Author: kTVision

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House of Yes & Death on Long Island

by KEM Huntley

Parker Posey Hangs on the Wall of Hové® New Orleans.
The House of Yes and Love and Death on Long Island are two indie presentations that have more than 90210 cast members in common. Without getting too caught up in histrionics and endless details that often attend melodrama, each film offers the same premise: mad love exists.

Each film holds the same expectation, as well. The viewer will not look askance at the “all’s fair in love and war” tactics, but will instead nod their head in affirmation that the heart does what it damn well pleases.

For recent widower and recluse, Giles De’ath (John Hurt), the main character in Love and Death on Long Island, written and directed by Richard Kwientniowski and loosely based upon Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the story begins as he ventures into the present day (overall story concern) after accepting (story driver-decision; overall story solution) an invitation to be interviewed on the “wireless.” When asked if he uses a word processor for his novels, he is bemused, tartly replying he is a writer; he does not “process words.”

It is here established that the notable British author is completely out of touch with the 20th century (overall story domain-universe), illustrated again as the camera focuses on him ruefully looking through the front door mail slot at forgotten house keys, his gaze taking in an archaic life.

As Giles is locked out and must wait before his niece is available to bring the extra set of keys, he decides to go to the cinema. He mistakenly walks into a matinee of “Hotpants College II,” instead of the latest E. M. Forster adaptation. Rising to leave (main character symptom-reaction), he is dumbstruck by the beauty of its dreamboat star, impact character Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestly), a screen heartthrob he will later compare to a painting of the writer Chatterton hanging in the Tate Gallery.

At this point, emphasis in the overall story throughline is placed upon the thematic conflict of attraction vs. repulsion, the clash between obsolescence and technology (overall story benchmark-progress) and high art and popular culture.

Giddy Giles begins the quest his own fictitious characters engage in (main character domain-physics) to learn (main character concern) all about the object of his desire. Hampered by the ministrations of his nosy parker housekeeper, and well-intentioned literary agent (main character problem-protection), he restricts their possible interference (main character approach-do-er) of his foray into “finding beauty where no-one (at least in his milieu) seems to look”: fan magazines, situation comedy, B grade movies.

While mooning over Ronnie, Giles comes to terms with the present (outcome-success). He is compelled to purchase and master the video player and “goggle box,” open an account at the video store (to rent the Ronnie film festival, “Tex Mex” and “Skid Marks”), hook up an answering machine to take messages while cutting and pasting his Ronnie collage, and finally, jetting to Long Island (main character response of proaction), where he will strategize (main character thematic issue) how to meet the actor.

Giles holes up in the roadside motel of Ronnie’s town, run by yet another interfering and overprotective landlady. Inside he scratches out tactics to determine his film idol’s whereabouts: “1. Hire detective 2. Bribe postman” (logical problem solving style), but it is his painstaking investigation (main vs. impact story catalyst) that pays off when he ascertains Ronnie’s exact location and trumps up a relationship with the lovely Audrey, Ronnie’s fiancée (overall story dividend-learning).

Like an infatuated schoolgirl, Giles sits anxiously by the telephone for hours (main vs. impact character inhibitor-need), until the beautiful couple rings up with a dinner invitation. Ronnie represents the emotional manipulation (impact character domain-psychology) of mass media, yet he repudiates (impact character problem-non-acceptance) his teen beat status-despite his photogenic “files of smiles” he wants to be a serious actor (impact character benchmark).

His initial appraisal (main vs. impact character thematic issue) of the old gentleman is based on Giles’ fabrication and the teen’s own conviction that “British stuff is cool,” yet this first impression (appraisal) is his critical flaw. Giles flatters the boy with what he needs (impact character thematic issue) to hear-he has “the look of a young Olivier” and the potential (main vs. impact character story problem) for Shakespeare.

Astute Audrey understands, however, that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” and arranges (impact character unique ability-permission) to effectively remove Ronnie from Giles’ advances (main character growth-stop).

