Hug It Out

     While someone who really loves Superman might have some facial hair-based reservations, the TV series Superman & Lois, now in it's final season, has settled meaningfully into being a show about people who care deeply about each other.  Spouses, partners, family, friendships, communities; every episode seems to have at least one tear-inducing moment about human connection.  Something to consider less than a week before election day.

Storytelling, Corporate Agendas and the Fate of the Multiverse

   We invest a lot in stories.  They entertain us, sure, but they also help us shape ourselves and our understanding of the world.  If they’re the things we make ourselves out of, they ought to be made of good stuff.

    Storytellers invest a lot in shaping those stories.  Yes, it’s a way to make a living, but the storytellers who really care know that they’re helping to build identities and worldviews, asking questions and offering possible answers.

    Corporations invest a lot in stories.  They’re a crucial part of the package they label with the unease-inducing generic term “content.”  The better the stories are, the more people will watch them, so there’s a reason to make them good.  But for the corporations, the investment is mainly a financial one, the foundation of what Mike Hale of the New York Times referred to as the “narrative-industrial complex." 

    We’re in an age where a certain kind of story has taken over: the overarching, infinite serialized mythology.  For corporations, this is the best kind of product possible.  For storytellers, it’s got unique, exciting opportunities, but also dangerous, frustrating pitfalls.  For the audience, it’s potentially a whole new level of attachment, for better and worse.

    The artist struggles to tell a story they actually feel.  That’s how you connect with other people and get people to connect with each other through the stories.  The corporation has a plan, a determined structure to the overstory, of which any particular storyteller’s part is only a small piece.  The artist struggles to tell a story they feel.  The corporation needs a story that fits.

    In Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson sent the Star Wars mythology spinning off its axis with a more idiosyncratic and personal tale that departed from the established lines of expectation, from those emotions already contained within the overstory.  This made fans queasy at first, buts seems to be widely lauded in retrospect.  Things happened in The Last Jedi that surprised us in a way that Star Wars movies hadn’t before (or at least not since The Empire Strikes Back).  Now admittedly, Johnson wasn’t working in a vacuum (so to speak).  Whatever he did ultimately required the approval of Disney and its arbiters, in this case, producer Kathleen Kennedy.  Now, maybe Kennedy saw the value of letting a young rebel go for a joyride, narratively-speaking, and how it could jump-start a kind of excitement and emotion that had been static.  Maybe she also knew that they still had an episode to go and any damage done could be rectified.

    And, of course, the addendum to this is that J.J. Abrams “corrected” the narrative course in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skylwalker.  Feeling more beholden to what he saw as the overarching theme of the three trilogies, the overstory, he determined that certain expectations had to be met and that the themes of redemption and facing your dark side had to rise to the top of the tale.  Was he right?  The first trilogy was about a fall from grace, which you could say was a set up for redemption.  The second trilogy turned out to be about redemption (thanks, Return of the Jedi).  Seems like the third trilogy was really up for grabs in that regard and Abrams imposed his interpretation on it (along with the assistance of Disney and Kathleen Kennedy).  Even had he not gone back and canceled out much of what Johnson introduced, he could still have played out those themes through the character of Kylo Ren and let Rey blaze a frontier into new, powerful thematic territory.  Abrams does strike one as a company man and he seems to have held the company line, here.

    In season 1 of Loki, meanwhile, creator Michael Waldron crafted a natural story for the title character that ultimately funneled into an unnatural place, as if his directions had been to tell whatever story he wanted, as long as it ended with certain very specific pieces in place.  Thematically-speaking, the ending the first season of Loki seemed to be driving toward was something on the order of having a final, ultimate Loki variant revealed as the cosmic manipulator behind the Time Variance Authority.  The entire show was about Loki facing down and owning up to the various versions of himself, struggling with the false ambition of himself “on a throne.”  But when we finally get to the figure sitting atop the throne-iest throne of all time (literally), it turns out to be . . . some scientist from the 31^st Century we’ve never seen or heard of before?  Yes, comic book readers know him and audiences will certainly get to know more of him and his machinations in the future (that’s the whole the point, after all), so Marvel is setting its ducks in a row very carefully.  But I do wonder if Waldron would have grown Loki’s narrative into that conclusion, had he been permitted to follow his storytelling instincts. 

