Re-watching Jennifer’s Body

If any of you know how to get ahold of Diablo Cody or Karyn Kusama, let me know. I would deeply like to send them a fan letter.

I re-watched this movie last night. As you may recall, I loved it when I saw it in the theater. Re-watching it only solidified my love for this film. A few things I noted this time around, that amused or interested me:

1. Watching Amanda Seyfried and Kyle Gallner share screen time made me miss Veronica Mars.

2. The bit where Nikolai complains that the only way for an indy band to make it is to be on Letterman or some crappy soundtrack — that made me laugh. Because, after all, the bands on the soundtrack to Jennifer’s Body are such things as Little Boots, Silversun Pickups, Black Kids, and Hayley Williams. The inclusion of Hayley was particularly amusing, since her band, Paramore, had two songs on the Twilight soundtrack.

3. I never saw much in the way of advertising for this film when it was in theaters. But what I did see, it didn’t seem to fit the film.

4. I still assert that Jennifer is supposed to come across as a bad Heathers-wannabe, that her cutting remarks are supposed to sound a little overdone and stupid. Jennifer is just not that good with words.

5. It’s so damn clear that the most important relationship in the film is between Jennifer and Needy. The way Jennifer is so insecure about anything Needy has, anything Needy enjoys, it’s downright sad. Even when the jealousy is coming from a blood-drenched succubus.

Life’s disappointments

This morning has been full of minor setbacks. The pipes draining the basement were leaking, precipitating a small flood in the playroom. Some of the kids’s Christmas toys did not function. The gym we took the kids to was closed. It’s snowing.

But the flooding was minor, and Cavorter quickly tightened the pipes, and all the water had drained into a toy bin — a toy bin full of small plastic animals, so nothing was damaged at all. The squirting Christmas toys did not function, but the whoopee cushion works great, and Grandma is here to play games with the kids. The gym was closed, but a nearby play area was open. The roads are a little slick with the snow, but it looks like my mom’s plane will still depart on time.

I don’t know how to teach a person to look on the bright side of things, to teach a person that for every setback there are other options. For every bad thing there are other good things. It doesn’t remove the disappointment of toys that don’t squirt or trampolines that are unavailable, but it replaces one good thing (now lost) with another, different good thing.

I’m seeing a lot of posts and remarks on the internet about what a sucktastic decade this has been. And I just don’t see it that way. We had eight years of Bush, sure — but now we have Obama. We’ve had seven years of war in the Middle East — but Guantanamo Bay is being closed. The economy is in a major recession — but the international monetary system did NOT collapse, and it was a damn close thing.

I started writing this decade — first fan fiction, and now my own stuff. And I continue to improve and learn and get better. Nobody’s paid me for writing, yet, but that’s not the point — the point is, I’m writing. And my audience, currently quite small, seems to think some of the things I write are worth their time. This is only going to improve and get better.

In the past decade I have left a few relationships, usually with the other party furious and hurt and with me not looking back. These aren’t good things. But I continue to learn and try to improve, to try and treat people better in each new relationship. This is a good thing.

I’ve lost touch with some people. But I’ve gained new friends.

In the past decade I had major surgery, and some other minor health problems. But all of those things turned out just fine.

And, on a final note, I got two astonishingly wonderful kids this decade. Which meant a year and a half of no sleep, and years of poopy diapers, and a current status of behavior that is sometimes sub-optimal. But these stunning, gorgeous, amazing kids are in my life, and there is no way that is a negative thing.

Cheers to you, decade of the past. I look forward to the next one.

“Blame It On the Pop”

DJ Earworm has brought to us another gorgeous damn mashup, the Best of Pop 2009: Blame It On the Pop.”

Blame It On the Pop

There you go.

