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April 07 Back to the Fleming source...CASINO ROYALE
Ian Fleming, 1953
- What is most alarming about Fleming's novel and Bond, and what causes reservations about the romp, is the misogyny. Yes, we know Bond is a man's man and that he's a bit of a sexist from the film, and ergo ditto Fleming, but nothing quite prepares for his aggression and immaturity concerning women. Vesper is a "bitch" even before he has met her; she's going to be a hinderance with her feelings and girl stuff. Why couldn't she stay in the kitchen? Or more exactly, when Vesper has been kidnapped by professional, ruthless killers:
This was just what [Bond] had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men. ... For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ranson like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch. (pg.116)
Or: for Bond to spiel such a stream of impassioned invective, like some cartoon ex-Etonian stereotype from a bygone age. The silly buffoon. Caresses, it seems, are for Bentley's and for a villain's gaze upon the naked spy he is about to torture. Not for a "damn fool girl getting herself trussed up like a chicken, having her skirt pulled over her head as if the whole of this business was some kind of dormitory rag." (pg. 124) And let us not forget that, even if by proxy, it is Vesper that almost brings about Bond's emasculiantion. That's women for you. But even this isn't quite the extent of Bond's immaturity. Whenever something goes wrong, he tends to blame others: if it isn't Vesper, then perhaps it is the fault of "M" and the Secret Service for not warning him of the superior villainy of his adversary. When initially beaten at baccarat, and when tortured and told how he cannot win, Bond seems just to give up in an instant. Is this truly an efficent, pragmatic and dependable spy we thought we knew (we can omit the superhuman elements)? And no, this doesn't necessarily imbue him with a more complex humanity: upon scrutiny, it is the immaturity that rises to the surface. More surprising, having been nearly emasculinated, Bond lays in his hospital bed and has an existential, ethical crisis. Having been forced to identify with his adversary in the increasingly sado-masochistic torture triste, Bond finds himself questioning his whole stand. Is he really on the side of good? Are his actions and motivations uninpeachable? Does patriotism justify his career? Was Les Chifre truly the face of evil, and would patriotism justify his actions? How can Bond assure himself of his own righteousness? Bond seemingly starts to grow up, or at least belatedly starts to grasp the complexity and subjectivity of behaviour, politics, morality, his whole profession and so on. When a man has almost been made a eunuch, he begins to reflect. But this, indeed, does give Bond some true shading and certainly this chapter sets literary Bond apart from his cinematic interpretation. Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy in this boy' s own romp. The concentration on a baccarat game rather than world domination. A streamlined narrative focused on a handful of set-pieces and an uncomplicated prose: Casino; torture; hospital; Vesper. Then there is the appealingly cartoonish portrayal of secret agents and evil organisations; and, yes, a formidable protagonist. Fleming proposes a seductive world of exotic locations and foreign menaces, something drawing from the Cold War era and looking towards the brave new world of affordable international travel and luxuries a decade or two ahead. Even now, it's a neverland that still captures culture's imagination. The 007 premise, it seems, is still durable in its datedness and still capable of appeal and being contemporised for new centuries. Casino Royale, 2006.... http://bucktheorem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB37E4BB9C94BFDC!329.entry Growing up with Bond.... http://bucktheorem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB37E4BB9C94BFDC!293.entry November 27 comics onlineClowns, Ballads, Whisp... Recommended online comics I guess I am happier with recommendations than using my, er, opinions to put down the labours-of-love that are online comics. I have said before that I believe we are in a Golden age of comics, and the online revolution and revelation has had its effect on graphic storytelling as everywhere else. Serialisations that come like weekly TV shows from people holding down jobs by day and writing and drawing by night. Wannabe professionals turning out work that, on occasion, rivals anything on the comic shelves. In fact, I’ll wager there’s more diversity out there, since the hardcopy stuff is still dominated by Marvel and DC icons. Can’t say I have found anything offensive enough to take a hatchet to either. I’m pretty easy to please and find most stuff temporarily pleasing. But here are a few that have had me finishing one chapter, going away knowing I can look forward to and relish the next part when I sit down again. The ones, then, that I feel deserving of second reads and not just the fast-click of the forward button.
