"Tessy Dubois": A Ghost Story

Happy Halloween, everybody!  Rather than the essay I'd normally post every other Wednesday, I thought I'd try to entertain all three of my readers with a brief little ghost story.  A campfire tale, if you will.  I'll try to keep this around 1,000 words, because I know that all of you have candy to collect and apples for which to bob.  Or whatever it is the kids are doing for Halloween these days.  Boo!

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"Tessy Dubois"

As the late autumn wind blew through the forests of Adams, two men crossed a decaying bridge across the Sessaqueek River and stepped onto leaf-covered banks.  They now stood on the old Dubois estate.  A century ago it was the center of the small-town aristocracy, but decades of neglect had removed most of the luster from the property.  Except, naturally, for the manor house.

"There it is, Tommy," Jack said, trailing.  "Are you sure you're up for this?"

Jack's doubt surprised Tommy; they'd been making these short films for years.  Nobody ever minded them using these old houses as sets--they were, after all, abandoned.  "What are you talking about?"

It was Jack's turn to look surprised.  "Are you telling me that you've never heard the stories about this place?"

"If you're going to tell me it's haunted--" Tommy began, not intending to finish the thought.

"I'm just saying, everybody knows about Tessy Dubois and the fourth floor window."

"Let me guess," said Tommy, turning towards the manor house.  "Her parents had arranged for her to marry some fellow she couldn't stomach, so the night before the wedding she jumped through the window to her death.  And now her ghost haunts the building and all the poor fools who enter it.  Is that right?"

Jack had no answer, because that was the legend to the letter.  Sometime in 1912--April and December were the most popular times--Tessy Dubois took her life and her family's hopes to the ground.  The momentous decision came not long Mrs. Dubois found her daughter moping in her darkened room.  The mother held a candle over Tessy's head, telling her to stop the nonsense and embrace the marriage for her family's sake.  An hour later, Tessy was gone.

The family moved out of Adams soon after, and while others wealthy clans bought the property, nobody stayed there longer than two years; the last owners left town in 1957.

Tommy started walking to the mansion, but Jack grabbed his arm.  "Dude, you're pushing your luck."

"What luck?  Look at the place," he said, motioning to the attic down to the ground floor.  "Haunted?  Please; Major Amberson himself could have lived here." 

Jack was about to say that Miss Havisham also lived in a mansion like this one, but before he could say so Tommy was halfway to the front door with the equipment bag.  "Hey, what gives?" he shouted.

Tommy stopped and turned around.  "I'm going to set up the set in the foyer.  Tell you what, I'll just get the lights all ready and I'll come after you.  Show you it's safe."  With that, he raced to the front door, ignoring the rest of Jack protestations.

After blowing the cobwebs out of the doorway, Tommy found that the house was even more magnificent than he had imagined.  All the furnishings, from the grand staircase to the candelabra beside the entrance, radiated the grandeur yet despair of the late Victorian, early Edwardian era.  That the place had clearly not been dusted since the Eisenhower administration made the perfect spot for a horror film; hell, he would consider setting a Dracula adaptation in this foyer.

Tommy stepped further into the room, in awe of his surroundings.  How could anyone refuse to live here, he thought.  With the striking paintings of the Dubois family framed in gold on every wall, the art collection alone must be a king's ransom.  He saw at least a dozen doors leading to Lord knows how many rooms, which in the past were staffed by Lord knows how many servants.  It was a testament to good old American materialism.  What citizen or filmmaker could resist?

What he found no sign of, though, was Tessy Dubois.  He could just imagine what he would tell Jack when he got back out.  "You would think that after living so long undisturbed she would just come charging after me.  Guess she's a deep sleeper, am I right?"  Okay, so he'd have to think of something wittier in the meantime, but the point still stood.

Now Tommy started feeling a bit risky.  Why not, he thought: "Hey, Tessy!  Yeah, you heard me!  Come down here, will you?  What, are you scared, too?"  He got no response besides his own voice echoing off the walls.  Such a beautiful echo, too, particularly high-pitched.  He'd have to take advantage of that somehow for the movie.  Note to self: buy good recording gear. 

Having had his fun, he unzipped the equipment bag, took out a tungsten lamp and tested it.  Bright as ever, he saw.  Very bright, indeed, given the contrast with the room.

Then, from nowhere, he heard a wail.  "Turn that off!  Turn that off!"

It was the same exact frequency as the echo he heard before.  Only, Tommy knew he didn't say that.  And there was no one else in the house.  Or was there?

He flipped about and looked up the grand staircase.  Quickly descending was a petite shade of a woman, dressed in a white gown and a piercing scowl.  "Turn that off!  Turn that off!"

Desperately, Tommy tried to push himself up from the floor, but his hands were too shaky to be helpful.  With every second Tessy Dubois came closer and closer, sounding more and more violent.  "Turn that off!"

Finally, Tommy was somehow back on his feet.  Leaving the shining lamp and the equipment bag behind, he barged through the front door and raced down the hill, Tessy's wail still echoing behind him.

Tommy's legs didn't stop once out of the mansion; he just kept on running, right past Jack sitting by the Sessaqueek passing the time.  "Run!" Tommy barked as the bridge creaked beneath him.  "Run, run!"

Jack just sat there grinning.  "I told you so!"

