Why Murder* is just so gosh darn comforting

(* fictional, television murder, that is)

I’ve mentioned my affection for Law and Order in several posts, so I thought I use this post to talk about crime shows. I usually approach them with a cup of Oolong tea and work in my lap – writing, grading, the grocery list – and I settle in and I am comforted. That’s a strange word for shows that focus on mangled bodies, lost lives, and a whole lot of treachery, but I have my theories for why they produce this sensation (and with the number of crime shows out there, I can’t be the only one tuning in). To illustrate my pet theories, I’ll be focusing on those shows I know best.

The first crime show I ever remember encountering is Murder She Wrote. I would stay at my grandma’s house, she would make me a cup of coffee I wasn’t supposed to have, and we’d snuggle up under afghans and watch Jessica Fletcher right the wrongs of the world. I was small enough that the introduction to the show was quite spooky and I was always relieved when they began to close in on the bad guy (and coffee notwithstanding I was usually asleep by the time they caught him). 

I was always so worried about her when she went creeping around in the dark!

I think Murder She Wrote illustrates one of the reasons crime shows can offer some comfort: Starting Again. You practically can’t have a crime show today without someone overcoming their past and trying to become a better person and middle-aged, widowed Jessica Fletcher is a great example of Starting Again – and doing so with great success! I think we all like the notion that, no matter how far down a road we’ve gone, it’s almost never too late to turn onto a new path.

Other examples: Seeley Booth leaving his sniper days behind him in Bones, Lennie Briscoe recovering from alcoholism in Law and Order, and Richard Castle embarking on a new set of novels after killing his money-making character.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, Law and Order is my favorite crime show and it offers the best example of another very comforting quality: Stability. Show after show (with only two exceptions that I can think of), a body is found, an investigation is undertaken, someone is arrested, and the second half (order) of the show begins. I don’t know about you, but in a world full of surprises (and sometimes just plain chaos) I need my entertainment to lie to me and create a clockwork universe in which things follow a set pattern… even if the center that the clock hands spin around happens to be, well, murder. If you don't believe me about the formulaic quality, check out this wonderful analysis!

We’re all looking for the person that acts as a perfect complement to us, the person who will always have our backs. If we’re lucky, we find them in the person of our spouse or a best friend. And if you want to find wonderful examples of the kind of Comradeship we all want, you can’t do better than a crime show. [I do stipulate that such shows tend to go downhill when the partners move from partners-on-the-job to partners-in-a-relationship, but I’m not applying that to real life]. Some great teams:

Bones and Booth

Castle and Kate

Lennie and Mike - Mike is growing on me as of late

Murdoch and Dr. Ogden

Remembrance: One of the irritating things about being an adult is bumping into reminders of one’s mortality. And just as we strive to do honor to and remember those people we’ve loved and lost, I think we all want to be remembered and like the idea that we could be remembered through what we did and what we loved. Shows like Bones play on this desire by looking at an ankle and saying, “she loved to jump rope,” or “he battled hard with this disease.” It is a show and probably exaggerates on a number of fronts, but the idea that we might be read and remembered after we’re no longer here is a comforting one. If you want to know the science behind what bones can tell, here’s a great read: Dead Men Do Tell Tales.

Which leads me to Justice. I know it’s probably childish, but there’s a part of me that still looks for justice, still wants it, still believes in it. 

“It’s not fair!” I yell at the universe, whereupon it does its best Goblin King impression and jeers back, “You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is.” 

Well, crime shows suggest that there is justice (somewhere, sometimes, somehow) and that even when we cannot speak for ourselves someone else will try to speak for us and demand justice on our behalf and restore our dignity if they can. One of my favorite moments in Law and Order comes from a crossover episode with Homicide: Life on the Streets. A character played by Richard Belzer is arguing with Lennie that he doesn’t know anything about him.

Lennie: You carry a badge and you avenge the dead. I think I know you.

