Barnyard: The Original Party Animals

“The Cow King�

We are afraid of tragedy in modern American cinema. We are doubly afraid of tragedy aimed at kids because of our belief that children can’t handle it. We do so under the well-intentioned umbrella of motivations of trying protect them from it rather than prepare them for it. The last successful (traditionally) animated film to tackle tragedy was Disney’s The Lion King. A variation on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, except with a happy ending, Disney continued its theme of parental loss (from Bambi to Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo) and learning responsibility as you grow up. While there was humor in The Lion King and Finding Nemo, both movies realized that they couldn’t be wacky comedies when their plots revolve around the death of a parent.

However, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals tries.

Director Steve Oederick (who wrote not only this screenplay but also such films as Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and Bruce Almighty) doesn’t want a little thing like the death of a party to stop the zany hijinks of his stock cast of characters. Either he didn’t trust his audience or this movie didn’t know what kind of movie it wanted to be. It started a number of epic themes, yet failing to follow though with a serious examination/meditation on any of them: fathers and sons, what it means to be a leader, having fun vs. learning responsibility, the natural order of things, what it means to be a(n adopted) family, and the futility of vengeance (violence doesn’t solve anything in a lasting way).

[Okay, I’ll be honest. I was thrown through the entire movie. I couldn’t get past the disturbing display of udders from all of the boy cows. Maybe it was my inner-seven year old, but that was the thing that I kept giggling at.]

“The best leader is the one that cares the most.� –Daisy (Courtney Cox)

“My place is here. Taking care of things,� Ben (voiced by Sam Elliott) believes. There is a myth called “The Corn King,� popularized by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough. It presents the archetype tradition of the king who carries the life of the land. That king, that protector, may be called upon to sacrifice himself for the sake of the land, his people. Obviously, this is an even older story, the story of stories, if you will, but it is the story that Barnyard: The Original Party Animals tries to follow. In this case, it is the story of a father, Ben trying to pass on the mantle of responsibility to his party-all-the-time son, Otis (Kevin James).

“A strong man stands up for himself. A stronger man stands up for others.� –Ben

The idea that the movie kept returning to was the idea of individuality vs. community. Otis is focused on himself, his needs, his desires. As a consequence, he believes in the survival of the fittest, every man for himself, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps mindset. While he has a regular contingent he hangs out with within the farm community, he also hangs out with a group of poser hooligans who are often guilty of, among other things, the “animal sin of sins�: joy-riding. Ben, and subsequently the farm elder, Miles the Mule (Danny Glover), try to instill in him the value and importance of community. Sadly, Otis has to learn the hard way, as Dag (David Koechner) the coyote points out, that “You could’ve made a difference had you been there for him.�

We say we want community, but we don’t really. We want that close circle of connectedness where one experiences a deep sense of belonging, acceptance, and love. That’s the lure of community, but we don’t want to do what it takes to achieve it. Otis has to realize not only the importance of community, but how tied he is to the community. The flipside of learning how to be a part of the community is learning how to let the community be there for you. This is the final lesson that Otis has to learn.

This year has an unprecedented amount of animated movies. Because this is a kids movie, we know that the tragedy will eventuate in a happy ending and we expect laughs along the way. Barnyard: The Original Party Animals has all of the right ingredients, yet still manages to wobble between overly earnest and randomly amusing. It has trouble sustaining the right tone/balance, lacking a central focus. These might be quibbles, however, since the yuks in the movie works fine for kids.


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My Name is Earl

“You know the kind of guy who does nothing but bad things and then wonders why his life sucks? That was me. Every time something good happened to me, something bad was always waiting around the corner. Karma. That's when I realized I had to change. So, I made a list of everything bad I've ever done and one by one I'm gonna make up for all my mistakes. I'm just trying to be a better person. My name is Earl.�

So goes the intro for My Name is Earl. The premise is simple: Earl’s (marvelously portrayed by Jason Lee) life was full of mistakes and poor choices, the kind of self-made bad drama that fuels many of our lives. A man just this side of naive, yet impossible to dislike, one day wins a small lottery, but then is promptly hit by a car. While recuperating in the hospital, he has an epiphany. There is a sort of balance to the universe, a cosmic justice that demands a payment, or retribution, for the wrongs one may have committed.

One wouldn’t think this would be the fodder for one of the funniest sitcoms on the air, which points to the sharpness of the writing and the supporting cast. Playing a string of trailer park misfits, we have Earl’s brother Randy (Ethan Suplee), their illegal immigrant friend (and oblivious romantic interest of Randy) Catalina (Nadina Velazquez), Earl’s harridan of an ex-wife Joy (Jaime Pressly), and her other baby’s daddy Darnell (Eddie Steeples). A passel of engaging characters rarely seen on network television. The comedy usually arises from Earl’s grand schemes to make right going horribly, horribly awry.

