The Stand

I read, and loved, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series a few years back. I’ve always been interested in works that combine fantasy elements with a real world setting. I think there’s a tendency to downplay the significance of events that happen in our world. People will accept an epic quest to save the world in The Lord of the Rings or a movie set in the past, but in movies set today, the best we can hope for is a quiet drama about a few peoples’ lives, or an action movie where a government is at stake. Even if it is about saving the world, it’s not presented that way. We devalue the significance of actions in our own world when in reality the things we do can be just as epic and important as any fantasy characters’ actions. So, I was pleased to pick up The Stand and find a story that started with the intention of doing a Lord of the Rings style epic in our world, using the iconography of the modern world to tell an epic story about a battle between the very forces of good and evil itself.

I was already familiar with some of the concepts in the story from The Dark Tower, where Randall Flagg appeared in various guises over the run of the story. Here in The Stand, he functions as one of two poles in the battle between good and evil. King has an uncanny ability to string huge stories together. This thousand page book just flies by, and he builds such a credible world that it really feels like the story could go on forever. There’s two major elements at work in the book, one is the story of the battle between good and evil, the other is the story of people rebuilding society following the catastrophic plague.

The good/evil battle works well enough, though some of it is bogged down by the sort of plot contrivances present in a lot of fantasy stories, namely the reliance on destiny and the hand of god to guide the story rather than character actions. Mother Abagail, despite being an interesting character, functions primarily as a literal deus ex machina, directing the characters and moving the story along to a place where it needs to go. Why does everyone come to Boulder? The story needs them there so that they can rebuild society, but there’s no particular reason, that’s where the dreams about Mother Abagail come in. Similarly, the conflict between Flagg and the Free Zone plays out almost entirely in dreams and visions, outside of Harold and Nadine bombing the town, there’s very little actual conforontation between the groups. And the end, The Stand itself,is slightly anticlimactic, but pretty much anything would be after 900 pages of buildup.

But, I think the intention is less a literal war than a metaphorical one. The actual battle is in the construction of the Free Zone versus Flagg’s Las Vegas. With the world wiped away, the survivors have the chance to build something totally different, and the conflict is whether humanity will choose a better path, or descend into a fascist state. We watch the democratic Free Zone arise, and understand how that world works, with an emphasis on freedom and people taking responsibility for themselves. The seven people on the council take on their responsibility reluctantly, and have no outright desire for power. In contrast, Flagg and his inner circle are all about getting power for themselves, ruling over the world and protecting their own self interest.

When Dayna goes over to Flagg’s society, we get an insight into the way they live. This world isn’t a den of evil, it’s mostly just regular people, unwittingly serving the force of conflict and destruction. I like that Flagg, though he is the embodiment of evil itself, isn’t played as an over the top evil guy. He can play nice, he can act human, and he sells people not with threats, but with promises of how he can help them. In the end, he is destroyed not by a people that betrays him, but by the Trashcan Man’s attempt to show how devoted he is. Flagg’s world is a viable alternative, it can work for some people, but it denies people freedom, he’s bringing back the strict regimentation of our world when people could move on to something different.

Ultimately, the message seems to be that there are some people who just enjoy doing evil, but most people who serve an evil master do so unconsciously. The everyday people in Las Vegas have no real idea what the Free Zone is, they don’t necessarily care about attacking it, but they go along with Flagg because he gives them security and purpose. He is the ultimate parent figure, with him around, nobody has any questions about what they should be doing. It’s a lot easier to govern as a fascist, the people in the Free Zone struggle to assert their authority because they don’t want to be oppressive, and yet, how do you stop people from doing things without oppressing them?

I’m used to film, where we’re lucky for a director to make a film every couple of years, and after doing a few films, most directors stop writing their own material and start doing other peoples’ scripts. That’s why I’m so amazed that King has so many stories to tell and continues to write one or more books pretty much every year. I suppose part of it is lifestyle, as a filmmaker, you need to work with actors, raise funding, and it’s tougher to branch out beyond traditional genres. But still, there’s so many stories and characters within this one book, it’s awe inspiring at times. I think there’s a lot of flaws with the book, ranging from his usual overemphasis on bodily functions, to the weak roles of women within the story, but on the whole, it’s a fantastic piece. By the end, when Tom Cullen comes along to find Stu, and they make it back to the Free Zone, it’s such a powerful feeling, of a journey completed.

