Still Growing

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A couple of years ago I posted about Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors.  Now life is so busy that when Friday rolls around my wife and I find ourselves at odds for deciding on a movie.  She’s not into horror and I’m often not in the mood for human drama after a week at work.  We recently compromised on the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors.  It has been many years since I’ve seen it although I watched it shortly after it came out.  Like Rocky Horror, the music makes the movie.  That and the appearances of Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Jim Belushi, and Christopher Guest.  The original was a comedy horror shot on a very short schedule but this Frank Oz production is a bit more lavish.  And the songs.  I’m a fan of classic rock-n-roll, and the show tunes here seem like a combination of Cats (the original) and Rocky Horror.  There’s an optimism to them.  And who couldn’t use a little hope?

Seeing the movie again brought home a phenomenon that’s been on my mind lately.  What you see first becomes your benchmark.  I only saw the 1960 version a couple years back.  Little Shop of Horrors was, to me, a musical.  It does use some classic horror tropes: thunderstorm at night, shadows of violence on the walls, and the ubiquitous fear of being eaten.  But unlike Roger Corman’s vision, this is primarily a love story about escaping Skid Row.  And, strangely, a feel-good film.  I suppose the lingering question is whether this is a horror movie or not.  Another phenomenon that’s been kicking through my gray matter lately is that “horror” really isn’t the best description for many movies so labeled.

My interest in origins led me to go back to the original a couple of summers ago.  That story developed because Corman had access to a set from a previous movie and wanted to shoot another using it.  The story took many forms before settling on a human-eating plant.  By the way, that still works for horror, as The Ruins shows.  Since his previous movie was a horror comedy, the movie I’m sitting down to watch on a Friday night was born.  Between the original and this one, the story was adapted into a stage play.  The movie version of the stage show was a box office success, and it still appeals to me on a night where we just have trouble deciding on a movie by which to unwind.

Recipe for Childhood

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I once read that over the course of an average lifespan, an American will eat 73,646 pounds of food.  Think about that.  That’s over 36 tons of food.  Apiece.  No wonder recipe books sell so well!  This came to mind recently as I was thumbing through one of my mother’s mementos.  When she died I inherited her recipe box.  In liquidity terms it’s worthless, but inside is a great deal of my childhood.  I still find it poignant to look through her things although she died two-and-a-half years ago.  The memories are thick and tangible.  I only now had the courage to look through the foods she tried, liked, and sometimes didn’t.  (Some have notes, for example, saying what a friend didn’t like.)  We eat every day.  And variety is important for health.  So, recipes.

But not all cards are for things we eat.  The one that really jarred me was the recipe for play dough.  I grew up in a family of humble means, but not destitute.  I know, and still recognize instantly that Play-Doh smell.  It, along with Crayola, encapsulates childhood.  But I remember Mom making play dough for us.  The recipe is very simple: flour, water, salt, and a little oil (yes, it is edible) with food coloring.  I remember trying to mix the coloring in by hand and ending up with stained skin until the dye wore off.  And Play-Doh always makes me think of Silly Putty.  I think as a kid I kind of supposed the two were married.  Similar, but different in significant ways.  Kind of like cats and dogs, in my juvenile mind.

Childhood is strange.  We tend to cast a kind of rosy glow on it, even if it wasn’t very pleasant.  In my case, Mom was my protector.  I grew up without a father present and one of my greatest fears on becoming a father was that I didn’t know how to be one.  My role models were television figures and men I’d met and admired in my own life.  My father was a stranger but Mom made play dough for us at home when we couldn’t afford to buy it at the store.  After my daughter was born, and was old enough for them, the smells of Crayola and Play-Doh took me back to that pleasant version of childhood where things were fine and I had nothing better to do than to play.  Mom would prepare part of the many tons of food I would eventually consume.  And it all came from a simple wooden recipe box.

Leaving Soon

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I’d been hoping to read the novel before seeing the movie, but there’s nothing like the words “leaving soon” on your streaming service to spur you into action.  So I watched Misery before I was ready to.  I remember the newspaper reviews from 1987, when the novel came out.  I didn’t read any Stephen King novels until those I’ve posted about on this blog.  There’s a full record here!  I do remember the reviews saying it was self-referential.  The protagonist, as in The Shining (is Jack Torrence a protagonist?), is a writer.  And the book is a writer’s nightmare.  When the movie came out in 1990, I had no interest in seeing it.  A couple of things changed my mind, however.  First of all, it is referenced all the time.  I didn’t even know how it ended.  Another factor was that it was a Rob Reiner horror movie.  And Reiner himself had been murdered a few weeks before I sat down to watch it.

