Lucky McKee's "The Woman," Horror, and Offense

I don't generally follow buzz out of Sundance, but I sat up and took notice when Lucky McKee's new film, "The Woman," started generating a hullabaloo last week. Co-authored by Jack Ketchum, author of The Girl Next Door, "The Woman" sounds like it's a real button-pusher. Writing at HitFix, Drew McWeeny notes that "'The Woman' outrages and offends with surgical skill."  He also offers a first-person account of the dustup that occurred at the midnight screening of the film at Sundance. In addition to numerous peaceful walkouts and one notable fainting episode, the film gave one guy a serious case of the rage virus, which a bystander recorded for posterity. To be fair, it does kind of suck that it's really tough to get away with having a giant temper tantrum in a public place these days. But even a casual glance at the first few minutes of the video evidence will tell you that  the rage virus takes you to a place beyond caring.

Given the McKee / Ketchum collaboration going on here, I'm not too surprised that "The Woman" is freaking people out. McKee's May, starring the luminous Angela Bettis, portrays an extremely oddball, so-wrong-she's-right female protagonist so skillfully that if you've got even the merest hint of an inner freak, you will be cheering. Clearly, McKee has a deep investment in understanding female desire and the ways in which it can lie beyond the pale.

That in itself is going to ruffle feathers.



And Jack Ketchum. The Girl Next Door came out in 1989. I remember the shelves at the bookstore in our local mall crammed with paperback copies of this book, the "x" in "next" rendered extra large and shiny. There have since been new editions, and a recent film version which Stephen King called "authentically shocking." A couple of years ago, I decided to read the novel. It was riveting and totally brutal. Jack Ketchum has mad skills when it comes to presenting human savagery. The Girl Next Door doesn't let you turn away until it's all over.

When you subject your audience to things they don't want to see, in a way that makes them care, that's powerful stuff. That's a recipe for the best kind of offense.

Most horror films only deal with the first part of the equation: showing us things we don't want to see. That's part of the titillation of horror. When it's done well, it can thrill you and leave you with a sense that regular reality has been disrupted.

Since I am super duper susceptible and easily freaked, I enjoy any film that takes the time to show me something I don't want to see, and that does it in a way that's convincing (The Exorcist), so over the top it becomes almost ballet-like (Neil Marshall's Doomsday), or so over the top it becomes hilarious and melds into slapstick-with-guts (Slither). There are other good, artful ways to show things we don't want to see. We don't necessarily care that much about the characters or about what happens to them (The Ring), but we are still engaged because what is happening is really disorienting, disturbing, or - a rare but always delightful trick - creates schadenfreude (Drag Me to Hell).

When a film or work of fiction makes us care - really care - that's when it has the potential to become true nightmare fuel. Because Stephen King is very, very great at creating characters that are easy to relate to, a lot of his work taps into this dynamic. The dad in The Shining - the role made famous by Jack Nicholson in the Kubrick adaptation - is fascinating because he's no better or worse than your everyday household tyrant. He's got the potential for violence, which he moderates until he can't any longer. A lot of us have dads like that. A lot of us are like that, or have felt like we could become that. So when things start getting supernatural in the story, the stakes are that much higher.

In print, it's not so rare to come across the magic combination of making us care and going to places we don't want to go. Back in the horror heyday of the 90s, writers like Poppy Z. Brite (you could do worse than read everything he ever wrote) and Kathe Koja did incredible things with that formula (and I understand that Kathe Koja is back in the saddle again: she is awesome buy all of her books posthaste!).

Filmakers face a set of different challenges when it comes to making us give a damn about their horror characters. Hollywood is still stuck in splatstick mode, for the most part. In an interview with Movieline, McKee talks about how this goes:

Horror films are starting to be treated like roller coaster rides at amusement parks. You go to a meeting in Hollywood and they’re like, “This is what we want to do — what do you think the good kills will be?”

Yikes. If that's the question you're asking, then chances are the kills won't be all that good.

