nell

gothic literature & films, history, and fantasies autistic • anti-censorship • multi-fandom

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

“Mourning jewellery is a singular, emotional manifestation of grief, recollection, and cultural rituals within the substantial fabric of historical artefacts. This style of jewellery, which dates back to the Victorian era, combines intricate craftsmanship with the nuanced feelings associated with loss to create a concrete representation of sorrow. These elaborate creations, made of materials such as black jet, onyx, and even woven human hair, are testaments to the grim craftsmanship that arose in the face of loss. […] Mourning jewellery was an essential component of Victorian-era culture as it allowed people to express their grief and memorize loved ones […] rings, brooches, and lockets.

[…] Human hair has been incorporated into jewellery since at least the seventeenth century. Around that time, the hair of the dear departed began to be incorporated into memento mori pieces, as a wearable remembrance of those who had gone before. […] gifts were exchanged between friends and relatives. Although hair jewellery had been worn before 1861, Queen Victoria's usage of it following the passing of her husband, Prince Albert, revived and increased its appeal. Due to Queen Victoria's loss, jewellery designs changed from modest memories and symbols of affection to more dramatic and solemn mourning jewellery that featured the hair of a deceased loved one.”

— Alexander Lappin Mackay; “Victorian Mourning Hair Jewellery (1840-1900)” (2024)

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

But isn't Orlock kinda racist or at least prejudiced towards the Romani because of the way he was talking about them during his meeting with Thomas? Does it stem from his noble background?

Is this because of this exchange? Orlok calls the ritual Hutter witnessed “filthy” not due to racial bias, but because it's a practice which can destroy him, and prevent him from escaping his Faustian bargain. He’s not saying the Romani are “filthy”. The moment Hutter talks about seeing “gypsies” the previous night, Orlok gives him the side-eye:

And then he explains what “last night” was (Saint Andrew’s Eve) and talks about “our common people”, and Hutter calls them the “peasantry”. He’s identifying the Romani as his people. Not as in his relatives; this Orlok (like book Dracula) is of Székely ancestry. The History of the Romani people in Romania is dark with accounts of slavery (especially in Wallachia and Moldavia), with Transylvania (where Orlok is from) being a sort of exception, where the Romani, according to the law, were free men, not slaves. By the 16th century (during Orlok’s human life), there’s accounts of many Romani in Transylvania as no longer nomad.

Which leads me to the next point: the Romani work for Count Orlok, the same way they work for Dracula in the novel. That’s why there’s a shovel at the crypt. Unlike the previous adaptations, this Orlok needs help to get his sarcophagus around, like shown by his scenes with Herr Knock once he arrives at Wisburg. Meaning, someone transported his sarcophagus to the harbour for him to travel. That’s where the Romani also come in, like in the book (they are the ones who assist Dracula moving about, as well). The Handsome Roma Man has a gold tooth, and the brunette Romani dancer has golden coins on her hair… And later Orlok exchanges a sack full of Roman and Dacian gold coins for Thomas’ signature in the covenant papers. Based on these details, the Romani are getting paid in gold for their services.

More relevant to ask: were the Romani Thomas saw even real, to begin with? The ones he met at dusk, probably, but the ones he sees during the night in Saint Andrew’s Eve, with the supernatural being real? No. Bring on “The VVitch” tagline: “Evil takes many forms”. Which leads us to another enigma and raises some intriguing questions.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Most of these accusations are really about the source material; you can blame it on Bram Stoker, not Robert Eggers, Murnau or even Werner Herzog. -> ok no you've to stuck to one narrative. Either Eggers can subvert Dracula and change completely the narrative or he's tied by the novel's xenophobia, it cannot be both!