I really wanted to read the novel first.  My reading pile is pretty high.  And currently the next Stephen King novel on it is The Dead Zone.  And yes, I have already seen the movie.  Unlike some critics, I think King is a substantial writer.  He has profound things to say, especially about religion.  And, of course, the movie Misery has plenty of that.  Annie Wilkes is a religious fanatic.  She’s also a fan of Paul Sheldon (the writer).  God tells her things.  She wears a cross.  She can’t stand swearing.  But even so, I wonder if King clearly had her religion in mind.  I would’ve guessed that, given her cinematic profile, she would’ve not been a wine drinker.  And I would’ve guessed that the Bible would appear in the movie.  She drinks and she doesn’t even quote the Good Book—at least not that I caught.

Some day, if I keep doing this long enough, I might make the connection between religion and horror plain.  I know scholars, not shackled by a 9-2-5 are working on that.  And like the books I have to read, there’s a waiting list for those I want to write.  One has my particular attention at this point, and I’ll be trying to put that to bed before starting on a new one.  Before working on such a book I’ll have to read Misery, the novel.  I do plan to do so.  I’m not a fast reader and I have quite a big stack.  In fact, I wouldn’t even be thinking about reading it now.  But my streaming service came up with those fatal words, “leaving soon.”

Easter Flowers

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Easter is our springtime holiday of hope.  Flowers are starting to bloom and the cold spells, when they come, don’t last too terribly long.  Of course, as a moveable feast Easter can come earlier than this, but here we are, in April with brave flowers making themselves vulnerable.  The weather’s fickle, as is typical of spring, with the lovely warm days often coinciding with when you have to be at work, reserving rain and chill for weekends.  Around here, anyway, it felt like winter lasted quite a long time.  It got cold early and was gray and gloomy for much of the time.  And for around here, we had a lot of snow.  Spring was reluctant to show up.  The timing of Easter was good this year.  The older I get, the more I appreciate the flowers.

As a kid, I appreciated the bright colors, but flowers were too delicate to play with and you could surprise a pollinator with a stinger, which seldom ended well.  As an adult I see that each flower is its own world.  For perennials, a resurrection.  Last year I somewhat clumsily dug up the daffodils that some previous owners had planted where nobody could see, and transplanted them in our attempts at a front garden.  Having already sprouted, they did not like that, and they withered and disappeared.  I hoped I hadn’t killed them.  This spring they showed up, reminding me that life is persistent.  It keeps trying.  That resurrection is possible.

We could spend a lifetime studying a flower and still not comprehend it all.  We see it for what it offers to us without thinking it exists for its own purposes.  All of nature interacts and we are connected, that flower and I.  We share the planet with insects for whom it is a source of life.  And other flowers with which it communicates in ways we can’t even understand.  We have to humble ourselves if we would let them be our teachers.  Our constant narrative of being on top of nature is misguided, you can almost hear them say.  There are riches here that money cannot buy and flowers would exist even without us being here to see them.  Nature carries on.  It urges us to acknowledge that we are part of it.  Easter is a holiday enfolded within hope, inseparable from its flowers.  They may be delicate but they are also wise.  We can learn from them.

Don’t Look

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The title of this movie could stop one word shy.  Of course, I had been warned.  Don’t Look Away is a low-budget horror film.  A low budget in and of itself doesn’t make a movie bad.  Poor writing, poor acting, and poor directing do, however.  Since I’m learning to appreciate bad movies, this was an obvious candidate to watch because it was a freebie. So, a group of college-age friends fall afoul of a supernatural mannequin that kills.  Its origin is never really explained, except a vague reference to “the Devil.”  It is being hauled by long-distance freight so that its handler can bury it, rending it harmless.  But truck-jackers in New Jersey try to rob the truck and release the dummy.  It is seen by Frankie and begins following her, killing many of the people it encounters.  No reason is given—it just does.

