From Concept to Reality

With numerous techniques for creating a specific reaction, the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer have created a visionary example of how to produce a show that not only drives plot, but also provides subtle characterization through dialogue and technicalities. Every camera angle can change perception, every one-liner alter perception of a character, provide backstory, and Joss Whedon’s crew has mastered that art.

Even just the descriptions at the beginning of each scene provide a specific image for what should be there, a detailed recollection of what the directors and writers want the audience to see. “The front of the affluent Southern California school gleams darkly in the moonlight” (pg. 5). That singular sentence alone sets the stage for a number of things. Firstly, the horror story. Why else would it “gleam darkly in the moonlight”? What else would this do for them but set the tone for the entire rest of the show--particularly taking into consideration the fact that this is the pilot episode and therefore an introduction to the entire series. Secondly, the environment: the word “affluent” sets a particular image in people’s mind. This isn’t some run-down building in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, this is a high-end Southern California high school--and beyond setting expectations of the environment, it sets an expectation for the characters. Southern California has a certain image, there are expectations of how people in that region of the country speak, for how they dress and act and present themselves, and while that may not seem significant or obvious in the opening scene, it’s fairly prevalent when you look at the script--sometimes, there are more than just monsters hiding in the shadows. Sometimes, there’s strategy.

It’s interesting, how the simplest of words can can alter the image that readers have in their mind. This is no different in writing a script than it is in writing a story, except that scripts are all about the visual. Take the introduction on page 14 for instance--shortly following Buffy’s encounter with Mr. Flutie (the school’s principal), she is described as “looking a bit depressed”. This would be no big deal, if it weren’t for the fact that that expression has to be executed by the actress portraying her. The play-by-play descriptions of scenes are some of the most important in the lighter scripts--in the ones without much detail, the places where detail is provided are extremely important. The significance of details is seen again on the bottom of page 15, where Cordelia Chase is described as “pretty, self assured. Killer outfit” (15). These aren’t details that just get thrown in for the sake of being there--details can make or break a character, and in this case--they make Cordelia, or at least what the audience initially comes to know of her. In film, first impressions are vital, and therefore introductions are too. In film, this goes beyond the personality of a person or description of a place--it includes the appearances. It includes every action and detail involved in their presentation. Anything out of place will alter the way that things are viewed--and not necessarily in the favor of the creator or writer.

The fact of the matter is that script writing really isn’t all that different from story writing, as far as I’ve seen--it’s still storytelling, with the same basic rules: keep the audience invested, know your characters, plot can’t drive plot (characters must, instead). Script writing is just a different format. Certain details are more prevalent or vital to the perception of the work. Certain concepts or images pop out more, depending on the way a scene is set or idea is cast. But looking at the two concepts as two parts of the same whole actually makes more sense than looking at them as two completely individual things. It was once said that “Directors are failed novelists and novelists are failed directors” and that quote? It seems like one of the most accurate descriptions of the two that I can find. They’re just two ways of telling the same story.

Dreams in the Dusk

Okay, okay, so after this I'll try to keep away from the Sandburg poetry. Try being the primary word, there. I will do my utmost best to avoid my default setting. At least it's not Poe! This time, it's "Dreams in the Dusk" that I've been infatuated with--and for good reason. (But then again, I'm biased, since it's my blog.)
So let's kick it off with not the first, but the second line of the piece: "Only dreams closing the day". And while it may just seem like semantics, the "Only" of this line is extremely important. It's not just "dreams closing the day", it's only dreams--specifically and irrevocably that one thing. This particular phrasing, laying emphasis not just on the dreams themselves but on the closing of the day, begins to point out the dramatically important theme--night is coming. Only dreams, the likes of which are associated with night, close out the day, lead to the night where the darkness rises and takes hold of the world.
The "gray things, the dark things" (line 3), come out then, to their "dreamland" (line 4)--their nightmarish twist on reality that not only feeds on the darkness, but feeds the darkness, itself. These dark things, the inhabitants of the night, are representative of our fears--as all monsters are. They are symbolic of the pain and the unknown, of the insecurities and the wide chasm of distance between what is expected of us and what we actually find ourselves to be. This, Sandburg points out through the re-emphasis on dreams--which, okay, let's be honest, how many of us have found our broken dreams to be the biggest contributors to our nightmares. Who's to say that our fears of failure, our constant struggle to meet our own expectations, or even just to achieve what we expect to achieve, won't drive us into madness? Who's to say that we are impermeable to these things?
"Tears and loss and broken dreams / May your heart find at dusk".
And this is exactly what was mentioned before hand, but stated by Sandburg. Tears, both in the sense of tears cried and tears in the fabric of our plans. Loss, both of innocence to the darkness and dreams that have fallen apart. Broken Dreams, the once-brilliant hopes that lit our ways, dashed and outed until all that is left is what could have been--a very dangerous thing, indeed.

