February 15, 2010

The Stories Our Age Brings

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:13 PM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 18, 2009

Where the Wild Things Are

1963. Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are

This is a children's book iconic, so well-known, so beloved ... and so short ... it's hard to believe Hollywood would even attempt to make a movie out of it. Of course, they're making re-makes of re-makes, so I suppose they've totally used up all of their creativity anyway. I could rant, but why waste the energy? We all know Hollywood's been sucking for a long time now and that they're making movies designed to be understood by people who've done so much crack and huffed so much paint they can barely stand upright.

Let's face it. Most Hollywood movies don't encourage thought. Those that do, get panned as too artsy or high-falutin'.

(Yes, I'm generalizing. Overstating the case. That's not really a good thing either, but let's roll with it for a minute.)

Anyhow, back to Sendak. When I saw Todd McFarlane's Where the Wild Things Are toys, I was over the moon. I was teaching at a university and my students were working on their essays during class. I was on a computer in the front of the room, ready to help if they needed anything - a student walked up while I was discovering these toy/statues.

"What's that?"

"Where the Wild Things are action figures."

"What's that?"

I blinked. He had never seen the book. So, the day before Spring Break, I brought the book in and after we'd done a little work, told them they could leave if they wanted, but those who wanted to stay, we'd sit down on the floor and have a little story time. I promised it would be quick. There were a couple of kids who started to leave ... but since the bulk of them were already plopping their butts down on the floor, most stayed. I think only 1 or 2 actually left.

Upon hearing that this book was to be made into a movie, I was furious. And it was going to be a live-action flick instead of animated. I was HORRIFIED.

And then I saw the trailer.

I was hooked and couldn't wait for it to come out.

It was absolutely fantastic.

It is not a typical Hollywood flick.

It is not a movie for children the same age as the book's original audience.

It is primarily a movie for adults, not because it's too scary or inappropriate ... but because kids aren't really the target audience. Spike Jonez is mostly reminding us what it was to be a child. The immediacy of emotion, the attempts to fix everything, the surety that a good story could fix the world just by your own force of will and belief. The mercurial emotions - gleeful one moment and devastated beyond the ability to explain in words the next. In fact, the movie is largely about being without words ... and learning to find words ... and being content knowing that sometimes words are completely unnecessary.

I've seen criticism that this movie encourages bad behaviour in children. Not really, although children do mimic what they see and they are sure to mimic the snowball fights and dirt clod wars and perhaps even the odd moment of biting. But they do this because they are children, just like Max and just like Max they are learning how to deal with their emotions and urges ... and their anger.

That's the core of this flick. How to deal with anger, with relationships, with living in community with other people.

Kids are not born knowing how to deal with anger. They are not born understanding that their actions have consequences both emotional and physical.

Max, in the beginning of the film, is a very angry little boy. He's ultimately pretty good at heart, but he is a wild thing. He is acting out. On the one hand, he wants to fix everything and make everyone happy all of the time. On the other hand (or claw), he doesn't know what to do with the anger he feels when he's lonely or sad or can't help his mom to not be sad. And with all of that confusion and anger and frustration, he behaves, oddly enough, like a child.

This is not to excuse him, mind you. His behaviour is unacceptable. His mother's reactions are not depressing, at least not to me, they're freaking realistic. She is tired. She is stressed. And while the boy is a wild thing ... she is obviously doing something right as he's also kind-hearted (when he thinks things through all the way).

However, children have to act like children in order to learn how they are supposed to behave. And if we ignore bad behaviour, they learn nothing and they act like Charlie Weis when they grow up. This movie does not hit us over the head with the punishments Max gets in order to learn how to behave ... that's a typical Hollywood gambit. Max learns it more organically than that. And sure, it's pretty obvious that there a Wild Thing that rather parallels Max ... but I think the movie manages to make that character an extension of Max's psyche in a way that's more of a literary foil than a dumbed-down version.

It's a film that captured, for me, what it was to be a child. It captured all of the things I promised myself I would never forget - how hard it is when no one has time for you, how impossible it is to explain yourself and what you're thinking and feeling sometimes.

