It's all about the story?

CNN just had a piece (Web-only I think) about sex on TV. It focused on one HBO show, one Showtime and in passing a network series and had very little that made this seem like anything unusual so it was clearly a non-story. But that's not the story that was the real focus. CNN had a TV Guide and a Newsweek critic on different sides of whether the sex scenes were important to the shows' stories; since they were only discussing generalities there's no way to reach a conclusion and a cynic (not me, I'm a stoic) would suspect that's exactly what CNN wanted. The TV Guide critic took the usual line that the sex scenes are acceptable if they're needed for the story though shortly afterwards she gave the game away by saying she wouldn't want her mother or her daughter to walk in and see such scenes. Of course they would have no idea whether this was part of the story or not so in other words as far as she's concerned it's irrelevant whether such scenes are important to the story.

But why do the sex scenes have to be necessary for the story? Do we care so much about "the story" that nothing else matters? Films like Lone Star and Oldboy definitely need fairly explicit sex scenes because major elements of the story require that viewers have absolutely no doubt that this took place. And apart from that, so what? Violence is also frequently subjected to the story-necessity idea but few people would argue that the violence in CSI and its kin are required by the story; well the violence yes because you can't have a murder mystery without a murder but the display not really. But I think you see where I'm going with this. Car chases in a cop show aren't really needed for the story. Soap operas can do without all the conversation. Musicals aren't advanced one bit by the songs. Sports film, why go through The Big Game but just tell us who won? In fact we should just listen to radio where some announcer can tell us the story in a few minutes and we don't have to be distracted by actors or dialogue or movement or locations. We can get the real story. Because apparently nothing else matters.

last year's Halloween viewing

Late as usual but might as well add this:

Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti 1980) - Saw this some twenty-something years ago under the title Invasion of the Flesh Hunters and remembered it as a pretty nifty zombie thriller. Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong. It's sloppy, lax and mindless; the kind of film where a guy way inside a building shoots a shotgun and blows out the window of a police car in the parking lot. There's not much apocalypse and few cannibals and little of note. I was very interested in the DVD bonus about shooting locations since I recognized the Decatur courthouse and I thought another spot or two but the bonus was mostly a botch. Should be very easy, just show the locations in their current state and talk about them a bit but instead there are some "what were they thinking" comedy bits and other misguided bits.

The Invisible Ray (Lambert Hillyer 1936) - Without Lugosi & Karloff this would have faded into obscurity or at least as obscure as any horror film gets. Opens with some almost competely nonsensical sequence about viewing Earth from space before eventually moving to a routine mad-scientist/killer story where nearly all the bad stuff happens off screen (save fx budget). Duller 'n dirt.

The Brides of Dracula (Terence Fisher 1960) - Moderately effective Hammer film with Cushing as Van Helsing, a girls school, an overbearing vampire mom, a castle, frightened villagers, etc.

Saw (James Wan 2004) - Quite dumb and shows filmmakers who didn't really have a good idea of what they were trying to do. That's until perhaps the most mindbogglingly stupid surprise ending since Pieces. You just wonder what Fulci might have done with this premise.

How to Make a Monster (Herbert L. Strock 1958) - Mild behind-the-scenes film about a make-up man seeking revenge.

Sisters of Death (Joseph Mazzuca 1977) - This kind of film fascinates me. It's not good, not even in a "so bad it's" way, and looks like a tax shelter effort that nobody expected to see theatres until co-star Claudia Jennings appeared in Playboy. I could be wrong but that's what it looks like. There's a meandering story and for a film of that era very little visible violence or sex (perhaps they were going after the TV market?). You can almost imagine some guys with a couple of weeks and some film stock deciding they'd make a movie which would account for the home movie feel of some scenes and the limited locations.

Dust Devil: The Final Cut (Richard Stanley 1992 & 2006?) - Fairly effective, almost-surreal outing about a woman in southern Africa who picks up a hitchhiker who may or may not be The Devil or a devil or a demon or something. The original release had most of the supernatural elements removed so this version is considered the director's final say.

