life in mokievision

Happy 230th birthday to Jakob Grimm, an influential linguist better known for his tales of fantasy.

Hang on, why does that sound familiar? Oh, right, yesterday's birthday boy.

Attention aspiring fantasy writers: be born in early January.

#1. Room 237
The structure of this documentary about the search for hidden meanings in Kubrick's The Shining seems to intentionally mirror the movie: creepy labyrinthine rambling, and then someone whips out the crazy.

Long before the documentary rolled up on Netflix, I'd seen an article (or three) mentioning some of the more plausible theories, and did some back reading on them. That's why it's so odd that the film does a relatively poor job presenting those theories: the documentary is a long series of rambling interviews with voices we never seen, played over clips from the movie edited together, looped around, rewound and replayed, while the soundtrack jogs along being inexplicably more creepy than it was in the actual film. It could easily have been trimmed not just for a tighter pace, but to better cover the theories. Instead, the detached voices ramble, and the more they ramble, the more obsessive they begin to sound, like the famous director himself.

And then they get to the moon landing conspiracy theory, which sounds like it was added intentionally to make everyone involved sound crazy.

#2. Death Becomes Her
Death Becomes Her took the bones of Hollywood's classic monster movies and turned them into a Hollywood monster movie.

A disgraced surgeon working on corpses to give them the semblance of life? An inmate asylum who funnels their obsession into eating? A slinky and seductive foreigner offering eternal youth? Not one, but two brides? Even zombies get a nod near the end of the film.

The horror isn't shambling creatures rising from the grave in search of blood, but shambling stars emerging from the plastic surgeon in search of youth, part of an industry based entirely on the preservation of appearance, the rejection of reality and fear of the passage of time.

#3. Lilo & Stitch
Lilo & Stitch was the first Disney movie in which we see protagonists who are orphans and the implications of that.

The golden age princesses had their parents conveniently removed in favor of wicked stepmothers and fairy godmothers, and later animal protagonists lost their parents for drama points, but it never mattered: the princesses were content to sing and wait for their prince to come, the animals were too young to care or got a narrative cut-away to hit us with the death but spare us the grieving. (Damn you, Bambi.)

The Disney renaissance passed on stepmothers in favor of single/adoptive parents and wicked fairy godmonsters (hey, worked for Maleficent). Neptune's daughters appear to have no mother, but Ariel gets a little hand from Ursula, while Belle had only crazy old Maurice and a long-gone witch who thought it was appropriate to turn a castle's worth of people into furniture because someone was once rude to her. Jasmine's mother? Pocahontas's mother? Chief Powhatan's first on-screen act was to let us know she was dead. Hercules? Kidnapped, adopted by a nice couple, later reunited with his parents. Simba? Lost his father, adopted by a nice same-sex couple, later reunited with his mother. Tarzan? Orphaned (but too young to grieve), adopted by a nice couple (of apes), later reunited with his species.

Lilo? Orphaned, grieving, arguably acting out because of it.
Nani? Orphaned, grieving, trying to keep their tiny broken family together in spite of it.

Beside the fantastical half of the story, there's this small human story about loss and coping with it. No Prince Charming can come to their rescue, though David offers support; no evil monster is going to rip them apart, though a social worker threatens the family (out of concern rather than malice). The big scifi tale of an isolated special snowflake created in a lab (almost a shot at Disney's family-free princesses) gains its depth by smooshing it into this little human story.

#4. The Addams Family
The original comics, TV show and movies all show the Addamses as part of a community that accepts and even celebrates their weirdness. While the plot may be about the average Joe or Jane stumbling into weird Addams territory, the Addamses and their culture are always accepting and welcoming of these mundanes - more accepting and welcoming than the mundanes are, certainly.

Weird moment of synchronicity! I jotted that down several months ago intending to expand it into a whole ramble at some point. A day or two later, Phred shared a blog post arguing that the Addamses are the most well-adjusted family on television, because: Gomez and Morticia are clearly in love and enjoy spending time together while also giving each other space to pursue their own interests; Wednesday and Pugsley may play dangerous, but "seem to view one another as accomplices, rather than rivals"; it's an extended family, in which relatives and employees are clearly respected and cared for; and they didn't change who they were to please others, or demand that others change for them.