Giles reacts (main vs. impact character story symptom) to Ronnie’s impending departure by confessing (main vs. impact character response-proaction) his desperate love to the boy in the local hamburger dive. That each has a different point of view (main vs. impact character story domain-mind) is underscored as they face each other from across the vinyl booth. It is clear Giles is as steadfast (main character resolve) in his disdain for the popular arts as he is in his devotion to Ronnie, contemptuously dismissing Ronnie’s adolescent audience and American “contacts” and entreating the actor to fall in with a traditional European relationship of mentor and student, on the order of Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Rattled, Ronnie refuses to consider the offer (overall story consequence-conscious), and the relationship, heretofore certain (main vs. impact character story solution) to flourish is ended. In the erstwhile author’s world, the quest is not a success without sacrifice.

Giles faxes a love letter to Ronnie that includes a revised scene for “Hot Pants College III.” On the way to the airport he inquires of the cabby if faxes can be retrieved. Shaking his head no, the cab driver asks Giles if he would like to return to the motel anyway. Giles knows there is no turning back (story limit-optionlock). With a smile (judgment-good), he slips on the new wave sunglasses-a gift from Ronnie-and waves the driver to continue on (main character solution-inaction).

Ronnie’s change is depicted on-screen in his new film as he delivers Giles’ eulogy to his character’s mother, an indication he will now aspire to something more than performing for the “rabble in the pit.”

In the House of Yes, written and directed by Mark Waters, the overall story concern is how the memory of the day JFK died–the same day Daddy tried to leave:

“Everybody remembers that day. Exactly what they were doing.”

The overall story goal, in particular, is the memory twins, (main vs. impact story domain-universe) Jackie-O (Parker Posey) and Marty (Josh Hamilton), share of their illicit affair that occurred the day they attended an Ides of March party . . . Jackie O costumed as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy pirouetting:

“. . . in a pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat and blood on my dress. Well, ketchup actually and other stuff too, like macaroni kind of glued on like brains. It was more tasteful than it sounds.”

Jackie-O is another main character zealous (do-er) in her efforts (main character domain-physics) to fulfill desires (main character problem). When impact character Marty, comes home to Washington D.C. Thanksgiving 1982-“20 years after the Kennedy assassination”-and announces (story driver-action) his engagement to Lesly (Tori Spelling), he has sealed his fate (main vs. impact character issue).

The circumstances (main vs. impact character domain-universe) of the twins’ relationship are such that any plan for a normal life Marty attempts to implement (impact character concern-conceptualizing) is anarchy (main vs. impact character problem-chaos).
Marriage is an act the unhinged Jackie-O will steadfastly (main character resolve) not allow.

Mama (Genevieve Bujold), very French Gothic, demands a private word with her son: Mama: You, a fiancée here, why?
Marty: I love her and I’m just trying to follow procedure (impact character symptom-order).
Mama: Marty, your sister has been out of the hospital less than six months. Last week she nearly lost it because the seltzer water was flat and you bring a woman home! Not just a woman, a fiancée! An anti-Jackie! Are you trying to push your sister over the edge?Marty: No.
Mama: Just what, then, are you trying to do?
Marty: Be normal.

Family secrets and lies (overall story thematic counterpoint-falsehood), exposed or withheld, are the weapons used against artless Lesly, the fiancée who smells like powdered sugar. The family knows (overall story symptom) Marty is making a mistake. Marty had loved a lizard; Jackie-O flushed it down the toilet.

Lesly’s perception overall story problem) of Marty’s glamorous twin is mistaken-she calls Jackie-O spoiled to which Jackie-O replies-“Oh please. If people start telling the truth (overall story thematic issue) around here, I’m going to bed.” What Lesly doesn’t consider (overall story benchmark-conscious), until almost too late, is that Jackie-O is insane (overall story solution-actuality) and extravagantly dangerous.

An unexpected hurricane extinguishes the electrical power and all but Marty and Jackie-O retire for the evening. By candlelight, the twins play their favorite game, the reenactment of Jack Kennedy’s assassination. This leads to a reenactment of their own affaire d’ amour, unaware Lesly is watching. Crushed, Lesly allows the twins’ younger brother, Anthony (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), to make love to her, unaware Mama is watching.