Frankie’s boyfriend, Steve, is a rather clueless, and completely insufferable, grad student.  Her more reasonable friends realize that the menace is real, but the police don’t believe in killer mannequins.  After a considerable amount of time they realize that the mannequin can’t disappear if someone is looking at it.  They decide to stare at it until they can figure out how to dispose of it.  They need to prevent other people from seeing it, otherwise they will become its victims as well.  It’s all a rather silly premise.  Finally the handler shows up in New Jersey.  Since he’s blind he can’t see the mannequin but he figures if he kills the surviving friends, the menace will be stopped.  Frankie discovers that it’s almost impossible to hide or defend yourself against a blind man.

As far as the horror element goes, it really isn’t scary.  The face on the mannequin is decidedly creepy, but since no explanation is given of how it kills, there is no focus for any fears.  Yes, looking out your window at night and seeing a mannequin standing on your lawn would be frightening.  There’s so much not to like about this movie.  The pacing, the slipshod story, the soundtrack by one artist who is likely a friend of the director.  I’m glad to have seen it although Don’t Look Away isn’t one of those movies that’s so bad that it’s good.  When I next meet with the friend who recommended it, we can compare notes.  It gives you something to talk about.  If you do decide to look, you have been warned.

The Help

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Helpmeet was recommended to me by a friend.  Since most of my reading these days seems to be in the form of long books, I welcomed a brief one.  And the story, which is gothic and distinctly creepy, unfolded quickly.  I’ll not give away the ending, but the premise is spooky enough.  Edward is a physician who is married to Louise.  This is in the late 1800s.  Louise is aware that Edward has been unfaithful, but she loves him nevertheless.  He is dying.  His request is to end his days in his ancestral home near Buffalo, New York.  Travel is difficult because his body is literally falling apart.  Other doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him.  Some acquaintances suggest a venereal disease, since, well, he hasn’t kept his love in one place.  Louise agrees to the move.  Edward has lost both his eyes and his nose, and some other extremities.

He has to be wrapped carefully for the move, which is by train.  In a private car.  Secrets are revealed.  The mysterious woman with whom he had an affair.  How she was able to reach inside his body.  And how she is coming to visit in their new location.  After all this the plot takes an unexpected twist, which I’ll leave out in case it’s a spoiler.  Atmospheric and melancholy, this is one of those horror stories that is easy to get into and difficult to put down.  Body horror is a sub-genre that can be disturbing since we all have to deal with bodies and their issues.  And bodies are tied to mortality.  We are pretty sure from the beginning that Edward is not long for this world.  His body has begun to decompose with him still in it.  Louise’s care for that body is also a factor that forces us to look at what we’d rather not see.  Out of love, in her case.  And maybe revenge.

Spare stories such as this can still be powerful.  There’s a supernatural element to the twist, but it doesn’t feel like a deus ex machina.  It has been there from the beginning, but the reader couldn’t see it.  Helpmeet also raises the question of how well we really can know another person.  Even couples have to spend much time apart and individual experiences can change a person.  Edward isn’t a sympathetic character here, but he’s not evil.  Louise has to accept him as a man with weaknesses, and one who requires, as the title suggests, a helpmeet.

No Reservations

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Having watched, and liked, Oddity some months ago, I was glad when a friend told me that Caveat was by the same writer/director, Damian McCarthy.  I don’t always pay close attention to director’s names unless I’m writing a book where that’s relevant.  I should pay more attention, since Caveat was also quite good.  And I found it on a streaming service for the price of watching commercials.  The premise is quite creepy.  Isaac is suffering from amnesia.  His landlord offers him good pay to watch his niece for a week.  She has a mental condition, he says, but she’s harmless.  She lives in a remote house and all he has to do is stay with her.  Distressed to learn that the house is the only one on an island, since he can’t swim, nevertheless he takes the job.  But there is a caveat.  He has to be chained in a harness that limits how far he can go.

Olga, the niece, is catatonic when they arrive.  When she starts walking and speaking she’s armed with a crossbow.  She tells Isaac that he was on the island before and that he locked her father in the basement where he shot himself with the crossbow.  His landlord, her uncle, is the one who sent him to do that.  He has no memory of it.  Isaac and Olga distrust each other, each attempting to get the upper hand.  Supernatural events take place while Isaac struggles to remember.  Isaac escapes the harness and locks Olga into it, but she shoots his leg with the crossbow.  There seems to be some indication that  Olga’s mother—killed by her father and uncle and buried behind a wall in the basement—is the source of the supernatural occurrences.  The landlord comes to the island and Olga shoots him and his dead sister-in-law stalks him in the dark.  Isaac manages to escape.

