Horror Comes in All Shapes and Sizes

The Thing (1982), or 12 Angry Men in the Antarctic.

The Plot: Scientists in the Antarctic are confronted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of the people that it kills.

The Tagline: Man is The Warmest Place to Hide.

The film is currently rated #163 on IMDb's Top 250 list.

The best horror films are those that play just as much on our psychological fears as on monsters or blood. The Thing achieves this in many ways. First, its plot unfolds such that isolation and danger create alienation among the characters which then leads to paranoia. You can never be sure who is who. Secondly, it disturbs the audience visually and aurally with grotesque creations that are deformed, ooze slime and bleed mucous, and attack everything in sight, usually with horrible dismemberment.

Some background: The Thing is one of five collaborations so far by director John Carpenter (shown here with his voluminous cranium) and actor Kurt Russell. The other four are Elvis, Escape From New York, Escape From LA, and perhaps the masterpiece of them all, Big Trouble in Little China.

Samurai films have the legendary collaboration of Akira Kurosawa had Toshiro Mifune. Gangster films have Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Horror and Sci-Fi have John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.

Yes, I consider Elvis to be horror.

The Thing is the second film version of John W. Campbell Jr.'s short story "Who Goes There?" It was written in the late 1930s and kicked off the trend of shapeshifting in science fiction.

Campbell Jr.'s story was so popular it influenced four earlier films: The Thing from Another World (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 and 1978), and Alien in 1979. The 1950s films had communist subtexts; commies looked like everyone else, and could hide anywhere and undermine us all. The later films put more science (and horror) into the science fiction. Only the 1951 film was a direct adaptation of "Who Goes There?" until Carpenter's 1982 film. However, the 1951 film did away with the shapeshifting element and instead was more of a Frankenstein type monster. James Arness, later famous as Marshal Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke," was chosen to play the monster, mostly because he was 6' 6" tall. John Carpenter's version takes Campbell Jr.'s material and turns it up to 11. Therefore it is not a remake of the 1951 film but a new(er) adaptation of the same source.

Dan O'Bannon, lead writer of Alien, rather obviously based his own screenplay on The Thing from Another World rather than the original story. Interestingly, Christian Nyby is credited as director of The Thing from Another World and Howard Hawks as producer, but anyone familiar with Hawks will tell you that the dialogue and camera style is very much Hawks. The rumor is that Hawks directed quite a bit of the film but since Nyby did the majority of the technical day-t0-day shooting Nyby got the credit. Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg had a similar relationship on Poltergeist (1982). Spielberg co-wrote and produced Poltergeist for Universal Studios but was directing ET (also 1982) at the time for MGM. Due to contractual issues, Spielberg was not allowed to shoot any other film while ET was in production. Spielberg directed most of Poltergeist (based on interviews with the cast and Spielberg's recognizable style) but Tobe Hooper was given credit to avoid a lawsuit with MGM.

So, what is the significance of the isolation and alienation in The Thing? The cast consists of twelve men, variously scientists, doctors, pilots, cooks, and other laborers, at a US research station in the Antarctic (it was an Air Force base in the Arctic in the 1951 film). Early in the film, the character Windows (evidently a technician of some sort) has trouble reaching anyone else on their radio equipment. They are thousands of miles from civilization in a hostile environment. Geography is an adversary. The exteriors of the film were shot near a glacier in Stewart, British Columbia, a real-life no man's land. The characters' egos and personalities begin to work against them under the strain of the job too, like cabin fever. When the Norwegian research team nearby arrives at their camp trying to kill a sled dog, the US team decides they must have gone nuts from too much time in the snow and cold.

All the characters in the film are male (despite the 1951 film featuring two women). The only "female" is the Chess Wizard computer, which Kurt Russell fries by pouring his J&B Scotch Whisky into the circuits when "she" checkmates him, effectively killing "her." This also reinforces that the characters are not in normal co-ed society. Their only other companions are sled dogs, which quickly become a source of conflict as well.