Another blogger expanded up on this with a brief comparison to the '60s other televised 'horror' family, the Munsters, and might have definitively explained why most people are either a Munsters fan or an Addams fan:

"On one level, the Munsters were a campy stereotype immigrant family, while the Addams' were strictly old-money. Two different spins on the American experience. On another level, the Munsters are 'externally validated' and live entirely for the approval of others. The Addams are 'internally validated' and totally comfortable with themselves as long as they live up to their own standards. The Munsters are ashamed of their unique qualities, while the Addams' celebrate and enjoy them. (Only Grandpa Munster is unabashed, and continually has to be reigned in). [...] In my experience, Business people, early risers, team sports players and dog owners all seem to like The Munsters while artists, night owls, individual sports players and cat fanciers see to prefer The Addams Family."

It makes me wish Mockingbird Lane, a very-Addams reboot of The Munsters, had been picked up. Ah well.

#5. Roseanne
In many ways, Roseanne is less about a working-class family than it is about the death of a small town.

The small town of Lanford, Illinois, is almost a character in its own right. Outline the series, and you'll see not just the changeable fortunes of the Conners, but the decline of Lanford: the closing of its primary employer, a loss of quality jobs, a slip in the local economy affecting local businesses, the town quietly fading into a trucker's stop-over point. It's part of why the last season rang so wrong, but for the right reasons (or, at least, right on paper): it wasn't a big fantasy about her husband not dying, but about the main character having the money to save everyone, culminating in saving the town itself by restoring its primary employer, Wellman Plastics. It all centers on one line in the monologue: "When you're a blue-collar woman and your husband dies it takes away your whole sense of security."

Feminism exploded all over my Internets from unexpected sources!

The other day, Cracked offered a lesson in tough love with 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person, and in the process nailed Nice Guys: "Don't say that you're a nice guy -- that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to them 36 times a day. [...D]on't complain about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks because those jerks have other things they can offer."

Today, Gawker points out [the now-defunct site] "Nice Guys" of OKCupid in all their glorious douchebaggery, complete with a handy flowchart.

I'm surprised. I mean, you expect it of Jezebel, which even offered a field guide to Nice Guys recently, but Cracked? That's dude-central!

Edited for clarification: In much the same way that 'killer whale' as a term refers to a specific breed of whale and not just random homicidal cetaceans, 'Nice Guy' is a term for a specific type of guy engaged in a specific type of behavior, which is described in-depth at the sites linked above.

Essentially, a Nice Guy is a manipulative man who befriends a girl but has ulterior motives in doing so. He has a sexual/romantic interest in her but fears he'll be rejected if he asks her out directly, so instead he attempts to weasel into her circle of friends. There he encourages her to rely on him for emotional support, and often tries to sabotage her relationship by badmouthing whoever she's with ("Why are you with him? He's a jerk!"). The Nice Guy does these things under the mistaken belief that the girl will have a magical epiphany about how great he is, and he'll be upgraded to boyfriend/rewarded with sex. Unfortunately for him, girls can't read minds either, so the object of his affection generally thinks of him as a friend—you know, since that's how he's putting himself out there.

Since he's not actually her friend and it's all a sham, he will eventually turn on her for being a bitch who only likes jerks, and then wander off to whine about friend-zones and how girls only go for assholes who treat them like shit by, oh, asking them out directly and interacting with them like people instead of "machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out."

Naturally, Nice Guys don't grasp the difference between themselves and actual nice guys.

A while back, in response to a drawing of Steampunk Sailor Moon, sweetevangeline posed a question: what would a Sailor Moon soap smell like?

Cherry blossoms! No, wait--basmati rice. Maybe cotton candy? But more importantly--swirls. SWIRLS!

Obviously, this required much deep thought.

The final soapy result: violet-scented cold process soap in white with pink and black swirls, topped with clear melt & pour soap in which iridescent pink glitter and tiny star glitter are layered for a holographic effect when the soap is tilted and turned.



It's an experiment at this stage. A few folks (including sweetevangeline) have agreed to test it out when the cure's complete, to see how well the mixed bar holds up under regular use. (I have an immature sliver in the kitchen soap cup being used for that test. So far, so good!) A small bit of color lifted from the pink into the melt & pour on one bar, and fingerprints on glycerin are a nuisance. But so far, the only real problem has been photographing the effect: the illusion of depth comes from the twinkle of glitter at different layers, and there's no capturing that in a regular photograph.