This is one of the few times when Lennie peeks out from behind his crusty carapace (studded with sarcastic one-liners) and reveals what he imagines his mission is. It’s a form of vengeance for those who cannot seek it for themselves – it’s getting justice. And in a world where some real courts and some real police do not always live up to the mark, I suggest that they might find something to model themselves on in such shows. Whether they choose to do so or not, I intend to keep returning to them for comfort, secure in the knowledge that all of the bodies get up and go back home at the end of the shoot!

The depths of nostalgia: Why submarine movies are so great!

This post is the fault of Jurassic Park. I just finished the novel, so this afternoon I'm watching the film and remembering seeing the film with my dad. Some of my best memories of my dad are going to Mr. Bulky's for candy that we'd sneak into the theater or spending evenings at his house watching films.

This is how I still imagine Mr. Bulky's

The last movie we ever watched together was Philadelphia and I remember realizing that my dad, who I had always assumed was so conservative, had unexpected depths. We also watched Fellowship of the Ring that year; even today, Gandalf's fall has an especial poignancy for me because I remember how upset dad was that he had died. I didn't want to spoil the next movie for him, so I didn't tell him about Gandalf's resurrection as Gandalf the White.

One of the genres of films that my father introduced me to was the submarine movie. I'm not sure why he was fond of them (he never said), but the following films hold a special place in my heart because they will always remind me of him. Plus, it's hard to beat Sean Connery or Kelsey Grammer at the helm (if that, indeed, is the correct term)!

To explain my love of The Hunt for Red October, I have to first explain the conditions under which I saw it - which is, well, the condition of being a kid. I didn't know anything about Russia (though I loved the language when I heard it for the first time), or the Cold War, and I saw the movie many times before I learned what "to defect" meant. [An aside: once, in graduate school, I emailed a favorite professor asking to defect from a class on Anglo-Saxon to his class. I thought it was hilarious.]

I assume that my dad did have thoughts/opinions about the Cold War. After his death, I found a pile of documents and certificates about his time in the Air Force in Germany. There was some kind of certificate that mentioned the Iron Curtain. I don't know what kind of work he was doing, but I like to imagine it was cool. Anyway, isn't he re-dork-ulously cute?

Dad during his Air Force days

Anyway, his love of Ramius became mine (even though the historical story isn't nearly so sunny).

The perfect pairing (at least for dad and me) for Red October is Crimson Tide (maybe it's all those red hues?). For my money, it's the more tension-inducing of the two, as the conflict between the captain and ex-o is internal but could drive the whole world into war.

And once you've raised the hair on the back of your neck by contemplating a madman with a nuclear weapon, you can then raise your spirits by tuning in to Down Periscope. It takes some of the best scenes from the two films above and then pokes fun at them, all the while treating the audience to the antics of Kelsey Grammer and Rip Torn!

So next time you're feeling confined, why not venture into the narrow world of the submarine film?

Rant: or why Hollywood will never hire me

I love television. Films and television have always been texts to me – a way to enjoy a story at a faster pace than I can read and to hear the words spoken in wonderful inflections never supplied by my internal narrator. That being said, I have a complaint about most of the shows I’ve recently watched.

I’m not a terrible prude, but I do wonder why so many shows have to be so very explicit. Who is the intended audience? After all, if one wanted to watch porn, wouldn’t that more easily be done outside of a series format? And if it’s being done for shock value – who is being shocked? I’m just annoyed. The king of this trend is Game of Thrones – which will set a scene in a brothel not because the setting contributes anything, but because it will allow for maximum nudity. Why? 

[Also, and not unrelated: why is rape so prevalent? I understand that it is traumatic and so, to a writer, probably carries some serious emotional resonance, but can you remember the last enduring female character you watched that wasn't subjected to rape or the threat of rape? What does that say about our culture and our entertainment?]

Some minor examples of gratuitous sex(uality):

Riverdale – a friend turned me on to this show. The dialogue is hilariously bad (I think it may be a ploy to make high schoolers look up words on their smart phones – a sort of covert Sat training) but the story is interesting in its melodramatic way. So what am I so irritated about? Cheerleading. I never was a huge fan of the activity, but in Riverdale it’s twice been used to focus a very male gaze on Betty and Veronica. 

