Monthly Archives: May 2012

Infection: Human Nature

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

May 23, 2012 Man rushed to hospital after his cousin bites his nose off.

May 26, 2012 Naked man allegedly eating victim’s face off is gunned down by police.

May 28, 2012 A Chinese man dubbed by local residents as the “Cannibal Monster” is arrested under suspicion of having killed and eaten eleven men. Witnesses say they could spot green bags with what appeared to be bones hanging from his house.

May 29, 2012 Canadian Police launch manhunt for suspected serial killer. Body parts were discovered around the areas of his apartment, and a gory scene in his room. Video was found online of him sexually assaulting his victim after brutally murdering him. The same man is also infamous for the video footage of him repeatedly killing kittens on the internet, dubbed on Facebook pages as the “Vacuum Kitten Killer.”

Since May 26th, with the news of the face-eating attack that occurred in Miami going viral, the internet has been abuzz with jokes and conspiracy theories involving zombies, demonic possession, and a slew of other reactions to something that is unfortunately all too common. Nearly everywhere I look there are gamers showing off their personal gun collections with a link to the CNN news article on the Miami Cannibalism story with captions such as “ready.” And some who take the matter more seriously and have linked the story with other stories involving murder and cannibalism and Hazmat disasters.

I highly doubt anyone actually believes such nonsense. If they do, then we’re looking at a plausibly more realistic threat to human civilization in a profound and startling ignorance sweeping the globe. We are not looking at a fresh batch of recent surges in violence and animalistic behavior from human beings, but in fact a series of events that are actually quite common and happen daily. Through the recent interest in such events due to media highlights and showcasing, the illusion is created that these things are new or somehow connected.

For my most recent work, I was researching news stories regarding infanticide. I found several stories each within the same time period of last year of couples who carried their children to full-term and then brutally murdered them or locked them away to let them starve. One story I found had a woman carrying her pregnancies to full-term, and hiding both pregnancies and children away from her family and husband, locking the infants away where she hid them.

I found so many similar stories I had to walk away from my computer.

Now, in a society where we can mindlessly murder our young with no regards to the legal or psychological consequences (much less the concept of killing a child, your own child), and this is not even relevant to the controversial abortion debates, but an actual breathing crying, screaming, laughing, shitting baby; what makes you think that we would not readily eat each other? We are animals. We are violent because we are nature and nature is the most violent of all.

Society’s reactions to these cases alone prove how unsympathetic and unfeeling we actually are. We walk around with grand facades of caring and sensitivity, and yet when it boils down to it all we treat murder and violence as mere illusions of entertainment. We’ve been desensitized, no longer knowing fiction from reality. Everything is either a joke, or a conspiracy to write down because we’re just glued to our computers and television sets, eager to know the next chapter of this thrilling story. Nothing is real to us anymore. It’s all an illusion, a fabricated reality that we don’t actually take seriously. We treat a story of death and destruction the same way we treat a gory death in a horror film, with winks and laughter.

This too is nothing new, or do we need to look at the calculated killing of Nazi Concentration Camps, the laughter and cheers heard from the Roman Coliseums where men tore each other to pieces for the entertainment of the wealthy upper class. Human nature will always dictate to us that given the chance we will rend each other to shreds. We will shit on our young. We will piss on our mothers. We will eat our friends and drown our sisters in our semen, laughing all the while.

We don’t need a zombie infection. We are already infected. We are infected from birth with this disease called humanity.

The Stigma Against Comic Book Writers

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Comic books are literature. I’m not sure how long it is going to take for the rest of the world to catch on to that fact, but it is the truth. It is every bit as valuable as a medium as music, writing, painting and filmmaking are. Yet despite the obvious effect the medium has had on pop-culture, the rampant commercial and critical success of various works in the medium, and the inclusion of Alan Moore’s Watchmen in the top 100 written works of all time, many still thumb their nose at it, deeming it too low-brow for their high-cultured and refined tastes. You’ll never see a comic book discussed in an academic setting, the psychological aspects of Batman’s rogues analyzed for their literary value, or the correlation between the mutant-rights plight of the X-men and the homophobia and transphobia present in today’s culture.