Oh, and the part where I create an intensely girly soap, in pink and glitter and floral scents, only to have my 12-year-old nephew walk in, pick up a bar, admire the side colors and say he really likes this new flame soap.

Next batch will be bonfire-scented...

The opening of the original V miniseries (1983) is a thing of beauty.

A Hispanic man in soldier garb is walking through a scene of chaos, discussing the results of their most recent action. His ranting pegs him as a Salvadoran freedom fighter, and as we pull back, we see his audience, an American cameraman. As the military bursts upon the rebel camp, Mike and his sound tech Evan alternate between dodging for cover and stepping out to get that perfect moment on film.

"You're going to get me killed this time, Donovan!"

"You're going to get another Emmy!" With clear admiration, Mike points out the rebel leader, who has calmly pulled a pistol on an encroaching helicopter. "Look at him! Look at him!"

The two journalists finally reach a vehicle and make a break for it, but are pursued and run off the road by another helicopter. Mike takes cover, camera rolling of course, to draw fire so the injured Evan can reach the trees, but the helicopter abruptly stops firing and pulls away. Mike turns to see the cause: a mammoth aircraft--no, let's be frank, it's a flying saucer--stretches across the sky overhead and grows larger by the moment. After a moment of shock, Mike has the presence of mind to resume filming.

Let's break it down, shall we?

- During the '80s, the reference to the conflict in El Salvador made this topical. War and revolution are timeless, though, so it also serves now, decades later, as a way to establish a time period for those familiar with history, and a foreshadowing tone for those not--and it does the former without seeming dated, like fashion or pop culture references might.

- We learn almost everything we need to know about Mike Donovan, who will go on to be the series' protagonist. Not only does he keep a clear head during danger, he has the guts to take big risks and the skill to make it work--which is a complimentary way of saying cockiness overrides the good sense to come in out of the bullets. He'll put himself on the line for others, and he has an idealistic streak( possible spoiler ).

- The early '80s loved their post-Vietnam para-military action flicks. First Blood had come out the previous year, Red Dawn would come out the year after, filmmakers chucked words like 'lone,' 'cobra,' 'wolf,' 'delta,' and 'force' into a hat for film titles, and nobody yet trusted Arnold Schwarzenegger with real dialogue. The miniseries takes advantage of the audience's genre familiarity by starting with images of guerilla fighters, guns and helicopters to establish a certain expectation for the series. And then it's batted aside almost casually, by an impossibly large flying saucer.

Independence Day owes a huge debt to V in terms of imagery, with giant craft hanging over iconic sites like the White House and the pyramids at Giza, but V goes a step better. We meet our ensemble cast with the news report's audio in the background as they discover the news, but where ID4 interrupted casual everyday activities, V interrupted guerilla activities, biomedical research, an archaeological discovery, a burglar at work, a child being hit by a car--each moment introducing a member of the ensemble cast and telling us something important about them. V's aliens didn't interrupt work or breakfast, they disrupted everything.

It was enough to put me on the edge of my seat in 1983, and it's still effective almost 30 years later.

I put words on toys this month. Words! On toys! And got paid to do it! I CONTROL YOUR CHILD'S MIND! Words on toys!

BEST JOB EVER.

I almost forgot to tell you this, LJ, and that would have been terrible.

In anticipation of a party at a home with cats last weekend, I took some Zyrtec and prepared myself for the consequences--extreme sleepiness, vivid dreams (paroniria!), impaired concentration and unexplained itching (paresthesia) over the 70 hours it takes to work its way out of one's system. Oh, and the possibility of hallucinations. Yes, Zyrtec and I have a weird and complicated history, so I don't take it often, but it's a knock-out antihistamine and it was all I had on hand, and I highly recommend it for parties with cats. Or parties with lasers. Lots of gravity, there was.

But I digress.

I took the Zyrtec, then I fell asleep, because that's what happens first, and why I took it well before party-time.

And then I dreamt, and I dreamt of a movie that was like "Snakes on a Plane," but not. No! It was snakes in a stadium.

With velociraptors.

And not the really-a-Deinonychus/Utahraptor of "Jurassic Park," either, but actual pint-sized velociraptors, lining up in the stands to chase people who ran from the snakes.

And it was awesome.

ETA: as noted in LJ comments, I didn't say the famous line, but "I turned to the dream screenwriter and pointed out we were going to have problems building drama because the raptors moved faster than the people in the tiered stairs, though."