    There’s a joy in a story that we know is going to keep coming, characters and worlds that we get to return to over and over and over again.  But sometimes, we need a story to end so we can fully understand it and use it to understand ourselves; so that it actually satisfies us instead of just leaving us wanting more.  What is a storyteller?  What do we expect from them and what do we need from them?  Surely more than just turning out "content."  What’s good for the product is not always good for the story.  And good stories are good for us.

Thanks 2017

     On Thanksgiving last year, the country was on the cusp of a momentous change.  Things have not particularly calmed down since then (do they ever, really?), and however you feel that change has paid off for the country, you'd have to agree that things have not exactly become easier or brighter.  But one of the ways we get through it is by finding things we're thankful for, too.  As on Thanksgivings' past, here are a few small things I'm thankful for, that offer sheer enjoyment, but also a deeper perspective on things we take for granted.

All the President's Men by Carl Benrstein and Bob Woodward - As an account of Watergate by the two journalists who broke the story, it's not exactly a light read, nor an escape from the real world.  Adapted into a riveting movie, the book illuminates just how much bigger the story was than the actual break in at the Democratic National Convention headquarters.  Most astonishing is just how deep President Nixon's rabbit hole of corruption went and the lengths he and his people would go to destroy their enemies, both real and imagined.  It happened in the 1970s, but it's still (or once again) a timely read and, ironically, a hopeful one.  Watergate, which felt every bit as cataclysmic as our own era's problems feel now, did change our country forever.  But if we survived that, maybe we can survive a lot more than we think we can. 

Channel Zero: No End House - Comprising the second season of the SyFy Channel's anthology horror series overseen by off-beat horror writer Nick Antosca, this takes the frame of the creaky old scary story standby, the haunted house, and builds something new out of it.  A small group of college-agers are lured by urban myth and social media into a mysterious, intermittently appearing and disappearing house.  Braving its increasingly terrifying rooms, they find that the true danger comes after they leave . . . or think they have.  Creepy, weird and psychologically insightful, this draws its fear from its characters and their relationships and, in a growing pool of TV horror anthologies, puts Channel Zero as the top of the heap.

Cinemaps by Andrew DeGraff and A.D. Jameson - A follow up to DeGraff's Plotted: A Literary Atlas, which provides maps for and commentary on several literary works, this does the same for thirty-five different movies.  You could spend plenty of time pouring over the intricate maps themselves, especially in such clever forms as the multiple time-period representation for Back to the Future, but the perceptive essays that accompany the maps draw insightful new thematic elements out of well-trodden and often-analyzed classics (The Empire Strikes Back and Alien are two particular stand outs).

     Have happy Thanksgiving and take a free, bonus turkey joke while you're at it.

 

The Wisdom of Tony Banta

     Watching my daughter's sometimes astounding, sometimes disappointing (to herself) performance in Little League puts me in the mind of the television show Taxi, surely TV's most melancholy sitcom.
     In the episode "Out of Commission" Tony Danza's hard-luck boxer Tony Banta faces the revocation of his boxing license after one too many knockouts in a row.  When asked why he even wants to continue in such a brutal sport anyway, Tony responds "I can't say I've ever had a great fight.  Hell, I can't even say I've had a great round.  But there have been moments."  He recounts a particular combination of "left, right, left hook" that left the crowd speechless and made him the equivalent of any of the champion boxers who ever lived.  "I always thought that someday I'd put a few of those great moments together and have that great fight."
     We build, little by little, in fits and starts, touching greatness and then seeing it recede, only to dive back into mediocrity knowing that next time, we have a chance of holding onto greatness just a little bit longer.  This applies to boxing, Little League, writing, and whatever else a human being might do to achieve something that resonates for everyone.

Confilct

     They say conflict is the basis of all drama.  They even say the three kinds of conflict there can be.  Those are:

1. Man vs. Man

2. Man vs. Nature

3. Man vs. Self

     I always thought they skimped in the Man vs. Society area, but I guess you could make a case that it falls under number 1 (or number 2, if we're going to let the metaphor of Nature stand in for a lot of stuff).  Anyway, I was watching the television show The Slap, which does a really excellent job of distilling conflict and making it personal and interesting, and it got me thinking about how a well written drama can create a conflict within the audience itself.  A primary way of doing this (which, again, The Slap does exceedingly well) is by making you root for someone who is not particularly likable (admittedly something of a trend in modern television writing, between your Don Drapers and your Walter Whites).  A subtle variation on this, and perhaps more difficult to manage, is knowing the guy you're rooting for is doing the wrong thing.  The Slap may be doing this, too.  At only the second episode (of its American incarnation, anyway), it's too early to tell.  But it will be fascinating to watch it unfold.