“Karma has a plan for me.� –Earl

We too have this sense of right and wrong written onto our hearts, wired into our very being. Though we may believe we’re all basically good people, we also have a sense that our lives are on some sort of scale and if the good we’ve done outweighs the bad, we’ll be fine - in the eternal consequences sort of way.

Karma becomes Earl’s religion and he becomes its prophet. This Karmic idea of God is an incomplete picture of Him, often leading to the image, especially as practically lived out in the reality of our spiritual journeys, of God hiding behind bushes waiting to smite us when we screw up.

“I like thinking about the journey it must have taken to get here.� –Randy

Earl leads what could be described as a purpose driven life. Despite being poor and uneducated, Earl comes up with a rather sophisticated self-salvation scheme. He seeks atonement and true to his understanding of atonement, he seeks out opportunities to repent. Not just to apologize, but to do something about it - an act of penitence - in order to truly change his life. He wants a better life for himself, wants to be a better man, and knows that this isn’t the end of his journey. He’s fully aware that he has a long way to go, but he clings to his hope that “ne day we will be seen as the perfect people we were on that one perfect day.�

For all of its morality tale trappings, My Name is Earl is the best kind of comedy. It radiates heart and warmth while not skimping on the laughs. Paired with The Office, My Name is Earl makes for a grand hour. Methinks the laments of the death of the sitcom might be a bit premature.


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Miami Vice

“Style over Substance. Again.�

It’s not like I went into Miami Vice with high expectations, fully prepared for another buddy cop movie to steal two hours of my life. In this era of small screen to silver screen leaps, usually spoofing the source material in the transition, the talent collective of Mann, Foxx, and Farell should be enough to sustain some hope for at least a grand mess. We get a pretty flat mess instead.

Writer-director Michael Mann (Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, Heat) returns to his roots, updating the series he executive produced from 1984-1989. Detective James “Sonny� Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Detective Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) are our no-nonsense (and no chemistry having) cops for a new generation. The “MTV cops� lose a lot of their glam, opting instead to take themselves much too seriously.

Part of what made the original show work was how it eschewed the reality of police work for a more salacious peek at the underworld. Mann kept the trappings of the show, letting the guys play with all of the cool toys (boats, cars, planes, women, yes, women were always little more than disposable objects, etc.) but aimed for a more mature look. The jittery, hand held camera work and grainy night lens look he employed with his last team up with Foxx in Collateral enhances the dark, brooding mood. It would make sense for Mann to explore the creativity and freedom that an R-rating might give him, however, the profanity, nudity (shall I note that these are some of the most gratuitously clean characters that I’ve seen in a while), and violence (the sheer level of brutality was the only thing to enliven the movie) had the feeling Mann was doing stuff just because he could.

The viewer gets dropped in the middle of the story: an overly complicated tale of white supremists, Columbian drug lords, and botched FBI operations. Luckily, we have our (deputized to do whatever they need to do) Miami-Dade police. There was so much authentic sounding jargon flying about, the characters were like talking tech books in a drug undercover procedural (peppered with random cliches and stilted fragments, not giving the actors much to work with).

Because of the setting, the movie is thick with a kind of swaggering machismo: guns and sex and drugs following the credo of whoever has the most toys when he dies (in a testosterone-fest of splattering blood), wins.

“Who are you?� Isabella (Gong Li)

Miami Vice relies on our familiarity with the characters, which is all we have to go on as none of the characters have any identity of their own. They are names and mission with no room for anything else. The performances come off as wooden (Farrell - a charismatic hardbody with bad hair) or sullen (Foxx - strangely restrained, not allowed to demonstrate much wit or warmth). Though Foxx’s Tubbs felt more of an equal partner to Crockett (so the movie didn’t feel like an episode of “Sonny and friends�), the rest of the relationships felt so contrived that not even the characters seemed to buy them.

“There is undercover and there is ‘which way is up?’� –Det. Tubbs

There is a lot that this movie meant to explore. Undercover cops successfully lead lives of duplicity and secrecy for months on end. With their fabricated identities, they are often so undercover as to lose their moral compass. We all face a similar situation living in a fallen world, not sure of our true identities (or our own moral compasses for that matter). Sometimes, like Isabella, this is the only thing, the only world, we know. With the constant deception, fear, broken relationships, and death, this undercover world finds many otherwise good people on the wrong side of the law.

