King's Highway pt. 28: Danse Macabre

Hey, wasn't I taking August off? Yes, I was/ am. But over the course of a few plane and train rides, I polished this one off and figure it won't fit so smoothly into the Dark Tower blogs I have planned for next month. So, roll another number for the road and let's take Danse Macabre for a quick spin.

It's kind of fun to read a book like this in 2012, when so many blogs, including this one, are devoted to the sort of discussion King orchestrates here. It's tempting to say the internet makes books like this (or list-books, for that matter) obsolete. But who knows? Is print dead? Aspects of it, sure, but overall, I doubt it. Either way, it's beyond our scope here.

This book is part autobiography, part overview of the films and books King thinks best inform the horror landscape in America, and part overall-philosophy-of-horror. It comes across as a breezy lecture course, delivered by a professor who may or may not have been drinking before class (or during). One might say it does for American horror circa 1950-1980 what Chuck Klostermann did for 80s metal in Fargo Rock City. 

I remember my brother (or mother) having this on the shelves in the 80s. I tried to read it then, but I didn't know any of the films or books he was talking about, so I never did. I've spent an awful lot of time in the years between getting to know the material, though - not consciously, i.e. at no point did I say Okay, time to make my way through the recommended reading/ viewing/ listening from Danse Macabre. But as suggested elsewhere, certain books and movies are gateway-drugs to certain other books and movies, and once you go down the EC path (to pick one of my own entry points) you end up taking in things like It, The Terror from Beyond Space and Lights Out. So this time around I knew first-hand or was familiar with most of the stories under discussion.

Arch Oboler, showrunner for Lights Out, and Joan Crawford.

I was particularly interested to see King devote some time to the golden age of radio. (Which, he quite rightly notes, was actually the twilight-age of radio; the programs he remembers listening to with his grandparents in his 1950s living room were the dying sounds of the once-unstoppable-entertainment-of-choice. Video may have killed the radio star, but TV was what drove all the radio actors and showrunners to NPR et al.) My apartment in Chicago is in one of the few areas that gets audionoir over the airwaves, and for the past few years, I put that on when I'm cooking or doing dishes. As a result, I started tracking down a lot of Old Timey Radio. There is tons of it out there, for free, if you're interested. (Any sci-fi fan will enjoy Dimension X; trust McMolo.)

One last bit of radio-reverie: I have a very clear memory of being 6 or 7 and huddled around a battery-operated radio in a tent in a campground in Frankfurt, Germany, listening to both an episode of "The Shadow" on Armed Forces Network Radio and a dramatization of Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace." And Bill Cosby used to talk about "The Chicken Heart" (which King discusses here) on one of my Dad's old records. (Records that I incidentally melted on the radiator. Not on purpose, of course.)

This was originally published in 1981. King had a bit of an ax to grind with the academic/ lit-critic establishment during this phase of his career, I think it's safe to say. He addresses it explicitly in his Playboy interview, discussed elsewhere, but there are several passages along these lines from DM that are worth reproducing here.

On the overall-futility of over-analyzing things like Invasion of the Body Snatchers: "Like endless discussions of breath units in modern poetry or the possible intrusiveness of some punctuation in the short story, it is really a discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and not really interesting unless those involved in the discussion are drunk or graduate students - two states of roughly similar incomprehension."

On the pretentious critical establishment: "...no one is so humorless as a big-time film critic or so apt to read deep meanings into simple doings. 'In The Fury,' Pauline Kael intoned, apparently, in all seriousness, 'Brian De Palma has found the junk heart for America.' It's as if these critics feel it necessary to prove and re-prove their own literacy; they are like teenage boys who feel obliged to demonstrate and redemonstrate their macho... they must surely be aware that while it requires at least a high school education to understand and appreciate all the facets of even such an accessible book as The Body Snatchers, any illiterate with four dollars in his or her pocket can go to a movie and find the junk heart of America."

Probably very true.