What Creepy Is

     I was watching a Twilight Zone episode with my daughters and afterward we had our standard debriefing.  The episode we watched leaned toward the scary end of the Twilight Zone spectrum and I've found that discussion and understanding often prevents bedtime anxiety.  My ten-year-old had been squeezing my hand pretty tight during the episode, so I asked if it was a little too scary for her.  "No," she assured me.  "I mean, it was a little creepy during the episode, but once I knew what was going on, it didn't scare me at all.  Things are creepier when you don't know what's going on."
     Now, the final explanation for all the creepy goings on in that episode ("The Hitch-Hiker") is a supernatural one and, in concept at least, no less scary than the rest of the episode.  But, as someone who tries to attain a sense of weirdness and creepiness in his own story-telling, my daughter's comments did highlight a crucial point for me.  Creepiness is all about not knowing, about not being able to explain something.  That, essentially, is what creepiness is.  Yet stories (or perhaps it's really readers of stories . . . or perhaps it's really publishers of stories) seem to demand an ultimate explanation.  As enjoyable as creepiness is for many, it seems intolerable that it should linger beyond the end of a narrative.  It's as if, if that were to happen, it would be to suggest that the world doesn't work properly.
     Many of us seem to read stories for a sense of closure or satisfaction that feels unattainable in our actual lives.  But I often wonder, isn't there something compelling, something enjoyable, maybe even something healthy, about facing our unease over things that are simply beyond our ability to control?

The King in Yellow

     Shared mythologies are narrative continuities created by one person and then used by many others, maybe over the course of decades or even centuries.  H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos is a prime example of this, as is the Wold Newton Universe (a family tree that establishes the genealogical connection between centuries' worth of literary heroes).  These mythologies are compelling and powerful because of the great sense of size and history they can evoke; creations that are larger than any single person (even their creators) that go on to have a life of their own.
     The King in Yellow was a book of short stories written by Robert W. Chambers in the late 19th Century that center around a play (that goes by the same title) which, when read, tends to cause insanity in and chaos around the reader.  The king himself is a mysterious figure who never really appears and the snatches of play that Chambers included merely deepen the eeriness.  Since the stories were first published, they've inspired writers from Lovecraft to Thomas Ligotti with, if not direct storylines, then certainly a tone and scale of weirdness, and furnished many others writers with characters, details and ideas to flesh out their own tales.
     HBO's True Detective is the latest and, perhaps, largest-scale entertainment to make use of this mythology and they are using it to excellent, unsettling effect so far.  It also makes for an excellent opportunity to revisit the original.

No Moaning

     Re-watching the TV series Quantum Leap recently made me realize how few straight up heroes there are in TV shows anymore.  Modern TV protagonists tend to straddle the line between hero and and villain, if they're not flat out on the far side of it.  Scott Bakula's character Sam Beckett, a scientist caught in a time travel experiment gone wrong and now leaping through time and "striving to put right what once went wrong," tread no such line.  He didn't lack complexity, it's just that his complexity didn't come from his doubts about himself, his mission or the world.  Despite what you hear about how so many writers and actors much prefer to take on villains because they're so much more interesting, heroes don't have to lack complexity. 
     In the February 2014 issue of Empire, the actor Chris Evans comments on playing the role of Captain America, a straight up hero if ever there was one.  When discussing the idea that Captain America doesn't seem to have a standard character arc (he starts out one kind of person and he basically stays that same person), he says, in part "to be a good man is difficult.  To be the best man you can be is even harder.  Even though he doesn't choose to wear his baggage on his sleeve, I think that's his skill set.  He doesn't moan.  There is a depth to him."  Mixed metaphors notwithstanding, Mr. Evans reiterates the point that it's the struggle and how he or she deals with it that can give a character both heroism and an interesting and engaging depth.

Clever/Wise

     In addition to having a hand in two of the scariest things I've ever seen, Rod Serling -- creator of the Twilight Zone, among many other accomplishments -- said "too often a man will become clever without becoming wise."
     We are a young culture and are fascinated by the clever, while actual wisdom is, by its nature, somewhat less seductive.  It's relatively easy to acquire knowledge.  Learning how to employ that knowledge responsibly and beneficially, and let it expand our perspective and understanding, is damned hard.  Laura, a character in What We Become, more or less says this, but Mr. Serling got there first.  His body of work contains many fine examples of how to be both clever and wise at the same time.