I never mentioned the novel’s xenophobia, nor antisemitism, for that matter. Stoker included the Romani as superstitious and as Dracula’s helpers, that was my point. Thomas Hutter uses the G-slur because his book counterpart Harker does the same and, unfortunately, it’s period accurate; this was something I’ve seen being used against Eggers several times. Including the fact there are Roma people in his film connected to Orlok/Dracula, when this is Stoker’s creation, not Eggers. Romani people also held beliefs about vampires, as folklorist Jan L. Perkowski explores on his “Vampires Of The Slavs” (1976). Stoker never set foot in Transylvania, but he did do some research to write “Dracula”, and many of the misguided notions he had are often blamed on Emily Gerard “The Land beyond the Forest” (1888).

And again: Robert Eggers is not adaptating “Dracula”; he’s doing his own spin on “Nosferatu” as created by F. W. Murnau, Henrik Galeen and Albin Grau, who included a bunch of stuff that’s not in the book, at all. Dracula’s victims don’t die of plague, nor does he bring a rat transmitted plague to Germany. Dracula isn’t obsessed with one female character like Count Orlok. In all honestly, it’s still mindblowing to me how everyone recognizes “Nosferatu” is a sort of “Dracula” rip off while thinking Ellen’s book counterpart is Mina. I don’t remember Mina sleepwalking in the book while Dracula is on his way to Whitby, but there’s another female character who does, and Eggers directly compared her to his Ellen.

[segamascott]

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

“Yet, difficult is the sword's nature, for it can only be unsheathed in the dark of night.”

THE NORTHMAN (2022); dir. Robert Eggers

NOSFERATU (2024); dir. Robert Eggers

[presentlydean]

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't think anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Oh dang so Ellen doesnt really know who Orlock is and only says its a demon because of Von Franz??

Yes! This is whole reason the mainstream interpretation of this film is all wrong and is baseless in film canon. Plus why Eggers himself never retracted from saying his version is a “demon lover story” and a Gothic Romance between Ellen and Orlok, and kept bringing up “Wuthering Heights” in the face of backlash. Or why Bill Skarsgård so confidently called Orlok the “romantic lead” to “Fangoria”.

And that’s exactly what Willem Dafoe explained, as well: “This [Nosferatu] had a real sacrifice and obsession to it, and I liked very much my relationship to the understanding of what Lily-Rose Depp's character must do, the kind of sacrifice she must make, her willingness and her understanding of it, and her passion for this force that she can't quite identify.” And to “Deadline”: “And then on the other hand, you have this demon lover that attracts her, and she doesn't know why, but somewhere there is a deep understanding there and a deep attraction.”

Ellen doesn’t know who the shadow at the window is (prologue), she calls it a “presence” to Von Franz. And, exactly, it’s only after the Professor says she’s possessed of some spirit, perhaps a daemon, she will insist there is a demon. In her scene with Anna (“Professor Franz said a demon!”) and Thomas, on arrival, also told her; “He has your locket.” Then, while Friedrich is out and Thomas kicks her out of bed, she dreams of meeting/facing this demon, and accuses him of possessing her: “I felt you crawling like a serpent in my body”, which he denies saying it’s her nature. The next day, she tells Harding the Professor was right, there is, indeed, a demon. It’s not her nature, it’s a demonic force who’s to “blame” for her “behavior”, which Harding dismisses because he sees right through Ellen. I really prefer the interpretation where the supernatural is real (otherwise this is bleak as hell) but once you go down the rabbit hole of the collective psychosis is hard to see anything else because it’s all very clear.

So when Ellen says “he took me as his lover, then” (connecting this to her dreams, when Orlok enchanted her to dream only of her lost husband) is like Thomas says: “impossible”. The narrative of the film says so, she can’t possibly be talking about the 19th century, and she isn’t because this is Folk Horror (that’s literally Eggers brand) and Count Orlok is a folk vampire based on Balkan and Slavic vampire folklore. The vampire of European folklore doesn’t target random people like the pop culture or literary vampire, it targets their living relatives, and their haunting type is more similar to Western ghosts. Their goal is to kill their living relatives, and that’s exactly want Orlok wants from Ellen. He wants her soul. This is already dark as it is, but for some reason, the mainstream decided it needed to be darker.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Nosferatu (2024) | Audio Commentary With Director Robert Eggers

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

“The highly coded conventions of melodrama performance, with its over-determined practices of characterisation, acting, and staging, constitute a self-referential sign system which exploits the playfulness and artfulness of the theatre to a high degree.