And on the narcissism of the intelligentsia: "I can't imagine... anyone trying to scratch out a subsistence-level existence for himself, his wife, and his eight kids giving much of a toot about Werner Erhard's est course or Rolfing. Such things are for rich folks. Recently, Joan Didion wrote a book about her own odyssey through the sixties, The White Album. For rich folks, I suppose it's a pretty interesting book: the story of a wealthy white woman who could afford to have her nervous breakdown in Hawaii - the seventies equivalent of worrying over pimples."

The book's chapters covering the radioactive-panic movies of the 1950s and their evolution through the subsequent decades are particularly fun reading.

"Once you've seen enough horror films, you begin to get a taste for really shitty movies. Films that are just bad... can be dismissed impatiently, with never a backward glance. But real fans look back on a film like The Brain from Planet Arous (It Came From Another World WITH AN INSATIABLE LUST FOR EARTH WOMEN!) with something like real love. It is the love one spares for an idiot child, true, but love is love, right? Right."

A few pics from the film in question.

He mentions how horror film fans like mining the dirt-bins for the discarded nugget of gold, and how every true fun usually has one film they uncovered before any of their friends or for which every true fan is an apostle. King's is Tourist Trap: 

Which made me happy, as I, too, have proselytized, independently of King's recommendation, for this movie. True, he wrote of this in 1981 so I am late to the party, but it was news to everyone to whom I mentioned it. Ditto for The Brotherhood of Satan. 

Among other things, it is produced by and stars the multi-talented L.Q. Jones.

"If we share a Brotherhood of Man, we also share an Insanity of Man."

You mean Brotherhood of SATAN!

"...I see the most aggressive of (horror movies) as lifting a trapdoor in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath."

"When the lights go out and we find ourselves stranded in a shoal of darkness, reality itself has an unpleasant way of fogging in. When we cut off one avenue of sensory input, that sense simply shuts down (although it never shuts down 100 percent, of course; even in a dark room, we will see a trace pattern in front of our eyes, and in the most perfect silence we will hear a faint hum... such "phantom input" only means that the circuits are open and standing by."

"Here is the final truth of horror movies: They do not love death, as some have suggested, they love life. They do not celebrate deformity by dwelling on deformity, they sing of health and energy. By showing us the miseries of the damned, they help us to rediscover the smaller (but never petty) joys of our own lives. They are the barber's leeches of the psyche, drawing not bad blood but anxiety... for a little while, anyway."

He devotes some text-time, rightly so, to George Romero's classic. Which if you haven't seen, shame on you.

"The horror movie asks you if you want to take a good close look at the dead cat (or the shape under the sheet, to use a metaphor from the introduction to my short story collection)... but not as an adult would look at it. Never mind the philosophical implications of death or the religious possibilities inherent in the idea of survival; the horror film suggests we just have a good close look at the physical artifact of death. Let us be children masquerading as pathologists. We will, perhaps, link hands like children in a circle, and sing the song we all know in our hearts: time is short, no one is really okay, life is quick and dead is dead."

The section on horror-on-TV is also great reading. The whole book is, really, but the last hundred or so pages devoted to ten or eleven horror novels was less captivating to me, personally, as I had only read a handful of the books discussed. Not so with the TV section; tho it was all before my time, I grew up watching most of this stuff.

King's analysis of the horror films of the 1970s is too comprehensive to sum up accurately here, but as it's my favorite era of film-making, my ears always perk up when it comes under the critical eye.

"This is like a sinister Woody Allen film" may be the most accurate review of Rosemary's Baby I've ever read. As an artifact of the "Is God dead?" era, it is first-rate archaeology, as well as a great flick.

"They are books and stories which seem to me to fulfill the primary duty of literature - to tell us the truth about ourselves by telling us lies about people who never existed."

A film I once heard described as "drenched in a menstrual panic," a phrase I've never gotten out of my head.

I quite liked this description of the "dead zone" one must dispel when bringing a story to life:

"In his marvelous novel The Hair of Harold Roux, Thomas Williams tells us that writing a long work of fiction is like gathering characters together on a great black plain. They stand around the small fire of the writer's imagination, warming their hands at the blaze, hoping the fire will grow into a blaze which will provide light as well as heat. But often it goes out, all light is extinguished, and the characters are smothered in black. It's a lovely metaphor for the fiction-making process, but it's not mine... I've always seen the novel as a large black castle to be attacked, a bastion to be taken by force or by trick. The thing about the castle is, it appears to be open. It doesn't look buttoned up for siege at all. The drawbridge is down. The gates are open. There are no bowmen on the turrets. Trouble is, there's really only one way safe way in; every other attempt at entry results in sudden annihilation from some hidden source."

