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.

Dark Shadows in the 18th Century: costumes

I am really going to miss the 18th century when they go back to the boring old 20th. i think the period costumes are quite accurate. 

When Millicent & Ruby Tate wore short sleeves, I wondered if women did that in those days, & i learned that they did. Compare the costumes of Naomi & Milicent to see what was old school & what was the latest thing in 1795. 

Short sleeves, high waist emphasizing the bust, & natural, unboned bodice were the mini skirts & go-go boots of their day.

THOUGHTS ON DARK SHADOWS

Now that I changed my Netflix membership so I can get disks in the mail as well as streaming shows on my computer, I was planning to revel in my joy at being able to watch Dark Shadows again after 40 years or so. I have been in love with Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins since I was 9 years old, & was heartbroken when the series suddenly went off the air in 1971 with no explanation or warning.

I've finished Collection 5, which I think is where the Barnabas/Josette/ Angelique triangle culminated in the witches curse causing Barnabas to become undead.

Now that I'm halfway through Collection 6, I feel less inclined to revel in the recovered joy of Barnabas than to mourn for the moral dissolution of Barnabas. It's all so sad.

Barnabas when he was alive was an extremely decent guy by 18th century standards

His indiscretion with the maid of his fiance's aunt would not have raised eyebrows in the 1790's, nor in the 1960's, for that matter. Being ahead of its time Dark Shadows had something of a 1970's sensibility, by which the fact that the maid was willing & the whole scene took place in a looser moral and warmer physical climate than stodgy, chilly Collinsport, did not excuse the gentleman's taking advantage of the situation, as so many gentlemen did in those days.

None of this means Barnabas deserved his horrible fate, of course. But no matter how willing the woman or how tropical or voodoo-savvy the locale, the moral seems to be you just don't know what the consequences of the mildest indiscretion will be.

Once Barnabas had become undead, he began the journey from uncommonly decent 18th century gentleman to evil undead monster.

Part of that journey seems to be to allow himself to indulge a little, and then a lot, in the few or many, depending on how you look at it, pleasures & advantages of his situation.

It seems like whatever happened between him and Angelique was the only time Barnanbas the living man got to indulge in lust. He never got to have married lawful lust with Josette. And that was it, while he was alive. But once he was undead, he got to indulge in blood lust.

The way he looks at the living, pulsing necks of his intended victims -- that's lust. And that's why 200 years later, he spurned Julia's offer of herself with some spurious excuse about how he needs her to have a will of her own so she can be his doctor, and settled on Carolyn. He wants to suck the blood of a young nubile woman.

But it's not only about pleasure. At first that stake through the heart was all he wanted, as it would end the curse. But Angelique would not allow that to happen. After that, he began to take extreme measures to protect his undead existence. And that's where he began to resort to murder. He began to resort to taking advantage of his vampire powers, as well as the one power he had while alive. The power to make women like, or even love him.

He tried to be good. He tried to warn all these women away from him. But we all know the consequence of an overwhelmingly attractive man saying "no, no, stay away from me, I'm no good for you." They pretty much throw themselves at him, and end up dead. All except Josette, who survived her bite. This must have been how he learned he could bite without killing, as 200 years later he did with Willy, & then Maggie. I guess his love for Josette led to the restraint that allowed her to survive, & eventually during all those years chained in his coffin he was able to learn how to do that on purpose, when Willy broke the chain & unwittingly let him out.

Jonathan Frid is 1 of 2 actors I've seen portray extreme benevolence & extreme viciousness in a single character. The other one is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Echo in Lost. (I think of him as the wonderful actor with the unpronounceable 2 names.) Barnabas, whether alive or undead, has the power to inspire uncommon affection, loyalty or love. And Jonathan Frid has uncommon power as an actor. That's ultimately what made Dark Shadows such a persistent success, regardless of how good the early pre-Barnabas episodes were.

Connection between real life love of space program and love of sci-fi

   

Once, without plan & by chance, I saw a space shuttle landing on TV. It was profoundly thrilling. As the machine came to a stop and stood on the runway, I thought, "That thing has been in outer space. It was JUST THERE and now it's back." I realized I have feelings about space travel that are not subject to rational thought. That is, politics, opinions about the value of space travel and space exploration, don't matter. It's an absolute. We must go into space.

How much does having watched Star Trek since I was six years old have to do with this?

Well, my introduction to the fantasy and the reality of space travel pretty much happened at the same time.

I was six when I first heard these words:
"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Then, two days after my eighth birthday, the people who ran the Hollywood Los Feliz Jewish Center wheeled a TV into the gym and herded us campers in to watch the moon landing.

