Popcorn Ideals – Why It’s Not A Bad Thing To Cuddle Up With A Hot Buttered Bowl Of Comics

I was given a copy of the first issue of a new comic series recently, “Darkness Falls”, published by The Healthy Aboriginal Network, and it got me to thinking about the value of discussing moral, ethical, mental health, medical and spiritual issues in comics, and by extension, in comic book movies. Admittedly, this had already been on my mind in recent weeks because of the theatrical release of “X-Men: Last Stand” and all the promo hype for “Superman Returns” and the accompanying resurrection of discussions of the Man of Steel’s philosophical implications.
For now, let’s put aside the whole debate about high vs. low culture, pop vs. the classics. Let’s not get into an epic, bicep-flexing, taunt-throwing, electrified slugfest about why the so-called elite lump comics as a body together, making no distinction between Wolverine and Maus, as they dismiss this nearly hundred-year-old art form as vulgar or scripted pose-offs, while extolling the pretentious dreck of Margaret Atwood and Louis Hemon. Let’s just treat comics and their movie spin-offs as pieces of our larger cultural tapestry.
Issue number one of “Darkness Falls” centres on a pudgy young artist struggling with life as he deals with bullying from teachers, fellow students and parents, as well as the harsh realities of existence on his first nation’s reserve. All of this causes him to question his self-worth and to consider suicide. During a tale spun by a native elder, the boy connects to his culture through a trickster spirit-turned-superhero who battles the evil phantom that preys on those who become lost, confused or despairing. In the end, the boy defeats the evil spirit and his suicidal feelings by declaring that he wants to live.
Right off the bat, I’ll tell ya this book has got some great art. The superhero and monster are standard fare, but it’s the vivid bleakness of the prairies at sundown that’s so perfectly captured as it both contrasts and compliments the brooding claustrophobia of a high school or household where you think everyone’s out to get you.
And the comic is to be credited for its cultural empowerment value. It’s important for youth of all cultures to see themselves positively represented in media, and this is especially true of first nations kids who must learn to hold on to their heritage as they deal with today’s challenges. Allowing the kid who’s seemingly the victim of a problem to step in and not only assist, but save his own hero by himself driving off the bad guy is an example more youth (from every culture) need to have more often.
Some may say, and rightly so, that the storyline itself isn’t terribly complex. That it’s the hit-you-over-the-head simplicity of dealing with tough issues that’s typical of Saturday morning cartoons, that it’s the light and fluffy, buttery sweet fare of movie theatre popcorn.
Admittedly, the reality is that suicidal feelings sometimes take a lot of councilling and soul-searching to overcome, and simply constructing a superheroic adventure around an elder’s story, all presented over the course of a single day in a single comic issue, probably wouldn’t be enough to work through a crisis.
And to be sure, this sort of treatment of “the big issues” is par for the course in comics. The cheap presentation of good vs. evil, of justice and social responsibility, friendship, loyalty and true love are played out every week in volumes galore of Marvel and DC. This is taken off the page and onto the screen in their movie adaptations, as we’ve seen recently with “X-Men: Last Stand” and its treatment of genetic tinkering and revision, social acceptance, pride in being what you are, revenge, self sacrifice and genocide.
Critics may argue this simplistic presentation of complex issues is harmful to youth, giving them a black and white view of a very grey world, or that it gives the impression that such issues can be solved quickly and relatively easily, or that a “good guy” facing a challenge can succeed by sheer force of being right and the possibility of failure is an empty fear.
I say there’s nothing wrong with comics or their movie spin-offs dealing with the big tough issues, even if they do it simply.
I’ve known a number of people over the years, and seen and heard interviews with others, who’ve said reading comics early on gave them important lessons on right and wrong because comics were an entertaining medium that was easy to identify with and the simple presentation of the morals within made them easy to grasp at a young age. As such, it’s eminently wise for aboriginal groups to get into comics to affect how those moral are illustrated and to present to youth the tough issues, such as suicide, which face some of them. They’re taking a widespread and youth-accepted pop culture medium and making it their own to present positive role models to their youngsters and to deliver messages that youth can get help with problems, that youth can empower themselves, and that there is hope.
But most importantly, I think the presentation of big issues in the comic format is valid because comics (like literature, movies, paintings, television, sculpture, music, theatre, photography – did I leave any out?) are ideally the beginning of dialogue, both internal and external, as well as entertainment. They are not, as some critics would warn, a closed system where a youth is fed an idea and never given the opportunity to explore it further. We all know that when kids lock onto an idea that interests them, or touches them emotionally in some way, they’re relentless in their pursuit of more information about it – especially now in the computer age. Whether they talk with friends, parents, elders or hunt down information on the internet or in a library, youth who want information usually know how to get it. Presenting issues such as suicide on a comic book platform is a way of getting kids thinking about how they can help themselves or others deal with crisis. It’s the creation of talking points where the youth can bounce the issue off of other people and perhaps get a deeper understanding of the issue and get directed towards sources of help. In an age where many adults complain about how hard it is to talk to youth, the wise person finds common ground or language – finds out what a kid is interested in so that they can talk with the kid about something that interests him in order to build mutual understanding, trust, and meaningful dialogue about important issues.
Maybe then, you might say that a better metaphor for big issues in comics is that of a salad, instead of popcorn, because it comes before the more complex and filling entre, as opposed to popcorn, which usually doesn’t come before anything else, unless you’re dining out at the local pub and the entre is 5 cent wings, and if that’s the case, it’s entirely possible (as a critic might worry) that you may not be having wings at all and the popcorn itself might constitute the entire solid portion of the meal. But I’ll stick with popcorn because to use salad for some reason leads me to soup, and that makes me think of Sean Connery’s line in Finding Forrester about “soup questions” which have to do more with obtaining information useful to oneself, instead of presenting ideas for discussion – although, you could argue they’re kind of the same thing. But I digress. I’m babbling.
I also like popcorn as metaphor for the big issues because the reality is that popcorn by itself is attractive, it’s a draw. How could you not like that combination of airy crunch, salt, and buttery sweetness (unless of course, you break a tooth on an errant kernel or choke on a bit of kernel husk – okay, I’m babbling again)? Go to any movie theatre or sports arena and you’ll see the popcorn stand keeps everyone, young and old, coming back for more. And what invariably happens when the popcorn they get is good? They talk about how good it is with each other. And when it comes to looking at, and hopefully later discussing, the big issues like suicide, that’s a pretty good start.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal feelings or other problems, remember that you’re not alone. Help is available. Contact your local distress line, crisis centre, mental health office or councilling service to get help. Contact information is usally available in your local Yellow Pages or online.

DaVinci Dementia

I’m officially joining just about every other loudmouth in the universe weighing in on the bloody DaVinci Code pop culture tidal wave.
Just to make it clear right off the top, I have not read Dan Brown’s book. Yep, I’m one of those 5 or 6 people left in the world you’ve probably heard about who hasn’t bothered to pick it up. This is not because of some irrational contempt like that vomited by the frothing fundamentalist idiots calling themselves the Christian right. Nor have I ignored it out of pure snobbery – although, admittedly, I have dug my heels in and kept my focus firmly on the pile of books I already have because I hate the whole peer-pressure thing associated with big book releases these days: I do not have to read anything just because everyone else has. No, the simple fact is that since its release I’ve had far too many books to read which I know will definitely be worthwhile to bother with that pile of over-hyped pages. No, if you’re looking for a review of the book, I’d suggest you check out Diane Walton’s great review “Cracking the Code” on the On Spec magazine blog
No, aside from hearing the odd tidbit from my wife and several friends who’ve read it, and what the reviewers have given away, I went into it cold when my wife and I went to see the movie version of The DaVinci Code at a matinee on Victoria Day.
DaVerdict: it wasn’t a bad movie. But it wasn’t that good either.
On my movie ratings scale of :
-Must see on opening night
-Definitely worth paying full price to see in the theatre
-Wait until cheapo Tuesday or the second-run cinema
-Wait to rent it on video
-Wait to see it for free on TV
-Not worth seeing at all
-Risk of causing brain death
I’d say The DaVinci Code was probably worth waiting to see on TV.
To be fair, Ron Howard has shot a beautiful movie to look at.
But the plot is absurdly predictable and the characters are clichéd. I mean, come on, Silas the albino assassin monk? Does anyone know if George Lucas has launched litigation for copyright infringement of Darth Maul?! And Sir Lee (with all due respect to the great Sir Ian McKellan) may as well have been one of Heilein’s curmudgeons (minus the bevy of nymphos) screaming “Front!” when he wants a servant to bark orders at.
My suggestion is to find superior alternatives from the big and small screens. If you want to see the adventures of a raven-haired beauty (and her faithful sidekicks) who finds out she’s the descendant of Christ, get yourself a copy of the hilarious and clever “Dogma” by Kevin Smith. Want something a little more serious but keeping with the religious “artifact” theme, go to those solid standards: the Indiana Jones movies. Is it conspiracies you’re looking for? Why not the X-Files series and movie, or, if you’re in the mood to wind the ol’ way-back machine, try The Prisoner (word on the street is they’re fixing to do a remake). And if you just like looking at pretty old European buildings, any number of films will do, but I’ll suggest the jolly good romp of “Four Weddings And A Funeral” or even the utter ridiculousness of “Blame It On The Bellboy”.
I think the real conspiracy of the DaVinci Code isn’t so much the fictions or real allegations built around the Catholic Church (not that I’m a defender of Rome, ‘cause I’m certainly not), rather it’s the push to get people to see a film or buy a book that’s ultimately forgettable.