The Black Cat (1934)

The Black Cat (1934)

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Screenplay by Peter Ruric

Runtime: 1 hr, 5 min

 

I now find myself at the end of Classic Horror Month, and only now am I struck my how little horror I’ve actually seen in my life.  Perhaps the best demonstration of this fact is that I had never seen a movie starring Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff.  What better way to fix that than to watch a film that they both were in?  Lugosi and Karloff filmed eight pictures together, so that presents many options.  As I always say, however, start at the beginning, which is why today’s movie is the 1934 version of The Black Cat.

The opening credits claim the film was “suggested” by the Edgar Allan Poe story, but in reality the two have nothing in common besides a black cat being somehow involved.  In this story, Lugosi plays Dr. Vitus Werdegast, a former prisoner of war off to visit an old acquaintance, Hjalmer Poelzig (Karloff).  On the train, he meets an American couple, Peter and Joan Alison (David Manners and Julie Bishop), who are on honeymoon.  Later on, however, their bus crashes, injuring Joan.  The three take refuge at the Poelzig estate, where it soon becomes evident that everything is not quite right.

I myself would begin to be suspicious just on looking at Poelzig.  The first time the audience sees him, he’s getting out of bed in a mechanical, monster-come-to-life fashion, all in silhouette.  Then there’s Karloff’s performance, which somehow manages to be dead-cold and maniacal at once.  All of his dialogue carries a combination of smugness and calculation that it leaves no doubt that he’s the villain.  Ordinarily I would find this sort of character dull, but Karloff has the chops to pull it off.

But what brings Karloff’s character to life is his relationship to Werdegast, whom Lugosi plays expertly.  Werdegast is determined to get revenge on Poelzig, whom he accuses of betraying him during the war and stealing his wife, Karen.  He’s also a bit unstable, despite being a psychiatrist, and is deathly afraid of a black cat in the mansion.  Yet Lugosi brings a great deal of nobility to his character, such as when he tells the Alisons of his past: “Have you ever heard of Kurgaal?  It is a prison below Amsk.  Many men have gone there.  Few have returned.  I have returned.  After fifteen years…I have returned.”

Karloff and Lugosi are brilliant together, and their disdain for each other’s existence could easily drive the story on its own.  Somewhat unfortunately, however, the Alisons are effectively The Black Cat’s motor.  It’s Joan’s injury that brings the trio to the mansion, and it’s Poelzig’s plan for her that keeps them there.  It’s not that Manners and Bishop are bad, per se, but they are not given very interesting characters, though their scenes together do have a certain affectionate charm.  Overall, though, the Alisons are just sort of a nuisance that keep Poelzig and Werdegast from settling their personal affairs.

But when the leads are let loose on each other, oh boy, this film kicks into high gear.  The confrontation has just about everything in it: Satanic cults, encased women, human sacrifice, torture, tons of dynamite, misunderstandings, and a game of chess.  And it’s all crammed into about thirty minutes of glorious footage.  Part of me wants to say that the film is trying too hard and throwing everything it can think of on screen, but the execution is so tight that the result is sheer destructive beauty.  This is what ridiculous action should be like.

Not only is The Black Cat suspenseful, but also it is pretty scary and disturbing.  Werdegast’s final confrontation with Poelzig sees the doctor go so far for revenge that it’s hard to remember that he’s the not-villain.  And while the cult meeting is bit silly, the staging carries a dark aura with it.  I can totally see why this film was a little controversial in its day, what with the Satanic and sadistic textures throughout.  This was released in May 1934; had it been delayed a few weeks I’m sure a lot would not have passed the Hays Code’s muster.

Finally, The Black Cat functions as a horror film not only with scares but also with atmosphere.  The architecture of the Poelzig mansion will abruptly transition from hard and angular Art Deco to a cartoonish Gothic appearance, which gives the proceedings an uneasy feel; major credit to Charles D. Hall’s art direction.  Further, the film’s use of heavy blacks and dark grays, punctuated by bright lightening flashes, is not just beautiful—it’s definitely and quintessentially creepy.  With its actions, scares and tone, The Black Cat fully succeeds.

It might be a shame that the film is not actually an adaptation of the Poe story—seriously, that needs to happen—but all the same, The Black Cat is a gem, by far my favorite film I reviewed for Classic Horror Month.  It’s the sort of film that has nearly everything working for it; a little plot trimming, and it would be damn near perfect.  If were to have children one day and wanted to show them a scary movie that succeeds at being “scary” and “a movie”, then I would need look no further than The Black Cat.

Mad Love (1935)

Mad Love (1935)

Directed by Karl Freund

Screenplay by P. J. Wolfson and John L. Balderston, based on the novel Les mains d’Orlac by Maurice Renard

Runtime: 1 hr, 8 minutes

 

In film, and most likely any medium, there is a fine line between scary and funny.  Given poor execution in any department, a scene or character that is meant to instill terror in the audience instead brings them to floor in stitches.  Perhaps the actor or the writing is too hammy, or the setup is too unrealistic for the viewer to accept.  Rarely, however, does the very concept of the work inspire that undesired reaction.  Such is the case with the only Karl Freund-directed film and Peter Lorre’s American debut, Mad Love.