There is a bit of confusion about parts of the film, but it works as a distinctly unsettling horror story.  The toy bunny that Olga, and then Isaac, uses is very creepy.  Mostly it’s the premise that makes this folk horror scary.  Being left on an island with someone of questionable sanity while chained up in a house is already frightening.  The supernatural elements, which are few and brief, add enough fear to tie all of this together as a good example of Euro-horror that has elements of folk horror to it.  I will be adding Damian McCarthy to my list of horror directors to keep an eye on.

First, Kings

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Recently I sat down to read 1 Kings.  Of course, I used to teach Hebrew Bible so I have more than a passing familiarity with it.  This time, though, I was reading it through the lens of Game of Thrones.  I wonder how much George R. R. Martin drew inspiration from the biblical book.  Indeed, a movie could be made from it—sex, conspiracy, battles, deception, it’s all there.  Perhaps someone should novelize it.  If you read it without knowing that it’s holy writ, you might be surprised to learn that it is.  Of course, having been edited by the Deuteronomists (so it’s supposed), it’s a bit preachy, but the action is pretty much the same.  In fact, Game of Thrones has quite a few biblical tropes in it.  And 1 Kings, if excised from the Bible, with its chapter and verse format, is pretty gripping itself.

Another thing that occurred to me is how little politics has changed over the millennia.  Powerful families want to retain power and privilege.  They aren’t too concerned with religious niceties but they rely on the backing of religious authorities.  (The priesthood and monarchy were always a tag team for keeping power in “the proper place.”)  And a number of the characters are quite colorful, even if you wouldn’t want them in the Oval Office.  Outside that context they can be quite loved, or at least people love to hate them.  Immature boy kings, seductive queens, and armed conflict at the slightest provocation are parts of the story across the ages.  The truth of power in powerful families plays out even in democracies.  Consider father and son presidents from the Adams and Bush families, husband and wife (nearly), in the Clintons, and countless powerful families represented in the senate or in the house.

Politics never change. Image: Saul threatening David, by José Leonardo, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Biblical tales are often more earthy than they might be supposed.  Viewed through the lens of faith, we’re willing to excuse behavior that wasn’t even condoned in that day: David’s adultery, (ahem) or literal political assassination (ahem).  Alas, poor Uriah.  The problem arises when these earthy texts are taken for something magical.  People still believe in magic.  Widely so.  This belief drives much of politics in two related nations far apart but bound together by a book.  Reading 1 Kings is a useful spiritual, and practical exercise.  We can learn much about how people behave.  The Good Book isn’t shy about the motivations either.  Sex, power, and fame drove leaders of antiquity even as they continue to do so today.  The Bible tells me so. 

Popping Clowns

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You need a scorecard to keep track of all the killer clowns.  While not the greatest horror movie, Clown in a Cornfield isn’t bad.  As with most of my movie posts, there may be spoilers here.  Before I get into it, I should note that this is a horror comedy, so it doesn’t take itself too seriously.  That’s important to help you get the most out of it.  So, Quinn and her father have moved from Philadelphia to Kettle Springs, Missouri.  Quinn’s mother had died that summer and her father was having trouble coping.  In the new town, however, the adults are generally jerks to the kids, not trusting them.  Even harassing them.  Quinn’s father supposes that she’s acting out when she begins to hang out with a “bad crowd.”  These kids like making prank videos of Frendo the Clown killing people and posting them online.  The problem is, there is really a killer Frendo on the loose.

The movie seems to enjoy indulging in cliches—the Black kid is the first to get killed, clowns as monsters, and kids at a loss when faced with old-timey devices such as a stick-shift car and a rotary phone.  These do make the film fun to watch.  Anyway, one night at a party the kids discover that there isn’t just one Frendo.  There are many.  And they come out of the cornfield in a horde, killing the teens.  Quinn has to watch her new friends being slaughtered, but two of them, a gay couple, manage to survive.  The final girl here (Quinn) is hardly virginal.  And it turns out that the adults in the town are Frendo.  Their kids are a “bad crop” and they’re only to glad to kill them off and start over again.