Here’s the list of songs included:

The Black Eyed Peas – BOOM BOOM POW
Lady Gaga – POKER FACE
Lady Gaga Featuring Colby O’Donis – JUST DANCE
The Black Eyed Peas – I GOTTA FEELING
Taylor Swift – LOVE STORY
Flo Rida – RIGHT ROUND
Jason Mraz – I’M YOURS
Beyonce – SINGLE LADIES (PUT A RING ON IT)
Kanye West – HEARTLESS
The All-American Rejects – GIVES YOU HELL
Taylor Swift – YOU BELONG WITH ME
T.I. Featuring Justin Timberlake – DEAD AND GONE
The Fray – YOU FOUND ME
Kings Of Leon – USE SOMEBODY
Keri Hilson Featuring Kanye West & Ne-Yo – KNOCK YOU DOWN
Jamie Foxx Featuring T-Pain – BLAME IT
Pitbull – I KNOW YOU WANT ME (CALLE OCHO)
T.I. Featuring Rihanna – LIVE YOUR LIFE
Soulja Boy Tell ‘em Featuring Sammie – KISS ME THRU THE PHONE
Jay Sean Featuring Lil Wayne – DOWN
Miley Cyrus – THE CLIMB
Drake – BEST I EVER HAD
Kelly Clarkson – MY LIFE WOULD SUCK WITHOUT YOU
Beyonce – HALO
Katy Perry – HOT N COLD

This, this thing that DJ Earworm does is a kind of alchemy. It’s the thing where he hears the message of all the music, where he distills out of the morass of music, the, the themes that they share in common. It’s the synthesis of a cultural moment, hearing the things that the whole pop culture is sharing without meaning to.

It’s a talent I crave and admire, this ability to see through the details to find the unconscious messages. These are the questions I ask myself all the time, like why does everybody dress up as steampunk now, and vampires three years ago? Why was everyone in pop singing about being an untrustworthy bastard in 2007, but this year they’re all singing about renewed hope? Why do some ideas catch on in the cultural moment and others fade? Why?

DJ Earworm doesn’t offer the answer to why, but he gives the answer to what. Here’s what people were singing about, dancing to. Here’s the emotional engine that drove the clubs in 2009, the sense of being lost and falling, of failing and losing one’s grip, countered by the thread of hope that one is not alone. Loneliness in a crowd that leads to finding someone who can see you through the noise and lights. Being alone until you connect with another person. And, as the mashup indicates, this new relationship is not guaranteed to be solid — but it’s a new hope, a new beginning, leading into the new year.

What I love about DJ Earworm is that he tells stories with his mixes. He makes narratives that give meaning to the music, placing songs in relationship to one another. He’s a writer, an artist, a storyteller, and this song is a perfect cap to my musical year.

Indy Comic Book Week

As many of you may already know, Diamond Comic Distributors is not shipping any comics this week. This means that stores will have no new comics from the major publishers. Rather than view this as a problem, however, select comics retailers across the country are holding Indy Comic Book Week.

Locally, The Source Comics and Games is holding The Source Mini Indy-Con, Wednesday from 5pm to 9pm. Independent comics by local artists will be featured, including the collection Cool Kids Vol. 1, by myself and Sean Lynch.

Call your local comics retailer and ask them what their plans are for Indy Comic Book Week! And, if you’re local, stop by The Source and check out the great comics by our local talent.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley

I know this is not unique to me, but sometimes I really have no idea what movie other people just saw. I watched The Haunting of Molly Hartley yesterday, and thought it was a damn fine film of its sort. I go and look it up on Rotten Tomatoes this afternoon, and see that it has a 3% score, with thirty-four Rotten reviews and one Fresh. Wow. What movie did they see, that I did not?

A glance at the reviews reveals the first and largest problem other people had with the film. It’s not “scary.” “I’ve read fortune cookies that are scarier,” said Eric Snider of Cinematical. And it’s true — the movie has few-to-no jump scenes, it has no gore. Now, I am too old to be the target demographic for horror films. More than half my life too old. And I was never interested in the gore-fest horror films. I tend to wince and look away until the wet, gasping, sticky sounds of mayhem subside. The Haunting of Molly Hartley has one — just one — special effect of a corpse. But this is why I liked the movie.