Confronting the naïf with what she knows (overall story symptom): “A mother doesn’t spy, a mother pays attention!”-she thinks (overall story response) Lesly will now leave alone. Instead, Lesly persuades Marty to believe the man she fell in love with is the man he truly is (impact character thematic issue of state of being), not the image he has of himself (impact character thematic counterpoint-sense of self). She implores Marty to return with her to New York.

Destiny (main vs. impact character catalyst), however, prevails. Jackie-O cajoles her brother into one more dead Kennedy charade, with the promise he may leave afterwards. He foolishly does not suspect (impact character critical flaw) she may fire the pistol they have used to pretend, despite the fact Jackie-O has shot him in the past (main vs. impact character concern). Marty is gunned down, and buried in the back yard next to his father-the romantic memory of gallant men: Jack, Daddy, and Marty, preserved intact (outcome-success).

In voice-over, Jackie-O reassures us: “Don’t worry about Marty. A close family like ours has to stick together. We cleared out a nice place for him out back, next to Daddy so he would stay right here with me, where he belongs (story judgment-good).

Love and Death on Long Island and the House of Yes approach obsessive, irrational love with humor and compassion for its main characters, and a distant nod to their impact characters. Emphasis in each is placed upon the main vs. impact story, almost to the exclusion of the overall story throughline, much like lovers heedless to the world around them.
Hové®

Founded in 1931, Hové® is the oldest continuous perfumer manufacturer in New Orleans. The adherence to quality and personal service has been staunchly maintained through four generations of ownership in the same family. Located in one of the oldest buildings in the New Orleans’ French Quarter, Hové® uses the finest of essential oils and ingredients from all over the world to create its fragrances. Hové®’s only store is its 18th Century shop in New Orleans, but through the mail order business (and now, its online store) its fine perfumes, colognes and other fragrant products are known throughout the entire United States, Canada and many other continents.

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NoHo Artist: @maxbussellart

“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen.”

Maurice Sendak

Max Bussell paints in proximity to the Maurice Sendak Elementary & Arts, Communication & Technology Magnet Center, which speaks to the wild rumpus energy of the NoHo Arts District. Write Between the Lines commissioned his vision of a window view. Scroll for the steps and reveal.

Max Bussell: Did I ever tell you I was named after Max from Where the Wild Things Are? I always felt such a connection to the book . . . and that Maurice Sendak passed away on my birthday . . . I found interesting.

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Baz Hands! Moulin Rouge Film Review

by Katharine Elizabeth Monahan Huntley

“Here we are now, entertain us.”—Nirvana

After Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Lurhman understands what the audience expects from a Bazmark production—a “spectacular spectacular” spectacle.  He presents just that with the theatrical enchantment Moulin Rouge.

Unabashed in its excess of sensation, this many splendored song and dance collage celebrates the burlesque and carnivalesque of bohemian life.  Amid the iridescent artifice of men who preen and prance, and bawdy beautiful courtesans that can-can, a doomed romance reclines in a courtesan’s boudoir.  Tragic and passionate—what falling in love is all about.

Ewan McGregor is dreamy, Nicole Kidman creamy.  As Satine, she allures with red smeary lipstick and a longing for a legitimate acting career.  McGregor’s Christian represents idealism in its purist form.  

Extravagant extravagance, indeed.  Alas, however, is stark reality—fate is fickle and time waits for no one.  Life may be a cabaret old friend, but right outside is the boulevard of broken dreams and all that jazz.

Why the audience for Moulin Rogue should really stop and cheer is the Bazman’s insistence on relating a full bodied fable—underscored by the villain who demands: “What’s the story?”  A question frequently unasked by Hollywood producers in the pursuit of percentage and the show must go on.

Talk to me Baz Lurhman, tell me all about it.

Please note: The original 2021 title of this review is Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!