The next statement is coming from an avid reader of well…just about anything and everything. My bookshelf is lined with everything from scientific and occult studies, non-fiction True Crime, and horror and fantasy alike. I’ve read Dickens, and Hawthorne, and Dostoyevsky, and perhaps one of my favorite writers of all time is the legendary Franz Kafka. I’m well-versed in academic literature, and have enjoyed a good lot of it.

So, do not discount me when I say that perhaps some of the best writing I’ve ever encountered is through the comic book medium. I was moved to tears many times while reading Chris Claremont’s run on Marvel’s X-men,  and my hands still shake at the power of J.O Barr’s The Crow. Reading Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles has caused me to look at life with an entirely new perspective. Neil Gaiman, a famed author of fantasy fiction who is regarded as one of the greatest writers of our time by both critics and fans alike got his start writing comic books, and his work on The Sandman remains to this day hailed as one of the greatest comic book series ever written. Best-selling author of horror and fantasy Clive Barker has turned his attentions in recent years to comic books by exploring the mythology set down in his original Hellraiser films through the medium of the graphic novel.

Granted, much science-fiction, fantasy, and horror is largely ignored by the academic community as “genre fiction” but that’s an entirely different can of worms I will not open here today. I’m instead going to express regret at the recent backlash against comic-book artists and authors. It is one thing to criticize a work for misogynistic and poorly-drawn art, or flat uninteresting characters, but another thing entirely to make vast blanket statements over the entire medium.

Perhaps this backlash is due to a weariness at the bombardment of cinema blockbusters based off of iconic superhero characters and the formulaic writing contained within, or maybe a groaning at the misogyny present in many comic book depictions of superhero women. These are not the fault of the medium, and I assure you, there are many talented writers in the industry, including female comic book creators, such as the talented Chandra Free.

Dig a little deeper, bring your nose down out of the sky, and if anything pick up a good comic-book. I’ve listed quite a few good ones here, and many talented authors and artists who each deserve recognition and praise. You will not lose your academic credibility by reading something that isn’t in the canon of “literary” authors.

Upcoming Anthology

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Image

I am pleased to announce that my short story “Angela’s Garden” will be appearing in Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous edited by Tim Marquitz. There are a host of talented authors I’ll be appearing alongside, such as Nick Cato and Gord Rollo.

Fading Light will be released in September 2012 by Angelic Knight Press

Originality is for fakers

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

You read that headline write. Shocking isn’t it? But it’s true.

Now, I’m familiar with jaded internet-culture, how it has bred into us a kind of cynicism when we see something that jolts us forwards in our seats or challenges us. This is especially true in the blogosphere. We immediately think that this seedy individual is trying to con us, shock-value for attention’s sake.

Believe me, I’m here to do no such thing. Not that I am above shock-tactics, mind you, only that I prefer to shock others for the personal pleasure of shocking them and not for attention’s sake. Such is the nature of the beast when it comes to writing horror.

Today, I shock you simply because I need you to grasp this fact. It’s important. The future of your work, your career as an artist, maybe even the way you look at the art of others, the way you perceive anything in this life is absolutely dependent on it.

Do not strive to be original. For one, this is a self-defeating goal. It has been said before by many cynics that there is no originality left, that no original thought is there to be thought, no original song to be sung, story to be penned, film to be shot, etc.  This has been true for decades, centuries maybe. What also remains to be true is that it does not matter.

Name to me the most original play, film, or book you’ve ever read. I will point to you an experience in the artist’s life, a favorite book, a favorite film that moved the artist to create their work and I will show you how derivative it all really is. There’s nothing wrong with this. Merely because a work is derivative of another has nothing to do with the quality of its work or the creativity of the artist. All that matters is the work itself, what goes into it aside from hard work and agonizing toil is completely happenstance.

