The Phantom Project Forum

I'm going through a phase where I am revisiting all the Phantom related paraphenalia I've accumulated over the years.

Having gone through a stack of movies and two derivative novels (Kay's "Phantom" and Meyer's "The Canary Trainer") I decided to revisit the original version by Gaston Leroux.

The version I have is a paperback edition with illustrations by Greg Hildebradt.

In addition to the abridged children's version that Anne has reviewed on this website, there was also a complete and unabridged softcover version which includes all the illustrations that were in the abridged version and a few more besides - I've been told that this is a rare item, though I was unaware of that when I picked it up for five bucks at a used bookstore.

I ususally end up watching the Chaney, Englund and Dance film versions at least once a year... I've listened to the Yeston/Kopit and Lloyd-Webber/Hart/Stilgoe recordings more times than I can count... I watched the animated Phantom so many times I wore out the VHS tape and now can no longer find it anywhere... and every now and then I'll watch the Rains or Schell films just for a good laugh... but I haven't bothered with reading the original novel for nine years.

The last time I read it I was going through a phase where I would madly devour anything related to Phantom I could get my hands on (though living in Darwin and not having an internet connection at the time limited things considerably) and I was pretty indiscriminating... hell, at the time I actually bought Frederick Forsyth's "Phantom Of Manhattan" in hardback and was not overcome with fits of rage when I had done with it... that's how naive and clueless I was...

Reading Leroux's original again after all these years has been a strange experience. I was aware of a lot more negative aspects of this book that I seem to have somehow tuned out all those years ago.

My first thought, sad to say, went something along the lines of:
"Maybe Frederick Forsyth, Susan Kay and Arthur Kopit weren't so full of shit as I originally thought when I first heard them diss Leroux's work".

I think Anne put it best in her review; Leroux is a master at creating atmosphere and has certainly done his homework on the period. "The Phantom Of The Opera" is very evocative when it comes to time and place. But the characterisation is sorely lacking. Most of the characters are simply cardboard cut out stereotypes, and many of them are dropped from the narrative as soon as they are introduced.

Erik, Christine, Raoul and The Persian are intriguing in a way, but they all do something over the course of the book that is incredibly irritating.

Or as Anne has put it in her review:

There's often a lot of outcry among fans who whine that Christine clearly should have stayed with Erik and not chosen Raoul. The reasons for this are as follows:

1) Erik is a genius.
2) Raoul is a naive putz.
3) Erik loves Christine enough to die for her (not to mention kill other people!).
4) Raoul loves Christine enough to mope about how she lied to him.
5) Erik dotes on Christine and wants her to achieve her full artistic potential.
6) Raoul wants Christine to be his wife and pop out some babies.
7) Erik is mysterious and broody.
8) Raoul is whiny and immature.

What really bugged me about Raoul is not any of these things... what really annoyed me was the stalker tendencies he exhibited all throughout this book - even before he realised that Christine was the object of the Phantom's desire.

He's constantly following her around and spying on her, and when he confesses this to her he seems surprised that she's offended. Twit.
(I must say that Raoul falls in love with Christine awfully fast. So fast that it's hard to read his interest in Christine as being anything deeper than an adolescent infatuation, a "crush"... or else he's projecting a whole lot of romantic illusions onto her... also, I find Raoul's naivete a bit incredible given his military training... I thought his training would've kicked some sense into him, it's been that way for friends of mine who've enlisted in the army, but then I don't know much about the way the military worked in France at that time)

At times it seems like Christine is essentially torn between two stalkers, both suffering from an arrested development.

Raoul is not the only one who throws childish tantrums when he doesn't get his way, Erik does this too. I am surprised that most "Phans", especially teenagers, don't pick up on this paralell between the two characters.

This is what always struck me as a bizarre aspect of the "Christine/Erik" shipping phenomenon... people hold it against Raoul that he stalks Christine and behaves very childishly at times... but Erik also stalks Christine and behaves childishly at times.

In the scene where he is berating the Persian, Erik did come across to me as being something of a spoilt brat... his petulant bragging tone in declaring his badassness and boasting of Christine's love for him. Then there's his behaviour towards the managers and his wording of the notes.

I suppose people are inclined to cut Erik more slack than Raoul because of his poor, deprived childhood... he hasn't had a normal childhood and proper moral guidance... Raoul has had access to a proper education and had a doting guardian, by all rights he should know better than to behave like such a twit.

But having said all this, I would say that of the two, Raoul was the better choice.