Kids watching this flick may act out for a while after seeing it. Testing boundaries and to a certain extent, feeling that momentary freedom of just acting rather than thinking. The movie walks a very fine line with Max's behaviour. As adults, I don't think we need to see his mother punishing him because really, we get that Max gets it - how bad his behaviour has been. It's subtle, but it's clearly there. Children - well, it depends on the maturity and intellectual capabilities of the specific child (or their attention span - the movie isn't really paced for kids). Some of them will get it. Some of them will think Max got away with murder and that they can as well.

If you take a child to this movie, it's up to us as adults to DISCUSS it with the kid afterward. Not hammer them about what was right or wrong about Max's behaviour. Not point out how much trouble they'd be in if they ever behaved that way. Discuss all of it. Ask them if they ever feel that lonely. If they ever get that terribly out of sorts that they feel like an out-of-control wild thing. Tell them how you used to be. How you sometimes still feel those feelings. And what you do to cope with the feelings and still behave like a proper person instead of a wild thing.

I loved this movie because it's not a passive thing. Sure, you can turn your brain off and watch it if you want. You might even enjoy it that way.

But if you engage with it and with other people ... if you discuss it ... the issues it brings up ...

Well, then it's a film that is as timeless as the book itself. A book which caused quite a bit of controversy itself when it was first published. And even more when it snagged the Caldecott.

One of my favourite bits (and it's giving nothing away, it's depicted on some versions of the movie poster) - is the parallel between Max and a Wild Thing walking through the desert and the very similar poster for the absolutely wretched George Lucas flick. Without overdoing it, Jonez is making a comparison, I think, that each of us has an Anakin/Vader battle of our own. Really, Jonez probably places more emphasis and symbolism on the desert the characters cross and its mere existence on the island of the wild things more than he was making a nerd reference to Episode One, but the visual "one-liner" was just one of many delights I found in the movie. For me, that was a still frame every bit as rich and engaging as a page from Sendak's original book.

I hope the movie does well. Maybe it will encourage Hollywood to make more films that don't require we turn off our brains and mindlessly consume without engagement.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:50 PM | Comments (6) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

Homes

When I was just starting school, we moved to a very magical place. The north side of Austin, in a little subdivision called Balcones Woods. You got there via the highway, passing a couple of active quarries - the subdivision was marked by a large stone wall turned into a sign ... that was Balcones Woods Drive, a long, winding road into the subdivision with little branches coming off of it like tiny creeks fracturing off a slightly larger river.

Having just come from the frozen northlands of Indiana and townhouse living, I was mesmerized with the duality of our new house. If I stood in the front yard and faced south, it was a neighborhood. If I stood in the backyard, faced north and through the section of fence that Dad had taken down ... woods. It was beautiful and I was in heaven.

Dad began carving out areas of the backyard for plants. There was a border lined with decorative cement "fence" pieces, scalloped like little half circles erupting from the ground - and rose bushes and other plants safely ensconced between them and the fence. There was the garden area to the west side of the yard. And one little "wild" patch that Dad never did figure out what he wanted to do with. In a lot of ways, that was my favourite area, oppositional child that I was.

Despite my allergies, I spent long and happy hours in the backyard. I learned to not give completely in to Mom's fear of wasps and bees, although they do make me rather nervous now. I played with little garter snakes ... and brought them up to show Mom and Dad both before learning that 1) Mom is terrified of any creepy-crawly, but most especially snakes and 2) some snakes were serious business. Dad was good about it. He told me what to watch for in rattlers - but I never did see one. I'm not sure we really discussed cottonmouths much, but we probably should have.

I continued to pick up and play with my little ribbon snakes, however. And lizards. If I could have caught the rabbits that came into the yard, I'd've picked them up as well.

In the evenings we'd watch as the rabbits and deer would come to the garden for a snack. Dad was alternately furious with the wildlife and entranced. We could have built a critter-fence around the garden, but somehow despite his complaining, Dad never built it. I wonder now if it wasn't because he, too, enjoyed watching the animals come creeping into the backyard through the gap in our back fence.

One of the most memorable and even magical moments, however, was one shared by the entire neighborhood.

