Moments that made you go "WHAT?!!!!"

[Sunny_Collins]

I've been in theatre most of my life, and the concept of a "drama queen" is very familiar to me. I'm a little bit of one myself. Such folks don't simply react to an event, or to trauma, but take up a pose and/or attitude for dramatic effect. Drama Queens come in all ranges and styles--from those who simply have loads of flair to their lives, to those to turn every typo into a scene from Tennessee Williams (I used to work for one of those).

But that is of course a different thing from the whole idolization of stoicism and distrust of emotion we've inheirited from the Victorian Age. That, while sometimes useful, is often unhealthy. And I firmly believe that in our current age it is coupled with somthing much, much worse--a sense of isolation stemming from a lack of process and shared ritual in our lives. I think as a people we seem to be losing our ability to empathize. We focus so much on being ourselves as individuals we sometimes lose track of ourselves as members of a family, a community, a nation, a species, etc. And too often we are amazingly impatient with others' troubles while demanding absolute understanding and forgiveness for our own. This frankly has come to permeate, among other things, politics as well as personal relationships.

Ours is a strange, neurotic time.

I found your post most interesting and insightful. Thanks for sharing your observations. 

[BuzzH]

I'm glad I'm not the only one putting it in strong terms.

A possible reason that you and I seem to disagree over the Barnabas/drama queen issue would seem to be that we're coming to it from opposing viewpoints, There's a world of difference between someone who experiences and/or has very real problems and issues but who's told that they're imaginary and insignificant and, thus, they're accused of being a drama queen and someone whose behavior is drama queenish because they often jump to the worst possible scenario based on little or no concrete info and/or they decide upon the most drastic course of action when a far less drastic alternative exists and might prove to be far more effective. The former is tragic and there's absolutely no excuse for anyone to treat someone that way. However, the latter truly is over-dramatizing a situation and can be completely avoidable. Barn as drama queen tends to fall into the latter category. Though as I said, it certainly can propel the DS storylines into dramatic and enjoyable directions that they would otherwise never go into if Barn always behaved rationally. Frankly, if Barn's behavior was always rational, the storylines involving him would be exceedingly dull.

Folks, even Frid thought Barnabas was a drama queen!  

[Zahir]

Can't argue with that.    I'm glad I'm not the only one putting it in strong terms.   I wouldn't put blame on a lack of shared rituals, though... a lot of people find ritual empty and hollow, something just sort of obligatory.    I'm sure there's more to say but I have to knock of for tonight/today.

Ritual can be meaningful or not.  But one of the most meaningful things about some rituals is simply that they are shared.  Such are often the building blocks of our mutuality, of our recognition that that guy over there is "one of us" even if we have little in common with him.

This can of course be taken too far, but what can't?

Anyway, I repeat my earlier point--that much of what people complain about in terms of characterization is complexity.

But some things that make no sense to me...

* How come Barnabas never seemed to need to drink blood after he returned from 1995?  Weeks and weeks went by, yet not one single victim.
* If everyone who dies from the bite of a vampire becomes a vampire, shouldn't we be up to our eyebrows in the pesky things?
* Why would the Collins family hire a waitress to be governess?
*  Exactly what was Julia Hoffman's specialty?  She seemed to be some kind of psychiatrist, but also a hemotologist.  That is a strange combo.  Then there was the strange way she'd move people without first determining the extent of their injuries.  Doesn't every Cub Scout handbook warn against doing that?
* What was it about Collinwood that attracted so much supernatural stuff?

[stefan]

Ritual can be meaningful or not.  But one of the most meaningful things about some rituals is simply that they are shared.  Such are often the building blocks of our mutuality, of our recognition that that guy over there is "one of us" even if we have little in common with him.

This can of course be taken too far, but what can't?

Anyway, I repeat my earlier point--that much of what people complain about in terms of characterization is complexity.

But some things that make no sense to me...

* How come Barnabas never seemed to need to drink blood after he returned from 1995?  Weeks and weeks went by, yet not one single victim.
* If everyone who dies from the bite of a vampire becomes a vampire, shouldn't we be up to our eyebrows in the pesky things?
* Why would the Collins family hire a waitress to be governess?
*  Exactly what was Julia Hoffman's specialty?  She seemed to be some kind of psychiatrist, but also a hemotologist.  That is a strange combo.  Then there was the strange way she'd move people without first determining the extent of their injuries.  Doesn't every Cub Scout handbook warn against doing that?
* What was it about Collinwood that attracted so much supernatural stuff?