The music by famed film composer Ennio Morricone repeatedly uses an ominous heartbeat-style rhythm, suggesting not only a foreboding feeling but also a vaguely organic tone. As the story progresses, the characters must confront this bizarre alien force that works by consuming, assimilating, and finally imitating any other life-form it touches. Thus the paranoia sets in. Even among your friends, how could you tell a perfect replica? Especially one that is intelligent enough to build an interplanetary spacecraft. It is even smart enough to fake a heart attack. This is in contrast to the usual invasion story such as Alien, where the characters are able to band together to fight the menace. In this case, the menace could be your friend standing with you face to face and you wouldn't know for sure. The characters have no true friends to trust. The men turn on each other, not knowing friend from foe (or alien), and one legitimate human is killed by a gunshot wound to the head. A film depicting just these aspects, without the science fiction, would be effective enough.

So what is the significance of the ooze, the pus, the disgusting blood, guts, and mangled body parts of The Thing? Julia Kristeva, in her article "The Powers of Horror" explains the psychological aspect (p 65). Throughout civilization, unclean things and unclean people have been ostracized for being polluting forces. It became such a strong aspect of society that it turned into religious law. Filth was "promoted to the ritual level of defilement." Blood and other body fluids had to be excluded from regular society, for hygiene and other reasons. Women who had just given birth or were menstruating were denied access to temples or religious ceremonies in Ancient Greece and Rome. Other films like the Alien series take this to new levels: the xenomorphs are precisely as dangerous as they are, besides the tail and claws and double-mouths, because they bleed acid. As Parker says in the first film, "It has a wonderful defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it." Humankind has a strong aversion to seeing what makes us tick physically.

The creature in The Thing is so bizarre as to be incomprehensible. It not only drips bodily fluids but changes shape, combining dogs with people with god knows what else. John Carpenter disturbs us by showing graphic autopsy scenes of elaborate half-changed organisms. As Roger Ebert put it in his review back in 1982, "There are times when we seem to be sticking our heads right down into the bloody, stinking maw of the unknown, as the Thing transforms itself into creatures with the body parts of dogs, men, lobsters, and spiders, all wrapped up in gooey intestines."

As for the gender issue raised earlier, the alien monster itself has no discernible gender, or discernible anything really. And that's the horror of it: we can't make sense of it. The characters only know that it is eager to assimilate them too and thus must be destroyed. It has a deliberately amorphous, very otherworldly shape. As John Carpenter said in the documentary Terror Takes Shape, "I didn't want to end up with a guy in a suit." He points out that, as brilliant as Alien was, at the end of the film you still see an actor in a big rubber suit. A man's chest spontaneously opening up in a huge pincer to rip another man's arms off, then its head pulling away and growing spider legs to escape, is definitely not the average man in a suit.

My Life in Pink, Blue, Frilly Dresses and Fantasy Scenes

Alain Berliner's 1997 film Ma Vie En Rose tells the story of Ludovic Fabre, a little boy who identifies as a girl. Ludo wears his sister's old dresses, uses makeup and jewelry, plays with dolls, and watches Pam and Ben (Barbie and Ken type characters) on television. He is not homosexual per se, because he dreams of growing up to become a girl, and comes up with a word to describe his present state: he is a "boygirl." Michael R. Schiavi, in his article "A Girlboy's Own Story: Non-Masculine Narrativity in Ma Vie En Rose" describes Ludo as "an aggressively narrative resisting protagonist. Effeminate, cross-dressing, boy-loving, girl-identified, pre-pubescent male."



Ludo is supposed to be seven, but actor Georges Du Fresne was 12 when the movie was shot.






With his bobbed hair and frilly dresses, Georges is distinctly Natalie Portman-esque.








Throughout the film, there are subtle hints in the color of the wardrobe and sets as to how the characters in the scene relate to Ludo. Are they accepting or hostile? What is the significance of the color scheme in Ma Vie En Rose?

Ludo's father Pierre wears a blue shirt at the party at the beginning of the film. He is quite flabbergasted and embarrassed by his son/daughter. Ludo's mother Hanna, on the other hand, is more composed and helps Ludo clean up. She wears a pink dress. A bit later in the film, when the children at school are doing show and tell, Ludo produces Pam and Ben dolls. The children all laugh, but the teacher, wearing a pinkish sweatshirt, is more understanding. On the playground, Jerome and Ludo have an encounter that can be best described as a flirtation. Jerome ignores a girl from the class who asks him to play with her. Jerome is wearing a pinkish jacket at the time. At dinner, after Jerome and Ludo are caught performing a mock wedding ceremony, Ludo's father is again embarrassed, and moreover, furious. Again Pierre is wearing blue. As the film progresses and Hanna's patience wears thin, she wears more blue dresses and sweaters. The list goes on.