Human Emotion

     In his autobiography, Tony and Me, the always compelling, always engaging and always lovable Jack Klugman noted that he hoped young actors and writers were reading what he had to say.  Why?  He had one major lesson to impart: “The most basic unit of any successful dramatic truth is human feeling. Not a quick joke, not a clever premise, not a multimillion dollar explosion can outperform a single human emotion.”
     It's that human emotion he's talking about which gives an audience that essential connection to any truly successful piece of expression.  To find that emotion, to make it accessible and universal, that's what can make the writer or actor in question great.  A greatness Mr. Klugman himself more than achieved.  

Vintage Weird

     Looking back over your life, you can turn up all sorts of things that contributed to your sense of weird.  As weirdness is often on my mind, I look back over the weird in my history and from time to time am delighted with what I rediscover there.  Two such things I dusted off and enjoyed recently were Doom Patrol and Nowhere Man.      

     Doom Patrol is a team of odd superheroes dating back to the Silver Age, but, as re-conceived by Grant Morrison, the oddness was ratcheted to a whole new level. If you're familiar with Morrison's recent work on Batman, or his superlative writing on JLA and All-Star Superman or the current run of Action Comics, you might be surprised that he made his name on hard-edged stories that flirted with the surreal, as in the Invisibles.  The first of collection Morrison's Doom Patrol stories, Climbing from the Wreckage, puts the heroes and their semi-nefarious boss Niles Caulder, up against the Scissormen, guardians of a world born from a parasitic book (and incidentally adapted from the psyche-scarring children's book Struwwelpeter).       

     Nowhere Man was a television series that lasted a single season, starring Bruce Greenwood as Thomas Veil, a photojournalist who returns home one night to find that his wife, his friends, his colleagues do not recognize him.  His entire life has, in fact, been erased by an organization that wants the film negative of a single image from him.  Like classically weird British sereies the Prisoner, Nowhere Man chronicled Veil's weekly run-ins with the organization and the plots they threw up against him.  Unlike most of those series that are cancelled after one season, Nowhere Man actually had provided a full-on explanation and a good sense of closure in its final episode.      

     Some vintage weirdness for those on the lookout.

Ode to a Former Starship Captain

     William Shatner is currently performing his one man show Shatner's World: We Just Live In It on Broadway.  It's always a risky prospect going to see or meet someone you have deep admiration for, but I went ahead and did it (with the moral support of some fellow admirers) and I'm pleased to say that it was quite charming overall.  He went over his history as a performer, told some anecdotes, told some (often funny) jokes, showed some well-chosen clips and did not overplay the "Shatner persona."
       In the end, what I found most gratifying about the evening was the chance to stand up and applaud.  I was, of course, one person in a huge room of standing, applauding people.  Mr. Shatner didn't see me as anything more than a face in a massive crowd.  However, on a personal level, it was shockingly affecting to be able to say thank you in this way.  I mean, this is a guy who had a profound effect on my life, a guy who (as Captain Kirk) helped me define what it actually meant to be a man, what it meant to stand up for for what's right and stand up to what's wrong.
      How often do you get the opportunity to actually thank your childhood hero?

We Can Rebuild Him

     Does anyone remember The Six Million Dollar Man?  Apparently Kevin Smith does (he's involved in a new comic book based on his movie script for an aborted cinematic update of the concept).  I do, too, with extreme fondness.  I was just the right age for the slow-motion heroics and to embrace Lee Majors' somewhat stony interpretation of the part.  The concept of a man becoming that intimate with technology (his right arm, left eye and both legs were bionic) did not particularly trouble me.  Cyborgs were already de rigueur in Sci-Fi, familiar even to a wee lad like me.  And, after all, it wasn't as though the technology was having a psychological effect on him.
     I bet Max Barry remembers it, too.  In Machine Man, he takes the central idea of the cyborg and adds in all the abnormal psychology, corporate menace and black humor that The Six Million Dollar Man did not feature.  Barry's wicked and disturbing take on corporate shenanigans was on full display in his excellent Jennifer Government and is not in short order here either. You also get a compulsively readable style, a morally dubious protagonist who Barry magnificently put you fully on the side of, and an unexpectedly poignant love story.  I suppose that it goes without saying that the examination of a world (and a man) that is so willing to integrate itself on the most intimate level with technology is all the more relevant now than it was back in the 1970's.  Unlike the fondly remembered Six Million Dollar Man, Machine Man is not about a cyborg hero, but is all about the psychological weight of the technology we embrace.