You're not reading into it enough. Edge of Darkness is not a blockbuster Hollywood film, it's a complex and ambitious piece of art. I don't need to have evidence to make assumptions, you don't need to interview Melville to know that Ahab is named that way for a reason.
This so-called attraction to his daughter is baloney. He loved her to bits, probably more than a father who still had a wife would have done. Do you have any children? If not, you won't understand how all-encompassing that love is, and how revolting it is to make up the idea of some kind of father-daughter relationship for which there is absolutely no evidence.
Him kissing the tip of her vibrator? The play he hides in during the chase being, specifically, about incest? Him mentioning how jealous he is of her boyfriend? The flashback where she climbes onto the bed and " replaces " his wife?
Yes, of course, we're all perverts.
Nobody who has children really imagines that they are "pristine babies". We were, after all, children ourselves once.
Heh. Do you have any children?
As for his "hidden past", it was hidden for security reasons. Many British Special Branch/MI5/Paras/SAS people were involved in undercover work in Northern Ireland, and their identities are still hidden. Even in 2009 they are still hidden because of the danger of reprisals, let alone when this series was set, when his security and the security of his family was paramount.
Irrelevant. What does this have to do with anything?
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bogwart-1
15 years ago
Jesus H. What does that turgid POS Moby-Dick have to do with Edge of Darkness? One is a book steeped in religious symbolism and metaphor, written in virtually perfect iambic pentameter. Melville at his most Melville-ish. The other is a TV series which was written with no deeper intent than to entertain; it was never intended to be a 'work of art' that would resonate through time.
Get over it, for goodness sake. Stop pretending that this is something more than it is. I watched it on TV when it was first broadcast, and like many other people thought it was bold and brilliant. I certainly didn't expect to be writing about it 25 years after the fact. I bought the DVDs recently and re-watched it, and most parts have stood the test of time very well.
You certainly are a pervert if you want to persist with this nonsense of incestuous love. The vibrator scene has to do with his exposure (again) to the fact that she is a grown woman and no longer a little child. It remains a clever and ambitious scene, if apparently beyond your black-and-white vision to appreciate. What you see as jealousy is a feeling that all men with daughters will have at some point; the bond between children and their parents is usually daughter to father, son to mother. To a father, the idea that some little dork with (he assumes) the sole object of shagging his little girl is hard to deal with. It doesn't mean that he's jealous of the aforesaid little dork, it means that he resents him. Perfectly natural.
Yes, I have children. I have twin sons, and they are older than you. I do know what I'm talking about; I'm not just flapping my brain processes in the air like you.
His "hidden past",which you now call irrelevant, was brought up by you and I was offering you the explanation. What you mean is that you consider it irrelevant because you now have no answer for it.
"I don't need to have evidence to make assumptions...". Well, you've certainly proven the truth of that. It remains to be seen how comprehensively it gets screwed up when it comes out on the big screen with Saint Mel.
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Havoac
15 years ago
Alright then.
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lizandrich
15 years ago
Most of the characters are named after places in northern England or Scotland.
She's a man, it's a sled, he's dead already.
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www.wedd
14 years ago
For what it's worth, Havoac, I'm with you. Things are not randomly thrown together in productions like this. I don't necessarily think that incest was involved, but they were certainly very, very close, perhaps too close for their own good. I noticed the detail of the play that Craven saw being about incest, and it did seem quite telling.
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nephihaha
14 years ago
In Bogwart's defence -
Many fathers resent their daughters' boyfriends. Probably because as one time young men themselves, they know exactly what young men are like. Not because they want to copulate with them...
I think there is a low level oedipal theme running through it though, but it's not something that was ever consummated.
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