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« on: July 18, 2007, 04:11:28 PM »
Arashi, this is a really great exposition of the emotional/sexual dynamics involved in the Angelique/Barnabas/Josette triangle. Excellent work!
I think it is interesting to compare the pre-1795 version of Barnabas' romance with Josette with the way the relationship is depicted as we see the events unfolding during 1795 and then how it plays out afterwards. When I finally got to see all the original 1967 Barnabas episodes in order, I remember being very disconcerted by just how creepy Barnabas' obsessive need for Josette seemed. There's a scene soon after Maggie has taken up "residence" in the OH where she's been dolled up in Josie drag and Barn is grinning like the cat that copped the cream and ranting on and on about how she will be his very own living Josette doll come to life again... it gives me gooseflesh to watch. I actually find it one of the most disturbing things they ever did on DS--perhaps THE most disturbing. I find it much more unsettling than the Cyrus/Maggie kidnapping scenario later on in 1970 even though by the time of the latter story they could be somewhat more sexually explicit (but only somewhat). The ruthlessness with which Barn pursues erasing Maggie's own identity and substituting a weirdly distilled simulacrum of Josette's own personality is very creepy.
Thinking about the series as a whole, Josette comes across almost as a blank-check character to me. I'd never thought about this before, but I guess the energy of KLS' own personality in the various forms and manifestations of the character helped give her a phantasmal unity that otherwise isn't really there. How do you reconcile the original version of Josette as a kind of spectral guardian of the Collins family with the image we get from Barnabas' own distorted memories (I do love the scene late in 1967 where Julia forces Barnabas to admit that Josette in real life never did return his love, even though this was almost immediately changed with the 1795 "flashback"), and then subsequent "incarnations" in later storylines? Will the real Josette Collins please stand up?
cheers, G.