Speaking of rituals - I had to read Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth" for my graduate studies (which I'm sure Zahir has read) about how the lack of rituals in today's society has affected us and our youth. He focuses mostly on shared actions and a sense (like even the family eating at a dinner table and talking of current events) of ritualistic authority - such as a Judge - that people need to maintain a sense of purpose and a subconscious need for authority. I realize that since the 60's such stuff appears nonsense, and with our present quests for self-fulfillment and freedom - "rituals" seems like an alien thing. "The Power of Myth" makes for great reading and is quite persuasive that humans have an integrated need for ritual and INTELLIGENT BALANCED authority (not like Osama or Hitler) but the following they had makes you wonder.

Anyway, the inconsistencies you point out in DS are standard fare. There are sooo many you'll start to loose interest if you let them bother you too much. The lack of a vampire following for Barnabas is a glaring omission. Considering other vampire tales such as Stephen King's "Salem's Lot", the vamp there practically turned the whole town vampire within weeks. I still huff and fuss that in 1795 Josette could never figure out Angelique was creating havoc behind her back. Probably best not to forget that DS is still just a soap opera, albeit a gothic one, where the writers frequently took the easy way out to keep it all going.

[MagnusTrask]

Ritual is something you do because you're used to doing it.    Any good ritual would have to win its right to exist through being of value on its own.  The world is full of plenty of bad ritual.    Maybe it would help me if certain shared activities were thought of as something you do because you know it helps everyone stay together.... maybe I'm getting hung up on the word "ritual", but for a fairly good reason, possibly.

It's common now to characterize social changes in the 60s as self-indulgent, but there were a lot of WW2 era parents with very small souls then, who drove their kids away from wanting to sit at the dinner table with them.   My father for one.

The Campbell idea of the family having a subconscious need for an authority figure... is that with the wife as part of the crowd looking up to the "judge"?     Did he say it was a good thing?     Bringing up kids right can't depend on "I say so" (then it falls apart, or you raise automatons), but demonstrating you're right by being a just person.      Needing an authority figure is something holding the human race back.

All this connects with DS somehow.  There, back on topic.    I'm good, aren't I?

[IluvBarnabas]

Folks, even Frid thought Barnabas was a drama queen!  

Really? Well far be it from me to disagree with my favorite actor on the show....

[Zahir]

It isn't about going through the motions, but about rituals that ultimately have meaning.  Rituals can be empty, yes.  But they can also offer a shape and a rhythm to parts of our lives.

As for "authority figures" Campbell wasn't talking about dictators, nor was he disparaging women as valuable human beings.  But look at nations that have constitutional monarchs.  The monarch serves as a unifying force that most folks find comforting to some degree--regardless of whether they like any specific individual member of the royal family.  Hence the great popularity of Prince William, of the late Queen Mum and of Princess Diana herself.  We tend to think of the British royals too much when we think of royalty anyway.  The Danish, Dutch and Spanish royal famiies are frankly better models.

Not everyone needs such an authority figure.  But lots of people do feel such a need, and that is not evidence of something being "wrong" with them.

One set of rituals that we've pretty much lost are rites of passage.  Individuals often go through such, but many don't and the site of  middle-aged men still behaving in fundamental ways like teenagers is frankly disturbing.  No less disturbing is the lack of commonality between those who have in some sense "graduated" to adulthood on an emotional and psychological level.  We no longer have some kind of difficult trial of endurance that everyone goes through, hence everyone can rightly call a "shared experience."  Adulthood is simply a matter of breathing long enough.  Adults and children wear the same clothes, wear their hair the same way, retain identical names regardless of age or status (save women who take their husband's family name--which is something else).  In the span of one second, a person in our society goes from totally without any real responsibility including being unable to hold a full-time job or be charged with a serious crime, to full responsibility and the right to have children, declare bankruptcy and be put to death.

I don't believe this is a good thing.  Neither am I claiming that a return to the past makes very much sense either.  Nor can any of this be imposed from above.  To work, to be genuine, it must arise and be embraced from below.  And we're a long, long, long way from even starting to do that.

