Something Wicked This Way Comes”: Apocalyptic Overtones and the Descent Into Ennui in John Logan’S TV Series Penny Dreadful

doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/H4YBT “Something Wicked This Way Comes”: Apocalyptic Overtones and the Descent into Ennui in John Logan’s TV Series Penny Dreadful Dr. Richard Logsdon, Professor Emeritus, College of Southern Nevada Abstract ennui that has its counterpart in our own culture. The suggestion is that Logan uses While scholars have provided some Vanessa Ives as a symbolic representation of insight into Penny Dreadful, no one has a dying world view, which, somewhat addressed the relationship of the piece’s ironically, provided for her remaining overall design to the writer’s vision. Indeed, friends a hope that sustained them. Penny Dreadful is offered as a warning of a darker age to come. Accordingly, writer 1. Introduction: Old or New Gothic? John Logan sets his series in a late Victorian, Gothicized London that serves as Since the release of Francis Ford a microcosm for a contemporary Western Coppola’s Dracula in 1992, Gothic horror world experiencing a psychological and films that gave the traditional depiction of spiritual disintegration that touches the the Prince of Vampires have been replaced individual and the larger culture. Logan calls by tamer, even more domesticated versions attention to the anxieties generated by this of Bram Stoker’s monster (Hutchings 40- disintegration by incorporating into his 48). Indeed, in the world of cinema and TV, series characters from late Victorian Gothic the past two or three decades have seen a fiction: Frankenstein and his creature, movement away from the traditional Gothic Dracula, the Wolf Man, Dorian Gray, and horror with its dark and haunted landscapes, Dr. Jekyll. The individual and cultural terrified females, cruelly oppressive males, anxieties suggested by these characters’ monsters, “life-threatening pursuits,” “monstrous” behaviors have their basis not gloomy castles, and bleeding statues only in their sexual dysfunctions but in their (Botting 13). Joseph Crawford’s The despair over God’s absence. This crisis is Twilight of the Gothic? provides an centered in sexually adventurous Vanessa excellent study on variations of this trend, Ives, whose attempts to return to the Christ focusing finally upon the significance of the Who has rejected her hold the series recent Twilight series in which vampires and together. In the series’ final episode, just werewolves occupy traditional male and before her death, Vanessa has a vision of female roles and emphasizing the significant Jesus. In response to Vanessa’s death, most role that the TV series Buffy the Vampire of the remaining characters are seized by an Slayer played in reshaping the character of The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 4, No. 1, August 2018 10 the vampire in Gothic narrative. Crawford whose machinations is the aristocratic, finds support from writer Roxanne sexually adventurous Vanessa Ives. Longstreet, author of the Rachel Cain series, However, what most sets Logan’s piece who affirms that “most editors in traditional apart from other recent Gothic works, publishing that I’ve spoken to are no longer cinema and TV series included, is a subtly seeking vampire-themed material” (Qtd. in prophetic, even didactic dimension, one that Crawford 271). Further support comes from has gone unnoticed. Convinced that his own Tim Kane, author The Changing Vampire of contemporary world is moving into a new, Film and Television, and from scholar possibly darker age, Logan sets his penny Jessica Groper, who has commented, dreadful in a late Victorian London that has “[T]here is now a generation that views the been seized by a dread over the vampire characters not as terrifying and evil disintegration of their own culture but as romantic and compassionate” (Qtd. in (Connally). In fact, Logan has commented Crawford 271-272). that he sets the action of his TV series in late From time to time, however, exceptions nineteen century London precisely because have emerged. the Victorians, like his contemporary Among these exceptions, the most audience, dreaded the “Modern Age” to notable may be John Logan’s recent three- come: season series Penny Dreadful (Showtime …The Victorian Era was a highly and Sky TV, 2014—2016), a TV series set specialized era. And why I chose to in a late nineteenth century Victorian set the show then was not because London that serves as a microcosm for our it’s a cool visual to bring these own world, one in which the seeming characters together, but because absence of God has become the context for there’s something about the “monstrous” acts, often rooted in sexual Victorian Era that reminds me of dysfunction, that are fed by and contribute to right now. They were on the cusp of the larger malaise that seems to accompany a modern world. The agrarian the disintegration of a culture once rooted in economy has been replaced by the now fading Christian paradigm. industrial economy. They’re looking The success of this fast-paced series, as