You can write a song that contains lyrics from Sinatra, Sondheim, and Shakespeare and combine it all, but do they get the credit for your work? Of course not! That’s ridiculous! You put the effort into transcribing their lyrics into your message, you penned the notes, you made it happen. They of course deserve credits for the basic ingredients, but it’s still your song, and chances are it will sound completely different from anything that they could have written because of the most important element any artist brings to their work: themselves.

Nobody can write a story quite the way you can. No two people on this earth could ever write the same book, without copying and pasting every line word for word. This fascinates me, as it has been said that every book in the English language is nothing more than different combination of the same 26 letters. You could write a story completely derivative of another work and still that work of yours would be unique from anything else like it.

We of course, are always in danger of falling into formulaic thinking, but I believe that this danger comes only from laziness and the lack of motivation to expand one’s creative horizons and try new things. These things don’t necessarily need to come from within, mind you, but outside sources, so long as you’re willing to continue to experiment and grow and throw the elements into the pot that you want to, telling the best story you possibly can.

I digress.

Let’s return once more to the original, rather brash statement made at the beginning of this article. Originality is for fakers. I suppose it would work to have a working definition of originality, now would it?

I like the opening paragraph from the Wikipedia entry on originality:

Originality is the aspect of created or invented works by as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or derivative works.[citation needed] An original work is one not received from others nor one copied based on the work of others.[citation needed]. It is a work created with a unique style and substance. The term “originality” is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers.

Emphasis on the last statement, “a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers.”

This is really where the application of the word ‘originality’ comes from when applied (or the lack thereof complained about) so frivolously in discussions of creative merit and art. I’ll not open the can of worms here by discussing the subjectivity of what is viewed as “good and bad art” or of the judgement in basis on technical skill. That is an entirely different blog post–possibly an entire book in itself.

We’re not thinking of the actual work itself, but of the person who created it. This is where ego, while undoubtedly integral and inseparable from the artistic process, becomes unbalanced.  We lean so far towards this one aspect of the creative process, on invention and inspiration, that the other elements, equally integral to the work are ignored.

What follows are the movements of fakers seeking their own glory and ascension over others. Their works are often either contrived and soulless or plagiarized from another source in hopes of gaining quick fame on the hard work of another. I’m skeptical of any artist who claims originality for himself, as not only is he doing himself lip-service, he is lying.

Originality simply does not exist. It is a romantic construct attached to the concept of novelty, but novelty itself is not inherently original. It is only that which stands out among its peers as being different, unusual. What is different and unusual for one crowd, old-hat for another. It’s all a matter of perspective, again, the subjectivity of art.

So, in your work, don’t strive as much for originality as much as you should strive for making something you want to see.  What movie do you want to watch? Make that movie. What book do you want to read? Write it. Do something that only you would enjoy.

As cliche as it sounds, be true to yourself. Don’t fake it. Let it be real. Let it be honest.

Work hard. Make it happen, but don’t worry about whether or not it’s original. If you have a story in your head about a space-opera involving a psychic religion, an evil empire, and a lonely princess, write that motherfucking story, no matter how many people tell you it’s a Star Wars rip-off. Nobody said that Star Wars was a rip-off of Edgar Rice Burroughs and science-fiction tropes, did they?

That’s because everyone was so busy enjoying the film that they didn’t even care. It didn’t matter to them. Neither should it matter to you.

So can the originality arguments. Go out there and make some shit. Make a lot of it.

Transphobia in the Gay Community

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Today, I saw something that upset me.

 

No, most people do not.  Most people acknowledge trans people to be the severely deluded people that they are.  It is people with gender-addled brains, such as deluded trans cultists, who misuse the concept of sexual orientation to include trans distortions.  By “sexual orientation” most sane people are referring to sex-based attraction, because that is what sexual orientation refers to.  Go look it up in the Oxford Dictionary, gender is not mentioned.  Sex is biological reality.  Gender is sexism and made up nonsense.  As a gay male I am attracted to other males.  I’m not going to fuck/date a trans who has deluded herself into thinking she’s a gay male.  Gay males aren’t attracted to females.  I’m not attracted to someone’s jendah identity.  I can hardly believe that trans are so deluded that they can’t see this.  Sheesh, I can’t believe I used to be transgender.  So glad I got out of this demented mind-fuck cult and sought recovery.

I don’t even think there’s enough time or books that could be written to go into how screwed up this statement is.  There is quite a bit of hypocrisy and distorted altruisms within this one paragraph alone, contradicting itself at nearly every turn. It is even possible that this person is not the bigot that they’re making themselves out to be, but is in fact nothing more than just a mentally-ill person with a computer and lack of supervision. Or perhaps they simply lack the ability to communicate coherently and basic argument-based logic skills.

Regardless, I think that to decide what is and is not someone else’s sexual orientation and gender is the same arrogant, pompous mentality that says that one person knows what is good for the majority. You are not these people, nor have you ever taken a walk in their shoes. It is not your business what gender they define themselves as, let alone your business to decide whether or not they are a homosexual.

People who are uncomfortable with someone else’s sexual choices and sexual identity are the same people who arrest lesbians for trying to get married, the same people who murder gay men, who beat up transgendered women just trying to walk home from work. They’re the kinds of people who decide what is and is not a human being deserving of human rights. They are the worst kinds of people as their minds are so small that in order to make themselves feel more secure they have to restrict others for fear that their worldview might be expanded.

What is tragic to me is the thinking reflected in the absurd paragraph above is reflected quite often in the homosexual community. One would think that having suffered the same amount of bigotry and hate from society, that one would be quick to defend those undergoing the same persecution. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered not only transphobic statements, but also racism within the Gay Community.

“Trannies scare me, lol.”

“I can’t stand black men. White boys only.”

Are two of the most common phrases I’ve heard from gay men in public interactions and through social media. This is disgusting. It is wrong. It needs to stop.

Very often we love to brag about how progressive and evolved we are as a people, yet I’m beginning to think that we are less evolved. I’m beginning to wonder if we might actually be devolving. We seem to be regressing in our ways of thinking to more limited and narrow scopes of view, so tied are we by the concepts of gender and sexual identity. Even skin color seems still to be an issue, an absolute  travesty in modern-society.

It’s 2012 and we’re still putting people into all these little boxes. Kids are tweeting about how upset that they are that a black actress played their favorite character in the Hunger Games. JJ Abrams is allowed to say that ” a gay character in Star Trek would be too distracting” and nobody gets mad at him for his homophobic comments. Our president is allowed to say that he’s for “gay marriage” and nobody holds him accountable to actually make it happen.

We have a complete facade of tolerance and acceptance, yet by the very definition of tolerance alone we prove what hypocrites we are. One should not have to be tolerant of ethnic or sexual differences. That means that it actually makes you uncomfortable but you just keep your mouth shut about it.  We should be completely comfortable with what two consenting parties do with one another behind closed doors. That’s it. That’s all it really should be.

All these different labels cropping up all over the place are nothing more than little clubs people want to identify with and be a part of, and while that’s cool and everything, I don’t believe we’ll have truly evolved until we can do away with the concept of race, gender, and sexuality, because in the future where everyone has finally progressed beyond these infantile stages of thinking, these things will no longer matter.

So please, tell me again how my friend is any less of a gay man because his boyfriend wasn’t born with a dick between his legs.

 

 

A Departure of Sense: Worlds Within Worlds of Fiction

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

The above trailer has to be without a doubt one of my favorite horror films ever made. Everything is so superbly crafted, from the imagery to the acting, to the dreamlike narrative. The film takes an almost lackadaisical stroll through its plot;  the plot itself is secondary. The film is more reliant upon emotional pull, remarkable characters and atmosphere to carry the narrative, and it does so quite effectively. If you are familiar with the giallo and horror work of Dario Argento, then this approach to storytelling is nothing new to you, as it is evidenced throughout his other works, such as Suspiria and Inferno.

When people strive for realism in fiction, I can only understand this approach to a certain extent. For one, I find it’s a very self-defeating goal. Stanley Kubrick once noted that there is no realism in fiction, only varying levels of unreality. Realism is nothing more than an unreality crafting an illusion of what we perceive to be realistic. I’ve said it before that reality is only our perspective of the thing, and this perspective changes from person to person. What we think of as realism is no more real than the dreams that entertain us in our sleep.

