Little things noticed upon re-viewing

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Siggdalos
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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by Siggdalos » Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:10 pm

Personally, I never thought the phrasing was weird. I'm not a grammar expert, but my gut feeling is that it makes sense to leave out the indefinite article and use "vampyr" as an adjective describing a character trait, similar to an occupation (läkare) or nationality (grek). Oskar is not asking if Eli is a distinctly non-human creature; he's asking if Eli is a human afflicted with vampirism. Same thing when Virginia tells Lacke "Jag är vampyr" in the novel. She doesn't think she's turned into a different species; she still thinks of herself as a person, albeit one who is now also a blood-sucking monster.

I feel like I'm overthinking this, but that's how I would justify this use of the word.
De höll om varandra i tystnad. Oskar blundade och visste: detta var det största. Ljuset från lyktan i portvalvet trängde svagt in genom hans slutna ögonlock, la en hinna av rött för hans ögon. Det största.

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metoo
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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by metoo » Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:16 pm

This is interesting.

Sense of language varies between individuals and as time passes, and is never absolute...
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by sauvin » Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:31 pm

metoo wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:16 pm
This is interesting.

Sense of language varies between individuals and as time passes, and is never absolute...
Read a story a few months ago, probably never find it again. Seems a pile of people speaking some Germanic language or other fetched up somewhere in England where the incumbent populations spoke either some Gaelic language or other, or some other Germanic language, don't remember which. This would have been while England was just a mass of warring kingdoms and fiefdoms and such. The incumbents' older members couldn't adapt easily to the incoming folk's language, and the newcomers' older members had similar trouble with the incumbents' language. They wound up creating a kind of mostly Germanic pidgin where some of the finer points like cases, genders, voices, subjunctives and so on were left by the roadside. It's what got the older folk talking and trading, and what the kids learned on the playground, and it's said that this brand of Germanic language formed the major part of what's spoken and written in the Anglosphere today.

I mean, even we're taking about just folks from different parts of the Germanic world, just about everybody on this board reads at least one Germanic language - English - and can testify very easily that other major members of the family (Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish and its siblings, and German) can be really tough to decipher.

If ur on the Nets alot these days, u no its still changing. 4 better or worse, I imagine, today's SMS-style English will b what's taught in grade schools n universities, n only lawyers and linguists will b able 2 read this post easily. I pray for them, really: I have a great deal of trouble with SMS-style English.

In some languages, you'd say "I am doctor" if you're stating what your profession is, but you might say "I am a doctor" if you're pointing towards the presence of other doctors nearby. What you are, in other words, is kinda defined by what you do, and it's tantamount to being the boy where "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy". Drag the doctor out of the hospital, he's still a doctor.

First time I heard Oskar ask "aer du vampir" (don't shoot me, please, it's what I heard), it didn't sound funny. You can take the girl out of Transylvania, but you can't take the Transylvania out of the girl. If I'd heard Oskar asking if she were a vampire, it'd have implied that Oskar had knowledge or suspicion of others, and the movie gives no hint that Oskar ever knew anything about what happened to Virginia.

In my understanding of how English is usually used, if Oskar had asked "are you vampire", it would have come across as asking if she were the very embodiment and authoritative definition of what it is to have a vampiric nature. In this case, it would have been more like "Are you the Transylvania that can't be taken out of you?" or even "do you comprise the entire vampire population in the whole wide world?", which is most definitely not what he was asking.

Oh, look, a subjunctive! One of the few (and probably fading) survivors from the "English as pidgin" story: "if she were". Most people these days say "if she was". More examples of technically correct but odd-sounding English: "if she be a vampire, if she have a need for blood (or if she simply like it)".

Even if we all spoke the same language as a first language, English, for example, we wouldn't all speak the same language. Folks even older than myself might be more inclined to pay attention to the subjunctives that kids from my age had long ago started to ignore, for example. I don't say "if he have" or "if she like", but am still often bothered when I hear people saying "if he has something", preferring instead that people say (aha! another!) "if he had something" (but he doesn't). This is more than just "toe may toe/toe mah toe" (grandma wouldn't "fry" things, after all, she'd just "frah" them, especially green tahmayters); and you'd still have folks from New England sucking down tonics, Grandma guzzling down sodies ("soh deez") while the guys across the street from me are just putting away some cokes. Telephone operators back in the day from England would say "you're through" when what they really mean is "you are connected to the party with whom you wish to speak".

