“I Have Touched You, Heard You, Felt The Comfort Of Your Presence–the Sweetness Of Your Consolation:

“No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being disturbed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face… I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious, yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony; a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.”

— Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (via undergroundoutofsight)

Thinking about Jordan Donica's Raoul and the illegal way he said sOAkEd to the sKiN

Phantom Acting Choices That Live in My Head Rent Free (Part 2)

The way Hugh Panaro says "sing for me" during the title song. Extra emphasis on the ME, like this man knows Christine doesn't sing for anyone else like this--especially not that insolent boy.

Tim Martin Gleason's emotionally regulating self-hug.

David Shannon plays the Phantom like his skull exposure is actually vulnerable/causes him chronic pain.

Earl Carpenter directs tf out of Christine's voice during the title song in his '06 run. Gospel choir director energy, but make it sex.

Phantoms kneeling during the Don Juan AIAOY reprise. (Looking at you David Thaxton and Hugh P.)

Every acting decision Gina Beck makes in the final lair.

There's a boot (I think 1995?) where Davis Gaines pauses after he says "this is the choice" and he actually realizes he's gone off the deep end and "this is the point of no return" fr.

Michael Nicholson's deranged laugh turned sob. So sad, so disturbed.

Gary Mauer says like 4-5 ily's in the final lair like he can't stop now that he's uttered it aloud. And the more the merrier imo lol.

Hugh gave everything this performance. It's historic somehow, idc.

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between gothic romance, melodrama, and fanfiction (mostly Re: POTO) and how they've been shunted into the category of "women's media." Like women and queer folks have been writing their desires into media for centuries and being told that such desires--the excess, the sensationalism/sensuality, the emotional transcendence--are not "realistic" and only good for aesthetic consumption in its place.

But then you look at the general endurance of "women's media" through time...and the fact that even in a capitalistic world obsessed with monetization and the "hyper-real," there are whole fandoms/online communities where authors are writing fanfics with hundreds of thousands of hits for FREE and where third spaces and alternative economies based on trading and sharing have taken shape around the very same desires deemed "unrealistic"....

Idk where I was going with that, but someone gets the point. Is it that queer and feminine desire are "silly," or do they imagine other ways of living and relating to each other, our bodies, our emotions that certain power structures want us to think is impossible?

A heartbreaking Davis Gaines hand thing.

Edit: Boots are cinema because do you SEE how this master lets the camera linger on the empty space even after Christine leaves the frame? Do you understand we give filmmakers oscars for this kind of thing?!

David Thaxton's Phantom is a special kind of unhinged and...amazing?

Slowly starting to discover Phantoms 2018-present as I build my mini archive. He and Killian Donnelly (but also maybe Dean Chisnall?) are carrying the post-Panaro era on their backs.

photo credit: melanie gowie (x)

From “Cinéastes de notre temps” Robert Bresson, 1965.