I don't know how the whole neighborhood knew to open their front doors and come outside. This was long before cell phones or even cordless phones. Besides, no one could hardly move or take their eyes off the scene.

A large buck was leaping diagonally across Balcones Woods Drive.

I can remember watching as it passed our house, lightly touching down and then this surging ripple in the muscles of the hindquarters and with this silent explosion of energy he was flying all the way across the street to the edge of Julie Koska's yard. Another surge and he was at the edge of Keith's yard, next door to ours. In a matter of heartbeats he was bounding down the street and around the curve out of our sight.

It was one of the most beautiful events I've ever witnessed. It seemed to happen so quickly and yet it also happened in slow motion.

And while it was a beautiful event ... it was also the harbinger of bad things to come.

You see, the subdivision was expanding. We were forced to put our section of back fence back up because the builders were going to put in a two-story house behind us. The woods behind us were bulldozed. Rabbits, opossums, snakes ... these were just a few critters we saw trying to move into our backyard because they had nowhere else to go.

At first, I thought this was wonderful. More rabbits in our yard. More deer. But then the deer stopped coming at all. The two-story house now where my beautiful extended backyard had been looked directly into our back porch and kitchen. An opossum decided to live in our trash can (until Mom freaked out so much that it left when she wasn't looking).

One night, soon after our new backyard neighbors moved into their two-story ... we had some old neighbors decide to move into our house. Mom and Dad were in their bedroom ... when they heard this odd skritch, skritch, skritch sound. They turned the lights back on, went into our wood paneled den and looked around. At first, nothing. Then the skritch.

Then there were three loud THUDs as Dad took a shoe and killed the three scorpions on the wall.

Mom came into my room the next morning and explained how we'd have to check our shoes every morning before putting them on from now on. So, I looked in my shoe carefully and saw something scurrying back and forth. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed the critter doing the 50 yard dash back and forth in my shoe even had Mom not warned me. I wasn't sure what the hell a scorpion was, but the thing in my shoe didn't move like a spider, that I knew. I bent over the shoe for a few minutes, studying the speeding critter. Definitely not a spider. And I had no idea what the issue was with scorpions - maybe they were somewhat poisonous. Not rattler poisonous or Mom would have been freaking out more, but maybe they were more painful than a wasp sting. Best not experiment.

Since she'd said something about it, I calmly went into her room, "Mom, there's a scorpion in my shoe."

"Oh honey, just because I just told you about that doesn't mean there's a scorpion in your shoe."

My poor mother never did understand that I was not a child who made up stories like this. If I said I didn't feel good, chances were that vomiting was in the near future, not that I was trying to get out of something. That kind of duplicity just didn't occur to me. If I said there was a critter, there was a critter.

Don't get me wrong, I could make up a wild story, but they were obviously wild stories. And I did like to play practical jokes, but I could never keep a straight face when I did. Which rather gave the joke away.

"Mom, there's a scorpion in my shoe."

"Now, don't make up stories."

I just stood there. Finally, "I've never seen a spider that looked like that."

Exasperated, Mom went into my room, picked up my shoe with casual abandon that I'd never seen her use around a creepy-crawly more than a daddy-longlegs, and dumped my shoe out over the toilet to prove to me for once and for all that there was ...

She screamed. Well, squeaked.

There in the toilet bowl, attempting to swim its way out, was a light tan, semi-translucent scorpion.

I was fascinated to see it where it couldn't hurt me (could it shoot venom or something out of that tail? maybe I should re-think this curiosity thing). Mom pushed me away and flushed the toilet. And apologized.

Whether it was coincidence or not, soon thereafter we began making plans for moving out of Austin to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Dad went up into the attic to lay down some more insulation to make the house more salable ... and discovered one more creepy-crawly who'd moved out of Balcones Woods and into the house.

As we were finishing our packing and waiting for the moving van to take our stuff away, I heard Dad laughing about the "bad luck" of the new home owner who'd bought this house. I should interject now to say that my Dad had the morality and ethics of a child who thinks pulling the wings off of flies is a roaring good time. When he was installing the insulation, he discovered not termites ... but thousands upon thousands of ant eggs. I like to think that he at least sprayed something up there, but probably not.