Some of the social commentary is quite good, and some of it is aimed at the cultural moment in which we find ourselves.  Our species is strange; the longer we live (ideally) the wiser we become.  Yet, for procreation we depend on the boldness and general lack of knowledge among the young.  It creates an interesting dynamic, and one that is explored in horror in many ways.  Having the young turn on the old has been done, as in Children of the Corn.  Hmm, maybe corn is dangerous?  Clown in a Cornfield turns that around.  Of course, an older generation that wipes out a younger dooms itself to extinction.  And that’s to say nothing of the psychopathic lack of feeling for your own family.  Clown in a Cornfield is a strange movie, but it is pretty well done.  And it adds yet another clown to that long list of those to fear.

Little Gems

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On a recent diversion to a curio shop we like, I found that one of the “Dark Shadows” paperbacks they had was one I hadn’t read.  Dark Shadows had, of course, spurred a pretty amazing franchise for its day.  It’d sunk its fangs into many young people who would not have otherwise been inclined towards soap operas.  I’ve written several times about the spin-off books by Marilyn Ross.  That series encompasses much of my childhood.  This particular book was a knock-off with the same branding titled The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires and Werewolves.  Now, to be fair, the asking price was about the same as a trade paperback price today—a little less, even—and the collection included, I saw at a glance, Polidori’s “The Vampyre.”  So now it sits on my shelf next to the other Dark Shadows books.  Apart from the gimmick of listing the book as edited by Barnabas and Quentin Collins, it is actually a nice period piece.

In addition to Polidori, eight stories I’d never read.  Two of them make the claim of being non-fiction, and a third maybe.  The tales, which favor vampires over werewolves, also include what are some little gems.  One is a story by M. R. James (“Count Magnus”).  Other noteworthy members are “Wolves Don’t Cry” by Bruce Elliott and “The Vampire Nemesis” by “Dolly.”  “For the Blood is the Life,” by F. Marion Crawford, is also good.  In other words, the collection was better than I suspected it would be.  I’d not read any of these before, so they were all new to me.  I was particularly intrigued by “Dolly.”  Apparently the author of The Vampire Nemesis and Other Weird Tales of the China Coast has remained anonymous since its 1905 publication.  The book has been rediscovered in modern times, and I’m now curious about it.

Although I like to think myself immune, I am sometimes susceptible to branding.  For whatever reason, that olive-green oval-cutout cover design, when spotted in the wild, makes me ecstatic.  My childhood wasn’t ideal, and I remember when I started to find these books used.  It was a very challenging phase in my younger years.  I knew even then that these cheap paperbacks would take me away from my troubles for a while.  And they would transport me back to an even more troubling period of my childhood when I would watch the show after school with my brothers.  A visit to the curio shop from time to time may be just what the doctor prescribes.

Cool Book Festival

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So yesterday I was at the Lehigh Valley Book Festival.  (It occurs to me know that I should perhaps post such notices in advance, but I know few people in the area where I live.)  I was there displaying my books.  I have participated in the Easton Book Festival for at least four years now, but I had only recently learned about this event held in Bethlehem.  The weather was clear, but cold for an outdoor event that involves a lot of sitting—it put me in mind of having to put on gym shorts and tee-shirts to go outside one November in college to have the coach lecture us about football, with no moving or actual playing involved.  It turned out to be an endurance test.  Not quite of the Shackleton magnitude, but I am sensitive to cold and it was struggling to reach 40, and this on the 28th of March.  At least there was a cool breeze.

Several lovely people stopped to talk and showed some interest in my work.  I’m grateful to all of them.  As an author you often wonder if you really are alone in your interests.  Since my table was next to a run of three tables of children’s books—when those authors decided on an unauthorized move of their tables into the sun (we were on the shaded side of the building), they did not invite me to join them—I was a bit self-conscious.  Parents hurried their kids past my modest display.  I took a quick swing through the other stands and I think mine was the only one for adults.  Many people glanced and frowned as they walked by, but several people got it.  I know there are local horror fans out there, but I have trouble finding them.