The bottom line is that, Miami Vice retains the rhythms of the show, feeling like a particularly drawn out episode. It could have been an insightful meditation on identity and duality, examining where the good guy stops and the bad guy, the “outlaw attitude,� begins. Instead, it has a convoluted plot, meant to imply depth - as opposed to messy story-telling; a dour and humorless cast of characters; and gritty for grittiness’ sake. No pastels, no percolating pop tunes (besides a poor cover of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight�), it is a grim, though stylized, exercise in atmosphere-buoyed, by-the-numbers crime yarn.

The war on drugs never ends. Thankfully, this movie did. Eventually.


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The Lady in the Water

“Man may have forgotten how to listen.� –Narrator

The Lady in the Water first and foremost, as we’re told, is a fairy tale. The problem afflicting M. Night Shyamalan movies is that people now go into them expecting/anticipating “the twist�. A lot of the reason why his movies have experienced mixed reviews is that the viewer is often promised one kind of movie, but comes out having experienced some thing different. The Sixth Sense wasn’t a horror movie, it was about a boy coming to terms with himself. Signs wasn’t an alien invasion movie, it was the story of a man wrestling with grief and faith. Then Unbreakable and The Village, which brings us to The Lady in the Water. The strength (and some would say weakness) of this movie is that it is so intentionally allegorical, however, the key to deciphering The Lady in the Water is realizing that it purposefully seeks to tell the story of Christ within our cultural context.

“You have to believe that this all makes sense somehow.� --Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti)

The Lady in the Water tells an ancient story, interpreting this story in a (postmodern) cultural context, re-examining this tale by connecting the ancient to the future to find faith. It starts with the Blue World, the spiritual realm home to all manner of beings, namely Narfs. The Narfs are guides, sea nymphs-cum-muses, desperate to impart their knowledge and warnings to vessels (mankind). The natural predator of the Narfs are Scrunts, grass-fleshed creatures that prowl around like roaring lions. Should a Scrunt break the rules that govern the Blue World, they are punished by the Tartutic, essentially angels, though not all that different in appearance than their “fallen� brethren, though more simian. Once a Narf has fulfilled her mission, she is carried off by a giant eagle, the Great Eatlon.

“I think we are linked.� –Young-Soon Choi (Cindy Cheung)

Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), once a doctor, spends his time helping those around him in the most mundane of ways, as the superintendent of The Cove apartments. The building is filled with colorful characters, going about the routine of their lives, each allotted their space in The Cove. Enter Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), the tale made flesh. Cleveland believes that he has no purpose, but “all beings have a purpose,� Story corrects. Cleveland personified that, as a vessel, we want to be known, we want to have the journals of our hearts read. No one is ever told who they are, but at some point, someone has to come along to reveal the truth of their natures to them, and the truth about the Story.

“Does man deserve to be saved?� –Mr. Leeds (Bill Irwin)

Though the theme of figuring out what is truly important (and who you are) runs through all of Shyamalan’s movies, the viewer is still tempted to play guess the twist. However, the twist reveals itself midway through the movie: that everyone has a part to play. Everyone has a gift to be used to carry out their mission in life. The biggest twist of all? That the weak, the seeming useless, are the ones who play the most important roles.

Even Story herself isn’t above being on a journey. Story comes to give purpose, provide a clarity about the nature of the vessels and the world around them. She wrestles with her own messianic consciousness, coming to terms with her fulfilling her role as a meta-Narf. At one point, the movie didn’t seem to stick to its internal rules (as the Narfs aren’t told of their own importance), however, Story is the fulfillment of the rules.

“He’s hearing the voice of God through a crossword puzzle.� –Anna Ran (Sarita Choudhury)

After all of their ancient-future examination of the story of Story, the residents of The Cove realize life is about seeing God at work in the ordinary. Believing that this is a magic infused world, filled with wonder and mystery; that our every action has meaning and eternal consequence. This world is about finding your purpose and joining in the mission, using your gifts, to be a blessing to one another. Only the arrogance of certainty (in the form of the movie critic, Harry Farber (Bob Balaban)) proves to be one’s spiritual undoing. Even the skeptic, Mr. Leeds, stumbling around trying to find meaning in a meaningless existence, wants “to believe in something other than the awfulness.�

The movie is about finding faith. Sometimes we feel like we have to throw out logic, but rather we, like Cleveland, have to become child-like in order to fully grasp the Story. We are all searching for a Story to provide meaning. Obviously, Story is the Christ figure (the movie revolving around her death, resurrection, and ascension being a very big clue). The Eagle landing on her like the Holy Spirit after Christ’s baptism, since rain, as we are told, is a symbol of purification and rebirth. Her return to her home in the heavens leaves Cleveland only capable of saying “Thank You for saving my life.�

This movie has a spirit of magic about it, not necessarily inherent to it, but because it takes pains to grab us by the collar and tell us how margical it is. Thoroughly explaining its magic in case we don’t get it. M. Night Shyamalan’s movies are intentional to the point of being contrived if not heavy-handed. Often accused of making self-indulgent movies (Exhibit E: he casts himself as the writer whose work may not be understood in his lifetime but will affect major changes in the world), either you track with them or you don’t. The Lady in the Water is full of his quirky sensibilities and humor, trying to operate on a meta-level of self-aware criticism (again, back to the movie critic). More intriguingly, the movie is full of his faith which tries to convey the power and importance of fairy tales and myth, the power of story, to transform lives. His reverence to the idea of story-telling bogs down the movie, bordering on pretentious; but if you can go with the movie maybe you can join in the glee of his child-like wonder.


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Interview With Wrath James White Part II

Here is the the first part of the interview:

Once you’ve removed God from the equation of your life, where do you find meaning? Why bother getting up and going through the day if everything is random and chance?

Everything is random and chance with or without God. If God exists his laissez faire attitude towards man's struggles would make the question just as relevant. I think that if God existed and this was all just some little game to see who got into heaven I'd refuse to play. Every child who suffers and dies in pursuit of heaven would make it too much of an injustice. I love humanity too much for that. Besides, as a Black Man I would find the entire notion of this blind unquestioning obedience/slavery offensive. For 400 years our people suffered and toiled under the White man's yoke and now we suffer under his God. All we've done is moved the overseer from the plantations to the pulpits and into our very hearts and minds.

I think the fact that a Supreme Being that is acutely concerned with the affairs of man probably does not exists makes the possibility of seeking out some type of meaning for ourselves possible. Because, "it's God's will" was never a good enough answer for me. It's like when a parent answers a child's question with "Because I said so." That's a guarantee that that child will disobey as soon as your back is turned. The answers most religions provide don't do it for me. I'm not the type for blind obedience. I want real answers.

And let's face it, by the time we are old enough to ask the question, "Why are we here?" we have already invested too much sweat and tears to give this existence up without first squeezing all the joy we can out of it. When we reach the point where the effort and struggle it takes to maintain our existence exceeds any joy we could possibly derive from it than it would be quite logical at that point to consider giving up the struggle.

If you had the chance to ask God some questions, what would you ask Him?

I have thought about it quite a bit and I guess the biggest questions I would want answered would be:

"Why are we here?"
"Why do we suffer? What is there to gain from all the pain in this world?"
And most importantly...
"Do you care? And if you do why do you do such a horrible job of showing it? What type of parent stays hidden from the children he claims to love when they so obviously need him?"

It seems like you are working through some serious, spiritual questions in your work. How do you approach intertwining writing and your beliefs? How do your beliefs come through in your writing?

My beliefs are what inspire me to write, or should I say my lack of belief, my thirst for answers. Arguments are my biggest source of inspiration. A lot of what I write are hypothetical situations designed to illustrate some question I am trying to work through in my own head or some point I'm trying to make. I can't stand people who think they have all the answers because it is so clear to me that everyone is floundering around in the dark just like I am. That's probably why you and I get along so well, because we are both at least somewhat open to the possibility that we might be wrong. My writing is my attempt to make people look at and confront the things they claim to believe and admit their own ignorance. I may not have all the answers but it's obvious to me that most everyone else who think they do are even more ignorant than I am. At least I "Don't think I know what I do not know." to quote Socrates.

Why horror? What sort of questions/demons are you trying to work through in your work? Why have you chosen the more graphic end of the horror spectrum to work in? Do you think that limits you or your potential audience?

The beauty of horror is that it envelops just about every other genre Sci-fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Thrillers, so-called Literary Fiction. It allows for absolute freedom. I tend to like to drive my points home with a sledgehammer and horror allows me to use extreme examples to get my point across. I can show you a human going through unimaginable torment and then ask, "Now what kind of God/political leader/ parent/friend/Lover/or fellow human being would do or allow this to be done to another person? I think it sobers people up and makes them really think about themselves and this world we live in when they read my stuff and realize that no matter how extreme the examples I use are there are people out there doing or suffering through the exact same things I'm describing and worse..Not everyone of course wants this sobering experience. Many people just want simple distraction and escapism and horror is good for that too though perhaps not my writing.