It's the thing we understand least, I think, when we tear down a "wild" area in order to build a new subdivision. We're not just building up a place for ourselves, we're evicting others. I'm not saying we shouldn't ever build! I do wonder, though, if we shouldn't re-think the arrogance with which we build. We get upset when our homes are invaded by spiders or ants or scorpions. (Or, mice in the attic, I say, shaking my fist at the mouse racetrack above the living room ceiling. Apparently mouse and chipmunk Nascar is held in our attic. Yeah, it's exciting to hear the zooming mice in an oval whilst trying to watch tv.)

What effect is displacing the native wildlife going to have on the neighborhood? What effect will having fewer trees and more concrete and asphalt have on the area? Can we figure out ways to coexist with the creatures we can coexist with?

Some things we learn through experience - like the midwestern farmers who tore down fences and tree lines to keep the landscape unmarked by ridiculous boundary lines (and thus keep us looking different from the "ugly" partitioned farms of the U.K.) ... only to find out that without those windbreaks, small though some of the were, snow swept through the fields and buried farmhouses and barns. Is there some kind of balance to be struck between living near the rich, rich farmland of an old river bottom ... and the completely natural and necessary flooding of that area every decade or so?

Why is our first instinct when an earthquake or hurricane rips through and destroys a town - or a tornado mutilates a trailer park - "well, they decided to live there." Why isn't our first thought a way to adapt to existing conditions instead of putting on blinders and assuming we can "fix" the nature of the area?

I don't know any of those answers ... just another one of my crazy-talk think-pieces.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:41 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

June 16, 2009

Fictions We Tell Ourselves

I have always had a relatively easy time making acquaintances when I gear myself up for it. What I have always had a difficult time with is making friends. Sure, everyone has this problem to some extent - that's why most folks have more acquaintances than friends and it's why the one line from "The Body" and Stand By Me gets quoted so often: "I never had friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was twelve - Jesus, does anyone?"

But I always struggled making friends. Maybe it was because we moved seven times to six cities before I started kindergarten. And then I went to 3 elementary schools, moved towns once more ... and did 3 semesters at one junior high and 3 semesters at another. It could be that. But I think it's something more fundamental to my core personality.

As a child, I could chat with adults quite comfortably. Other children, on the other hand, confused me. I felt a bit like Invader Zim in his human suit - except I had no plans to actually take over the world. I was an alien surrounded by real people and I could never quite figure out how they worked or what so many of their gestures or phrases or looks meant. I could hang around with a bunch of different groups of kids ... but I was always on the periphery.

As an adult, that's not really changed - I'm constantly misreading cues from others and misinterpreting things. At the same time, I can generally tell you someone's motivations for actions.

When I first started going to a certain activity as an adult, I didn't expect to like it or to make friends. I'd long since learned that I suck at making friends. I tagged along at first because my partner enjoyed going to this group activity and wanted me to come as well. I was quite surprised to discover I enjoyed the hell out of it. I hoped that I would be able to fit in and to make friends ... but I was unsurprised to have this not really happen. Don't get me wrong, there are several folks I've met there whose company I really enjoy and would love to call friend - but seems like it's mostly a one-way relationship and frankly, I get tired of trying so hard to keep it going.

You can only invite someone over so many times before you get the message, you know?

Eventually, I joined a subgroup in this place - love every minute of it. It's an activity that stretches me and terrifies me and the folks there have been wonderful. No one has judged me, no one has told me I suck or I'm not talented or any of that. They encourage me - it's great! But I also feel like I've never really "broken into" the group either. I still don't feel included, I suppose I'm saying.

And then, a few weeks ago our subgroup has a party. And the "owner" of the main group is also a member of this subgroup - just a member of it though, someone else leads this subgroup. The "owner" says "something came up" and he can't attend the party. I'm disappointed, but I get that. The "owner" is a very busy person and shit does come up for him all the time.

So we're all at the party having a grand ole time ... and somehow the whole thing changes from a party to an impromptu meeting. And the subject appears to be how some folks are thinking that the "owner" isn't a good leader. Parts of this meeting are really good - we needed to do some thinking about our budget for next year and to see if we could do some fundraising or something. We had great discussion around this. But there were these odd moments where everything would shift and grow dark and bitter ... and people told how unhappy they were with the "owner."