He may be incredibly naive and slow on the uptake when it comes to reading people's emotions, but at least his intentions are good and he doesn't seem to want to hurt anyone, even his stalker-ways are presented as a kind of benevolent stalking... whereas Erik is a thief/liar/stalker/extortionist/vandal/murderer who is totally cavalier about the people he has to hurt in order to get his way.

Although, to be honest, in the back of my mind I kept thinking that Christine would be better off if she didn't have to end up with either of thema and instead "pulled a Susanna Foster", leaving them both to focus on her career.
Anachronistic though that may be.

Anne said some other interesting things in her review:

As I'll be reading through a large number of novels that prefer to have Christine realize her "terrible mistake" and return to Erik, this dichotomy will only become clearer; while it's entirely possible that a modern-day woman would find herself unhappy and depressed at passing up the opportunity for rapport and growth in favor of safety, the likelihood is that those feelings in Christine would probably have taken a far, far backseat to relief and security, simply as a function of her society, time period, and upbringing. And the fact that Erik looks really, really creepy.

And the fact that Erik is a criminal. He's murderer, thief, vandal, extortionist, con-man... even today, in real life, that is a big barrier to forming a relationship with someone.

Even today, even if someone has served time in prison for their crimes, a lot of people would have an in built resistance to entering into a relationship with this person, knowing what they have done in the past and are therefore capable of doing.

I wonder how many Phans would give a convicted murderer the time of day in real life.

That's what really astounds me the most... I can understand readers looking at the story from a modern mindset being dismissive of class issues and the sexual mores of the time (which are contributing factors to Christine's rejection of Erik, as Anne points out)... I can't understand how people can overlook the criminal tendencies of the character.

It seems to me that those criminal tendencies, more than any other factor, contributed to Christine's rejection of Erik.

Again, I suppose a lot of people are willing to cut Erik slack for his crimes because of his deprived childhood...

But again, one can only take this so far. There are criminals who have had equally deprived childhoods and committed less crimes than Erik, and yet they remain vilified by the public at large.

(sigh)

I guess that's the power of fiction.

Raoul may be unfortunately relegated to the world of sympathetic cardboard cutouts, but Christine may actually be the character who undergoes the most change and growth throughout the novel's course. She is surprisingly strong when confronted, quite unlike the meek image most later versions paint her in, declaring her actions her own and reproaching Raoul for judging her. Leroux's intent to make Christine the perfect woman is still evident; she is gentle but not weak, sweet but not stupid, innocent but not naive. Even in the final scenes of the novel, when she faints, screams, gets kidnapped and tied up, and generally requires a lot of rescuing, she attempts desperately to fool the Phantom to save Raoul and the Persian and eventually sacrifices herself for them, actions at odds with the idea of a fainting flower.

You know, this stood out for me too.

Christine does come across as quite assertive, even feisty in the earlier portions of the novel. I really liked the scenes where she is standing up to Raoul and telling him off for stalking her, it is so unlike the Christine of many other adaptations over the years... these scenes actually brought the image of the animated Christine to my mind, which I had previously thought of as something of a departure because I had so gotten used to the wallflower image of Christine.

Reading the novel again made me even angrier at Susan Kay and Nicholas Meyer for totally removing Christine's backbone in their retellings
(although less so in the case of Meyer, where to a certain extent you could attribute the presentation of the character as being a product of Holmes' arrogance as a narrator)

So, Christine is actually quite a strong character in the early stages of the book...

But then comes the scene of Christine "playing house" with Raoul in her dressing room, and later the scene where she attempts suicide by bashing her head against a wall.

These two scenes irritated me immensely. They seemed totally out of character given her behaviour before.

I suppose these can be attributed to the stress of recent events, but since much of that occurs "offstage", this aspect of the character development just didn't ring true to me.

Leroux uses this chapter to intentionally emphasize Erik's monstrousness by recounting (via the Persian) his murders, the atrocities which he committed while in Persia, and his general all-around ghoulishness; but a very poignant counterpoint is made when, while the Persian is chiding him for his behavior and telling him that he must not kill again, Erik replies, "It is different now. I am loved for myself." That longing to be loved despite his disfigurement juxtaposes heartbreakingly with his seemingly conscienceless killing, especially in light of the fact that, eventually, Christine will leave him, despite being perhaps the only person who has ever "loved him for himself".

Again, what struck me about this scene was how childlike Erik came across.

The Persian talks to Erik as though to an errant child, and his petulance feels very bratty. There's a similar father/child dynamic that comes across in the scene where Erik visits The Persian at his house and confesses that he's let Christine go. It felt like a prodigal son returning home.

