Movies about Movies

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The category of movies so bad that they’re good sometimes spawns the phenomenon of a movie about the bad movie.  The Room, generally on the list of worst movies of all time, was followed by The Disaster Artist.  Not exactly a documentary, it was a movie about the making of the movie.  There’s a macabre fascination with films that dare to be so very bad.  They’re released nevertheless, and if they’re the right kind of bad they grow a following.  Ed Wood’s movies inspired Tim Burton’s movie Ed Wood—dramatized, but apparently not far from the truth.  Troll 2 was followed up by Best Worst Movie, directed by the child star of the original, Michael Stephenson.  Such movies are irresistible in their own right.  So when I finally saw Troll 2 I turned around and immediately watched Best Worst Movie.

A few things stood out in this documentary.  One is that being part of something larger, it’s not always clear what this larger thing will be.  Most of the people in the movie (which was released directly to video) found out about the release by accident.  Many of them never acted again but one thing they all knew: when they did see it, it was clear that it was a bad movie.  The one person in the documentary who doesn’t accept this is Claudio Fragasso, the director.  Fragasso is Italian and he still maintains that this is a great movie and everybody else is wrong about it.  He skulks around the tributes made to the movie and insists to both actors and viewers, that the movie isn’t bad.  They are wrong, he is right.

There’s nothing wrong with pride in achievement, of course.  Sometimes, however, it’s more graceful to admit that you simply got it wrong.  Best Worst Movie follows some of the actors to conferences where they expected huge lines and great attention, only to find a handful of disinterested spectators wondering what all the fuss was about.  At the same time, there are screenings of Troll 2 in major US cities that draw sell-out crowds.  Bad movies don’t appeal to everyone, of course.  They can, however, serve some good and might even add some enjoyment to life.  Best Worst Movie underscores that not all film fans have the same taste.  It also shows that those who enjoy traditionally bad movies aren’t alone.  There’s an aesthetic to being bad enough to be good, and even that can spin off sequels of its own.  And please, Mr. Fragasso, don’t make the sequel you’re touting—this kind of magic only comes once, unless you’re a genius like Ed Wood.

Bad Movie Therapy

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I haven’t see Troll, but it doesn’t matter.  Troll 2 has nothing to do with it.  As a frequent contender for worst movie of all time, Troll 2 is an anti-vegetarian screed and campy horror film that’s impossible to take seriously.  It’s part of my bad movie therapy.  And it’s also an example of religion and horror.  But first, let’s set the scene.  The Waits family (Michael and Diana, and their kids Holly and Joshua) is doing a house exchange for a vacation.  Before they leave, however, Joshua’s dead grandfather appears to him to warn him about the goblins.  The goblins, who are vegetarians, make people eat/drink a special substance that turns them into plants so that they can eat them.  (Yes, it’s that bad.)  Ignoring Joshua’s concerns, the Waitses head for Nilbog (goblin backwards) and go ahead with the house exchange.

The locals (there are only 26 of them) can make themselves appear human and they try in vain to get the visitors to eat.  Joshua prevents his family from eating the plant food by peeing on it.  They go to bed hungry as the queen of the goblins plans her next move to get them floradated.  About midway through the film, we’re shown a church scene in which the minister preaches of the evil of the flesh.  Ironically, this is not far off from the teaching of some Christian denominations.   He tells the trolls what they already know—they have to get the visitors to eat so that they can eat them.  If nothing else, it will make you forget your troubles for ninety minutes, unless your trouble is that you’re being turned into a plant.

Any number of reasons have been offered for why the film is so bad.  While filmed in Utah, the crew was Italian, and most of them spoke no English.  The movie was low budget.  The acting is just plain bad.  All together, however, these features work symbiotically to grow a wonderfully therapeutic end result.  Some of the crew claimed that it was the intention all along to make this a funny film.  Comedy horror or horror comedy is a recognized genre, after all.  The only problem I have now, however, is where to go from here.  So how does the Waits family escape their peril?  I’ll need to offer a bit of a spoiler here.  The goblins are frightened away long enough by a double-decker bologna sandwich that the family can touch the magic stone and destroy the conspiracy.  What are you still doing here? Why aren’t you watching this already?

The Ology

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It’s good to refresh yourself once in a while.  I attended a Calvinist college and my doctoral program was in the context of an institution strongly influenced by Calvinism.  I took courses based on Calvinistic theology.  Jon Balserak’s Calvinism: A Very Short Introduction was really a refresher for me and I have to admit that it sparked a pretty strong reaction.  For one thing, many Calvinists unthinkingly accept the tradition in which they were raised.  (Call it indoctrination, literally.  This is true of most religions.)  Those I know seldom believe what Calvinism teaches, for it presents God as a monster. (This is me, not Balserak, and I mean this in the kindest possible way.)  You see, doctrinally Calvinists have to accept Scripture literally and if you do that you come up with all kinds of contradictions.  (The amount of special pleading is mind-boggling.)  The way the Calvinists landed on this was that God created us for his glory, which will be shown in predestining large numbers of people to Hell.  These people can do nothing to change that since God doesn’t really love them.  What would Jesus say?

I argued quite a lot with professors at Grove City College.  I was raised a Fundamentalist, but of the free will stripe.  The Methodist Church, which I eventually joined, was not Calvinistic in outlook.  (Neither are Lutherans or many others.)  Still, Calvinism has unduly influenced American culture—I wish the book would’ve focused more on this.  We are, culturally, heirs of Calvinism.  This little book points out one obvious way this is so, namely, the separation of church and state.  There are many other features that could be pointed out, but the book aims to be universal and this is therefore not a theme.

The book approaches Calvinism theologically.  There’s quite a lot of “shop talk” here that I imagine might put off those who don’t really care to know who said what about a particular point of doctrine.  Balserak points out that Calvinism is complex and there is no one way of looking at everything, but there are clearly some non-negotiables.  These non-negotiables are precisely what prevented me from ever trying Calvinism on for size.  I’ve moved through various religious outlooks on my journey that is geared toward finding the truth.  Calvinism never tempted me, nor did it ever seem to make sense.  It was as if the tradition accepted that Zwingli and Calvin and company had gotten the basics all correct and every act of theology since then involves a casuistry to prove the early teachings correct.  Why not question things?  Well, I guess they’re predestined not too.

Thinking Power

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Thoughts are powerful.  An idea can change everything.  While materialism tells us that thoughts are only electro-chemical signals in an organic mass of tissue, those who have them know differently.  I don’t know you, kind readers, well enough to share the full truth of the matter, but I am more and more convinced that materialism is woefully overconfident in its ability to explain everything.  As a friend once told me, science accomplishes a lot and it clearly works, but it also sweeps anomalies off the table as statistically insignificant.  So when we read accounts of educated, rational individuals describing the impossible we laugh it off.  We shouldn’t.  Science and spirit working together is a powerful combination.  Getting the mix right is part of the process.

Our thoughts affect the world around us.  This can be as simple as deciding to mow the lawn.  By doing so, based on a thought, you physically altered the environment in some small way.  Isn’t it merely a matter of degree to let the thought do more of the work?  We’re a long way from mowing the lawn by mind power alone, but we’re at the point where belief (and I’m not talking facile follow-the-leader kinds of belief) should be allowed to grow a little bit.  There’s a lot more to the world than we’re often told there is.  What’s happened to our curiosity that we don’t explore it?  I have some theories regarding why we’ve cut ourselves off from potentially world-changing thoughts—thoughts that really could make the world a better place for all.  We’re tied to old paradigms.

We tend to be too busy to put large amounts of time into thinking.  As a society we undervalue that, in any case, until we need a professor in a specific specialization.  Thinking can lead to action.  We still can’t explain, scientifically, how the thought that I should mow the lawn translates to me standing from my chair, grabbing my hat and gloves, and a battery-pack, going to the garage, and hauling out the mower.  We do know that a thought starts a chain of events, but how does that thought move arms, legs, hands, and feet?  “For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, ‘Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.”  Or so the perhaps most influential sage in history once said. 

Hoppy Fourth

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Today is the one of the relatively rare summer holidays.  Modern industrialized nations tend to take a more relaxed view toward summers without having to give out too many prescribed company holidays.  This seems to follow on from school schedules because the kids are out in summer and adults need some flexibility when work demands collide with family needs.  The internet has made work-life balance a little tricker to achieve since work is always just a click away.  Some more generous employers gave yesterday as part of an extended four-day weekend, which is rejuvenating in a way that’s easily forgotten until you start to feel it.  The sense of obligation takes a couple of days to wind down, and then on Monday you realize “I’ve still got another day off!”  It’s a sublime feeling.  Why not watch holiday horror on it?

The Wicker Man is a holiday horror movie.  One of my arguments in the book is that holiday horror has to derive its energy from the holiday, and not just be set on it.  For example, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Return of the Living Dead are both set on or near Independence Day but the movies don’t really draw their horror from the holiday itself.  It falls into the same category.  Frogs?  Well, maybe.  Perhaps holiday horror, it’s definitely in bad movie territory.  A rich southern family is dominated by a Trump-like grandfather who controls the money and measures everyone by loyalty to him personally.  On his birthday, the fourth of July, nature revolts and his adult children and grandchildren (apart from one granddaughter), are killed by animals in this eco-revenge groaner.  But is it holiday horror?

One scene may suggest that perhaps it fits the category, but the real significance of that day is that grandpa won’t let it be celebrated any way other than by his prescribed plan.  Even as the estate is overrun by frogs (mostly), snakes, lizards, alligators,  tarantulas, and even some birds (thank you, Mr. Hitchcock), he insists that everyone do what they always do on the fourth of July/his birthday.  The only scene that suggests holiday horror is where the eponymous frogs hop onto a cake decorated like an American flag.  I normally like nature-revenge films, and this one starts out well but quickly goes downhill.  The environmental message is there, but underplayed.  There are some firecrackers and a number of dead rich folks, but otherwise the film seems to have no message at all.  It’s a bad movie.  Holiday horror?  Not really.  Something to watch for a day off work?  Definitely.

Private Therapy

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A friend recently introduced me to the YouTube channel, Cinema Therapy.  While I had some vague notions already that cinema therapy was “a thing,” I had never looked into it.  This was so, even while consciously knowing that I use movies that way.  Most of what I’ve seen on the YouTube channel has been about Disney/Pixar movies, especially those that tug at emotions.  These have never been my favorite movies since I have unresolved issues from childhood.  Still I learn a lot from watching their analyses.  It can still be difficult to watch these films, though.  As a family we recently rewatched Finding Nemo.  It struck me pretty hard how growing up without a father figure left me the anxious, quivering mess that I often am.  I prefer movies where I can find a father, no matter how odd the choices may be.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

In fact, in my own form of cinema therapy, I use horror films.  (Even the YouTube channel parses M. Night Shyamalan.)  Part of this is clearly because such movies take me back to my childhood.  I’m not sure why I found monsters so comforting, but I did.  We had no father and I latched onto the strong men—particularly if they didn’t smoke or drink—that dominated movies  (it was the sixties, after all).  Somehow I felt that this made the world seem alright.  Or a little less scary.   I didn’t understand the biology of parenthood, I just knew that I needed a man in the family.  One who would protect me and show me how to be a man.  Well, that never really happened.  My step-father was verbally abusive and I seemed to be his special target.  I watched horror and listened to Alice Cooper.

Sublimation, in psychology, is where you put difficult feelings aside, acting as if everything’s normal.  I did that for many, many years.  College, seminary, doctoral program, full-time professorate.  Then it all broke down.  After the tragedy at Nashotah House, I found myself watching horror movies again.  It took about a decade of doing that to realize that I could write books about the connection between religion and horror.  With three published (the third about to be, actually), I have a fourth nearly finished.  The writing is therapeutic as well.  I have to wonder, however, if these Pixar movies that are so painful for me to watch are really helping me.  I don’t always feel refreshed afterwards, as I do when I see a good horror movie.  (Bad films are their own kind of therapy.)  I’m an amateur psychologist (no license), with a most intractable client (myself).  My way of dealing with him is to watch horror and call it therapy.

Good-Bad

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If anybody bothers to follow my movie viewing history, they’ll know that it includes a perhaps disproportionate number of “bad movies.”  In fact, I recently added that as a category for my blog posts.  In need of some reassurance, I read Matthew Strohl’s Why It’s OK To Love Bad Movies.  (As far as I can tell the Why It’s OK series was started by my old boss at Routledge—an inspired idea!)  Strohl is a philosopher, but one who admits to, and even advocates for, loving bad movies.  This book is fun but it does have a serious philosophical underpinning.  I can’t summarize it all here (you need to read the book anyway) but my main takeaways are that ridicule isn’t making the world a better place.  Movies that are so bad that they’re good are definitely a reality.  There’s a community built around it, but I haven’t had many visits from it in my lonely little corner of the internet here.

Strohl points out that not all bad movies are what he terms “good-bad.”  There are certain qualities—aesthetic qualities—that make a bad movie good.  And it doesn’t involve watching the movies to make fun of them.  One of the films that often tops the list is The Room.  When I first saw it I really couldn’t think of anything to write about it on this blog.  It was just another bad movie.  Now I want to see it again.  I do have to say that on my first viewing I didn’t feel like ridiculing.  I was more stunned than that.  And when I watched Plan 9 from Outer Space—another on the list—I felt inspired to learn more about Ed Wood, its famous director.  I’ve since watched a couple more of his movies and I appreciated them.  Now I have a better idea of why.

In addition to discussing the biggies, Strohl also takes forays into some collectives: the Twilight series, for example, and the movies of Nicholas Cage.  These are both often singled out for ridicule, but this book demonstrates that there’s an artistry to such things.  And Bad Movies underscores that not everyone likes the same bad movies.  Strohl also makes the salient point that if we only ever watch great movies we’d have no basis for comparison.  There’s a lot to like in this little book.  One thing it convinced me of (in addition to making me feel a bit better about myself) is that there’s a community out there that I’m missing out on.  Good books bring people together instead of dividing into factions.  This is a good book.

Out of Season

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Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz, has been a fixture since the early eighties.  I was a bit too old for Scholastic at the time, but my daughter had a copy that I read recently.  I heard about the 2019 film before it came out (and I’m having trouble believing it was all the way back before the pandemic).  It’s more of a Halloween movie and since it features young actors it had translated to a “kids’ movie” in my head.  I suppose the PG-13 rating contributed to that.  Sill, it turns out that it’s a proper horror film, but not too scary.  The story is partially by Guillermo del Toro, so I had some idea of what to expect.  I’m glad I watched it, even though the right season is still months away.  Therapy is welcome any time of year.

Anthology films often don’t work well, and this one manages to avoid that by constructing an overarching narrative.  The teens, visiting a haunted house on Halloween night, find a book by a hidden family member who’d hanged herself but who was rumored to tell stories to those who ask.  The book, written in blood, writes new stories featuring each of the kids, telling their bizarre deaths.  Since there are six main kids there are six main subplots and some of them are quite effective.  Scarecrows aren’t like the kind you find in Oz.  And two of the good kids end up missing while this is played off against the Vietnam War (it’s set in 1968).  One of the characters has been drafted and is being shipped off to the war as the film ends.  Since the final girls (there are two) are committed to finding the lost kids, a sequel seems inevitable.

The setting of fictional Mill Valley is a Pennsylvania town, and it’s nice to see my home state getting some attention outside M. Night Shyamalan movies.  I’ve always felt there was more creepy potential here than has been explored.  And autumn is generally beautiful in the commonwealth.  Although I watched the movie out of season (while it was free to do so on Amazon Prime), it has landed on my list of films to watch in October.  It manages to get that feel right and I know that come the autumn I’ll have a hankering for that sensation.  It’s not really that scary, but it manages to be worth an adult’s time and attention.  And it makes me want to read the book again.  And horror can work for therapy, even when it’s starting to get hot outside.

All Connected

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The physical world is interconnected.  It’s not the only world, I’m convinced (there’s simply too much evidence that it’s not), but it’s certainly entangled.  We’re clearly part of a planet-wide system.  More than that, perhaps life is endemic in the universe.  We like to think our planet is exceptional, but what if it’s quite common (as the stats would seem to indicate)?  Sometimes physical objects can influence the spiritual world.  We don’t really know what the spiritual world is, so how the physical and spiritual interact we can’t always say.  My brother, knowing we needed some hope, sent my family some small gifts.  Things like this can cross worlds.  What he sent me was the replica of the famous “alien nickel” reported in the news last June.  (He knows me.)

A coin collector in Michigan was going through a roll of quarters in 2022 looking for any that might contain some silver.  You see, until 1964 US dimes and quarters were still manufactured with a portion of silver.  I very seldom use cash any more, but I always used to glance through my change to see if there was anything unusual before putting it in the coin jar.  In any case, the Michigan man found a buffalo nickel that, instead of the American Indian head on the obverse, it had an alien head.  “Experts” (numismatists, presumably) declared it a “hobo nickel,” as the homeless used to redefine currency to their own liking, apparently.  The interesting thing about this news story is that it disappeared from attention soon after the coin was found although the pictures indicate a high degree of artistry for a homeless person etching with a penknife.  It’s not alien currency, I know, but I do wonder from whence it came.  With hope.

For all the advances our society has made, we still defer to ridicule to explain the unexplained.  This is wrong-headed.  I have my own theory about why it is so, but in part it’s because science as we know it, in its Enlightenment form, was born in a Christian context.  Scientific thinking has been around for as long as humans, but the Enlightenment marked the point when the interconnectedness of the world began to be dropped from discussion.  Why?  Because science grew in cultures based on the biblical view of humans as exceptional.  If biblical events occurred here, on this planet, to us, we must be pretty special indeed.  Even as science has become more materialistic, its cultural matrix remained largely unchanged.   Ironically that matrix now excludes the interconnected world.  Life is pervasive, and who are we to say that stones, or this entire globe, are excluded from the party?  We’re all connected and there is wisdom in rocks and metal, if only we could see it.  If we believe.

Release the Wicker

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One of the many fascinating things about The Wicker Man is that even its release date can cause confusion.  There should be nothing so simple as to look up when a movie first hit theaters, but especially in trans-Atlanic efforts the dates are often different between the UK and the US.  The Wicker Man had a limited UK release on June 21 (quite close to Midsummer, it turns out) of this year.  It’d been released before, of course.  The initial UK release date was December 6, 1973 (twenty days before the US release date of The Exorcist).  Making its way to the US, it was first released on May 15, 1974—not long after May Day.  One of the features of the curious history of the movie is that it lacked support from its own studio.  Not surprisingly, it performed better overseas, particularly in America.

Release dates can be important, and can make a difference in a film’s success.  Again, the quirkiness of The Wicker Man reveals this—although set in late April-early May, it was filmed in November.  Actors had to suck on ice chips to prevent their breath from being visible.  And who’s thinking about May Day when getting ready for Christmas?  All of these factors swirl around in a mythology that the movie has developed.  My book went to the printer yesterday.  It should be out in August-September, hopefully in time to catch the interest of those who’ve gone to see it in theaters again.  I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen it.  I’ve watched all three released versions.  It feels like an old friend.

From the beginning, the plan was to release my book this year, due to the fiftieth anniversary of the movie.  It’s funny how simply surviving half a century can make something interesting to people.  There are plenty of 1973 movies that aren’t getting any particular boost this year.  The thing about The Wicker Man is that it became a cult classic.  Although it was never a mainstream hit, it has sent out its tentacles far and wide.  I notice references to it is unexpected places.  If you’re attuned to this you say to yourself, “that movie really made an impact.”  And it did.  When I first pitched this book idea to the editor of Auteur, I told him I’d do whatever I could to make a 2023 release.  Of course, I started writing it before Nightmares with the Bible came out.  My next book after the Wicker Man doesn’t have an anniversary release in mind.  That’s good, because like a moon-shot it’s nerve-racking to aim for such a narrow target, years in advance.

Sleepy and Hollow

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There’s a kind of charm to Chronicles.  I don’t mean the biblical book, but rather Chronicles of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, a book published in the 1890s by Edgar Mayhew Bacon.  A somewhat poorly organized volume, you get the sense that Bacon had more curiosity than literary ability, but that didn’t prevent him from leaving a valuable record.  What’s more, other accessible books like it tend not to exist or be easily found.  There’s definitely a reason to write so that the average person can read your work.  I didn’t spring for an original edition on this one, as much as I love old books.  Nevertheless, the material’s still old and that’s what counts.  At least to someone with an historian’s point of view.

What really caught my attention here was Bacon himself.  Who was he?  His book was from that era of “you should believe me because I wrote a book about it,” but modern critics want to see credentials.  Although search engines are often good, if you’re looking for information on an obscure author (such as yours truly) they’re going to try to sell you something first.  Books, in the case of those of us who write.  If you scroll down far enough you’ll learn that Bacon was born in the Bahamas in 1855.  He wrote, it seems, five books.  He doesn’t have a Wikipedia page and I looked him up because (in addition to basic curiosity) he at times appears to be a bit of a curmudgeon.  He was only about 42 when this book was published, however, but writes like a long-time resident, slightly jaded.

Bacon was mostly a place writer.  His non-fiction books focus on places he lived or knew.  His educational history isn’t easily discovered, and again, the modern reader wants a degree (preferably three)  to show that one can be a proper historian.  He lived in an age, however, where gumption to write and complete a book likely meant finding a publisher.  The internet has changed that, probably forever (or at least as far as we can see).  It’s a buyer’s market for publishers.  But still, Chronicles of Tarrytown was brought back into print and was made available again, in an affordable paperback.  It contains some second-person history, closer to the events than we currently are, and a few legends as well.  It can’t be relied upon for history as we know it, but it can still offer a bit of charm for those curious about yesteryear.

Feathers and Flight

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Bird identification must be one of the trickiest activities known to humankind.  My office window overlooks a small segment of a porch roof that is popular with birds.  Whether it’s pecking at some invisible specks on the shingles or dipping a sip from the gutters, they stop by often during the day.  Maybe my brain wiring is odd, but since I was a child I wanted to be able to identify correctly any animal I saw.  We had a few of those Zim Golden Nature Guides that I poured over like a second Bible.  I would study page after page, repeatedly, until I could identify just about any critter I came across.  It seemed, in those days, that all birds were sparrows, starlings, or robins.  There was the occasional blue jay or cardinal, but usually it was the more ordinary, less colorful variety.  Birds are symbols of hope.  Their lightness and ability to fly are what human dreams are made of.

I’m not an avid bird watcher, but I do try to identify them.  I see bald eagles occasionally, several times a year usually, and plenty of red-tailed hawks.  Once in a while, however, a smallish bird hops by that resembles nothing in my field guides.  In frustration I turn to Cornell University’s bird identification app, Merlin.  Almost never can they find anything like what I saw.  Maybe it’s because the app asks the wrong questions.  Never do they say “was the tail long, medium, or short?” for example.  Things you’d actually notice.  They do ask where you saw it, and “on the roof” isn’t an option, let alone “on the roof overlooking my porch.”  I saw an interesting bird the other day that was all gray.  Bill and all.  I saw it next to a starling, from which it was clearly distinct.  It wasn’t in my book and it wasn’t on Merlin.  What could it have been?

This isn’t the first time this has happened.  Strangely, bird color isn’t always a reliable indicator of species although this is what the viewer tends to notice first.  To make positive identification takes close observation of details most people don’t immediately catch.  The more common species are seldom an issue, but the less showy kind are often more difficult to identify.  This strikes me as a life lesson.  We may all know who the showiest are, but those more modest of our avian friends likely live lives of greater satisfaction without people constantly chasing after them.  At least I imagine it so, since I can’t find a write-up about them in my identification guides.  But I can still watch them and gain hope.

Employment Opportunities

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It’s important to be reminded that stories can also be told by what’s not said.  Non-narrative fiction can be a little tricky to follow, but often contains admirable aphorisms.  Such as “I believe in the future.  I think you need to imagine a future and then live in it.“  This is from Olga Ravn’s The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century.  One of the many things driving me insane at the moment is where I found out about this book.  I know I ran across a recommendation somewhere and I can’t recall the place.  It would be helpful to know since I wonder what it was about the description that convinced me I had to read it.  In any case, there will likely be spoilers below since it’s difficult to describe the book without them.  I’ll start off by saying it’s classified as science fiction, but it’s not your typical 1950s kind.

The story’s told via a series of employee statements to the company that owns a space freighter.  The ship has a mixed crew of humans and humanoids—androids that aren’t easily distinguished from biological humans.  They discover some mysterious, perhaps organic, objects on a new planet and the humanoids begin to request, or even demand, equal treatment.  The outlooks from the two perspectives, human and non-human, are quite different, but they argue that fair treatment is only, well, fair.  The situation gets out of hand and the company, as such entities often do, decides on the economical solution of killing everyone aboard the ship but preserving the exotic objects.  Though generally described as “comic,” I picked up on the seriousness of the issues of prejudice and inequality.  The quote above is from the very last statement from the ship.

Ravn has established a reputation as a poet and that shows through in this novel.  The quote above is an example.  According to the article about her on Wikipedia, she graduated from the Danish School for Authors.  That made me wonder why we don’t have such things.  This isn’t the same as an MFA program.  Indeed, the nordic countries seem to have abandoned their viking ways for literature.  There’s a deep wisdom in this.  Costs of living are high in such places, but so are happiness levels.  What’s not to like about a school option where budding poets and novelists can become acquainted with one another and imagine a better world?  Writers sometimes give us challenging stories but the reason, I believe, is that we can learn from them, view a better future, and live it.

Meeting Places

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It’s one of those quirky British television plays that’s its own movie.  It was part of the Play for Today series.  I turned to Penda’s Fen after receiving some very distressing news, as a means of self-healing.  (I may seem distracted for some time, please forgive me.)  Sometimes considered folk horror, it really isn’t a horror film although it may be treated as one.  The dialogue is heavily religious, involving a lot of theological discussion of Manichaeism, the “heretical” belief in the struggle between the powers of light and powers of darkness.  It plays out through the maturing of Stephen Franklin, son of the local vicar who is, unbeknownst to himself, adopted.  He also discovers his homosexuality as he begins to rebel against the strictures of his private school education.  Underlying all this is the fact that he lives in Pinvin, in reality Penda’s Fen.

The story deals with the past interrupting into the present as Penda’s pagan kingdom never really fell.   A local writer claims that there is an entire escape city beneath the British landscape to which those deemed “important” to the government are to be evacuated in case of emergency.  In reality, the kingdom beneath, and overlapping, Pinvin is that of Penda.  Penda was an actual Anglo-Saxon king and here he encourages Stephen to know himself—one of the mottos of the school.  That knowing involves coming to question the conservative, Christian belief system he has wholeheartedly embraced.  His adoptive father, the vicar, has broader beliefs, including the reality of other gods.  Stephen discovers this and learns of his adoption, making for some heartfelt religious dialogue.

My reason for watching, apart from the much-needed therapy, was that it had been recommended as a piece of religion and horror.  There are some horror moments, but generally it’s difficult to say whether they’re hallucinations of Stephen or they’re really happening.  One is presented outside his viewing, which suggests that they are meant to be real.  One involves a demon, but not the scary kind of The Exorcist, which had been released just a few months ahead of Penda’s Fen.  In all, it’s a thoughtful movie, the kind you might expect when based on a play.  Given the themes, I’m not sure it was the best therapy, but it did engage the religion and media dialogue.  I hope to come back to it some day under better circumstances.  The dialogue is worth engaging with more depth than I’ve been able to muster here right now and there’s much I still don’t understand.

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I’m not really interested in politics.  Powerful people deciding the fate of the rest of us seems inherently depressing.  We could use a good laugh.  I’ve been curious about Will Rogers for some time now.  He’s a name that everyone in my generation seems to recognize but few people know anything about him, beyond some of his famous quips.  So I read Gary Clayton Anderson’s Will Rogers and His America.  It was an eye-opening experience.  Rogers died in 1935, the year my mother was born.  What a difference less than a century can make!  At the time of his death he was one of the most famous people in the country, personal friend of U.S. Presidents, an international traveler, and widely syndicated newspaper columnist.  He was also a film actor and comedian.  When he traveled internationally world leaders gladly met him.  Not bad for a poor boy from Oklahoma.

Anderson’s book is a good introduction to who Rogers was, but it does tend to focus on the politics.  Arguably that’s where one’s greatest impact in life might reside.  Still, there’s a lot more to an individual than politics.  I’m curious about Rogers’ career as an entertainer.  He started out as a Vaudeville roper—literally, a rope act.  His noted wit, however, made him famous.  At various points he was one of the highest paid entertainers in the country.  His sympathies, like many of us born in humble circumstances, tended to be with the average person who, it seems, is always struggling against an economy that favors the wealthy.  See?  There I’ve done it myself, gone and got political.  It’s difficult to avoid.

Perhaps the most widely read columnist in the country, who influenced political opinions and could rake in the money at just about any form of comedic enterprise, Rogers nevertheless faded from view after his death in a plane crash.  He was part American Indian.  He never completed college.  He was homespun and yet influential around the world.  Fame comes with no guarantees, of course.  I guess it would be helpful to know what Roger’s motivations were.  Was he, like most people, simply trying to secure his future for himself and family?  Was he trying to change the world?  Can anyone manage to do that for very long before things come along and everything’s suddenly different?  (Think AI, for example.)  I’m glad to have met Will Rogers through Anderson’s book.  Even though I’m not really interested in politics, I learned something about them too, along the way.