I was shocked.

I had NO idea.

None. It was to the point, apparently, that some have thought about leaving the group because the "owner" isn't the kind of leader they understand. He has a legitimate leadership style, but it's one in which the power is NOT vested in one single person, but instead is supposed to be shared among members in various capacities (capacities which are open and transparent, by the way). What he doesn't really do is stand up and say "And now our group is going to do X because I said so."

Ummm, I thought that was a good thing?

I listened. Spoke up now and again. But it seemed like people needed to vent, so I tried to let them do that. They were upset that for the first time ever, the "owner" had not shown up for a group event. They said he was avoiding conflict.

I just had a feeling that he didn't even know there was a real conflict.

And when it was all over, I emailed him and said, "We have to talk."

We did that ... spent two hours telling him everything that I could remember from that gathering/meeting. Not because I'm a tattletale. Not because I thought it would garner any kind of favour.

But because there was a serious problem going on and the people who needed to be talking to each other weren't doing it.

There was no indication at the meeting that anything was said that wouldn't be said to the "owner's" face. There was no indication that this was a closed discussion or that there was any kind of implied privacy or confidentiality.

The "owner" thanked me for having the courage to come forward and let him know what was happening. He'd only heard the vaguest of mutterings and that had only come very recently when apparently this had been going on for quite some time.

He wrote everyone in the subgroup a letter and asked if it was okay if he named me as the one who had come forward. I said it was fine - and it is. If I misspoke or gave him any wrong impressions, the others should know whom to correct. I don't do the crappy behind-the-back shit. That's just cowardly.

A part of me expects that the subgroup might feel betrayed anyway. I knew when I first went to the "owner" that doing so might cost me my membership. So be it. It was the right thing to do. I didn't carry tales - I let there be known what the problems were. I didn't engage in any he said/she said - my memory is not that good.

The owner sent me a copy of the letter before everyone else to make sure that I was still comfortable being named as the one who'd come forward. That what he'd written was a fair interpretation/recounting of what I'd said (inasmuch as it even covered that - really there was only a small section that came from me). And then an invitation for people to please come forward and talk with the owner - to get this worked out.

That sounds like someone who is good at handling conflict to me - not someone who skips a social event because he's avoiding conflict.

Ultimately, I hope this all works out. That all the issues are brought to the forefront and dealt with and we come back in the fall as an even stronger group than we were this year.

But I will never understand why some folks seem to have gone at least a whole year harbouring issues until they festered into wounds and expected the owner to just magically know there was a problem, what the problem was and how to fix it.

And people act like I the alien.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:47 PM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

May 26, 2009

Piles of Dirt

There was little more fascinating to me as a kid than a simple pile of dirt. Now I'm not talking Mom-sweeping-the-floor dirt. I'm talking a nice, solid mound at least 3-4 feet high.

Oh, who am I kidding? Even today there is little that will spark my imagination faster than a pile of dirt.

During my lunch hour now, I leave the building and make a quick jaunt to a little subdivision on the edge of Northern Indiana farmland. The subdivision has just four streets so far - two "horizontal" and two connecting "vertical" streets - and maybe as many as a dozen houses, but I doubt there are even that many. It is, I suppose, a victim of our current economy and the housing bubble gone POP.

It's the perfect lunch sanctuary here.

I come out here and park the car at the end of an unfinished vertical street, and stop just as the pavement turns to gravel and then dirt. And I face this large meadow to my left and a small line of windbreak trees before me. Just to right there is a huge old tree and I hope they never tear it down just to put another crappy little house up.

And as much as I love trees, and as much as I love to feel the wind on my face, hear the birds and the grasshoppers and the screech of the occasional hawk, it is the simple piles of dirt which mesmerize me.

I look at them and I am instantly ten years old again. Those tire tracks are really desolate roads leading to the mountains and I can see my younger self kneeling in the dirt with absolutely no regard for my now decrepit knees or the pile of hardware that keeps my right leg together and also keeps it tender and stiff.