Again, the bits where he expresses amazement that Christine did not die upon receiving his kiss do seem oddly childlike.

This made me think that both the Kopit/Yeston and Lloyd-Webber/Schumacher conceptions of the character weren't so far off the mark as they may appear to be.

Reading these sequences, I was reminded both of the scene where Gerard Carierre is telling Erik to take Christine back upstairs in the Kopit/Yeston version... and the scene in the Lloyd-Webber/Schumacher version where the unnamed Phantom is playing with a toy theatre and replacing the heads of the dolls.



I must say, I was also amused by Anne's comment in her review about Erik writing an opera based upon Mozart, based upon Byron, only this time things are they way they should've been... it seems that Erik spends a great deal of time writing fan fiction.

And again, this is something else that bugs me about Leroux's book. Erik would've seemed like more of a genius if his opera revolved around a totally original concept rather than being based on something else - but I guess the Don Juan motif offered Leroux an opportunity to pack more symbolism into the book... cause let's face it, it's not like there's a lot of that in the text already...

Ooh, that does sound like you have a nice edition. Which translation is it?

It's true; Raoul is just not what we think of as a hero. Part of that is the change in time period, but part of it is on purpose--he's very much a child, just like Christine, and spends plenty of time lampooning the aristocracy through him. I talk a lot about how later versions of Erik have been "softened" so that they're less evil, more sympathetic, etc., but Raoul's character is almost inevitably changed in every version, too; either he's made a villain to assist in sympathizing Erik, or even in those versions that keep him as the hero, he's matured into a much more solid adult (as in Webber's musical, for example).

(Incidentally, Raoul would have been through some training and he'd be very competent and capable with his weapons, but Leroux makes it a point to tell us that he hasn't actually gone out into the field yet and that the ladies of the aristocracy are already pitying him for the grueling work that's still to come. He's on his last hurrah, so to speak, before he has to go off and experience the thoroughly uncomfortable parts of soldiering.)

Ben wrote:In the scene where he is berating the Persian, Erik did come across to me as being something of a spoilt brat... his petulant bragging tone in declaring his badassness and boasting of Christine's love for him. Then there's his behaviour towards the managers and his wording of the notes.

Absolutely. I really love that aspect of Erik's character, actually... he has a certain childishness about him, which both reinforces the idea of his insanity and inability to relate to others and still helps add some sympathy to the character. It's obvious that he just doesn't understand how he's supposed to treat other people, and so he does it the same way a six-year-old does: he whines, cajoles, insists, tantrums, and is confused and bewildered when people (whose other desires he doesn't understand) resist or get angry.

Ben wrote:I suppose people are inclined to cut Erik more slack than Raoul because of his poor, deprived childhood... he hasn't had a normal childhood and proper moral guidance... Raoul has had access to a proper education and had a doting guardian, by all rights he should know better than to behave like such a twit.

I think that is the root of a lot of the transfer of sympathy from Raoul to Erik; Raoul has always had everything in his life, whereas Erik's had very little and suffered for most of it. However, in my opinion, that doesn't at all mean that Christine should have chosen Erik or decided to be more lenient in her assessment of his insanity. It's very tragic that bad things have happened to him, but I'm with her 100% in thinking that she could neither fix nor tolerate his condition.
On the flip side, I think that Raoul's behavior, again, is probably Leroux making a comment on the general dissolution of the aristocracy. He's portraying the nobles as somewhat selfish and out of touch with reality. It's still quite silly, but as a function of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Raoul is probably also somewhat stunted in his development as far as knowing what to do about people that don't do what he wants (though not to the extreme that Erik is).

Ben wrote:Although, to be honest, in the back of my mind I kept thinking that Christine would be better off if she didn't have to end up with either of thema and instead "pulled a Susanna Foster", leaving them both to focus on her career. Anachronistic though that may be.

Heh, that was really my favorite part of that film, apart from Rains' able portrayal. I liked the neat switcheroo, since Lubin had done such a good job of making us think that she was probably going to choose Anatole since he was more sympathetic and involved in music as well. It's a pity that more versions of Christine don't assert themselves (I think the original did a pretty impressive job of it, considering the time period and her lack of social standing).

Ben wrote:Reading the novel again made me even angrier at Susan Kay and Nicholas Meyer for totally removing Christine's backbone in their retellings.