As an aside, in Ancient Greek mythology, art, and culture, boys who appeared girlish were considered beautiful. Then again, in most city-states of Ancient Greece, pederasty was considered normal...





Later in Michael Schiavi's article, he quotes Judith Butler, the American post-structuralist philosopher who has written on feminism and so-called queer theory. Butler assert that gender identity can be "reconceived as a personal/cultural history of received meanings subject to a set of imitative practices which refer laterally to other imitations and which, jointly, construct the illusion of a primary and interior gendered self." For all her erudite language, Butler is essentially saying that people imitate what their culture tells them is the normal behavior for their gender, to the point that they too consider it normal and identify themselves as society has instructed. Gender identity comes from without, yet is imitated so ardently that it finally appears, even to the imitator, as coming from within. What is the significance of this in the film? In regards to Ludo in Ma Vie En Rose, I think this can cut both ways.

First, it is true that Ludo is pushed to act like a boy by his parents and fellow children. His parents even take him to see a child psychiatrist. Culture has dictated to its members what being a boy means, and Ludo's family tries to conform to that for fear of being ostracized by their neighbors and coworkers. Ludo idolizes Pam, an external source in the local media, who is the ultra-feminine fantasy figure on television, and he internalizes her world.

However, Ludo also watches his father, his brothers (who play with guns and exclaim that they have killed one another) and the other boys at school, yet does not identify with them. He attempts to emulate them with crude gestures and activities but fails. It is not in his nature. He is not pushed into a box by stereotypical gender roles as Butler would claim. Also, if people are simply imitating what society tells them, who started these concepts? Surely not everyone can imitate each other back to the beginning of time. Butler's theory ignores instinct as well. Who was the originator? The logic breaks down at this point.

Far From Heaven is about the most apt title I can imagine

Jackie Stacey's 1988 essay "Desperately Seeking Difference" is in clear contrast to Laura Mulvey's theories in her 1973 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Stacey uses her essay as a critique of Mulvey's theories of psychoanalysis and voyeurism. I believe the different time periods and films of their time explain these differences in view.

Todd Haynes' 2002 film Far From Heaven tells the story of three main characters: Cathy and Frank the white married couple, and Raymond their black gardener. They live in idyllic Hartford, Connecticut town circa 1957. On the surface, Cathy and Frank have the perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect job, perfect house, and perfect community. Instead, Frank (Dennis Quaid) harbors a secret attraction to men, and Cathy (Julianne Moore) is drawn to her new friend Raymond (Dennis Haysbert, better known as the president on 24). As the title implies, the true existence is far from it. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards: for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Julianne Moore), Best Original Screenplay (Todd Haynes), Best Cinematography (Edward Lachman), and Best Original Score (Elmer Bernstein).

What is the significance of the gaze in Far From Heaven? Frank still possesses the male gaze, although his gaze is now fixated on other men. In fact, the film offers no other content to the male lovers of Frank. They are image only. They have no dialogue or meaningful scenes. They only serve as an device of physical attraction for Frank, which create conflict between characters. During the scenes of Frank's encounters, visually the camera is set at odd angles and the scenes take place in shadows.

Cathy is the protagonist but, in tune with Mulvey's theory, Frank pushes the narrative along. At the same time, the local magazine columnist and photographer snap photos of Cathy at home and abroad, surprising her. This too is a type of gaze, but it is a gaze on the surface image of the person, not the reality. Modern audiences sympathize with Cathy but at first may not relate to her because of her initial robotic, Stepford Wife personality. In other scenes, the white status quo characters gawk at Cathy as she speaks on a coeval basis with Raymond, and black characters stare at Raymond dancing with Cathy. Even in a state without legal segregation, the people do not rub elbows.

Mulvey's essay cites the concept of the buddy movie (p. 384), which dispenses with the problem of erotic contemplation in the characters by having homosexual eroticism of the central male figures carry the story without distraction. In Far From Heaven the "buddies" could be twofold: Cathy and Raymond, or Frank and his lover(s). Either way the homosexual relationships are not under the surface at all. Frank has more than one sexual encounter with men and eventually leaves his wife and children to be with a man and the film does not shy away from showing the encounters. Stacey, writing 15 years later, claims that gender and sexuality should be separated (p. 394). This is a more modern view and is slowly being adapted to the media depictions of people. Notice that Far From Heaven is a mainstream Hollywood film produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, and starring multiple major actors. It was not an underground art film.