There’s a special kind of helplessness to being under the age of eighteen. Do you remember it? Do you remember knowing that you had no rights? Do you remember that feeling of knowing that the adults around you, however well-meaning they were, could disrupt and destroy your life? Do you remember the things the adults with authority told you to do, because it was in your best interest and they cared about you? Most people come to their adulthood with a few neurosis and no major psychological damage. Some are more harmed by the care of the people who purport to love them. But one thing we all share is that helplessness — the fact of being nearly an adult, yet being controlled by those who say they love us. This, then, is the core of the horror in The Haunting of Molly Hartley. Not gore, not the splattering of fake blood. The horror in this film is best represented by Molly’s incredibly well-intentioned father, who keeps telling her that everything is going to be fine. The horror is in her mother, who keeps trying to kill her.

But let me back up a little bit, and cover a known problem in horror films. I’m going to talk about identification.

Horror films have a bit of a problem when it comes to audience identification. The audience doesn’t want to identify with people who are stupid, or venal, or cowardly. Or, you know, dismembered. And most people do not easily identify with monsters and killers. (Some of the more powerful horror franchises have obviously overcome this hurdle.) Yet this is a genre in which any character might well end up dead. Being the lead is no guarantee of surviving the film. This leads to a certain amount of distance, on the part of the audience. The audience watches the characters carefully, condemning their stupidity, watching for bad decisions, while also simultaneously identifying with and empathizing with the characters’ positions. The better the movie — the better the acting — the more effective this is. The death of Drew Barrymore’s character in Scream is one of the best examples of this, ever. (And it’s why Wes Craven is a master of the art.)

This identification is built up through the actor’s ability to sell the part, and through the details of the film. Through the mundane settings, the reality of the part of the world we share with the world of the film. The movie 5ive Girls (which I happen to find incredibly entertaining, despite the fact that it’s not very good) fails at this — the film opens with the lead character entering the portion of the story where the bad things happen. We never get to see her in a situation to which we can relate. (Unless more of you reading this have been sent to satanic-reform-boarding-schools-for-girls than I know of. And, if so, can you tell me where they are?) This selling of the reality is the part that makes or breaks a movie for me. If I can believe in the character and her world, then the stakes are high enough and I don’t want to see her lose.

I say “her,” and I mean “her.” Most horror movies feature female leads. And there is a specific sub-genre that features female leads almost exclusively. THoMH is in this sub-genre, which I call “is she possessed, going crazy, or is everyone lying to her?” (The movies similar to this that feature male leads are subtly but powerfully different. In those, the question is frequently resolved by showing us that the male narrative lead is dying or dead, and the entire movie is a metaphor or a deathbed hallucination.) Now, many types of horror genres involve a thread of “and no-one will believe me.” Everything from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to The Faculty. But the Possessed or Crazy sub-genre of horror is composed of this kind of fear. It doesn’t need gore or special effects — all it needs is for the protagonist’s loved ones to want to help her.

I think it’s not a coincidence that an entire sub-genre of horror films has grown up around the question of whether the girl is crazy or not. The nightmare in these films comes not from the special effects and gore, but from the betrayal and silencing. It’s the moment Rosemary tries to tell her husband her suspicions about Dr. Sapirstein. It’s Michaela afraid for her sanity. It’s the way Dr. Markway and the others condescend to Eleanor. It’s in the conversation between Needy and her boyfriend about Jennifer. It’s the entire story of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. In this genre, the moment where the protagonist finds out that the demons are real is terrifying, certainly. It’s frequently punctuated by death. But there’s sometimes a current of relief in the scenes after that one — relief that the evil is real and external. When women in horror movies are seen as crazy they are either possessed or . . . or they are just crazy. So their choices are to have the demons be real, or to have all their autonomy stripped from them as they are committed or drugged. In this context, having the demon or creature be real is the *better* choice — Satan can possibly be defeated; your most beloved relatives and friends cannot.

In the Possessed or Crazy sub-genre, identification with the protagonist is built as she hides her fears and concerns from the people around her. Now, most of the audience has not been demonically possessed. But I think almost everyone has had occasion to hide some private fear or worry from one’s friends and family. Did you ever worry you were going to get fired? Kicked out of school? Did you worry that your parents would find out that you drove home from that party drunk? Did you pray to an unanswering God that you not be pregnant? Did you worry you might be crazy? Did you know that no-one had ever felt the way you felt, no-one understood the things you thought, did you know that no-one could understand the violent impulses in your head, the anxiety, the depression, the guilt, the panic?