Although I dearly love horror films and will keep seeing them, my heart soars when a horror filmmaker breaks out and makes something genuinely upsetting. When it comes right down to it, making us care and showing us what we don't want to see is not only a great formula for upsetting folks: it's also a great formula for raising consciousness - by which I mean making us think, but more specifically inviting us to go deeper in exploring the whys and wherefores of our lives.

I love horror because I want art that takes me by the shoulders and shakes me as hard as it can. I want to feel challenged. I want to wake up to new truths, or new shadows of truths.

This is where things get tricky. A lot of people who aren't horror fans or aren't attuned to the genre or have only seen the most superficial examples of the genre or base their opinions exclusively on that trailer for Alien Vs. Predator that they saw by accident a few years ago - well, they probably won't follow me here. Yes, the roller coaster model of horror movie making can simply create a shut down of sorts. The violence becomes merely cartoony, the whole thing loses its edge, and we find ourselves yawning through decapitation and murder and mayhem. Yes. But horror is uniquely situated to do the opposite of desensitization. It can really get you where you live.

Remember the kerfuffles around Pan's Labyrinth? (If you haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth, stop what you're doing and go see it immediately you will thank me.) This film is no more violent than others. Schindler's List had far more kills and way more graphic scenes in it. But it is really emotionally engaging. Personally, I grooved on it because it was booked into a Washington DC art house one of the years I was down there. The art house crowd was just totally unprepared for Guillermo del Toro. It blew them away.

What films like Pan's Labyrinth do, I think, is to resensitize us to violence. Where we've become jaded, we can become open and vulnerable again. This is a great thing.

Presenting the worst, most disturbing realities while making us care can invite us to become more conscious and more aware, not less. I know, I know. It's easier to be entertained sometimes. Sometimes, you just want to turn your brain off and shut down. Go watch yourself some Jerry Springer until you get that out of your system.

If you never challenge yourself, though, then how much can you expect to get out of your life? I like to think that we are here to think, understand, and process the art of being, not to simply confirm everything we already believe. This is the beauty of consuming art that makes you want to flinch: it invites you to ask why. This is the beauty of offense: it invites you to explore the borders of your personal tolerances. It turns the world upside down so you can look at it in a different way.

If there is no chance that what you're reading or watching will offend you on some level, then why bother? I feel the same way about comedy: if there is zero chance that it will offend someone (especially me), then I'm pretty sure there is zero chance that it's funny. I love seeing films and reading fiction and experiencing art that takes risks. If it goes too far for me, well, I'll applaud it even harder.

It sounds like The Woman is tailor made to evoke a strong response. In addition to posting those clips of that one dude's big freakout, McWeeny's article makes some very excellent points about what McKee is up to in this film. He writes:

"The Woman," written by Jack Ketchum and McKee, is a fable about the smiling psychopath that our society is built to support, and the women he keeps under his thumb in his home. The entire film's tone is somewhat heightened, the color palette jacked up, and the entire thing playing out more like a remembered dream than a literal story.  It is harrowing in a way that few horror films are for me these days, emotionally demanding.  It is extreme, but more in terms of the psychology and the toll on the personalities of the characters than in terms of overt onscreen violence.

If the film is about critiquing the way our culture supports the "smiling psychopath," then its plot seems aimed at exploring the consequences of this situation in thorough, brutal ways:

Chris Cleek is a soft-featured family man, and Sean Bridgers does an amazing job in the role.  He is as nauseating a character as I've seen in a film in quite a while, and it's the little touches that really make the performance special.  He is hunting one afternoon in the woods near his house when he sees a feral, animal-like woman, filthy and wounded, washing herself in the creek.  One look at her naked torso, and he never looks back.  A plan occurs to him, fully formed, and he starts by going home and modifying the cellar of his barn.  He tells his family he's going to bring home a surprise, and right away, there's something about this family that just feels fundamentally broken.  His wife Belle (Angela Bettis) and his daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter) are both like ghosts, barely there, cowed by something, while his son Brian (Zach Rand) is blank-faced, filled with cruelty, barely able to pretend to be human.  If that's where they start, then imagine where they end up after Chris reveals his surprise:  he has captured the feral Woman (the remarkable Pollyanna McIntosh), and he has her bound in the cellar, where they are going to, as a family, "fix her."