The final section is a nice summary of King's personal philosophy-of-horror and, as with most of the above, is quoted directly from the text:

"The danse macabre is a waltz with death. This is a truth we cannot afford to shy away from. Like the rides in the amusement park which mimic violent death, the tale of horror is a chance to examine what's going on behind doors which we usually keep double-locked. Yet the human imagination is not content with locked doors. Somewhere there is another dancing partner, the imagination whispers in the night - a partner in a rotting ball gown, a partner with empty eyesockets, green mold growing on her elbow-length gloves, maggots squirming in the thin remains of her hair. To hold such a creature in our arms? Whom, you ask me, would be so mad? Well... Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or windo willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not... and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever."

Colored engraving of the dance of death, from 1483.

"It is not a dance of death at all, not really. There is a third level here, as well. It is, at bottom, a dance of dreams. It's a way of awakening the child inside, who never dies but only sleeps ever more deeply. If the horror story is our rehearsal for death, then it's strict moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination - just one more pipeline to the infinite."

I don't think the films of Mario Bava/ screen presence of Barbara Steele get much text consideration. (None of the giallos do, actually, though there may be some in the recommended-viewing in the back.) I suppose enough has been written elsewhere about them, but Mario Bava straddles the Hammer-knock-off era and the slasher-giallo era better than most. I'd have included a chapter just on him, were this my own Guide to Horror. But hey!

Finally, King shares a personal anecdote near the end that interested me. While a student at the University of Maine, he attended a lecture given by a couple of Black Panthers:

"These Black Panthers were suggesting an umbrella of conspiracy that was almost laughable.. except the audience wasn't laughing..." (He stands up to ask them if they were actually suggesting Nelson Rockefeller was orchestrating the Vietnam war from some shadowy room under the Pentagon, perhaps in cahoots with UFOs.) "The audience began to shout angrily at me to sit down and shut up. Which I did posthaste, blushing furiously, knowing how these eccentrics who mount their soapboxes in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons must feel. I did not much relish the feeling... It is impossible for those of my generation, propelled harum-scarum through the sixties... without a belief that someone - like Nelson Rockefeller - is pulling the strings."

I don't know if it's all that generational. The same crowd/ conspiracies exist today, as well as the same sit-down-and-shut-up angry-mob (and furious blushing embarrassment) when assumptions are challenged.

For any fan of horror (or King), Danse Macabre is a rewarding and accessible read.

NEXT!

We begin our exploration of Dark Tower National Park, following the route suggested by The Truth Inside the Lie, with... The Gunslinger.

King's Highway pt. 24: The Dead Zone

Written during "a depressed state of mind," according to SK.

This is a quirky little novel. I don't use quirky condescendingly. It's just a bit odd, both in how it stands out from King's other books and how the plot unfolds from other would-you-kill-Hitler narratives.

Why doesn't anyone ever go back in time to kill Stalin? I've always wondered that.

The epilogue ("Notes from the Dead Zone") and the way the sections fit together/ unfold... the character arc of "John Smith..." It almost seems like a strange version of Don DeLilo's Libra, but I'm sure that's not what he was going for. Interesting, though, that the two ideas, there, kind of converge later in 11/23/61, but I'll get to that way later.

(I'll get to my Castle Rock thoughts, later, too, and the lasting impact of Frank Dodd et al. when I see the exits for The Dark Half and Needful Things.)

I was reminded both of Duma Key and of On Writing, both which came much later in King's career, of course. But the accident and physical recovery section of TDZ brought to mind the similar section in OW, and the first two acts of TDZ brought DK to mind: accident, severed relationship, psychic ability, used on serial killer, and ... then the two novels diverge, but you see what I mean.