The readership for horror is very small right now compared to what it was but I do believe that it's because most people are just unaware of what's out there. Books have immense competition now between TV, movies, DVDs, and video games and the Book publishers have not responded well to this increased competition. They still do not market authors well if at all. They seem to be in denial or simply resolved to the idea that each new generation is reading less and less. It's sad but true. So, yes, being a horror author limits my readership, but being a writer of any kind right now outside of maybe Westerns and Romance novels means a smaller readership than it did just a decade ago. For me it will always be a labor of love anyway. I’m petrified of the day when I need to do this in order to pay bills.

As writers, we’re gods after a fashion: we create worlds, people it, and often direct the characters actions as much as the characters take on lives of their own and do their own thing. My question is, as “their god,� how do you justify doing what you do to your characters?

The same way you do, anything is permissible if it helps tell the story and I am just grandiose enough to believe that what I have to say is worth torturing and butchering my characters for. Not being a Christian I don't feel the need to pretend to be humble in that or any regard.

What’s up next for you?

I have a novella coming out this summer from Delirium Books called "His Pain". I'm looking now for a publisher for my magnum opus, "Yaccub" a novel that deals with everything from crime and poverty to race, religion, and family. I'm currently working on a novel about inter-racial relationships and slavery titled "400 Days of Oppression". I am taking the advice of the late great Richard Laymon and writing the stories that only I could have written.


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Interview With Wrath James White Part I

(From the World Horror Convention 2002)

For matters of complete disclosure, Wrath James White and I are friends.

For people who know the two of us, that never ceases to amuse them. We are polar opposites. Our writing styles, our lifestyles, our politics, our worldviews, our spiritual perspectives. However, we have more in common than we’re both black: we respect one another. His blog has gained him a host of new fans who normally wouldn’t pick up one of his works, moved by his passion and intellect (yes, he’s even guest blogged for me). We are able to have conversations on some of the prickliest of topics because we listen to one another, we’re not interested in converting one another, and we are genuinely interested in seeing how the other person comes at things, even if we don’t agree.

I recently reviewed his collection of short stories, Book of 1,000 Sins, and wanted to ask him about his beliefs and his work.

How would you describe your beliefs? Atheist? Agnostic? Humanistic?

That's quite a difficult question to answer because I don't know that I've defined them yet. Atheists deny the existence of God. I don't deny that God exists I just doubt that man has the vaguest clue about the creator. I find most religions to be little more than wishful fairytales, manifestations of man's fears and desires and some of them just border on the ridiculous. The idea that the being that created the entire universe would care wether you jacked-off in the bathroom or had sexual desires for a member of the opposite sex just seems absurd. No less absurd however than the idea that a few "Hail Mary's" and an "Our Father" would allow a child molester to enter paradise while a Buddhist goes to hell. What I do deny is the credibility of faith, that it should hold the same weight as empirical evidence as reliable a source of knowledge. I suppose that would make me agnostic.

It sounds as if you want to believe in something. There are all types of faith: faith in science, faith in self, faith in religion. Would you consider yourself a man of faith? What role does faith play in your life?

I consider myself a man of theories and hypothesis. The difference between faith and a hypothesis is that a hypothesis can be proven wrong. When you hold a hypothesis you may want it to be true but you accept the possibility that it may be wrong. You are not committed to one conclusion or another until all the facts are gathered. A hypothesis can be verified or refuted and change based on new evidence. Hypothesis are not considered "Truth". Faith does not allow for refutation. In order for a Hypothesis to be true there has to be a circumstance under which it would be false. For instance if I had a hypothesis that a gasoline engine could run on water I could test that by pouring water into the engine. If the engine runs I'm right if it doesn't I'm wrong and I change my hypothesis to fit this new evidence. Faith allows for no circumstance under which the theories it espouses could be wrong. Faith does not even allow for them to be considered theories but only "Truth" with a capital "T". For instance if I were to ask someone how they would know if God stopped loving them right now they could not answer that because they could never allow for that possibility. If I were to ask what would change in your life if God were to suddenly stop loving you. Would a loved one die? A favorite pet? Would you lose your job? Would you lose your home? Would your health fail? They would have no answer because the belief that God loves you is not based on any empirical evidence but faith in a book. No evidence can refute it because it is not based on evidence. This belief without evidence not only makes things like racism, homophobia, sexism, holy wars, and terrorism possible but inevitable. If your beliefs are not based on anything verifiable all I have to do to get you to hate someone is write in a book that God said you were supposed to hate them or put it in the mouth of a preacher. From there suicide bombers and Kamikaze death pilots are an easy step. It's easy to deny human rights to someone you believe has sinned in the eyes of God. It is easy to hate them when you don't have to give anymore reason for that hate then, "It says so in the bible."