Oasis of the Zombies (Jess Franco 1981) - Almost completely worthless but hey what else would you expect from a Franco film? Even by his standards this is tedious and poorly done.

Homecoming (Joe Dante 2005) - The political point is heavy-handed and even for an hour-long film Dante hasn't completely thought it through but still it's a decent addition to his filmography. When he's not on the main point, Dante has a good satirical eye (I particularly like the preacher who has a different opinion of the zombies when their true purpose is revealed) and the skill to keep it moving.

Pick Me Up (Larry Cohen 2005) - Cohen pits two serial killers against each other in a tight and pretty interesting story, marred primarily by a murder scene that seems mostly misogynist.

big arrivals

Apart from my usual slackness, some 60+ hour weeks at work has ground pretty much everything else to a halt. But today was a big mail day: the monthly shipment from Discount Comic Book Service, the annual box from WFMU and the once-in-a-lifetime arrival of Tim Lucas' Bava biography. The Lucas/Bava book is stunning with an amazing amount of illustrations (one-sheets, behind-the-scenes photos, ad slicks, stills, etc) and enough text to fill possibly two books. It's also probably the heaviest book I own (my shipping scale only goes up to five pounds so I can't weigh it). This and Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA are going to be top priority when I get some free time and finish my TCM assignments. The DCBS shipment had the first volume of the Terry & the Pirates release and a blind buy of The Mammoth Book of War Stories which seems more interesting than I expected. It has Eisner's Vietnam story, a manga about Hiroshima, some British comics, a Toth pilot story, some undergrounds and modern indies and even what appear to be Charlton reprints. Man, what I wouldn't give for some Essentials/Showcase-style Charlton books; if they're doing Harvey then why not? More details later. The FMU stuff included a tour of James Brown tributes, Irwin's latest calypso explorations, a disc of strange country and a couple that I don't remember choosing but probably did. Also, We Jam Econo. And of course super-cool t-shirts.

Harry Potter & the Big Funnel?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/31/news/china.php

Some titles of Chinese Potter knock-offs:

Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon
Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire
Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Harry Potter
Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-up-to-Dragon
Harry Potter and the Big Funnel
Harry Potter and the Crystal Vase

Harry Potter

I suspect that the series doesn’t have the sturdiness to last more than two or three decades, the amount of time for kids currently reading to try to force it on their own offspring. Rowling does manage to maintain a forward momentum that most writers never quite nail—as Terry Gilliam puts it “she keeps the pages turning”—but the entire thing is too ramshackle and padded, too second-rate really no matter how entertaining. At most this should have been a trilogy, possibly even a single book would have been sufficient considering how much is basically just sitting around and waiting. The entire fifth book, for instance, feels like it should have been a few pages in one of the others but Rowling committed to seven books and that’s what she was gonna produce.

The most troubling aspect though isn’t the technical issues but the treatment of Muggles. Though anti-Muggle thinking is considered wrong by the right-thinking characters and is in fact a minor plot issue in the final book (“minor” in how it actually functions though clearly intended to be much more significant) such focus is only superficial. The books themselves (ie Rowling) consistently show a smug contempt for Muggles. The non-magic-users are either bad folk or befuddled simpletons who have nothing to offer wizards and witches. One of the most telling moments is in Deathly Hallows when a roll call of the dead comes to an entire Muggle family that Rowling doesn’t even bother to name. Think this is over-reacting? Replace “Muggle” with “Jew” or “Asian” and then the books would immediately and correctly be considered racist. Several commentators have pointed out how Voldemort (notice the uh clever “mort”) resembles some quasi-fascist demagogue but considering that nobody else has any interest in Muggles, and only lipservice compassion, he’s merely the same as all the other characters only a bit more extreme. Just notice that at the end even the Malfoys who wanted to help enslave and murder thousands of people are given group-hug redemption but that the Dursleys, child abusers though they were, are completely ignored.

There was a point at the end of the fourth book where I thought the entire series was coming into focus not as a good vs evil story but instead about making the choice. What immediately sprang to mind was Babylon 5, how so much of the first season seemed like amusing stories much as the early Potter books until you saw that there is a big conflict and pretty much the entire show is about choices. It’s interesting to note in B5 how often characters claim they have no choice in something but it’s almost always how they justify a decision they’ve already made. (Extra credit: Compare and contrast to 24 where people who have no choice frequently don’t. Does 24 suffer from this rigidity? What are the political implications?) B5 eventually upends the entire good vs evil concept, not in any philosophical make-a-point way but more quietly in a Renoir-ian “everybody has their reasons” way. Voldemort acts the way he does because he’s Evil but on B5 the Shadows have a perfectly legitimate reason, even if one that most of us will oppose, and even the closest to an Evil Character, Bester, behaves plausibly and even has a moment of humanity. The Potter books, though, get by with a lot because they’re children’s books, as if that was a blanket excuse.

Handling magic in books is always tricky because of the way it undermines narrative operations and Rowling wasn’t up to the task. Though magic doesn’t have to operate with explicit and unyielding laws it does need some consistency or the story will lurch when it shouldn’t. Rowling too often offers up “oh by the way” types of comments. Harry’s “death” is an obvious example – “oh yeah if he really intended to die then he won’t really.” Admittedly this is hard to prepare the groundwork without tipping off the ending but it feels too much like a cheat, just like the appearance of a “dead” Dumbledore to explain the missing backstory or elsewhere the labored explanation of why wizards can’t conjure up food (an “Exception” don’t cha know). After a while I felt that Hogswart itself was just some giant catch all where characters can get anything they need from the Room of Requiring (no further comment) to one of the Horcruxes its own bad self. Just compare to a lot of “children’s” fantasy from Le Guin to Wynne Jones to Pullman to see what I mean. Even stuff as deliberately haphazard as the Xanth or Discworld books are more narratively plausible.

Considering that Rowling had to pad seven lengthy books and clearly has no Dickensian imagination (or for that matter Tolkenian, Leiberian, Moorcockian, etc) then there’s going to be a lot of jerry-rigged backstory. Perhaps her major plotting weakness and one so severe that even the characters in the book comment on it is that she too often relies on withheld information. Dumbledore lets out only dribbles whenever convenient even though he seems to know the entire deal and much of the books consist of Potter trying to discover information that somebody could easily have told him. This gets tiresome very quickly and the justifications (protecting Potter, letting him discover for himself) are nearly nonsensical. Rowling’s abilities are also why right into Deathly Hallows I realized that Potter couldn’t die – killing off a point of view character is tricky even for a skillful writer and while Rowling is nowhere near capable enough to do it properly she also seems aware enough to realize at least some of her limitations (and pumped up the body count to compensate). To her credit Rowling didn’t make the final book easy for the screenwriters. Apart from the sheer length it’s very nearly an array of different voices. Numerous characters stop to unburden themselves of some story or another and in addition we get newspaper articles, excerpts from a pop biography, a fairy tale, flashbacks, overheard conversation (very convenient that Potter is in the British wilderness at the same location as passing fugitives) and so on. And here’s where I might as well add that while the sentimental epilogue seems to have been the most criticized aspect of Deathly Hallows I thought it was perfectly pitched and almost necessary. The somewhat flubbed final battle is a different matterl I had to go back and re-read parts because I thought something was missing. It’s almost as if Rowling got to the end and just went “Whew, Potter kills Voldemort. I’m off to the beach.”

The entire focus on endings and surprises was unfortunate because it can’t help but have deformed response. Does Harry or Hermione or Ron die was such a focus of discussion that it tended to make Deathly Hallows almost a reading race to the end, kinda the reverse of a mystery where you want to find out whodunnit but here will it be dun. Not that Rowling or Scholastic could have done much about that but still.

Bond synchronicity

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2123271,00.html

Well, this is strange. I'm about halfway through Engleby, the new novel by Sebastian Faulks when the announcement comes that he's written the forthcoming James Bond book. Strange because Faulks seems a quite unlikely choice given that he's more self-consciously literary and mostly interested in psychology (Engleby is Holden Caulfield if he was British and possibly or possibly not a murderer). Or as the Guardian imagining of Faulks' story goes "For now Bond had an appointment with M to discuss his new role as the unreliable narrator." Then again Kingsley Amis and John Gardner had previously been tapped so this is a minor tradition but just imagine what we could have seen from Martin Amis or George MacDonald Fraser or Philip Hensher or even Zadie Smith just to stay with Brits.

The whimpering of 24

At one point I thought I'd be so cool and post about each episode of 24 just like a real blogger instead of the sporadic quasi-sequiturs that otherwise mark this Funhouse. But as much as we all pretended otherwise this past season started bad and just went downhill from there. I knew the pre-season hype about it being the redemption of Jack was just fluff - he's barely even a character and the writers have never shown the slightest interest in anything other than pure plotting. By episode 4 it was obviously all up. The death of Curtis was so badly botched that what should have been well not shattering but at least unnerving moment was just tossed off. Just think of what they could have done with Curtis alive and involved but nobody quite trusting each other. Again, pure plot, pure effect. Same as last season when the Peter Weller character was introduced and the prospect of Jack working with somebody who may or may not have been wronged opened up. But then once again any ambiguity was shut down immediately; in the same episode Weller first appeared if I remember right. And then episode 4 ended with a nuclear bomb explosion in L.A. Surprising certainly but then where do they go from there? More bombs? Something bigger? (I was half-convinced that the terrorist scheme involved detonating enough bombs to trigger an earthquake which seemed like a stupid idea at the time but I now wish they'd used.)

But I honestly think that when the ratings weren't at the top the writers just threw up their hands and let the pieces fall where they might. There was one point about a month from the finale when I literally couldn't remember what the story was; weren't the terrorists already dead? One producer even admitted that they start filming without having determined the ending or even mapping out much of the season's story. That at least explains the slapdash feel to nearly all seasons and even the poorly done finale to Season Four (where stopping a missile depended on whether CTU hackers could recover info from a smashed PDA - hardly a tension building device). This writerly indifference would explain why there are so many rehashes of previous story devices not to mention why it's nearly impossible to figure out just what a major character like Jack's dad actually wants.

By the time the story reached the point where Chinese-hired mercenaries entered CTU headquarters through a sewer gate it had started to look like the worst Mad parody ever. After being bombed, gassed and infiltrated by double agents you'd think CTU would be darn near a fortress. And in the middle of a major incident have more than just a few rent-a-cops around; if I was CTU boss I'd have National Guard or at least SWAT. But at least this invasion finally got something going. How about the investigators from Division who showed up near the end (fourth episode from last? fifth?), set up shop in CTU, promised to be watching and then were never seen again? Or what about the brother of the dead agent who shows up an episode later (yeah it's no security breach to allow uncleared people inside a major government agency devoted entirely to stopping a world war) and then--my last boldface, promise--vanished! Like Chloe turns around and he's gone like some magic trick.

And let's not even get into Jack being the one who almost started the war due to his arrogance about tricking the Chinese but only one person even bothers to call him on this; the offshore oil rigs being by a beach within walking distance of the Secretary of Defense's vacation house; the complete pointlessness of the former president story line (and how did he know about all this anyway?); the fact that a freakin' NUCLEAR BOMB goes off but it only ties up traffic for a couple of hours; the needless complexity of stealing drones when terrorists could have just driven to another target; the probability that nobody else will ever want to be president in the 24verse considering they barely outlive mayflies; the odd fact that apparently all CTU agents are trained helicopter pilots; the Russians moving troops in a few hours rather than the days it takes in reality; and on and on. I don't expect plausibility in 24 any more than I would in a Marx Bros movie but at some point you just don't care.

I'll certainly watch the opening of the next season but won't be giving them the benefit of the doubt again.