Faking bisexuality to win a spot on the cheering squad

And weirdest of all, their performances weren’t just for the camera but for female spectators – other cheerleaders – and that’s what makes it so odd. Not that there isn’t a trend towards this – the cover of women’s magazines, advertisements for bras – but that doesn’t make it less bizarre. [Oh, and just in case it seems like I’m only irritated with the male gaze, I have just as many complaints about Outlander, which definitely uses the female gaze. I’d just like less porn, period.]

Then there’s Dear White People. The humor is far superior to that in Riverdale and I think it is making a serious attempt to parse some of the issues that intersect with race, but it has its share of lurid scenes that don’t necessarily advance the plot (or in which the plot could have been advanced without shoving genitals into the viewers face) – and it commits the second sin I’ve come here to complain about:

Cell phones.

I understand that smart phones are now part of the fabric of modern life (I’m gritting my teeth as I type this) but why do they have to be so very central to television? Shows from the 1980s and 1990s didn’t show incessant phone calls, so why do we have to watch scene after scene of sending a text, getting a text, posting to some form of social media… it bores me and I think it shows a lack of creativity on the part of scriptwriters.

This all being said, I’m not going to quit television anytime soon. I’m always eager to explore new offerings and see new stories. But, sometimes I think it’s okay to tally the sins of this medium and to wonder who is being addressed by these stories. I don’t have the answer… but when all else fails, I know Lennie Briscoe is there to keep me from sliding into cynicism! 

The Imaginary City: Popular Culture and Impressions of New York City

New York is one of those cities that exists in some "other place" than the geographical space it occupies on the map; it escapes itself to get into the consciousness. It calls some people like a siren, casting webs of glitter and promise over their dreams. The city is hard to get a glimpse of (my reason for choosing the painting above) because its cocooned by myth and allusion, shaped by projected dreams, shadowed by rumors, legends, and statistics. As a first time visitor, I'm probably not entitled to waste a lot of ink on the subject - but first impressions stick and I found myself turning to the places I'd encountered New York before to see how they may have shifted or sharpened my focus.

Leaving the airport, the cab I took seemed to swoop (dangerous as any predatory bird) downward toward a city that rose as green towers out of the mist. It was early morning and the water and the mist and the new light all conspired to color the city in shades of aqua and creamy pearl... Later, on the streets, I felt the rhythm and breathless pacing of Midtown. At first, I felt like I was being swept off of my feet, but then I found a way to get into the crowd and be carried along with it. There was energy in all that motion and a perilous sort of beauty -- and maybe, most of all, the exhilaration of being completely unknown in the center of so many other unknown faces. You could be a new person every single time you walked those streets!

The most beautiful introduction to New York that I ever received came in the prose of Mark Helprin in Winter's Tale. I got to stand where it's cover photo was taken and the pulse and beauty (largely unnoticed by everyone on the move) of Grand Central surprised me (though the wedding pictures being snapped right in the middle of the frenzy did not!).

 My first musical introduction the city came via Rush's "Camera Eye," and I can report that Neil's lyrics were true! I got to behold:
"An angular mass of New Yorkers
Pacing in rhythm
Race the oncoming night
They chase through the streets of Manhattan
Head-first humanity
Pause at a light
Then flow through the streets of the city..."
but unlike the narrator, I never felt like I entirely caught "the pulse," though I did mention to a dear friend and city-dweller that I thought that the city could be used as a training ground for confidence. Once you've got the nerve to chase down a bus or defy traffic to get where you're going, you can do anything!  (Also, in true Rush-obsession mode, I did spot Geddy Lee in New York! His face was on a telephone booth advertising the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of Yes. Only me...)

A more recent, toe-tapping song that seems made to echo through those urban canyons is Coheed and Cambria's "Bridge and Tunnel." My heart did not get "lost in the Hudson," but I gained a better understanding of why people love the city!