I love humanity and so I am offended by the ills I see caused by faith. All of the positive things faith has done could, in my opinion, have been done just as easily by reason without the risk of intolerance and fanaticism.

Do you allow for the possibility of the existence of God? What would you imagine Him to be?

I believe that an intelligent creator is possible. This entire universe could be sitting in a petri dish in some lab somewhere growing like a fungus for all we know. We could be little more than a medical experiment, a side-effect of some larger experiment. I would imagine that the creator of the universe would be no more concerned with or aware of the concerns of man than we are concerned with or aware of the microscopic single-celled organisms that live in our eyelashes. I think that the creator would be surprised to discover that we worshiped he/she or it. I think the creator would be surprised that we believed ourselves to hold such a high place of importance in it's creator's life. As surprised as we would be if we found out that the micro-organisms in our eyelashes were building temples in our honor and praying for forgiveness every time they cheated at poker or had impure thoughts. If there is a "Supreme Being" I doubt he would be quite a trifling and petty as man's religions make him out to be. I doubt he would require you to light candles and burn incense and chant spells and prayers. That all just seems sort of silly. I can't imagine a being that dwarfs the universe being as insecure and emotionally unstable as most of the Western master/slave religions make him out to be.

[to be continued]


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Book of a Thousand Sins

written by Wrath James White
published by Two-Backed Books

"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates said this more than two thousand years ago. Yet how many of us really examine our lives, our beliefs, values and opinions? How many of us question why we believe what we believe from our morals and ethics to our prejudices and biases to our politics and religion? How many of us just parrot our cultural, familial, or generational party line without truly understanding the reasoning behind these ideologies? How many of us go through life like a leaf in the wind just going with the flow without once questioning why or where it is all leading?

When your average person thinks of (extreme) horror, whether they realize it or not, they are thinking of work similar to the work of Wrath James White. When I say horror, many (of you) are thinking blood and guts and maybe randomly naked people. As a genre, it is dismissed as being too brutal, too sadistic, and too terrifying to have any redeeming value.

“He would free them from the mores, the traditions and the societal, moral, and cultural restraints that have for so long fettered the development of the human spirit.� –“The Book of a Thousand Sins�

I usually don’t read from the extremist/bizarro spectrum of horror, though I am a huge fan of Wrath James White’s blog. I always felt that it typically doesn’t have a moral core since so much of what the extreme side of the genre tries to do is get a response out of the reader, using the tools of the style to provoke arousal, revulsion, or even offense. While I do occasionally read things from the extreme side of things–Clive Barker, John Shirley, Gemma Files–without a doubt, White’s The Book of a Thousand Sins might be the most vile, disturbing, sacrilegious, and brain-scarringly haunting piece of work I’ve read. Almost prompting me to title this piece “Wrath James White: What the hell is wrong with you?� However, these things are also what makes it a notable horror work.

All that being said, why is Wrath James White’s work worth wrestling with?

“After stopping the intrusion of that one false ideology with the simplest of all defenses, a lucid question, I immediately began to wonder how much additional mental refuse I might rid my mind of with the strength of that one question. How many ideas had I accepted simply because so many others had accepted it before me?� –“Awake�

It is no secret that Wrath has some issues with religion. In his 15 short stories, many violent and some sexually explicit, he keeps returning to certain themes. “Awake� explores the power of asking the question “why?� As one man searches for God, and the journey it takes him on, in his story “He Who Increases Knowledge,� we get a glimpse of how he sees religion: as a renunciation of reason and autonomy as people become cattle. A Christian punished for the sin of pride and self-righteousness in “Don’t Scream,� which is a violent meditation on the afterlife. “Couch Potato� is a nihilistic horror show examining what the point of life is. Again, this follows the theme to his work, a search for answers to questions and heaven help us when he doesn’t like what he hears. Interestingly, the answers to the questions that he poses tend to eventuate in the same place: violence, insanity, and death.

“Pain is the nervous system’s primary indicator that we are doing something that might compromise the integrity of our bodies. It presents us from destroying ourselves. To not know pain is to not understand what it takes to survive and succeed.� –“The Sooner They Learn�

It might be unfair to say that his characters are bereft of moral restraints. One thing they have in common is that they constantly question how knowledge is passed down, whether or not people have accepted beliefs simply because tradition passed the ideas down. Their minds unravel once they hold to no beliefs, becoming assured of only one’s self. In other words, they are the product of skepticism unchecked, unable to find a reasonable reason to draw their next breath if everything was random and meaningless. And then finding themselves capable of doing anything.