Protoculture, Patios, and Attempts at Godhood

Spring came stampeding down Vancouver’s Robson Street like a flock of flamingos this week. To be sure, we’ve had a fair share of sunny days here on the Wet Coast over the past two months, but often grudgingly, and never terribly warm. This week though, ah, sun and summery highs in the mid to high 20’s. (That sound you hear now is the collective grating of teeth from every inhabitant of Ontario and Quebec still slogging through spring rains, with nothing to look forward to afterwards but a summer forecast of brutal record heat and the usual psychosis-inducing humidity)
The point here is not to gush about how great I think Vancouver is (if I wanted to do that, I’d strap on a kilt, doff my drawers and launch into a rendition of that old Scottish chestnut “These are my mountains and this is my home!” – which would probably drive off every other resident of the Lower Mainland and insure that it was my home and no-one else’s), or to thumb my nose at easterners (as fun as that is – and I say that as someone born and raised in Ontario). No, the point is to illustrate how a stray thought can transform the mundane into the surreal.
-Which is not to say I see parts of the ordinary world in a Charles De Lint sort of way, as a fusion of the normal and the supernatural, rather in a Bradburian sense: as a loam to grow metaphor.
Grasping my hand as though she were holding a dog’s leash, my wife dragged me on an afternoon odyssey of shoe-hunting (for herself, naturally – I get brought along because she’s short and the store bags hang too low and get too heavy after she’s made 7 or 8 purchases – not an unusual sight: pushy little Chinese women dragging lumbering white guys behind them is par for the course in this town) and I glanced around: at the usual horde of women with pink tank-tops plastered across boobs propped up by every conceivable means to look like twin zeppelins at dock and white pants tight enough to see not only the panty line but the colour of the knickers in question as they ride up into the unknown and dye jobs in every shade of blonde (frequently on the same head), at the exasperated American tourists dragging their portly children along wondering where all the igloos are and why their dollar isn’t going so far, at the occasional dude with a dog and the mandatory shit bag hanging at his side, at the juice monkeys in their tight white T-shirts who’ve pumped weights until their chests and arms would put a gorilla to shame but who’ve left their legs in the same sparrow condition they were born with, the teenage girls pillaging yoga stores for the fashions more than any real desire to contort their bodies and achieve clarity of mind and soul, the matrons who are long on money and short on class parading around displaying all of their jewels and brand-names and botox work with their noses elevated above their eye level and leading harried Filipino nannies suffering under the squalls of their mistresses’ pampered larvae, the Goths, the sporty college boys with their retro-80’s mesh-backed ballcaps mounted at every conceivable angle, frazzled store clerks in the black and white uniforms of their caste just coming off shift, and every other type of rabble to stalk The Scene.
Watching the tide of bodies ebb and flow around the Starbucks, the gelato place, the Milestones, Fogg ‘N Suds, Zin, Shinnanigans, and even A Taste Of India, my attention was drawn not as much to the faces and bodies on the street, as it was to the faces and bodies on the patios abutting the street. And I wasn’t the only one. No-one could pass the fenced-off patches of concrete without looking at the denizens ensconced within.
I was reminded of a similar moment last year, when seeing the gaggle of people seated out into the sidewalk hit me with a japanimation flashback – it made me think of one sentence in particular, in fact. I’ve been chewing on an idea about our society ever since that Macross moment.
Remember that scene in Macross: Superdimensional Fortress where Breetai and the other fleet commanders are getting a history lecture from Supreme Commander Dolza? Breetai haltingly asks “What… is… pro-to-cul-ture?”
That’s what hit me looking at the outdoor seating. “What… is… pro-to-culture?”
You may wonder what the hell a term from an early 80’s anime classic has to do with drinking or dining out-of-doors.
Nothing. It was the turn of phrase.
I found myself twisting it and asking: “What is patio culture?”
Thinking about it a little longer (yes, there was steam coming out of my hairy ears and sweat beading on my bespectacled face with the effort), it occurred to me that our varieties of modern patio culture are more than just accommodations for smokers or platforms for dining al-fresco. They’re metaphors for types of religion.
Start with the easiest: restaurant patios on Robson - The Scene (pick your city, the attitudes of the people in the cool places to be – as officially sanctioned by local pop culture outlets – are all the same). People on the patios – especially the street-level patios – are self-styled gods from some ancient pantheon. That gaggle of university girls there nursing their grande caramel lattes are Aphrodite, Diana and the Muses. The ballcapped gym rats leering at them from the next table are really Thor and Baldur tearing into 10-cent wings and quaffing pints of Gastown Amber Ale. Notice how rare it is for you to see a non-hipster on the patios in the heart of The Scene? That’s the job of the hostess, the ultimate gatekeeper and judge of cool to keep the human advertisements for good times in full view in the outdoor sweet spot, and the rest of us schmucks safely tucked away in the dark inner recesses where we can’t be seen amongst the kitsch. Nightclub doormen have got nothin’ on her. You can ask all you want, be as nice as you want, make comments about the great weather until the cows come home, or even dangle a 20, but you ain’t getting in unless the girl in black with a tasteful amount of cleavage showing judges you to by worthy. She is the gatekeeper. The new Hades or Osiris. Sending you to your final eating and drinking destination, with the decision having already been made before you’ve even opened your mouth.
The patio is the place to see and be seen. It is the new Olympus. The godlings can bask in the sun, watch the breeze waft away their cigarette clouds, and feel the cool night air caress their alcohol-fired cheeks. More importantly, the diners can gaze aloofly out at the world and judge the beauty of the passers-by (or equally likely the inadequacy of their couture). They are satisfied in knowing that their comments to this effect can probably be heard by the same pedestrian. Zeus thundering his wrath above a temple never had it so good. The patio also elevates their egos – their need to be worshipped (anybody thinking about Apollo’s pathetic speech to Captain Kirk in the classic Star Trek series?) - by allowing them to see those on the outside gazing at them with envy – they know you’re thinking “Wow, She/He’s got it all! That place looks happening! Must be hard to get a table on that patio! Wouldn’t it be great to cozy up to that hottie there and down a wobblypop or five?” It abuts into the sidewalk, thrusting the cool people into the midst of the marching throng, but keeping them safely separated from the great unwashed by the unbreachable line of the waist-high iron fence. And yet, it allows for interaction. The old gods walk in the world and take part in it, even though they are protected by their divinity. Any one of the patio loungers can wave to someone on the street and say “Hey, why don’t you come and sit with us and have a few drinks?!” and that lucky soul will be admitted onto the hallowed ground, where he will have a napkin bestowed upon him which will then blow away in the breeze. In this, it’s like the woodland abodes of the ancient gods – places where Bacchus and his cronies could party it up while mere mortals trembled in the bushes at the sight, until they were invited to partake in the festivities.
It’s also like the home of ancient gods because nearly everyone wants onto the patio – it’s where the good times are! You can see those good times right there in front of you, just a metre or two away! People will queue up for hours just to get a patio seat – unless you know the hostess or look cool enough, then you’re in right away. It’s like a host of antsy Vikings petitioning to get into the mead-halls of Valhalla.
And like any home of the gods, it’s perfectly manicured and controlled in its attempt to create a precise image of the kind of cool it wants to generate. Plants only in pots where they should be. Heat lamps standing tastefully at attention at strategic distances from the restaurant door or suspended like red suns of Krypton from the eaves to gently bake the bar nymphs as they daintily sip their ambrosiac bellinis on otherwise chill late spring or early fall nights.
Ultimately, the patio is also like a pantheon because it is doomed. As the Norse gods knew Fenrir the wolf waited for the dinnerbell of Ragnarok, so those-who-would-be-gods who assume mastery of the patio know that it’s only for a span of a few months before the onslaught of winter forces the chairs and tables off the sidewalk.
And we can see other types of patio culture as illustrations of other kinds of ancient religions.
Take settin’ out on the front porch (your choice of open or mosquito-mesh-enclosed) on a sticky summer’s night. Something you see more in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and maybe some neighbourhoods in parts of Manitoba, than here out West. This laid-back patio lifestyle is the perfect analogy for aboriginal shamanism.
The porch on a summer’s eve is the crossroads of the worlds of man, nature, and spirit – or rather, it is the illustration that they’re not separate worlds, but intertwining facets of the same existence.
The porch, though man’s creation, is side-by-side with the yard, but neither is mutually exclusive. The grass or weeds from the lawn may spill over onto parts of the porch. The leaves, flower petals, grass clippings and dandylion down all blow freely onto the porch. Bird crap is often allowed to fossilize onto the railings. And man’s creations spill into nature: splinters from the railings, coins, cigarette butts, ice cubes, broken glass, marbles, toys and all manner of snacks may slip, blow or be kicked off the edge and into the grass or flower beds or fall through the cracks between the boards to the dark places beneath. The porch itself, while man-made, is often weathered. Even on the most fastidiously maintained front stoops, there’s bound to be faded or peeling paint, warped or cracked boards or concrete, and possibly old furniture, maybe rusting, maybe bleached by the sun and smelling faintly of mildew from the rain making it past the awning.
It’s a place of levels, where one can sit on a chair, slightly lower on a step, lean on a railing, in some cases crawl into the dark spider-and-worm cavern underneath, hang from rafters, step through a creaking screen door into the house or tumble down onto the lawn. It is the manifestation of the idea that a man or spirit can freely move from the village to the dreamtime and back to the forest.
And just as shamanism acknowledges that man shares the world on an equal footing with the animals and spirits – all moving freely into and out of the world, that life and death are intertwined and that power relations can shift, so too does the porch. Grandpa may sit on the steps, the family dog gnawing a sheep’s kneebone on the porch as both watch the kids running around the maple tree in the middle of the lawn; a sparrow roosts on one of the beams above; Gramma knits in the rocking chair, a cat on her lap; the afternoon’s lazy flies give way to the evening’s more determined mosquitos; Dad leans over the railing to inspect the moss crawling up the concrete on the foundation of the house; a spider inspects the day’s catch in her web in the corner; Mom puts down her book and goes into the house to get a jacket; a neighbour comes ambling over from the sidewalk to say “hi”; an owl alights on top of the awning as twilight deepens; and two teenagers cuddle on an old couch against the side of the house after everyone else has gone inside.
As shamanistic cultures become sparse as they’re marginalized by “modern” societies and their members are absorbed into the dominant traditions, so too the way of the porch is becoming rare. Suburbs continue to explode into what was once farmland, but the increase in housing has seen a decrease in neighbourhoods. People don’t know their neighbours any more. Horror stories on the news make people distrustful of their neighbours too. How many people stop weeding the garden or mowing the lawn to chat with the guy next door and maybe have a beer? Gone is community parenting. Fading are the impromptu block road-hockey games and baseball games in the empty lot at the end of the street. They’ve been replaced by carpools to organized sports leagues and protracted video game campaigns. Kids don’t go and bang on their friends’ doors anymore. Now they have “play dates” arranged over cellphones with individually-identifying ringtones. Neighbourhood barbeque or block party? Nope. Street garage sale? Can’t – might violate the strata bylaws. Jane Jacobs warned in “Dark Age Ahead” that this growing isolation is a forerunner of societal collapse, and look what’s happened to aboriginal cultures stripped of their heritage by colonization and imposed values. Jacobs’ words might not be so far-fetched. Even if you don’t take this kind of apocalyptic view, even if you take all the nostalgia with a hefty grain of salt, you have to admit those easy-going evenings of only 20 years ago were a lot nicer.
To be sure, there are pockets of resistance, where settin’ out on the porch of a summer’s evenin’ is still a way of life. I hope it’ll see a resurgence.
That brings us to a more modern form of religion: monotheism. That is the apartment/condo balcony.
The Judeo/Christian/Muslim tradition teaches that God is all-seeing, all-powerful, and perched in his distant heaven that’s attainable for mortal man only through strict adherence to certain values. That’s not too removed from the realities of the balcony: it’s owned by one person/family, it’s usually physically high up – mounted on the side of a building with a view either of scenery, other apartments or the city streets below, and if you, as an outsider/non-owner are ever to hope to rise above the crowd on the sidewalk and get up to where the air might be fresher or the view of the fireworks/festival/sunset might be better, complete with drinks and snacks, you’ve got to prove your worth to the Power above (otherwise known as the guy with his name on the lease/deed).
That’s right, merely knowing in your heart that the balcony, complete with its view and beer and barbeque, exists isn’t enough! No, you’ve got to be friends with the owner, which means you have to share the same values (more or less) and spend countless hours in communication (your choice of in person/by phone/over the net) – so, let’s call a spade a spade and say “in prayer”.
Moreover, while anyone can imagine a balcony, not just anyone can see the owner. No, up there he or she can look down at you and see just how much you’re balding on the back of your head or whether you scratch your balls when you think no-one is looking, but if you look up, it’s unlikely you’ll catch a glimpse of the high one unless they want you to. If the Lord works in mysterious ways and appears only to the chosen, we can see the symmetry with the apartment-dweller who chooses when he’ll lean over the railing and wave and call down to you, and when he’ll simply stay away from the edge and appear to not be at home.
And if you, oh lowly one, are deemed worthy, your pleas at the holy call box at the front door (and let’s face it, some building entrances are ornate enough to compete with churches/mosques/synagogues) will be answered, and you will be granted admittance. You’ll rise (in an elevator of course, which may or may not contain cheap advertising panels displaying curious combinations of restaurant brochures, sex service ads and pamphlets offering to help you find true faith and enlightenment – wait a minute, does that make those panels like the grail?) to that “de-lux apartment in the sky-y-y”, far above the great unwashed and mosquitos and the pollen to that perfectly controlled environment hovering in the air where there will be fine whiskeys and sizzling steaks and binoculars and witty conversation and comfortable chairs and all manner of salty snacks. And like heaven, once you’re there, you’ve got to abide by the rules and whims of your host or be judged as wanting, cast out, and forced to descend back into the crowd and the heat and the false light of neon and the danger of mugging and the noise and the fumes of the street, never to return. Were Dante and Milton writing from 19th storey 2-bedroom strata lots?
Lastly, we arrive at agnosticism and atheism – respectively the belief that there might be something out there, but we don’t know its nature, and the denial in any sort of deity. That’s an apartment without a balcony. Nothing outwardly visible up there except windows glittering like stars and nothing beyond your imagination hinting at whether anyone’s behind them, or if there is, if that person’s even bothering to look down at you or cares one whit whether you’re there or not. The apartment dweller in front of his TV isn’t even a part of the world at all to the man on the street.
On the flip side, is the man who may be behind the window like the Buddha, having left the chaos of the world behind for some inner quiet? Or is he merely Narcissus substituting a TV, book, piano, porno mag, computer or stereo for a pool to mirror his own ideas?
So what is patio culture? Well, Commander Breetai, it’s where the mundane world becomes metaphor, where life unwittingly gains spirituality, whether the aspiration (conscious or unconscious) of a hipster toward godhood, the gentle acceptance of coexistence with other elements of the world – both seen and unseen, the desire to rise above the common to a better place, or a great mystery or absence.
Where do you sit when you’re outside?

