EPISODE 206: BUMPED

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

(Goodnight, Spice. Goodnight, Giant Sandworms. Goodnight, Mentats. Goodnight, Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV.)

One day in December, completely out of the blue, this thought floated through the background of my mind, like a banner fluttering from a plane so deep in the distance you don’t even know you’ve noticed it until much later: “You have to let them have their chance.”

I don’t know how it is for other writers, but for me there’s a point at which the characters of a story begin to have a life of their own. The first pilot I ever wrote, and still one of the ones I’m most proud of, was a half hour sitcom about a suburban mom diagnosed with cancer. (Because what could be funnier than that.) It’s the script that got me into film school, and also the one that even now some of my friends in the business encourage me to use to get work. And I think it’s because the lead character is so alive. I don’t know where she came from, she doesn’t remind me of anyone I’ve ever know, she just kind of popped out, like Athena, fully formed. I didn’t even get a headache.

(And yes, that’s right, in this analogy I’m Zeus.)

Ever since I wrote that script – and it’s been years now – I see her there on the page pacing, waiting for someone to see her and help her to be free of my desk drawer and uncertainties.

But at least she’s had a couple good solid viewings from people. There are others like her trapped in file folders within file folders in the distant reaches of my hard drive, characters that I just haven’t been able to let out into the world yet. And while of course I can say it’s up to me to decide what to do with them and when, I’m the writer. But somehow it also feels kind of awful person not to let them have their opportunity to step into the light. Like I’ve got them locked up in a cellar somewhere. How did I become that guy? (Come to think of it, how does anyone become that guy? Maybe not enough time with the birds...)

What stops me is not perfectionism. Not entirely, anyway. No, it’s also my own version of the things that go bump in the night, their unseen presence pressing upon me like a parking brake that’s been hidden in some part of the car I can’t find – who the hell designed this thing? Or the cage I find myself in like a Rubik’s Cube. I keep moving the walls around trying to fit the door together but I just haven’t figured it out.

I can tell you what it looks like, this creature that terrorizes me. He’s an ultra fit 20something in a v-neck shirt and an expensive sport coat, taking calls on his cell while he has me in his office trying to explain who I am and what I want to do. To say he hates me would be to suggest I made an impression, which of course I didn’t, none of us do except for the seven and eight figures folk. I’m just another car he wants to drive until then, see how much mileage he can rack up. And it doesn’t matter what I want, not really, I’m going to end up going where he says, until I’m ready for his junk heap. He’s Hollywood, in other words. As driven and as inhuman as they come.

Many places I go I’m afraid I’m going to run into him. I’ve met him in real life more than once, and let him mess with my head.

(A Jesuit I used to know once said to me, “That first cup of coffee with Asmodeus (aka the guy with the tail) is not a big deal. It’s really clear that you know who he is, so he can’t do you any harm. And it turns out, with all that on the table he’s actually very charming.

“No, it’s when you agree to have that second cup of coffee that you’re in trouble. Because he’s just way better at all this than you.”)

He’s definitely monstrous, Hollywood Agent Guy. He burned his humanity out of him with his own ambition. But it’s also sort of like when you’ve had to quit every job you’ve ever had because the people were just terrible – at some point, maybe there isn’t a monster out there at all. Maybe it’s not them, or not entirely. Maybe that creature you keep fighting (or running from) is actually inside you. ++ I don’t know if the adult experience of monsters is at all like what we go through as kids, that experience of knowing, KNOWING that there is something in the closet, there is SOMETHING UNDER THE BED, or IN THE CELLAR. (Is there any culture in which the cellar is actually no big deal? I gotta think there isn’t. Cellars (and unfinished basements) are just the worst.) What is that fear all about for kids? What are they working out? Is it like the next stage in peek-a-boo, where now that you know that when a thing can’t be seen it doesn’t mean it’s not there, you’re having to deal with the fact that, if that’s the case, WHAT ELSE MIGHT BE OUT THERE?

Is it about facing our relative tinyness or helplessness, the nightmarish side effect of a child’s growing self-awareness being that they’re more and more aware of how vulnerable they are?

Or maybe a side effect of our imagination, the yang to the imaginary friend’s yin?

