Monday, September 14, 2015

Guest Post by Spencer Blohm - The Strain: Trilogy vs. Television Show.


Vampires and vampire culture have been a staple of the Western horror genre for centuries, though it has significantly evolved throughout the years. Vampires have gone from bestial creatures that stalked the night like animals to an ideal of romance and sophistication, catering to young adult fantasies. This is part of the reason why Guillermo del Toro's The Strain is so unique in an otherwise flooded market of the same themes and stories.

The hit television series, though always intended for the small screen, started its life as a trilogy of books written by producers Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro. In many ways, the show is a master class in how to adapt a book to television, making changes to the novels that fit the visual style and the pacing of a season in TV.

These changes include the novels focusing heavily on the protagonists, leaving many of the machinations of the strigoi, specifically series big bad Eldritch Palmer, in the background. The show instead uses Palmer's plans as an anchor for the rest of the series and as a way of building tension. Further, Eichorst doesn't even appear in the first book but plays a prominent role in the first season of the show, providing an excellent counterpoint to his nemesis Abraham Setrakian and multiple opportunities to see their dynamic in flashbacks.

One other smaller differences is that the strigoi in the show can talk despite not having the physical capability of doing so in the books where they communicate telepathically and just move their lips accordingly. The character of Mr. Fitzwilliam is far more prominent in the show, acting as Palmer's bodyguard, and Dutch is entirely made up for the show in order to use hacking as a way of moving the plot forward more quickly than the books can.

It's difficult to choose which one is a better story, largely because they each choose where their focus is. Unlike a comparison of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart to the film adaptation Hellraiser, where a larger amount of time is granted to worldbuilding and explaining unclear motivations to make the book better, The Strain gives us as much in both book and show, but it ultimately gives us different aspects. In the show, we’re able to experience a series of flashbacks throughout the episodes to better understand the strigoi’s origins and Setrakian’s involvement with them in the past. Although we also get some of that in the novels, the larger focus is on the present.

Critics, by and large, have enjoyed it according to the 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many feeling that the adaptation from the novels is anything from passable to masterful. While the second season took a larger departure from the source material, it still remained plenty loyal to the books.

In both cases, del Toro’s take on vampires is fairly original, which is to say it draws more from the folklore that Bram Stoker used to inform his novel rather than the resulting book. Rarely are vampires portrayed with the animalistic fury of the show, especially now in paranormal romance novels. In fact, The Strain’s departure from the vampire-as-sex-symbol trope is so great that the strigoi have no human sex organs or drive at all.

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan have done an amazing job of reclaiming the vampire as a terrifying threat rather than a representation of unsuppressed libido. The strigoi are monsters plain and simple, but that combined with an excellently adapted novel plot and some fascinating ideas makes The Strain worth the watch. Catch up with the show on FX through DTV or streamed on Hulu to prepare for the third season, which will generally cover the events of the second half of The Fall. You won’t want to miss this newest take on the popular blood-sucking creatures.

Spencer Blohm is a freelance entertainment, culture, and lifestyle blogger. He lives and works in Chicago. When not working he can be found camped out in his apartment watching the latest films and newest television shows.


3 comments:

wangzha said...

A 1982 Gallup poll revealed that one out of seven Americans had at least once been close to dying and 35% of these reported having the NDE. These experiences would seem fairly common, but were not generally reported by physicians, which is explained by the fact that only 32% of doctors at the time believed in an afterlife vs. 67% of the public.

Basically, anywhere you turn in the 1970s, you the birth of legendary directors, cinematic movements in full swing,and first rate horror movies galore as a generation of filmmakers pushed and prodded the boundaries ofthe genre. By exploring the endless permutations of subgenre allegory, those filmmakers took full advantage of the limitless opportunities for self exploration, social commentary, and good old fashioned meditations on mortality and the Clothing Designer human condition. And they covered it all in blood and dirt and viscera.

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You may have already spotted the irony of Russians fearing secret American influence around every corner. After all, if you search Twitter for the words "Russian bots," you'll see that this has become a meme. When some right wing hashtag is trending, the assumption is that it all originates with Russian trolls and swarms of dummy accounts. Don't get me wrong, there is good reason to be concerned about Russian interference in American politics. The disinformation machine is real. But ultimately, the fundamental mistrust of any information we disagree with may be more damaging in the long term. It becomes one more way in which the well gets poisoned.

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