Why would a kayakin' sleddogin' birdwatchin' scubadivin' nature-lovin' horsewoman in her 50s care about a movie full of stuff blowing up and giant butt kicking robots??? Well, keep your vampire weddings, I'd rather go back and see more stuff explode. And the Transformers song (from the 1984 TV cartoon) keeps running through my head. (Two red Transformers inhabit my bookshelf to this day). I remember the cartoon, I was 29 when it appeared; a 29 year old woman training horses, doing living history, camping in mosquito infested salt marshes, backpacking, and randomly knocking guys upside the head with rattan broadswords. I loved Saturday morning cartoons, and this CARtoon was one of my favorites. Why? It was obviously designed for 12 year old boys with a technology fetish. Or was it? The thing I liked about it was the characters, the eternal Battle Between Good and Evil. And now, looking at it from the perspective of an artist/writer with a fascination for myth and legend, I see it's mythic roots. The first thing that comes to mind is an archetype I can't quite put a name to. I saw it in the Jungle Books (Kipling's version) which I read as a kid. I wanted to be the kid in the jungle with a bear, a wolfpack, a black leopard and a thirty foot python for buddies (take THAT mean girls!). Or Bud whose best buddy was a dolphin named Flipper. Or the boys who had Big Black Wild Horses for buddies (Joey and Fury, Alex and the Black Stallion, Zorro and Tornado). I caught a glimpse of it again with Arnold's Terminator ("Cool! My own terminator!") in Terminator 2. Sam (boy) and Bumblebee (Autobot) are the same pair. The next thing is the archetype of the Shapeshifter. Every culture has stories of shapeshifters. Animals who become people, people who become animals, and beings who are both, or somewhere in between. Some Native American Coyote tales seem to star a humanoid who is called Coyote, or maybe it's a coyote who can talk, or is it a being that looks like Wile E.? Shapeshifters trick humans into better behavior, help put the stars in the sky, awaken the first humans, teach, lead... ...transform. Early humans had only to look around them to see shapeshifting at work: the egg that becomes the nymph that becomes the dragonfly; the tadpole that becomes the frog; the nut that becomes the tree. Old tales tell of barnacles that become geese, horsehairs in the water trough that become worms (admittedly, their grasp of natural history was a little vague). Easy to transform those legends, adapt them (shapeshifters are adaptable) to our technological world. And finally: our relationship with technology. I hate it, I loathe it, I detest it. OK, not entirely, I need the computer, the digital camera, the car, the van, the pickup truck, the microwave. I just don't understand them (despite occasionally catching the hilarious and helpful "Car Talk" on NPR); they are as alien as autobots, and less friendly. I can relate to the (hysterically funny) scene in Dark of the Moon where Sam's cheesy car breaks down and he pounds on it in frustration. You can have a conversation, an argument even, with Bumblebee, but not with a cheapo hatchback. Lots of films, from Matrix to Terminator to Star Trek, have dealt with our relationship with our technology, and whether we are using it wisely, or whether it is out of control. Humans, as storytellers, tend to anthropomorphize; animals (talking animal fairy tales, bedtime tales, and cartoons), trees (see Tolkien and CS Lewis, and JK Rowling, whose trees didn't talk so much as whomp), forces of Nature (all those Greek, Norse, Celtic etc. Gods and Goddesses), psychological archetypes (more Gods and Goddesses). Surrounded by technology, with most of us clueless as to how it actually is made or how it works, we anthropomorphize it. ...and its two sides, dark and light; Decepticons and Autobots arise from the collective unconcious, playing out our deepest fears and triumphs on the big screen. Superficially, it's a 3D CG cartoon, a boomfest of big cannons, bigger explosions, buildings crashing like the Titanic (while our doughty heroes scramble, unscathed, through oceans of shattered glass). If you look a little deeper, you catch references to our deepest cultural scars: 9/11. Falling towers, paper fluttering down like snow, evil lurking under the sane surface of the mundane world, leaping out and catching us by the throat when we least expect it. I lost count of how many times someone said "Let's roll!" But that's what faerie tales do; they address our fears, failings, obstacles, triumphs. They point the way, they give us hope. That said, Transformers is a bit more than just two hours of explosions, of awesome effects, incredible mind-boggling animation, Shia LeBeouf's cute self (or the sleek runway model, running from danger in ridiculous high heels, for you guys), muscular military guys, daring stunts, stuff crashing and burning, giant robots crashing into each other, cars crashing into each other and giant robots, stuff blowing up.... there is actually character development. While many of the characters are pretty loosely sketched (Hot Girl, Beefy Warriors), many are archetypal. Optimus Prime is the iconic Hero King (even to his long-legged, broad torsoed build). Wang is the iconic Geek Science Guy (with some seriously hilarious quirks). There's a young warrior who is the first to volunteer for the "kamikaze" mission, he manages to make us care for the few moments he's onscreen. And finally, there's just A Boy and His Car. Sam and Bee are the core of it, the buddy team we all want to be part of. The Boy who nobody takes seriously until he proves (again) his great worth as a hero. The Man who finds himself helpless against huge odss...and finds a way. The bumbling autobot who is somehow more human than many flesh and blood actors. Wish my car would do that.... Well told story is well told story...the rest is just shiny paint and a flame job. Add Comment Blue Moon 12/27/2009