(Do imaginary friends ever turn against the kids imagining them and become monsters of one kind or another? Because that would be kind of cool, wouldn’t it? Also kind of logical in some twisted way – they really are two sides of the same thing, aren’t they? Like Batman and Superman, except in the cool way we all see them in our imaginations, not the I think it's cool to imagine everything dying in a series of explosions caused by superheroes Zack Snyder movie way.

Yeah, I don’t know what it is we’re doing when we’re imagining monsters as kids. As adults, the best I can figure is that the monsters we project are a kind of defense mechanism. They put us on alert, make us tread carefully, back up, stay away – in other words, even though they scare us, in doing so they also keep us safe.

The question is, at what cost? I am definitely safer in my room 24/7. But I’m probably not going to get work that way. Or see friends. Or enjoy “Logan” on the big screen (which is something we all should do, and you might as well agree with me and do it next weekend because I’m going to be talking about it and otherwise it’s going to exhaust you and it would be good for you).

Or sleep. #FunnyNotFunny story: I had never seen “Paranormal Activity” before a couple years ago, when a friend invited me to come with him and his girlfriend to see the sequel. I wanted to know what I was in for so beforehand I took the time to watch the first one. And let me tell you, that !%!%# messed me up, BIG TIME. It turns out, for me the absolute scariest thing is an invisible monster. Every time I closed my eyes that night after seeing those movies back to back, I had this feeling that standing there, right next to my bed, bent over, its head directly across from my own, was the scariest !%!%! monster there had ever been. And that this is not a fear it’s really happening fear continued for days afterwards – and sometimes even now. What fun! Thank you, Blumhouse Films!

(It is a fantastic series of films, actually, if you like to be scared. Very satisfying. Nightmarish and permanently life-scarring, but satisfying.) ++ My friend Juliana Hanford is a children’s book editor. And yes, that is the coolest job ever. I wrote her recently about children’s books and the things that make us scared. And let me just say at the outset, you’re in for a treat.

Do you think kids understand monsters differently than we do as adults?
Yes and no. On a literal level, probably yes. Kids are (usually!) more afraid of literal monsters under the bed, etc. But on a grownup level, when we call someone a monster, I think we're often reacting the same way that kids do to green cackling witches—a monster is something that seems bigger than me and stronger than me and scarier than me, and maybe makes me feel as if I have less power. So we tell stories about monsters—from David and Goliath to Buffy and the Master—not to scare ourselves but to give ourselves that power back. The bigger the monster, the more empowered the hero.

God I love that answer.

When you were a kid, who was the villain/monster that disturbed you the most?
I literally called my mom to ask her if I was remembering wrong, but she agreed that I just wasn't a very scared kid. Funny story, though. I had a VHS tape of the movie Legend (okay, it was probably a Beta tape because I'm that old) which I didn't realize till much later starred Tom Cruise as the forest boy Jack who takes on the evil Lord of Darkness (played amaaaaaazingly by Tim Curry). In the movie, Darkness is terrifying. Huge, red, hoofed, horned—seriously, Google him and enjoy your creepy dreams about his fangs and his goblin minions.

Results of Googling Lord of Darkness: Decidedly Yeesh.

But as a kid, I thought the movie frigging rocked and Darkness didn't particularly scare me. At some point, however, after about my 42nd viewing, my mother decided Legend was just too scary and probably wasn't good for me. I came home from school and my movie was gone. Never to be seen again ... until DVD players and re-releases were invented, boom!

But my point is, as a kid, I didn't find the scary monster scary. It was the adult who decided I must be scared and took the monster away.

I find this especially interesting in light of this assertion by Bruno Awesomesauce Bettelheim, who kindly doesn't mention Disney or other gatekeepers by name in this quote from The Uses of Enchantment:

Those who outlawed traditional folk fairy tales decided that if there were monsters in a story told to children, these must all be friendly—but they missed the monster a child knows best and is most concerned with: the monster he feels or fears himself to be, and which also sometimes persecutes him. By keeping this monster within the child unspoken of, hidden in his unconscious, adults prevent the child from spinning fantasies around it in the image of the fairy tales he knows. Without such fantasies, the child fails to get to know his monster better, nor is he given suggestions as to how he may gain mastery over it. As a result, the child remains helpless with his worst anxieties—much more so than if he had been told fairy tales which give these anxieties form and body and also show ways to overcome these monsters. If our fear of being devoured takes the tangible form of a witch, it can be gotten rid of by burning her in the oven! But these considerations did not occur to those who outlawed fairy tales.

(Emphasis mine because I think that point is extremely important.)

So, you know, as a kid, I think I just wanted to subconsciously let my inner Tim Curry out for a ride. The funny thing is that my mom's suggestion for why I wasn't an easily flustered kid was, "Well, we just read so much"—and she read me the good non-sanitized fairy tales too! So maybe that explains it. My baby imagination took me exactly as far as it needed to and as far as it could handle.

Did you have some version of "monster under the bed/in the closet"? And did you have rules about how to protect yourself?
So, the first time I saw The Shining—and not the Jack Nicholson one but that made-for-TV also-creepy-as-heck miniseries version—the ghost in the shower freaked me out so much that I literally still always have to keep the shower curtain open. Not a lot—just six inches or so. But if it's closed, I get very nervous.

(And I'd love to say I first saw The Shining in kindergarten, but it was totally high school.)

I have something similar. “Jaws” came out when I was a kid and though I didn’t see it, it got me into reading pulp-y “genuinely true story” drugstore paperbacks about shark attacks. And now I am sometimes 300% terrified of swimming, even in a pool. (What? A shark could totally slip through a drain. They’re very flexible.)

This was also the era of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”; I read tons about alien abduction, too. I’m such a mess.

Why do so many kids’ stories have such scary monsters, when children actually believe in monsters and are seriously afraid of them? Do we want our kids to be perpetually afraid forever so that they will never leave us? (Or is that just me?)
We don't want to scare them; we want to prepare them for reality—which is something they're just becoming aware of. The wicked stepmother, for instance, isn't some out-of-the-wild-blue-yonder villain. It's actually just Mom when she's mean. As Bettelheim wrote:

...the typical fairy-tale splitting of the mother into a good (usually dead) mother and an evil stepmother serves the child well. It is not only a means of preserving an internal all-good mother when the real mother is not all-good, but it also permits anger at this bad 'stepmother' without endangering the goodwill of the true mother, who is viewed as a different person. Thus, the fairy tale suggests how the child may manage the contradictory feelings which would otherwise overwhelm him at this stage of his barely beginning ability to integrate contradictory emotions. The fantasy of the wicked stepmother not only preservers the good mother intact, it also prevents having to feel guilty about one's angry thoughts and wishes about her...

In other words, the kid can't reconcile "Mommy who tucks me in" with "Mommy who yells at me for putting lipstick on the dog," so these fairy tales become a way for kids to feel angry and feel afraid of Mommy ... without actually feeling angry or afraid of Mommy. Our stories give children a context and an emotionally safe outlet for big scary feelings like guilt, anger, and fear.

So although that's slightly off the topic of "monsters," it's all to say that the things that scare us in stories serve a very real purpose!

For you, as editor and reader, what makes for a great villain or monster in a children's story? And for you, what makes for the coolest defeats of such a villain (e.g. befriending them; realizing the monster is me; cutting off their head; making them listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber)?
Ooh, I loooove this question.

My favorite villains are the love-to-hate ones. Like Scar in The Lion King. I mean, he's a Hitler-esque murderer who lords over literal goosestepping hyenas ... but they're SINGING goosestepping hyenas!!! Who could resist Jeremy Irons' drawling disdain for his idiotic minions? Or his ability to get caught up in a duet of "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, deedly-dee..."? Scar is great. But again ... there's that pesky murder / attempted child murder thing to remind you that if he doesn't scare the bleep out of you, you should really rethink your survival strategies. (I mean, he killed Mufasa. So.)

Know what other villain death I love? The original Brothers Grimm ending to Snow White where the Evil Queen is forced to put on red-hot shoes and dance until she dies. Ow, right?? (...But also—did you see Kinky Boots? I feel this could be an aspirational tale for all the young Lolas out there. That is a fierce way to go.)

Ha ha ha. I’ve never heard about that original ending to Snow White, but now I wish that could be the ending to the movie and every episode of “Dancing with the Stars”.