“WHISP” by Damian Duffy & Dann Tincher http://www.webcomicsnation.com/eyetrauma/whisp/series.php?view=archive&chapter=3120&mpe=1&step=1 There is something very kinetic in the text of Duffy and Tincher’s “Whisp”. The way a cigarette thrown out of a car window bounces off of the title captions like a karaoke guide, or the way the smoker’s coughing marked out in various cartoon fonts is broken up by a caption box of his thoughts. Or how dialogue boxes overlay one other until someone stops it with “Will you listen?” Elsewhere, TV dialogue distracts a man listening to his wife’s complaints: TV dialogue is bold black; the wife’s text is grey, less legible. Text doesn’t necessarily need to kick around with action, to riff visually, but when it works, it’s like a great rhythm section. It also keeps you hooked whilst you try to wonder what’s going on and who is who in “Whisp”. You know that it will be the second reading, possibly only when it’s completed, will reveal everything clearly. That’s not a bad thing either. I’m reminded of Bill Sienkiewicz’s work. Blue-black-white impressionistic artwork sets a downbeat mood. It’s frequently nightmarish. Smart and real dialogue keeps the hook as flashbacks reveal intriguing little stories. Whisp is a narcotic that seems to have memory-time-bending properties, even precognitive. Very Philip K Dick. But this is junkiedom as hell, without even the slacker humour of, say, “A Scanner Darkly”. Curt Blake is a Whisp addict, in prison for apparently killing someone called Markham; Blake says he is innocent. There’s some political intrigue with an election candidate… Slowly the style and the characters and the flashbacks start to pull together. Slowly you find yourself drawn in and fascinated. This is trippy and adult stuff where you find yourself wanting to decode all the clues, and I image it will be full of greater rewards when completed.
“SAMURAI CLOWN” – Quinn Fleming Also a cut above, crackling with stylisation, broad colour-scheming and benefiting from a mature approach is Quinn Fleming’s “Samuai Clown”. Your average gangster scenario with a twist: Utamaro is an on-the-skids clown (“I haven’t made a child laugh in three years”) who finds himself accepting the role of mob assassin and gets mixed up in a gang war. Minimalist, bold-stroke artwork supported by good dialogue and a welcome underplaying of its central gimmick, “Clown Samurai” flits through its familiar genre narrative without adolescent geek-cool affectations. It’s closer to “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” than to Tarantino. There is also the occasional stylistic surprise, such as the burst of colour as our protagonist lies in a flowerbed, and then a page to contemplate a tricycle. And as an example of that maturity I mentioned, take the scene where the doctor is supported by the mob as long as he confesses his liaison with an underage girl every time he is asked.
I’m looking forward to see where and how this one goes on.
“BALLAD” - DEADMOUSE http://www.moderntales.com//comics/ballad.php?view=toc Now this is special. Something to remind me of a David Lynch interested in funny creatures, of the work of Svankmajer, and the bolexbrothers “The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb”. Something truly Gothic and unusual. “Ballad” is a fascinating, ongoing comic by Deadmouse. All fairy-tale cruelty and black-and-white Gothic artwork. If you sit with patience, the mystery and magic start to seep in and you’ll be hooked. Certainly you might find yourself wanting to pay the minor membership fee at modertales.com just to read the later “Ballad” episodes. It’s gorgeous, surreal and often horrible. An egg-head servant boy (creature? Zombie?) is resurrected from the dead back into the service of his malignant young sorceress, beginning a tour of Deadmouse’s warped vision of those kind of pictures that accompany old children’s texts. Other short stories – “Pumpkin”, “Mermaid”, “Oshidori” - show Deadmouse drawing from the same dark matter as Grimms, Giger, Victorian children’s literature and post-modern horror. A Bite of LaymonRICHARD LAYMON: “BITE”
When I was about, oh, fourteen, I made a shift from science-fiction to horror literature. I was on holiday somewhere by the English coast, and in the creaky rotating wire rack in the beach-balls-and-postcards shop, there was a book with the most surprisingly graphic cover: A decapitated head at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a shadowy figure with an axe at the top. At least, I am sure that is what that particular edition of Richard Laymon’s “Night Show” showed – I remember the head the most. No one stopped me buying such an obviously repellent book. It was certainly as nasty as I wanted. I read a few of his books but wasn’t a grand fan. But a year ago, on the long dark search for good, bloody hell, just some decent horror writing, I started reading Laymon again. And now I am a fan.