About thirty lightyears ago, I heard about a new film with starships and aliens and wicked cool new effects. There was no internet, only the SF mags and word of mouth and the odd movie trailer and TV ad. I heard about it after it had already exploded onscreen with a Death Star sized bigbang. SF/fantasy fan that I am, I went. I went out of the theater going, "hmmmm, that was cool." I thought about it for a few days. Went back with more friends. I went back something like 25 times. Star Wars was one of those nifty turning points that introduced me to a whole new world: friends of like mind, SF cons, fantasy illustration, real world adventures that sprang out of all that. That is the point of well told stories. They connect us. They inspire us. They teach us. They say something about our past. Our future. Our choices. I like James Cameron films. Terminator 2 and Titanic are on my ten best list (although I think that may include several dozen by now). He understands Joseph Campbell's concept of The Hero Journey (see my earlier blog or look it up on Wikipedia). He talks about the relationship between humans and technology; the use and abuse of it. The dangers we face if we blow it. Our relationship with each other and Nature. He's a Leo, born two days after me and one year earlier. He's definitely from the same planet. And now here's our planet. I heard about Avatar much the way I heard about Star Wars; after everybody else knew about it. Yeah, I have internet access now. I even check my email once a week or so. I blog or twiddle the website when I can. This week I was running sleddogs, hacking my way through Suckway (unlike my Disney princess namesake, I hate food service), eating fattening PA Dutch food with relatives over Christmas, wrangling my friend's young, enthusiastic Malenois, ducks, free range chickens, horses, goats and other critters while Mona and Joe escaped to the great white north. I watched the great white north melt into mud before Mona could break a sled dog trail around her farm. I hashed out the rest of my Christmas presents ( I don't Mall anymore, mall, that's a verb, a four letter verb). "I should probably see this." I said. "After all, it's James Cameron, how bad could it be." I bought a black leather jacket at a yard sale and learned to play the Terminator theme on a Native American flute. I bought the action figures (uh, it's for my nephew). I asked Bob Ballard (the guy who found the Titanic) a more or less intelligent question at a program at the Baltimore Aquarium. I leapt off of several perfectly good floatin' boats in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean (well, we were out of sight of land) to look at the sunken boats. One of my dive buddies did that 'soaring on the bow/king of the world' move on the bow of one of those sunken boats. I went to the Titanic exhibit at the local museum, stood with my nose inches from things that had lain two and a half miles down in 375 atmospheres of pressure (that's how geeky this gets). Yep, I'm a fan. I considered that fact that this could be one more of those grand heartless fx extravaganzas. Blow lots of stuff up and nobody will notice there isn't a plot or character development. Ok, I'll go watch stuff blow up for three hours, at least once. The James Horner soundtrack hooked me from the beginning. After looking him up on Wikipedia (easier than going through my CD collection or my own memory banks) I realized he's scored a bunch of my favorite films. I love "Echoes" on National Public Radio; that sort of soundtracky, epic stuff with spacey electronics and indigenous instruments and voices. This soundtrack captures that quality; epic, emotion, eerie, otherworldy. Horner's a Leo too, born on the same day and two years earlier. I could analyze the film for hours; it's a place you can get lost in. "Haven't got lost in the woods?" the badaxx Colonel says to Our Hero. Of course I have, I know those woods. This is the archetypal Garden. This is the place we all remember (well, some of us do). This is the place Richard Louv talked about in "Last Child in the Woods". In his book he shows how this generation has become plugged into their 'avatars'; Game Boys and cell phones and computers. How they've lost the ability to run soundlessly through the forest, to read the trail, to bond with other living things, to just sit and look and feel and experience. Louv tells us the cure for ADD and a