In “The Sooner They Learn,� White poses that if there were a God, He was afflicted with Munchausen by Proxy. He imagines God as a woman, the ultimate mother, causing suffering in order to have us call out to Him to save us. This is the knowledge that Adam learned in the garden of Eden and such a deity affliction would be one answer to the problem of pain in the world. The book ends with the story “No Questions Unanswered,� which wrestles with the argument of faith vs. facts in the context of what happens to us if God is dead (or killed in this case)?

“You have no idea what death is. Your deluded little fanatic ass believes that there is something waiting for you after all this is over, but there isn’t. Believe me, I know this life is all there is. Religion is one big lie and you’re just another sucker. Perhaps the biggest of all.� –“A dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man�

In this revenge fantasy with a terrorist, testing his “faith� both wrestles with the idea of the afterlife as well as echoing the words of Paul (“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.� I Corinthians 15:14). That is pretty much the crux of things. The despair and hopelessness, the sense of (tragic) desperation to White’s characters pervade the stories. In Calvinistic terms, White could be speaking to the total depravity of man when left to his own devices. The flip side to this doctrine is that sometimes this comes out as acknowledging that man has a darker nature that he needs to resist, restrain, or “kill.� The conclusion, whether White intends it or not, is that if we have no faith in God, we certainly can’t have faith in man either.

It all comes down to hope. Hope is the anticipation of a good that is not yet here. Sometimes the good is deliverance from an evil (which doesn’t happen very often in any of White’s stories), but it is also related to faith. Faith is confidence grounded in reality, the reality of the invisible; not seen, but nonetheless real. An answer to the bleakness, emptiness we all so often feel. We live in a world of sin, suffering, and evil. Horror stories, like any other kind of story, can be an important vehicle of truth. And I certainly wouldn’t argue about the transformative power of story.

Having built up quite a following in the small press, Wrath James White is poised for mainstream success, waiting for the right vehicle for him to move to the next level. The Book of a Thousand Sins is not without its problems. The stories are inconsistent and a little uneven, with the title story being a little too long (though one got the feeling that White really enjoyed writing that one). Some have some jarring POV switches. Others are afflicted with too much brainy philosophizing getting in the way of the atmosphere of the story. One, “More Maggots,� though delightfully gross prove little more than one note jokes. All of his stories, however, are rife with striking images.

Wrath James White is at his strongest when he meditates on the human condition. He is quick to go to the extreme, painting with those colors when he doesn’t have to. I couldn’t help thinking that his visceral writing style has become a crutch at this point in his career, when often in his tales, the true horror lies beyond the blood and the sex. Which is why part of me felt as if this collection was a bit of a “good-bye and thank you for your support� to his early fans. While ever honing his craft, he demonstrates a creative agility with all things depraved. It’s easy to be nasty. It’s a lot more difficult to bring intelligent themes to the canvas and paint with nastiness as Wrath James White does. He may not be for everyone, but you can tell that he has definitely found his voice.



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Superman Returns

or “The Passion of the Superman�

“They can be a great people, Kal-El–they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you–my only son.� –Jor-El (Marlon Brando)

It’s a story old as creation itself: the Father sent the Son to be a blessing to the world. To inspire us to join in His mission. To stand for Truth and Justice. The Son, after being about his ministry for a few years, goes away for a time, returning to His home in the heavens, but expects us to carry on and be faithful in his absence.

Which brings us to Superman.

The first Superman movie (1978) made us believe that a man could fly. However, we live in a post-Matrix cinematic world. Brandon Routh’s casting as Superman is more of a compromise between not being able to re-cast a young Christopher Reeve and not wanting to cast Tom Welling from the Smallville series. Superman Returns picks up after a five year absence of our hero, on sabbatical to the remains of his doomed home planet of Krypton to see the graveyard for himself. During this time, many gave up hope of his return. Even Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on, engaged to a new man, Richard White (James Marsden, joining his former X-Men director and maybe explaining why his character, Cyclops, was killed off screen during X-Men: Last Stand). She also happens to totes around a five year old son, Jason White (Tristan Lake Leabu, whose performance was disturbingly reminiscent of The Omen’s Damien). As with the Spider-Man movies, we have such a well known hero and cast of characters that casting doesn’t seem to matter as much as long as the players don’t screw things up. What you end up with, however, are people playing cutouts with the movie counting on the sheer power of myth to carry it through. Which it does, this go around.