I knew since then that imagining going into "Space, the Final Frontier" was an indelible part of my reality, as was actually going into space, as in "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

The confluence of these two experiences left me not only with the imperative that we must go into space, but my own answer to the question "Why must we go into space?"

Glued to NASA TV on my computer screen watching the space shuttle program's final mission to the International Space Station now, in July 2011, I think of the role science fiction has played in shaping this answer:

I think of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. It confronts us with the possibility that an alien intelligence, vastly greater than our own, will judge the merit of our species, and have the power to destroy us based on the outcome of that judgment.

The alien visitor Klaatu, who has landed in Washington DC, explains to a representative of the President of the United States that he must deliver a critical message to all the leaders of the world. The representative says that’s impossible.

The scene demonstrating this impossibility shows attempts to arrange the meeting failing as each possible location is rejected on grounds that seem perfectly reasonable by the standards of 1951.

Now in 2011 the space shuttle Atlantis is docked with an International Space Station made possible by cooperation of leaders of the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Klaatu would be proud. So would Gene Roddenberry.

To see the U.S. and Russia cooperating in space seems like something out of Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future: the Starship Enterprise staffed with officers from the U.S., Russia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of Africa, and an alien from the planet Vulcan.

I am also thinking of the novelette "Dinosaur Blood" by Richard A. Lovett, published in the January/February 2006 issue of Analog, in which an artificial intelligence probe placed by a loose confederation of aliens monitors the Earth to see whether its current dominant species is worthy of continued existence & possible future membership, or should be considered an evolutionary dead end and destroyed, like its predecessor the dinosaurs.

What, in this story, is the turning point that decides humanity's fate?

When humanity's representative in the eyes of the AI, a young heiress named Trista, brought to its attention by the carbon signature of the burning of the world's last gallon of gasoline, a human with the material resources to make her vision count once her vision is awakened, "had found something that had always been rare and was now nearly nonexistent. She had found the soul of an explorer."

We must come together and cooperate as one planet, and we must explore. Our very survival depends on it.

That's the message of science fiction about space travel, corroborated by the reality of space travel during my lifetime.

Source for my comments about the film The Day The Earth Stood Still: http://www.moviefanfare.com/the-day-the-earth-stood-still/


A timeline of space travel around my lifetime:

October 4, 1957

Sputnik I the first human-made object to orbit the Earth


May 25, 1961

President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade.


April 12, 196

Yuri Gagarin, 1st human in space, orbited earth


July 18, 1961

I am born


August 14, 1961

The current president of the United States, Barack Obama, is born


20 July 1969

United States's Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon


12 April 1981

STS-1 First launch of Space Shuttle Columbia


1998

Beginning of construction of the International Space Station


July 8 2011

STS-135 launch final mission space shuttle Atlantis


2011

Completion of US part of ISS


2012

Completion of Russian part of ISS

~ Linda Talisman

From Doctor Who to Star Trek: Geekily Delicious Gingerbread

The nerdy Christmas bakery eleves are at it again. Here's a selection of Nerdtastic gingerbread possibilities.  This tasty TARDIS comes with complete instructions.

This delicious take on Hogwarts is featured with 14 other clever creations on Neatorama. The Star Wars creations are not to be missed.

A nice treat for your favorite Brown Coat.

Forever Geek has a great look at perfect items for the nerd's tree.

This Flickr user has brought The Nightmare Before Christmas to living death.

Feeling ambitious? The Food Network has a gingerbread house recipe right here. Or you can learn by
watching the master (or is that mistress?), Martha Stewart work with Miss Piggy.

Enjoy your visions of gingerbread. I feel a craft attack coming on. Royal icing is the culinary equivalent of hot glue.

So what's up with that Star Trek Trailer? Analysis roundup

 

The trailers for Star Trek: Into Darkness have raised a lot of questions about just who that mysterious villian played by "Sherlock" and "The Hobbit" star Benedict Cumberbatch. (Side note: has there have been a better name for a British actor?) Speculations have run from Kahn to Spock's brother Sybok from the poorly received Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Many have insisted Cumberbatch is not playing Kahn; and they wouldn't lie to us, right? Below we have a trailer and then a link to Entertainment Weekly's blow by blow of the trailer with some interesting ideas as to what's going on. I'm pretty sure I see Carol Marcus in there. Or am I just imagining things? I hope in this version of the future Kirk's son doesn't wear a preppie sweater tied around his shoulder on the bridge. I appreciate the work of the late Merritt Butrick in Square Pegs, but not a stellar choice to play Kirk's son.

 

The Trailer

 

 

Entertainment Weekly's analysis.

 

So what do you think? Who is who in this rebooted Federation?