In Defense of Something I Didn't Really Like

I'm just going to put this out there:

Picking on 50 Shades is starting to feel like teasing the developmentally disadvantaged kid on the playground.

Look, is it great literature? Oh hell no. Twilight may have actually been better written, and that's saying a lot. (Yes, I've read them. At least enough to get a feel for them, anyway. Didn't finish either, in total honesty.) Then again, considering that was the source for the fanfic that was 50 Shades origin story - like Peter Parker before he got bit - it's also somehow not all that surprising. The plot was problematic in its essential glorification of an emotionally abusive relationship (not that it was original in this *cough*), and there are issues with how it portrays certain aspects of sexuality and even the mechanics of safe sex.

So yeah, it's a bad book, and yeah, it making the splash it did was the equivalent of hitting the lottery in terms of luck and timing.

I'm not saying it didn't deserve a certain amount of sarcastic disassembling, because it did.

But I'm starting to feel that we - and here "we" includes a number of people in the writing community that I talk to - that we're all busy patting ourselves on the back for how much more clever we are for mocking it. We sit around and we point and laugh and congratulate ourselves on understanding just how bad a book it was, as if somehow seeing the fifty car pile-up on the freeway is the equivalent of being a great mechanic. Myself included at times. Worst of all, the discussion often just waits to turn that mockery from the book itself to the people who read it and unironically liked it.

All of which misses one of the most salient points of the whole thing:

No matter how bad a book it was - and, again, it was - people read it. It entered the zeitgeist, and put erotica into that same mainstream sphere. And before anyone gripes that there was erotica before, sure, there was. How much of it got read publicly? Acknowledged publicly? Turned into a freaking movie with a section in Target??

If for nothing else than educating that section of older women - like one of my coworkers - that hey, there is actually more to sex than missionary and hey, there's nothing wrong with that - I think the book can be cut some slack.

Yet it feels like there's a curb stomp waiting to happen for anyone who speaks up and says they enjoyed it.

But people did read it. Droves of people. A lot of them enjoyed it, and not just desperate middle-aged divorcees who had to look up the terms in the dictionary (that would be my coworker). And if it opened their eyes to an entirely new genre (for them), then more power to it.

Where is it written that just because something becomes popular, that opens it up to even more disdain? Which I think is part of that whole "we're so much more clever" motif is coming into it. You're not allowed to like the book in certain circles. There must be something wrong with your judgement. Don't you know there's so many other better books out there?

Forgetting, I think, that a lot of what's popular is, in fact, not particularly sophisticated entertainment in the first place. Big Bang Theory, what few episodes I've managed to watch, seems about as accurate to geek culture as 50 Shades was to the BDSM community. Yet those same people who rail against the latter don't seem to have as much problem with the former. Moreover, popularity for a less well done thing can lead to increased exposure for things in that same vein that are better done.

"You liked that? Well, here, you should like this, and you might get a little more out of it."

Or even, "You liked that? Well, here, this is like a new and improved version of that. You should like it, too."

So I hope the movie does well.

I hope it gets mocked mercilessly, too. I still think the movie is begging for the MST3K treatment, though that speaks more to Hollywood than anything else. (Yes, I'm perfectly capable of holding two contrasting ideas about something.)

Yet I also hope that somewhere between there a conversation gets had about abusive relationships and why they get glorified so long as the guy is broody and "dark" and handsome and a conversation about all the better erotica out there. Because this is one of the things you can do with that piece of "bad" media. You can use it as a bridge to other things. You can talk about issues that sometimes get lost when something isn't labeled as "bad." Gone Girl is in many respects extremely problematic in terms of its own portrayal of abuse in relationships, yet no one really talked about that because everyone was busy oohing and ahhing over the artistic merits of first the book and then the film. Admittedly, 50 Shades doesn't have a whole lot of artistic merit, and maybe that can be a good thing.

Then when all of this is done, when it all blows over and we're on to the the next thing, good or bad, we can actually talk about whatever new issues that thing raises.

Once we're done with the sarcasm, of course.

Have We Learned Nothing From Indiana Jones?

I saw the Jack Reacher movie the other day. Now, before anyone harps all over the diminutive casting choice, I have not read the books. After the movie initially came out, and seeing the furor and the obvious popularity, I did pull one off the library shelf. After reading the dust jacket, I promptly put it back. All of the blurbs read like too much Marty Stu guy fantasy fulfillment, and the movie, while for the most part entertaining, did nothing to disabuse that notion. While I will spend two hours on a movie that does that, the time invested in a book is another matter.

(I used to read things like that back when I was younger; I just grew out of them after a while. Which is not to imply I "grew up" or anything else, just that tastes change as we get older. A trip through the cd's that have been sitting in a box in my closet for years will demonstrate that.)

But I did have one major problem with the film, and something I hope was Hollywood insertion. At the climax of the film, in the midst of the big action scene, Reacher has just gone several rounds of both gunplay and hand to hand with the big bad's burly henchman, and has finally managed to mostly overcome him. A henchman who has spent a good deal of the film attempting to kill - often successfully - numerous people, including the hero and the leading lady. A henchman whom, there is no doubt, our hero will have to shoot.