Superman Returns takes into account the mythology of Smallville as well as the first two (Richard Donner) Superman movies. Though written with a certain amount of messianic expectation, the movie doesn’t skimp on iconic images to build the myth, such as Superman catching the symbol of the Daily Planet, a giant globe, letting us know that he has the whole world in his hands. Superman is a cosmic guardian angel, omnipresent like the Holy Spirit, with shots of him hovering in the heavens, hearing it all, empowered by the sun’s (son’s) light. [And his rescue of the airplane certainly beat Michael Jordan sending a fax to let everyone know “I’m back.�] Though the special effects were spectacular, on more than one occasion Superman appeared to be too digitalized, practically a beatifically filmed action figure.

“Gods are selfish beings who fly around in red tights and don’t share their gifts with mankind.� –Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor sees himself as a modern day Prometheus, stealing the technology of the gods and delivering it to man. For a cut of the profits. He’s not the super genius of the comic books, nor bumbling villainous businessman. His scheme involves using stolen Kryptonian technology to create a new land mass that he will own, no matter that billions would die in the process of him creating it. In other words, he is little more than a grand scheming petty thug. However, Kevin Spacey imbues him with a charm and a gravitas that the script lacks, giving a delightfully sadistic, scenery chewing performance, just this side of Gene Hackman’s classic hamming.

“The world doesn’t need a Savior. And neither do I.� –Lois Lane

Apparently once absent, people do what they do best and try to topple their heroes. They forget about Superman and what he stood for, re-characterize him and de-construct who he was. Lois herself wins a Pulitzer Prize for an editorial entitled “Why the world doesn’t need Superman.� Yet, there is a void that Superman filled, not just for her, but for all who turned to him.

Superman finds himself on a journey, tested more emotionally and spiritually, but eventually physically. A crisis of love as his life becomes a struggle between the alien and the human sides of himself. He tries to balance his calling versus the possibilities of him having a life outside of his mission. The true heart of the movie revolves around this love triangle between Superman/Lois/Richard (a triangle complicated and expanded by both Clark and Jason). For a while we wonder if he was more man than Superman, as he uses his X-ray vision and super hearing to keep tabs on Lois (becoming, in fact, Super-Stalker). For that matter, Clark Kent, the man of Superman, essentially disappears during huge chunks of the movie and no one, certainly no Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, seems to particularly notice.

“There are questions to be asked, here in this fortress of solitude. And we should look for the answers together.� –Jor-El

Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, from where Luthor steals the Kryptonian technology, was a place where Superman could go to express his Garden of Gethsemane moments where he doubts his mission and purpose. A place where he could learning in community by talking to his father when times got dark. Such a time including what could only be described as the passion of Superman.

Beginning with a beating that stopped short of a scourging at the hands of Luthor’s henchmen, it included a (kryptonite) spear to the side. By the time he took care of the Kryptonian island threat, we see Superman’s arms spread out as if on a cross, sacrificing himself for humanity, then laying as if dead for days. Not coincidentally, it was a woman, a nurse, who was the first to notice that he had risen. The movie concludes with Superman a chat with his son (and if we’re not taking the Christ analogy too far by pointing out the The Da Vinci Code-like twist to the story).

Why does the movie dwell so much on the messianic comparisons to Superman? Because, in response to Lois’ comments about not needing a savior, Superman comes back with the response that “everyday I hear people crying out for one.�

“It’s like a seed and all it needs is water.� –Lex Luther

The movie centers around love, faith, and hope - the three fruits of our lives’ work and what we should be about. Lex Luthor wanted to re-create the world through one simple act (Kryptonian crystal) while Christ wanted to do so through one simple teaching (love).

Also on the plus side, Superman Returns is filled with insider geek tidbits. Posing with the car over his head to re-create the cover of Action Comics #1, Superman’s first appearance. The Daily Planet headlines (“Superman is Dead� and “Superman Lives�) book-ending the “Death of Superman� comic book storyline. The movie crams a lot of action into the story, allowing Superman a chance to showcase all of his powers (X-ray vision, speed, strength, flight, cold breath, heat vision, invulnerability, super-hearing ... all without giving him new ones like flying around the planet to turn back time).

Superman Returns basically updates Richard Donner’s movies, being little more than a love letter to them and Christopher Reeves. However, Bryan Singer stages an amazing relaunch of the franchise. We can only hope that with the next go around, he infuses more of a re-imagining into our hero.


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