The issue of theatricality in the popular theatre of the nineteenth century is an important one. The theatre of this period is remarkable for its employment of illusionary techniques which draw attention to the play's existence as play: that is, as a game of apprehension in which both performers and spectators participate. The metatheatrical nature of the nineteenth century stage drew on this general acknowledgement of the artificiality of the stage and a sophisticated knowledge of its conventions. […] such devices often worked to increase the spectator's awareness of the artifice, and thus the process of the creation of the performance itself.”

While melodrama establishes the primacy of the feeling individual as a defence against the depersonalising forces of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century, it also stages Victorian anxieties about the existence of the individual, and the innate theatricality involved in the performance of the self. However, despite the deep suspicion of the theatre and theatricality in Victorian culture, the evidence of plays about the theatre in the nineteenth century suggests that such anxieties were mixed with delight in the power of the theatre and theatricality, and use of its performance energy to counter anxieties about identity and its representation.”

— Katherine Newey; “Melodrama and Metatheatre: Theatricality in the Nineteenth Century Theatre” (1997)

[fitfullywoven]

this makes no sense?

xavier is a whole other can of worms, but tyler is quite literally not the “average white man.” and the fact that the original poster has to make the real life argument shows they have an understanding that there’s no basis of that statement in the canonical universe.

tyler, the same man (in proper terms a boy, he was and still is a teenager in both season one and two) who was groomed and practically made a puppet by an older woman?

tyler, the same man who has had no control over his most violent of actions for almost the entirety we know him? the man who, outside of being forced to do another person’s bidding (first by laurel then by his mom, francoise, followed by his uncle issac) and his mind eating away at his conscience from not having a master, has been conflicted but enamored with wednesday?

tyler, the same man who feels as if the only individuality he’s able to cling to is the hyde? who feels he hardly even knows himself anymore?

you are allowed to not enjoy a pairing (despite it being canon), but some of you guys are blissfully ignorant or plain stupid.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

i have a question and sorry if this sounds dumb but is the darkness sexuality in this?

The core themes here are sex and death, so sexuality is only half of the equation.

Nosferatu is Death personified, as Professor Von Franz says: “Is a force more powerful than evil. It is death itself.” Orlok, as the folk vampire, brings plague, disease = death. However, due to the time period views on sexuality, sexuality itself (especially female) was seen as a disease, which makes that connection and this as the perfect time frame to explore these two topics together, through the human characters. It’s Freud’s Eros and Thanatos theory. It’s also present in feminist literary criticism of “Dracula”.

As Marie-Gabrielle Rotie explained, Ellen’s character is more about the medicalization of women’s bodies and sexuality by 19th century medicine, rather than owned by her husband and motherhood (that’s Anna’s case). So that connection between sex and disease is very present in her character, yes. Of course, this takes us to larger themes of pregnancy/childbirth related death or even STD’s (very affiliated with the Dracula mythos), and masturbation was believed to cause death during this time, and it’s more thematically appropriate with this version, and Ellen herself.

But, then, of course, this story goes deep into the occult. And Ellen’s trances have another meaning other than Female hysteria, connected to a form of mediumship. And this is where the Death half comes in. Literally, since is through her trances Ellen is able to communicate with Orlok, and has visions she calls “dreams”. Folks need to keep in mind what Robert Eggers explained: Ellen doesn’t have the language to talk about this, or even understand her gift due to the environment she’s a part of. And even the Professor is learning; as he says after his examination of Ellen, he must return to his studies.