Ironically, the guy who freaked out at the end of the movie spent a lot of time shouting about how the film degrades women (and men?). Apparently, it's an equal opportunity degradation. It is always disturbing when someone holds a mirror up to the dirtiest, grossest parts of humanity and forces you to take a look. After reading McWeeny's article, I was really looking forward to seeing this film. But I got even more excited after reading McKee's interview with MovieLine about his reasons for making The Woman:

the whole point of me making this film was that I’ve been tagged as a horror director but had never felt like I’d really made a horror film. And I was like, if you really want a horror film let’s get into some really scary stuff, and let’s not do it with monsters — let’s do it with people....The idea of it is that it’s supposed to get people to think about how they treat people, how they treat themselves. It’s supposed to spark that sort of stuff in an emotional way, and it’s supposed to scare you! There’s nothing more scary than a f*cking human being. We do some pretty awful things, and the thing that’s scary about it is we know what we’re doing, we’re conscious of it.

This is why I love horror as a genre, and why I hope more people will give the Jack Ketchums and the Lucky McKees of the world a shot and attention and wide distribution in theatres everywhere. Like nothing else, horror has the capacity to get to the heart of why we feel sad, alone, scared and upset with our lives. Because we are, as a species, as a culture, seriously fucked up, there will never be an end to our need for this type of storytelling. We have to process it somehow, you know? If we forget how to recoil from the seedier, more disgusting, and utterly unethical parts of ourselves, if we forget that we should recoil and reject those parts and embrace something better, then it will always be as crappy as it is right now.

A Short Round-Up

Over at Killing the Buddha, Hillary White's article, "Cutting it Out," discusses Mormon DVD players and their terrifying, magical ability to edit out potentially offensive filmic moments.

Disclaimer: I think Twilight is silly and potentially damaging, although I probably would have gone nuts for it if I'd been twelve when the first book came out. But: yuck. Just yuck. (In case you're scared to click through as you should be, InStyle Magazine has gathered together some wedding planners so they can fake plan Edward and Bella's wedding.) Potential Twilight-and-feminism commentroversy over at Zachary Little's blog, if you're into Twilight-related commentroversy. Or you could just go hang out at Reasoning with Vampires and be done with it.

Eileen at Speak Coffee to Me blogged this already, but I saw it first! I saw it first!

Multi-Tasking

About a year ago, I took a community course for writers, which was basically a learn-to-critique-others course - a handy skill, indeed. The slightly unfortunate part of the course was that it took place in Burlington, which is a much less interesting, much wealthier, and much more WASP-ish town than the Hammer. I struggled a little bit with the sensibilities of some of the other course participants. (Okay, I struggled a whole heck of a lot with them. Basically, we're talking about people who for the most part seemed transported directly from the more conservative environs of Mad Men.) Even more than that, I struggled with the way a lot of them were approaching the act of writing.

Not the best choice of role models, but feel free to dress this well.

A lot of these good men and women had been labouring for some time on just one big project. For a couple of them, the twelve-week course I was a part of was their third time around with the same project. This was true for the woman writing the conceptually and stylistically impressive literary novel about the woman who had travelled to Northern Ontario to bury the body of her mother. It was also true of the woman writing the not-so-great novel about a woman finding love/potential rapists (I was never sure which it was) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And of the woman who was putting together a short story collection the theme of which was Christmas. They'd spent twenty-four weeks of workshop already on these things, and they weren't writing anything else.

Me, on the other hand: I was workshopping my not-quite-vampire WiP, while producing short story after short story and planning another novel. I wrote during the course, fresh stuff on the WiP. I polished (and published) a flash fiction piece sometime in the first week or two.