If you haven't read it or seen the movie or the tv show, you're probably still familiar with the essential elements of the story. Like a lot of King's work from this period (Cujo, Christine, Pennywise, The Stand, Redrum, Carrie White Burns in Hell, etc.) the core ideas have taken enduring root in the collective unconsciousness.

Once it's on The Simpsons, it can be considered as belonging to all of us.

King has said that he likes the movie better, and I agree. The changes in the material that the conversion process necessitate definitely work to the story's advantage. The relationship between Sarah and John is more romantically-doomed as it stands in the film, as is the undoing-of-and-apocalyptic-visions-pertaining-to-Stillson scene(s). I think the book is good, don't get me wrong. I just like the way the film handles the elements better.

I suppose it's not that uncommon a practice, but I like how the same font design is used for both the book and the international markets for the film.

That tunnel by the way - which I remember as the main picture that ran with the Fangoria article I read (it might have been Starlog, but that seems wrong - I don't remember clearly) at the time it came out - is called Screaming Tunnel:

Creepy first date...! Creepy any date, maybe.

There's a good review of the film here. Simply put, it's a great film. I don't think "masterpiece" would be unfairly applied. It always seems to be the undiscovered Cronenberg film or King-adaptation film for a lot of people. I don't know why that is. Christopher Walken and David Cronenberg are certainly well known enough. Yet it rarely pops up as the number one King adaptation, or on a short list of Cronenberg's best. (Or, hell, best of the 80s, for that matter.)

This title design is just such a treat. What a way to set the mood. If you haven't watched the movie in awhile, watch those credits again; hell, if you haven't seen the movie at all, watch it, too. It works as a trailer, granted a murky one. The score by Michael Kamen is haunting and used to great effect, particularly the music cues for Sarah.

And of course there's this:

I grew up watching The Dead Zone and even as I discovered the rest of both his and Cronenberg's catalogs, Walken's portrayal of Johnny Smith has remained a Katahdin among Appalachians.

Odd fact I came across while googling for this entry: Bill Murray was considered for the role before Walken.

Martin Sheen's portrayal of Greg Stillson is great, as well. Another role (like Firestarter) where it's fun to think of this as some bizarro previous-work-experience on President Bartlett's cv.

I did enjoy the evolution of Stillson's career in the novel, as well as the friendlier relationship he had with Chuck's family, both of which are changed considerably for the film.

I'm always amused when we cut to a scene where the President has his finger on the button vs. a boardroom in the middle of the night with a bunch of bankers flown in straight out of the movie Margin Call... 

The wolf is loose...

Sheriff Bannerman is played here by Evan Drake from Cheers aka Viper from Top Gun (like he'd be Viper from anything else) aka Tom Preston from The Devil's Rain:

Bannerman pops up or is referenced in several of the Castle Rock stories. Not to mention the Dead Zone tv show, where he's combined with Walt Hazlett and George Bannerman to create Walt Bannerman. Whew. Anyway. Cujo eats him, eventually. So it goes.

Chuck's Dad, Roger, is played by Anthony Zerbe aka that-one-guy-from-Insurrection, not to mention

The Omega Man:

Which, now that I think about it...

is another film where a cult leader must be put down with a rifle via heroic self-sacrifice. (And look at that outfit! Not to make this a review of The Omega Man, but man, that movie.)

Two quick words on the Frank Dodd serial killer sequence: 1) my friend and I have the same lingering-audio-OCD-ness from this film. Anytime we see a gazebo, we say, either out loud or in our heads, "gaa-zee-booh." Try it - you may never stop. And b) now that I think about it, I think it was Fangoria...

and not Starlog. The twitching in the tub was a real fine touch for me. It made the difference to me in the 6th grade and still does today.

As for the tv show, I know many people who enjoy it. I watched the first two episodes to see how they'd handle the origin story and the Frank Dodd bit. I can see it being a fun show. I know they deal with the Stillson stuff as an ongoing subplot. Characters are added or, as aforementioned, fused. I prefer the way the film handles the material, so some of those changes are hard to roll with. But, what I saw wasn't bad, just not my thing.