But the deaths I think might really be the best are the more ambiguous ones. Take Voldemort, or the Lord of Darkness in Legend. Are they dead, or are they just temporarily pushed back into the shadows? It doesn't make the hero's victory less triumphant. But it's definitely more real. Of course Harry Potter and Legend are stories for "older" young readers. In fairy tales for little kids, the monster generally drops stone-cold dead. The wolf is butchered by the huntsman. But young adults are starting to become capable of realizing that there's no permanent defeat of evil and that constant vigilance is required. The fight is eternal, and all we can do is try to tip the balance toward good a little more every day.

So even if the villain is not dead but only banished (Lucifer being cast out of heaven, anyone?), I don't think it takes away from the story because I think we relate more to the triumph of the protagonist than to the defeat of the antagonist. Bringing this around to politics, I think that's why a lot of the folks out there are trying to focus on positive action right now. Everyone's trying to find that balance between fighting for and fighting against. It's not easy.

Oh, and quickly on your point of "realizing the monster is me"—I love that too. It's exactly what Bettelheim said about monsters. I think it's particularly powerful when you see yourself in the villain. Harry could have done well in Slytherin, right? But in the words of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we really are, far more than our abilities." And I'll just leave it at that. :)

Wowser. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be feasting on those ideas for months. Thank you, Jules!

(And if you’ve got kids or nephews or nieces, check out Kane Press!)

By the way, extra credit for giving Dumbledore’s full name. Anyone else surprised one of his middle names is “Brian”? That’s got to be a reference to some distant elderly bachelor uncle who Albus’ parents were guilted into including. “He’s telling everyone his whole life has made absolutely no difference in the world, that no one will even remember him after he’s gone.” “Mom, we’ve never even met him.” “Oh, think of someone else for a change, Samantha!” ++ One last monster thought for this week: FX has this new show called “Legion” about a guy in a mental institution who seems to also have super powers.

(He might not be totally in control of them.)

I know, another superhero origin story show. I’m as conflicted about it as you are (and I watch pretty much all of them). But I’ve watched the first three episodes, and I have to say, it’s interesting. Rather than being about spandex and saving the world, it’s the story of a person trying to put himself back together, and he’s so incredibly broken that it’s very hard for him to discern what is reality and what is just in his head. Which I don’t know, is kind of all of us, really, no?

In fact – and I think this is why I’m really digging it -- I kind of wonder whether everything we’re seeing might actually be taking place in his head, and everyone on the show is a part of his psyche. There’s the loyal friend, the harsh critic who seems like a friend, the loving mentor. And the terrifying yellow-eyed grinning guy that haunts him. You know, like we all have. (It’s not just me, right?)

I might be wrong about what’s really going on, but either way, it’s turning out to be almost therapeutic. Like having all the competing voices and impulses and fears within externalized and a distance where you can just watch and learn.

(Also, the pilot is free on iTunes! Huzzah!) ++ LINKS ++

I really love the video for the new Katy Perry song “Chained to the Rhythm”. It’s still got that fun cotton candy feel and look of her most recent stuff, but it has some pointy teeth, too. (I want to say so much more, but it would ruin it. Suffice to say, it’s the rare piece of pop culture right now that offers a sort of comment on the present and yet doesn’t lose its joy or yours.)

Wendell Berry is a great American poet, someone who appreciates like few others just how much we need nature and silence and simplicity in our lives, and also how much left to our own devices we forget that.

The actor Nick Offerman and some others have taken one poem of his and set it to images. There’s a lot there. That last minute or so in particular...ahhhh it’s so good.

(One note – for some reason the volume is always off when you start the video. If you go to the right hand corner of the video and click on the volume speaker you can turn it up.)

Also, for absolutely no reason at all, here’s 43 Cool Things about Sweden (check out those yogurt flavors); a great recent speech on Seeing, Judging and Acting in the present from San Diego’s Catholic Bishop (the Acting piece alone is pretty Rock & Roll); just the coolest new vehicle for delivering humanitarian aid; how the head executive of a different country dealt with his own very silly comment (aka DO NOT GET BETWEEN ICELANDERS AND THEIR PINEAPPLE);

... and THIS!!!!!!!

293 DAYS TO EPISODE VIII

Lot of people out there right now who need a friend. So keep your eyes open. You never know how much good you might do, even just by standing silently next to a total stranger. We are all each other has.