Three Times Ten Million Thoughts

Carl Sandburg’s “The Four Brothers” is a fantastic poem that may actually be longer than the requirement for this blog… Found here, it is an incredibly lengthy work covering the events of World War II from the sidelong view of The Four Brothers—The United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia. This work stays true to Sandburg’s traditional form of prose-poetry with run-on sentences so long that they leave you winded and stuck in Albania and an insight on the human condition that leaves you speechless on top of it all.

While I’m admittedly biased in the area of Sandburg’s poetry (seeing as I kind of adore everything he’s ever written that I’ve read…), it’s still safe to say that he’s outdone himself with this particular piece. His point is clear, if not necessarily concise, and finds itself twisted into the identifying diction of a man that spent years people-watching, but I digress.

While projecting his pride for the countries that fought for a world that would know only peace, Mr. Sandburg also makes quite evident his feelings for their reign. Words like “gibbering” and “God’s great dustpan” leave a bit to be desired in his railing description of Russia’s great Romanoff family, and so, too, with Germany’s Hohenzollerns. His description of Adolf Hitler as a “half-cracked one-armed child of the German kings”, “a child born with his head wrong-shaped,/ The blood of rotted kings in his veins” is also fairly indicative of his feelings on the matter. Why call Hitler—a mass murderer, a man whose name is so well-known and feared that even children scorn it—a child if not to make a point? Why use the phrasing “blood of rotted kings” if not to make a point?

Exactly. No matter how subversively and keenly the great poet finds himself manipulating the words in his works, the message remains; the only way to end the madness was war. “There is only one way now” Sandburg wrote in what is assuredly one of my favorite stanzas of the piece, “only the way of the red tubes and the great price”. War was the only way out, so far had the world let Hitler go—a man driven mad by his ancestry and ambition, a man that spilt blood for a cause he deemed worthy, and The Four Brothers deemed terrible.

Now don’t hear me saying that Sandburg is condoning Hitler—he isn’t. There is no praise of the Kaiser that “will go onto God’s great dustpan”, but rather a leveling of the playing field, as he recognizes that the Four Brothers were, in objective terms, no better.

“The killing gangs are on the way”.

The Four Brothers did as their people wished, as they deemed right in the eyes of “God [who] is a god of the People. / And the God who made the world … is the God of bleeding France and bleeding Russia; / This is the God of the people of Britain and America”. They did what “three times ten million men” asked them to do, they avenged the lives lost and fought for the tortured, but they killed too, in what they thought was right.

I give kudos to Sandburg for pointing that out. 

A People's Rights Rant

So… The Age of Innocence and A Doll’s House, written by Edith Wharton and Henrik Ibsen respectively, are interesting to say the least. Both are well-crafted in their intent and their execution, in their social criticism and the reactions of their respective societies. These two authors were both certainly aware of what they wanted to say and of how the world around them would react—otherwise the works themselves wouldn’t have been written. And reading them, I find myself asking a question: have we really changed all that much?

Now, before you get on your high horse and lecture me on the improvement of women’s rights and all that, before you call me a raging feminist and completely dismiss my opinions, let me finish; women’s rights have come an incredible distance from the time that Wharton and Ibsen wrote their works. A great deal more women have a great deal more respect and opportunity and future—I get that. The United States alone has come a long way, and the world as a whole has taken a huge step forward, but overall, gender expectations and roles are still very similar.

Women are still the cooks, the cleaners, the ones responsible for their children; men are still the providers, the hunters, the head of the household—which is fine, but not all that different. Yes, women are able to be more independent, but no, men weren’t the only source of that problem. We are still expected to get married, to stay innocent, to bear children and be “good”—which is, again, fine, but not all that different.

Even disregarding women, thought, the roles of men have changed very little in the grand scheme of things. As previously mentioned, men are expected to provide for their families—it is both a necessity and a weight that they can neither fight off nor run from if they are to have a family. Society, as a whole, regards men as the champions of the home and the outside world—they don’t have a choice, it seems, to be anything but strong and independent. This sort of mentality is, within reason, not a terrible one. If they want to, there is absolutely no reason for a man to not be the head of the household, to be the breadwinner, and to be responsible for finances; the issue comes, instead, when the expectations are forced to extremes.

