Many men are torn apart psychically because they are not in touch with their gentler emotions, writes N.C. Harrison.
To me, the TV shows made between 1960 and 1980 are probably the best that have ever been. I absolutely adore The Beverly Hillbillies, because Granny reminds me of my own great-grandmother, Petticoat Junction because Bea Benaderet was a wonderful actress who deserved a turn in the spotlight, Green Acres because Eva Gabor was a stone-cold hottie (in addition to being adorable and hilarious) and Jay Sommers a total madman and Star Trek because, well… it’s Star Trek. The thing’s like Shakespeare; they’re going to be watching the Starship Enterprise boldly go in four hundred years just like we’re watching Hamlet, mark my words. And, if I’m wrong, stick around to tell me so because I, personally, intend to live forever in one of those brain-orbs that Kirk and Co. encountered in “Return to Tomorrow.”
But I digress. My main 1960s era love, recently, has been the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. I have fond memories of it in syndication as a small child, just as my mother does of its first run forty-five years ago. She has told me that her heroes as a little girl were Herman Munster, Mr. Spock and Barnabas Collins—she even had a poster of them on her bedroom wall. I concur wholeheartedly, as I told her once, but always preferred Gomez Addams to Mr. Munster. Now there was a man who understood romance!
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In any event, I bought her the Dark Shadows DVD collection for her Mother’s Day, birthday and Christmas presents this year (those things were as expensive as my Xbox One!) and we’ve been watching them at a clip of about three per day ever since. I knew that it was pretty good (it had to have been to have held my gnat-like attention span) but never really realized, until seeing it now as an adult, the subtle and rather mature emotional core at the seemingly melodramatic silliness.
The Warrior and the Lover need not be mutually exclusive, indeed must not be, because they must coexist in the same body and soul.
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Barnabas Collins, originally brought in as a villainous vampire who’d be staked in the heart after a scanty six weeks, went from sideshow antagonist to the show’s real centerpiece. This was in no small part due to Jonathan Frid’s magnificently modulated voice and expressive face (as no engine, however, small or mighty, can run without fuel) but also, largely, to the complicated nature of Mr. Collins as a character. He is an anti-hero of the first order, ruthlessly obsessed with finding a replacement for his lost love, Josette, and yet somehow strangely sympathetic due to his lonely, melancholy nature and desire to be a man again, instead of a monster.
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It is on this topic that the show has spoken to me most eloquently, in the three hundred plus episodes that we have watched. In conversation with Dr. Julia Hoffman, his confidante and associate, Barnabas muses that Victoria Winters, the woman that he would like to make into his vampire bride, is someone who is able to “love and not destroy.” Barnabas laments the fact that, in his current condition, he is unable to do this.
Dr. Hoffman, ever the cynical, worldly scientist, sardonically comments that most men are perfectly capable of destroying—and seemingly incapable, she implies, of loving—without the complication of vampirism. Barnabas, nonetheless, wants the chance. He knows that a man is capable of both loving and destroying, as he did both during his mortal life, but believes in his heart that the love he feels for Victoria (er… Josette… but not really… it was the Sixties, man) and the tenderness he feels for Sarah, his deceased little sister, could buoy him into happiness… but not unless he’s cured of the curse that has made him into a monster, something simultaneously more and less than a human being.
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A vampire, according to Stephen King in Danse Macabre (and, hey, he wrote ‘Salem’s Lot, I’m gonna take his word on vampires) represents all of a man’s repressed lusts, his dark side, the sexual energy with which Victorian England (at the time when Dracula was written) felt both aversion and fascination. Here, though, is a more complex creature—and coming before Louis, Lestat, Angel and Spike, probably the first of his kind. This is a vampire who would trade his almost unspeakable power for kindness, his ferocity for gentility.
The truly sad part of the conversation, however, is that Barnabas believes he is incapable of loving and being loved, as he is, and so many men agree with him. They do not understand that the two sides of life, light and darkness, aggression and vulnerability, are not mutually exclusive but exist, instead, in constant flux with one another, two sides of the same coin. Barnabas does not realize that Victoria is his friend and that Dr. Hoffman is falling in love with him because he cannot reconcile his “condition” with gentle emotions and does not understand how anyone could feel anything for him. Many men are torn apart psychically—and eventually even physically—because they, too, cannot feel the softer side of Sears, so to speak.
This would be a great lesson for men of all shapes, sizes and creeds to pay close heed to. The Warrior and the Lover, to paraphrase Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, need not be mutually exclusive, indeed must not be, because they must coexist in the same body and soul. This seems like the only way to live a truly balanced life, to love and be loved, and to experience the joys of eudaimonia.
Photo–Flickr/Atin
How is this a challenge for men rather than a challenge for human beings?
Youth wants to know.
It’s a challenge for men because I am a man and don’t feel comfortable speaking from a woman’s perspective, because men are often more troubled by emotional dissonance than women and because this website is mostly dedicated to becoming a “good” man, whatever that is. Relative youth attempts to answer.
It’s a challenge for human beings because I am a human being and feel comfortable speaking from a human being’s perspective. As the poet says, “I am large. I contain multitudes”. Women are often more troubled by emotional dissonance than men, and are therefore unreliable in so many ways – if you believe what it says in so much of the world’s historical and spiritual literature, including the Bible and the writings of the early church fathers you might have studied in seminary. Or think about the Real Housewives of Atlanta, New Jersey, etc. You see how easy, and how… Read more »
I also happened to focus on men because the character in question happened to be male, and I try to stay inside my text of choice whenever possible when doing analyses.