THE CROW dir. alex proyas

what’s your piece of horror media? the one you claim as your own, the one people need to know to get you

Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?

Smith’s Weekly, Sydney, Australia, September 3, 1932

the raven (1845) - edgar allan poe

op change ur fucking url

The Raven, abridged

The first verse of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe (1845).

Whatevermore.

Poe my goodness

The Tell-tale Art

Edgar Allen Poe (via gorunwithsissors)

meaning of Shezza (part two)

just-sort-of-happened:

OMG yes pls... if this isn’t too much trouble. I’d love to read your thoughts on Irene and the Raven!!!

The Woman As The Raven

As Sherlock gets up from his bed to check The Woman’s first text message we see a picture of Edgar Allan Poe behind him.  

The woman, dressed all in black, wearing Sherlock’s coat, has come in to his room through his window, like a bird.  She leaves his coat hanging on his door, like a dark figure silhouetted against its pale paint colour.  From his coat will come a repetitive sound: her new text alert.  This sound will confound Sherlock and he will ponder on who The Woman is and what she’s trying to say.  Is she deeply wise or is she just speaking nonsense?

Sherlock and The Woman mirror each other throughout and here Sherlock mirrors her as The Raven, as well.  Sherlock wears all black and looks like a bird when John puts him back in bed.  Whatever The Woman says to Sherlock, as The Raven, he says to himself.  She reflects back to him his own life, his own troubles.

In The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, a lonely man immerses himself in books and learning, hoping to forget a love lost.  One night a bird comes into his room and repeats a single word, ‘Nevermore’.  This is an unwelcome visitor, one who reminds him of the sweetness of love and the agony of loss.

Irene Adler’s text alert is repetitive, like The Raven’s answer.  Her message is enigmatic, like his.  Sherlock, like the main character in the poem is torn between finding it deeply meaningful and dismissing it as gibberish.  In the end, The Woman serves to remind him of the love he tries to forget.  He is really the one who’s said, ‘Nevermore’, because his, ‘Lenore’, is right there with him, literally coming into his room.  In The Raven, a memory of Lenore sweeps over the narrator and he feels as if he can smell his beloved.  This cruel trick he blames on The Raven.  And like the Raven, the Woman brings John into Sherlock’s bedroom.  She has drugged him into unconsciousness, this is what the narrator of The Raven longs for, he longs to forget, to be unconscious.  And yet, this incident leads John to take care of Sherlock and to come into his lonely bedroom and remind him of the very person he is trying to forget.

The Woman’s message is, ‘Nevermore’, because that’s how Sherlock feels about his love.  He will not risk getting hurt.  ”Alone protects me”.  This is one of the ways that Irene Adler challenges him.  She reflects him back to himself so he must face his decision to shut down his heart.  With her in his life, he can’t just keep pretending he’s not in love.  His self-imposed prison is laid bare by her gaze: she, in her mysterious wisdom, like The Raven, sees all.        

When the narrator of The Raven first thinks there’s someone at his door, he says, ‘Lenore!’, ‘Lenore!’.  When Sherlock wakes up, he says, ‘John!’, ‘John!’.  Then he sends John away, like the narrator sends away the memory of Lenore.  It is easier to forget than to suffer over something that can never be.  Except, eventually hope emerges and the narrator wants to know if he will ever see Lenore again.  But, the Raven is hardcore and all he can say is, ‘Nevermore’.

So, he can never have her and he can never forget.  This is his lot in life.  But Sherlock’s Lenore is not no-more: he’s right there, next door.  Sherlock can Scrooge his way out of this bind and now that The Woman has made him think about all this.  I think she forces him to see that what he feels is real.

If Sherlock had resigned himself to never have John, this contrast between Lenore and his own beloved one would hope would have a positive effect on him.  He can have his heaven with his beloved, because his beloved is there.  Now, if only there were a way for him to confirm that John’s into him, too.  Maybe The Raven’s got a message for John, too.  He better follow him wherever he goes, just in case.  

The first time that The Woman appears to John as The Raven is at her own window when she tells him that Sherlock has successfully ascertained her measurements.  This is her first, ‘Nevermore’, to him.  The soundtrack and her face tell us that this is bad news to John, this is reason to be jealous.  She is perched with Sherlock’s dark coat on in the window and jumps out as if she could fly.

Irene’s text alert has an even more Raveny effect on John because he does not read her texts.  All he has is that repetitive sound: to count, to wonder about, to obsess over.  To John, that moan is literally, ‘Nevermore’, if he sees it as a sign that Sherlock is into The Woman or into women in general.  Every time that John thinks Sherlock is receptive to this perceived seduction he hears a door closing.  With every text, his jealousy expands and his hope shrinks.  When he gets to confront The Raven, at Battersea, she says the opposite of, ‘Nevermore’, to him.  She says, ‘You’re Lenore’, and he’s taken aback.  And Sherlock is listening and he’s taken aback by John’s reaction because, when pressed, he does not deny it. 

In The Raven the main character is just projecting onto his annoying visitor the things that are already on his mind.  In reality, ‘Nevermore’, could be a sign of a million different things depending on what one may ask.  The message he gets is one of doom because that’s already how he feels.  The message that The-Woman-as-The-Raven gives to John and Sherlock is one of love and hope because that’s already how they feel.

Other Raven-like themes in ASiB include: the boomerang (‘another kind of flying thing’), the plane (‘the flight of the dead’) and Sherlock and Irene wearing either black or white almost exclusively.  In some traditions white ravens as seen as messengers that later turn black.  Sherlock wears a white sheet to Buckingham Palace before changing into an all-black outfit.  When we meet Irene she’s coming home in a white dress.  Later we will see her in Sherlock’s coat and in a black dress.  In a furry coat she looks very raven-like, indeed, next to a very phallic set of lights, reflected in glass.  She is two ravens, one who visits Sherlock and one who visits John.  

The very last time we see her, she’s dressed entirely in black, head covered.  This is as Raveny as she will look in the whole episode.  Sherlock is her Raven, too.  And while he did say, ‘Nevermore’, to her during the scene where he reveals her keycode, here, he proves himself to be a good bird and saves her, as her friend.

Bela Lugosi recites some Poe in The Raven (1935).