Even Count Orlok himself… he didn’t sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge on sex. Given the context and his current condition there’s only one knowledge he could have bargained for: Necromancy, bring people back from the dead. And since Bill sort of confirmed being a reanimated corpse himself wasn’t his plan, then his intention was to bring someone else back from the dead. Even Ellen herself can be considered a sort of necromancer, her gift is connected to death.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

"Eggers told me Death and the Maiden was on his mind while adapting Nosferatu, as well as countless other classic tales about love being supplanted by obsession or self-annihilation, from The Daemon Lover to Wuthering Heights."

https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/nosferatu-beauty-ending-shot/

Thoughts on this review?

That’s the person who says Ellen sacrifices herself to save Thomas when Lily-Rose Depp literally tells him only Orlok can fulfill Ellen. I think that alone, makes it clear there’s nothing of worth on that review. Also he calls the Solomonari codex of secrets “Knock’s 19th century diary”… a Early Modern codex based on Romanian folklore. As an Historian that made me want throw my phone against the wall. Dude is also clueless about the historical context surrounding the story if he thinks there’s any “equal footing” between Ellen and Hutter, when she’s his property. This is the early 19th century.

Moving on, I think it’s obvious dude never read “Wuthering Heights” because how is that a story about “love being supplanted by self-annihilation”? The thing about Cathy and Heathcliff is they can only be together in death, the book ends with their ghosts haunting the Moors, together at last and there’s peace in the land (doesn’t it ring any bells?) Eggers said several times he was inspired by Cathy-Heathcliff-Linton love triangle to write his Ellen-Orlok-Thomas. Death and the Maiden is not a “classic tale”; it’s a Art History motif. In several interviews, Eggers talked about the literary archetype of the “demon lover”, not the 17th century ballad.

This reviewer says Eggers told him, years ago, he wanted to do a story of that sort (forsaking love for self-annihilation), and yes, he did that… in “The Northman” since Amleth not only chooses his vengeance/death over a life with Olga and their children (love), but his soul goes to Valhalla at the end, to where Olga can’t never follow due to their different religious backgrounds. Their love lives on their bloodline, yes, but their souls can’t never reunite. While in “Nosferatu” (if we go by the supernatural being real), Orlok initiates Ellen into the mysteries of Zalmoxis by selecting her as the Messenger, so both their souls can ascend, together, to the “blessed kingdom of Zalmoxis”.

Ellen already sacrifices herself every single day in the society she lives in, as Eggers very much said. She sacrifices her identity, who she truly is, to try and fit into this society which will never accept her, and has no place for her… unless it’s in the “madhouse” because she is a “madwoman”, a hysteric and melancholic. She already lives a life of death, or “death in life”; she has nothing of her own except her inner world. So I would say his “Nosferatu” is actually a subversion of “forsaking love for self-annihilation”; it’s forsaking self-annihilation for love. Both self-love and love with Orlok’s soul, as Marie-Gabrielle Rotie puts it.

[sunstiana]

[fitfullywoven]

characters i relate deeply to

(posted on tiktok under vampyredany and twitter fangedfolk)

[ellensferatu]

“Oh no! 😱Orlok, the realms have mixed!!! Eastern Slavic churches right next to a gothic spire! Where are we?!!”

“No matter where we are, enchantress. We’re together - and it’s the only thing that really matters”

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Frances Jauncey Ketchum, “Common Lilac, A Native of Persia” (c. 1818-20)

“The lilac has been dedicated to first emotions of love, because nothing is more charming than the appearance of this graceful shrub in the return of spring. Indeed, the freshness of its greenery, the suppleness of its branches, the abundance of its flowers, their fleeting, ephemeral beauty, their tender and varied colors—everything about it evokes those celestial emotions that enhance beauty and lend a divine grace to adolescence.

[…] What a combination of fragrance, freshness, grace, and delicacy! What a variety of details, what overall beauty! Ah! Doubtless, from the very beginning, Providence destined it to be the link that would one day unite Europe and Asia. The lilac, which the traveler Busbeck brought to us from Persia, now grows on the mountains of Switzerland and in the forests of Germany.”

— Charlotte de La Tour; “Le Langage des Fleurs” (1819) - the first dictionary to explain the meaning behind multiple flowers, and introduce middle and upper classes to their significance.