Lorre plays Dr. Gogol, a brilliant Paris-based surgeon.  Gogol is obsessed with one Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), an actress at Le Théâtre des Horreurs.  Meeting her after a performance, however, he discovers that Yvonne plans to retire from the stage and head to England with her concert pianist husband, Stephen (Colin Clive).  This sends what is clearly an unstable man over the edge, and he’ll do anything to get Yvonne to be his.  Gogol is more than ready to strike at a chance to ruin Stephen’s life.

This is where Mad Love jumps over the believability cliff and into the ravine.  Following a train accident which smashes Stephen’s hands, Yvonne takes her husband to Gogol for surgery.  Gogol has to amputate, but then attaches the hands of the recently executed knife thrower Rollo (Edward Brophy).  This not only prevents Stephen from playing piano as well as he did before, but also makes him a knife thrower.  Gogol then just uses the power of suggestion to convince Stephen that he murdered his father.

Yeah, there’s no way that I’m taking that plot seriously.  “Yeah, right” is my consistent, sole reaction for most of the film.  Yet the film plays it perfectly straight throughout, as if the whole hands plot is inherently terrifying, rather than simply being ridiculous.  The mood of the film is always eerie with nary a moment of genuine levity that this sort of premise requires.  This does give the story some humor value, but even then it only stretches so far before it becomes a mere head scratcher.

That’s not to say that the film itself is poor quality, even though most of it is.  Stephen, despite going through all this trauma—the crash, the surgery, the realization he now sucks at piano—never shows all that much emotion, and when he does it’s too upbeat to be believable.  Yvonne is a bit better, but no matter who she’s acting with she never really stands out.  And then there’s the comic relief character, a journalist played by Ted Healy.  To put it bluntly, I laughed more at a car horn which lasted for a second than at the totality of Healy’s performance.

In the cast, the only saving grace is Lorre.  When he first appears on screen, it seems possible that Mad Love might be legitimately scary.  From the complete baldness to the lack of blinking to his Hungarian accent, Lorre exudes creepy as Gogol.  I would completely buy this man swiping the wax figurine of Yvonne and having conversations with it, or just trying to make Stephen miserable to get to his beloved.  He and the film still lose me the knife throwing hands plan, though.  Can’t win them all, I guess.

I will say, though, that though Mad Love is a pretty bad movie, it’s not that painful a watch.  I’m not even sure if it’s because it’s so bad, it’s good.  It may just be the absurdity of the proceedings.  It’s not just the premise—like I said, that only goes so far.  There’s the cinematography, which I hear inspired Citizen Kane but I’m not seeing it  At one point, Gogol’s silhouette is cast on the wall, and it’s so gargantuan that it makes me think that a vulture is about to attack.  Clearly going for scary, but that’s just hilarious.

And that’s not even getting into the strange behavior of Gogol’s maid (May Beatty), the unconvincing manner in which Stephen’s new found knife throwing talents are shown, or how blasé Stephen sounds when he gets arrested for murder.  Hell, if Freund had taken this premise and played it for laughs, it could have been an effective spoof of mad scientist/doctor movies.  That’s obviously not what he did, however, and the result is movie which is rarely frightening and only intermittently funny.  Not a winning formula, that.

So can I recommend even an ironic viewing of Mad Love?  Not really, considering that it only gets truly humorous, as opposed to strange, on occasion.  I can certainly see how having crazy hands attached could make for some psychological drama, but not when part of a crazy scheme to win over an actress.  I guess you could say that this was filmed in all seriousness is a bit frightening, but suffice to say that as is, Mad Love does not make for a good horror movie, or for that matter, an exceptionally “so bad, it’s good” one, either.

Ambiguous Satire: "The Onion", Mark Twain and Poe's Law

Recently, the inability of some people to recognize satire has made headlines again.  As reported on The World, FARS, a government-backed news source in Iran, copied an article from The Onion entitled "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama" and ran it as if it were fact.  That FARS would be attracted to such a headline is not really surprising--anything to glorify the current regime, right?--but all the same, I have got to wonder: how is it that people keep believing what they read in The Onion?

Alas, this just keeps on happening.  No matter how long The Onion has been around, people keep missing the satire.  If anything, the rise of the Internet has made this more common; check out Literally Unbelievable if you need evidence and an afternoon of face-palms.  But it's not just the incredibly credulous on Facebook and foreign media groups who fall victim.  Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast notes that the recently duped include Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), Stephen A. Smith of ESPN, and even The New York Times.  Not even the paper of record has a fully functioning satire-detector.

What to make of this trend?  After all, aren't we supposed to be living in a world whose culture is dominated by irony and "irony"?  If that's the case, it's sure strange how our abilities to recognize satire so often falters.  It could very well be that the world has gotten so absurd that absolutely nothing would surprise us.  But I'd like to make a modest proposal (sorry, I had to).  Perhaps the issue isn't that we are unable to recognize satire.  Maybe the problem is satire especially in text, itself tends to be ambiguous, to leave its objective and targets unclear.

Poe's Law

First things first: why do so many people mistake things obviously written as satire seriously?

Prose text is a wonderful and rich medium, but it's not the best medium to communicate on a non-literal level.  There's a reason I advise people never to be sarcastic on the Internet: without the intonations of speech and the gestures of body language, all the audience has is what is literally said.  There's no real way to determine the intent of the writer just from analyzing what he wrote, so what choice does the reader have but to take what is written at face value?  There's got to be a major tip-off in the text to do otherwise, which leads right into Poe's Law.

