JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 67 из 359) The difference between Utterson and Jekyll is that Jekyll would only drink gin to mortify a taste for vintages in public. In the privacy of his own library he's the sort of man who might well drink an entire bottle of good port (and probably congratulate himself on not having to share it, or any of his fine Jamaican cigars, either). Perhaps he would not want to be caught dead attending a risqué play in the West End, but he is more than happy to go as Hyde. Jekyll does not want to mortify any of his tastes. He only wants to gratify them in secret.
9
All of that is very interesting, you may be saying, but the fact is there hasn't been a good Werewolf movie in ten or fifteen years (a couple of pretty dismal made-for-TV movies, such as Moon of the Wolf, but they hardly count); and although there have been a good number of Jekylland-Hyde movies, * I don't believe there has been a full-fledged remake (or ripoff ) of Stevenson's story since American-International's Daughter of Dr. Jekyll in the late fifties, and that was a sad comedown for one of the original Mad Doctors, a figure that most horror buffs view with a great deal of affection.
*Three great actors took the dual role: John Barrymore (1920), Fredric March (1932), and Spencer Tracey (1941). March won an Academy Award for the role, earning him the distinction of being the only actor ever to win the award for Best Actor as a result of his efforts in a horror movie.
But remember that what we're talking about here, at its most basic level, is the old conflict between id and superego, the free will to do evil or to deny it . . . or in Stevenson's own terms, the conflict between mortification and gratification. This old struggle is the cornerstone of Christianity, but if you want to put it in mythic terms, the twinning of Jekyll and Hyde suggests another duality: the aforementioned split between the Apollonian (the creature of intellect, morality, and nobility, "always treading the upward path") and the Dionysian (god of partying and physical gratification; the get-down-and-boogie side of human nature). If you try to take it any further than the mythic, you come damn close to splitting the body and mind altogether . . . which is exactly the impression Jekyll wants to give his friends: that he is a creature of pure mind, with no human tastes or needs at all. It's hard to picture the guy sitting on the fakes with a newspaper.
If we look at the Jekyll and Hyde story as a pagan conflict between man's Apollonian potential and his Dionysian desires, we see that the Werewolf myth does indeed run through a great many modern horror novels and movies.
9
All of that is very interesting, you may be saying, but the fact is there hasn't been a good Werewolf movie in ten or fifteen years (a couple of pretty dismal made-for-TV movies, such as Moon of the Wolf, but they hardly count); and although there have been a good number of Jekylland-Hyde movies, * I don't believe there has been a full-fledged remake (or ripoff ) of Stevenson's story since American-International's Daughter of Dr. Jekyll in the late fifties, and that was a sad comedown for one of the original Mad Doctors, a figure that most horror buffs view with a great deal of affection.
*Three great actors took the dual role: John Barrymore (1920), Fredric March (1932), and Spencer Tracey (1941). March won an Academy Award for the role, earning him the distinction of being the only actor ever to win the award for Best Actor as a result of his efforts in a horror movie.
But remember that what we're talking about here, at its most basic level, is the old conflict between id and superego, the free will to do evil or to deny it . . . or in Stevenson's own terms, the conflict between mortification and gratification. This old struggle is the cornerstone of Christianity, but if you want to put it in mythic terms, the twinning of Jekyll and Hyde suggests another duality: the aforementioned split between the Apollonian (the creature of intellect, morality, and nobility, "always treading the upward path") and the Dionysian (god of partying and physical gratification; the get-down-and-boogie side of human nature). If you try to take it any further than the mythic, you come damn close to splitting the body and mind altogether . . . which is exactly the impression Jekyll wants to give his friends: that he is a creature of pure mind, with no human tastes or needs at all. It's hard to picture the guy sitting on the fakes with a newspaper.
If we look at the Jekyll and Hyde story as a pagan conflict between man's Apollonian potential and his Dionysian desires, we see that the Werewolf myth does indeed run through a great many modern horror novels and movies.