The Lehigh Valley Book Festival isn’t huge and several people just happened upon it, asking why we were there.  It was held at the main branch of the library and it is fairly centrally located in town.  Also, there was a cherry blossom festival taking place on the other side of the library.  I couldn’t be certain but it seemed that many more people were headed for that.  And honestly, I’ve lived in this area for going on eight years and I just learned about the festival last fall.  And I’m a book guy.  Not too connected locally, I’ll admit.  There was enough interest that I might consider it again next year (if selected again).  Especially if the temperatures are back towards the seasonal norm.

Red Thread

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Theseus would never have survived the labyrinth without the help of Ariadne.  After escaping the minotaur, the two eloped and, according to some versions of the myth, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the isle of Naxos.  This story has been told and retold countless times, and even served as a source of inspiration for the movie Inception.  Back when I was thrashing about dark academia, trying to make a living as an adjunct professor at Rutgers and Montclair State, I taught classical mythology at the latter.  These were in the days of PowerPoint lectures, and I knew a few things about doing them: slides shouldn’t be overly wordy, and they should have images.  People are visual learners.  During my three semesters at Montclair, I developed my PowerPoints peppered with images found online.  I recently remembered one of Ariadne on Naxos, and I really wanted to find it.

My Oshkosh slides were burned onto CDs, but now tech has moved beyond that and I have no readers for burned CDs.  My hopes of finding the name of the artist in the credits on the slide have not been fulfilled.  I turned to the all-wise internet.  Image search after image search brings up nothing close to that particular picture.  I thought it was a painting, but it might’ve been a pastel or colored pencil drawing (it was from a relatively contemporary artist).  I simply can’t find it.  I remember the subject, and the image, but neither its formal title nor its artist’s name.  The information exists, but on unreadable discs.  On those same discs rest the sermons I preached at Nashotah House.  I sometimes think of them and would like to look at them again, to refresh my memory.  I can’t, however, access them, although they are on discs in the closet just behind my back.

Not the image I was looking for (image: Bacchus and Ariadne. Guido Reni).

We let technology drive our lives.  It comes with costs.  I recently talked to a young person who was buying a nice journal and some writing implements to use in it.  They told me that although they’d grown up with computers, and the internet, they wanted the very human experience of writing by hand.  My default for taking notes is still by hand.  If only I had done that when adjunct teaching…. I remember well how frantic those days were.  I was teaching up to eleven classes in one year (a typical professor has three or four), driving between two campuses.  Eating in my car.  I didn’t really have much of a chance to note individual artworks in a notebook, figuring I’d be pining to remember them many years later.  I could use Ariadne to help me out of this labyrinth.  I know right where she is, but the isle of Naxos is inaccessible.

Together Again

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Body horror can be gruesome, but also thought-provoking.  Together shares a similar them to The Substance, namely, bodies merging.  They differ in the details, and some spoilers may follow.  Before I get there, however, I’ll say that this is yet another example of horror and religion working, one might say, growing, together.  The basic premise is that a pool of water in the woods, located at the bottom of a cave, causes two people (or animals) who drink it, to physically merge.  Tim is an emotionally immature, and troubled man and Millie, his girlfriend, refuses to give up on him.  They buy a house together outside the city, but their relationship continues to struggle.  Out on a hike, they fall into the cave and drink the water.  Soon Tim, who has refrained from intimacy with Millie for a long time, can’t be away from her.

As the movie unfolds, they try to resolve their differences, but if they try separating, they are physically forced together.  Religion comes into this in that a New Age church, which collapsed into the cave, had formerly accepted this new form of marriage.  Those who have gone through with it experience a level of belonging and intimacy that is otherwise unattainable.  One of Millie’s coworkers was a member of that church and encourages her to go through with the union.  Meanwhile, Tim discovers the horrific fate of those who resist.  Despite all these positive reassurances, the two resist it until Tim tries to stop a deep wound of Millie’s from bleeding.  Stuck together once again, they decide to go through with it.

Interestingly enough, the rationale given for the New Age church in the movie is a story taken from Plato’s Symposium.  People, the claim is made, once had doubled bodies.  When these were forced apart, they thereafter cannot be at peace until they find their other body to merge with.  The fictional church even has a painting representing this.  Anyone who’s been in love knows the feeling.  Together exploits the fear associated with it—the loss of self to become someone new.  Literally.  In that way it can almost be a parable of parenting a child, although one of the couples that merges in the movie is a gay couple.  And he, it can be argued, is the most content person in the film.  Movies like Together and The Substance tend to find praise among the critics because they concern issues of embodiment and what it implies.  That in itself is thought provoking.