That being said, I’ve taken to very much going in the other direction, and that is of crafting things to be believable. Is it particularly realistic to have a story where a man breaks into another’s house purely for the sake of having something to write about? Hardly, but we can imagine it easily, and within the realms of fiction, we can be willing to accept it as fact. This can also be stretched to include the supernatural, such as a malevolent entity haunting the halls of an all-girls boarding school. Not realistic, but it can be accepted in the world of fiction it occupies.

This can be taken even further to include fantastic, almost-unbelievable things. A crazy deformed child, driven insane by his own abnormalities who takes to murdering others with a large pair of scissors. Ridiculous, absurd even, and yet you would not be laughing were the thing approaching you at breakneck speed, intent on ending your miserable life.  The idea is basically that you have more of an open canvas when telling a story, in any medium, than you might have previously realized.

If done well, with enough showmanship and pacing and skill, any plot-device, absurd element, supernatural or otherwise can work for your narrative. It all depends on your writer’s instinct on what will and will not work for a particular story. Sometimes the absurd might be inappropriate and result in unintentional comedy (i.e the killer cannibal child in the finale of Lucky Mckee’s The Woman), but sometimes it might just work to propel a moment of memorable non sequitur and infinite terror. What notably comes to mind are many of the greatest moments in Dario Argento’s work, as well as the animal-suit blowjob scene in Stanely Kubrick’s The Shining.

A particularly fabulous deployment of the fantastic into a plausible setting is seen to its utmost perfection in Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart, possibly one of the greatest horror stories ever written. The book opens with taking us into a wholly unique vista of reality, tearing apart our preconceived notions of hell and damnation with an erotic and instantly terrifying vision, before thrusting us back into mundane surroundings, letting our guards down until we are introduced to the cenobites in the latter half of the book. We explore the impossible worlds Clive Barker creates with every story he pens, and we should be grateful for his complete and utter disregard of realism.

It all truly depends on the kinds of stories you want to tell, but personally, I find that it’s more enjoyable and satisfying to in the end, to flip off the constructions of the genre mistakenly referred to as “literary fiction” by academics, and call it what it really is, “contemporary realism.” Picture me saying realism with my fingers making little quote signs in the air, as fictional realism is as far from reality as fantasy is. Instead, I’d much rather abandon the real-world in lieu of telling a great story with little care to if anyone thinks my work is plausible enough.

Bring on the tentacle-monsters, and the alien-gods! The mutant-children and the living dolls!

The correlation between humor and likeable characters

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Think of some of your favorite and most memorable fictional characters, whether it be in TV or film serials, comic books, literature, etc. Now, think of those who became endearing to you after how often they made you laugh. You got to see their foolishness, their wild antics, put your ear up against their witty banter, and suddenly even though a dimensional wall of fiction existed between you and them, you felt as if you’d known them for years. They became your best friend, and you found yourself caring a great deal about whatever happened to them.

You would cry when they cried or felt loss. You would laugh with them when they laughed. And when they were in great peril, you quaked for their safety.

No matter the genre, humor is an effective tool in the writer’s handbag no author should leave behind. Not that every story is necessarily appropriate for the tool, but when it can be used effectively without altering the mood or tone of the story, it should be deeply considered. There is something about laughter that brings people closer together, and can really work to help endearing an audience to your protagonists.

Think of the last time you ever went to a comedy show. As you left the theater, remember the closeness you felt with those who’d attended with you. More intimately, think of a circle of friends who is constantly sharing jokes and humorous anecdotes with one another, a family huddled together on a couch in front of a TV screen watching a funny children’s movie. Laughter works a lot like glue, or more accurately, a magnetic force. Come now, out of your friends what are some of your favorite qualities out of them? That they are fun to be around or that they make you laugh will come up on nearly every list.

