Let Me In (Re)considered Alone

[handful_ofdust]

I'm not always a huge fan of Jim Emerson, whose blog "Scanners" is occasionally prone to do things like talk about why he doesn't like The Dark Knight for fucking weeks on end in utterly excruciating detail, but I was pleasantly surprised and struck by his defense of Let Me In, here (http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2010/10/let_me_in_the_role_of_evil_in.html)... especially so because by the time we get to the comments, it becomes an equally interesting discussion of what is/has been good in American horror in the last fifteen years or so. For myself, I continue to the think Let Me In was reductionist in odd ways yet still viable; I could've really done without the musical cueing (though I think that about most American films), and making Eli into Abby of course simplifies the narrative in various ways. Nevertheless, there's a core which translates through both versions--the core of the age-unequal relationship being inherently prospectively predatory, whether or not the (actually) older person is a genuine predator.

Similarly, I liked the inclusion of Owen getting to see what Abby had done to her previous protector--that he was once a sweet, outcast boy like himself, deformed by time and the rigours of taking care of a little girl who's really a deathless crone; it made me wonder how they could possibly continue the same charade as they moved towards our time-period, when records become stable and all-inclusive, and pedophilia is the consistent spectre (will he become her "brother"? Will he be forced to fish in a series of GFs/wives, living camouflage to be drained and dumped?).

And Abby's background, too--what was that, exactly? Did she just "get sick" one day back in the early 1800s or late 1700s, around the time of girls like Mercy Brown, and was then hidden and enabled by her family--a professional invalid, subject to the cult of such as she moved towards Victorian times--until she simply outlived them all? In her day, a twelve-year-old being engaged to or even marrying a man of her original protector's age would've been no big thing--see Virginia Clemm Poe. Did she ride that fact for a while, before switching gradually--maybe around the 1950s, with the introduction of an artificial "teenage" evolutionary stage--to being a permanent child, instead of a quasi-adult?

Amended to add: And let's assume that like Claudia, because of her size, Abby probably can't "turn" anybody else--not an adult, definitely. So that adds the extra thing of "you can decide right now that you want to be a kid 'til the end of time (which I pretty much know you won't choose, because I know how ambivalent you are about being a kid in the first place) or you can age out into 'powerful' adulthood, only to realize you will now inevitably keep aging 'til you're weak again, then die. For me. Enjoy!"

(The fact that we never meet any other vampires in Abby's world only makes it all the more creepy. Because maybe it was just a mutation, and none of her victims ever survives, even the infected ones. Maybe she's literally all there is. Or, if not--will they ever run into one of her discards somewhere, a person who sees Owen as their competition? Or a person who'll do any damn thing to destroy Abby, on the mistaken assumption her death might "cure" them?)

Naturally, I miss the queer and intersex subtexts of the original, but I'm far from considering Let Me In a complete failure just on those grounds alone. Nice/interesting to see somebody who agrees with me, even if it's a guy I often don't agree with myself.;)

Comments

[sovay]

Did she just "get sick" one day back in the early 1800s or late 1700s, around the time of girls like Mercy Brown, and was then hidden and enabled by her family--a professional invalid, subject to the cult of such as she moved towards Victorian times--until she simply outlived them all?

Story?

(I still feel no need to see Let Me In—for me, the gender simplification of Eli was a deal-breaker—but I'm glad it provides you with things to think about.)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Oh, everything goes into the garburator.;)

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I kept thinking Emerson should rename his blog "Why I Don't Like Christopher Nolan" and leave it at that.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it'd simplify matters considerably, because it all boils down to Why do people like that thing I don't like? Which is never a question there's any point at all in trying to answer, particularly to your own satisfaction.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think it can be useful to answer that question, as long as you approach it in the spirit of someone trying to expand his horizons. The problem is that JE approaches it like someone with an entrenched, embattled territory to protect, and so the result is one idiot's-delight argument after another (as seen in the comments on most of his posts about these subjects).

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm sorry--you're right, it can be useful. I guess I just feel like, having spent ten years trying to do it on a regular basis, I'm really very happy to be able to be as "unfair" as I feel like, these days--though in my case, it usually takes the form of me just going: "Hmmm, interesting, but I see no need to think about that, thank you." Objectivity can be a real strain to maintain; shouldn't surprise me that Emerson has trouble keeping it up. Then again, I think he just likes to argue.;)

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

It's OK to take that stance, too. It's just that part of why it bothers me in Emerson's case is because as a critic, it seems like part of his duty should be to understand or at least empathize with the tastes of others. Being able to understand why someone else like something else, IMO, helps you make that much more sense of your own tastes. That doesn't mean you have to change your own tastes accordingly. I understand where people come from when they talk about liking romantic fluff like "Eat Pray Love"; I just have no interest in adding that to my own reading list. :D