Poe's Law is named after an Internet user by the name of Nathan Poe; although the idea stipulated in the law had previously been floating around the Web, Poe's phrasing of the concept is the one that caught on, which is why he's the namesake.  Poe's original formulation was posted to a message board called Christian Forums, and ran thusly:

Without a winking smiley or blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.

Over time, Poe's Law has been expanded to included topics outside of creationism or even religion, and can probably be reformulated like so:

It is impossible to parody anything in such a way that no one will take you at face value.

Whether it's an article about Obama's "long missing son" or a massive leap of creationist logic, there is simply no way to craft a parody so extreme that the satiric intent is plainly visible without explicitly stating it.  After all, both The Onion and creationist parodists, while certainly humorous, play their roles straight.  If you were just given the text of the article or post, how on Earth could you determine whether what you were reading was legitimately stupid or designed to look legitimately stupid to make a larger point?

(Hell, go on and read some of the posts from Literally Unbelievable.  Some of the responses on Facebook are so over-the-top and clueless that I'm tempted to call Poe on them.)

Fuzzy Targets

Furthermore, even if it is clear, absolutely clear that a work is satire, there is still another hurdle to overcome in satire recognition: what is being satirized can be ambiguous.  You know how some conservatives feel that The Colbert Report is a parody of how liberals view right-wing pundits?  Well, especially in text, that could be a valid interpretation.  After all, what is a parodic creationist post poking fun at?  Creationism? creationists? atheists/scientists/the general public's view of creationism/creationism?  Who can be sure?

For the rest of this article, I would like to focus on one particular work of satire as a case study.  Given the author, the tone, and that proving a work to be a satire given Poe's Law would be nigh impossible, I shall grant the satiric intent as self-evident.  Even so, it will become clear that what the satiric target is can only be guessed at. 

Recently, I came across a especially ambiguous satire as an assignment for a class in nonfiction.  In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain details a excursion he paid to partake in, which took him to continental Europe and the Holy Land.  The text drips with Twain's trademark derision and humor, and no one is exempt from it.  His fellow American travelers, the great landmarks of Europe, the clergy and religion: everyone is an acceptable target.  So much so, it raises the question, "What is Twain even satirizing?"

Based on the title and Twain's later works such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one would be tempted to immedaitely respond that he is poking fun at American tourists.  In fact, one could argue that The Innocents Abroad predicts the rise of the "ugly American" archetype that would later emerge.  For instance, Twain spends a great deal of time describing fellow voyager Dan, who insists on speaking to everyone they meet in English, as in this exchange in Italy:

      Dan's voice rose on the air: "Oh, bring some soap, why don't you?"
      The reply was Italian.  Dan resumed: "Soap, you know - soap.  That is what I want - soap.  S-o-a-p, soap; s-o-p-e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap.  Hurry up!  I don't know how you Irish spell it, but I want it.  Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it.  I'm freezing." (119)

Yet while Twain certainly takes a lot of jabs at the passengers, he also seems to skewer the foreigners as well.  In particular, he portrays many of the French, Italian, etc. commoners as scam artists, preying on tourists looking for tour guides; Twain and others even take to calling all of their guides "Ferguson" after one such guide.  Considering how wide Twain spray is and how light his tone is through most of the book, one could possibly say that he just wants to poke fun at humanity in general.

This view, however, would suggest that Twain lacks an agenda.  That's not impossible, but then how does one account for the drastic tonal shift that Twain's voice undergoes while in Florence?  Normally, Twain seems content to make jokes and cast everyone in unflattering lights.  Then, out of nowhere, his words become deathly serious.  Rather than making jokes about the wealth of the church and the poverty of the masses, Twain's prose takes the form of an impassioned plea:

Look at the grand Duomo of Florence - a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet.  Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said, "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavour, utterly dead within ye?  Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?" (164)

Compared to earlier passages about soap and tour-guides and general annoyance, this passage is downright acidic.  It's as if an episode of The Colbert Report suddenly smash cut to John Stewart at his most outraged.  It ceases to be a satire and transitions into straight polemic.  And most confusing, this change is only temporary.  Once Florence far behind the Quaker City, Twain jumps right back into a lighter, broader comedy.  So is Twain actually satirizing Europe, or the ruling classes, but doing so in the persona of a rural hick?  The Innocents Abroad is far from a straight-forward work.

In Search of a Solution

So how are we to make sense of ambiguous satiric targets?  One proposal comes from David McNeil, who, in an essay on A Confederacy of Dunces, suggests a type of satire which accomodates conflicting or shifting targets.  He refers to it as "reverse satire", which McNeil defines as "the kind of satire in which the satirist-persona or the satirist-character makes his attack and is ironically ridiculed himself" (33).  The term itself does not appear to have caught on, but McNeil contends that this particular satiric form is prevelant throughout American literature.