More than anything else, my imagining about New York have been shaped by Law and Order and I found myself peering around as if Detective Logan might materialize eating a hot dog at a street stand. I certainly could have used Lennie to guide me up and down the streets! I didn't get to adventure to the street named for Jerry. Worse still, despite the show's quip that, "This is New York, bodies turn up in all kinds of places" they did not turn up on my hotel room television and I did not get to enjoy the meta-experience of watching the show with the city outside. I also (to the credit of good tourists everywhere) resisted the urge to pet the horses ridden by the mounted police!

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my most recent New York popular culture association. I doubt very much that I'll ever get to see the performance itself, but as I entered the city I saw giant signs painted on the front of buildings and grinned and grinned and thought, "[I] just happen to be / In the greatest city in the world!"





 And one last impression: The mournful wail of an ambulance stuck in traffic made me freeze on the spot. It sounded like an escaping soul and I wondered why no one else seemed to notice or be bothered by it. I hope it made it through and caught up with that soul before it took its leave, but I doubt I'll ever forget the sad sound of it. Maybe out-of-work banshees head for the city, too...

"Am I fonder of goblins or shoes? - The Phantom and the Goblin King

I recently had the pleasure of taking in my very first Broadway show: Phantom of the Opera. As a veteran of several Rush concerts, I didn't think that I would be overwhelmed (if you've survived Peart on percussion, I think you can endure an actual artillery barrage). To my very pleasant surprise, we arrived just as the notes of the title theme were being played and some nerve sandwiched between my vertebrae began to corkscrew -- and I then proceeded to spend the next hour with my mouth actually hanging open. When the lights came up at intermission, I, being ignorant, thought that the show had ended and I felt bereft at being ejected from the experience. Besides the wonder of the whole thing -- statues sinking through the stage, actors dropping from the rafters, the stage elephant! -- I kept thinking of Jim Henson's cult classic: Labyrinth. (I talked about my love of it here). Is the Opera Ghost's influence so strong that he exerted it on popular culture?

As indicated in the title, the first connection came with that line of lyrics from "Little Lotte/ The Mirror" which asks, "Little Lotte, let her mind wander. Little Lotte thought, "Am I fonder of dolls or of goblins or of shoes?" I couldn't help but think of Sarah at her mirror, making up her stories (were they like Christine's "dark stories of the North?) and dreaming of who she might become.

 

Then there is the actual use of the word "labyrinth" in the main theme: "and in this labyrinth/ where night is blind."

Then there are the two masquerade scenes:

Finally, there's a great deal of similarity between the main characters. Both Sarah and Christine are painfully young and they originally look to the power they've summoned (Angel of Music and Goblin King) as a power that will free them and transform them into what they most wish to be (which, for both young women, is the center of the story). They both discover that the creature that once helped them is capable of great violence: the phantom murders and Jareth drugs Sarah and attempts to seduce her away from her quest. Both the phantom and the Goblin King are motivated on some level by love. Music is an inherent part of both stories, too!

Then there's the greatest thorn of all -- in both cases, I found myself cheering on the villain...

P.S. I thought I was very clever with these observations, but people on Google (it turns out) did beat me to them. The ones above come from my own notes, but it seems there are some pretty fan-famous web comics in which Jareth and Erik are roommates!

“And give me a hand o’ thine!:” Old friends, old fans, and why fan fiction gets revived

I’m one of those people who like to pull strange threads together and make a tapestry. Maybe  it’s an occupational hazard, as the research I do must be sewn tight with threads taken from other works. I encountered the first strand in today’s post last year in the article mentioned here:   (If you bother to pause on the date, you’ll see I’m discussing old news – but blog space (of all spaces) ought to be space of the indulgent sort!)

Before I get too deeply entangled with Shatner’s cameo, I have to offer the following critique of his most recent publication. On one hand, Shatner does tell a few lovely (though not truly new) tales from Trek and I think that he does seek to pay tribute to Nimoy’s upbringing and how it affected him, his many talents on and off-screen, and the aid and support he provided while they worked together and in their friendship.

Unfortunately, I don’t know if the points outlined above really made this book worth reading. The cynical part of me feels like it was at least partially a money grab (creepy, isn’t it, to make money off of your friend’s death?). And though I expected this, the book was also partially about Shatner getting the last word. He tells Nimoy’s story by telling his own and sometimes Nimoy recedes behind the golden glow of all-things-Shatner.

Was this real???

The thing that really left a bitter taste in my mouth was the ending of the book. In the last fifteen or so pages, Shatner explains that he and Nimoy weren’t even speaking at the time of Nimoy’s death. There could be several reasons for this; Nimoy’s illness could even have been a contributing factor, but the fact that the friendship is ultimately sundered (good memories notwithstanding) makes the title feel like a lie. Honestly, I wish Shatner and his co/ghost-writer would have just lied and said that they were dear to one another up to the end. In the absence of the fairy tale I wanted, I will continue to remember the friendship between the characters!

Oh, that fond look...

… which brings us back to the article above. You’ll note that Shatner’s cameo was cut because it was seen as “pandering,” as “fan service.” I’ll be honest; I don’t have a problem with fan service. Isn’t it fans who fund these creative endeavors, who discuss them, analyze them, and live inside of them to some extent? 

But I bring up the article not to debate that, but because I think it reflects Shatner’s true impulse: to bring to life – one last time – the friendship between Kirk and Spock. Whatever criticisms one can level against Shatner, I respect him for his love of Kirk. Not that he always loved him, or loved being him. But ultimately, this is the stance he ultimately takes:

"I have a lot of respect for Patrick Stewart, and [it was seeing] the gravitas that this great Shakespearean actor gave to his role that I suddenly realized that this guy is taking Capt. Picard every bit as seriously as Macbeth," Shatner says. "And I used to [do the same for Capt. Kirk]. And I stopped. And what the hell's the matter with me? It was a great piece of work. Everybody contributed to it for three years, and it has lasted 50. It's a phenomenon. Why aren't I proud of it? And that's when I had a moment."

I love that he ignored the entire canon to bring Kirk back in The Return and I love that one of the things he can’t seem to let go of (or let rest) is Kirk’s connection to Spock. To believe so deeply in the friendship of a fictional being that you feel that you must memorialize it onscreen – to say, “this is how it was; I missed him,” –  makes me overlook whatever other criticisms might be leveled at Shatner. I feel the same way about my own characters (who, being unpublished, obviously aren’t impacting popular culture…) and I didn’t want Kirk to die in Generations, either. That he will survive both his creator and the man who played him makes me smile.

… which brings us to thread two.

 Though a devotee of Star Wars in my younger days (indeed, my eternally-in-progress novel owes an enormous debt to Luke, Han, Leia, and company) my obsession quieted as I got older and I came to prefer what I saw as the “deeper” universe of Star Trek to the “space opera” gaiety of Star Wars. But the best obsessions are made to be returned to and I was unexpectedly pulled back in when I watched a few youtube videos produced by RoyishGoodLooks. Fun and funny as these pieces were, they reminded me just how much fun I had once had spending time in this universe and in the company of these characters. So I have returned to the graphic novels and the novels and the fan fiction – and to this article that I didn’t expect to find.

When placed side-by-side with Shatner’s cameo, it makes for an interesting comparison, doesn’t it? Here, too, a fictional friendship seems to deserve a better commemoration than it receives onscreen. It would be difficult, of course, to compete with the glass wall in Wrath of Khan, but I would have taken an updated version of Han’s longing look in Empire Strikes Back. 

 Like Shatner, Hamill wants to memorialize the bond and emotions that surround these characters – and the fact that such emotions are powerful enough to sweep up even those people playing these characters ensures that I will never be without fan fiction to browse! For myself, I'll just be imagining that dear friends walk into the sunshine of whatever galaxy they're inhabiting (an ending recently embraced, I might point out, by the series Black Sails). 

Cheers to fictional friendships! Boldly go to wherever it is you’re best needed, and may the force be with you!