One thing I noticed in there, though - the fictional 3rd district of New Hampshire was changed to the 2nd district of Maine. Which is an actual district. This district encompasses (I think) the fictional towns of both Derry and Castle Rock.

Has King ever introduced a congressional character from that district? There could be a whole new novel in that. I hope the idea has occurred to him.

I guess not every adaptation keeps the font design.

King's Highway pt. 23: Can You Hear Me Now?

Not too much to say about this one - it's very straightforward:

There's a nice review here, with no real spoilers, and I will observe the same with this post. You should read it, if you haven't. Perfect way to pass some time in an airport, lounge-chair, train, etc. I don't mean to damn by faint praise; it's a damn-near perfect example of a story finely-tuned to those experiences (during which, for me anyway, reading a book is the only thing I want to do.) It's not too long, starts off with a bang, and takes some wild twists and turns.

I like the paperback cover a bit better than the hardcover. The "911" and tagline are fun commentaries on the events within, as is one of the three inscriptions before the story begins: Can You Hear Me Now?

It reminded me a lot of "The Mist."In both stories, a crisis-event happens and is not explained (ominous references to "The Arrowhead Project" in "The Mist," notwithstanding); survivors band together and hi-jinks ensue (among them, a religious-crazy-survivor who descends on the protagonists); the main character is preoccupied with the unknown fate of his loved ones back home; fact-finding missions are made into the lion's den; and both end ambiguously.

Of course, there are plenty of differences, too. In "The Mist," the m.c. has his kid with him, in Cell we get a glimpse of what the monsters/crazies are doing, and many more.

Frank Darabont added an ending to his film version of "The Mist," and I imagine a film version of Cell would do the same. (Why this hasn't been made, sequeled, and rebooted is beyond me.) I can sympathize with allegations of "cop-out" for the ending, but I for one was more disappointed with how the phone-crazy convention in Kashwakamak wrapped up. That was it? Not that I was exactly "disappointed," more surprised.

A view from the actual Kashwakamak, in Canada, that is.

Pretty good boogeyman in the character of The Raggedy Man aka The President of Harvard

Neither here nor there, but I liked the references to Dark Horse Comics, as well. I'll probably remove Dark Horse Presents from my pull-list in the months to come, but it's been something I've looked forward to for the past fourteen months.

Survival is like love; both are blind.

I couldn't help but think of the TV show Dollhouse, which also depicts an apocalypse triggered by a remote activation, a sudden and ubiquitous paving-over of the neural topography. Opinions are divided on the show...

Full disclosure - I love it.

but the central conceit of Cell (i.e. a pulse was generated over mobile networks and whomever answered the call went wack-a-doo) is pretty much said verbatim by Topher in "Epitaph One." I found a You-Tube clip of the particular dialogue, but it's a whole lot and not the isolated five-second clip that I was looking for. (Here it is, at 1:02, should you want a look)

I don't mean to suggest Dollhouse is derivative of Cell. Only that certain ideas suggest certain tributaries, independent of who observes them.

I found your friend...

I couldn't help but like the idea of old-timers who never quite embraced the change in societal customs and manners that the intrusion of cellphones demanded. I'll never forget the first few times someone answered a call in the middle of conversation and how exasperated I felt. And I still crease my eyebrows when a cashier (or even a cabbie) divides his or her attention between me and the phone, or I overhear the most personal/ ridiculous conversation on the train or bus.

Par for the course, now.

Considering the amount of dropped calls and the inability of Dawn and I to have a phone conversation when she's in her apartment, I remain as unconvinced of the superiority of the cellphone age to the one I grew up on as the author.

I get the same thing when I read F. Scott Fitzgerald and he speaks of how the world he grew up in would be/ is constantly offended by the world he died in. It's not unique to him, by any rate; it's an authorly observation passed down in every generation. But viewed through this perspective, this novel is a bit more of a gut-punch of a "get off my lawn" than others.

Great stuff - on the King recommendation/ readability scale, it's a Gjallarhorn.