But there I am, knees grinding into the dirt tracks with my Fisher Price Adventure People action figures. The blue TV van and the green action sports van hurtling down the dirt roads, leaving their own tiny tracks behind in the soft, loose soil.

We pull up to the base of the left-most mountain and the mountain climbers (Jan and a nameless red-headed bearded man in a red lumberjack-like shirt) clamber out of the back of the green van. The motorcross guy helps them with their gear - a climbing rope "backpack" and a "backpack" for their sleeping bags. And while the always nameless motorcross guy is helping them, his brother Joey is getting the motorcycle out of the van and prepping it. Joey will just watch from the sidelines today - his sports are parachuting and kayaking. Fisher Price did not make him with legs to bend at the knee so he could also ride the motorcycle, so in my world, Joey has had an accident which fused his knees. He fouled up a skydiving jump. His parachute is wrapped and ready to go, strapped in to the top of the van, but ... not today.

The mountain climbers begin their arduous trek up the piles of dirt. Throwing the climbing rope and labouriously ensuring that it's caught solidly before beginning the next part of their ascent. Jan, in her shorts, is particularly nimble whilst the poor bearded man is ... well ... a bit clumsy for a climber.

They make a brief rest camp and I climb to the top of the dirt pile and survey what dangers might lie ahead for them and Mr. Motorcross and wish for a tame creek - one I could bring my action figures' boats to and have them go scuba-diving without fear of the current stealing my toys with a minute's inattention.

For example, ants are now travelling over the abandoned Joey and I jump down to smush them because ants are evil and must all be smushed.

My younger self could happily play with my toys out here for a week and really not notice the passing of time as such.

Sadly, that was never allowed.

"You'll lose them."

"The other kids will break them or steal them."

"The other kids will laugh at you."

I didn't care then, but my mother did. I turned 11, 12, 13, 14 and then 15 and I still had not lost interest in my toys and my mother began to panic. She devised any excuse she could think of to disrupt my playtime ... although at 15 I called it storytime and used the toys to act out bits of novels I wrote during school. And finally, she forced me to sell them all.

I am convinced that were I plopped out there today with a tubload of those action figures and a guarantee that no one would see me or disrupt me, I could easily lose myself again - like a fade cut at the end of a movie when the main character finally gets what he wants and we're ready to assume that it all works out, and there are, in fact, no consequences beyond that moment of perfect contentment as the scene closes.

Unfortunately, this is reality and as I check my iPod's clock to see how I've managed to write all of this and NOT use up my entire lunch hour yet, the reality comes flooding back. The alarm went off fifteen minutes ago, but I had turned the external volume all the way down and forgotten. I convinced myself to trust the alarm and just keep writing instead of obsessively checking the time like I usually do. I am supposed to be clocking back in this very second.

I start the car and begin to back up, turn around and head back to the cubicle ...

... once again denying that kid a promising pile of dirt.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:26 PM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

May 10, 2009

Complexities of Dollhouse

Most of my favourite books are character-driven books. They have to have a good plot, but it's the character that drives everything for me. The same with television and movies. Oh sure, I'll turn on a rather empty movie or show for background noise whilst I'm drawing ... or working in Photoshop - but it's not something I pay close attention to.

And, I've realized, besides the character-driven aspect, I want a plot that is rich. One that I can't really guess from 200 pages out or from the first three minutes of the show. I will admit I enjoyed the TV show The Pretender - not for its wretched Scooby Doo plots (where the first person the Scooby gang sees is generally the bad guy) - I found the show fascinating for the overall story. Who was Jarod really? Why was he snatched? Would he find his answers? Could he bring down the Center and save Sydney and Miss Parker? How can he claim to be so moral when he's constantly lying about who he is? What is the back story of the Center? of Miss Parker?

The basic weekly plot was a funny li'l side benefit. Nothing to concentrate hard on, but just an interesting side note on the way to delivering the larger story. It was often amusing, funny, touching ... and always revealing about Jarod's real self. It was not the best-written show ever, but I found the premise fascinating and the actors all did a splendid job, I thought.