The differences between Douglas Sirk in 1955, Mulvey in 1973, Stacey in 1988, and Todd Haynes in 2002, shows a clear progression of social views. Stacey's article references Desperately Seeking Susan, a possible homosexual buddy movie starring two women in which one is asked outright if she is a lesbian. An essay written in 2009 may be different still. On that note, what films about unconventional relationships could Mulvey have considered in 1973? I can cite two off the top of my head, neither of which are particularly controversial today: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967 and Harold and Maude in 1971. The most shocking thing about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner today is not that Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton are an interracial couple, it's that Poitier is 20 years older than his young fiancee. In Harold and Maude the age difference is closer to 60 years.

What is the significance of the role reversals in Far From Heaven? The film seems to be inspired by Douglas Sirk's 1955 film All That Heaven Allows. That movie starred Jane Wyman as an upper-class widow and Rock Hudson as her gardener, two people from opposite sides of the tracks. Hudson is now known to be a closeted gay star and he died of AIDS related illness in 1985. Todd Haynes is an openly gay director, and you can see why he was interested in "remaking" the 1955 film with race and sexuality as the themes rather than class differences. His sensibilities as a gay white man may present a different style than another director with a different background.

Far From Heaven functions as a parody of the stereotypical depiction of the post-WW2 ideal as seen in Leave it to Beaver and the Donna Reed Show. The most realistic, down to earth, and honest character in the film is Raymond. He graduated from college with a degree in business and is raising a daughter alone. He is the only character who not only knows direct hardship but he has faced it head on and is a better person for it. He is less sheltered and more worldly. The white residents of Hartford all seem to live in a little pampered bubble.

Myopia and Naiveté: Dancer in the Dark

Lars von Trier's 2000 film Dancer in the Dark is the story of Selma Jezkova, a Czech immigrant who works in a factory in the state of Washington circa 1964. Selma suffers from severe myopia, to the point that she will soon be totally blind. Selma secretly hoards cash from her job in order to pay for an operation for her son Gene who has the same affliction.

Selma is a perpetually innocent person, loyal to her dying breath, despite others not being loyal to her. She doesn't even testify on her own behalf in court during her own murder trial, lest that break her oath to Bill, the murder victim. She works in a dead end job for little pay, occasionally taking on double shifts to earn more money for her son. She doesn't argue or make a fuss and is always polite, to a fault. This is in contrast to Laura Mulvey's assertion that female protagonists always behave like men. In other words, Selma is pretty naive.

The film is structured as a dark homage to Hollywood musicals. Selma's sunny personality could have been lifted right from a 1940s song and dance film like Ziegfeld Follies or a Busby Berkeley movie. Throughout the film, the drama is interrupted with musical numbers that take place in Selma's imagination. However, von Trier turns the old Hollywood optimism on its head with Dancer's realistic depiction of poverty, hardship and injustice.

Karl Marx's theory of alienation fits into certain aspects of the plot of Dancer in the Dark. Marx believed that capitalism deliberately alienated people from one another, particularly laborers, in order to take advantage of them (Reader in Marxist Philosophy p. 297). Human nature is manipulated to turn peers against each other for the sake of profit.

First, what is the significance of this alienation in the film? First, due to her daydreaming, naiveté and near blindness, Selma is already alienated from much of society. Her employer takes advantage of her (and its other employees) by the hard labor and low pay. Bill, the police officer killed by Selma, represents the government or bourgeois class in society (those with the power). Bill is in a bad spot with his wife and house because he is behind on payments to the bank, which serves as another indictment to capitalism and the status quo. Bill takes advantage of his police position by bullying Selma and taking her money to solve his own problems. She "defeats" this power, but reluctantly and at her own peril. The rest of the law establishment responds by arresting, imprisoning, trying, and convicting her. Her friends from the proletariat want to help her but their own ability is limited. Ultimately she is hanged and justice is not served.