That’s the fear-engine of The Haunting of Molly Hartley. And it’s why the movie is effective and scary. Molly knows she’s going crazy. At the start of the film she is trying to hide this from her new schoolmates. As the story progresses, though, Molly stops trying to hide it and starts asking for help. Her angry and frightened requests for assistance from her father are met with his placating assurances that everything is fine — which gives us the “being ignored” portion of the formula. The only person who takes Molly seriously is the slightly intense Alexis, whose offers to save Molly’s soul are ill-timed and worrisome.

What makes this movie work is the performance of Hayley Bennett. As Molly Hartley she is guarded and angry, frightened and composed. Molly’s smart and pretty and would fit right in at her new school if she weren’t going insane. Ms. Bennett shows us this in ways the script doesn’t really supply. A less adroit actor wouldn’t have much to work with, but Ms. Bennett sells Molly’s fear and repression of said fear with skill. Kudos also to Jake Weber (who many will recognize from the tv show Medium.) As Molly’s father, he manages to be ineffectual and useless without coming across as either stupid or malicious. He’s just a father whose need for normalcy is deafening him to Molly’s pleas. The rest of the cast is solid, too, with kudos to Shannon Woodward for doing well with a part that seemed truncated, possibly cut during editing, and to Marin Hinkle for not chewing the scenery as Molly’s mother.

I skimmed the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’m still a little mystified as to what those reviewers were seeing, or what they were expecting to see. More gore, certainly. More jump-scenes, more horrific effects. But that’s not the point of Molly Hartley’s story. Her story is about slow betrayal. About finding that the people one most trusts and depends on have betrayed you from the start. About slowly understanding that one’s mind is not one’s own, that one’s body and soul belong to someone — or something — else. That strikes me as a pretty damn scary story.

The morning of the Eve

We open our presents on Christmas Eve. But, to the incredibly dismay of my son, we do not open them right the hell away on Christmas Eve. The prospect that he has to wait even longer for, as far as he can tell, no reason other than arbitrary caprice on my part, is excruciating for him. Yet, him sobbing quietly in my arms at 6:30 am was not the bad part of my morning.

No, the comically bad part of my morning was when I let the dogs out at 6:00. You see, our oldest and smallest dog is Toby. Toby is completely deaf, is mostly blind, has arthritis, and weighs about eight pounds. His legs are about two inches long. Or, at least, it seems that way.

The dogs go out into the yard via the back door, and four steps down. Under the absolute best conditions, Toby sometimes can’t get back up the steps and into the house. The solution is for an adult to step out into the yard and scoop him up, carrying him into the house. We received six inches of snow overnight. Conditions for Toby to get into the house were not the best.

I saw the struggling little scrap of a dog at the bottom of the steps and sighed. I found a pair of boots and stepped out into the yard. It is six a.m., I will have you recall. I’m wearing a nightgown and a pair of boots. As I maneuvered to get the little dog, I slipped in the six inches of snow and promptly sat on the back steps. My nightgown, seeing that I was falling backwards, solicitously hitched itself up as I sat, so as to avoid getting wet.

There is nothing quite like sitting bare-ass-naked in six inches of snow to liven up a person’s morning.

I stood, brushed snow off my butt (noting that it is fine packing snow, and that the kids should go play in it later today,) grabbed a scampering terrier who was now so coated in snow as to be unrecognizable, and trudged up the steps. I am fairly certain that the rest of the day is going to be a snap after this.

If I don’t get back online in the next couple of days (hah, fat chance of that, but I’m trying to be polite here) Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate!

My 2009 in music

This is a personal list, a retrospective, not an attempt at a best-of. I can’t say that this was particularly a year of new music for me. Not in the sense that the music was produced or released in this year. (Well, some of it was.) But this is the music that moved me, that held me, that I fell into in 2009. (And, yes, those tactile metaphors are deliberate. Music-as-overwhelming-physical-sensation, that thing that makes me bang on the steering wheel as I drive to and from work, you know?)

Winter Solstice, Camelot Station

My favorite winter poem is by John M. Ford. Winter Solstice, Camelot Station is available in the collected The Heat of Light, published by Tor. I also expect you can find copies of it floating around online.

Camelot is served
By a sixteen-track stub terminal done in High Gothick Style,
The tracks covered by a single great barrel-vaulted glass roof framed upon iron,
At once looking back to the Romans and ahead to the Brunels.

The poem is an amazing series of metaphors. It takes Camelot into the modern age of rail. Each knight comes in on his own train, arrives at the station at, we discover, not the height of glorious Camelot, but into the growing darkness that is to come. Each knight arrives — Kay is “half Falstaff, hot Hotspur,” Galahad arrives wearing Armani, Palomides comes in astrakhan and patchouli. And the greatest knight in the world arrives riding the rods, like a hobo, friend to porter and conductor.

It’s a poem of gathering, of the coming together of greatness and goodness — and evil, for Mordred is there, too — on the darkest night of the year. Come to Camelot to . . . to what, exactly? The poem does not say. We the readers understand, because we know how the story ends, that Lance will falter and fail, that Mordred will raise revolt, and that the glorious trains and turntables and engines of Camelot will soon lie empty and snow-drifted. We know that this moment of friendship as Art and Lance walk through the darkened train-yard towards the glittering city, we know that this moment is doomed.

By the roundhouse they pause,
And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,
The look for a long time at the turntable,
Until the one who is King says “It all seemed so simple, once,”
And the best knight in the world says “It is. We make it hard.”
They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road.

Why write this story set on the winter solstice? It is the darkest day of the year, the longest night, that is true. But starting at dawn tomorrow, every day gets brighter. This is the turning point of the year, the time when the sun begins a long, slow return. Why place this Arthurian moment of falling into shadow and ruin on the day when the world turns towards light?

I think the answer is in the last lines of the poem.

And at the great glass station, motion goes on,
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on.

The train may stop, but the line goes on. This Arthur, this Camelot, they may falter and fail. But the ideas that once seemed so simple to Arthur and Lancelot, the “two great ugly men on the back platform,” those ideas go on. Those ideas and ideals may dim, may fade — they may even be momentarily obscured by a darkened world. But the light always returns. Even on the darkest night of the year, the light returns.

My Three Stories

My friend Caroline posted this today:

Well, if all the stories in the world were Say Anything. . ., X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga, or King Lear, I wouldn’t complain too much. That was a spur of the moment set of associations, but as I tried to improve on the idea — to come up with a more appropriate set of stories — I really couldn’t. [...] What I mean when I talk about my three stories is that I feel about them the way I feel about the song “Badlands” by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. I don’t know if I can say that’s my favorite song, and I certainly wouldn’t try to argue it’s the best song I’ve ever heard, even by my own idiosyncratic standards of music …. But there’s not a single thing I can think of that I want a song to do that isn’t in “Badlands”. [...] I’m curious, then: What are your three stories? Or one or two, whatever — those things that are constantly coming up, as a palimpsest, maybe, or some kind of reflecting surface that new stories always seem to intermingle with?

So, my three stories.

Things of a Thursday

1. Is there any way to explain to a child that asserting one is good at something is not the same as being good at it? Probably not, since I happen to know adults who still labor under this misapprehension.

2. I should make a post about the Palm Pixi and why it’s working out for me. Hmm, I’ll put that on the list.

3. I watched the movie Trick ‘r Treat last night. By which I mean to say, I watched all the parts with Anna Paquin and none of the rest of it. Movies in which small children are in peril are no longer watchable by me. Nope.

4. I am not the best gift-giver in my family, not by a long shot. The kids got their presents from aunts and uncles yesterday — in them mail, so we just open them on arrival — and scored some awesome stuff. Including a gross-science-game which I intend to never play. Eeeeew! Full of slime and earwax and such. Luckily, Cavorter will play it with them. With them, and with enthusiasm.

5. There’s another tempest in a teapot going around the comics-related internet, regarding Marvel’s forthcoming Girl Comics. My remarks and reactions can be found at Fantastic Fangirls, but the gist is this: there’s no downside, here.