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Bridge Over Seven Decades: Musings of a Mad Housewife

by Kerrin Ross Monahan

California Girls: Artwork by Charlotte Huntley
When you have six kids in ten years you tend to miss the nuances, the fine points of what’s going on.  For instance, you’re busy doing nothing sitting in the gas crunch and because you had a personalized plate (vanity) you could only get in the long lines at seven a.m. with a screaming infant or two, on odd days only.    

I followed Patty Hearst as little as possible, and Watergate was hard to miss.  Boring.  So have a nice day and I’d like to punch out that little round yellow face.  You can tell who’s stuck way back there when they still say that to you.

Forget the lava lamps and mood rings—I didn’t need a ring to figure out what state I was in.  Beanbag chairs were tacky so was avocado anything, especially shag.  Down vests and trail mix were okay, I guess, but if I see another macramé plant hanger interspersed with wooden beads it’ll be too soon. No, I was of aqua fondue pots and terrariums in a cool green Almaden gallon jug.  And Hang Ten and decoupage and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, not Rod McKuen and his ridiculous dog.

Love Story was never having to see sap acting again* and who cares about streaking because I saw plenty of little bare bottoms everyday. Bicentennial and an ice skater’s coif satin jackets. Bare Trap sandals that’s what I saw along with five million in paperback sales: bodice rippers.      

Vietnam then was whacked out Vets committing suicide it was more interesting to see all those Italians killing each other on the screen after they cooked the best spaghetti to die for.  Throwing up Campbell’s pea green soup—I’d rather watch kid Spielberg’s two million dollar nuts and bolts come after you in the steel tank at Universal.    

Tonsils and tonsils and stepping over zonked out freaks on Telegraph, dragging a five year old to the throat doctor and loud discos in convention hotels filled with mid-life plaid polyester.  Irishmen don’t look good in all white and besides they don’t like gold chains.

Parochial plaid and Sister Said cupcake sale and Lip Smackers whoever dreamt that up was a genius just add strawberry (red dye #5) to Vaseline and hang it from a cord for the premenstrual set.

Going from one disaster at home to another give me a dime for every time the milk hit the fan and I’ll show you an operation to rival Dreyer’s.  The upside down leviathan and flames in the Big Guinea and the psycho with the life insurance out of a machine was nothing.      

Take back the Italian horn I get enough virility thanks and leave your Puka shells behind with the tooled leather belt embossed colored flowers and cannabis bronze buckle.     

Keep on truckin’ away from me because I’m waiting for the carpenters it’s only just begun between the pet rocks and pop rocks and it’s all over with the flaming Pintos.
Burn your bellbottoms and chuck the turquoise and silver squash blossom ‘cause the baby just signed his ass over to Uncle Sam, the same ass that was pampered once upon a time.

Say goodnight Mary Ellen, stay high yellow brick road—gotta do-run-run.		 
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All Who Wander Are Not Lost

by Kerrin Ross Monahan


 		  
 “All who wander are not lost.”—Tolkien

“Everything comes from somewhere.”—Rushdie

The way to avoid tragedy is to cultivate a sense of it” (Robert D. Kaplan). Aidan Chamber has said that the classic definition of story is: “What happens to whom, and why,” and since, as he reminds us, “story is everywhere,” we need to look everywhere in order to find exactly what it is we should be searching for.

We should start with oral tradition, with what Seamus Heaney calls: “the directness of utterance” by the skalds, bards, jongleurs, troubadours (and Rushdie’s the “Shah of Blah”), and from there progress through the arts up to the present.

A quest is a search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something. There is a testing of some importance and obstacles to overcome. The goal or prize could be: The Holy Grail, hidden treasure, a castle or kingdom or fair maiden. It could well be something intangible such as: salvation, redemption, revenge, justice, peace, truth, glory, courage, strength, wisdom, faith, love, or hope. Sometimes one isn’t certain what it is that she/he seeks. Some fail, others do reach their goal.

The quest occurs in all types of literature, music, and historic events the world over, and all forms reflect the historical and cultural base in which they are embedded. There is a universality, however, a basic humanism about them all—a transcending core that resonates with everyone.