I leave you with this, which I feel relates to all of the above, from Neil Gaiman's excellent interview with SK:

"I start to tell King my theory, that when people in the far future want to get an idea of how things felt between 1973 and today, they'll look to King. He's a master of reflecting the world that he sees, and recording it on the page. The rise and fall of the VCR, the arrival of Google and smartphones. It's all in there, behind the monsters and the night, making them more real."

His answer: "King is sanguine. “You know what you can’t tell what is going to last, what’s not going to last. There’s Kurt Vonnegut quote about John D. McDonald saying “200 years from now, when people want to know what the 20th century they ll go to John D. McDonald”, but I’m not sure that’s true – it seems like he’s almost been forgotten.  But I try and reread a John D. McDonald novel whenever I come down here."

King's Highway pt. 21: King Goes to Prison

(Updated 9/4/2012: RIP, Michael Clarke Duncan. Here are a couple of fine tributes.)

I've talked to a lot of King fans since starting this project. If there is a consensus among them as to "favorite King work," it is most likely The Stand. If you're talking to non-King fans, however, or those who know his work mainly through the many adaptations for the screen, Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is the favorite by a wide margin.

Many don't even realize it's based on a work of King's:

The movie omits the "Rita Hayworth" part of the title, but yep, it sure is.

Shawshank even pops up on Top Ten Best American Films lists, sometimes snagging the number-one spot away from The Godfather or Casablanca. Does it belong there? Who can say? (Well, if you're asking me, no, it's not the best American film ever made, but who can say with any of those lists...) Arguably, though, sure - it's a powerful story with some terrific performances and an epic perspective. (And Morgan Freeman narrates it, even.)

That it's more or less the same exact story on the page as it is on the screen says a lot for King's uncanny instinct for what the masses want to see/ hear/ read.

(Another list where it would sit comfortably is Top Ten Best Break-Up Films For Guys. I don't mean something like Swingers or any film that comments explicitly on "the break-up from the guy's point of view." It has been my experience these films (usually) do little for the emotional reality of a guy going through a break-up. But something like this - or Stalag 17, Sorcerer, The Great Escape, Master and Commander, or, my personal favorite go-to-for-such-an-occasion...

I have a film to go with most "life events."

... - which features a mostly male cast in a tight, restricted space, having to surmount or withstand some difficulty that fits easily as a metaphor for trauma or past-adversity, and whammo, emotional catharsis, guy-style. (A few others? Die Hard 2 - though the husband/wife reunion at the end is no good, for these purposes - or The Edge.) Everyone's got their own. I don't mean to make too much of this, just saying; it fits the profile.)

This film is on cable every other weekend. I'd gotten used to seeing the sanitized-for-TV version, so when I re-read the novella, I thought there was a lot more prison-rape than I recalled and figured 'Oh, they just took that out for the movie.'

But nope it's all in there. Thankfully, not graphically, a la Oz or American History X - two very different "prison genre" examinations - but dealt with squarely.

The film and its plot have been recounted a hundred times and by far better critics than myself. (Here's a good review, and, actually, here's a better or at least more-focused / less McMeander-y side-by-side examination of Shawshank and The Green Mile, though the pic-captions kind of annoy me in that latter one.) I guess Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins were both legitimate movie stars by this point, but this film certainly helped cement their positions in Hollywood.

Of the two, I'd say Morgan Freeman has capitalized on its success a bit better.

"Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side."

Both actors have given so many iconic performances over the years that it's difficult to pinpoint their respective best. But if someone said it was Shawshank, I wouldn't argue. Incidentally, this:

is the only film where this shot is acceptable. Are you listening, world? The "arms outstretched, face up to rain, overhead shot" thing, I mean. Anything before 1994, okay, well, you're off the hook; anything after 1994 and you are in grievous violation. Let's adopt this as an across-the-board rule. Hire Lucasfilm editors to digitally alter every post-Shawshank movie that violates this moratorium.

"That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory." (Re: Mexico, in the novel/movie. Tho' as a father-to-be, this is how I picture my little 9-weeks-on baby at the moment. Not in a prison-yard. In a warm place with no memory. i.e. Wombsville. Enjoy it while it lasts, Spacebaby!)