But disregarding my own social commentary, there is plenty to be said for Wharton and Ibsen’s books on the subject of gender roles. Archer describes May Wayland as a “darling” who “doesn’t even guess what it [the opera] is all about” (Wharton 4), while Torvald and Nora both refer to her as Torvald’s “little skylark” (Ibsen 12). Torvald rants on about the expectation of men to be the providers and instilled with good morals, while Archer recounts and fantasizes about “teaching” May—a phrase which holds a double meaning in-and-of itself. And while these two writers had astounding timing, hitting it off right as the revolution of human rights began, both were faced with considerable trials and judgments and protests.

In 2013, writings of the same general topic don’t receive as much public scrutiny, but the fact of the matter is that there is still backlash, instead of being judged as “out of place” because it goes against moral standing, they are judged for their independence and dubbed “tenacious” or “too feminist” (notice that books written on such topics typically don’t involve men’s rights—it’s almost always women). So really, at the core of it, has much changed? 

Lessons Learned

Duality was William Blake’s signature—the mix of innocence and experience, of grace and rage; it was what seemed to hold his works together. So maybe the quote at the beginning of John Gardner’s Grendel should have hinted at the duality within the pages, served as a sort of warning for the oncoming headache that was sure to settle deep into our skulls.

But we missed it.

That, however, didn’t make the duality any less present (or keep our heads from, y’know, cracking into thousands of tiny splinters). Innocence and experience, love and hate, good and evil, Dragon and Shaper—there is no set side that Grendel finds himself upon throughout the course of his story. And the best demonstration of this that I can find is that of the Dragon and the Shaper.

Most of my class seemed to claim in various discussions that, in the aftermath of his Chapter Five Meet the Dragon Migraine, Grendel settled into the ancient creature’s mentality. With that, though, I disagree. Even after chapter five, even after meeting the Dragon, Grendel makes comments or acts in ways that just don’t fit with the philosophies he has supposedly taken on. On page 76, Chapter 6, Grendel says “Though I scorned them, sometimes hated them, there had been something between myself and men when we could fight”. Where in that is the Dragon’s mentality of the human’s futility and “crackpot theories”? Where in that is the resignation to let things pass as they please?

Precisely. In that quote, Grendel demonstrates the duality that is so key to Blake’s writing. While he is, for the large majority, given over to Dragon’s pile of gold explanation, he still finds himself believing that there is (or at least was) more to his relationship with man. That he almost misses the feeling of belonging to something in the struggle, even if that was the antagonistic and violent retaliations; that now, with him charmed to the point of near-immortality, something is gone.

“Enough of that! A night for tearing heads off, bathing in blood! Except, alas, he has killed his quota for the season. Care, take care of the gold-egg-laying goose!” (93) is another prime example of Blake’s duality-heavy influence. The phrase “killed his quota” feels akin to the Shaper’s mentality, where there are rules, restrictions set in place like those of war—unspoken, but present nonetheless. There is a limit, a set number that Grendel allows himself to kill, or maybe requires of himself. And in that, we see the Shaper’s influence: Grendel will kill, he will enjoy doing it, but he will respect the balance and do no more than is absolutely necessary. That line however is immediately followed by a distinctly Dragon-esque line making reference to a “gold-egg-laying goose”. Geese sit on their eggs to protect them, to warm them, to guard them—as the Dragon does and tells Grendel to.

We missed the warning, got smacked in the face with Blake-esque duality, and were rewarded with migraines that felt like death, but, if nothing else, we gained one useful nugget of information for future readings:

Always look the quote up first. 

Cliche but Still Relevant (Never Thought I'd Find Myself Here)

The rage, the snap of anger and burning pain and tough-guy attitude, people understand. They can comprehend the chaos, can relate to it. People understand what has become known as the “Chaotic Good,” or even the “Chaotic Evil,” because they can wrap their minds around the assorted emotions that come with each side. Every villain has a backstory, every “big bad” has a purpose—even if it’s not as evident to begin with.

What audiences have a hard time understanding is the borderline-perfect character that still somehow has evident flaws; the one that holds true to their purpose, to their morals, without much visible emotion. A sort of neutral, lawful good.

And I get that—it’s hard to empathize with a seemingly emotionless character. It’s difficult to look at the borderline perfection of someone like Stefan Salvatore (from the CW’s hit TV series The Vampire Diaries) and cheer him on, especially when he’s standing against his love-wrecked, angry, and obviously faulted brother, Damon Salvatore—a fix him upper’s dream.