The quest can take the form of a grand and sweeping heroic epic, can appear in a short poem, a long narrative, an interior monologue, a small gem of a fable, a “pourquoi” story, a nursery rhyme. It can be found in certain films, music, plays, opera, novels, and rock songs. It can take the form of a chivalric romance, fairytale, folktale, mythology, legend, or nationalistic or religious saga. It can be emotionally heavy, or light and airy, and may contain both elements of tragedy and comedy. (Barzun points out that the word “tragedy” means “goat song” and in the Renaissance the word “comedy” meant any sort of play—drama in general.) He also states that the epic, thought of as a serious genre, is “often close to burlesque.”

The quest can be in the form of a cautionary tale, allegory, rules of conduct, a coming-of-age work or nationalistic propaganda. It can be gorgeous and soaring in tone, and heartwarming, whimsical, and quaint, or raw, ugly, and petty—but always passionate and always magic. It can entertain (hopefully, always), anger and disturb, instruct and uplift, enchant and inspire: one should come away thinking, analyzing, considering and questioning—and be receptive to and expressive about the core meaning of each story.

In each instance the characters could be any of the following: druids, oracles, pookas, banshees, piskies, kelpies, leprechauns, trolls, elves, menehunes, water sprites, Baba Yagas, dwarves, goblins, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, wizards, nissers, sorcerers, ogres, mummies, monsters, fairies, witches, queens, gremlins, brownies, golems, giants, genies, Black and Tans, angels, kings, dragons, devils, talking animals, and of course, larger-than-life heroic warriors (both male and female), their evil human counterparts, and naturally, a large cast of “common folk” such as farmers, innkeepers, “hoors,” hobbits, beggars, and children.

Props include: ancient books and parchments, thunder and fire, magic swords, cloaks, wooden legs, riddles and runes, shoes and lamps, talking cats, flying horses, snakes and toads, secret doorways and curses, spells, passwords, boats, bikes, rafts, umbrellas, whales, Cadillacs and taxis, dreams, visions, portents and nightmares, poisons and elixirs, trees and burning bushes, vast quantities of beer, wine, mead, and weed, and of course, gold rings.

Because, on the whole, we in this country have been exposed to mostly Western Canon, some may not be aware that there is a plenitude of much admired, and many revered, works of all genres that come from a global cultural base. Much of Western art, in fact, is based upon, or drawn from, ancient worldwide customs and lore.

The following is not meant by any means to be all-inclusive; the selections are certainly subjective. If they are top heavy with works from Great Britain, it is because (until fairly recently), our nation’s literary canon has derived mainly from and has glorified our “motherland’s” literature.

I Western

Great Britain and Ireland

The Cuchulain Cycle, The Finn Cycle, (Fin M’Coul), two pre-Christian Celtic epics: The Hound of Ulster and Queen Mab. Beowulf: Anglo Saxon epic Christian poem composed sometime between 650 ad and 900 AD. Seamus Heaney, Irish Nobel Laureate Poet, renders a brilliant translation. King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, Merlin, The Holy Grail, and Robin Hood. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (author unknown). The Crusades, St. George and the Dragon, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Welsh White Book of Rchydderch, Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’ Arthur. Morality plays and mystery plays for example, Everyman, dramatized allegories of Christian life: a quest for salvation.

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s English and Roman histories, tragedies and tragic-comedies. He was extremely knowledgeable about the volatile social and political issues of his day: the escalating patriotism and nationalism, the new colonialism, and concerns about the royal succession. A.L. Rowse tells us that he (Shakespeare) “. . . knew too well how thin is the crust of civilisation; how easy for society to break down, to fall into what dark waters beneath.” In these works, Shakespeare’s quest is for order and obedience to authority.