thousand other modern afflictions is to just go outside and play. He's right. When the SAD felt like a space marine's backpack, I hitched up two dogs and slogged through a foot of snow on half a trail in a sunlit wood. I felt like I might keel over a few times. The dogs hadn't run more than in the dogyard all fall. I had sleazed off the rider and the stationary bike for weeks. It was good! Ooooraahh! The plot was described by someone as "trite". No, not trite, not stereotypal, archetypal. The Hero Journey. Sure, I knew how certain scenes, certain situations had to play out. I knew how I'd write them. Same way I know that stuff in a good Disney flick. I know the pattern, I've been over this trail before. But every time you go over the trail, it's different. Different animals have walked there, leaving different signs. Different weather, different seasons, different things blooming, fading, dying, rebirthing. This is a rebirth of the Hero Journey. Tolkien gave the old archetypes back their power. Rescued the Elves and Dwarves and Wizards and dark things from the nursery and made them tall and strong; a Force of Nature to be reckoned with. Lucas sent them to the far far away edges of the universe, and showed us that those tales are, well, universal. J.K. Rowling showed kids that they too had power, and must learn how to wield it. Cameron has shown us the place we come from and that there is still time to change our course. Change our relationship with Nature, with technology, with other living things. Much of the film has already happened in real life: we know that, not from our history books, which always tell the tale from the viewpoint of the winners, but from listening to Native American, African, Australian Aboriginal, Polynesian and other indigenous authors/storytellers/bards/artists/teachers. (The excellent Wes Studi, a Native American actor, is the voice of Neytiri's father). The concept of communicating with animals (on levels beyond verbal) is not new to anyone who's ever worked with them. The concept of trees communicating chemically or electrically is not new to science. The idea of a world organism, the Earth as one big biosphere is not new either. What is new is putting it all into an action-packed, thrilling adventure that twelve year olds will absorb. And maybe they'll go home and think about it. Maybe they'll pick up a bow, because Neytiri made it look so cool. Maybe they'll try riding an earth horse. Or flight. Or diving into the clear waters that are still left. Or saving the rest. The Twilight Groan 12/27/2009
200910.25 letter to Mike Argento, York Daily Record Argento is a brilliant, hysterically funny columnist with a wit sharper than a Na'Vi arrowhead. He can write serious stuff too, but mostly he sends up the Morons of our culture (no shortage of those in York County). This was my (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) plee to him to save our tweens from the vampires. The rise of the New Moon sparked a deep, insistent urge to lurk at my computer, biting deep into the bloody depths of the Thesaurus, and Spell Check. Then I considered that you only write articles of Deep Social Meaning, sending up the Idiots of Society. Wait; this has Deep Social Meaning. We must save our young girls from the ravages of... ...a meaningless life obsessing over boys with bad hair and weird eyes. I noted your excellent send-up of 2021, or 2012... or 2010, no wait, that was Real Science Fiction, written by a Real Science Fiction writer; Arthur C. Clarke. We need, in this benighted age, Mikey the Vampire Slayer. Or, perhaps, Van-argento. J.K. Rowling gave us a complex, unique world of Wizards and Good and Evil. She addressed the Deep Questions of The Meaning of Life. She gave us three Heroes on a Hero Journey that made sense and resonated with our own lives (note that one of them is an intelligent girl, with a career, and a Life, and a Purpose, and cool guy friends, and... a cool guy). Rowling gave us Quidditch, and Time Turners and an owl delivery service and a large drooly dog, and a larger droolier gamekeeper, and the wonderful vision of turning a horrible relative into a hot air balloon. J.R.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis gave us entire planets to run around on. Middle Earth and Narnia with their Elves and Orcs and Centaurs and Talking Animals had plenty of room for each of us to pick up our longbows and broadswords and learn to slay the evils in our mundane lives. To ride into the sunset, to wax poetic over the song of gulls in the dark, to talk to trees, to ride without saddle or rein, to have seven meals a day, to sail with the Corsairs of Umbar, to ... Oh, yes, I digress... George Lucas and Gene Rodenberry eschewed the use of initials and went with their full names, which may be why they gave us the whole universe to play in. Go ahead, snicker at the kid whomping womp rats on his game boy, or the girl with the pointy ears at the sci-fi convention doing the Vulcan salute, but when your computer breaks down, or your rover is stranded on Neptune; who 'ya' gonna' call? In the wake of these greats, yea, in the Twilight of their existence, comes a saga of a girl and a vampire. And some