At first it would appear that the reverse satire may be the key to deciphering Twain's intentions in The Innocents Abroad.  I certainly got that hope reading McNeil's essay, since he draws myriad references to another Twain novel, and my personal favorite of his, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  In that novel, the satire first appears to be aimed squarely at the chilavric, medieval age, but as the narrative develops and the tone darkens it becomes clear the real target is the industrial age and "Yankee ingenuity", represented by the protagonist Hank Morgan.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court works as a reverse satire because Hank Morgan "makes his attack" on the Arthurian world but later "is ironically ridiculed himself" thanks to the unfolding narrative; industrial progress is really just another form of magic that leaves nobody enlightened.  The joke, in other words, is on the perspective character.  In the case of The Innocents Abroad, however, I don't believe that the text fits the definition.  The issue is the "ironically ridiculed himself" part of the equation.

For this idea to really hold, there ought to be a clear indication that the ultimate target is the perpective character.  So, in The Innocents Abroad, that would mean that by the end we should get the sense that the Twain figure, the chronically unimpressed and dismissive narrator, is the real target.  By the end, however, Twain's character has not changed all that much.  He pretty much has the same tone and outlook that he had at the start; he's just seen the world now.  So the reverse satire approach seems to be a dead end.

What, then, do we call a work such as The Innocents Abroad?  Given the scattershot approach Twain takes, that hard to say.  Perhaps we should just forget the intent of the satire and read whatever meaning we want into it.  That's not a particularly satisfying approach, but given how the author is currently unavailable on account of being dead, it's probably the only approach.  What else can the modern reader do but interpret the satiric intent as the reader sees fit?

In fact, given how we interact with print media, far away from the author and unable to hear his voice, this may explain why satire often goes over our heads.  Because a direct statement of intent is unavailable to the audience, and text yields the fewest clues about intent, initial exposures to satire can be easy to mistake, especially when the satire itself is ambiguous.  This still doesn't excuse people who take Onion articles at face value, but at least now--I think--I can understand what exactly is going on when that happens.  Perhaps.

Works cited:
"Iranian News Agency Apologizes for Reprinting Onion Satire as Fact." The World.
     Host Marco Werman. NPR. WESA, Pittsburgh, 1 Oct. 2012. Radio.

McNeil, David. "A Confederacy of Dunces as Reverse Satire: The American
     Subgenre." The Mississippi Quarterly 38.1 (1984): 33-47. Literature Resource
     Center. Web. 2 Oct. 2012.

Poe, Nathan. "Big contradictions in the evolution theory." Christian Forums. Christian
     Forums, 11 Aug. 2005. Web. 2 Oct. 2012.

Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. 1869. Introduction Stuart Hutchinson. Ware,
     Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 2010. Print.

Freaks (1932)

Freaks (1932)

Directed by Tod Browning

Screenplay by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon, based on the story “Spurs” by Tod Robbins

Runtime: 1 hour, 4 minutes

Freaks is not a film which is easy to discuss, and I was torn as to whether to write about it for Classic Horror Month.  Not only is it debatable whether Freaks qualifies as a horror film, but also to review the film would require me to possibly criticize the performances of people who were actually deformed—people who legitimately were “circus freaks”.  However, in the end I decided that it was a film too good to pass up on, and it may be a starting place for a discussion on what constitutes horror and normality in society.

The story of Freaks contains both a central plot and a series of vignettes about a group of circus performers.  The main character is a short person named Hans (Harry Earles), who is in love with a “normal” circus acrobat named Cleopatra (Olga Blacanova).  Cleopatra and most of the other “normals” laugh at Hans and his comrades, but when Cleopatra learns from Hans’ girlfriend Frieda (Daisy Earles) that Hans is heir to a large fortune, she marries Hans and plots to kill him to gain his inheritance.

Because of the way this film is structured, this conflict doesn’t come up until more than halfway through the film.  The first part of Freaks is largely devoted to showcasing the various circus acts, both “freaks” and “normals” (and I will henceforth drop the scare quotes).  It’s difficult to decipher the purpose of these early scenes.  Is it that the film wishes to engage in exploitation by putting as many freaks on screen as possible, or does it wish to portray their plight and challenge the audience to view them with sympathy?

Well, this may be a cop-out answer, but it’s likely a little of both.  There are certainly sequences which only serve the purpose of entertainment.  The one that sticks out most in my mind is where the Living Torso, Prince Randian, lights a cigarette using only his mouth.  It’s not as if the man is given a particularly developed character in the film; in fact, that bit is practically his whole shtick.  To see him struggle to do something most of us would find rudimentary may elicit some pangs of sympathy, but its purpose seems exploitative, and the same applies to many other performers as well.

However, at its heart, Freaks takes a sympathetic view of those with deformities.  The staging of the proceedings clearly condemns the harassment that Josephine Joseph (the Half-Woman Half-Man) receives, and Madame Tetrallini (Rose Dione) scolds the man who tells the freaks under her supervision to get off of his property.  In fact, the film’s portrayal of these people has such a noticeable heart to it that the bits which come across as exploitative could probably be written off as unfortunate implications.  I’m still not sure they should be, but they could.

I must commend the film for how it portrays certain characters not just as objects of sympathy, but as actual people.  Hans and Frieda, other than being short, have a thoroughly human relationship, even if their acting is a bit stiff and their accents miles thick.  They lust, they get jealous and despondent, the whole nine yards.  In fact, while one can’t ever forget that there’s a love quadrilateral involving two midgets, the whole affair could easily be written for four random people plucked off of the street.

