- Joined
- May 8, 2009
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This is a bit rambling, but bear with me please?
I like vampire stories. I also like adaptations, seeing how a story translates from one medium to another. Hence I could easily write an essay on the different "takes" done with various stage and screen versions of Dracula. Wrote one myself back in the day. Not bad, if far from groundbreaking.
But what I find intriguing as well as frustrating is the relative lack of adaptations of Carmilla. For those who don't know, Carmilla is a novella written by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu and generally agreed to be a classic of the vampire genre (if you're of a mind, the full text is right here). To my knowledge it has been filmed seriously three times--by Hammer Studios as The Vampire Lovers, by Roger Vadim as Blood and Roses and for Nightmare Classics using the original title. Two radio plays. One known stage production.
And that is pretty much, as they say, it.
Why?
Methinks maybe I've figured it out. First of all, the interplay between characters in the novella is mostly missing. Dracula has all kinds of mini-dramas going on, not least because the characters have full and interesting relationships. Carmilla (written, it should noted, by someone other than someone who worked in the theatre) is a first person narrative by a lonely girl pretty much on her own in an isolated country estate. Other than the title character, she has no one her own age with whom to talk. We learn little or nothing about the lives and interests of those around her--her father, her governess, the housekeeper of the schloss. The few other characters who do interact and at least have interesting stories to relate--General Spielsdorf, the mountebank, Baron Vordenburg--are little more than walk-ons.
Another problem is the nature of the vampirism itself, at least in this story. Laura (the narrator) recounts her dreams but they don't really suggest very much in terms of dramatic stage actions. She doesn't go sleepwalking, for instance. She doesn't seem to become in any way vampiric, either. Maybe even more importantly, no one seems to suspect the truth for the longest time--until the General and Baron show up and events spiral to their conclusion with breakneck speed but little enough suspense.
LeFanu's creation has never been called an adventure, after all. Its strength lies in the atmosphere, the mood and the subtle eroticism of events from the POV of someone who seems rather innocent, almost simple. Laura, quite simply, has not a trace of the spunk of Mina Murray or Lucy Westenra.
All of which creates problems for the writer trying to adapt same. Not necessarily insurmountable problems, though. At least IMHO.
Rather than take the obvious tack of redesigning the work--in effect making the piece a lesbian version of Bram Stoker's Dracula or some such--it occurs to me a more interesting direction is deeper into the text itself. For one thing, it is in the first person which makes it the testimony of a particular individual. So might Laura be a less reliable narrator than we suspect? What, in other words, did she leave out from the written word? Perhaps out of (justified?) fear that others would read her words? As written, Laura also seems isolated from the others in her home. One might ask "Why?" What were her father, governess and housekeeper keeping from her? For what reason? And what did they think would happen if she found out? Laura evidently was visited by the spirit of her dead mother--were there other signs of her being psychic? Hints abound in the novella that Laura's mother was in fact a distant relation of Carmilla herself. Does this have something to do with why she died? For that matter, what is an English gentleman doing living in a remote estate in rural Austria anyway? Her father also agreed to take a total stranger into his home with little or no argument, upon the word of a strange woman he claimed to have never met before. What was up with that?
Seems to me this could be an extremely promising direction, if someone were of the mind to travel down that path. Given the current (and frankly recurring) fad about the undead, such might prove financially lucrative as well.
I like vampire stories. I also like adaptations, seeing how a story translates from one medium to another. Hence I could easily write an essay on the different "takes" done with various stage and screen versions of Dracula. Wrote one myself back in the day. Not bad, if far from groundbreaking.
But what I find intriguing as well as frustrating is the relative lack of adaptations of Carmilla. For those who don't know, Carmilla is a novella written by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu and generally agreed to be a classic of the vampire genre (if you're of a mind, the full text is right here). To my knowledge it has been filmed seriously three times--by Hammer Studios as The Vampire Lovers, by Roger Vadim as Blood and Roses and for Nightmare Classics using the original title. Two radio plays. One known stage production.
And that is pretty much, as they say, it.
Why?
Methinks maybe I've figured it out. First of all, the interplay between characters in the novella is mostly missing. Dracula has all kinds of mini-dramas going on, not least because the characters have full and interesting relationships. Carmilla (written, it should noted, by someone other than someone who worked in the theatre) is a first person narrative by a lonely girl pretty much on her own in an isolated country estate. Other than the title character, she has no one her own age with whom to talk. We learn little or nothing about the lives and interests of those around her--her father, her governess, the housekeeper of the schloss. The few other characters who do interact and at least have interesting stories to relate--General Spielsdorf, the mountebank, Baron Vordenburg--are little more than walk-ons.
Another problem is the nature of the vampirism itself, at least in this story. Laura (the narrator) recounts her dreams but they don't really suggest very much in terms of dramatic stage actions. She doesn't go sleepwalking, for instance. She doesn't seem to become in any way vampiric, either. Maybe even more importantly, no one seems to suspect the truth for the longest time--until the General and Baron show up and events spiral to their conclusion with breakneck speed but little enough suspense.
LeFanu's creation has never been called an adventure, after all. Its strength lies in the atmosphere, the mood and the subtle eroticism of events from the POV of someone who seems rather innocent, almost simple. Laura, quite simply, has not a trace of the spunk of Mina Murray or Lucy Westenra.
All of which creates problems for the writer trying to adapt same. Not necessarily insurmountable problems, though. At least IMHO.
Rather than take the obvious tack of redesigning the work--in effect making the piece a lesbian version of Bram Stoker's Dracula or some such--it occurs to me a more interesting direction is deeper into the text itself. For one thing, it is in the first person which makes it the testimony of a particular individual. So might Laura be a less reliable narrator than we suspect? What, in other words, did she leave out from the written word? Perhaps out of (justified?) fear that others would read her words? As written, Laura also seems isolated from the others in her home. One might ask "Why?" What were her father, governess and housekeeper keeping from her? For what reason? And what did they think would happen if she found out? Laura evidently was visited by the spirit of her dead mother--were there other signs of her being psychic? Hints abound in the novella that Laura's mother was in fact a distant relation of Carmilla herself. Does this have something to do with why she died? For that matter, what is an English gentleman doing living in a remote estate in rural Austria anyway? Her father also agreed to take a total stranger into his home with little or no argument, upon the word of a strange woman he claimed to have never met before. What was up with that?
Seems to me this could be an extremely promising direction, if someone were of the mind to travel down that path. Given the current (and frankly recurring) fad about the undead, such might prove financially lucrative as well.