Secondly, what is the significance of Selma's blindness? I think this establishes two things: why she is so innocent and why she is so in love with musicals. She cannot clearly see all the problems and dreariness around her, so she retains a friendly, charming demeanor, perhaps even childish. It also explains why she enjoys her daydreams so much. She may not be able to enjoy standard Hollywood movies, but musicals have so much movement and audio stimulation that she can still get some enjoyment from it. With her eyesight more or less cut off, her mind can take over and take her into her own musical numbers.


Lastly, what is the significance of those musical numbers interspersed among the dramatic scenes? These serve a few purposes. They are levity to break up the heavy, sad scenes of oppression in Selma's life. They also provide a window into Selma's imagination. She has a genuine personality to the audience. The scenes show that Selma is the most human of the characters because of her unwillingness to feel sorry for herself or give up. During her tedious, rough job at the factory she can escape temporarily into a dance routine. During the musical sequences, the film (actually digital video tape) is brighter and more colorful, and not so drab as in the "real life" scenes. Therefore the songs are more real to the audience than the main plot. The film seems to be saying that life may be hard, but your attitude matters too. It isn't quite so hard if you're creative and have something fun to keep you company.

Hitchcock and Sigmund, strange bedfellows

Freud or Fraud? I am dismayed that this section of the class leans so heavily on the theories of Sigmund Freud. His writings, particularly on developmental psychology and sex, are something of a minor embarrassment to modern psychologists and psychiatrists. Psychoanalysis has come a long way since 1910 Vienna. I will give him his due: he was the icon of psychoanalysis and popularized the study of mind and emotion. However, he was evidently not a fan of Occam's Razor. Instead of looking for simple explanations, he delved into convoluted roundabout answers, almost always involving sexual events or abuse.

Rather than spending a good deal of time observing and studying children (even his own - he had six) he preferred to create his ideas alone with his cigar and cocaine addictions. If people's problems are attributable to sexual mis-development, did Freud believe his own children were perfect? Or, if they had psychological issues, were they instead abused, either by him or without his knowledge? You can see the problem with this lack of logic. He reduced the human mind to the drive of a bacterium, perpetually focused on procreation with no possible altruism or higher thought. Today's patients are disgusted at the Oedipus Complex and most women are rightly offended by Penis Envy.


Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, was an early critic of Freud and was often himself a target of derision in those days for not praising Freud as a genius as most others did.

From the New York Times, January 30, 1966:

Mr. Nabokov, would you tell us why it is that you detest Dr. Freud?

Nabokov: I think he's crude, I think he's medieval, and I don't want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me. I don't have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don't see umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons.

From the Wisconsin Studies, 1967:

Interviewer: Speaking of ideology, you have often expressed your hostility to Freud, most noticeably in the forewords to your translated novels. Some readers have wondered which of Freud's works or theories you were most offended by and why. The parodies of Freud in Lolita and Pale Fire suggest a wider familiarity with the good doctor than you have ever publicly granted. Would you comment on this?

Nabokov: Oh, I am not up to discussing again that figure of fun. He is not worthy of more attention than I have granted him in my novels and in Speak, Memory. Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts. I really do not care.

From Strong Opinions, pages 23-24: Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods appears to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.

Of course, this blog is ultimately about Hitchcock, his 1954 film Rear Window, and the concept of the Gaze.

Hitchcock... interesting name. And why is he holding a phallic symbol in his mouth? Does he have an oral fixation? Lack of development at the genital stage? What does the bird represent? A bird resting on the phallic symbol...

Oh sorry, I was channeling Freud for a moment.

Laura Mulvey, in her article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, analyzes the inherent pleasure in looking at people and the human form. If people did not have this fascination, visual artwork would be nothing but landscape paintings and portraits of animals. We would have no Greco-Roman statues or photography or movies. Scopophilia is defined as the pleasure in looking, which differs slightly from voyeurism, which is the pleasure is viewing private or forbidden activity. Mulvey writes that there is also a reverse pleasure, that in being looked at (381).

This significance is the basis of Hitchcock's Rear Window, wherein the main character LB is stuck in a wheelchair after an accident at a racing event. Notably, LB is a photographer, which in itself implies a fascination with looking. LB watches the neighbors in his apartment complex across the courtyard through their windows. In particular, he becomes obsessed with a salesman in the opposite building, who LB believes has killed his wife and shipped her body off in a crate. Later, LB draws his nurse and girlfriend into the intrigue. Hitchcock knew very well that the audience would relate to this story, because all of us have been curious about what goes on in another person's home, or glanced (although probably not stared through binoculars) into a window.