That's one of the biggest complaints I've heard from readers on Kay's book, actually. Her version of Christine is almost autistic in her total disconnection from reality and her inability to take care of herself, and while it does make certain aspects of Kay's version of Erik work better, it's a little grating when we recall the original's propensity for telling her suitors (both of them) off when they upset her.

Ben wrote:But then comes the scene of Christine "playing house" with Raoul in her dressing room, and later the scene where she attempts suicide by bashing her head against a wall. These two scenes irritated me immensely. They seemed totally out of character given her behaviour before. I suppose these can be attributed to the stress of recent events, but since much of that occurs "offstage", this aspect of the character development just didn't ring true to me.

I've always thought of Christine's suicide attempt as an example of her strength, actually, rather than a lack of it. I also tend to think of suicide as an "easy out" kind of a solution, but for Christine, a Catholic (she believes in angels, for heaven's sake), she's trying to commit a mortal sin here. That's a serious decision to make, and it really makes me wonder what motivates the character so strongly. It's always seemed to me that Christine's greatest motivator is usually freedom--she doesn't want Raoul following her and curtailing her movements, and while she wants to perform to the best of her ability, she immediately balks at Erik's demands and is even afraid of her own voice when it seems that she doesn't have control over it anymore. The suicide scene made me think that she was, even tied up and helpless while other people bickered over her fate and made increasingly histrionic demands on her, trying to make her own choice--about the most vehement middle finger she could have come up with to prevent anyone from forcing her into anything.

Ben wrote:The Persian talks to Erik as though to an errant child, and his petulance feels very bratty. There's a similar father/child dynamic that comes across in the scene where Erik visits The Persian at his house and confesses that he's let Christine go. It felt like a prodigal son returning home.

I've never thought of it quite that way; I've always seen the childlike element of Erik's character, but I confess that the Persian's policeman role had always been a convenient explanation for his actions for me. But now that you say that, I can definitely see it--and that's almost definitely the paternal dynamic that Yeston and Kopit probably picked up on when they made the character of Carriere (who is, basically, the Persian anyway).

Ben wrote:And again, this is something else that bugs me about Leroux's book. Erik would've seemed like more of a genius if his opera revolved around a totally original concept rather than being based on something else - but I guess the Don Juan motif offered Leroux an opportunity to pack more symbolism into the book...

I theorize that Leroux uses the Don Juan idea because Erik is, in essence, writing about himself, and the idea would appeal to him that way. The Don Juan story has so many parallel ideas to Erik's conception of himself--damnation, rejection of God, a sense of being set above other men, and eventual disaster--and Don Juan seems very much like the figure that Erik kind of wants to be--someone who chooses his own damnation and says a big fuck you to God, instead of someone who's been condemned to it through no fault of his own. It plays nicely with the whole hatred of God/desperate attempts for redemption thing that Erik has going on... which are another example of Erik seeming very childlike and in need of a father figure, as he alternately curses God and mopes over his (supposed) evil of soul that should have made God do this to him. Sort of like a child being angry when spanked, but secretly mortified that they've disappointed the parent or otherwise brought this on themselves.
You're probably right. I'm sure Leroux could have gone a more creative route, but the Don Juan story was probably pretty irresistible when it comes to all that symbolism junk, and it also ties into the opera thing, what with the controversy and popularity of Mozart's opera.

but Raoul's character is almost inevitably changed in every version, too; either he's made a villain to assist in sympathizing Erik, or even in those versions that keep him as the hero, he's matured into a much more solid adult (as in Webber's musical, for example).

Sure, he may be written that way, but 99% of the time, this attempt to make the character seem more mature is neutered by the casting of an uncharismatic girly-man in the role - like Patrick Wilson, Michael York or Byron Neese, all are wet as dishrags.

The only time I've seen Raoul portrayed as really capable is in the Robert Englund version... and again, this is kind of offset by the fact that Alex Hyde-White isn't very charismatic, and he winds up killed in the end anyway.

So even when the writers try to beef up the character, it's ruined by bad acting - that's been my experience of it anyway.

From what I recall, I actually think I liked Patrick Wilson in the role, but I haven't seen that version in years (still upcoming on my to-see list), so I can't really cite much. I'll have to look again.

Yeah, I agree on York, though... he wasn't terrible or anything, but I could have probably forgotten he was there without much difficulty.

Actually, if you want a capable Raoul, the director from the other Argento film, Opera, was pretty sensible and heroic (sometimes... he had his lapses of judgment, don't get me wrong). That might partly have been because the more innocent Raoul attributes had been spliced off and handed to another character, though.