Further, not all of the “normals” are presented as malicious bastards out to steal inheritances.  Venus (Lelia Hyams) and Phroso (Wallace Ford), who form a couple during the film—and get top billing—are continually nice to the freaks, if a little condescending.  They tangentially are involved in the freaks’ plot to get revenge on Cleopatra, and they joke around with their fellow performers and practice new skits with them.  And given how the Earleses are not exactly the Barrymores, they are the most compelling characters throughout.

As for the horror element, well, it’s not really there.  At least not in the terror sense, it isn’t.  The wedding sequence, which is the iconic bit in the film, does get more than a little unnerving to watch, but at least to my eyes, it’s more bizarre than scary.  Later on, when the freaks put their revenge plot into action and attack Cleopatra and her beau, Hercules (Henry Victor), the cinematography is too hectic to easily decipher what’s going on—confusing, yes, but not particularly horrifying.

Once more, however, that’s not a bad thing.  In fact, given the nature of the film’s subject, it’s probably for the best that Freaks doesn’t turn into a straight horror film.  Instead, it’s a weird little funhouse ride through a 1930s circus with a bit of social commentary thrown in for good measure.  It’s still more than a little uncomfortable to watch at times, but Freaks ultimately has its heart in the right place.  This might not be a Halloween film for the whole family, but it is worth a watch someday.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian

Screenplay by Samuel Hoffenstein and Percy Hath, based on the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Runtime: 1 hr, 36 min

 

Ah, Jekyll and Hyde: the classic twist ending that people forget was in fact a twist ending.  The strange case of Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde is so ingrained in our culture, almost synonymous with “multiple personality” disorders, that it’s easy to forget that the Robert Louis Stevenson work was not so much a horror story, but a mystery.  Granted, the original story is not very cinematic in that regard, so most adaptations just make the “Jekyll-is-Hyde” conclusion the starting point of the story, as is the case with the first film of Classic Horror Month.

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, the 1931 version of the tale stars Fredric March and a heap of makeup as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Jekyll appears to have it all; he’s a respected scientist and lecturer and he’s engaged to the lovely Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart).  Yet there’s a scientific enterprise which is consuming his efforts.  Jekyll makes a concoction which can separate the bad in a man from the good.  Long story short, he drinks the potion and becomes his concentrated evil, Hyde.  No surprise there.

What may be a bit surprising is how much this adaptation changes from the Stevenson text.  For example, Muriel and the temptress Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) are not in the text—in fact, the number of female leads in the book is zero.  Meanwhile, the book’s narrator and detective, Mr. Utterson, is only mentioned in passing and I don’t think he has one line of dialogue.  And then there are the confusing changes to Danvers Carew (Halliwell Hobbes), turned from an elderly Parliament member who exists to get murdered to a stubborn general keeping Jekyll and his daughter from marrying earlier.

Aside from the alterations to Carew, these changes are mostly justified for the page-to-screen adaptation.  After all, following Mr. Utterson’s quest to compare handwriting would likely not make for thrilling cinema.  At any rate, most of the action would have to take place off-screen, and if the filmmakers were really being faithful to the text, then the whole ending would be revealed via a series of letters.  The film medium just wouldn’t support that very well.  The change in perspective and the addition of romances make the story more visually oriented, which is fine in my book.

Of course, the key is whether these changes actually work.  Fortunately, they do.  Muriel as a character may be a bit on the bland side, but she is relatable in her worries regarding what’s gotten into Henry as of late.  Similarly, while Hobbes’ performance as her father tends toward one note (anger), he does provide some additional conflict to the story.  Meanwhile, while Ivy, a beleaguered bar singer, is probably expendable plot-wise, she is able to bring out both the nobility--and the baseness—in Dr. Jekyll.  Yeah, two minutes with Ivy is enough to demonstrate that this movie was pre-Code.

However, the scene stealer is, appropriately, March’s Jekyll and Hyde routine.  As the former, he is a gentleman and compassionate, but always with an undercurrent of impatience for those around him.  March makes it clear that Jekyll could in fact possess an interior Hyde.  And when that dwarfish monster is set loose, so is March’s more hammy side.  A lot of the character may be brought out in the makeup and transformation sequences, but March himself is so lustful and lively that it’s hard not to get involved in the performance.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is certainly a fun movie to watch, and on that merit alone it is worth watching.  However, it must be said that the film is not particularly frightening or suspenseful.  Given that we already know the twist and can’t be scared by the implications it has for humanity, any fear factor must be found in the atmosphere or the plotting—what is Hyde going to do next?  There certainly is build-up, with Hyde lusting after Ivy and making her life hell, but there’s little payoff involved, and other incidents are similarly wanting.  Let’s just say this film is not scream-inducing.

Then again, it could easily be that modern audiences just have different standards for what constitutes horror.  Hell, given how good the makeup work on March looks for 1931, that alone might have been a frightening sequence.  Further, the way the film is shot does give it a certain off-kilter feel.  Mamoulian and cinematographer Karl Struss love close-ups of people eyes, which is nicely eerie touch.  And really, the source material is not especially scary, so it’s not as if they failed in that regard.  Given what Mamoulian and crew had to work with, the finished product is fine enough scary flick.