This is a major reason institutions like the Academie Francaise evoke a reaction in me that can't be described faithfully on this board (language policy and all, you know), and it's related to the absurdity of trying to map Latin grammar onto a Germanic language. We're command to never split an infinitive or put prepositions at the ends of sentences (Winston Churchill masterfully lampooned the latter by saying "this is the sort of nonsense up with which we shall not put"). Any living spoken language is exactly that: alive. Growing, changing, adapting to new circumstances and finding new ways to look at old things.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. Take it with a grain: I am no doctor, even if I've played doctor a few times in front of a TV set.
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metoo
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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by metoo » Sat Feb 06, 2021 6:25 am

sauvin wrote:
Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:31 pm
In some languages, you'd say "I am doctor" if you're stating what your profession is, but you might say "I am a doctor" if you're pointing towards the presence of other doctors nearby. What you are, in other words, is kinda defined by what you do, and it's tantamount to being the boy where "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy". Drag the doctor out of the hospital, he's still a doctor.
If I was to ask in Swedish if Eli was one of several known or assumed vampires, I would have had to say:
Är du en av vampyrerna?

It occurs to me that the same construct is used to convey this idea in English:
Are you one of the vampires?
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by Jameron » Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:48 pm

sauvin wrote:
Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:31 pm
If ur on the Nets alot these days, u no its still changing. 4 better or worse
Definitely for the worse. Especially four being replaced by 4, and the upcoming death of the apostrophe. In my humble and inconsequential opinion.

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"For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was … himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love."

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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by sauvin » Sat Feb 06, 2021 3:32 pm

Jameron wrote:
Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:48 pm
sauvin wrote:
Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:31 pm
If ur on the Nets alot these days, u no its still changing. 4 better or worse
Definitely for the worse. Especially four being replaced by 4, and the upcoming death of the apostrophe. In my humble and inconsequential opinion.

.
Your opinion in this matter isn't quite so humble. Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the US, said "it's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word". Maybe it's also a damn poor mind that can think only in slogans. I have the fear that SMS-style abbreviated English will tend to encourage smaller, "simpler" vocabularies that'll mitigate against expressing complex ideas. "2 b or not 2 b", is that supposed to be an algebraic expression or the opening words of a famous soliloquy?
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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by Jameron » Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:58 am

sauvin wrote:
Sat Feb 06, 2021 3:32 pm
Jameron wrote:
Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:48 pm
sauvin wrote:
Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:31 pm
If ur on the Nets alot these days, u no its still changing. 4 better or worse
Definitely for the worse. Especially four being replaced by 4, and the upcoming death of the apostrophe. In my humble and inconsequential opinion.

.
I have the fear that SMS-style abbreviated English will tend to encourage smaller, "simpler" vocabularies that'll mitigate against expressing complex ideas.
You make a double plus good point ;)

.
"For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was … himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love."

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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by manananmaclir » Wed Feb 10, 2021 7:37 pm

I realize this is late to the party (sorry!). I always assumed that Oskar turned on the light to see if his Mom was really out (sleeping pills perhaps?), so he could sneak over to Eli's. If she had woken up, he could have come with one of a number of excuses for waking his mom up. It's at least implied that his Mom sleeps in the living room, so if she woke up to the light, she would have woken to the door.

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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by dongregg » Wed Feb 10, 2021 8:23 pm

Welcome to the forum!

Good post. I thought it may have been a step toward withdrawing from his childhood, like closing the hoods on his toy cars.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: Little things noticed upon re-viewing

Post by NigelNinja » Fri Feb 12, 2021 12:31 pm

manananmaclir wrote:
Wed Feb 10, 2021 7:37 pm
I realize this is late to the party (sorry!). I always assumed that Oskar turned on the light to see if his Mom was really out (sleeping pills perhaps?), so he could sneak over to Eli's. If she had woken up, he could have come with one of a number of excuses for waking his mom up. It's at least implied that his Mom sleeps in the living room, so if she woke up to the light, she would have woken to the door.
I agree that he was definitely testing to see how hard his mom was sleeping so he could sneak out. I also think that it shows how disconnected she was to him, and foreshadowing that his path was leading away from that home/life and pulling him toward Eli and their life together.
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