What people seem to miss, though, is the heart of Stefan’s character and his necessity for order and morality. Granted, without his raving addiction to human blood, it appears that the writers have “successfully cured him of anything interesting about his personality” (Damon, Season 1, Episode 21), but that’s the interesting part. Stefan, unlike most other characters, has two strictly unrelated sides to his portrayal—the good, moral, “uninteresting” Stefan and the blood-addicted, ripper-esque, terrifying Stefan. He’s probably the closest representation of a true addict in the entire series.

Viewers seem to cast this aside, however, as if his being a vampire makes his addiction any less valid. Yes, he’s a vampire. Yes, he’s addicted to human blood. Yes, it’s a fairly clichéd characteristic all things considered. But look at the other vampires that the show provides—Damon (who’s got more problems than LOST’s heroin-addict Charlie), Caroline Fell (with her personality issues heightened to the point of insanity), Katherine Pierce (a manipulative, maniacal seductress with more of a sense for self-preservation than for affection). Are any of them as helpless to resist their life source as Stefan? No.

And it’s this addiction, this helplessness, that makes Stefan Salvatore what he is: weak. He puts on a good show, pretends that he’s strong enough to resist his temptations, and does everything in his power to do so, but the fact of the matter is that he’s not what he says he is. He proves this over and over again by taking what is undoubtedly one of the worst routes for an addict to take.  He shuns human blood, completely cuts himself off, and denies himself even the smallest taste for decades. It just takes a drop to send him reeling again.

There’s more to characters than their surface personality, and while the “chaotic” or “bad” ones make audiences want  to learn their story, it’s the “lawful,” “boring,” and “moral” ones that seem to need it more. If the writers have done their jobs properly, then no protagonist is simply moral or a “hard ass” without a reason, no antagonist is “bad” without cause.

Next time, look for it. 

The Top Reason I'm Watching Lost: It's An AP Lit Nightmare, and It's Glorious

As I am in the process of starting JJ Abram's infamous project LOST (thank you Mr. Fortunato, Mom and friends, and the entire rest of the world) I figured it might be best to blog about it. So let's just kick this off with one of my favorite (as of Episode 3) blatantly obvious character and symbol.

John Locke (aptly named, as my mother oh so constantly reassures me) is, for starters, quiet. And I’m not talking we just crashed on a deserted island holy crap shocked sort of quiet; no, this is full-on morally ambiguous, potentially a massive villain quiet. He speaks to absolutely no one for a full episode—and, by the passage of time as we know it, a full day. His plane has crashed, there are (at minimum) dozens dead, and he could be stranded on this island for the rest of his life, and yet John is not fazed.

In part one of the phenomenon’s pilot, the island is drenched in an unexpected torrential downpour and the other survivors—still desperately hoping for rescue—seek refuge under the wreckage. Not John—of course not, right?—no, instead, the ever silent, eye-scarred, bald man plants himself in the middle of the beach sand and waits—rain washing over him. Is it a cleansing? Maybe, but I sort of doubt it. Cleansings don’t typically involve beach sand sticky with blood and fresh tears. They don’t involve a borderline maniacal smile and calm acceptance. No, cleansings are typically all grit and pain and fighting—a walk through the rain, yes, but one that leaves them more worn for the wear despite rejuvenation. But if not a cleansing, what is it? A descent into darkness? (No, that title falls to ex-rocker Charlie. But he’s another blog on his own.) To be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure what the rain means, except that John Locke is not at all what we expect—and he’ll stay that way until the end.

Moving onward to part two of the pilot, though, we see something even more interesting in the (undoubtedly extensive) novel that is John Locke—his first choice of companions is a 10 year old boy named Walter. It’s safe to say that Walter has daddy issues, complete with a lost dog and multiple spats that end in preadolescent rage-quits, which leaves him an open, easy target for another male role model. If we can even call John that. And it all starts with backgammon: “two players, one is light and one is dark” (Episode 2). And in that moment, with John providing both knowledge (starting with pointing out that backgammon is highly superior to checkers) and a secret, we see what is the first, though undoubtedly not the last, loss of innocence.

But of course we have yet to find out what the secret is.

So what, though? Why did JJ Abrams spend so much of his time putting details into this one character? Why waste hours on deciding how the camera pans over the rainy beach and the exact placement of John’s scar? The best and only answer I have as a newfound viewer is this: John Locke’s roll in LOST  is far from small, direct, or easily followed—and Abrams just wanted to give us a little heads up. How considerate of him.