Unfortunately, the twenty-first century has seen the demise of many worthy things: cultural literacy, equal access to health care, real movie stars (like Katharine Hepburn and Liz Taylor), and, most gut-wrenching of all, good manners. I say, dear reader, that the demise of social propriety is most gut-wrenching of all because it represents—with even more chilling accuracy than Ke$ha’s record sales, global warming, and the existence of Rush Limbaugh—the corruption, and subsequent deterioration, of society as we know it.
Too dramatic? Perhaps. But I maintain that proper etiquette is more than just behaving one’s self in public; it symbolizes an awareness for the necessity of maintaining a widely-accepted doctrine of human interaction. I say “necessity” because this set of social norms is a prerequisite for the very definition of humanity. Lions snatch up the prey that their cheetah neighbors have caught without so much as a “thank you”. Male leopards mate with their female counterparts without any sort of proper introductions or courtship. Manners don’t exist in the wild. And if we continue to allow our manners to fall by the wayside, well, the biggest, strongest members of our species may rise up to bully the rest of us, and all our intellectual advancements will be rendered powerless against a Darwinian uprising of nature, red in tooth and claw.
Still too dramatic? If you will, dear friends, attend The Tale of the Christmas Ham. I ventured into the grocery store today to purchase a ham for Christmas dinner, among a few other items. Naturally, the grocery store was filled to the brim with people preparing for their own Christmas dinners, and tensions were running high. I elected to use the self-checkout (as a side note, I believe this self-checkout concept is both a blessing and a curse, since it allows us to avoid rude cashiers, but represents a problematic devaluing of human interaction). Upon ringing up my ham, I decided that $42.75 was far too much to pay for a hunk of meat that would summarily be devoured and excreted into oblivion, and that I could find a better deal elsewhere. In the extra minute-and-a-half it took to void the purchase of the ham, I neglected to instantaneously remove my basket from the scanner, an offense that the gentleman who was waiting for my self-checkout kiosk deemed to be a truly damnable offense. When I did remove the basket to make way for our impatient friend in line behind me, he snarled “Thanks”. Surprised by his apparent agitation, I said, politely, “Sorry about that, sir”, wondering whether the ham delay had taken longer than I thought, to which he replied, passive-aggressively, “That’s all right”, and proceeded to scan his own items with not-so-subtle vitriol.
Conditioned as I am to such low-level impropriety from perfect strangers, I would not have even registered this incident had it not been for the previous day’s tale, the Tale of the Mall Parking Lot Duel. Against my better judgment, I sought parking in our suburban town’s mall parking lot yesterday (a mere three days before Christmas, mind you). After ten nail-biting minutes of circulating the parking lot, praying that the aggressive drivers around me wouldn’t T-bone my car just to take me out of the running, I finally located an SUV (large, fuel-inefficient SUV’s are standard fare in my town) in the process of vacating a space. I instantly flashed my turn signal, excited to finally end my dangerous quest. I spotted a Mercedes convertible hovering nearby, and wondered if the driver was planning to duel me for the parking spot. Since I deemed a parking spot to be a ridiculous thing to duel over (a parking spot not being, say, a family member’s honor or a plot of land), I prepared to politely yield the spot to the other person in case she was truly intent on taking it. Sure enough, once the SUV had moved on to bigger and better things, the Mercedes convertible began to viciously seize the spot, like a lioness pouncing on a wildebeest that the hyenas around her possibly had their eyes on. Having been mentally prepared for this turn of events, and consequently not invested in claiming that particular spot for my own, I remained expressionless, impassively watching and thinking about where I ought to continue my search. To my surprise, the driver of the Mercedes pulled back out of the spot, gnashing her teeth and probably cursing, drove up to my car, and rolled down her window. Curious as to what could possibly have inspired her to initiate conversation with me, I rolled down my own window and raised my eyebrows. The lady snapped, “I was following that person and waiting for her spot. I’ll just take this one that opened up down there.” And with that, she sped off in a huff before I even had the chance to say, courteously, “Well, ma’am, in that case, please, be my guest. I was unaware of your admirably diligent efforts to secure this parking space. I hope it serves you well.” Instead, I forlornly took the lust-worthy parking spot, the source of so much conflict, and wondered why people in the suburbs are so passive-aggressively rude.
Indeed, I almost prefer the outright rudeness of the city, where holding doors for others is almost unheard-of and cashiers won’t make eye contact with you even once while ringing up your groceries. At least you know where you stand with these city folk: they don’t give a damn about you, and, the sooner you’re out of their faces, the happier they are. Suburban rudeness is sneakier and more confrontational, in that people seem to go out of their way to make complete strangers uncomfortable, when the proper thing to do is to simply ignore those minor, inevitable, annoying things that may occur when people are forced to interact in public places.
I believe that it is truly too late to rectify the rudeness that is endemic to our society. Manners must be ingrained in children by their parents, and it’s obvious to me, by the way children behave nowadays in public, that manners are not on most parents’ minds. Twenty-first century people, whether they be in the wild urban jungles or in the supposedly more tame suburban oases, are returning to their primitive ways. For all our gadgets and our politics, we are not so far removed from our ancestors, those creatures who roamed the wilderness, living only by the laws of Nature. If we’re not careful, we will soon be regarded with as much respect and admiration as the humble apes, while other, more well-behaved species take our place in the world.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Shock Value
Is it ever appropriate for a writer to use gimmicks? Is an attention-grabbing opening line, a nail-biting cliff-hanger, or an ultra-graphic murder always a diversion from a weak plot or poor character development?
I have read countless novels that relied heavily on gimmicks, novels written by lesser authors who needed the bells and whistles to keep their attention-deficit 21st century readers engaged, authors who lacked the skill to execute Hemingway’s stark prose or Tolkien’s long-winded self-importance. The impetus for this particular discussion, the product of years of head-shaking at the tacky literary gimmicks that permeate modern literature, is my recent completion of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The film adaptation of the latter was forced upon me by my man-friend, and, although I spent much of the film’s gory climax huddling under the covers with my ears plugged, I found myself unwittingly intrigued by whatever plot points I could glean during my unplugged moments, and decided to read the next novel in the tetralogy.
Horror, suspense, and murder mysteries not being my preference, I remain open to any genre of fiction, with the simple provision being that the author exhibits competence. I have no doubt that Harris is a competent author, but, so utterly disgusted was I by Hannibal, I’m reluctant to even bother with any of his other works.
The film The Silence of the Lambs can thank the memorably disturbing character of Hannibal Lecter for its critical acclaim and its unshakeable status as one of the best films ever to be made. The character himself is indisputably a marvelous and impenetrable villain. I wish that Harris hadn’t castrated, cheapened, and made a mockery out of his own creation by writing Hannibal eight years after Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed Dr. Lecter with such chilling profundity. In Hannibal, Dr. Lecter is lost beneath the sea of corny, diabolic villain stereotypes and the ridiculous gimmicks of the “evil psychopath with traumatic childhood experiences” archetype. Even the grotesque murders he commits fail to impress after awhile.
It wasn’t exactly the gruesome violence depicted with distasteful glee throughout the hundreds of pages of Hannibal that I found repugnant. It was the unsettling feeling that Harris was utilizing shock value to maintain his reader’s interest. I don’t like to be manipulated, whether it be in a literary or a literal context.
The conclusion struck me as particularly vulgar in its attempt at shocking the reader. After rescuing Agent Clarice Starling like some perversion of a knight in shining armor, Dr. Lecter smuggles her away to his Lavish Mansion of Crazy (complete with bronze statuettes, candelabras, and roaring fireplaces) and manages to completely overhaul her consciousness, transforming her into his concubine. Not only did I find this offensively misogynistic (and, please, do not mistake that for a knee-jerk feminist reaction), I felt that it was a complete non sequitur. Nothing about this supposed “conclusion” was remotely consistent with Starling’s character, nor did it strike me as being all that consistent with Dr. Lecter’s character either.
Did Harris want Starling to be a bad-ass FBI agent who takes care of herself and deals with her obvious Daddy issues like a boss? Or did he want her to be a vulnerable, needy woman who tries to mask her feelings of inadequacy by attempting to hang with the boys? Or did he want her to be something nuanced, something in between? Ever the optimist, I wanted to believe that Harris’s vision of Starling was subtle, interesting, and unexpected. As it turned out, she was just another damsel in distress who knew how to shoot a gun.
And Dr. Lecter, that fantastic fictional creation who made Academy Awards rain and quotable allusions to fava beans and Chianti endure: what was Harris’s intention with him? Was his utter lack of humanity, the fact that he could eat a nurse’s tongue out of her mouth without his heart rate increasing one beat, a manifestation of his own childhood trauma? Could the fact that he watched his younger sister get eaten by Nazi deserters when he was a child account for all of his monstrous qualities as an adult? Does he want us to sympathize with Dr. Lecter, or does he want us to lust for his demise? Harris’s exploration of Dr. Lecter’s psyche was lazy and piecemeal in Hannibal, a wasted opportunity to flesh out the complexities of a character who is more and less than a man. He half-heartedly encouraged us to root for him, then turned us against him (but not really, because, after all, he did mutilate a pedophile…how bad can he be?), then made us roll our eyes at him as he transformed into some lame parody of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, pacing around a Gothic mansion and seducing a helpless woman with his macabre charms. I can only hope that Harris attempted to redeem himself in his development of this intriguing character in Hannibal Rising, the next book in the tetralogy. Dr. Lecter deserves much better.
The gimmicks in Hannibal, instead of drawing the reader in and holding his attention, distracted from what is truly competent about the author’s writing: his prose, his understanding of suspense, and the adept research that gave the novel depth. Instead of respecting his readers’ intelligence by taking a more difficult approach, Harris chose to make all of Lecter’s victims either greedy (Pazzi, the crooked Italian cop), scummy (Paul Krendler, the crooked Department of Justice official), good-for-nothing (the gypsy, the Sardinians, the Italian pornographer), or just plain deplorable (Mason Verger, the filthy rich pedophile). I find this to be a lazy gimmick that many horror writers seem to use. So bad things don’t happen to good people in fiction? Or are you just trying to make the reader tread between fearing your villain and wanting to see him triumph?
The funny thing is, fellow authors, you can create complexity in a character without resorting to gimmicks like tired archetypes and shocking murder scenes. You just have to take the time to explore the character. Had Harris spent more time exploring the admirable villain he created in Lecter than he did on setting up the feasting-on-Paul-Krendler’s-brains-out-of-his still-living-body scene, the reader might have come away with a truly memorable character worthy of the notoriety earned by Hopkins’ portrayal in the films. Instead, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.
Who’s ready for lunch?
I have read countless novels that relied heavily on gimmicks, novels written by lesser authors who needed the bells and whistles to keep their attention-deficit 21st century readers engaged, authors who lacked the skill to execute Hemingway’s stark prose or Tolkien’s long-winded self-importance. The impetus for this particular discussion, the product of years of head-shaking at the tacky literary gimmicks that permeate modern literature, is my recent completion of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The film adaptation of the latter was forced upon me by my man-friend, and, although I spent much of the film’s gory climax huddling under the covers with my ears plugged, I found myself unwittingly intrigued by whatever plot points I could glean during my unplugged moments, and decided to read the next novel in the tetralogy.
Horror, suspense, and murder mysteries not being my preference, I remain open to any genre of fiction, with the simple provision being that the author exhibits competence. I have no doubt that Harris is a competent author, but, so utterly disgusted was I by Hannibal, I’m reluctant to even bother with any of his other works.
The film The Silence of the Lambs can thank the memorably disturbing character of Hannibal Lecter for its critical acclaim and its unshakeable status as one of the best films ever to be made. The character himself is indisputably a marvelous and impenetrable villain. I wish that Harris hadn’t castrated, cheapened, and made a mockery out of his own creation by writing Hannibal eight years after Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed Dr. Lecter with such chilling profundity. In Hannibal, Dr. Lecter is lost beneath the sea of corny, diabolic villain stereotypes and the ridiculous gimmicks of the “evil psychopath with traumatic childhood experiences” archetype. Even the grotesque murders he commits fail to impress after awhile.