Bounce Back

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I confess to being a graphomaniac.  I write a lot.  I’ve done this pretty much most of my life, and so I tend to have backlogs, both fiction and nonfiction.  This is necessary background for this bit of friendly publishing advice—avoid bounce-backs.  What I mean by this is if an editor tells you “no,” don’t come back a week or two later with another project.  It speaks of desperation when an author does that (and believe me, I know about desperation!).  Publishing is a slow industry (which is one reason that AI is so dangerous).  Authors who can quickly pull together a new proposal, let alone a manuscript, in only a couple of weeks may as well wave a red flag at an editor.  Give it some time.  Give it some thought.  There are plenty of publishers out there, and targeting one for repeat requests isn’t likely to achieve success.

Photo by Samuel-Elias Nadler on Unsplash

We all know the rebound relationship.  You’ve just been dumped and you need to find someone to fill that hole in your life.  The person selected too quickly is a rebound, or bounce-back.  In my experience, such relationships don’t end well, if they ever get started.  It’s a life lesson we sometimes don’t think to apply to that other passion many experience—the desire to be published.  Many of us have publishers that we want to be associated with.  Mine is W. W. Norton.  My very first publishing job interview was with Norton.  They flew me from Milwaukee to New York City for an interview.  I didn’t get the job, but it was like being let go by the girl (or guy) you just can’t have.  The bounce-back, in my life, was Gorgias Press.  And you can piece the rest of the story together from this blog.

In any case, if you’re inclined to learn from the voice of experience, don’t keep pushing after you’ve been told “no.”  Please understand that I know how this desire feels.  If you want to be published, you need to be professional about it.  And sometimes you need to take a strategic approach to reach a more lofty goal.  I started writing my first attempted novel at about sixteen.  It was never finished.  The first one I completed was in 1988.  I had to take a few years off to write a dissertation, then a second book (during which time I began a novel that I only recently finished).  Please note, that span of time was over twenty years.  Publishing is a slow business, and the bounce-back is a sure way to gain a reputation you don’t want to have.

Actual Intelligence

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Horror movies love a good sequel.  A self-referential genre, there’s a lot of give and take and reassessing.  I may have waited a little too long to watch M3GAN 2.0, however.  I remembered the premise of M3GAN: an AI robot companion built to keep a young girl company misreads its protocol and ends up killing people.  I’d forgotten the details of how this came about, but as I watched the sequel, it started coming back.  It might’ve been best if I’d rewatched M3GAN first, but weekends are only so long and I’ve got a lot to do.  In any case, it isn’t bad.  This is sci-fi horror, but the future it foresees doesn’t seem very far off now.  So, M3GAN was destroyed at the end of the first movie.  Her maker, Gemma, has become kind of a Neo-Luddite, such as yours truly, and is advocating for control of AI by the government.  This need is underscored when a military application of M3GAN goes rogue and starts killing people.

Fighting fire with fire, Gemma decides she needs to bring M3GAN back to stop AMELIA.  After the usual chaos and action, it seems that AMELIA is going to merge with the motherboard of the first AI system built, which is now super-smart, and will then wipe out the human race.  M3GAN, however, has “learned” empathy and is able to stop AMELIA by sacrificing herself.  The film doesn’t have a clear message, although overall it seems to advocate caution regarding artificial intelligence.  On that I agree.  (Of course, we’ll need to get some kind of actual intelligence in the White House before we can consider any of this.)  This does seem less horror and more action than the original, but it goes quickly and is fairly fun to watch.

A few months before seeing this, I’d watched Companion, another AI cautionary horror movie.  A few months before that, Ex Machina.  Companion was a bit better, I think, but the original M3GAN was out of the gate first.  Ex Machina, however, was even a decade earlier.  The films are very different.  Companion is about a sex-bot and M3GAN concerns a, well, companion for a lonely young orphan.  Ex Machina is about an AI woman developed just because she can be.  She, however, can’t be controlled either.  All three films represent the zeitgeist of an underlying, lurking fear that we are really going the wrong direction with all the tech we’ve created.  All feature female robots, and none of them end well for humankind.  At least if the implications are followed through.  It might not be a bad idea to pay attention to the human creative side when thinking about Actual Intelligence.