Now, just to further the Raiders of the Lost Ark comparison here, the leading lady is, at that very moment, in danger. It would behoove our hero to be done with the henchman as absolutely quickly as possible, as decisively as possible, before the bad guy kills the leading lady.

Fortunately, in the ensuing struggle, Reacher has wound up with the gun, whereas the henchman has not. Reacher has him point blank, and all he has to do is shoot.

Which is when he throws the gun away in order to go mano a mano in fisticuffs with the guy.

I'm pretty sure that's the moment I yelled at my tv.

Now, I know there are certain conventions in the movies. Cars blow up, even when someone just bumps the fender. Heroes shake off concussions like they've been okayed to play by the team doctor. Every explosion is a gas explosion with a giant fireball (see the aforementioned car). I accept this, even though I know it's wrong, and it's okay. It's called suspension of disbelief. (Also a Michael Bay film.) Even so, I would think we had put to rest this dumb as a post macho need to go fist to fist with the bad guy when we can just *shoot* the guy and it's expedient to do so.

Even Andrew Dice Clay knew better than this in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Yes, I am citing the Dice Man as a supporting reference here. That's how put to bed this trope should be. It does not prove the hero is a manly man. It does not demonstrate a sense of honor (which, it should be said, Indy has, to a certain extent, as did film Reacher, but they both demonstrated a great deal of flexibility with that, too). All it demonstrates is that they put testosterone (because this is by and large a failing of male heroes. Female heroes seem much more willing to just shoot the bastards, and rightly so) over the need to do what they should be doing in the first place.

Which, I will remind you, was saving the person Reacher had deliberately gone there to rescue in the first place.

So please, Hollywood and writers everywhere, learn from Indiana Jones: just shoot them.

The Problem of Ernest Frankenstein

It's nice to know even the classic authors made mistakes. Not little typographical mistakes, either, but large, "how the heck did that happen" mistakes.

Take, for example, Ernest Frankenstein.

Now, at this point I expect half of you are going "Ernest who?" and protesting that the protagonist's - or, depending on your point of view, antagonist's - name is Victor.

The other half of you are going, "It's Franken-STEEN." (Actually, I hope all of you were doing that, first, then splitting into two factions.)

Now, for those of you who either haven't read it, or haven't read it in a while, a great refresher read on the classic novel has been put out by Gris Grimly (whom you can find here). Grimly gave Shelley's novel the graphic novel treatment, and it is GORGEOUS. If you haven't yet read Frankenstein, and have always wanted to, but argue you don't have the time, this is the version for you. If you have read it, this is still the version for you. So go, read, now, and then come back so we can continue.

[I know I joke about this all the time, but on this one I mean it. Even if you've read Frankenstein before, you've not seen it like this. Go, get it from your library, and read it. Or better yet, buy it. Or even better still, buy it for me, because you missed my birthday and Christmas. I shall wait anxiously by the door for the Amazon drone.]

I picked it up from the library, and before I could finish it, my 9 year old daughter picked it up and finished it first. Took her two days, and she enjoyed it immensely. But then she asked me something.

"What happened to Ernest?"

And, because I had not yet gotten that far, I said, "Who?"

So, in case you did not take my instructions seriously, Ernest is Victor's younger brother. Not THE younger brother, however, because that would be the youngest brother William (looking in Grimly's version like a creepy Pillsbury Doughboy). It is William who plays the role of the Monster's first victim. It is William who gets all the press. It is William whose death sets many horrible things in motion.

Ernest is the other brother. The middle brother. And if ever there were an argument for the middle sibling being overlooked between the eldest and the youngest, Ernest would be the poster child. In the first version of the book, which is the one Grimly adapts, Ernest just... disappears. Something is mentioned about him becoming a farmer in a letter and then... nothing. He's just gone.

Meanwhile, the Monster continues the roaring rampage of revenge through the rest of Victor's family and even friends. No one is left untouched. Heck, no one else in Victor's circle is left alive by the end of the book.*

Except Ernest.

Now, in fairness, Shelley wrote the novel quickly, by hand, and seemed to realize what she had done with regards to poor Ernest after the first version was published. By which I mean instead of relegating him to some farm, she sent him off to join the military.

And then forgot about him. Again.

He doesn't get mentioned again. Not for the wedding, not when the father dies... nothing. Again. I'm presuming that it was easier to simply ignore him for the latter sections of the book than somehow rework him in, but the attempt to explain his absence only highlighted it further. Ernest is the only Frankenstein to survive the book, but even in subsequent editions he's never mentioned again once William the Creepy Doughboy dies. I think it might have been less obvious if Shelley had just continued to ignore him.

In this modern age of computers and searchable files, it's all too easy to sit here and poke fun at Shelley. She could not, with the press of a few keys, discover she had created a character in the beginning of the novel that she then subsequently forgot about. I cannot even begin to imagine writing a novel by hand (though I know some still do), let alone everything it took for a woman to get a book published back then.