I knew from the beginning of the course that my writing was different. None of the other participants were doing genre stuff (unless you count YA, which I don't unless it's speculative YA), a fact that eventually caused me to ditch the course. It took me a few weeks in, however, to realize that I was approaching the entire task of writing differently. They were using slender razors to carve increasingly intricate patterns on the same piece of paper. I was using a shotgun to blow massive, unpredictable holes in the sides of any number of plywood shacks from week to week. My work was focused in all kinds of different directions. And there was no telling what beasts would come flying out when the walls finally fell apart.

The penny dropped when I brought part of a new short story to the group. "I'm amazed that you can work on more than one thing at a time," said a Serious Novelist. "I don't know how you do that."

I don't know that I've ever considered working only on one big thing at a time. In grad school, you can't. Even when you're writing your thesis, you're also teaching a class, grading papers, heading off to conferences, and trying to get published. While the topic areas on all these different projects might vaguely resemble each other,  you have to learn how to task switch to survive. As a freelancer, I'm aware that one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to put all of your eggs in one basket. To diversify across clients is to have a better chance of surviving if a client goes down.

In creative writing, I know I am still learning. I hope I never stop learning. And if I work exclusively on one big project, I'll miss out on the valuable experimentation and excitement of actually finishing something that I get from writing short stories. And if there's only one big project going on at a time, well, what am I going to work on if I get stuck?

Then again, I find that working on so many things at the same time can end up making me feel a little cuckoo. At least a couple of times a day, I wake up to the sudden realization that I've totally forgotten to work on a WiP.

I'm all like, "Gah! I haven't written a new novel chapter in a week! How am I going to get back into my plot?"

Or I'll check out the calendar and it will be "Yikes! I'd planned to submit a story somewhere by last Thursday! But I haven't decided which one yet!"

(I live this way too. Every day it's "Crap! It's 5:00 and I was supposed to pick up Dave at 5:00. Why didn't I leave the house yet?" This is an unfortunate side effect of multitasking.)

But I'm not alone in these habits. Eileen Wiedbrauk of Speak Coffee to Me writes,

I'm always working on ten projects.  I think that's a conservative yet realistic number for what I'm doing.  I have four novel projects on the "this year" list. Ha. Other novel projects are chillin in the bread box.  I'm writing one academic paper, editing another.  I'm actively editing two short stories, and I've got another few who are patiently waiting their turn.  And then there's the teaching projects.  So ten seems about right.

The end result is that it seems like nothing gets done.  I work bit by bit, accomplishing a little bit more on each task daily.  But then I get frustrated for not finishing--much like I get frustrated when I over task my computer and slow it down.

She suggests a solution:

I'm beginning to think I need to streamline my process more.  Multi-task less.  Produce more finished items rather than switching projects.

Amen to that. I always, always wish that I could see the end of some of my projects a whole heck of a lot faster. It seems that the ones I do finish always happen with a whiz-bang. No coincidence that I've finished more flash pieces than anything else in recent months. The light at the end of the tunnel is just that much closer when your word count limit is under 1k.

I guess I don't see changing my multi-tasking tendencies anytime soon, but I do think that for me, the key is patience. I'm hoping it will also help that I'm scheduling some time to finish pieces of writing on a more frequent basis - if only so I can remember how. 

For some writers and other work-at-home types, scheduling is key. Charity Bradford at My Writing Journey recently posted about working out a daily schedule as a way to make sure her needs as a writer and her family's needs get met. What I like about Charity's schedule is that she's partitioning time for social networking as well as raw word count. In other words, she's making sure that she stays in touch with her support group of online writers. She's also got exercise scheduled in there. That's genius, Charity. Because I teach tai chi and attend classes so I can stay on top of my game, I have exercise enmeshed in most of my days, but I find that I do need to pay attention if I'm going to get time to play outside - meaning hikes in the woods or at the local park with the dog. (You all are getting regular exercise, right?)