Smartly, the film is shot from mainly one location, LB's apartment looking out, and many of the camera shots are from LB's point of view. We, as a viewer of the cinema screen, are a participant. And indeed, what is cinema, but a chance to openly engage in viewing a private world? The screen is a window crafted for the audience. Freud's concept of the gaze, which has a sexual connotation, is not paramount to Rear Window, because LB is mainly trying to solve a murder. There are some scenes, though, where LB watches Miss Torso the pretty dancer or a married couple. You will notice that, inexplicably, the windows in the apartment complex seem to be open and uncovered at all times. As a plot device, the story takes place in a heat wave, justifying this fabricated opportunity to view others at all hours.

Later in her article, Mulvey cites the concept of woman as image and man as bearer of the look. "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance" (384). Here Mulvey is quoting Budd Boetticher, a noted director of Westerns in the 1940s and 50s.

So what is the significance of the woman-as-object in Hitchcock's work? I don't agree that Rear Window embodies this quote exactly. LB's girlfriend, Lisa, is not a one-dimensional character. She does drive the plot and assist the man, but she is not the reason LB acts the way he does. She chastises him at first for snooping and being so fixated on the theory of murder. LB does have concern for Lisa when she is in danger, but being confined to a wheelchair, he is unable to fight back. In Hitchcock's other films, such as The Birds, women take the central role of strong yet not-masculine figures. Then again, in the case of Rear Window, Hitchcock did cast one the most beautiful starlets of the day, Grace Kelly, later Princess of Monaco. Again, we the audience are able to view their private moments and appreciate aesthetically the image on the screen: the beautiful actress. The woman is not merely an image to drive the male character, but to inspire the viewer as well.

Identity Crisis: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and David B.'s Epileptic

I couldn't narrow down my post to just one comic, since both of them are so realistic, well made, and deeply personal. For those reasons, the two books have a similar ancestry. They are autobiographical tales, in high contrast black and white, that portray the pain and confusion of adolescence. Hopefully I can include enough analysis of both to do them justice.

I think they also share a kinship in their confusion with identity. Purposefully or not, both stories seem to be saying that a person is basically a product of his or her environment and influences. It may be inescapable, as the character Abellio in Epileptic claims.

Both Marji and Pierre-Francois (who later renames himself David), the main characters, are faced with terrible events surrounding them. Marji's problems are on a large scale (political unrest, social uprising, war, government oppression) while Pierre-Francois' are closer to home (turmoil within his family and friends). Both experiences occur during their formative years, and I think this is why the stories are so vivid and powerful in their memories all these years later.

The concept and development of identity is significant in both works. Hayden White's article Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation states that the purpose of narrative is to reflect on culture and humanity itself. Persepolis and Epileptic have very different cultures but the humanity is the same. White also points out that narrative is made up of a person's story, edited down to what they decide to include or exclude. Marjane Satrapi and David B. both cut down their narratives to the essentials of their experience developing as a person around very tough times.

Marji seems to be a bit more malleable than David and his siblings, but both imagine greatness for themselves. Already at age 6, Marji decided, apparently on her own, that she would be a great prophet. However, her ideals and views change from one period of life to the next. At first, she loves the Shah and believes he is appointed by God. Later, Marji strives for greatness by association. She is enthralled with the stories of her ancestors who were persecuted by the old regime. Quickly her love of the Shah disappears. When her uncle Anoosh arrives and relates tales of his communist past, Marji suddenly admires Karl Marx. She even sneaks out to attend demonstrations.

She is very proud of her uncle, not just because of his politics, but because he has suffered. After Anoosh is imprisoned and executed, she rejects God as her friend (a great departure from her earlier childhood) and declares that she is lost and without bearings (p. 70). When the war with Iraq begins, however, she is ready to fight the Arab invaders, and Marji draws herself wearing a military cap (p. 79). In this way, Marjane Satrapi seems to portray herself as always changing and a bit confused as she grows up.

