Monsters Walk Among Us: Whiplash and Penny Dreadful
One of the most heart-wrenching narratives in Season One of Penny Dreadful is that of Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the entity dubbed “Caliban” by one of his few friends, actor Vincent Brand. Although the creature’s origin story is somewhat different to the one told in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it’s one of the best adaptations around, in large part because it captures the essence of dread, fear, and empathy that characterizes the original novel.
We both loathe and pity Frankenstein as we loathe and pity his creation, but nothing even comes close to the loathing and rage they both feel for themselves. It’s that chasm into which we fall when we read Frankenstein and it’s what makes it such a complex, compelling novel after so many years.
Perhaps it’s a stretch, then, to find parallels between this Gothic tale of misery and a much more recent film, 2014’s Whiplash. Visually, at least in the beginning of the film, Whiplash’s mise en scene lurks in the same shadowy depths as a lot of modern horror films. Its sickly-green palette colors Andrew Neiman’s lonely journey towards some kind of epiphany, although the precise nature of that epiphany is withheld until the very end and then snatched away, forcing viewers to decide for themselves.
Neiman is a young musician at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York. He’s practicing alone one night when he encounters the famous conductor, Terence Fletcher, who is an instructor at the school. It’s not exactly an encouraging meeting. Shaffer toys with Neiman’s emotional responses to his questions, wielding his own prestige like a weapon. Although Neiman is forced to admit that he knows who Terence Fletcher is, we don’t know who Terence Fletcher is beyond a name. It’s his despicable behavior that implies he’s supposed to be A Big Deal.
Fletcher plays the carrot and stick game with Neiman constantly throughout the movie. It’s not just Neiman, though, it’s everyone. Fletcher berates, bullies, demeans, and denigrates many of his students. Even learning that one of his former students recently died—a discovery that brings Fletcher to what we think are realistic tears—doesn’t stop him from being a dick. There are a few times when Fletcher’s frustrated outbursts seem valid, but 99 percent of the time he comes across like a raging asshole. In scene after scene, Fletcher is revealed to be a monster of epic proportions and anyone who has suffered from emotional abuse will find themselves almost unable to watch the film without shaking and crying, at least that was the case for me.
The movie itself wields the carrot and the stick when Fletcher is fired from Shaffer after a lawsuit brought against the school by disgruntled parents disgusted by his abusive treatment. Months later, Neiman is lurking in the corner of a jazz bar where his former teacher is playing when Fletcher notices him and wants to chat. Could Fletcher have mellowed? Might he genuinely be interested in Neiman’s musical prowess now that Neiman himself has been kicked out of Shaffer and is now attending Columbia? No.
In an appalling scene, we realize that Fletcher, within minutes of seeing Neiman again, devised a scheme humiliate his former student in front of a much larger audience than the student body at Shaffer. Neiman, however, is not done with fighting back against Shaffer, something he’s done several times already, both verbally and physically (it’s the latter which gets him booted from Shaffer). He actually performs the hell out of the piece, improvising an insanely intense drum solo that even shocks Shaffer. Then, the movie ends.
What is Whiplash saying? How were people reacting? I was actually afraid to read reviews of the film after seeing it in case there were people who might argue that Fletcher's ends justified his means. The Wikipedia entry characterizes the end as such: “When Andrew ends the performance with an extravagant drum solo, Fletcher and Andrew exchange smiles.” This implies that the smiling is meant to indicate some kind of forgiveness on Neiman’s part, an acknowledgement that Shaffer did the right thing in the end, even if his methods were abysmal, from a moral standpoint.
Indie London calls Fletcher’s methods “borderline sadistic” and although it remarks that Whiplash “poses legitimate questions over teaching methods and the use of fear as a tool” and refers to Fletcher as “part-monster, part-genius,” it notes that Fletcher has “humanity,” and “genuinely believes his methods are right.” The Sun characterizes Fletcher’s behavior as a lot “shouting” and “colorful insults.”
Not everyone had the warm fuzzies about Whiplash, though: “Whiplash draws you into a human experiment. Andrew is the subject and Fletcher is the mad scientist manipulating him to achieve magic,” says Blake Howard of Graffiti With Punctuation. And now we come to the heart of it all.
What makes a man into a monster? Frankenstein created the Creature out of hubris and is terrified at what he hath wrought. The Creature didn’t ask to be born and in some twisted Freudian nightmare, wants to destroy his creator, not through death but suffering.
While Neiman isn’t perfect (who among us is?), Fletcher is like something out of a horror movie (as several reviewers have astutely observed), but unless you’ve endured the slings and arrows of someone like Fletcher it’s hard to believe someone like that could be real. (Believe it.) Note the way that Neiman himself becomes a cocky jackass to his cousins at a family dinner and witness the way that Tanner flips out at Neiman for losing the sheet music. Cruelty begets cruelty and it’s not a stretch to propose that Fletcher isn’t just making amazing musicians, he’s making monsters, too.