Friday, February 3, 2017
Hellfire
When I read the passage in Portrait where Stephen is contemplating his potential life as a priest and hearing sinful (salacious) confessions from "the lips of women and girls", then quickly reminding himself that he must remain pure and sinless, I knew it reminded me of something. Then I realized it was this song from The Hunchback of Notre Dame:
I'm not saying Stephen could ever be like Frollo, but he has all the same self-loathing, stemming from religion-based sexual repression. And, of course, they both like to blow a perfectly normal situation way out of context. Of course, Stephen is not a villain because he doesn't blame his sin on the women he lusts after and condemn them to death. He just writes angsty poems about them.
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What a throwback. This is a really good connection on many levels, just that we don't see Stephen as a villain. Good find!
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ReplyDeleteI wonder if Disney is influenced by Joyce? More likely, it's that Disney movies are made for kids, so they put the good guys and bad guys in black and white terms, much like how Stephen sees himself.
ReplyDeleteAnother song I thought of was "When you're evil" by Voltaire, the Cuban-American dark cabaret artist who dresses a lot like how Stephen must see himself at this point in the novel.
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