I will say that at 96 minutes, the film does come off as a bit padded.  There are only so many times that we can see Jekyll show up late/not at all for a Carew affair before it feels repetitive.  Yet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is never a bore to watch, either.  It moves at its own pace, tells its own story and delivers its own scares.  It’s not a masterwork of horror or psychological drama, but it is a damn fine film nonetheless.  If you’d like some classic-lit based classic horror this Halloween, then this would be a good bet.

Why Don't I Watch Baseball Anymore?

The height of my baseball fandom occured on Ocotber 16, 2003, about nine years and almost half of my life ago.  On that day was the seventh game of the 2003 American League Championship Series, in which my team, the New York Yankees, hosted the Boston Red Sox.  Trailing 5-2 in the 8th inning, the Yankees managed to tie the game off of doubles by Hideki Matsui and Jorge Poseda; they'd go on to win when Aaron Boone hit a home run off of Tim Wakefield in the bottom of the 11th.

It is one of the few sporting events that I can distinctly remember watching on television.  After all, I got to stay up late on a school night to watch the best team in baseball beat those goddamn Red Sox, made all the more sweet as they were my little brother's team, and when you're ten years old, you are kind of evil that way.  It didn't matter that the Yankees lost the World Series that year; Aaron Boone's fifteen minutes of fame is the sweetest thing in my sports memory.

Fast forward to 2012, and I barely care anymore.  I sometimes look back and wonder what happened to the days when the Yankees and baseball were my life.  What happened to the days when I was disappointed that the Yankees traded for Alex Rodriguez because they traded away Alfonso Soriano?  Or when I actually cared about an interleague doubleheader against the New York Mets?  What happened?  Where is the love?

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure that my love of baseball ever actually diminished.  At least, my interest in baseball's history never went anywhere.  I'm not sure that the connection to baseball's history could ever leave.  Unlike the other major American sports, baseball is obsessed with the past.  Whereas football and basketball are almost always focused on the present with cursory glances to the old days, baseball is defined by the stars and games of the distant past.

One reason for that tendency is that, compared to the NFL and NBA, baseball actually has a past, one where it was the undisputed king.  It essentially defined the nation and what it meant to be an American.  In the documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, Rabbi Michael Paley argues that Detroit Tigers' slugger Hank Greenberg may have been the most important Jewish American in history.  As a baseball star, few people could make it easier for Jews to claim a legitimate place in American culture.

In the United States, baseball has that mythic quality to it.  Not only was it massively popular, it mattered in a cultural sense.  If Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax had played some other sport, even one as popular as baseball, I doubt that they would have had the same societal impact.  Even separate from their cultural importance, the baseball giants, from Babe Ruth to Roberto Clemente, seem to shine brighter than their counterparts in other American sports.

Granted, the other sports have had their stars, and the soccer greats such as Pelé likely inspired a far greater number of people.  But for some reason they aren't shrouded in the history perfume, and the ones that do don't stretch back that far; I don't see many basketball retrospectives focusing on Bob Petit.  Not so for Major League Baseball.  So even when sports in general stop mattering all that much to me, baseball still held a special place in my heart.

So if baseball as a game and as a cultural force is still interesting to me, then what explains my present state of apathy?  All I really know going in that my current state of mind set in some time in the last four years or so.  I figure that, at least, because the last bit of random baseball trivia I remember memorizing was that Jose Molina hit the last home run at the original Yankee Stadium.  Whatever happened, it was some time after that.

One possible explanation is a version of nostalgia.  The state of baseball in 2012 is pretty different from the state of the game a decade ago.  Maybe I just respond negatively to that change.  I mean, in my personal ordering the universe, the Atlanta Braves should win the NL East every single year and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays should be a doormat.  And the idea of the Texas Rangers winning the World Series is patently ridiculous.

I suppose there is somthing to that.  But given how nostalgia generally works, I should not have entered that phase of my life yet.  After all, when people complain how everything sucks nowadays, it's usually in comparison to their teenage and early-20s years.  Hell, in two decades, I should be regretting that baseball isn't the way that it is right now.  I mean, I've been told I have an old-man mentality, but it just doesn't seem like a plausible answer.

Could it be that the steroid cloud hanging over the game affected my attitudes?  I actually know the answer to this one: no.  For one thing, steroids have been a part of the game the whole time I've been watching it; for me, it's baseball's status quo.  For another, I really, honestly do not care if players cheat by using steroids.  I'd rather they not cheat at all, but ethically, how is it all that different from Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes to injure second basemen?

Actually, the best explanation I can think of is a fairly simple one: time.  At a certain point, one simply does not have the time or energy to follow things as one did while a child.  In fact, Bill Simmons argues that this, in the form of getting old, is one of the things that caused him to fall out of the loop with Major League Baseball:

But when you reach your 30s, your Tolerance Level drop dramatically, your Responsibility Level increases, and it becomes much more difficult to subject yourself to the day-to-day grind of a professional sports season--there simply isn't enough time in the day.  I find I'm choosing sports over each other.  The first to go was college football...The NHL followed quickly...College hoops was next...Now I'm down to the NBA (my favorite sport), the NFL (a close second) and baseball (a distant third). (1)

Granted, to apply this to my own situation would still require my old-man mentality, but it seems to be the most logical option.  Though I would also add the work required to be a fan varies by sport.  I maintain that the reason the NFL remains popular in the modern TV landscape is that it requires the least effort to follow--one game per week.  Similarly, work is why I never got too into the NBA and NHL; one must diligently follow the team to figure out when they're playing.