other vampires who are not as nice. Although the main one isn't very nice either, at first. I tried very hard to finish the first book, but after two hundred pages of a very boring teenager obsessing over a badaxx boy I had to donate the book to the Library for the Literary Impaired, and go find a copy of Treasure Island, which, despite its political incorrectness, is a romping good yarn, and contains a young hero who acts impulsively but with good heart and wins out in the end. I also plowed through several thousand pages of the Inkheart Trilogy, which contains a heroine who has better things to do with her life than obsess over boys with bad hair and weird teeth. I think you should do an interview with the vampire's girlfriend: it would go something like this... “So, Bella, how was school today?” Her eyes glaze over. Hoarsely she whispers. “Edward.” “Ah. What are you studying?” Her eyes have now developed a strange shape, like those anime or manga characters: little hearts. They seem to be twitching in a weird rhythm. “Eeeeedwaaard.” “Um, went by the animal rescue earlier this week, I think you should have a dog. What kind would you like?” “Edward.” “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Edddddddward.” The eyeball hearts are definitely thumping like manic bunnies. Bunnies, bunnies, ohgawd, what do bunnies do best? “You realize this is kind of gross, I mean, he's dead and everything...” She's stopped talking, only the weird little thumpy hearts are visible. You knock her upside the head, duct tape her to a chair and make her watch all three...extended DVD... Lord of the Rings films. At least Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson aren't dead. Then you drag her kicking and screaming to the library. Save us Argento-wan, you're our only hope. The rest of us will sling our longbows over our backs, our swords, lightsabers and phasers at our hips, mount our steeds of Rohan (or centaurs, or landspeeders, if you're horse-impaired) and sally forth to rescue True Fantasy and Science Fiction from the clutches of the Pseudo-vampiric hordes. Some of us will probably settle down with a good Anne Rice book, or a Sookie Stackhouse novel. We might, (gasp) even turn on the TV and catch a drop or two of True Blood, or a rerun of Buffy. Live Long and Prosper... a long time ago, in a sketchbook far, far away... some friends and I visited the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, in Washington D.C. for an exhibit of props, costumes and other goodies from the Star Wars films. (We had already been to the one they devoted to Star Trek). In the displays, the museum outlined George Lucas' interpretation of the Hero Journey through the three first films. Lucas had studied the works of Joseph Campbell, a guy who studied myth, legend and faerie tale and made it comprehensible to the rest of us. Then Lucas brought it to the masses with Luke and Han and the rest. Here are my notes from the exhibit, with an eye to writing my own tales. Perhaps they'll be useful for yours... 1999.01.16 Remember Space 1999? It was SF then, now it's ancient history. George Lucas based his mythic tale on the concepts of Joseph Campbell , who studied the worlds mythologies and folk tales. Mythologizing mythology; taking an overview of all the world's spiritual ideas. PBS did The Power of Myth as a series, I own Hero With A Thousand Faces (the Hero Journey Cycle), Primitive Mythology and Myths to Live By, all by Campbell. I cant find Hero, I am in the middle of writing several Hero Journey tales. I did find my Star Wars notes. Forthwith, here they are:(with some nods to other Hero Journeys I have loved) Star Wars is driven by character, story. You don't have to explain what everything is. We figure out hyperdrive and lightsabers without the scientific treatise. The Hero is obscure, ordinary; a farm boy, a Hobbit, a Gelfling, a girl from Kansas, a fat panda working in a noodle shop, a beat-up trash compactor robot named WALL-E. The Mentor is Jedi, wizard, wiz, wise man. Gandalf, Obi-Wan. The call to adventure: Begins with The Herald: usually small, unassuming. Talking frogs. Gollum with a ring. Droid with a message. The guy pasting the sign on he wall about choosing the Dragon Warrior (Kung-Fu Panda). Starship landing (Wall-E). Ok, that one wasn't small and unassuming. In Pan's Labyrinth, the messenger is a bug-fairy. The Hand of Fate oftens plays a role here: the apparent Bad Thing drives the tale forward, involves the Hero, becomes part of the Journey. The threshold: Mos Eisley spaceport. Rivendell. Train stations (Narnia: Prince Caspian & Harry Potter). The Stairway to Heaven in Kung-fu Panda: the Place of Enlightenment is at the top. Note that he falls down that stairway a lot. The Hero must leave familiar life behind and begin journey from childhood to adulthood, and to a life transformation. The threshold contains dangers, but also helpers. In SW, Han and Chewie are Dark Hero? Trickster? Beast Prince (Chewie) Animal Companion (the power of the Hero's instinctive nature). The ship has an animal name as well. Maybe it should have been the Millenium Raven. Or Chasseur. Han is a privateer (complete with wicked swift agile