Lost in Hypaspace

First of all, folks, sorry for my month-long hiatus from the old SF soapbox. It’s been one of those Dickensian periods – the best of times, the worst of times. The positive distractions have taken the form of babies – the birth of my nephew, the imminent births of a number of friends’ babies, and the announced pregnancies of many, many more friends. All of these have been accompanied by a chorus of friends insisting that it’s time for my wife and I to think about having one of our own. Career obligations mean that’ll be a couple of years off though. On the down side, a family friend has died in the prime of his life and we’ve been quite concerned for his widow and their two pre-teen kids. Throw in day-to-day work and a flurry of technical problems as I try to cobble together our wedding video here on our home computer, and you’ll understand why I’ve been a little remiss.
Anyway, I’m back.
For this installment, I’d like to bitch about problems with the navigation of Hypaspace. That’s Hype-a-space, not hyperspace – referring to an SF news/gossip show airing on Canada’s Space channel. The navigation problems I speak of don’t involve me having lost my tv remote control or suddenly forgetting what channel the station’s been assigned or problems finding the station & show’s web address. No, I mean the damn show’s gone so far off course it’s in imminent danger of being lost. Lost from what it originally was intended to do – to give news and reviews of speculative fiction in movies, tv, literature and comics. And by extension, at risk of being lost from the attention of fans.
Over the past year, Hypaspace has watered itself down and surrendered to commercialism. By watered-down I mean the content has now become dominated by movie previews, many of which do not remotely involve any elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, or anything else vaguely off the beaten path. How many hours of programming have been lost to trailers, interviews and gossip about movies like Mission Impossible III? Leave that to mainstream dreck like Entertainment Tonight. It’s not a question of not having enough SF-related material to talk about either – for years Hypaspace kept exclusively to the world of SF and managed to fill its half hour dutifully. This recent change smells like the Hollywood movie distributors who buy ad time for their movies are flexing their financial muscles to drive the content of the channel’s programming and the producers are caving like the house at the end of “Poltergeist”.
And speaking of sponsors running rampant with the content, what’s going on with the incessant new toy previews? Two years ago new figurines or ugly stuffed toys would have come up as an occasional feature, maybe during the toy industry conventions. Now they’re a 5 to 10 minute staple of every episode. For a show that only airs once a week, that’s a hell of a lot of air time. Really, the majority of the audience probably isn’t frothing at the mouth waiting to hear about the new line of Simpsons figurines that’s being released (don’t get me wrong, I love the Simpsons like everyone else – the Hallowe’en episodes are great tv).
Having been in the broadcast business, I can say the station’s getting greedy. The show’s always had a low production value, and with the consistent sponsorship they were pulling in, they must have been pulling in at least modest profits. Now they’re goin’ for the motherlode. You may argue that broadcast is a business like any other, and company owners like CHUM have to pursue profits where they can, but where that alienates the audience (no pun intended), the risk is losing the viewers who convince the advertisers to sign those fat cheques.
What they’ve sacrificed by slapping in the irrelevant content and freebie advertising are the interesting SF-related pieces of news and gossip, and the intelligent interviews with authors. There hasn’t been a decent installment of the “Shelf-Space” segment in months. Time was they’d keep track of the releases of all kinds of good books, by authors from around the world, but especially by Canadian writers (gotta inform the home audience about local talent while scoring Can-con brownie points with the CRTC) and run interviews, either conducted by their own staff at conventions, or gathered from other sources. The loss of regular book reviews and author interviews has seriously dumbed-down the show.
Even the comic feature has become infrequent. Granted, I haven’t collected comics since I graduated high school (not ‘cause I think they’re for kids, ‘cause they’re not, and I still buy one every now and again, it’s just other spending priorities like food and shelter have come up over the years), but it was always good to see what was new on the off chance that something was interesting enough to send me down to Golden Age Collectibles to check out the shelves. To be fair, last week they previewed the Simpsons comic’s upcoming issue with the return of Hank Scorpio, but they recycled their preview of “Batman: Year 100” that they’d cooked-up a few months ago. The producers are getting undermotivated as well as greedy in their old age.
Lastly, I’ve gotta gripe about the host. Bringing Kim Poirier in last summer was the worst mistake Space and its owners at CHUM have made – worse than selling-out on their content. The former host, Jonathan Llyr, sounded natural and conversational and gave the impression he actually knew what he was talking about. Not sure why, but he’s been relegated to a short gossip section at the end of the show. Even if he’d tired of doing the whole thing or had fallen out of favour, they should have used their reporter and stand-in host Natasha Eloi. She too looked like she knew what she was talking about. She’s been banished to the toy report and little else. Ms. Poirier, on the other hand, is hogging the spotlight but has no business being there. Granted, with her elfin beauty, it might be nice just to look at Kim, except she’s so utterly annoying in every other aspect. You can see how completely insecure this young actress is as she postures and arbitrarily tries to show the camera her best body angles and sassy smiles for no apparent reason – really, she’ll engage in a pose-off while delivering a poor read of something off a cue-card that she clearly neither knows or cares anything about! It’s as though she’s just trying to assemble a collection of shots to add to her portfolio to send off in advance of her next audition in an attempt to salvage her flagging on-screen career. And her delivery of the dialogue is over-the-top cheerleader style. This kid wouldn’t know how to use her voice if her life depended on it. I really can’t say enough bad things about her. She’s helped make the show nearly unwatchable.
So after this extensive rant, you’re probably wondering why, if Hypaspace seems to be so lost in space, I bother giving it any attention. I’ve often wondered that myself. But, in the end, I think it’s the minimal presence of Jonathan Llyr that draws me back. And no, for any of you out there who’ve watched the station since it hit the air, I’m not saying this for any fondness for his role as the inebriated alien in the “Space Bar” hosting segments for movies they’d run in the old days, ‘cause those were lame. No, it’s because Llyr’s entertaining and has the scoop on a lot of the SF news drifting around (when the producers and bogging him down with mainstream gossip that can be had elsewhere). In fact, his column on the Hypaspace portion of the Space website has become better than the show. The fact that he can come up with new material every day proves there’s enough out there to fill the show like they used to in the old days. Many’s the time these days when I skip the weekly tv show entirely and just do a quick check of the website to see what Llyr’s serving up.
A basic rule of broadcasting that CHUM has forgotten with Space and it’s show “Hypaspace” is audience and purpose. You need to focus. If you’re catering to a niche market like Space is, find out what the audience wants and who can best deliver it. By watering the show down with mainstream garbage and bringing in a host who’s clearly too young, dumb, and self-absorbed, the company’s shown it’s lost touch with its audience. In an age where plenty of programs are available on-line, and where production companies aren’t shy about getting tv shows out on DVD asap to boost their revenues, there’s little reason for an audience to pay attention to a station that’s lost interest in them.

The Monsters and the Critics

It was a near-miss dream of watching a movie – the uber-cinema experience: an ancient epic brought to life on the big screen, the theatre nearly all to ourselves, fresh popcorn, no mulish parents failing to pay attention to their yowling spawn in the flickering shadows of a story wildly inappropriate for youngsters… pity the film itself was wanting.
Last week the family and I trekked to our local labrynthine theatre complex to see “Beowulf & Grendel”. (Hence my borrowing of the title of a famous essay by the esteemed Professor J.R.R. Tolkien for the title of this not-anywhwere-near-so-famous blog posting.)
The fact that we even knew the movie existed, let alone that it was running in a nearby theatre was a stroke of luck even the famous beast-battling Geat would have been grateful to have. In all the previous months of production, the weeks before the premier, and even now, more than a week after it’s hit the silver screen, there has been no advertising and next to no buzz on this film. It’s a fluke we knew it existed.
To be sure, there was a blurb on Canada’s Space Channel sci-fi news show “Hypaspace” – one day after the movie hit the screen. And there was the odd review in the occasional paper, like the one my parents caught in the Ottawa Citizen. But no ads? No previews in the cinema? What the hell were the producers thinking? Granted, as a Canadian/British/Icelandic production (and admittedly, I have no idea if anything ran in the UK or Iceland), there’s no way any ads would ever hit the air on major American networks, and by extension, no chance of it ever making it to the review line-up of Ebert and his brainlessly yappy sidekick. Granted too, because it wasn’t an Alliance/Atlantis production, it would be difficult to make inroads on the Canadian networks. But no ads at all?
You can’t tell me they didn’t have the budget for it, after filming the whole thing in Iceland, one of the most expensive countries in the world to do anything, especially make a movie! If they could cobble together the funds to film this beast, the producers ought to have been able to trot out a 30 second spot or two on Space, CBC, CTV, CHUM or some of the other, smaller players. Most of the networks probably would have bit if only to write off the production & some of the cast for CanCon requirements! I mean, if they could make airtime to run commercials for “Men With Brooms” back in 2002, I think they could have given away a discount time slot for “Beowulf”. The total lack of advertising has automatically, and unfairly, set this movie up to fail, regardless of the quality of the film. I’m reminded of that old piece of broadcasting wisdom Mother Carlson told Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP: “Sometimes you put money into a radio station because it succeeds, and sometimes you put money into a business because you need a tax write-off.”
The fact there was such a near absence of publicity makes me wonder if the theatre chains were showing “Beowulf & Grendal” as a personal favour to some member of the production team. I’d suggest the possibility of the afore-mentioned tax write-off, but the cinemas aren’t in any financial position to be losing money these days if they can help it. Moreover, I doubt it will get any more screentime beyond the end of the week.
So like I was saying, my wife and I, along with my folks (visiting from Ontario for the birth of my nephew) were the only ones in the theatre until about 5 minutes before the show started, at which point we were joined by three other couples. And that was it. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to guess most other showings had about the same turnout, if they were even that packed.
As for the movie itself… “Beowulf & Grendel” wasn’t a bad film (insert sympathetic wince). It wasn’t a great film either. It wasn’t what it could have been, not by a long shot.
To give credit where credit is due, the cinematography was magnificent. Beautiful shots of the wild grandeur of Iceland that would make a Viking weep.
I also enjoyed how the 21st century dialogue was punctuated with snippets of the original Old English dialect when the skop among Beowulf’s gaggle of thanes (most certainly not the “merry band of psychopaths” as they’re dubbed by the satyr poet Martin Silenus in Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion”) tries to compose a poem to tell the kiddies and the folks back home the tale of their adventure. In debating this with my brother (one of the only other people on the planet, it seems, to have paid to see this flick), he complained it was jarring to have the odd snatch of the old dialect flung at the audience. I thought it was an effective (if obvious) way of underlining Beowulf’s unease with poetry’s tendency to magnify men and events beyond their banality.
And to be fair, I think the movie did a great job of creating two important portraits: that of Beowulf, effectively played by Gerard Butler as the hero who’s really just a guy who’s a bit smarter and tougher than his chums but is embarrassed by and wary of having his reputation elevated to that of some sort of godling, and that of Hrothgar, a king mouldering under his impotance as his kingdom wastes away as its warriors die and its survivors are overcome by despair, and as his people turn from the old ways to the false comfort of the new Christianity.
Hats off to Stellan Skarsgard for his performance as the king tearing himself apart with guilt and alcohol for ultimately being the cause of his people’s misfortune and for not being able to admit it to the foreigner who comes to his rescue and circles ever closer to the truth. With a modified script and better editing to make the movie tighter, Skarsgard’s performance could have been the entire focus of the film – would have been a brilliant movie on its own.
And the writers should be commended for following in the footsteps of a number of other, smarter writers in trying to make Grendal more than just a monster. We feel sorry for him from the opening scene of the movie when the not-so-little tyke is forced to witness his titanic daddy being hunted down and slaughtered by Hrothgar’s gang of surly Norse. And it is easier to by sympathetic to a Grendal who looks basically human except for his enormous size and the presence of a beard during his childhood. For all that the Danes and Geats call him “troll” throughout the film, Grendal’s appearance is more that of the thursir, the frost giants, than the demons of Norse folklore. It’s also harder to fear a Grendal who spends more time teasing Beowulf and his gang (and peeing on the door of their sleeping quarters) than slaughtering them, and we feel pity for the poor soul who, in the end, is desperate enough to escape the Geats that he saws off his own arm at the shoulder rather than be captured.
Let’s also give credit to the mad Irish priest who cavorts around the Danish village trying to convince the worried Norse to head down to the local freezing waterfall for a dip and a conversion. He adds a laugh or three to an otherwise dry flick – that is until Grendal’s drippy momma comes sloshing up the garden path with blood on her mind and takes his head off.
Oh yeah, Grendal’s bowling with heads scene was pretty funny too – in a gruesome Bastille sort of way.
But that being said, the flaws in this film are more fatal than the dragon that comes a’callin’ on Beowulf at the end of his life (sadly, not an episode shown in this trollkind family values film). As mentioned before, the flick’s too damn long. Hrothgar’s mental collapse could have been done just as effectively in a shorter period of time (this criticism from a guy who takes 3 pages to get to the point). There’s so much chin-scratching on Beowulf’s part, so much “aw, let’s get it over with” from his buddies, so many mocking stares from the village witch, and so many Hrothgar’s falling apart yet again scenes that the tension was completely bled out of the movie.
Then there were the accents. To be sure, in a period piece like this, casting directors will do their damndest to round up every British accent they can lay their hands on to sound vaguely authentic. Hats off to this crew for netting Skarsgard and some other northern European actors to actually sound, well, Norse. Problem is, there were about half a dozen different accents going on. If that wasn’t jarring enough, there was Sarah Polly, with her Canadian non-accent, not even trying to affect any kind of British or Danish/Icelandic/Norwegian/Swedish/Finnish accent. It was like listening to a version of Beowulf performed by 1st year university students on a theatre exchange summer study course in Bermuda or something. Yet another sacrifice on the alter of lack-of-consistency.
I’ve earlier bemoaned the lack of the final chapter of the poem, Beowulf’s fatal encounter with a dragon. But maybe the dragon really was in this picture. Maybe it was stalking the film all along, the spirit of an ancient poem that wants to be read, preferably in the original (though not ruling out fitting tributes like Parke Godwin’s “The Tower of Beowulf”), and so tearing the guts out of the editing and script of a film that hasn’t been thought through or produced properly. In essence, guarding the hoard of the imagination from those who would cheapen it.

Unca Bloginhood?

Good news from the SF soapbox in the marketplace today: I'm an uncle!
My brother's wife gave birth this afternoon to an 8 pound, 8 ounce boy. Mother and child are doing well. They've tentatively decided to name him "Fin", though not in any reference to the ancient Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhail (Finn MacCool), nor, apparently, in any sense meaning "the end".
I think in a couple of years we'll get him started on the classics like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperump-a-zoo", then J.K. Rowling's misadventures of Harry Potter.
Later we'll move on to appreciation of J.R.R. Tolkien, Shakespeare, Dan Simmons, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Robert J. Sawyer, Douglas Adams and Corey Doctorow, with a little of the SF musings of Mark Twain and Edger Allan Poe to boot.
He'll learn why Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar Galactica (shot right here in the rainy confines of what's now being called "Caprica City" in the press) are not only the best SF TV series' ever made, but the best TV series' - period.
We'll watch Star Wars (Episode IV, thank you very much), 2001, Bladerunner, the new and the old King Kong, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Akira, Monty Python's The Holy Grail, Princess Mononoke, and of course, Big Trouble in Little China.
Welcome to the family, Fin.

The Obsidian Stare Behind Citizen G'Kar - In Memorium

I heard the word on the Space channel’s “Hypaspace” a couple of days ago, and have since verified on Associated Press, that actor Andreas Katsulas has died.
With those eyes blazing like collapsars crouching beneath his brows, Katsulas looked the typical heavy, like he could be putting philosophers on trial in Athens or conspiring against Julius Caesar.
And he did play innumerable bad guys. You might remember him menacing Dudley Moore with a tiny set of sparking jumper cables and asking for verification of his English vocabulary (Katsulas: “…or I’m-a gonna fry your, how you say…?” Moore: “TESTICLES! TESTICLES!”) in that Disney ode to the follies of a Bronson Pinchot stint in the tourism industry in Venice called “Blame It On The Bellboy”.
More of you probably remember that flat, midnight tombstone stare of his as the One-Armed-Man with a haute couture addiction in “The Fugitive”.
But his finest role, the part that showed the greatest breadth and depth of his craft was that of Ambassador/Citizen G’Kar in “Babylon 5”.
To be sure, he played the bully to the hilt in the first season. But as the story evolved, so did G’Kar. Granted, J. Michael Straczynski’s writing is to be credited, but so is Katsulas for breathing life into the lines. Katsulas made us feel G’Kar’s frustration and desperation as the Centauri bombed his beloved Narn back to the Stone Age. In what was one of the finest, most powerful moments of drama on North American television – ever – Katsulas used subdued tones to deliver a tightly chained supernova of rage and contempt outside of an elevator, droning “Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.” for each drop of blood falling from the wound he’d sliced into his own hand – and not stopping! – ratcheting up our level of discomfort at home until we were squirming under the weight of those very many droplets as much as poor Vir Cotto (who was sympathetic to the Narns and only trying to apologize), followed up by a question so flat that his voice was as dead as those droplets and those Narns: “Can you apologize to them? Then you can never apologize to me.” Along the way, Katsulas’ G’Kar stumbled upon understanding and unearthed a measure of peace beneath it. Enough to show compassion for a sworn enemy. He even made us laugh a time or two.
Am I saying no other actor could have done a good job playing G’Kar? No. I am saying very, very few could have. So delicate became the portrayal of this seemingly obvious malcontent from the first season that few actors would have been able to convincingly show us his growth and enlightenment. Under another’s ministrations, G’Kar’s character could have been clumsy and unworthy of attention, let alone respect or the care of the audience. In fact, so crucial to the serious dramatic themes of “Babylon 5” was G’Kar that a performance by anyone of less skill would have gravely injured the entire show.
Much is made of Katsulas’ enduring the tons of makeup and costume for every day of shooting. I say his real trial was bearing the monumental weight of his character.
Andreas Katsulas died of lung cancer in his Los Angeles home on February 13th at the age of 59. He is survived by his wife and two children from a previous marriage.

“You see, I believe that when we leave a place, part of it leaves with us, and part of us remains behind.”
-G’Kar
“Objects in Motion”, season 5, “Babylon 5”

Eagles And Canines And Balrogs - Oh My!

Gung Hei Fat Choy everyone! A belated welcome to the Year of the Dog.
I’ve gotta confess: events around Chinese New Year’s celebrations in my neck of the woods this year went to the dogs in some respects, but there was some good mixed in with the bad. Dinner for the holiday with my wife’s family was a dog’s breakfast as usual (had to keep with the canine motif). Imagine 14 people going to a nice restaurant and the uncles in charge only ordering enough food to feed 8 light eaters. And these are only mediocre dishes too. It’s kinda like taking a date out to Morton’s and ordering a hotdog for both of you. They proceeded then to swipe the lai-si away from us as quickly as we could take them out of our pockets, but gave us nothing in return – exploiting the technicality that says once you’re married they don’t have to give you lucky money any more, even though most families continue to give, and if we fail to give them their red pockets, even though they’re married, they’d scream bloody blue murder. I know tradition says it’s good luck to give red pockets and it’s not about receiving them. But this is one of the reasons why my wife refers to them as “the beggar tribe” and refuses to associate with them at any other time of the year. On the up side, the following evening we had an orphan’s Chinese New Year’s dinner for some friends of ours with no family here on BC’s Lower Mainland, and that was a lot of fun. Ultimately, I guess you could say the holiday was in balance, which is very appropriate in a Buddhist sort of way.
And, of course, no Chinese New Year would be complete without a screening of that John Carpenter/Kurt Russell masterpiece: “Big Trouble In Little China”. My wife thinks it’s absurd and refuses to be in the same room when I watch it. I’d like to point out for the record that it is absurd, and that’s the point, and that’s why it’s so good. A movie with action, humor and weird monsters running around that doesn’t take itself seriously is a definite must have. How can you not love Russell’s character Jack Burton as he swaggers around with his bad John Wayne impression that only lasts as long as he’s comfortable showing off and fades like gunpowder smoke as soon as the water starts to rise in the elevator that stops in The Hell Of The Upside-down Sinners. What makes it more interesting is that for once, the swaggering, good-looking, tough-guy, white American is only the sidekick – completely in the dark and playing second fiddle to the wily little Chinese hero Wang who’s in search of his bride-to-be. And I can’t say how many times I’ve seen that movie over the years, but it still leaves me in stitches when the villain Lo-Pan in his “little old basketcase” form snaps at the captive Russell: “You were not put on this earth to ‘get it’, Mr. Burton!” Like Carpenter and Russell say on the commentary track: there are only two kinds of moviegoers, those who love “Big Trouble In Little China” and those who don’t get it and hate it. Sign me up for a big ol’ mug of Egg Shen’s magic potion.
Anyhow, getting back to the title’s topic of beasties in speculative fiction these days, I found myself realizing there’s been a bit of an animalistic theme to my reading of late.
Back in January, just prior to the advent of the Year of the Dog, I was coincidentally going through Kit Reed’s new collection of short stories “Dogs of Truth”. I was looking forward to this book after reading her biting, funny and disturbing attack on the ramifications of modern fitness flexing its muscle on pop culture and self-image in “Thinner Than Thou” this summer. “Dogs” however, was, like an over-bred purebred, somewhat hit and miss. I enjoyed her take on the classic midnight haunting scenario in “The Zombie Prince”, as well as her wry tale of codependency amidst the apocalypse in “Captive Kong”. It’s hard not to like the sense of humor in this author who’s seen every high school movie ever made and who suggests in “High School High” that an individual’s life and personality is formed by their prom night experience. But the writing in “High School High” and “Grand Opening” illustrates a flaw in Reed’s style, because in all too many of her stories, her narrative voice wastes time by stopping the story and talking to the reader. It’s like a car pulling out of a garage with the parking break still on, but the driver does it on purpose. I think one of the reasons I so dislike a narrator talking to me is because it’s rarely done well. Unfortunately, Reed is among those lacking the necessary skill. Her stories without a narrator interjecting like a wino on the bus are infinitely superior for that choice of subtlety of style.
From dogs of truth to birds of prey, I next dove into Jack Whyte’s latest addition to his realistic take on the Arthurian legend: “The Eagle”. It picks up the tale of the man who will be the inspiration for Sir Lancelot. Clothar the Frank is a post-Roman trooper who’s rank of lancerius and skill at hurling his bamboo spears earn him the nickname of “Lance”.
From the outset, Clothar, despite being an uncouth outlander, is the man closest to Arthur and yet he’s doomed to be kept at a distance. As the High King’s most skilled knight commander and one of his wisest advisors, Clothar is dispatched to the north and later home to Gaul, where Arthur intends him to stay permanently to train cavalry for the Gallic kings as a first line of defence against the threat of the rampaging Huns. Whyte does a brilliant job of conveying the Lance’s frustration as he’s torn between his duty to the king’s orders to serve as ambassador and military advisor on the mainland, and his desire to return to Britain and help his ailing friend hold his realm together.
While Clothar does, in fact, have Gwinnifer for his own by the novel’s conclusion, Whyte sidesteps the sappy melodrama of the French tradition of the legend, and does not embroil the knight and queen in a treacherous extramarital affair against Arthur that tears the kingdom apart. Instead, Gwinnifer remains a loving and loyal wife, mirroring Arthur’s own love, and Clothar stays their dutiful friend. The union of Clothar and the former queen comes only after Arthur and the dream of Camulod are nothing more than memories. Even Mordred is portrayed in a better light, having no part in his father’s downfall.
But it is Clothar’s distance from the events that bring Arthur and Camulod down that show the depth of skill in Whyte’s writing, even if they are a little exasperating to readers who naturally want to see every detail of the kingdom’s collapse. We truly experience Clothar’s frustrations by not seeing those events first hand, caught-up as we are in his own efforts to brace the Gallic kings against the barbarism to come, and in his journey to his roots on Lake Geneva. As Clothar hears of events in Britain only through increasingly infrequent dispatches from Camulod, so are we limited in our knowledge – there is no smug omniscient narrative to spoon-feed the reader with all the details poor Clothar is not privy to. Being as much in the dark as he is makes him more real to us.
It also heightens the feeling of the speed of Camulod’s collapse. While hundreds of pages can be devoted to Clothar’s travels and political machinations and military adventures in the course of his duties, the dispatches he receives are not day-by-day experiences, but short summaries of many events occurring over months or years. Having witnessed Britain slip into darkness so quickly from so great a distance away, we find ourselves like Clothar, regretful and feeling powerless. This distance from those events also adds to the sense that they are somewhat unreal – we see the foundations of myth being laid in actual events only heard about through the fog of time, location and individual interpretation. This is most blatantly illustrated by Clothar’s sifting through and discarding of the various versions of the tale that have come to him over the years – the popularized versions where he and the queen cuckolded Arthur, or where Mordred was his father’s bane.
And in the aftermath, as with any good story, the reader who’s soldiered through all nine books in the series is left wondering, “What happens now? Will the author ever fill in the blanks and tell me what I missed?” Sadly, but appropriately, the answer is no. The tale now passes into myth and speculation. Whyte begins his author’s note at the end of the book by saying this was the last book in his saga. Clearly then it is Whyte speaking as much as Clothar at the end of the tale when the knight writes of how eventually all of the people who made Camulod great eventually died and how he will miss all of them. As will the rest of us.
So what to read now?
R. Scott Bakker’s “The Thousandfold Thought”, the third book in his “Prince of Nothing” series has finally hit the shelves and I’m trudging through it now (as I write this, I’m through the first quarter) and feeling like his Inrithi crusaders as they dragged themselves through the desert in the last installment. I want to like this series because it’s a large-scale fantasy that’s been thought-out in great detail, and because the author’s from London, Ontario and there’s a bit of a patriotic drive to support a Canadian with a vision and the guts to try to get his story published, and because London’s not too far from my old hometown.
But I just can’t bring myself to say it’s more than mildly interesting.
Maybe it’s because the story hasn’t yet convinced me that it isn’t anything more than a Tolkien knock-off with a crusades angle to it. Maybe it’s the deliberately overwrought tongue-twisting names. Maybe it’s because I’m getting tired of the author’s overuse of pronunciation marks on his vowels (Bakker does love his umlauts, doesn’t he?). Maybe it’s because as I read it I get the sense that if the author was reading it aloud he’d be using weighty, highly significant tones to indicate edginess and the portentousness of every sentence - like truly pretentious people often do when they read the sputum they regard as their own brilliance (and I should know, having had that flaw on occasion – we can smell our own). Maybe it’s that extremely pretentious picture of Bakker on the rear fold of the cover, half in light, half in shadow with that just-on-the-verge-of-a-sneer oh-boy-aren’t-I-ever-so-intelligent-and-cool-and-now-all-of-your-who-mocked-me-in-the-junior-high-locker-room-will-have-to-deal-with-your-shame-at-my-success stare affected on his face.
But I think it’s really because I’m not satisfied with his portrayal of his warrior-prophet, mega logician, uber psychologist Anasurimbor Kellhus. It seems (and who knows, I may be proven wrong by the end of the book/series) that Bakker’s taking the easy way out and casting Kellhus in the role of “The Chosen One” (insert an orchestra’s thunderous Da-da-DAAAAAAA!!!! music for effect).
Wouldn’t it be so very much more interesting and complex for this armed Aristotelian monk to actually be a fallible human being, and for the other human beings around him to be that much more fallible for falling under his spell?
Wouldn’t it be far more sophisticated if Kellhus made a mistake in his incessant calculations, as Cnaiur (anyone else slip and think/say Conan on this one?) the grasslands destroyer did during the battle of book two?
Wouldn’t it be refreshing for Kellhus to have to deal with a serious personal crisis that he wasn’t equipped to handle, much as he forces others around him into introspective nightmares? To be sure, Cnaiur is the voice of doubt in Kellhus’ infallibility for readers. But Bakker subverts that by undermining Cnaiur’s doubts at every turn and conveniently driving Cnaiur mad with his inability to reconcile the truth of Kellhus’ might (yawn). And yes, Kellhus does have the threat of his jedi-esque popeish father looming in the wastelands ahead. But Bakker never turns aside from his portrayal of Kellhus as the cold and controlling next step in human evolution destined to either defeat “the evil power” or (maybe he’ll throw in a bit of a twist, though not unexpected) and supplant it.
In maintaining this course, Bakker utterly fails at creating a three-dimensional character who, heavens to betsy, might actually be interesting. Man-plus had its day of SF chic, but that’s long gone. It’s not like he’s merely an alien figure who we never get to ride along with and thus never get to know and who provides a backdrop for a study of the humanity of the characters around him who the story is truly focusing on – Kellhus’ point of view is imposed on us, reinforcing that he is infallible, and consequently a bore. Paul Muad’dib Atreides may have seen the roadmap of possibilities laid before the people of Dune, but he had his doubts and moments of weakness, which is why we, as readers, give a damn about what happens to him.
Sounds kinda stupid then that I keep buying his books, doesn’t it? But there’s that whole bit about wanting to support Canadian SF authors. And part of me keeps hoping Bakker will pick up a little more skill in his storytelling and, like Kellhus, truly win me over. Hasn’t happened yet.
With that in mind, I’m planning ahead to something that I will thoroughly enjoy once I’m done with the Book of Nothing. Lots of choices on the old bookshelf. We’re in the middle of a curiously clear cold snap here on the Wet Coast right now, and granted, it’s not the real cold that squats like a sumo wrestler over the rest of the Great White North every winter, but –10 is cold enough for these parts. The biggest surprise has been no rain for the past week. And that’s afforded me a rarity in the BC winter – a view of the stars. That’s got me to thinkin’ it’s time again to walk with the elves beneath the stars at the dawn of Middle Earth. Time to crack open Tolkien’s Silmarillion again. I tend to read the good professor’s works in cycles, alternating from year to year between “The Lord of the Rings”, “The Hobbit”, and the afore-mentioned collection of tales about the formation and early years of Middle Earth and the dwindling of the elves. Once in a while I’ll pick up “Tales From the Perilous Realm”. It’s been decades since he first put pen to paper, but no one beats Tolkien. Someone once asked me why I bother rereading books, since I already know the story. My response was that’s the true test of how good a book is, whether you can read again and still love it. Even if you’ve read it a few times and mined all the possible meanings and subtleties out of it, if you can still appreciate the crafting of it, and most importantly, get the same emotional charge out of it, the book’s worthy of an honoured place on the bookshelf and worthy of the time and attention to reread it.

More Magic Shadows, or, Going Ape For A New Monkey Movie

Happy New Year everyone! Yeah, I know, it seems like I’m a couple of weeks late, but actually, a New Year’s salutation at this point in the month turns out to be convenient timing for me: we celebrate two New Years around this house. There is, of course, the typical Western New Year on January first, but since my wife is Chinese, we also celebrate Chinese New Year, which this time around comes on Jan 29th. So, whether you’re a few weeks into trying to find an excuse to get out of your New Year’s resolution to lose that extra Christmas weight (I’ve long since accepted I’m keeping my hippopotamic girth for good), or whether you’re gearing up to flip through a stack of lai-si (red pockets) in a couple of days to find out how much money you’ve received from the relatives (and by extension, how much, if at all, they care about you in comparison with your cousin Johnny), Happy New Year all around.
I admit to being kinda lazy about getting this posting up in the weeks since Christmas, although I do have a good excuse. After spending a couple of months “in between projects” as they say, I’ve started a new gig and it’s been the usual new-job chore of getting up to speed on the inside info and re-adapting the old biological clock to the rest of the world’s 9 to 5 workday. In my former incarnation as a broadcaster, weird hours like evening and overnight shifts were the rule rather than the exception, and during my period of unemployment, I fell into what for me is a natural nocturnal rhythm where it wasn’t a problem staying up writing until 4 in the morning (I’ve often seriously considered that there’s gotta be a lot of validity to a theory I once came across in a short story by Robert Charles Wilson – or maybe it was Robert J. Sawyer, not sure without diving through a whole pile o’ books – that there’s a sort of “night watchman” gene at work in some people that makes them prone to staying up late, if not all night, in order to keep watch and make sure a jaguar doesn’t go dragging off some unfortunate member of the tribe in the wee small hours).
Aside from that, I’ve had to make my way through the pile of DVD’s my wife and others were kind enough to inundate me with at Christmas: the kick-ass “Firefly” movie “Serenity” (impressive job of getting that one to video so quickly), Babylon 5 season 2 (I seem to be collecting that series in reverse order), and that venerable old chestnut “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, along with others.
Speaking of Christmas, one major omission on my part from the nostalgia posting a few weeks ago was that giant among TV traditions: “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. Having acknowledged the masterpiece, I have hopefully redeemed myself.
On to the main point of this posting… time to don the mantle of Elwe Yost again and present another all-new take on Magic Shadows (again, apologies to TV Ontario for the copyright infringement).
I figure it’s long past time to babble for a little bit about that giant that grappled with the cinemas this holiday season: Peter Jackson’s “King Kong”. At this point I can talk about the details until I’m blue in the face because anyone who wanted to see it already has.
Simply put, I loved it.
The special effects were, not surprisingly, amazing. Kong actually looked and moved like a real gorilla, you could almost feel the steam coming out of the jungle he lived in, the frigid art deco hardness of New York’s winter concrete jungle where he died, and when the action started to pound, it was exactly the kind of mayhem that you want to see when you’re paying the extortion rates the theatres are demanding for a ticket these days. I mean, who didn’t think it was pretty cool to watch a 25-foot ape whip out the Kong Fu on a pack of tyrannosaurs?
The cave at the top of Skull Mountain was made a wonderful melancholy in Jackson’s version with the bones of Kong’s titanic forebears scattered around, giving us the uneasy feeling that he might be the last of his kind. A far better display than the original’s corny plesiosaur popping its noggin out of the pond in the depths of the cavern (how the hell does a sea-going dinosaur get all the way up to the top of a mountain and into a cave to swim in circles in a rock bowl full of rainwater?).
What about the biplane battle on the Empire State Building at the end? Amazing to watch – especially Kong’s leap into the air to knock down one of his attackers and then managing to grab onto the building for another go. And looking around the theatre, I noticed there were very few people who weren’t at least a little choked when Kong finally succumbed. What a refreshing and brave move on Jackson’s part to bring us in close to watch Kong desperately trying to maintain eye-contact with his beautiful blonde before he dies, instead of the clumsy longshot of a tumble that’s in the classic version.
And let’s give Jackson full credit for staying true to the original 1930’s classic Kong, while having the guts and the skill to flush it out.
I had a debate about this with a buddy of mine a while ago… My friend (who hasn’t seen the new version yet) is an older guy who, while he wasn’t around for King Kong’s original release during the Depression, did see the original re-released on the big screen as a kid back in the ‘50’s. He argued that there’s no need for a remake because the original was a fast-moving hour-and-a-half of action with tight writing and good special effects (for its day). He also went on to claim that it’s a pretty well established law of art that remakes are never as good as the original.
I have a lot of trouble with these lines of thinking though.
Firstly, I agree that the original Kong is a work of art. It is well-paced and it gets the job done. That being said, that version of the film moves so quickly and focuses so much on the shock of the sight of those monsters cavorting around (something new to the audiences of the early black and white era) that there isn’t a lot of character development in the human beings. In fact, they’re about as one-dimensional as the celluloid they’re printed on. By expanding the movie to three hours, Jackson has been able to add depth to his characters, to show us why they embark on their odyssey and why any of them actually care enough for the producer to sadly remark “ ‘Twas beauty killed the beast.” over the great ape’s mangled corpse. In taking a full hour to set the story up before the monster even makes an appearance (a-la “Jaws” as many have remarked), Jackson can set us up emotionally to sympathize with his overgrown monkey’s plight by drawing comparisons with the lives of the hairless primates of New York. He opens the movie by hitting us over the head with this by showing the denizens of the zoo in their cages not a stone’s throw away from a Depression shantytown in the park where the xylophone-ribbed homeless are crowded cheek-by-jowl in the filth. Not long after, we see our heroine put on display on the stage and tormented by her audience. She’s as much shackled by her hunger looking through the steakhouse window at the dismissive producer as Kong is at the beginning of the final act after being battered, captured and put in manacles for the enjoyment of the Big Apple without so much as a banana.
I’d also point out that a new adaptation is worth-while for the simple necessity of changing the delivery of the dialogue. While it’s enjoyable to watch the antiquated, rapid-fire hard-tone method of delivering lines popular in movies of the 30’s and 40’s, that manner of speech is no longer in use (if people ever actually spoke like that back then, and having had long conversations with elderly relatives who lived through that era, I have my doubts – it’s likely that mobster-movie manner of speech was entirely fabricated by Hollywood and the radio plays of the time to artificially ramp-up the intensity of the production) and is totally alien to the younger audiences of today, to the point that it runs the risk of sounding hokey to the point of being utterly ridiculous. The movie needed to be remade just so the dialogue could be delivered in normal conversational tones.
As to whether any remake can ever be as good as the original (an argument that caught fire for a while back in the ‘90’s when there was talk that perhaps there ought to be another attempt at “Casablanca”), I would argue that while many remakes ARE inferior, that DOESN’T mean that a remake, by definition, MUST be inferior. Without a doubt, the 1970’s remake of King Kong was a complete waste of time. But let’s take a look at some other movie remakes that DID work: what about Kurisawa’s “The Seven Samurai”? Remade any number of times, and most of them good. “The Magnificent Seven” changed the environment, but it was the same story told with utter reverence and it worked, well, magnificently (we’ll ignore the sequels to the western version, though). Admittedly, the SF attempt to remake it – “Battle Beyond the Stars” (with “The Magnificent Seven” ‘s Robert Vaughn reprising his role as the bounty hunter looking for a place to hide) did, without a doubt, suck ass. But the recent Chinese film “Seven Swords” (I don’t believe for a minute that it was an original Chinese work, it stinks of “Samurai” remake) was immensely entertaining, even if all seven of the heroes do survive. And, if you need any further proof that remakes can work, I have one word for you: Shakespeare. The Bard’s plays have been reinterpreted for performances on stage for centuries, and the trend has continued into the cinematic age (including some takes on Shakespeare by the afore-mentioned Kurisawa himself). It should also be noted that some of Shakespeare’s plays themselves are, in fact, remakes of earlier works by other playwrites. There’s nothing wrong with a remake, as long as it’s done well. Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake was done exceptionally well.
That being said, there are a number of critics out there who would still disagree with me. The reviewers at thetyee.ca took a special joy in burning this flick at the stake.
And I’ll admit it’s not without its flaws: while it was immensely entertaining to watch Kong’s slugfest with the pack of T-Rex’s, there was a small part of my mind that kept saying “Hey! Those tyranno teeth were designed to rip 300 pound gobbits of flesh outa the side of a triceratops. Why isn’t monkeyboy there missing a hunk or two of meat from his arms where they keep biting him? Granted, the hair and the skin that’s as thick as elephant hid probably offers some protection, but come on!” And while that doesn’t make much sense, the rest of my mind that was enjoying the show just said “Shut up. Who’d believe in a 25 foot gorilla in modern times when the closest an primate ever got to being that big was giganticus in the forests of Asia millions of years ago which got about 12 feet tall and eventually died out. Much less an ape of that stature pummeling dinosaurs that have been dead for millions of years.” The fight with those weird vampire bat things flapping around Skull Mountain would have looked a lot better if they’d just stuck with the pterodactyls from the original (and what was with using one of them as a hang-glider?). And yeah, Kong’s little skating scene in Central Park has that part of the brain howling about how many tons he must weigh and how the ice would crack beneath his tubby butt. And then there’s our damsel in distress climbing a ladder on the OUTSIDE of the Empire State building in the middle of winter wearing nothing but a cocktail dress and somehow not getting blown off the side of the tower by the crosswind or freezing to death during the half-hour ordeal.
But you know what? It’s a story about a giant gorilla that fights dinosaurs and climbs skyscrapers and knocks biplanes out of the air. Cut the analytical crap and enjoy the flick for what it is – popcorn action (that is if you choose to ignore the good acting and writing) worth every penny you spend.
A movie that fell short of the value of the price of admission this past holiday season was “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe”. There were times when the CG didn’t seem as seamless as it should have, where Aslan didn’t look quite like he was on the same layer of film as the children he was supposed to interact with (kind of like old special effects where the beast would be projected onto a movie screen behind the actors). And for a story that’s bogged down with C.S. Lewis’ clumsy hit-you-over-the-head religious allegory, the movie fired a lot of hits and misses: it was long on “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve” and short on the horror of the allusion to the crucifixion that Lewis makes when Aslan is taken to the sacrificial stone. The movie doesn’t show the whipping, spitting upon, slashing, shaving and pounding that the lion endures before he’s stabbed to death that Lewis goes to great lengths to inflict on children who read his book. It’s as though the director and screenwriters wanted a sparkling glass of Lewis light: all the heavy-handed religion, half the gore.
But ultimately, the reason why I didn’t like this “Narnia” movie was something I can’t quite put my finger on. All I can say is that for the legion of monsters and myths present in all their photo-realistic glory, the film was missing… magic. Maybe it’s because I’m not a kid. Or maybe it’s because I read the Narnia books about 10 times when I was a kid. Or maybe it’s because I’m still rather puzzled that they didn’t start with the FIRST book in the series, “The Magician’s Nephew”. But I don’t think so. Pity that a fantasy movie has no magic in its heart.
Speaking of magic, I notice it’s fast approaching the witching hour, and long past time for me to hit the sack. Until next time, this has been another rip-off of “Magic Shadows”.

Happy holiday SF memories

Season’s Greetings everyone!

In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d indulge in that favourite of yuletide traditions: reminiscing.
Okay, fine, in actual fact my favourite holiday tradition is to belly up to the dining room table with family and friends (especially since in recent years we’ve gathered other merry-makers for an orphan’s Christmas when many of us haven’t been able to make it home to our families for the holidays) for some laughs while we attack a turkey with all the trimmings (save some extra skin for me!).
But since this blog is about SF rather than food (although, admittedly, the subject of food does come up a lot in one way or another – I make no apologies for nods toward one of my other passions), I thought it would be fun to look back to some of, in my opinion, the best SF contributions to the holidays.
For me, no Christmas Eve has been complete since I became an adult without re-reading “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke. There’s a poigniency in any tale about a man grappling with his faith, but in this case it’s all the more interesting because of his shocking discovery in the depths of space, and during the Christmas season no less. Sure, some of the science (notions of supernovaed suns having lasted long enough to spawn planets with intelligent life) is out-dated, but that doesn’t distract from the pathos of the story.
And you can’t have Christmas without Charles Dickons’ “A Christmas Carol”. In an age where there are probably at least a dozen versions of this story on film and tv, it’s always worth it to pick up the book every couple of years and feel and smell the paper as the ghosts drag the Victorian curmudgeon through time and space to bring him around.
Other literary recommendations: “Christmas Stories” from Random House’s “The Charles Dickons Library” to get a look at some of Dickons other, less well-known holiday tales; “Christmas Ghosts”, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg; “Christmas Stars”, edited by David G. Hartwell; and J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letters from Father Christmas”.
On to the small screen. Let me say right off the bat I have no fond memories of that great fiasco of the ‘70’s: “Star Wars: Christmas Among the Stars”. This is for the simple reason that I haven’t actually seen the aforementioned train wreck. Granted, I was around when it aired, but I didn’t catch it at the time and Lucas has done a good job in eliminating all traces of it in the years since. I haven’t bothered with trying to track it down on the net yet, but one of this years we’ll probably cross paths (came close a few years back when visiting my folks in Ottawa for the holidays when the club Zaphod Beeblebrox down in the Byward Market screened it one night as part of a theme party, but I had other, family-related duties at the time).
No, my first TV Christmas special loyalty is to a program that’s nearly equally as rare: “John Denver and the Muppets Christmas”. While the more recent “Muppets Christmas Carol” gets aired nearly every year, the older Henson production is pretty much unknown these days. In fact, I was pleasantly shocked out of my boots back in the mid ‘90’s when the record companies finally transferred all the old songs from that special onto CD. For years we’d been listening to a somewhat scratchy recording of the show on an original vinyl LP my mom had bought for us that had been releasaed back in the ‘70’s when the show first aired. No Christmas is complete without hearing the Muppets’ wacky renditions of the classics. For years when I was a kid, the Muppet version of “The 12 Days of Christmas” was the only version I knew, and I was surprised as tyke to learn that you weren’t actually supposed to yell “ba-dump-bump-bump!” like Miss Piggy after the 5 gold rings verse halfway through the song.
While many people will profess their loyalties to the original animated “Frosty the Snowman” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and other examples of puppetronic ilk, as much as I enjoyed them as a kid, they don’t hold the same interest for me as an adult. No, give me that rollicking late ‘80’s cartoon “The Tick”. Most especially, the episode entitled “The Tick Loves Christmas”. I nearly killed myself laughing during that one, especially when the security elves lock-down Arthur’s apartment and Santa arrives to convince the Tick he has to see the difference between himself (jolly old St. Nick, that is) and the evil Santa clones plaguing the city. “Now, Tick, I’m grateful that you’ve believed in me longer than any sane adult would, but it’s time to put that aside so you can fight the bad Santas.”
Rounding out the Top Three holiday tv specials, a nice little tongue-in-cheek animated production out of the UK entitled “Father Christmas” (or as I tend to remember it: “Another Bloomin’ Christmas”), which shows the off-season adventures of a somewhat foul-mouthed Father Christmas as he takes a much-needed vacation. Hats off to the Brits for loving Santa enough to be able to show him getting the turkey-trots after eating some bad food in Mexico. I think this one was cooked up by the same studio which did an earlier, quiet little feature called “The Snowman” (my wife’s favourite of the season).
In film, I’ve gotta give an honourable mention to a favourite of my mother’s side of the family: the old black and white version of “A Christmas Carol” starring Alistair Sim. A must watch.
But, that being said, my heart truly lies with the funnier, updated ode to the reform of a die-hard capitalist that came to us in the late ‘80’s: “Scrooged” starring Bill Murray. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen it over the Christmases since it first came out, but I laugh every time. That’s the true test of a comedy.
Also, another honourable mention. This one in a bit of a strange direction… one of my all-time cinematic guilty pleasures: “Walt Disney’s The Black Hole”. Don’t think this is a Christmas movie? In the beginning when the crew of the Palomino comes across the seemingly derilect U.S.S. Cygnus, and the larger cruiser suddenly hits the lights, co-pilot Charlie Pizer remarks “Just like a tree on Christmas morning”. And that’s not just a convenient simile either – the novelization by Alan Dean Foster sets the story on Christmas Day, with the aforementioned Mr. Pizer just sitting down to a reconstituted turkey dinner when he gets the call from the robot Vincent to come to the bridge.
Why would I give “The Black Hole” the time of day when so many, like my brother, hate it with a passion? That’s a discussion for another entry. For now, my wife’s calling me down to Christmas Eve dinner, and of course, food and family are the most important parts of the holiday.
So, whatever you celebrate, be it Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Festivus-for-the-rest-of-us, some other religious festival, or even just a couple of well-earned days off from work, may you have a happy holiday season with good folks around you, plenty to eat and peace in your heart.

A Feast of Dreams

First of all, folks, sorry for the lack of a posting last week, I was busy with a few things. From now on, I’ll try to keep up to date with some sort of weekly ramble here on bloginhood’s SF soapbox.
On to the point…
It’s been an early Christmas for fantasy lovers this year. The latest installments of two of the best (and longest) stories in recent years have hit the shelves. Robert Jordan has presented us with “Knife of Dreams” from his “Wheel of Time” saga. And just weeks later, from his “Song of Ice and Fire” series, George R. R. Martin has served us “A Feast for Crows”.
Interesting timing, since I seem to recall both series had installments published at roughly the same time back in the winter of 2000/2001. This kind of double helping from the book-buying menu is hard on the old bank account (especially since both are hefty hardcovers), but how can you resist? I can’t. Admittedly, I’ve always been a glutton when it comes to good books.
In both cases, fans have been waiting with baited breath for these new additions to the story lines to come out. In fact, the breath of Martin’s fans has been so baited they’re now blue in the face, since the last installment, “A Storm of Swords”, came out in 2000. But we can forgive him the half-decade delay since it’s obvious he’s been crafting his tale with such diligence and attention to quality. Martin himself has been up-front in admitting the story was getting just too long and complex to publish on time and in one volume. Instead of making us wait another year or two for what would be a monster of a couple of thousand pages, he’s decided to split the story in half – wisely, not square down the middle, but rather allocating the individual story lines of some characters to this book, leaving the other characters for the next, thereby allowing him to do them, and the broader story, justice, by flushing them out in another volume expected sometime next year. (Keep your fingers crossed)
In fact, the issuing of both series’ installments so close together almost invites comparison of the two. Especially since being the afore-mentioned book glutton, I gorged myself on both of them back-to-back.
Let’s take a look at the man wielding the One Power first. Jordan gets points right off the top in the fast service department, with three new volumes and a prelude within the past five years, as opposed to Martin’s two. Jordan’s installments are entertaining and always leave you wondering what the protagonists will do or have to put up with next. He’s drawing from a lot of influences including Tolkien, Herbert and the Arthurian legend. Jordan also goes into detail about how his elemental magic works, and more interestingly, how men and women wield it differently, and their impressions of how the other sex uses it.
But his world lacks depth.
Hold your gasps of outrage, here, I know Jordan’s shooting for high fantasy, but in a story line this long and with the amount of effort the author’s put in to detailing the different nations of his world and the occasional phrases from the Old Tongue, there are plenty of issues that haven’t been examined enough or dealt with at all, and streaks of luck for the main characters that are getting a little hard to believe.
In all the battles that have ravaged the lands, be they Trolloc-caused or due to yet another onslaught from the late-returning invaders from over the sea, do any of his young lordlings ever stop after the slaughter to consider the long-term consequences of the chaos on the people they’re fighting to protect? Have they ever looked at the wreckage of a barn or a blasted field and thought “Gee, some of these little folk may starve this winter. That’ll mean lower tax revenues, fewer new recruits for my army, fewer supplies for my army, a likely spread of crime in the cities due to refugees, and the possible spread of disease. Oh, not to mention the human cost of this tragedy. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
Why, if it’s common knowledge that the “Wheel” turns and the ages repeat themselves, do his protagonists never actually pause to reflect on the implications of their constant reincarnations and the world’s repetition? Granted, they’re all strong-willed, driven types, but amidst all the battles, grim pauses before the battles, imprisonments and inconvenient political machinations, wouldn’t you think at least one of them would entertain a second of bleak resolution and think: “Well, even if I blow it, it doesn’t much matter in the grand scheme of things, ‘cause the Wheel of Time always repeats everything, so one way or another the Dark Lord will be overthrown by somebody, if not me in yet another incarnation, so why bother worrying much?” And what if one of these ta’veren actually DID give up, pack up his ball and go home? Why do they seriously worry about the head honcho of evil actually upsetting the pattern when in all the countless repetitions it’s never happened before?
On that note, for the large number of protagonists in Jordan’s tale, they all have quite a knack for surviving. Despite all the close calls, the very nature of this repetitive universe dictates that the good guys will make it through at least to the final battle. Kind of robs the tension from some of those moments. The reader may wonder how the characters will get out of this sticky situation, but it’s unlikely you’re seriously doubting they will get out. After all, who, among the primary cast, has actually died? Thom Merrilin pulled a disappearing act after slugging it out with a Myrddraal but later reappeared. Moiraine apparently went down fighting one of the Forsaken, but there were always indications (now clearer than ever in the most recent volume) that she’d be back too.
And if the protagonists aren’t dying, they’re certainly not changing much emotionally/mentally/as people either. Rand may have become somewhat testy since looney Lews Therrin crawled out of the closet inside his head, and may get even more touchy with the loss of his hand, but ultimately, he’s still the same good country bumpkin who wants to save the world, cuddle his three wives, and has resigned himself to one day going buggo and breaking the world. The other characters as well are all psychologically pretty much the same as when they were first introduced: Mat checks out the chicks but wants his independence and is annoyed with constantly falling into trouble; Perrin’s something of a stoic (except when it comes to his wife), finds his position as a focal point of fate to be a pain in the ass, and is extremely secretive about his doggy-style allies.
In fact, one of the earliest criticisms about Jordan’s character development was his portrayal of women. While many have applauded his accurate portrayal of a female mindset, his women are frequently all of the same mindset. They’re all more or less scheming and somewhat distrustful of the intellectual abilities of the men they’re trying to control. That may be a female mindset, but it’s certainly not the only one. The fact that it creates a certain constant degree of paranoia in his male characters is a stretch too.
And what’s with the spanking fetish in these books? It seems that’s pretty much the only punishment around for characters who have been naughty or merely perceived to be out of line or disrespectful of assumed authority. You’d think they would come up with something else as a civilization.
After so many installments, it’s also becoming apparent that Jordan’s getting a lot repetitive in his descriptions of what it feels like when his magical miscreants touch “the Source”: “he struggled to master the torrent of fire and ice that was saidin” – yep, haven’t heard that one yet. More than 50 or so times that is.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m always eager for the next “Wheel of Time” book to come out. I do enjoy the story for all its flaws. But ultimately, Jordan’s writing is like a nice piece of chocolate cake at The Bread Garden – sweet, available quickly right out of the case, and it goes down easy, but missing it won’t mean that you haven’t experienced the best there is.
Martin’s work, on the other hand, is like a hot chocolate cake at Morton’s – it takes a long time to bake, and it’s deep and rich and memorable with a variety of textures and degrees of flavour, and you really should order it at least once.
What I said before about Martin’s delay being due to his attention to quality wasn’t written idly. Martin has written a fantasy with a hefty dose of realism. There’s a grittiness to his world, where people have to go to the bathroom (and sometimes get shot with a crossbow while going about their business in there), where soldiers desert or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or prey upon the peasantry, where inns are less than sanitary and protagonists sleep on flea-infested straw or cloth-stuffed mattresses, where wealthy teenagers are pawns in their parents’ political games, where people stink and where major characters who we’ve been allowed to ride along with get killed - sometimes abruptly. The term “used universe” that Lucas applied when describing the look of “Star Wars” is even more apt here – Jordan will merely tell you that his character is entering this or that big castle, Martin will tell you how long it’s been there, what it looks like in detail, when and how it was modified, and what sort of sieges it’s endured. Martin describes the intricacies of his nobles’ fashions, like Jordan, with the same eye as a Paris designer, but takes it farther and describes the degree of shabbiness and datedness that couture suffers.
Life is tough for Martin’s people. In Westeros, kings have to count their coppers if they want anything done (especially with bankers from across the sea incessantly demanding payment from regent Queen Cersei), and you believe his protagonists like Brienne of Tarth could starve on the road like any other poor schmuck they encounter. Kings even die: Robb Stark never lost a battle, but ended up losing his head after annoying the Freys.
More important than the harsh realities they face though, is the fact that Martin’s characters change over time because of those experiences and because of introspection. Moreover, these developments are believable. In losing a hand, the once arrogant uber-knight Jaime Lannister suddenly has to start considering people for who they are instead of merely rolling over them, and realizes his supremacy is not a natural fact. Sansa Stark goes from being the spoiled teenager who’s so grotesquely naïve she gets her own father killed to being a young lady of the Vale who’s learning politics at the hands of her adoptive father in order to survive. She even changes her name, something also true of her younger sister, Arya, who’s so determined to get the tools of revenge that she goes so far as to enlist in an assassin’s cult where she will have to give up her identity and recreate herself entirely. This makes all of his characters, even those like Cersei who are too trapped in their self-delusions, exquisitely memorable. Five years may have elapsed since the last book in the series, but it’s easy to get back into the story and remember who was doing what because the characters are so interesting. With Jordan, on the other hand, I find myself frequently during the first few chapters rechecking the index at the back of the book to bring myself up to speed again.
All in all, both Robert Jordan’s “Knife of Dreams” and George R. R. Martin’s “A Feast for Crows” were worth every penny. I think on the balance though, I’m a little more eager for the next trip to Westeros than another spin on “The Wheel of Time”.
In the meantime, since it’ll be a while before either series has a new offering, I’ll be contenting myself with other fare. My recommendation for the coming months: the somewhat late fall issue of “On Spec” – a Canadian quarterly magazine of speculative fiction. While it’s understandably heavy on the Can-con (local slang for “Canadian content” to those of you not from The Great White North), there are submissions from authors from around the globe, and they all have one thing in common: regardless of their country of origin, whether they’re prose or poetry, or where they sit in that great realm of sci-fi, fantasy and everything in between, all are well-crafted and thought-provoking. If you can’t find a copy in your local bookstore, I suggest you check out their website at www.onspec.ca and look into getting yourself a subscription.
At any rate, I think this babble session has become long enough. Next posting: another trip to the movies.