What I always liked about Laymon (1947-01) is that he is a writer who seems to know his limitations and just gets on with all the mayhem and ugliness. This, I want to stress, is rare. The writing is stripped down and straight-forward, the dialogue believable and full of hooks. He'll start right in the middle of the horror, but then spend ages drawing out the suspense of one scenario. Or he'll kill of the characters you think you're rooting for and move on to other hapless victims. Laymon is nihilistic, cynical, brutal and uncompromising and happily beats genre motifs down into his own preferred ugliness. And then you find there is often more happening than you suspected. For example, you will read "The Woods Are Dark", but it is only when you reach the end that you discover you were reading H.P. Lovecraft homage all along, rather than just a "The Hills Have Eyes" variation. And he shocks too.
"Bite" seems like it will be an average vampire novel, and we start right in. Cat knocks on Sam's door; they haven't seen each other in a long, long time, but he still pines for her. She needs his help to kill a vampire who is feeding off of her at night, she says. Sam says, well, okay. Is Elliot a vampire? He sure behaves weirdly and brutally, and he comes donned with a cape and metal fangs. But... is he really a vampire? They kill him and set off to dispose of the body, and that's when the couple's troubles really begin.
Every minor dilemma gets a couple of chapters at least: Laymon draws out the problems and twists of disposing of this body on a skeletal narrative, but it drags you in. And then suddenly "Double Indemnity" gets mentioned, and you realise that you are reading Laymon's version of film noir. Cat is a severely victimised woman with all the credentials of a prime femme fatale, but is she? Are we being lulled into believing her incredible history of abuse? We are stuck with Sam's perspective, and suddenly we can't trust anyone or anything. Bad luck - or is it? - has them meeting up with bully biker Snow White (or is he a biker?), who proves to be their true nemesis. Do we believe Snow White's hostage Peggy when she says he is torturing and threatening her young brother? Is there a boy at all? Sam and Cat are taking on the American road, but we know it's filled with dangerous eccentrics and victims-in-waiting. Sometimes this couple are smart; sometimes they are dumb. They negotiate every plan of action. Suddenly the novel's immediate opening proves a false lead: Laymon isn't interested in fast and furious horrors, but in the drawing out of an improbable scenario, keeping it the right side of plausible and turning the screws and throwing in a number of surprises. "Duel" and "Detour" come to mind. If Hitchcock liked monster horror, and made a vampire the McGuffin... Vampire noir, anyone? November 15 "Ring" - Koji SuzukiRING / RINGU
Koji Suzuki,1991
HarperCollins edition 2003, translated by Robert B Rohmer & Glynne Walley
Well I'm one of those horror fans that finds so much of its literature very badly written... it's great to find something competent with a bit of artistry. Sheesh. I decided to try Koji Suzuki's "Ring", being a fan of the film. Hey, I thought, a return to great old ghost stories. But it's a shame that the book isn't very well written at all. Something lost in translation? Maybe. But the way the characters think and go about things is so, well, clunky and half-baked. Motivation and psychological insights seem coloured in with felt tips and a slimline edition of "Author's Bizarre Generalities". For example: here is journalist Asakawa trying to get some information from a wife at the end of the phone:
Where to start with this? It's a daft observation that doesn't hold up to any scrutiny (either the journalist or the wives are particularly stupid), and it's weak as a satirical comment on misogyny; the female characters are vapourous and token. Publisher's Weekly notes that the novel has "somewhat pedestrian and unintentionally comic prose style that seems derived from manga comics"(1) And at it's most average, Manga always feels made-up-as-it-goes-along with off-kilter and melodramatic and half-baked motivations; Suzuki himself says:
He compares it to composing music. To Mozart. Or we can be generous like bookslut and say that, in this case, "Ring left most of its inner workings disguised and the deeper lives of its characters largely undisclosed."(3) But most inexcuseable is the totally confused psychological doublespeak that Suzuki used to incoporate and justify the character of Ryuiji, an avowed, self-confessed rapist who likes to nostalgically recite his first rape to his pal Asakawa. Asakawa has the strangest reaction to his long-term sex-offending pal, someone he can just catch up with casually at any point. His first reaction upon being told? "Naturally, Asakawa never told anyone about Ryuiji's crime." [pg. 120] Uhuh. We are to accept that journalists don't report rapes, just as housewives are easily duped by cliches? The same journalist who then thinks, "Someone who says he wants to watch the extinction of mankind doesn't deserve to live a long life."? [pg. 122](4) And even later than this, suddenly thinks he shouldn't let this friend hang around his wife and daughter? Presentation and psychology is incredibly garbled and immature. Is this trying to say something about patriachal Japanese society? Or is the plot simply in need of someone truly vile and disposable? Someone armed with knowledge of both technology and the paranormal, no less. It's less Mozart and more Cannibal Corpse. Despite the air of Japanese sophistication, Shaun Hutson would be proud.
It has to be said that all the video stuff is rather quaint now, quite cute. There's no problem with the novel, as it was written in 1991 and now stands fine as a period piece. The film adaptations just about get away with it, coming in just as VHS is disappearing into thin air (Haneke's "Cache" doesn't get away with it, somehow). Will there be a time in horror when VHS tapes are like antique icons of evil, like ancient amulets and so on; and evil-doers will spend a long time on wild goose chases hunting for that ever-elusive antique video player to unleash untold, slightly chewed-up mayhem?
[4] Akasawa's statement here is in reaction to Ryuiji's priceless exclamation that, "While viewing the excitinction of the human race from the top of the hill, I would dig a hole in the earth and ejaculate into it over and over." [pg. 117]
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STEPHEN KING... reprints, and an old story.
Koji Suzuki is Japan's Stephen King, they say... everytime Suzuki is mentioned. I say it's just a lazy comparison due to Suzuki's current high profile and something to stick on dust jackets. Speaking of dust jackets, I see that Hodder have reissued some classic King in rather atmospheric and appealing new designs. Counter to popular trend, King's name does not cover half of the cover, and although clear, is restricted to a neat little strip halfway down, which oddly - and I guess, artilly - sometimes covers the picture's focus. For example, on the cover of "The Shining", Torrence Jnr. has his scalp cropped off, and you have to look twice to find the infamous car on "Christine". They are rather stunning designs. I've attached them here as way of a little gallery.
But I won't be rushing to gobble up King's new opus, "Lisey's Story" anytime soon. It's about a celebrated award-winning author... oh wait, let's just leave it there. Despite "Misery" being rather good hate mail to obsessive fans, King has always been tedious in his repeatedly casting writers as protagonists. Not that this can't work - "The Shining" is a brilliant piece on writer's block - but he just does it all the time. He casts his young writer in "IT" as the best shag out of the gang in its group-sex scene; he has visited his own characters in text; he has writer's creations coming back from... oh just pick up every other King title. When King does it, it's like one foot dragging back with vanity and/or limitation. The synopsis for "Lisey's Story" does read like some self-indulgent literati, post-modern effort, and I am sure he can bring the premise back down to earth. But despite it being a thinly veiled and winning love poem to his wife, it does smack of him trying ever-so-hard to be taken seriously. I always think he's the Steven Spielberg of horror. ...of course, I really should shake this prejudice and see for myself, for "Lisey's Story" might be his best. But, you know, it's always about... nhhh.
...but I read "Salem's Lot" not so long back, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The fact that King made his own miniseries apparently in reaction to his dislike of the Kubrick interpretation, and that that miniseries resembled like a weak King cash-in says that sometimes King's creative radar isn't always on the ball. If there is any similarity between King and Suzuki apart from popularity it's that perhaps it sometimes take others to extract and reinvent their material to being out the best in the concept.
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