Unlike the contemporary journalists of yesteryear, film critics of today have the unique luxury of a retrospective viewpoint of classic films from the past to enrich their commentaries. Too often, though, these films are assessed through the lens of presentism and there seems to be a compulsion to judge things in the context of current societal and moral values, which we all know were most certainly not the same back then. Still, some cinema historians find the need to wipe clean the perceived verdigris of the irrelevant "old ways" with the new, which, in my opinion, is not only a critical error, but irresponsible and highly specious. In many ways, it reminds me of the so-called book bans of the last few years.
To put things in context, we are currently being led by the nose by billionaire tech giants, politicians, scientists, and federal and local lawmakers into an uncertain--and perhaps apocalyptic--future. Perplexing changes are made regularly; for instance, prostitution is still illegal in most of the United States, but up until only recently, sex reassignment programs and gender-affirming care were often funded by the federal government. Moreover, news media bias continues unabated on both sides of the fence and objective journalism is slowly going by way of the Dodo. And lest we forget the elephant in the room: the AI gods and their legions of worshippers, along with the data centers that support them by using yet another way to suck the life-force out of the environment.
In the meantime, literature is being usurped and re-written to satisfy presentist thinking and the arts are indiscriminately being re-fashioned into a new aesthetic. Meanwhile, social media and its influencers are shaping public opinion on what to buy, what to wear, what to eat, and more dangerously, what to think.
This brings us to the literary microcosm of cinema history in general and horror cinema history in particular, where it has been an increasingly common practice for authors to apply their own stamp of revisionism on their work from the subtlest to the most brazen of ways. The good news is that research material is more widely available today than ever before and new facts about horror films, the actors and the crews that made them are being unearthed on a regular basis. It's how the writer appropriates this information and how he or she manipulates it that makes the difference.
Granted, it's nearly impossible to remain 100% objective in this field and the topic itself inherently invites the use of metaphor and speculation when under the lens of criticism. There is nothing wrong with metaphor and speculation, especially in the case of the latter when information is insufficient to fully resolve a point. But there comes a time when, 1) The metaphor becomes an exaggerated stretch of the author's imagination, and 2) Speculation is asserted without any correlation to existing facts, that these devices are wielded carelessly, albeit deliberately, to form an opinion that is not always objective.
Now, on to the reason why I brought this topic up today: recently I was researching some information on Universal's DRACULA (1931) and found myself leafing through the section on the film in Jonathan Rigby's informative book "American Gothic: Six Decades of Classic Horror Cinema" (Signum Books, 2017). Imagine my surprise when I came across this passage:
The Eliza Doolittle type whom Dracula takes as his first London victim is dropped altogether, while the English women sharing Renfield's coach journey are more strongly identified [italics mine] as bluestockings -- which, to judge from the footage here, may have been a 1930s euphemism for lesbians.
After reading this, I was ready to pull what's left of my hair out by the roots and I remain quite dumbfounded on the assertion that Rigby resorted to in this comparison between the two women (Carla Laemmle and Daisy Belmore in the English version) and to how onion-skin thin--and unfounded--I believe this assumption to be. To make Rigby's statement clear: he was at that point discussing the Spanish version, but he implies with the words "more strongly" that his same observation applies to the English version as well.
I can't tell you how ridiculous this sounds to me, and I'll tell you why.
After watching both opening coach sequences, I can't see anything remotely indicating the two women in either scenes can be interpreted as lesbians. In addition, Rigby's term "bluestockings" is misleading. Unless there is some colloquial meaning behind it, bluestockings is a term historically used to describe women who were educated and preferred intellectual pursuits over the typical household duties expected of them. True, they were outliers of traditional society, but that didn't make them all lesbians. There was actually a Blue Stockings Society active in England in the 18th century, which antedates Stoker's "Dracula" by a hundred years. Moreover, bluestockings were looked upon in "proper" society with contempt for their unconventional lifestyle. Once again, that didn't make them all lesbians.
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From L to R: Coach passengers Carla Laemmle, Dwight Frye, an unidentified woman
believed to be Nicholas Bela's wife, Nicholas Bela and Daisy Belmore. |
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| Unidentified actors and actresses in coach with Barry Norton (L). |
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| Notice unidentified woman wearing suit, tie and "bookish" glasses. |
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| Traveling companions Carla Laemmle and Daisy Belmore (R). |
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| "Mannish" Daisy Belmore wearing suit and tie. |
In all fairness, Rigby does use the caveat verba, "may have been" when making his statement, but there is no assumptive reasoning behind it, perhaps only with the exception of a term found buried in the fourth and final DRACULA shooting script by Tod Browning and Garret Fort. When describing the coach scene, Fort writes:
Two seats running lengthwise in coach. The passengers consist of a mannish-looking Englishwoman in tweeds; her secretary, a mouselike creature with a perpetually worried air; two natives of Transylvania, a husband and wife; their little four-year-old girl, and Renfield [the child was not used in the scene].
It's entirely possible that Rigby read this himself and based his assumption on this description, but still, that's an unreasonably long stretch in my opinion.
So, is this all a big deal and worth discussing? I guess I'll leave that up to you. Does it mean you should not buy Jonathan Rigby's book? Definitely not! I've got all three of his gothic horror history books and recommend them to anyone interested in the subject. Am I just picking on him? No, I've come across these types of things in other books, but it's because I ran across this recently that I decided to write about it. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere!