The passage that chokes most people up when they watch this movie (myself included) is spoken by Red (Morgan Freeman) towards the end:

"Sometimes it makes me sad, though... Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend..."

I always find it interesting to compare how dialogue is changed from page to screen, particularly when the change is slight. Here's the corresponding passage from the novella:

"We’re glad he’s gone, but a little sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure."

Both the film and the novella do a good job of showing the passage of time without drawing too much attention to it, mainly via the progression of pin-up posters: Rita Hayworth (40s) to Marilyn Monroe (50s) to Raquel Welch (60s). I guess "Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch and the Shawshank Redemption" is too unwieldy of a title, though it should be noted both Ms. Monroe and Ms. Welch perform the same service for the plot.

One last bit of dialogue, as I think it gets to the heart of what the story is trying to tell us, in some ways: "There’s a crying shortage of pretty things in the slam, and the real pity of it is that a lot of men don’t even seem to miss them." It's interesting to compare this to John Coffey (from The Green Mile)'s rationale for wanting to leave this earth:

It's about more than just that, of course, just as The Green Mile is about more than the crippling weight of ignored cruelty and violence in the world, but I wanted to set the two quotes beside one another.

Morgan Freeman is not in The Green Mile, but he is profiled in the August 2012 issue of Esquire, (where, incidentally, pt. 2 of SK's collaboration with his son, Joe Hill, can be found; a good review of it here) and the beginning of that profile is worth bringing up here:

“They call Morgan Freeman The Magical Negro, which is one hateful trope. The Magical Negro is a white man’s narrative chestnut, a stereotype, in which a black character – often socially powerless, physically infirm or disabled, overly humble – provides comfort to a white protagonist by helping him discover who he truly is. Obama gets The Magical Negro tag from time to time. Freeman more so.”

First off, wow, Obama? Obama is totally not a candidate for TMN. If someone is silly enough to "tag" Obama as a savior, an anti-Christ, or a Magical Negro, that's not my business, but it's certainly Chris-Matthews-class-embarrassing. So, putting Our Fearless Leader aside to one side, is this a fair definition of the "hateful trope?" Sure, I think it's a fair enough description. Something to be aware of, the same way an awareness of anything discussed over at tvtropes can enliven one's media literacy. 

Don't trope me, boy...

But is it hateful? It is dehumanizing, sure. (Even that seems extreme, to me.) But hateful? As in "done in the service of hate?" I'm of the opinion we have devalued actual racism and hate by decrying things as such when they might not actually be that way. I am reminded of a Hebrew phrase - Mitoch Shelo Lishma Ba Lishma - which translates loosely (loose I'll-take-your-word-for-it translations are all a Non-Hebrew-speaker like myself has to work with) as do something good for the wrong reason and eventually you'll do it for the right reason. (i.e. "Better to do the right thing, for the right reasons, but meh, if you want to treat all black people as magical angels from whom the white man can only learn how to be a better person, then at least that's better than (fill in the blank).")

Ironic, tho, that the author of this Esquire piece, Tom Chiarella, (a white guy, for the record) who just described TMN-syndrome as "a hateful trope," keeps the trope alive-and-well-fed in this next passage:

"And in some ways, you can see why. Freeman taught half a generation of white kids on The Electric Company in the seventies. He drove Miss Daisy, saved – and was later saved by – the pasty Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption, played a friendly God for Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell and spirit guide to Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List, and won an Academy Award as a battered corner-man for Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby. This summer he returns as the soft-spoken, benighted corporate front-man for Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne in the third Batman installment. In some ways, then, the Magical Negro lives."

Okay, here's where he loses me completely, and where so much of -ism thinking loses me completely.  These roles he lists are only TMN roles when seen from a certain point of view; in fact, you have to reduce all black people to a set of circumstances that is wholly determined by white people to even apply this definition to any of the aforementioned roles. Never mind that this is done (allegedly) in order to defy said discrimination; it achieves the same result as discriminating in the first place. I doubt very much Tim Robbins or Tom Hanks would have his filmography viewed through that lens, and it makes about as much sense to do so for Freeman's, here. So, rather than one of America's most respected actors embodying all the varied and story-specific roles mentioned above, Mr. Chiarella sees only one thing.