Milton’s Paradise Lost, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Richardson’s Clarissa, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Edward Fitzgerald’s (translation) The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, Blake’s The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, Keat’s Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Byron’s Childe Harold, Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels and ballads, Dicken’s Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities, Robert Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Tennyson’s Ulysses and Idylls of the King, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Kipling’s Just So Stories, Sir James Barrie’s Peter Pan, Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins, Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Yeats’ Fairy Tales of Ireland, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Ring Trilogy, C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series

North America

Highwater’s Anpao (the Native American Ulysses) The Sedna Legends of the Inuits, Paul Bunyan’s tall tales, the tales of Pecos Bill the Cowboy, Melville’s Moby Dick, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus Stories (a retelling of stories brought from overseas by African slaves), L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, the Russian born Nabokov’s Lolita, Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and, with George Lucas, the Indiana Jones sagas and Star Wars series.

French Canada
The Adventures of Petit Jean

Mexico/South America
Why the Burro Lives With Man, The Tale of the Lazy People and many legends and myths from the Incas and Aztecs and Mayan civilizations

Greece
Homer’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, Aesop’s Fables

Italy
The Roman poet Virgil’s The Aëneid, the poet Dante’s The Inferno, the poet Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered

Spain
El Cid (the epic poem El Cantar de Mio Cid), Cervante’s Don Quixote

Portugal
Comoën’s The Lusiads

France
The deeds of Charlemagne, Le Chanson de Roland, Jean de Neun’s Roman de la Rose, La Fontaine’s Fables, Perrault’s folktales (Cinderella), Villanueva’s Beauty and the Beast, Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Saint Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, de Brunhoff’s Stories of Babar

Germany
The Nibelungen Saga (heroic sagas), the tales of the Brothers Grimm, Richard Wagner’s Opera Cycle: The Ring of the Neibelung

Norway/Sweden/Denmark
The great sagas involving Valhalla and the gods Thor, Odin, Freya, and Loke; Hans Christian Andersen’s tales

Iceland

The Elder Edda, The Younger Edda (ancient manuscripts), from these comes The Volsunga Saga

Finland

The saga The Kalevala

Russia

The Legend of the Firebird, Pushkin’s fairy tales, Vasilissa the Fair

II Middle East

The sacred texts: The Holy Bible, The Torah, The Talmud, The Koran. Firdavsi’s Shah (collection of legendary Persian epic folktales), the splendid Arabian Nights, the Islamic legend The Night Journey (Mohammed’s Night Ride to Heaven) Nobel Laureate Isaac B. Singer’s Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories

III India

The Fables of Bidpai, The Jatake Tales of Buddha, the cycle of fables in the Hindu collection of the Panchatantha, Vyasa’s Mahabharata, Valmiki’s Ranayana, Salman Rushdie’s Shame and Haroun and the Sea of Stories

IV Africa

Tribal tales of witchdoctors and brave warriors, folktales like Anansi the Spider, Podhu and Aruwa, Unanana and the Elephant

IV Far East

Japan
Great shogun and samurai exploits, folktales such as The Tongue-Cut Sparrow, The Enchanted Sticks

China
Fantastic tales of empresses and peasants, warlords and courtiers. Folktales like Ah Tcha the Sleeper, The Story of Wang Li

V Oceania (Australia)

The wonderful Aboriginal “dream-time” experiences and folktales such as Dinewan the Emu

Polynesia
Many fantasy tales of how their islands were fashioned; from Hawaii we get the myth: How Kana Brought Back the Sun and Moon and Stars. To quote Heaney, all of the foregoing are universal stories of “mythic potency.”

To return to the main question: What should we be looking for, and why? Tolkien said: “Myth is invention about truth.” Joseph Campbell states that the hero’s journey is about “overcoming the dark passions . . . to control the irrational savage within us,” and that “the journey is a life lived in self-discovery . . . the ultimate aim of the quest must be . . . the wisdom and the power to serve others.” The hero acts “to redeem society.” Dostoyevsky said: “Man is a mystery.” The author was “an investigator of the human spirit” always searching for truth. In Richard Tarnas’ preface to his grand The Passion of the Western Mind (and this could certainly apply to the rich and varied canon of world literature as well), he states: “The history of Western culture has long seemed to possess the dynamics, scope, and beauty of a great epic drama . . . [containing] sweep and grandeur, dramatic conflicts and astonishing resolutions . . . a stirring adventure and epic heroism . . .” He also talks about: “A common vision . . . to see clarifying universals in the chaos of life . . . the attempt to comprehend the nature of reality.” Bruno Bettelheim says that through fables and fairy tales we can find ways “to gain peace within ourselves and with the world . . .” In a new volume of Yeat’s essays, Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth he tells us that in fables, “mortals are transformed into ‘perfect symbols of the sorrow and beauty and of the magnificence and penury of dreams.'” Harold Bloom feels: “We read to find ourselves . . .[to gain] an enhanced sense of freedom . . . to prepare ourselves for change and the final change, alas is universal.”

