Caseus Archivelox: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Fly, & Paris Is Burning

2002-02-25
First off, there is one too many pronunciations of Jekyll. People need to pronounce it correctly. It bothers me when I hear it pronounced correctly (as in the movie) and I cringe because of being misled and not corrected for so many years.

Also, the special effects of the dissolves for the transformations are sometimes perfect, and very impressive for the time. Although occasionally the dissolves are noticeable, I am not sure whether it was because I knew to look for them; they were nicely concealed, and subtler than most computer graphic work today.

I also appreciated the very sexual nature of the film, which, had it been released three years later, with the implementation of the Hays production code, would have been taken out and the film would have been less interesting from our standpoint. Sex is very important in the film, from the obvious lasciviousness of Mr. Hyde and semi-nude Ivy Pearson to the subtler hairy hands of Mr. Hyde (suggesting the “hairy palms” of masturbators) and the nude pictures in Ivy’s bedroom. Jekyll is an obviously sexually frustrated man, and when he is denied marriage with Muriel (and it’s accompanying conjugal rights), he “creates” the sexual predator Mr. Hyde (a play on the hidden sexual desires that he thinks are in all men) in order to fulfill his sexual appetites. With further transformations, the makeup becomes more pronounced and Hyde more disfigured. His sexual desires ultimately turn him into “one of the living dead” and destroy him.

The use of the first person camera help to force the viewer not only to see the world from Jekyll’s perspective, but also to identify with his feelings of sexual frustration and desire. When he is cornered in his lab at the end of the film, instead of using a medium or far shot of Dr. Lanyon pointing Jekyll out as Hyde, Mamoulian uses the first person shot, implicating the audience as a partner in Hyde’s crimes as well, suggesting that since the audience (presumably) took pleasure in the story, they have also turned into Hyde-like sexual deviants.

Having seen many Cronenberg films in my life (Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, Crash, and eXistenZ), I am constantly amazed at how uncomfortable they make me feel, although M. Butterfly and Crash made me feel uncomfortable due to their not-as-good-ness, not creepy organic materials showing up in the weirdest places or head exploding. In The Fly, Cronenberg creates an organic monster that eventually becomes fused with inorganic materials (and thus must die, in Cronenberg’s organic-focused worldview). Even without the now famous “Help me” lines from the original film, Seth Brundle’s transformation into a fly is more disturbing and much more graphic than the original, and his use of his own vomit to eat and eventually as a weapon makes the audience even more disgusted than when the baboon is turned inside out. Although the plot holes occasionally get in the way of the audience (without a large amount of suspension of their disbelief), it is more enjoyable than some of Cronenberg’s later films.

The Fly is a painful story about the disintegration of a loved one in front of your eyes, which mirrors the decline of humans into old age, although it has some fun leprosy similarities, as parts of Brundle’s body fall off, and it could almost be seen as a metaphor for AIDS, but that would require some selective readings and ignorance of some of the facts of the movie. But the fears of seeing someone you love fall apart mirror the fears of other horror films of the 1980s like The Hunger, which also revolves around the fear of aging in the consumer and youth dominated culture of the 1980s.

2002-02-25 - 11:05 p.m.
So this morning, I went off to East Campus to watch two movies: "Paris is Burning" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Paris was a documentary about NYC drag queens in the late 1980s and their balls (note: not referring to their testicles) wherein they dance and strut trying to be things they're not, like being straight. It was funny (catty gay people are inherently funny (note: deadpanned to see who is paying attention)) and informative (I now know that Madonna stole voguing from the balls where it is a sort of way to insult other people by dancing rather than fighting) and eventually sad (one of the transsexuals was beaten to death and left for four days under a motel bed before his/hers/its body was found (remind me not to stay at that motel)). I waited around for [female friend] to watch "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and enjoyed it. Neat special effects, and lots of sexual innuendo. Although I did manage to embarrass myself when I was mocking Hyde's ridiculous overbite, and [classmate] from my Sexualities class walked by. She had just enjoyed "Paris is Burning" as well. Whoops.