across the ocean to Germany and it touches upon the anxieties created by the America. They were grappling with sense that contemporary culture is the very elemental question of what disintegrating, has much to with Logan’s use it is to be human, with Darwinism of dark and foggy streets and his recreation and evolution…. I don’t understand of a thoroughly Gothicized London, one any of the new world that’s zooming filled with creatures of the night. In line with toward us. I think we’re on the cusp the traditional vampire-based Gothic, of the same thing now, and it’s Logan’s Penny Dreadful has given the frightening and there’s dissonance viewer a universe in which Dracula exists as and there’s excitement about the clear prototype of the devil, the target of uncharted waters.” (Radish) The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 4, No. 1, August 2018 11 Victorian world and the current anxieties To enable the viewer to grasp the dread awakened by such horrors as the rise of that the Victorians felt over moving into a global and domestic terrorism, numerous period that they had already acknowledged mass murders committed, unwarranted as “the Modern Age,” Logan does two police shootings of African Americans, things: he relies upon the bloody “viral outbreaks,” natural disasters, global sensationalism associated with traditional warming, and a return of that dread once Gothic horror, and he incorporates into his associated with a nuclear war waged by the script a host of familiar Gothic characters world’s super-powers (“The New Cold that create, for the viewer, a sense of War”; Brooks). sustained terror. These characters include Frankenstein and his creature, the Wolf II. Why the Penny Dreadful? Man, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Henry Jekyll. In fact, Logan uses these characters and their To capture the anxiety and subsequent monstrous behaviors (rape, murder, malaise of the late Victorian age and, by unrestrained sexual debauchery, and mass extension, our own troubled age, Logan killings) in a script that represents a makes unexpected use of the penny “codification” of our own world, one in dreadful, a subgenre of Gothic literature. which such anti-social behaviors are a clear Traditionally, the success of the penny indication of spiritual and psychological dreadful—or “bloods,” as they were disorders, often fueled by sexual called—had nothing to do with literary merit dysfunction, to which contemporary and everything to do this sub-genre’s appeal psychologists apply such labels as to the basest elements of humanity. The sociopathic, psychopathic, schizophrenic, penny dreadful itself, generally known for and narcissistic. In short, Logan seems to be bloody spectacle and tasteless pushing the viewers to consider the sensationalism, emerged in mid-nineteenth connection linking these disorders to the century England as a phenomenally larger malaise or contagion occasioned by successful sub-genre of Gothic literature. cultural disintegration of both the late According to British historian and author Victorian world and our own present Judith Sanders, culture. The bloods were astonishingly In this series, this malaise brings an successful, creating a vast new almost paralyzing despair, or ennui, born of readership. Between 1830 and 1850 the growing conviction that God has there were up to 100 publishers of vanished or never existed at all. In fact, it is penny-fiction, as well as the many this ennui, a term museum curator Ferdinand magazines which now Lyle uses in the opening episode of season wholeheartedly embraced the genre. three to describe Vanessa’s own depression, At first the bloods copied popular that provides the strongest connection cheap fiction’s love of late 18th- between the climate of Logan’s late century gothic tales, the more The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 4, No. 1, August 2018 12 sensational the better, ‘a world,’ said that reflects “the embodiments and one writer, ‘of dormant peerages, of evocations of cultural anxieties” and murderous baronets, and ladies of “project[s] an uncontrollable and title addicted to the study of overwhelming power [that] threatens not toxicology [the study of poison], of only the loss of sanity [and] honor but the gipsies [sic] and brigand-chiefs, men very order” of society (Botting 2, 4). Within with masks and women with this series, this “power” is most immediately daggers, of stolen children, withered related to but not necessarily identifiable hags, heartless gamesters, nefarious with the presence of the demonic, evidence roués, foreign princesses….’ of this “ancient evil,” and by the growing apprehensions created by the sense that God As his penny dreadful moves from has forsaken, or is one the verge of bloody scene to bloody scene, Logan gives forsaking, the disintegrating Victorian his viewers a remarkably insightful and society of the script. Certainly, the pervasive unified work, one held together by the story influence of the demonic in Penny Dreadful of Vanessa Ives.

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