It wasn’t exactly the gruesome violence depicted with distasteful glee throughout the hundreds of pages of Hannibal that I found repugnant. It was the unsettling feeling that Harris was utilizing shock value to maintain his reader’s interest. I don’t like to be manipulated, whether it be in a literary or a literal context.
The conclusion struck me as particularly vulgar in its attempt at shocking the reader. After rescuing Agent Clarice Starling like some perversion of a knight in shining armor, Dr. Lecter smuggles her away to his Lavish Mansion of Crazy (complete with bronze statuettes, candelabras, and roaring fireplaces) and manages to completely overhaul her consciousness, transforming her into his concubine. Not only did I find this offensively misogynistic (and, please, do not mistake that for a knee-jerk feminist reaction), I felt that it was a complete non sequitur. Nothing about this supposed “conclusion” was remotely consistent with Starling’s character, nor did it strike me as being all that consistent with Dr. Lecter’s character either.
Did Harris want Starling to be a bad-ass FBI agent who takes care of herself and deals with her obvious Daddy issues like a boss? Or did he want her to be a vulnerable, needy woman who tries to mask her feelings of inadequacy by attempting to hang with the boys? Or did he want her to be something nuanced, something in between? Ever the optimist, I wanted to believe that Harris’s vision of Starling was subtle, interesting, and unexpected. As it turned out, she was just another damsel in distress who knew how to shoot a gun.
And Dr. Lecter, that fantastic fictional creation who made Academy Awards rain and quotable allusions to fava beans and Chianti endure: what was Harris’s intention with him? Was his utter lack of humanity, the fact that he could eat a nurse’s tongue out of her mouth without his heart rate increasing one beat, a manifestation of his own childhood trauma? Could the fact that he watched his younger sister get eaten by Nazi deserters when he was a child account for all of his monstrous qualities as an adult? Does he want us to sympathize with Dr. Lecter, or does he want us to lust for his demise? Harris’s exploration of Dr. Lecter’s psyche was lazy and piecemeal in Hannibal, a wasted opportunity to flesh out the complexities of a character who is more and less than a man. He half-heartedly encouraged us to root for him, then turned us against him (but not really, because, after all, he did mutilate a pedophile…how bad can he be?), then made us roll our eyes at him as he transformed into some lame parody of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, pacing around a Gothic mansion and seducing a helpless woman with his macabre charms. I can only hope that Harris attempted to redeem himself in his development of this intriguing character in Hannibal Rising, the next book in the tetralogy. Dr. Lecter deserves much better.
The gimmicks in Hannibal, instead of drawing the reader in and holding his attention, distracted from what is truly competent about the author’s writing: his prose, his understanding of suspense, and the adept research that gave the novel depth. Instead of respecting his readers’ intelligence by taking a more difficult approach, Harris chose to make all of Lecter’s victims either greedy (Pazzi, the crooked Italian cop), scummy (Paul Krendler, the crooked Department of Justice official), good-for-nothing (the gypsy, the Sardinians, the Italian pornographer), or just plain deplorable (Mason Verger, the filthy rich pedophile). I find this to be a lazy gimmick that many horror writers seem to use. So bad things don’t happen to good people in fiction? Or are you just trying to make the reader tread between fearing your villain and wanting to see him triumph?
The funny thing is, fellow authors, you can create complexity in a character without resorting to gimmicks like tired archetypes and shocking murder scenes. You just have to take the time to explore the character. Had Harris spent more time exploring the admirable villain he created in Lecter than he did on setting up the feasting-on-Paul-Krendler’s-brains-out-of-his still-living-body scene, the reader might have come away with a truly memorable character worthy of the notoriety earned by Hopkins’ portrayal in the films. Instead, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth.
Who’s ready for lunch?
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