Still, I find myself asking why, in subsequent editions, she just didn't take him out completely. He adds nothing to the story, serves no discernible purpose, and other than arguing that he just takes on a life of his own (Frankenstein's Monster-like) once he's in that first edition, there's no rationale for his being there.

And it makes me wonder how many other unaccounted for characters are out there in classic fiction. Did Long John Silver have a brother? (Short Tom Bronze, maybe?) Was Ahab avenged by a cousin we didn't know about? Was there a fifth rabbit besides Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail who is not perpetually at the mercy of Farmer McGregor? Maybe the literary world is littered with the likes of Ernest Frankenstein.

In the end, the only answer I could give my daughter was, "Ernest lives."

And maybe someday, someone will write his story.

*(I am not putting a spoiler warning on a post that talks about a 200 year old story. If you don't know it all ends badly at this point, someone neglected your literary education. Possibly you.)

Muses and Estellas

Most of us know about muses, even if we can't name all nine of the original Greek muses, or what they were muses of. (Did you know there is a muse for astronomy? Or that there were five different muses in charge of the various aspects of poetry?) Modern muses come in different guises. Some constantly inspire, while others may drive us to attempt things we've never done before. Then there's the kind that mostly sits in the background and kicks ideas in our general direction every once in a while in a resigned effort to remind us that yes, we are creative people.

Okay, that last one may just be mine.

Lots have been written on muses - you don't get to hang around for a few thousand years without people consistently talking about you - and I'm sure I've expounded on that subject once or twice  myself. This, however, is not about muses, but about their counterparts, the Estellas.

Before I get too far, while this is a post about metaphorical, literary-minded Estellas, the concept of an Estella can be applied to actual people as well. So if by the end of this you're wondering whether there is an actual, flesh and blood Estella that might have inspired this, well, isn't there always?

(The wanna-be noir writer in me was tempted to write, "There's always a woman," but it occurs to me that sounds somewhat sexist. Even if I can hear Bogie saying it while he puts on his fedora.)

If you don't know what an Estella is, then you aren't familiar with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. In which case, go out and rent the 1998 film with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. Do not read the book. Trust me on this. It is not a great film and I won't pretend it is. Good, yes; great, no. However, the film captures all you need to know about the book - for right now - without having to sit through the novel's wordy prose and somewhat absurd machinations and melodrama.

My feelings on Dickens are also a subject on which I have expounded before. Possibly even preached or heresied, depending on where you stand on Dickens.

(My spellchecker is insisting I can't turn heresy into a verb, but I am refusing to acknowledge this.)

By way of quick summary, Estella is the great love of our hero, Pip - Finn in the movie, because who the heck names their kid Pip in this day and age? - and the two of them meet through the manipulations of a cold, malicious spinster who does her best to encourage Pip to love Estella, and Estella to scorn Pip. There are other plot elements, including an escaped criminal and a mysterious fortune, but that's about the gist of it.

I like the movie version in part because it makes Estella's influence on Pip/Finn much more explicit than it is in the book. Pip/Finn is clearly smitten with Estella, and just as clearly knows it's a bad idea. He's an artist, and while she isn't directly his muse in the conventional sense, despite the "draw me like one of your French girls" Titanic-esque scene, I think it's safe to say she inspires him, both directly and indirectly, throughout the film.

Yet she is bad news, and he knows it. And still he chases her anyway. She floats into his life at various moments, wraps him up, discombobulates him, and sends him spinning before cruelly stepping out of reach. Multiple times. Each time she comes to him, he falls back into his enthrallment with her, knowing how it's going to end, and willingly playing it out anyway because he can't help himself. He is, after all, entirely in love with her.

Some ideas are like this. They come to us, we fall for them, we think we're onto something that could be really spectacular. Briefly, it is. There are sparks, there are longing glances and stolen caresses and for a moment, just a moment, we let ourselves ignore the obstacles. Muses do this, too, of course, but where the promise of the muse is ultimately fulfillment of the idea, the promise of the Estella is familiar heartbreak when, once again, it doesn't go anywhere.

And like Estella, these ideas are ones we just can't shake, just can't put down or relegate to that dusty bin where unworkable ideas go to fade away. They come back to us, we dance with them again, knowing deep inside it's not going to work any better this time, and ignoring that inner voice of caution because the idea itself has enough power over us to make us willfully forget. Part of us wants to dance again, after all, wants to cling to the hope that maybe, just maybe, this time it's going to work out, that we're going to figure out that missing element that will let it all come together.

So we go around the floor again, even though we ought to send it packing.

There are two endings to the original novel. The first, the original, was bleak and bitter because hey, it's Dickens, and especially it's late Dickens. He was asked to do a second, slightly more hopeful ending, which no surprise is the one I like much better. The movie uses the second one.

I like that ending better in part because it ends the story in the ruins of that old spinster's estate, and that seems far more poetic to me. I also like it better because, while not precisely hopeful (the movie is a bit vaguer on this than the book), there is the sense that the potential for a better ending is there this time. That this time, with Pip/Finn a little more worldly, a little wiser, and Estella a little less harsh around the edges, they might find a way to make it work.

Or they might not, because it is, after all, Estella.