Certainly there are skeptics among us: the poet W. H. Auden said: “poetry makes nothing happen” and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road narrator (“the road is life”) says “. . . nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old . . .” And U2’s Bono laments “. . . and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” To all that, Tolkien’s Gandalf could well answer: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

During the rest of our lifequest we must: read, write, travel, attend plays, opera, museums and films, watch television and sporting events, listen to music, political debates, talk shows, gossip, and propaganda. We must sing and dance and work and love, all so that we may connect in some positive and meaningful way with our ancestors, peers, and children, thus hopefully discovering our higher selves. By doing so, when our grand quest comes to the inevitable and unavoidable end, we will be able to leave behind a brilliant, universal ensemble cast with a balanced and harmonious script full of recurring motifs such as unity and integration, a magnificent work, a gift of love and peace to our vast audience—all of humankind’s descendants.

“The world is sacred,
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If your treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.”—Lao-tzu

Bibliography

Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Simon, 2000.
Bloom, Harold. How to Read and Why. New York: Simon, 2000.
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Chamber, Aidan. Introducing Books to Children. 2nd ed. Horn, 1983.
Doyle, Roddy. A Star Called Henry. New York: Penguin, 2000.
Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: Norton, 2000.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Viking, 1957.
Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper, 1988.
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The Butcher Boy

by KEM Huntley

In a Dramatica grand argument story, it is the influence character that has the most impact on the main character. The influence character, wittingly or unwittingly, will compel the main character to remain steadfast to their particular paradigm or change to the influence character’s point of view.

Typically, the influence character is one person or single entity. In the case of Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy, and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, the influence character is the society in which the main character functions.

The Butcher Boy, an adaptation of Pat McCabe’s novel, is a brutal account of one boy’s moral destruction set against the “duck and cover” environment of fear that emanated from communism, specifically the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Precocious and full of Gaelic charm, “The Incredible Francis Brady” (main character) is an ebullient twelve-year-old with a wide Irish eyes smile and an unfortunate set of parents-a beautiful and suicidal mother, and a father who ” . . . was the best drinker in the town.” Francie sets up the story with a voice-over narration: “When I was a young lad . . . I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I’d done [to] Mrs. Nugent.”

What follows is a cinematic treatise on the making of a psychopath.

Francis steals apples from Mrs. Nugent’s tree and extorts Green Lantern comics from her bespectacled son, Philip. Mrs. Nugent tells his mother exactly what she thinks of the Bradys: “Pigs!” igniting a feud (story driver-action) between the boy and neighbor that erupts in unholy carnage. During the course of the story, Francie’s pranks evolve from the malicious to the unconscionably vicious. He is sent to a reform school where he easily manipulates his release, a mental institution where he escapes, and even fools his parish priest who exhorts the townspeople to ” . . . pray for the redemption of Francis Brady . . .” Each personal tragedy, most notably the death of his mother and perceived betrayal of best friend Joe Purcell, exacerbates the sins he commits against Mrs. Nugent and the small community. Finally, the town’s authorities ” . . . put Francie Brady in the ‘garage’ for bad bastards.” (ic resolve-change)

Like anti-hero Alex in A Clockwork Orange, none of Francie’s actions are excusable, but there is a margin for understanding. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Francie lists his losses on the steamed up kitchen window with his finger-unaware his abandoned soul is the most tragic loss of all.