Now with all of that said, I didn't watch more than a handful of episodes of Lost. It does seem like the show is character-driven. There is in over-arching, series-encompassing plot rather than each episode being a "one-off," a self-enclosed entity. I'm not positive why Lost didn't capture my attention and, in fact, wound up irritating the crap out of me. Perhaps too many characters and not enough hints/clues/info about each? That's the most likely answer - there were too many people and I couldn't focus enough on someone to become invested in. The ending of the few early episodes I saw felt like cheats to me. When I hear co-workers talking about the overall plot now, it does sound like an interesting show ... maybe I'll give it another try and Netflix it later on. But it seemed too spread out and too slow to capture my attention.

On the other hand, Dollhouse captured my attention from the get-go. I had one major character to concentrate on - Echo/Caroline - and two semi-major characters: her handler, Boyd, and the FBI agent who is obsessed with this mysterious dollhouse organization. Then there's two more slightly less air-time (at least at the beginning of the show) characters that I'm fascinated by: Topher and Dr. Saunders. To a lesser extent, I'm somewhat interested in the "madame" of the show as Cowboy Pete called her - and he's right about that. As the show has progressed, I have become much more invested in her character than I ever thought I would.

For those who haven't watched the show, let me explain the concept very quickly: The Dollhouse is a "company" which has developed a way to take your memories and personality and place all of that on a hard drive (a wedge). They can then wipe your brain clean, essentially, and imprint you with a new personality and new memories. It might be a composite of several people - the skills of a bank robber, the law knowledge of a cop, the computer skills of a genius and the empathy of a really good nurse. Or, it might be the straight-up personality, knowledge, skills and memories of a single person.

The "actives," as they call their unwitting operatives, have little personality when they are not actually on an assignment. They are docile half-wits who do what they're told. It's only after they've received a "treatment" to turn them into a full-fledged personality that they "come to life" - as someone other than their "true" selves.

Okay, I have to admit, the concept alone completely fascinates me. Some unscrupulous company is erasing people? Who the hell is going to volunteer for shit like this, it's insane to let yourself be wiped, right? But think of those times in your teens or twenties when something wretched had happened and you just wanted to disappear. Or you thought that if you just had x amount of money, you could get through this and start over, better. In a moment of desperation, the thought of disappearing for 5 years and then "waking up" with 5 years of damn good salary and not having had to spend anything on apartment rent or car payments or well, even food, might sound like a good idea. Momentarily. After all, you're not responsible for anything you do during those 5 years, because it's not really you doing it. And you won't remember any of it anyway. And you'll be through the bad patch with a nice sum of cash. It's kind of like hitting fast forward on a bad patch of your life, right?

Naturally, the situation is more complex than that, but I can easily see how at 22 I might have found that an attractive option in a moment of weakness or desperation. Hell, I can see where a 30something or a 40 something might find that an attractive option after the love of their life dies ... or a traumatic divorce. There are circumstances which make most people wish for a fast-forward and a clean start.

And, from the first aired episode of Dollhouse, we get the idea that at least the main active we'll be watching through this series, Echo, is not quite as "wiped clean" as Topher (the genius tech who runs the wiping and imprinting technology) thinks. There are moments in every episode where we see flashes of Echo's core self, Caroline, coming to the surface even though that's not supposed to happen.

We're also told that Alpha - a doll who at one time was their best male active - was an anomaly whose core personality started "waking up" at least somewhat when he was supposed to be in his docile, empty state. He turned out to be an active who broke the programming, killed a handler, maimed several dolls and escaped. An insane genius, they describe him now. One they'd both like to forget and capture. But their first clue something was wrong was the fact that his core personality starting coming through the imprinted ones.

So, will Echo/Caroline turn into a psychotic repeat of Alpha? Or will she "wake up" and bring the Dollhouse and its company down?

Other Whedon fans have called the show an actor's dream where the main character can be completely different every week - and therefore show off the actor's range. There is some truth to that, I think, but to write the show off as only a Dushku vehicle - a kind of network sponsored demo reel - is to sell literally everyone involved in the series very, very short.

I honestly don't understand the ire Dollhouse has gained from some Whedon fans ... unless it is perhaps too subtle for them? And I think this is the real crux of the problem.

