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 "Think
Positive!"
Special
thanks to: Stuart
Manning
Stuart
Manning has been no stranger to Dark Shadows fandom for nearly
ten years. He maintains The
Dark Shadows Journal Online, a website that can tell someone
anything they want to know about Dark Shadows, new or old.
Stuart
was kind enough to share with Barnabas Undead a column about the
fan reactions to the new series so far, and what a Dark Shadows
means to him...
I’m
a long-term fan of Dark Shadows. How amazing - I’ve
always prided myself on being a fresh-faced newbie. I’ve got
good reason to - Dark Shadows is old enough to be my mother…
or words to that effect. Yet, with a new pilot going before the
cameras, I guess I’m no longer the ardent new convert. The
existence of this site proves that. And I find that really exciting.
When
I joined Dark Shadows fandom in 1995, it was a different
world. The 1991 revival series was just four years old, and we stubbornly
held onto the delusion that NBC would have an epiphany, re-gather
the cast and continue like nothing had happened. In black and white,
it sounds lunatic in retrospect - yet rumours along those lines
were doing the rounds solidly into the late 1990s. Perhaps foolishly,
we all believed it would happen someday, somehow.
It’s
a strange little irony that seems obvious in retrospect - as it
stood, Dark Shadows could never return. Creator Dan Curtis
had struggled to bring fresh angles to the revival effort, frequently
re-creating House of Dark Shadows shot-by-shot, line-by-line.
Even with 20 years hindsight, he had little new to give. It’s
an unpleasant truth we fans try not to admit, but Dan’s best
Dark Shadows work was done long before 1991. Something tells
me the audience sensed it, and so did the networks and studios too,
as proposal after proposal fell on deaf ears in the years that followed.
Curtis
stubbornly insisted that he was the only person who could bring
Dark Shadows back, yet by 2003 he seemed to have a change
of heart. As the show’s parent, perhaps he finally realised
he needed to cut the apron strings if it was to have a chance. Compare
the prospects of the current John Wells collaboration to a decade
of stalled maybes, and I think most will agree he made the right
choice. And perhaps by the same token, the show’s long-term
fans need to do the same.
In
the wake of the pilot’s announcement, the fan reaction was
passionate, vociferous and sustained. Choice commandments included:
Thou
must not cast teenage actors… but did we mention that Marley
Shelton is too old? Victoria can’t be blonde… and we decree
that wigs and dye may not apply to this argument. Thou must only
cast original series actors. Ever… No changes… but don’t
redo the same old stories. No intentional humour… but boom
mikes dipping into shot are fine. And so on…
Was
it Alice who said one should always attempt three impossible things
before breakfast? And let me add, for those that have suffered my
bleatings on the subject, all I can say is please forgive my hubris.
I care, just like everyone else who posts something imminently heartfelt
but utterly nonsensical. So maybe as fans we’re missing the
point - in the grim light of day, to produce mass-market, sustainable
television, we’re the last people a new Dark Shadows
series needs to appeal to.
Reporting
the project has made me consider a lot of what made me a fan to
begin with. I’ve no illusions that a new version will capture
my own personal connection with the original - it can’t. Yet
I’m excited as a viewer, at the prospect of exploring those
untapped possibilities and revisiting those characters. It won’t
be my show any more, but I think it will still be something pretty
special.
Dark
Shadows and I were destined to be good friends. As a child,
I was always drawn to the macabre - skulls and ghosts, witches and
monsters. As an eight year old, I remember trying to convince my
classmates that there was a haunted castle behind my house, just
because the notion seemed the epitome of cool to me. With hindsight,
the foreboding image in my head wasn’t a million miles from
the silhouette of Collinwood.
Growing
up in the UK, where Dark Shadows was painfully obscure, finding
it became a minor quest. I first found the title. Dark. Shadows.
I still think it’s the coolest name for a show ever. So many
possibilities and meanings - the grainy group photo on the Collinwood
staircase seemed to tell me everything I needed to know. I had no
idea what the show was about, yet I instantly knew that it could
have been made just for me. That was at the age of 10. I was 15
before I saw an actual episode, but it didn’t disappoint. Hokey,
yes… Slightly creaky, yes… Slow moving, indeed… But
yet, quite wonderful - not in spite of those flaws, but because
of them. Dark Shadows was so mindbendingly different from
anything else I’d ever seen that I couldn’t not like it.
It lived in my childish world of cobwebs and coffins, yet resonated
with my predictable teenage preoccupations about life, death and
love.
Part
of that feeling never went away - happily, even after all these
years, Dark Shadows still seems to be adult problems played
out in a kids’ wonderland. Maybe that’s the appeal - that
a world of fantasy can solve the things that reality gets in the
way of the most. Love is reincarnated, the dead return, problems
can be solved with a trip to the past. We all know life isn’t
that simple, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to pretend.
For
fans of the original show, Dark Shadows will probably always
mean the cramped videotaped world of its ABC days, held together
with overwrought drama and first-night nerves. But maybe that’s
the point - the original is unique for me, it speaks to me and my
personal experiences. No one intended it that way, it just happened.
Most people are fans through happy coincidence, yet in trying to
contrive that coincidence unreasonably onto a new and distant relation,
we end up disappointed and cheated.
The
new series will be Collinwood in a different zip code. New actors,
new stories, new characters - not what the fans might want, but
what the show needs. And I know which one is more important.
As
reticent and suspicious as many fans are of the new series, deep
down we’re all as eager as anyone else to find out who will
be Barnabas, see just how big and scary Collinwood looks, and get
carried away by those stories all over again. Looking at what’s
been hinted, I think that might just happen.
Dark
Shadows in 2004 will be a new show for a new audience. And I
hope that audience discovers in it something as unique and rewarding
as the original offers myself and so many others.
You
can visit Stuart Manning's website at Collinwood.net
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