On the other end of the spectrum, Loralie Hall at Apathy’s Hero talks about the demoralizing effects of setting a schedule and realizing that it just isn't for you. Of course, if you're like Loralie and setting a blogging schedule means you actually end up rereading and editing a novel project, you basically win.

So I realize that "schedule" isn't quite the name for what I do. What I do is more like "make a vague plan and emotional commitment involving as many people as possible and potential public shame, then cram it in somewhere when you finally settle down to work." This style of scheduling works best when it's combined with a little bit of a relaxed sense of obligation to the outside world, a sense of space in the course of a day, a sense that I don't have to rush. Even if I'm doing a lot and I will, in fact, have to rush at some point, if I can achieve that relaxed state of mind, then writing is much more likely to happen.

Ultimately, I think managing my life as a writer is more about the inner game of writing than the external, time-slotting game. I want to be like Trisha Leaver, who seems to be some kind of task-switching prodigy:

Yesterday I was asked how I do it . . . how I can switch from one set of characters to another multiple times a day. My answer: Mental White Board.

I am insanely organized. I don’t have a date book or a wall calendar posted anywhere in my house, nor do I use my computers handy post-it reminder system.  What I do have is this huge white board in my head, one that not only keeps tracks of appointments and coffee-dates, but has character maps, plot lines, and red-line editing projects clearly drawn out. It is so vivid I can actually smell my imaginary sharpie marker.

When I move from one project to the next throughout the day, I simply shuffle whiteboards. . . toss one to the back while bringing another forward.

Brilliant!

I guess the bottom line is that you should do whatever keeps your hand moving, right? The thrill and promise of raw word count is great, as is the elbow grease required to get a manuscript from first draft to finished. And submitting I find weirdly satisfying. Although it is a struggle to get a story to the point where it's ready to go, it's worth it. As Misa Buckley, writing about the importance of audience, says:

unless my writing is read, then it's just words on a page. It doesn't live And I remain a writer.

So this is my belief. That writing doesn't matter, nor editing, nor subbing. Not even being published. It's not until someone picks up my book and reads it that I become an author.

Happy plotting, writing, subbing, and getting read, everyone.

Don't Forget to Use Your Cell Phone

Via Tofutti Break.

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

It's the 202nd anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, and we all get a present! Since we all can't be at Fergie's Pub in Philly tonight to celebrate with the Raven Society,  Random House offers us this spooky, atmospheric reading of Ulalume, performed by Jeff Buckley.

Write 1 Sub 1

Inspired by the lovely Misa Buckley, I have decided to participate in the Write 1 Sub 1 challenge. The insano version.

I realize that I am tired of setting goals and then wishy-washying out on them. I love the idea of having a little community of writers who are all trying to do something rather rigorous (like a mini-NaNo, or maybe not so mini?).

You should totally sign up for this. Seriously.

The Broken Aquariums of Will Ferrell

Early this morning I was deep in a dream that my good friend Will Ferrell had purchased a large quantity of small aquariums (aquariae?) that were all defective.

He picked up one of the aquariums (aquariae?), with its small goldfish swimming happily inside, and turned on a switch that was supposed to turn on the filter. The aquarium made a loud sound, kind of like this:

OOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

and then it stopped.

"See?" said Will Ferrell. "It's broken."

"I'm sorry to see that," I replied. "But what about the next one?"

Will Ferrell picked up another aquarium. He turned it on, and the loud, disturbing sound repeated, then stopped.

"Huh," I said. "I'm so sorry this is happening to you. Will the fish be okay?"

"I don't know," said Will Ferrell.

At that point, I came into a sort of consciousness. Sometime in the night, my dog had worked his way up from his customary sleeping position on my feet, to the pillow right beside my head. He's a Boston Terrier. He snores, sometimes incredibly loudly.

Apparently if I'm just the right shade of tired, I can incorporate any external noise into my dream world quite seamlessly.