Baseball is a mixed bag in this sense.  On the one hand, it requires little effort to get into; just flip on the TV at 7:00 p.m., and nine times out of ten there'll be a game on.  But, because of the 162-game schedule, it can get tiresome very quickly.  Even when I was ten and could follow the Yankees with little getting in the way, I would still go on two week stretches without watching a game, just to take a break.  Nine years later, and those breaks have gone on indefinitely.

Whatever the reason that I lost contact with America's past-time in the modern day, I figure that it is only appropriate that I determine whether I can fall in love with it again.  To test this idea, I sat down with my younger brother and watched a Yankees-Red Sox game.  The first game of a July 7 day-night doubleheader set at Boston's Fenway Park, if this contest couldn't wake me out of my baseball apathy, then it's unlikely that anything else could.

Furthermore, I wanted the full baseball nerd experience with this.  And I can't think of anything that screams "baseball nerd" than actually keeping score of the game.  I even hand drew a double-sided baseball scorecard for the task, since the computer connected to the printer in our house is barely functional.  "This better be worth it," I was thinking.  "It took me over two hours to draw up this damned thing."  So what did this game tell me?

Well, for one thing, I was surprised by just how many of the players I had never heard of.  I realize that as the first half of a doubleheader, coming after a game the previous night, there would be a lot of benchwarmers getting some playing time.  All the same, the bottom third of the Yankees line-up was pretty foreign to me: Jayson Nix at shortstop, Darnell McDonald playing left, and Chris Stewart behind the plate.  Not a classic Yankees line-up, that.

But that was at least better than with Boston; I recognized exactly one player from the Red Sox of a few years ago, and that was David Ortiz as the designated hitter.  Other than him, who the hell were these people?  Maura Gomez, Daniel Nava, Ryan Kalish: as far as I could tell, the announcers were just making up names as they went.  Give me this, at least I realized that half of the Red Sox key players were on the diabled list.  But one out of nine, that's pretty bad.

On the plus side, it told me watching the Yankees destroy the Red Sox is still a satisfying experience.  In a 6-1 victory, the Yankees hit four home runs over the Green Monster, including two blasts from Andruw Jones, who apparently joined the team last year.  And keeping score helped me get some enjoyable digs in at my brother.  "Hey, whoever this Kalish fellow is, he's grounded into two 4-6-3 double plays today."  Though now I sound like that guy, which is never a good thing.

All in all though, I had a good time watching that particular game.  I missed most of the night game on account of July 4 weekend affairs, but I did catch some of the action on Fox, and even though the Yankees lost, it was still a cool experience.  The same held in the fourth and final contest, this time broadcast on ESPN.  Some guy named Ivan Nova got ten strikeouts for the Yankees, and had he not struggled with pitch count I'm sure he'd have gotten some more.  I'll have to keep my eye on him.

But I also found a few things rather bothersome about baseball.  Well, not baseball itself, but the presentation.  The broadcasters in all the games I watched for this project--whether on YES, Fox or ESPN--proved incredibly distracting.  In fact, the annoyance factor increased with every game.  By the time we got to Sunday Night Baseball, I was yelling at the television for Dan Shulman and company to focus on the actual game, instead of uninformative interviews with the managers or the several thousands references to the upcoming Home Run Derby.

Actually, watching that train wreck of digressions punctuated by Nova strikeouts calls to mind an article by Noel Murray I read over at The A.V. Club a couple of weeks ago while perusing the archives:

On the national level...I've noticed an increase in time-filling business only loosely related to the game at hand: more guests in the booth, more uniformative sideline reporting, more in-game interviews with coaches, and the like.  Watching a Saturday baseball game on Fox is like tuning into an especially lame daytime talk show, interrupted by an occasional play in the field. (1)

This quote may have finally help me reach a conclusion, or at least a rationalization, for I stopped watching baseball.  The time factor I mentioned before is a factor, but it's ultimately coupled with this problem of presentation.  I always say that if you love to do something, then you will make time for it.  Well, I may love baseball, but not with this terrible packaging around it.  I can make time to watch baseball, but I won't do it to listen to the broadcasting.

That's the sad part of the conclusion, but the happy news is that, hey, I still love baseball.  It kind of makes me sad that I wasn't keeping up with it at all at the beginning of the season.  And keeping score allowed me to ignore the announcing to a large degree; I don't need to depend on the ESPN crew to point out that Rafael Soriano was struggling in the bottom of the ninth when I can see that he's been worked into three straight full counts.  I can still love baseball.

Now, if only I got the Yankees games out in Pittsburgh.

Works cited:
Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story. Dir. Peter Miller. Narr. Dustin
     Hoffman. PBS. WLIW, New York, 5 July 2012. Television.

Murray, Noel. "Why Does Most Modern Sports Broadcasting Suck So Hard?" The A.V.
     Club. Onion, 7 Dec. 2010. Web. 9 July 2012.

Simmons, Bill. "Falling out of Love with Baseball." Page 2. ESPN, 28 Mar. 2002, Web.
     8 July 2012.