There are times I totally sympathize with Barnabas, preferring the 18th century to the 20th.  Or the 21st!

[Nancy]

My concept of a drama queen is someone who lives off of drama to the point where they will create it for themselves in order to have something going on . . . to make something out of nothing.  I don't want to confuse a drama queen with someone who makes bad decisions out of temper which is the case with Barnabas in my opinion.  Jonathan Frid has repeatedly referred to Dark Shadows as being "operatic" but never identified Barnabas as someone who was looking to create drama or being a drama queen. There was plenty of drama and equally plenty of rash decisions that complicated matters on the show.

By its very nature, soap operas are operatic; heightened stakes further heightened by stupid and/or irrational decisions and usually repeating the same dumb mistake over and over again.  I don't think it is really possible to single out any one character on DS who was more of a drama queen as least in my definition of the term with the exception of Carolyn.  I thought the early Carolyn was a drama queen if ever one existed on DS.

Nancy

[Mysterious Benefactor]

My concept of a drama queen is someone who lives off of drama to the point where they will create it for themselves in order to have something going on . . . to make something out of nothing.

The classic definition of drama queen is "someone who is melodramatic" or "an overly dramatic person" - though someone who fits that bill could most certainly resort to creating drama/melodrama for themselves if there's a lack of real drama/melodrama already in their lives to over-dramatize. 

By its very nature, soap operas are operatic; heightened stakes further heightened by stupid and/or irrational decisions and usually repeating the same dumb mistake over and over again.  I don't think it is really possible to single out any one character on DS who was more of a drama queen as least in my definition of the term with the exception of Carolyn.  I thought the early Carolyn was a drama queen if ever one existed on DS.

Well, there is no shortage of drama queens or characters who were something of drama queens on DS. Carolyn was most certainly one of them, particularly during the first year of the show. (Whoa, was she ever!  ) But as you say, soap opera is operatic and, well, opera and over-dramatic characters/situations tend to go hand in hand. 

[MagnusTrask]

I'll just throw in one last comment and back away cautiously from the whole subject, because it's not really good for me to stay in this one.   I don't know if DQs exist (though I like that cherry dip they have for the ice cream cones... I'm getting confised now, sorry), from lack of personal experience, but the existence of the idea is dangerous.    It's too easy to give in to temptation to misapply it.   I have a destructive medical condition that is automatically dismissed or at least downgraded in most people's imaginations, to something far less severe than it really is, because it's so hard to come up with language for.  People assume that if it were serious, I'd have no trouble talking about it.  Something like that.

I'm then treated by many of these people as a "DQ" in everything but name.   I was never literally awarded the title, but they were thinking it pretty loudly, or an equivalent.    26 years of this.     I'll stop there, since no one wants to read that depressing an autobiography.   And contrary to the opinions of those people I've had to deal with in life over all those years (not any of you), I can't stand drawing attention to myself, and to this "thing" of mine.

I just hope people will try to think twice or half a dozen times, before making that judgment about someone.   Just be careful, please.   Maybe you already do, and if so, thanks.

[Nancy]

As a point of interest, I just asked JF if he thought the character of Barnabas was a "drama queen."  He totally did not understand why anyone would think that in the first place.  But I can see how people would think that though I don't agree.

Nancy

[Mysterious Benefactor]

What you should have asked is if he thought Barnabas was "something of a drama queen."    But it's too late for that because the idea of Barn not being a drama queen is already in his mind. 

[Raineypark]

What you should have asked is if he thought Barnabas was "something of a drama queen."    But it's too late for that because the idea of Barn not being a drama queen is already in his mind. 

I would assume (always a dangerous thing) that Frid doesn't SEE Barnabas as a drama queen because he never thought he was PLAYING him as a drama queen.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

he never thought he was PLAYING him as a drama queen.

Nor should he have. Any actor who's in touch with his/her craft is going to find a reason to justify all of his/her character's actions in order to play the truth of any given scene/situation as the character sees it. Though that's not to say that those looking from outside the character's viewpoint might see it the same way, particularly because they don't necessarily have to justify the character's actions.

[michael c]

in my opinion every single one of them was a drama queen...

...except for perhaps joe haskell.