There are a handful of shows that I must actually watch every minute. Dollhouse is one. Dexter is another. Life is another. And Saving Grace is another. I cannot sit and draw and half-watch any of these. The acting is often done in silence as it is in real life. More is communicated through a look or a gesture or a sudden look in an unexpected direction than through the overt dialogue. In Saving Grace, everyone from Holly Hunter through the director, writers and producers have said what a joy the show has been to work on because they don't rely on music or a "hit-you-over-the-head" camera angle to force their viewers to pick up on a subtle detail or clue. You have to pay attention yourself. And the show assumes that you are and that you are intelligent enough to pick up on these things. Imagine that, television that assumes the viewer has a brain and enjoys using it.

Now, don't misinterpret that last paragraph. I don't think that the Whedon fans who dislike the show are stupid - I am NOT saying that. I am thinking that they - for any number of reasons - are not picking up on the subtleties of the show. And that could be true for a variety of very legitimate reasons.

I, personally, have found the Echo/Caroline character fascinating. I see quite a bit of her core Caroline self in her various Echo personalities. I think that to accept that Echo has nothing of Caroline in her either in the inactive docile doll state or while she has been imprinted with a personality and is out on an assignment is to swallow the line that the Dollhouse company is handing out. The evidence is certainly there that the personality wipes are simply not very good. I watch each episode waiting for Caroline to burst through Echo in some way ... to further the mystery, to further her struggle and save herself. To say that only in the last episode does Echo begin feeling stirrings of Caroline is to have not really watched the subtleties of the show from the first episode aired.

You see, I don't think either Echo or Caroline is a damsel in distress and doesn't know it. And I don't think she's waiting for someone else to come rescue her. I think that core personality - that soul as the rather overbearing FBI agent Ballard kept saying in the season finale - is there and is trying to break through. She might be a Sleeping Beauty as Jane Espenson says in the episode with that title - but she's not really waiting for a prince to come and save her. This show is about her struggle to awaken from a situation which seems beyond her control and yet at the same time is a situation in which she got herself into.

That, to me, seems to describe many people I know. How many people find themselves in a situation where they essentially, became lulled by everyday living to the point where they "fell asleep"? I can think of friends who were so caught up in the day-to-day "I have to work 80 hours a week to make enough" or to keep this job or to put my wife or husband or boyfriend through school -- and when that goal is accomplished we can start living again. They are so caught up in that, that they aren't living any more. They're not staying true to their core values even though they've lulled themselves into believing they are. And one day, something happens and they wake up and look at what they've been doing, who they've become, the time they've "wasted" and freak out. They can either be numbed by the realization, go back to sleep and back to the status quo or they can struggle to wake up and make a change, become true to that older ideal and less involved in reacting to the now, but acting upon their core beliefs.

To watch Dollhouse, to me, has been to watch each of the characters struggle with this. How do they balance the ethics of what they do? How do they make a change now? If they just leave, does that really change anything since the dollhouse continues on without them?

Dollhouse is not Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It's not Angel. It's not Firefly. And yet, it does encompass all of the tropes that mark a good Joss Whedon venture. All of his shows have explored the messy choices that we make and how we stay true to our own moral compass. Spike (from Buffy and Angel) was not just a bad guy, nasty vampire. He was, in many ways, better than Angel ever was because despite the demon within (the vampire), he wanted to do good. Angel had a soul forced on him - before then, he was a right nasty bastard who'd given in to the demon.

Mal (from Firefly) was not the immoral smuggler he seemed to be. He was a military man who fought for and believed in the side who lost. He tried to take jobs that either helped people or at least didn't hurt anyone.

All of these characters struggled deeply with the circumstances in which they found themselves. The struggled against societies who wanted them to fall asleep and toe the line - to fit into their neat, little stereotypical boxes and just stay there and be predictable. But life isn't like that. It's messy and it's not predictable.

And neither are we.

Even when we fall asleep and let our circumstances carry us away, we tend to wake up and fight back at the most inopportune moments.

If you wrote off Dollhouse as merely an actor's dream role, I invite you to take another look. If you haven't watched it yet, I hope this has intrigued you to take a look now. The DVDs are available on Amazon and available by the end of July. Or watch it on FOX on demand.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:46 AM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble