News From the File Marked "Duh"

Showdown: Kubric vs. King

2006-01-23T16:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, kids -- with a title like that, there's only one place I could be going, right? All righty then, let's talk about The Shining.

Even though I was a voracious King fan from the age of about 12 on, I didn't get around to reading The Shining until my husband gave it to me as a present for our first dating anniversary when I was 21. After I'd started reading it, I was sorry it had taken me so long to discover it, because I was hooked from word one. Since then I've read not one but two paperback copies to shreds, and it's still reliably absorbing and entertaining every time I pick it up.

So nobody was more surprised than me to find out that I hated, hated, HATED Kubric's version when I saw it a couple of years later. Actually, I was probably the only one who was surprised; after all, King's and Kubric's disagreement about the material is well-documented, and one Google search would have shown me how divided the fans of both artists are over the film. Nevertheless, I was dismayed and angry at the changes Kubric had made to King's human drama.

It took about five years after that initial disappointment to talk myself into giving the movie another, fairer chance. I finally got the chance this weekend when I caught the movie on TV, and now I think I have a better understanding of where both Kubric and King get it right (and wrong).

The first (and easiest) thing for me to do was get over the minor liberties Kubric takes: the hedge maze instead of King's hedge animals, Wendy's change in hair color, the way Tony manifests himself, the lack of boiler-maintenance-as-plot-point. I say it was easy to get over these things, and it was -- the second time around. The first time through, the entire movie started going south in my mind when Danny started talking to his finger in the first few scenes.

I tried to let go of the larger things, too, but that's where I had a much harder time. It's also where I figured out the (duh-worthy) difference that divides the King fans and the Kubric fans on this one. Kubric fans marvel at his proficiency for creating tension and mood; King fans miss the characters. I mean, yes, the Kubric characters have the same names and a superficial, situational connection to King's characters, but not one of them is as interesting, vibrant, or human as they are in the book, and that makes what happens to them much less involving. In Kubric's movie, the only reason not to root for Jack is because of the visceral discomfort of watching people get sliced up, and his Wendy and Danny are so banal and stupid that after awhile it would be a pleasure to watch them get hacked to bits.

Compare this to their counterparts in the book. King's Jack is a loving family man clawing his way back from a pretty miserable place as a violent alcoholic whose temper and addiction have cost him nearly everything. His internal struggle between his addiction, his desire to be a good father and husband, and his revulsion over his past misdeeds is fascinating even before the ghosts start popping out of the woodwork. Kubric's Jack, on the other hand, seems like a nutjob from the word "go". I can't tell if the dynamic here is the director's fault or the actor's, but either way it's a big mistake. It robs the story of its dramatic arc. Instead of wondering if Jack will hurt his family, all we're left wondering is when he will (and why hasn't he done so already). Likewise, Kubric takes smart, conflicted Wendy and makes her a useless, vapid dishrag, and lonely, wise-beyond-his-years Danny and makes him talk to his damn finger.

I'm sorry, I said I was over that, didn't I? Well, I guess I'm not. It really does look freaking ridiculous.

At any rate, while I can see what makes Kubric's version a classic (the atmosphere, the jumps, the special effects), by cutting the life out of the characters, he's cut the heart out of the story.

The Clearing at the End of the Path

2006-01-17T12:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was home sick. It was good timing, because I had about 100 pages left to read in The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, which other Stephen King fans will know is the last of an epic fantasy series that King has taken 30 years to complete. I haven't been with the series that long -- hell, I'm not even as old as the series yet! -- but I have been following the adventures of Roland the Gunslinger and his Ka-Tet ("one from many"; destiny-mates and/or family) for 5 years or more, and I was as anxious as Roland himself was to reach the tower, and to see what was at its top.

WARNING- The rest of this review will contain spoilers. Read on at your own risk!

So, now that I've seen the top of the tower, and know what's there, what do I think? I'm not sure. In a way, the fact that the top of the tower is a portal to the beginning of the story, and Roland's fleeting realization that he has taken this journey over and over, just to be dumped back at the beginning with no memory of what has come before, is the most fitting end to a book I have ever read. It's always struck me how timeless stories are. Not timeless in the traditional sense; references get dated, characters become stale. Just timeless in relation to themselves. How on page 4, the characters'll never know what happens to them on page 50, no matter how many times you read the story. I say read here, even though movies and television series have the same inevitable-ness to them (no matter how many times you watch King Kong, he's still going to die), because books are a little more immediate with their timelessness. If a beloved character dies on page 150, it only takes the turn of your index finger to flip back to page 149 and see that character alive again. When you pick up a book, you hold an entire history in your hands, and what's happening between its covers will always be fresh and new to the imaginary people living through it.

So, yes, I'm glad that the Dark Tower series ends as it does. It makes sense. In my own mind, Roland has chased the man in black through the desert more times than I can count, because I've read The Gunslinger more times than I can count. If he has to do it every time a reader reads his journey, of course he'll be making that trek hundreds of times, and for many years to come. But at the end of volume VII, as Roland is ejected from the top of the tower to begin again for the umpteenth time the work of telling this story, King gives him a new accessory -- the Horn of Eld, an heirloom of his home world which we have previously learned had been lost in battle long before we first met Roland in the desert. In his afterword, King says (in his typical-of-late defensive style) that we probably hated the ending, that he didn't like it either, and that the horn is there to give the reader hope that this time may be different, that this time Roland may find a true end to his tale, even if we aren't there to see it. I didn't hate the ending, but reading that made me hate the horn in the ending. If this book is King's meta-statement on stories and story-telling, then that horn not only destroys the internal logic of the ending, but it is also a sop to the readers he feels are too unsophisticated to "get it".

That brings me to one of my big gripes about King. Hang on, because it's going to get a little ranty right about now. In the last decade, I have really started to feel a sense of condescension and scorn from Stephen King, and it's directed squarely at his most loyal readers. I've felt it in his books (most notably Bag of Bones -- I loved that book, read it to pieces, and had stop halfway through what was probably my 30th reading because the pretension and self-righteousness of the first-person narrator/protagonist had become too grating), but mostly, I've felt it in his writings directed at his readership, both in his books and on his website.

The afterword of The Dark Tower VII is an extremely good example of King's scornful attitude, not to mention his lack of trust in his audience. After his defensive mea culpa about the nature of the ending, he adds a stern order that we should not send him any mail to confirm his suspicions, "because I won't answer it." Well, thanks, Steve. I've spend nearly a quarter of my life following these characters, not to mention nearly half of my life helping to make you rich(er), but I should go to hell before I dare to pick up a pen and tell you what I thought of the end of something in which I made a large investment? There's some reader appreciation for you.

King also speaks defensively of his decision to include himself as a character in the book, takes a shot across the bow at those who would accurately term this decision meta-fiction, and rants a bit about how the details in the book concerning where he lives and what his routine are have been fictionalized at his wife's request in order to keep his crazy fans away. He then adds a direct plea for us to not come looking for him(!), saying "These books are my way of knowing you; let them be your way of knowing me." How insulting. While I realize that King's writing doubtlessly attracts its fair share of kooks, and probably more than its fair share, considering the subject matter, I have two questions:

Is the problem so pervasive that he feels the need to reward readers who have just finished this particular book, thus necessarily having slogged through thousands of pages of his prose over the years, with a newspaper-across-the-nose admonition like this one? and
Does he honestly believe that the people crazy enough to actually come looking for him would be so easily stopped just because he said so?

My guess is 1. no, and 2. no. Even if he does think that this will put off the small faction of nuts who would travel all over western Maine looking for King's ass, this stand-offish, downright "fuck off" tone is completely uncalled for. Hey, Steve- if anyone shows up on your property that isn't invited, there're these folks called "police" that you can call, and they'll come take care of the problem... for free!

Whew, I really didn't mean to get that far from where I was going, but the bottom line is this: The Dark Tower series, often described as King's uber-work, has now come full-circle to a satisfying conclusion. I've traveled long miles with these characters and now I'm done with them, at least until the next time I make Roland pursue the Man in Black across the desert. And it's very comforting to know that, no matter how much the creator of this world may hate me for being a "fan" (even as he enjoys the money I have paid for being one), I'll still have these friends to go back to over and over again as they eternally live their quest for the tower.

So, you want a religion-based society, huh?

2006-01-13T22:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have to admit that this question has been on my mind for a while now. It's actually the question that made me want a blog in the first place. I've been pondering this for months, and I still don't have an answer that makes any sense.

Who the fuck are all these people who vote based on religious ideology? How do they think mixing religion and politics is a good idea?

I don't mean all of them. I understand that there are crazy folks out there like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who think Jesus rode a dinosaur to church. And I also get that there are cynics like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly who make up crusades and prey on righteous indignation in order to have something to talk about so they can get paid for their shows. But Falwell and his ilk are not legion. I can pick up my birth control prescription without having to walk a picket line (for now), so that's got to be a good sign that most people are still reasonable to a degree about their religious beliefs as they pertain to society. So why, then, is the "Christian Right" so fucking powerful?

I mean, I can't think of a statement more duh-worthy than "Societies based on religion don't work". Think of all the bloodshed that's happened between the Israelis and the Palestinians over a piece of land smaller than the county I live in. It's not about the land; it's about who "God thinks" should have the land, and God ain't talking. That's kind of the thing about God -- He's the strong and silent type, and He wants us to figure it out for ourselves.

But wait -- whose God are we talking about? That's the other thing. There are so many conflicting teachings in all of the world's versions of God that there's no way anyone will ever agree. We have free will, and that also includes the will to freely see what we want in our religion of choice. There's never going to be a consensus, unless God Himself comes down and makes one. And call me crazy, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

So we're left with a couple of choices. Either we make religion a major part of our law-making processes, and spend years and years arguing (and probably killing each other) over who's version of God is the most "right", or we take the whole religion thing out of it and try to make decisions that make logical sense in service of the stability of society.

Personally, I think the latter option is the one that makes sense, and I think the Founding Fathers did, too -- that's probably where that whole "separation of church and state" deal came from. But even if the Founding Fathers didn't want us to remove religion from societal policy-making, fuck 'em. They've been dead for a long time, and the society we have isn't the same one they lived in. There's a lot of reasons religion and policy-making don't mix, but chief among them is the fact that religion isn't negotiable. You believe what you believe, and you can't reason with it. If your marching orders come from God, how am I going to change your mind? And as society changes, the right to change your mind is sort of key, y'know?

"Remove religion from law-making? That's madness! There'll be amoral chaos!" Um, no. I'm not saying that morality itself is a bad thing, nor am I endorsing anarchy. There are plenty of good logical reasons for keeping most of our laws. No stealing? Makes sense -- man is a social animal, and society can't function if people have to protect their things all the time. No raping/murdering/beating, etc.? Again, makes sense. People have to feel safe to form a society, and so it follows that anything that overtly makes people feel unsafe is detrimental to society and should not be allowed. There's plenty of other things that I could cite here, including the logical reasons that back up legal abortion, gun control, and equal marriage rights for homosexuals, but it's late and I have to spend half an hour blow-drying my hair before I can go to bed, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

See, now I can't figure out if what I've said here is really simple or really controversial. To me, it seems pretty logical, but then, a big part of the country wants to give up on logic, it seems. All I can say is, let's not go there. That way lies bombing and sadness.

The Duh Files

2006-01-13T16:54:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had a thought where you were sure you'd come to some life-altering observation, something that would change the world if only you had a way to get it out there? And then you do find a way, and it turns out your thought is totally, totally trite?

Welcome to my every thought. Although luckily, in my case, the opposite seems to be true as well -- that if I have a thought that I think is pretty much common sense, someone will tell me, "Hey, that's deep, man."

Of course, if I think something is "important" enough to publish here, chances are it's probably not. But maybe not! You never know!

So check this space to read my possibly-life-altering, probably mind-numbingly-simple views on politics, art, books and whatever else comes into my silly, flighty little head.