battling demons in face paint and big shoes

As children, the world is an infinite source of wonder, enhanced only as much as our imagination will allow (and children are pros at imagination, God willing). It's never a good thing when any small part of the imagination takes a negative turn and something meant to bring joy is turned into the things nightmares are made of. Life begins to suck just a little bit the moment the idea of something fun is turned into a reality that is anything but pleasant. For me, that moment happened when I was six or so and something terrible happened. I haven't been the same since. Every other part of this event is blurry to the point that I've been unable to really recall most details. All I know is that there were children and balloons, pizza and fried chicken and mojo potatoes, presents and laughter. (Yes, we were at Shakey's. Every birthday party was at Shakey's.) The entertainment arrived and he began his show. He was wobbly and I'm sure we all thought that was part of his act. That is until he wobbled one last time and collapsed. I remember gasps and screams and crying. I'm not sure I reacted aside from being scared stiff. I also remember thinking that this was the first time I had seen someone die in front of me. Turns out the clown was drunk and he passed out. And I don't mean that figuratively. It was a clown. And for all intents and purposes, a dead clown.


Thus a fear was born. It has a name but is not even recognized in psychological circles. The experts who decided that can kiss my ass. Coulrophobia is real. enough. It's real and it sucks. I've never seen It or Killer Clowns from Outer Space. I would normally love Commedia dell'arte but can't really enjoy it because of Arlecchino. Circuses freak me out. I once threatened to punch a clown who approached me while my friend tried to tell him how serious I was and talk me down at the same time. I have a visible, audible reaction to even a still picture of a clown. You have to admit that they do look fricking scary. There's a reason there are horror movies about them. So don't even go there.

And then it gets really weird.

Examining different parts of my personality, as I am wont to do, I've discovered that when it concerns moving picture and literature, aside from genre or movement, there are two recurring themes in what I like. Most often they occur separately but when they do appear in the same work together, I am usually through the roof in ecstatic fandom. Those two themes are traveling carnivals/circuses and America the 1930's. The one work that blew my mind with its awesomeness was Carnivale, an HBO series that ran for two seasons between 2003 and 2005 before being cancelled do to high costs of production even though the program was a big success from its debut. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's breathtaking. It's flawless. It's so good that I am mentioning it in this blog entry despite the fact that it is not at all relevant.

Of course the relevant part of that tidbit is the whole carnival/circus deal. Obviously, it's because they usually have some kind of clown-like weirdo terrorizing patrons. It's a morbid fascination. A clown in any other venue is cause for a violent reaction. And even in a carnival setting, I cover my eyes and cringe (or scream) when I see a clown. But I admit that I also peak through the cracks between my fingers as tears well in my eyes. (Yes, sometimes I am close to crying. Or, again, screaming.)


And that hasn't been the only thing that seems paradoxical. More years ago than I'd like to admit, I had to think about my senior quote to appear beside my picture in the yearbook. Being someone who loves words, this was actually a very difficult decision. Nothing stood out more than others. There were many quotes I liked equally and I could have gone in any direction. As someone involved in the arts, should I use an artsy quote? Or a literary quote? Something about being a woman? Something humorous or something serious? Maybe a quote from anyone of my favorite songs or a nod to my favorite genres. I didn't do any of those things. Instead I went against my usual character and used a commercial ad from a clothing company. As a teenager who really didn't care much for fashion, it was unexpected. It was also simple. Maybe a bit trite. But it really did make sense. In seven words it said a lot about my state of mind, or at least the state of mind I convinced myself was real. Maybe not real but close enough.


It was even for a brand I didn't know anything about. I didn't own any of the label's products. I couldn't even tell you if I've ever actually seen this brand in real life. Perhaps you remember this:




That's my senior quote right there. That's a brand I am unfamiliar with. And yes, that's a clown. In a straight jacket. The message meant to be conveyed is that this clown is insane. Insanity is scary. Clowns are scary. You draw those parallels. It's not that hard to see the horror in this ad.

I cannot tell you why this happens. I cannot begin to understand why what is arguably my biggest fear keeps popping up in things I like or why they only occur in certain forms. And if I were honest with myself, the reality is that I don't like these things in spite of. I like these things because of.

It's sick and twisted but very, very common. It's the horrible accident you slow down to watch. It's scary movies and messed-up images and the knowledge that something that freaks you out so much also gets you excited. It's the adrenaline of fear. It's a naturally occurring irony that I accept even though I am not too proud to say that this fascination has not really helped me battle those demons. It has intensified my fears rather than dispel them. But I keep telling myself that it's helping me conquer those fears, anyway, even if it's a big old lie. Besides, as a parent more in touch with a sense of mortality and responsibility, I've begrudgingly retired from more dangerous adrenaline addictions and stupid antics. Perhaps my fascination with this fear and the means with which I am able to reason my way through it is all the rush I can allow, now.

And maybe one day I actually will get over my fears. Because it was pretty difficult trying to find a picture of that ad, copy, upload and position it in this entry with my eyes closed.

Twilight Madness: The New Frontier in Vampire Fan Hysteria

Cool it, Meyer fans. I'm actually speaking up for the craze this time.

I have this issue with snobbery. I like to consider myself a recovering elitist. This applies to those situations outside of human relations. I was once a music snob. I was a movie snob. That's toned down, some. But the literary snob in me is still floating there on the surface. It's a bit expected, though. Being an English Lit major, it's a an occupational hazard. And thus I was thrust into a program that often had me forgetting one half of arts and entertainment: the ENTERTAINMENT!

Whether happily or begrudgingly fed literary classics and expected to discuss and research and analyze ad nauseum, I've been trained to look for that which is hidden, things not expressed by the definitions of the parts (the words) but those hidden beneath the text in the author's subconscious. I look for things everywhere, even when it's not there. But not every dog-eared paperback tossed on to the floor from my bed has to be an in-depth study. It doesn't have to be an artistic work designed to push boundaries and ask questions and force the reader to question one's own set of morals and the life he has led. Sometimes it just has to give us a magnificent mental picture, one so vivid and so lively that there is almost no question as to what the writer wants you to see. And sometimes it just has to fit into a pattern that has been proven repeatedly to provoke a captive audience and draw us fiercely into the story that we become emotionally involved with the lives of characters who now exist in the minds of millions of strangers. There is significant artistic merit in both of those abilities.

The latter is what Meyer's books are. This is what the Twilight series was meant to do. One thing cannot be argued, no matter how unskilled of a writer she is or how trite -- or sometimes, bogus -- her ideas may be. If Meyer is anything she is a woman with a decent understanding of what young women generally want in a fantasy. Beyond that, she knew how to present this idea in a package so pretty and inviting that her influence has reaches none of us were expecting. True, this is a collection of novels that were quite obviously written in very little time, with not much thought and almost no research. More, it did scream "debut novel by an inexperienced and unlearned writer". It is brainless, effortless reading and that cannot be argued. But only the pretentious and the image-conscious are afflicted with the problem of demanding constant, elevated, cerebral stimulation. And pretentious and image-conscious are not anywhere on my list of attractive traits. Rather, I tend to believe that it's the person most secure with himself that is able to let go and accept stimuli with an open mind. Even intelligent people enjoy brainless entertainment. Sometimes it's exactly what the intellectual needs.

I have many criticisms of the books and subsequent movies, some of which are directly related to its commercially formed content and fancy packaging. The first being in that such a pretty package, it's lost all sense of reality. While it could be argued that the point of fantasy is to be an escape from reality, the fact is that in every work of fiction -- fantasy or reality-based-- the author's aim is to show a sense of humanity. That's the one part that connects the reader to the plot. All of our favorite fantasy characters, good or evil, represent some connection. Meyer's characters didn't do that for me. Their alleged love for each other was overridden by a sense of biological need devoid of actual chemistry or an attraction that makes any sort of sense. It had me questioning how deep this love would be had Edward not been a vampire and had Bella's blood not been so enticing. There was little explanation in the way of why her blood was so smelly or the fact that Edward could not read her mind, emphasizing that sense of an uncontrollable lust. Perhaps this carnal attraction was a metaphor for the emotional desire that becomes a physical need in our idea of real-life love. But her emphasis seemed misdirected and not very artistically expressed. Thus that has become my only real criticism for the works as a whole. My bottom line is that Meyer is not a skilled writer. She is, however, skilled at understanding the young female mind and that is the crux of these works.

Another criticism is the Edward and Jacob love among the female population. Going back to the target audience, I understand immediately why teenage girls developed wild crushes on these characters. Then these crushes took over an older female population and that had me a bit confused. Except, really, it's not that strange. All I need to do is catch some movies from the 90's starring Christian Slater or Stephen Dorff and I am instantly that teenage girl, semi-giddy of the men who were to be the loves of my life. It's more than a flashback. Those crushes were arguably more intense than any recent attraction to Jason Statham and Gerard Butler. And that girl is still in me somewhere. There is a part of me still attracted to Jordan Catalano (I have my own issues with strange attraction, shut up.) Besides, there is the simple fact that men seem to be above reproach when it concerns younger-than-average objects of attraction. Why shouldn't an older woman understand that draw of a young, mysterious man if for no other reason than Edward and Jacob seem to try a whole lot harder than the average grown man? Let's face it, while men love to laugh at our silly childish fantasies, the reality is that the average man could stand to learn a thing or two from Edward Cullen. As if male fantasies aren't just as silly and eye-roll worthy.

Among all of that, there seems to be one source of disfavor among the anti-Twilightians and that has to do with the theory of vampire folklore canon. This is actually the one part of the harsh criticism of Meyers' novels that I disagree with vehemently. The vampire purists are claiming that Meyers raped the image of vampires with Edward's sparkly skin and ability to love a human beyond blood-lust. They call into question how a vampire would be able to deny his own nature as what should be a predatory creature. They are disturbed with the way Meyer has changed the genre. And I say that these self-proclaimed vampire purists know very, very little about the mythos.

Vampires, as we know them, have not been around for very long. This alleged canon is barely a couple centuries old. Garlic, mirrors, graves, the ability to shapeshift into an animal, the aversion to sun, superhuman strength, all of it is a recent occurrence in a world with tales and legends that are often thousands of years old. While it is true that vampire-like creatures have existed for ages, they were hardly anything like any of the vampire characters we've seen in movies or read in books. With 19th century writers such as John Polidori and Bram Stoker, a new creature was born, one that most people associate with the notion of vampire.

So the question remains: If Stoker and Polidori and their contemporaries could change the idea of vampires, from the those that existed for centuries before, and create this brand new character that we now recognize, why can't Meyer do the same? Where do we draw the line as far as how mythos is changed? Why are there limits?

And really, are sparkly vampires that much sillier than an aristocratic Dracula? I think not.

There is, however, one thing I'd like the fans to consider when dealing with those of us who are not fans. Just keep in mind, while more mature fans probably resent being lumped into the same category as little girls with curfews and Algebra homework, we don't always like being associated with the rest of the people who dislike Twilight. Not everyone is cut from the same cloth of forced non-conformity in an attempt to be interesting. While it's pretty lame to jump on a bandwagon of trend and popularity, it's equally as lame to join the ranks of critics just because something is popular. I know that. I'm fully capable of having reasons to dislike any work of art based on my own experiences and thoughts.

So while I'll never be one willing to spend a single cent on the series or anything that comes from it, and I have no problems admitting that had I a daughter, I'd probably shield her from the Twilight mania if only to save myself from the residual exposure, and though I know that I went into reading the books and watching the movie with a full helping of skepticism, I am not above understanding the hype. I don't agree, per se. But I get it. I'd just rather return to sender after having got it.

And here I wait for a modern vampire story and movie I can actually get behind that didn't come from a comic book (Blade was truly awesome). I really appreciate the legend behind vampires and the legends that were its predecesor. I just wish that someone would put it all together in something I appreciate so I can move beyond German expressionism and find that connection I mentioned before. Because there ain't a damn person in any of my social circles that wouldn't look at me strangely as I weep and sob over an almost century-old silent film.

F.W. Murnau has some explaining to do.

Now that's what I call a vampire.