For all the philosophical components of the story, what ultimately makes it work is those first 200 pages, which set up the characters and their worlds before the plague. I’m guessing the producers of Lost were inspired by that section of the book, and used it as the basis for their flashback structure. But, the difference is, reading the beginning of the book, I didn’t know where it was going to go, and those stories were just as interesting as people in the postapocalyptic world. I could have read a whole book about Frannie’s struggle with being pregnant, or Larry’s attempt to get clean. But, taking those strong character bases and putting them through the wringer of the plague makes the whole story stronger, so that instead of feeling like the entire purpose of the book, the plague becomes just something that happened to these people, the event to bring all the disparate people together to build a new world.

Real World

For the past few years, I haven’t read many ‘regular books.’ I’ve read many comics, seen many movies, but for a variety of reasons, haven’t read many prose books. However, with a twenty minute subway ride to work each day, I’ve got more time to read, and have read a bunch of books lately. Over the past couple of days, I read Natsuo Kirino’s Real World, a really powerful suburban noir about a group of teenage girls who get involved with a boy who murders his mother.

The book’s power lies in its use of subjectivity. Each chapter is written in first person, from one of five characters. Notably, it’s not a Rashomon style multiple perspectives on the same events kind of thing, the narrative progresses forward as it passes from character to character, but our perspective on the people involved changes through our immersion in the various subjectivities. The murder plot is the book’s hook, but what was most interesting for me was the examination of social dynamics, between friends and between men and women. In seeing the dichotomy between what people think of themselves and how their friends perceive them, the personas we put on to function in society become clear.

Pretty much every character starts their chapter by describing how her friends can never really understand what’s going on with them, that the friends are all about surface and are unable to have meaningful discussions. There’s always going to be two layers of social interaction, the show we put on to pass the time, joking around and talking about surface things. But, underneath that, there’s another layer, the real sharing of emotions and ideas. This is something that doesn’t happen that often, because it can be painful and dangerous. The more of yourself you put out there, the more people can pounce on your weaknesses. No one is without their secret shame, and if people know what if it is that bothers you the most about yourself, they can use it to hurt you.

That’s the logic of most of the characters here. They won’t threaten the status quo of their friend circle by bringing in real emotions, they just keep it on the surface. We see this in a variety of ways, everyone’s got a secret life. Yuzan’s is the most overt. She’s a closeted lesbian, and doesn’t want her friends to know, even though two of them already do. It’s an open secret between them, but the decision to not address it lets them get on with their day to day lives. To bring the issue to the surface would complicate the friendship in a way that they’re not really ready for.

Interestingly, we never actually see the four girls together. We get to know them by what’s in their heads, and can piece together the dynamics of their interaction through that. We start with Toshi, who’s the most ‘normal’ of the characters. She doesn’t really have a secret life, she doesn’t have any of the traumas that the other characters suffer through, she’s dealing with getting into college and feels jealous when two of her friends hang out without her. Her secret life is the most mundane, a false name, Ninna Hori, that she puts on when she wants to remain anonymous. Her perspective opens and closes the book, a bookend of normalcy around the crazier events within. Her small transgression, not telling the police that she saw Worm on the day his mother was murdered, is what leads to the traumatic events to come.

For all of them, Worm becomes a way of flirting with something out of the ordinary, a respite from the pressures of everyday life. For Toshi, lying to the police is enough of a thrill. For Yuzan, it’s giving him a bike and a cellphone, helping him escape the law. But, Kirarin fancies herself the most mature of the group, and the chance to get to know a murderer proves irresistible for her. Kirarin feels very real, a girl who likes the power that she has over men, and wants to exercise that power, even as she maintains the image of the cute, popular girl at school. She reminds me a bit of Laura Palmer in Fire Walk With Me, living a double life of normalcy and sophistication, all the while drawn to danger.

She makes a huge deal of being the only one of her friends to have a gay friend, and she also thinks she’s the only one of her friends with another alternate circle of friends, in this case, a group of girls with whom she talks about only shopping and boys. She compartmentalizes her life, talking about relationships with one group of people and other things with her ‘normal’ friends. We see that with a lot of characters in the book, the constant keeping of secrets to protect a social image that their friends have created.

It’s something that rings true to me, in high school, we talked endlessly about things that didn’t matter, and never discussed anything really important. I had close friends, but it wasn’t until the end of high school that we really broke the surface and talked about more important, emotional things. I remember having these ‘discussions,’ as we called them, it was something that would just happen organically, a segue from the surface to deeper emotion, making internal dialogue external. In Waking Life, one of the character says that the sharing of ideas between two people is a religious experience, and I’d agree with that. Some of the most amazing moments of my life have been conversations where everything just clicked and ideas and emotions moved between me and someone else. But, our restrictive images of ourselves make that hard to do. We have to conform to this role that society has put us in, to not do something ‘out of character.’

In Kirarin’s case, she chooses to do something dangerous and ‘out of character’ without consulting her school friends, speaking only to her gay friend, the friend who is a social transgression for her. In her mind, his exoticism is topped only by the exoticism of meeting a murderer. Kirarin is the kind of person who uses others for her own benefit, who loves to control men, as a way of getting back at Wataru, a boy she opened herself up to, who subsequently betrayed her. She fantasizes about using Worm as a way of getting back at Wataru, only to find herself in way over her head as things go too far.

When interacting with Kirarin, Worm alternates between militant dominance and total weakness. Kirarin is such a strong presence, she would normally have total control over a guy like Worm. He is a meek guy who hasn’t had much luck with women, a loner. But, the fact that he’s a murderer gives him an edge, a power that he otherwise lacks. In his changing behavior we see the spectrum of control in relationships between men and women. Weaker men are always controlled by women, they are the ones who go where their women want them to, and do what is asked of them. They’re the guys who can’t just go out and pick somebody up, who on some level feel lucky to be with anyone. They are essentially harmless, and lack the capacity for violence. But, men with the capacity of violence change the power equation. The threat of violence gives powerful men the implicit last word. Women can try to make them do anything, but they don’t have the last word. Here, Worm switches between roles, embracing the persona of a military commander, but slipping out of that back to weakness.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is the way each character comes fully alive during the chapters they narrate. You feel like this whole thing is about whoever’s speaking, and aren’t sure how things will proceed when they recede from the main stage. Late in the book, we spend time with Terauchi, and get a fully drawn picture of this girl’s life from childhood to high school. A few months ago, I watched Love and Pop, Hideaki Anno’s film about a group of four high school girls who kind of prostitute themselves to make money. It reminds me a lot of this book, and gave me a better understanding of the kind of culture these girls are in. Terauchi talks about being felt up everyday on the train, constantly harassed by older men. This gets her down, it makes everyday a struggle, and that’s why she chooses to kill herself at the end of the book.

It all ends with Toshi, who is still living a pretty normal life at the end of the book. She meets Haru, a girl who used to be a Barbie and has now become a mod, shedding personalities with the seasons. But, Toshi puts on the persona of normality. She says she wears clothes that won’t stand out, and in doing so, she’s making her own kind of fashion statement. She’s implicitly saying I’m nothing special, and maybe living that kind of ‘normal’ life makes her the healthiest one in the book. She isn’t as enraptured with the idea of escape as the others, she can’t quite understand why they do what they do. She’s the closest the book has to an objective point of view. But, immersed in the other characters’ minds, we have a total understanding of why they acted like they did, we know the world they lived in and the struggles they faced.

I though this was a great book, a really striking use of subjectivity to make a story that could have been a simple thriller into an exploration of universal social dynamics, the way that people interact with each other, the way we build up our own public personas, and the secrets we keep from the world.

The Big Picture

A few days ago I finished reading a book called The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood, a book that examines the ways that Hollywood changed since the 80s as a result of the fact that all the majors are now owned by absurdly huge media conglomerates who see films as media commodities that can support their television channels and consumer electronics products. The book lambasts the present Hollywood studio system, dwelling on the way that mainstream films have ceased to be art and instead are loss leaders for ancillary products.

Now, the reason I read this book was because I read an article by the author on why there's less nudity and sex in movies recently. The reason for this is because of all purpose twenty-first century villian, Wal Mart, who consign films with nudity or sex to the 'adult' area of their video section, and refuse to give them prominent placement at the front of the store. Wal Mart is even reluctant to stock R rated films, which means that studios will lose a major revenue source if they put out films with the sort of content that runs contrary to Wal Mart's values.

Now, in the book he goes on to talk about how marketing campaigns are geared entirely to the opening weekend, which means they want a film that will make most of its money in the opening weekend, then get out of the theater so they can ride the coat tails of the theatrical campaign for the DVD release. So, they want films that don't rely on building an audience, they want presold properties, hence the huge amount of TV remakes this summer. You don't have to explain the premise to people, they already know it. The thing that vexes me is the fact that I seriously doubt most people under 20 have heard of Dukes of Hazzard, yet the film is targetted at them, so the brand name won't even appeal to your target audience. Why not make an original film then?

The book makes me feel very bad about the state of mainstream cinema in America, I've seen enough bad films to know that they really are churning out product, not art, and the thing that has me so annoyed is the fact that people continue to see these shitty films and buy them on DVD, while ignoring the stuff that is really great. It's reached the point where I've seen only one American film this year that I'd consider a truly great movie, and that's Revenge of the Sith, a film that despite being a prime example of the commodification of movies, also works as a stunning piece of art.

That's the crucial thing to keep in mind, just because your movie doubles as a toy commercial, that doesn't mean it can't be a phenomenal movie. Sure, your Star Wars or Lord of the Rings generates a ton of money through licensing, but they are also great films, whereas so many blockbuster movies don't even try to do something original, they just synthesize things that had been successful in the past into a 'new' film.

The book does give you a good idea of why most Hollywood product is so awful, there's so many stages a film has to go through to get made, it's inevitable that the auterial spark will be diminished along the way. It's a tough thing, as a writer, I'm sure there's a ton of great writers out there who refused to compromise, and ended up not having their movies made, as many as the number of writers who did write a great script, but ended up having it lost on the journey to the screen.

A while back, I did a blog comparing the current American film scene to that of the 70s, ending on the hopeful note that this summer of bombs would lead Hollywood to become more experimental and get back to the more challenging cinema that was dominant in the 70s. However, this book would lead you to believe that's never going to happen.

The reason for this is because of the Wal Mart thing I talked about before, and the fact that those more challenging films don't translate well overseas. Stars and effects are apparently universal, while more subtle stuff doesn't play as well. The other reason is that while the box office may be slumping, the DVD market is keeping the studios quite wealthy, which means there's not really a dire threat. Studios don't make that much money from theatrical distribution, and since they have no financial stake in theaters, there's not a huge need to try to help them out.

While the studios are churning out increasingly less artistic films, they still do keep indie studios under their wing, things like Focus Features and Warner Independent. These subdivisions usually do lose money, but they also churn out the best American films that are made, usually supporting auteur filmmakers with more challening projects. Looking at my top ten films of 2004, there were five American movies on the list, all of them from these mini-majors. So, that's where we're seeing continued support for more challenging films in America.

The only problem is this means that most of the best filmmakers in the country don't have access to big budgets, or big audiences for that matter. The sad thing is that even though I really wish that studios would make more challenging films, people are so conditioned to expect a certain type of story that they really couldn't handle more challenging films.

I showed Irreversible at my film series and a woman asked me, "Why would you watch this movie," and I talked about how it uses cinema to depict the way a single act of violence can destroy people's lives, as well as showing the futility of revenge. She responded to this by saying "Ok, but that's not an evening's entertainment." People just expect a movie to tell a story, to entertain you, and I suppose that's valid. The thing is, I find being challenged by a film much more entertaining than just watching a disposable comedy, laughing while it's on, but leaving barely remembering what happened. But, I view film as art and most people don't.

That said, the upside of America is that TV has become a medium very friendly to auteurs. Look at the story of Joss Whedon, struggling screenwriter, doctoring scripts, but unable to express his true vision. He makes a show and is given basically carte blanche to do what he wants, and as a result, he's able to tell a story with more scope and fully developed characters than any film I've ever seen. In the new highbrow serial type show, we see the mature subject matter and challenging characters that were the hallmarks of 70s Hollywood, but now with the added bonus of added time to develop much larger and more complex storylines. This season of Six Feet Under was better than any film I've seen this year, with the exception of Sith, and The Sopranos puts to shame even the brilliant Godfather and Goodfellas. TV is still looked down upon, but the work being done there is really phenomenal, and if I could do anything, it wouldn't be to make a film, it would be to be able to do a long form series on HBO.

The Dark Tower

A couple of days ago I finished reading the last book of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. This is a 3500 page, seven book tale, one that he began in 1970 and finished in September of last year. I read the first book around 2000, and over the past few years have gradually read the rest. It was a great series of books. one that was consistently entertaining and had some really interesting ideas throughout. The series was always at least partially about the nature of storytelling, making it fitting that the ending of the series should be a meta-comment on the nature of the text itself, an ending that I found really fulfilling. Spoilers are obviously below.

In the thirty years and seven books, Roland's world has changed dramatically, but the one thing that has always remained constant is his desire to get to the tower. That is the thing that drives him, the thing that keeps him going after losing his old friends, losing Jake, losing Eddie, losing Jake again and even losing Susannah, he has one thing driving him forward and that is his need to make it to the dark tower. Throughout the book, we have the vague idea tha the tower is the nexus of all realities, and therefore plays a crucial role in preventing the world from collapsing. However, we never learn exactly what its purpose is, and what it is that makes Roland so drawn to it. After they fix the beam midway through book VII, they've essentially accomplished their task, the world is saved, and there's no reason to go on anymore, except Roland's need to see the tower for himself, to accomplish his goal, the one thing that has driven him above all others.

One thing I found interesting was the way the ending was structured. The main book ends with Roland walking into the dark tower, and I was like, did I miss something, where's my resolution with what the tower is? And then there's the piece about Susannah which was good, and then there's a little note from Stephen King about the fact that it's the journey that matters, what happens on the way to the tower, not the tower itself, and that ultimately every ending is something of a let down. But, thankfully after that, we go back to Roland his ascent up the tower.

So, when he finally does reach the tower, he finds that is sort of a summation of his life, each level corresponds to events that occurred to him, and in ascending it, he views the entirety of his life. Then at the top of the tower he is sucked through time and returns to the beginning of his journey, right before the first sentence of The Gunslinger. I love this ending because it follows up on what King was talking about with the journey being the point of things. Nothing he finds at the top of the tower could satisfy the reader, and I think this is the best way to the end the book.

A lot of people have been knocking the idea of the loop, but I think to do that is to ignore one crucial thing, the presence of the horn when he begins his next journey. What this implies is that with each journey he's doing things better, and it's implied that his one failure this time is the fact that he didn't pick up the horn at the end of the battle in Wizard and the Glass, so now he has it, and I get the feeling that this next journey will be his last time, and then he will find peace at the top of the tower.

I love the quasi-dreamlike memories Roland has of things when he is spit out the end of the loop. All throughout the book you get the feeling he's been on this quest forever, and his past is so distant from who he is now. That's something that's reaffirmed by this ending. He has been on this quest forever, and he's become ageless, moving through an infernal hell.

If I had to guess, I would say that when Roland finally does reach the top of the tower, and do things right, it will be something like what happens to Susannah at the end of her journey. I get the feeling that Susannah got everything right this time, and even if she was consigned to a loop before, she won't be now. She got her happy ending, reuinted with everyone in the clearing at the end of the path. When Roland completes his mission, he will probably find the same happiness, but until then, it is his burden to forever be seeking the tower.

The ending also brilliantly plays off the fact that the universe didn't really end, you can pick up the first book and start all over again. Throughout all the books, the series has flirted with meta-fiction and this ending references that without being excessively gimmicky or self reflexive. If the horn wasn't there, it might seem like too much of a downer, but this way you still have hope. I like the symmetry of placing the 'Childe Roland' poem at the end of the book, with the implication that this poem depicts Roland's final journey to the tower, because it was also the impetus for the creation of the entire world. So, it both opens and closes the series.

I'm really satisfied with the ending and I think it stands as one of the great stories ever told, full of so many memorable characters and events. The books frequently refer to the fact that they aren't so much being written, it's more King tapping into another universe and bringing the story back from there. That's what it's like to write, and thus, both the writer and the reader are like Eddie or Susannah, taken from our world to Roland's world for an adventure outside of the everyday.