided for their disabled child the love the parents felt for them. The clients of this law firm were not wealthy people who would make  a trust for any child, but people of modest means who only created trusts for children with special problems. But as I read and typed the text for these trusts, I thought "This is love." I know the clients of the firm I worked for were warm people who showed all their children love in ways more tangible than the legalese of a trust. But the wealthy parents who set up trusts for any child are expressing love too, but if they are like Joshua Collins the children may not feel loved.

DARK SHADOWS, REASON & THE OCCULT

DARK SHADOWS, REASON & THE OCCULT

Watched Collection 6 disk 4 again. Am thinking more about the relationship between the 18th century, the original Age of Reason, and the 20th century, which seemed to be the Age of Reason II, at least until the mid to late 1960's, when Dark Shadows was on.

Back when I was watching collections 1-4 when Barnabas was introduced, I wondered what was wrong with these people. How much evidence did they need that something supernatural was going on?

When I watched the first disk of Dark Shadows: The Beginning, I realized that the Collins family had a long history of spooky, creepy, things that go bump, or sob uncontrollably, in the night.

Then, in Collection 4 Episode 366, Victoria Winters is transported back in time to 1795, when Joshua & Naomi Collins & their children Barnabas & Sarah lived in the old house, & Collinwood had just been built but was not yet occupied.

Joshua's sister Abigail & the man she summoned from Salem (of all places) whom she calls the "Reverend" Trask,  insist that witchcraft is going on, & conclude that Victoria must be the witch.

In 1795, it had been 100 years since the Salem Witch trials. Modern people like Joshua & Naomi Collins thought people who believed in such things, like Abigail, were throwbacks to a bygone superstitious age, and those who took advantage of them, like Trask, were charlatans.

In 1795, just as in 1967, people thought there were no such things as witches, vampires, curses and black magic.

Dark Shadows is about the conflict between rationality and reason on the one hand, and the occult, on the other, and is told from the point of view that the latter is real and the former tragically mistaken.

It's about a time when the certainties of the 20^th century, like those of the 18^th, were about to be questioned, & perhaps shattered forever.