Ergo, Note to All Black Actors: All you can be is The Magical Negro, even when you're cast as GOD. 

Or, in Michael Clarke Duncan's case here in The Green Mile, when you're cast as "Jesus" aka John Coffey.

I get that Morgan Freeman, as an African-American in a country with a complicated history and legacy of racial tension and discrimination, is subject to different forces / lead-ins for a profile; I suggest that by doing it the way it is done here that it still imposes a "white-determined" identity. * Many -isms do. You are attached to what you attack. I'm reminded of what Jeff Winger said in an episode of Community: "I think not-being-racist is the new racist."

* For what it's worth, here's Morgan Freeman's interview with Mike Wallace re: "How do we move past racism?" His answer: "Stop talking about it." i.e. maybe stop imposing it as a default position.

(Also, "taught half a generation of white kids on The Electric Company?" Really? That is at the very least an overstatement of both Freeman's time on Electric Company and his character's impact on "half a generation of white kids." Not that he wasn't fun on there.)

I go on at length like this for two reasons: 1) My objection to this type of approach, what I call the -ism approach, is that it is backwards. I don't object to the politics of it; I object to its inefficiency as a means of artistic / social criticism. It privileges a "correct conclusion" over actual analysis/ what the story actually offers. It's like diving into a pool with something in your hand, staying underwater for a few, then breaking the surface and waving your hand about excitedly. Look what I found at the bottom of the pool! Well, holy duh, you only found what you brought in with you. 2) The Green Mile can be seen almost as a deconstruction of TMN-syndrome, on so many levels, so this seemed appropriate. But also, I mean, what do you do when the story is about a magical black man? The approach described seems to suggest skin color and the sensitivity of its audience should determine to whom the writer assigns what part, etc. (A position I do not agree with)

So what do we have here? A religious parable? Partly. An ironic-deconstruction of TMN-syndrome? Perhaps. Condemnation of racism and/or capital punishment? Sure. A compelling jailhouse drama? Certainly. An overview of the full scope of a person's existence, with all the poison, all the pudding, all the triumph/tragedy? Yes, all of these things and more. The most succinct-yet-comprehensive review of this story I've seen is here: "A wealth of plot, a mix between the real and the mystical, excellent characters." Amen! One hundred percent. And accessible to all. (In case you were wondering.)

The book is even sadder than the film, primarily because the language is so absorbing. So many lines hit me, I wouldn't know where to start. GoodReads collects most of them.

Paul: On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and he asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That it was my job? My job?

Often overlooked when thinking about the life of JC is how much pain was involved with seeing the full breadth of human betrayal and cruelty, not being able to filter it out the way we mere-mortals can. (We have to by necessity, I suppose; only madmen and saints see us for what we truly are, or are capable of being, at any time.)

The dilemma faced by the guards - put rather well in the book as "I've done plenty of things in my life that were bad, but this is the first thing I ever did where I'm worried about going to Hell" - is examined very well. And even though you accept that putting JC out of his misery is both inevitable and also a kind of kindness, given his world-weariness and anguish, it still stings. As does the last line: "We each owe a death — there are no exceptions. But, oh God, sometimes the Green Mile seems so long."

It's not a perfect story, but it's perfect enough. I can easily see it being the King book future generations read in school. (If they read any - the classroom presence of popular novelists is never assured.)

A couple words on casting. This marks the third King project for both Bill Sadler

who's been in Star Trek, Bill and Ted, Disturbing Behavior, Die Hard, you name it.

and David Morse

and the fourth for actor Jeff DeMunn:

I had a slight problem with Sam Rockwell's being cast as Wild Bill, if only because Sam Rockwell brings a certain likeability to any role he plays. And given what we discover about Wild Bill, I didn't want to like anything about him. He does his usual excellent-job, of course, I'm just saying.

I was working at Waldenbooks the year these came out, and I set up many a display of these... King has always had some fun with publishing in different formats, and this was published in 5 slim paperbacks, serial-style, before being collected in one volume.

Mr. Jingles.

Thanks for reading.