Similar to Marji, at an early age Jean-Christophe (David's older brother) sees greatness in himself, but as an imaginary dictator like Hitler or Stalin. David himself wants to partake in bloody, historical battles and be a conquering hero like Genghis Khan. When the two brothers play with their sister, they treat her as Joan of Arc. War intrigues the two, but they never partake in one. The Beauchard family has a great many soldiers in it, but David and Jean-Christophe are relegated to childish fantasies about it. Marji has to see war up close, and eventually escape it by moving to Austria.

I suppose these are archetypes of adolescent fantasy. After all, nobody daydreams about being ordinary. But it is clear their fantasies, and thus their identities are created by the culture and events surrounding them. In Epileptic, Abellio claims that most people only utilize 1% of their free will (p. 139). Jean-Christophe is the perfect example, because his demonic illness, portrayed as a Meso-American serpent, is controlling him. It is ever present, and cannot be exorcised, despite all the efforts of doctors, faith healers, and other gurus.

That brings me to the alienation of character. What is the significance of alienation in both stories? In both, it can be an empowering device, and one that brings unexpected freedom. Jean-Christophe is first alienated from his friends (the "gang") because they are afraid of his seizures. Marji is alienated from her Iranian society because she wants to be an ordinary, educated, Westernized girl, but the new religious regime forbids such behavior.

Eventually Jean-Christophe goes away to a school for disabled kids and finds freedom from his family, from macrobiotic diets, and from mad scientist doctors. He rejects his family and tries to stuff the demon serpent into his locker. Marji, by contrast, is sent away by her parents to a foreign nation and is sad at the departure. They are both faced with a pivotal time in their lives, where independence is sudden and hard to deal with. However, this alienation means a freedom from oppression, and a freedom to be yourself on your own terms, in a new stage of life.

These two aspects of storytelling (identity as a result of environment and alienation from that environment) may seem to be contradictory, and perhaps it is, but that's life.

I've always said, if there's one thing Star Trek needs, it's more lens flares

And Beastie Boys music.

Interesting Excerpts from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

De vita Caesarum is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Suetonius.

Robert Graves translation.


Tiberius: Once, as a funeral procession was passing, a humorist hailed the corpse and asked him to tell Augustus' ghost that his bequests to the commons had not yet been duly paid. Tiberius ordered the man to be arrested and brought before him. 'I will give you your due at once,' he said, and ordered his execution with 'why not go to my father yourself and tell him the truth about those legacies?'

A few days after he came to Capreae, a fisherman suddenly intruded on his solitude by presenting him with an enormous mullet, which he had lugged up the trackless cliffs at the rear of the island. Tiberius was so scared that he ordered his guards to rub the fisherman's face with the mullet. The scales skinned it raw, and the poor fellow shouted in his agony 'thank Heaven I did not bring Caesar that huge crab I also caught!' Tiberius sent for the crab and had it used in the same way.


Claudius: These honours [consulship, presidency of the Games] did not protect him from frequent insults... When he took his usual after-dinner nap the company would pelt him with olives and date stones. Some jokers exercised their wit by putting slippers on his hands as he lay snoring, and then gave him a sudden blow of a whip or cane to wake him, so that he rubbed his face with them.

A woman once refused to admit she was the mother of a young man produced in court, and a conflict of evidence arose; but the truth came out when Claudius ordered her to marry the man... After a man was found guilty of forgery, the crowd shouted: 'He ought to have his hands cut off!' Claudius immediately sent for an executioner, with block and cleaver, to act on this suggestion.

While still a boy Claudius had started work on a Roman history, encouraged by Livy, and assisted by Sulpicius Flavus. But when he gave his first public reading to a packed audience he found it difficult to finish because he constantly threw cold water upon his own performance. As he started to read, a very fat man came in, sat down, and broke several benches, which excited considerable merriment. Even when silence had been restored Claudius could not help recalling the sight and going off into peals of laughter.


Nero: It might have been possible to excuse his insolent, lustful, extravagant, greedy, or cruel early practices (which were furtive and increased only gradually) by saying that boys will be boys; yet at the same time, this was clearly the true Nero, not merely Nero in his adolescence. As soon as night fell he would snatch a cap or wig and make a round of the taverns, or prowl the streets in search of mischief - and not always innocent mischief either, because one of his games was to attack men on their way home from dinner, stab them if they offered resistance, and then drop their bodies down the sewers.

