Beyond the Tweet: The curious creative decisions of Dark Shadows 1991/2012

In a post about the 1991 Dark Shadows “revival,” I compared the series to an ill-conceived cover song. I had this long diatribe planned that compared Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” to the odious cover by The Ataris as an example of how sentiment can be totally obliterated while still preserving structure, narrative and intent. But I scrapped that part of the piece for fear that someone would get the mistaken impression that I like Don Henley.

But the 1991 series is the equivalent of a bad cover song, and I’m beginning to wonder if the same can’t be said for the new Tim Burton movie, which appears to carry over some of the revival show’s curious creative decisions. Again, we’re introduced to Collinwood through governess Victoria Winters who, as in the 1991 series, was kinda/sorta the reincarnation of Josette DuPres. Willie Loomis has also been described as a “drunken handyman,” which sounds more like 1991 Willie Loomis than any character played by John Karlen on the original series.

I don’t want to be quick to judge a film I haven’t seen, but these decisions created serious problems in the original series, and I can’t help but believe they will serve the new film in a positive way.

Victoria Winters pushed Maggie Evans almost entirely out of the picture in the ’91 series, a decision prompted by one narrative goal: to bind the audience to a character who is equally new to the show’s concept. It’s a cheap way to buy an audience’s empathy, but it works. But it only worked for about 15 minutes, because the role served by Winters in the original story was much more complex: she was at the center of a mystery surrounding her identify.

You might even say that Dark Shadows, before Barnabas Collins arrived, was really about Victoria Winters' identity and her suggested blood ties to the Collins clan, with rest of the subplots merely orbiting this central mystery. When that element was removed in 1991, it not only robbed Victoria Winters of any meaning, but made the character of Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard inconsequential.

I also think that having the wealthy, entitled Josette reborn as a struggling waitress is a lot more interesting .

Willie Loomis, a character whose arc was about redemption in the original series, was mostly gutted in the revival series, too. When introduced, Willie was an aimless, violent dirtbag, but quickly turned into the show’s most interesting character when he put himself between Barnabas and his potential victims. As much as I love Jackie Earle Haley, I just haven’t been impressed by what little we’ve been shown of the character.

Maybe I’m expecting too much from a two-hour movie. As a comicbook fan, I’ve had to endure a lot of crummy Hollywood “interpretations” of characters over the years, so I’m a decorated fanboy veteran of these peculiar battles. But maybe it’s time we stopped looking at Hollywood to validate our passions, because it’s next to impossible for a two-hour film to present us with the same kind of experience we get from longform, serialized fiction (see From Hell, Fantastic Four, The X-Files, pretty much any Charles Dickens adaption, etc.) 

I know movies are “bigger” and “more expensive” projects, but usually they feel a little less than grand.

Josette & Angelique: A gothic Betty and Veronica?

Those were my thoughts the other day as I was watching episodes of the 1795 story arc. But moments after pressing the "Tweet" button I had another thought: Is the Angelique/Josette rivalry a riff on the Betty and Veronica feud from Archie comics?

I don't think these similarities are intentional, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. But in Dark Shadows' own perverse manner it transformed Veronica into the spoiled innocent, while Betty is made a corrupt bully.

I think it's safe to say that Barnabas is just as clueless as Archie (though Vampire Barnabas is more of a Reggie.) I don't know who Jughead would be.

The 1795 story arc is probably my favorite in the entire series and is where Dark Shadows becomes the show we remember. The 1795 story  is rich and complex, and only grows more complicated the deeper into it we get. The story also establishes one of Dark Shadows' favorite motifs: when all else fails, feed your dangling plot points to Barnabas.

It also has some of the show's best villains in Nathan Forbes, the Reverend Trask, Angelique and, eventually Barnabas Collins. But the story also features one of my least favorite characters in the entire series: Josette Du Pres.

This isn't a criticism of Katherine Leigh Scott, who I admire a great deal. Given the opportunity I'll watch pretty much anything she does, and the existence of Pomegranate Press is a testament to how smart and capable she really is. As far as I'm concerned KLS is a superhero.

But Josette was always an appallingly underwritten character and it's kind of shameful that she was more interesting dead than she ever was alive. It's never really made clear why Barnabas Collins is in love with her (a phenomenon that even Lara Parker struggled to explain in her Dark Shadows novels) and Josette sometimes seems like a character that's wandered in from another television show. She would have been much more at home on an episode of Bonanza. She certainly would have been happier.

I understand that Josette is supposed to be an innocent, and in that regard the character works. She is clearly out of her depth and is nothing more than a pawn in Angelique's campaign to conquer Barnabas. Josette is a child who is trapped in the middle of a very adult war, and if you were to remove the supernatural elements from the story she would still be at a loss to defend herself.

But Josette is further hobbled by the writers obvious love of Angelique, whose character is given the chance to develop through genuine drama and conflict. It's always a little ambiguous whether or not Angelique really loves Barnabas or if she just hates to hear the word "No" (it might be a little bit of both.) As the story begins to wind down, though, we see that Angelique is not nearly as corrupt as we were lead to believe. She's treated like trash by the Collins family and has the backbone to defy them on nothing more than moral principle. And, when Joshua tries to bribe her with a sum equal to millions of today's dollars, she still gives him the metaphorical finger.

Lara Parker was always baffled as to why Angelique became a feminist icon in the '60s, but when your competition faints whenever the wind changes direction ... well, Angelique is clearly the more independent figure.

Winner: Angelique.