Baltimore Clipper); out for his own gain at first, but always fighting the tyrannical empire. I do a lot of Elves, shapeshifters and folk with animal totems. They are plugged into their instinctive natures, one with Nature. A dive is a Hero Journey. You cross the Threshold of the Surface into an alien world where all the rules are changed. A journey by ship is similar: the Dock is the threshold. You leave this last attachment to land and set out into the Unknown. Into the labyrinth: Difficult journey into the Unknown. Death Star. The Old Forest. Moria. Heroes don armour to rescue princess. Pan's Labrynth has a very literal labyrinth. The dark road of trials: Midway through the hero journey comes the long and perilous path of trials and ordeals bringing important moments of illumination and understanding. The decent into darkness. Moria again. One of Lewis' entire tales (the Silver Chair) is a Journey in the Dark. Monsters to be slain. Obstacles to be passed. Into the belly of the beast: The Millenium Falcon flies into the asteroid cave which turns out to be the maw of a huge beast. Jonah and the whale. Pinochio and the same whale. Leviathan. Is there an equivalent in Middle Earth? In Pan's Labyrinth, there is the beast-frog under the tree, who spits out the key (rather grossly). Vader undergoes transformation in egg-like chamber. You are eaten, you are spat out again, transformed. The sacred grove: Enclosure where the Hero is changed. Trees infused with creative energy. Forests symbolize mystery and transformation (the forest world of Dagobah). Forests are also the unconcious mind; secrets, dark emotions to confront (Luke's battle with the Vader-image under the tree). Water is also the Unconcious Mind. The Dive Beneath, to the scary dark place. Sacrifices: Opening of mind and heart to spiritual knowledge requires sacrifice from Hero. Cloud City: Han and Luke both reaffirm the meaning and importance of their lives by willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater cause. Hero deeds: The princess rescue, the Death Star attack, lightsaber battles, firefights. The blowing up of the Death Star in film one is the beginning of the next stage: the Road of Trials. The path to atonement: Hero Journey sometimes includes a Fatherquest. After trials, the Hero finds the Father and becomes At-One with him. A spiritual symbol of oneness with God. Luke is following in his father's footsteps: pilot, Jedi... ...but Luke is ready to sacrifice himself rather than follow his father's path to evil. Luke falls (from the underside of Cloud City), is rescued (by sister: one with the same father), acknowledges Vader as Father, they move toward reconciliation, Vader moves toward his own transformation. The hero's return: End of the Road of Trials. Hero returns across the threshold to his society with the means to benefit it. In SW, each character has undergone their own Hero Journey. In LOTR, the Hobbits return to the Shire and cleanse and heal it. Aragorn takes on the Kingship. Legolas and Gimli rebuild Gondor. WALL-E and EVE bring people back to Earth and spark renewal. Po the Panda defeats the Villain as no one else can, and restores order to his world. The shadow rises: The forces of evil can also undergo change and rebirth, recoup power, gain new strength. Tolkien actually had a thought to write something after LOTR, in which this happens. If you start at the beginning of his world, the Silmarillion, and read through, you see the dark rising again and again: Morgoth the Vala is replaced by Sauron the Maia (a lesser evil), whose understudy was a wizard: Saruman. Presumeably by the time you get to the Age of Men, the Evil would have degenerated to mere human tyrants and dictators; reality. The hero twins: Luke and Leia are yin-yang, two sides of the same person, in a way. Anima and animé, or animus, or whatever. One of my favorite images in tales, is this Hero Twin thing: often two guys, opposites: Starsky and Hutch, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, Red and Blue in Hellboy, and last but definitely not least: Legolas and Gimli. By their contrast, they show us a complete picture. And they're usually very funny. The enchanted forest: The inhabitants can be helpful, dangerous, or both. The Hero must know the right magic to invoke the protective powers. Luke wins the help of the Ewoks (these faerie folk are small, have primitve tech, and a lush environment compared to the cold hard tech of the Empire). The Fellowship enters Lothlorien, but not easily and with great welcome. Boromir shows the attitude of the mainstream culture: fear of the now unknown powers of the Elves, and distance from them. The heart of darkness; The Fortress of Evil. Destroying it. Tolkien has several, in varying stages of evil power: Moria, Cirith Ungol, Mordor, the Cracks of Doom. Mount Doom self-destructs at the end. Dark Crystal has one of the more unique Dark Tower images: the castle which peels off its layer of darkness as the skeksis are reunited with the uru and become, again, whole urskeks. The castle casts off its dark skin and glows once more with light. Sealskin/Soulskin 07/23/2009
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