He would also break into shops and rob them, afterwards opening a market at the Palace with the stolen goods, dividing them up into lots, auctioning them himself, and squandering the proceeds. During these escapades he often risked being blinded or killed - once he was beaten almost to death by a senator whose wife he had molested, which taught him never to go out after dark unless an escort of colonels was following him at a distance unobserved.

He tried to poison [his mother] three times, but she had always taken the antidote in advance; so he rigged up a machine in the ceiling of her bedroom which would dislodge the panels and drop them on her while she slept. However, one of the people involved in the plot gave the secret away. Then he had a collapsible boat designed which would either sink or have its cabin fall in on top of her... On discovering that everything had gone wrong and she had escaped by swimming, when Lucius Agerinus, her freedman, entered joyfully to report that she was safe and sound, Nero, in desperation, ordered one of his men to drop a dagger surreptitiously beside Agerinus, whom he arrested at once on a charge of having been hired to murder the Emperor.

Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: Style Over Substance?

Chris Ware's comic Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth strikes me as a great guide to retro art design. I feel it is an amalgamation or picture gallery of different art styles of the late 19th through mid 20th Centuries.

Ware is an admitted fanatic of ragtime music and the fashions of that era. Ragtime was popular from the mid 1890s to around 1920, when Jazz began to supersede it. Around that time, Art Nouveau (1890-1905), American Modernism (late 19th to mid 20th Centuries), and Art Deco (1920s-1940s) were the dominant styles.

Art Deco could be described as a less ornate Art Nouveau. Whereas Art Nouveau had very Rococo style ostentation and curved lines, Art Deco was more streamlined with straighter lines. Art Deco, at least in print, can be summed up as using heavy lines, warped text, and bold contrasting colors. In architecture, the Chrysler Building in New York City is a good example. Art Deco style remained very popular in Eastern Europe right up until the present day. Many modern movie posters from that region still have obvious art deco influence. There has been an on-and-off resurgence in modern America of Art Deco too. One example is the 1991 superhero movie The Rocketeer. More recently there was the beautiful 2007 videogame BioShock.

The purposes and effects of this style in Jimmy Corrigan are quite simple. First, they are very eye-catching and make the comic unique. It stands out from the crowd. The fake letterheads, advertisements, synopses, and introductions in Jimmy Corrigan are dynamic and antique looking. The old, clunky robots and airships could be right out of an early sci-fi publication.

Second, Ware is updating a retro style with a modern story which includes cursing, nudity, etc. In fact it is a pretty mundane story. Jimmy is lonely, has no friends or girlfriend, talks to his mother on the phone every day, has a dead-end job, and eventually flies to meet the father he's never known. All in all it is pretty straightforward and a bit depressing. However, over the course of the story, Ware interjects surreal memories, flashbacks, and dream (or daydream) sequences. Ware may be saying that, despite the passage of time, people are inherently the same. Relationships between people, particularly children and parents, follow the same path. Jimmy's ancestors in 1893 Chicago have the same issues he has today.

Ware brilliantly adapts his drawing to the era it depicts. The Civil War scenes are drawn very realistically like sepia tone photographs, with detailed trees and explosions. Later, in 1890s Chicago, the art changes to evoke the early "color" photographs that actually were black-and-white prints diligently colored in by hand. On another page, a hospital transforms to Doctor Linn's Pharmacy, back to a smaller St. Mary's hospital, and finally to a Medlife Clinicare. Ware nails each architectural style perfectly. The reader is immediately drawn into that time period without having to be told where or when it is.

In Thomas A. Bredehoft's article "Comics Architecture, Multidimensionality, and Time" (p. 3), Ware mentions his compositional style. At first he compares the eye taking in a page as the ear listens to music, but then also compares it to a building. "Another way is to pull back and consider the composition all at once, as you would the façade of a building. You can look at a comic as you would look at a structure that you could turn around in your mind and see all sides of at once."

The effect of Ware's widely-varied composition seems to imply a musical sensation. Many pages are uneven, with alternating large and small panels. Others switch between tall and short. Still others have panels that don't have a clear flow from one to the next. Oftentimes the characters take an entire page to get out one sentence of dialogue. In those cases, the panels and drawings themselves provide the beat rather than the words. Some panels may have such little differentiation between the pictorial action that they could be frames of film or pages in a flipbook. Ware apparently wants the audience to be as much a viewer as a reader. The art should be used to create mood and tell the story just as much as the plot and characters.


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