Now, as a storyteller, how can this knowledge assist you in your stories? Simple. Don’t be afraid to make your characters a little foolish. Let their hair down a bit, let them laugh, let them trip and fall and look a little silly. A little brevity never hurt anyone. Do this, and immediately watch as your characters spring to life and you find yourself a little more attached to them than before.

“But, Dorian!” You might say. “I don’t write comedy!”

You don’t have to. Personally, comedy is one of the many difficult genres to write effectively. You hear me say that it is difficult, though not impossible, and it is certainly not a low-brow genre despite the rampant amount of shit-quality comedies you see in the cinema today. I also prefer horror and darker subject materials.

Fortunately for me, in order to be able to have what it takes to scare someone, you need to have the same skill-sets to make them laugh. The same could be said for a drama, or a romantic work. You need a basic understanding of human psychology, what pushes all the buttons in their brain, and allow yourself to realize that these things might not work 100% for everyone. After all, what scares you, turns you on, or makes you laugh might not have the same effect on another human being. We are all different, after all. Though there are universal things that work.

So, first of all. Know your story. Know the mood you want to set and the type of characters you are portraying. After all, in a Gothic-Horror story of Lovecraftian proportions, throwing in fart-jokes for the sake of humor might not necessarily be the best route to travel down. In a horror story about a group of ghost-hunters trapped in a haunted mansion, how much more effective might your later scares be if you included a scene early on where they were all exchanging jokes and anecdotes and memories in a van on the way to their doomed location? By making them real, fleshing them out with humor, letting the audience laugh alongside them, you’re creating a person that the audience has a connection, a kinship with.

Probably one of the undisputed masters of this sort of banter is the critically-acclaimed Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Firefly, and the writer/director of the recent Box Office Hit The Avengers. Even in his darkest and most serious of story-lines, he never once abandons his sense of humor. He remains very self-aware as a writer, of the commonly-used tropes and cliche’s, and is not above laughing at them, or even himself for that matter. Nearly every one of his characters are memorable and lovable, and at the end of all their journeys, you feel that you’ve journeyed alongside them.

Again, this method is not always appropriate, so careful thought should always be used before deploying it in your writing. That’s the wonderful thing about the art though. We have many paintbrushes and textures and canvasses and tools at our disposal. The world is ours for the making.

One should always be aware of the tools in one’s tool-belt, and I hope that next time you’re about to tell that ghastly tale, you contemplate throwing in some lighthearted banter near the beginning, right before dragging those poor fools shrieking and clawing their way into the darkness.

Strong Female Characters: I hate you

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

We all know her. We all hate her. We see her once a year in the Summer Blockbuster movies. She flies in on a rope, camera firmly fixed on her buttocks as she kicks several of her opponents down, somersaults through the air, her cleavage barely managing to stay in her shirt. All of this fighting just makes her sweaty and ready to cu…kick more ass, of course. She aims a gun at the villain’s head.

A nearby henchman grabs her by her delicate wrists and she crumbles like a wilting flower to the ground, only to be saved by the token love-interest, a burly and brawn male hero.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the media archetype of the Strong Female Character. When people demand to see more women in kickass roles instead of constantly being portrayed as the hapless victim, this is the cardboard cutout we are given. The Strong Female Character (or SFC) is meant to make us believe that this is a fighter for gender equality, which of course would explain why in comic books her spine is usually broken to ensure that both breasts and ass can be completely visible at all times. And yet, she’s not allowed to be sexual, because that would deny her virtue and make her seem like a slut. She just happens to have her boobs falling out of her shirt every other moment.

Let’s be honest, the reason the SFC is not allowed to show a sexual interest is because heterosexual men find a woman with control of her sexuality threatening. Sexuality can be seen as a token of power, and to give any power to a woman seems considered to be almost taboo to many filmmakers and modern comic-book writers. I’m not making a broad  general sweep, and in fact, I consider comic-book readers and writers to be probably some of the most evolved parties when it comes to recognizing these pathetic excuses for feminist “girl-power” characters.

So, let’s go over what defines an SFC, and what makes her different from a strong character who just happens to be female.

An SFC will never seduce a man, but will always be the one seduced by the token love-interest. A strong character who happens to be a female will be doing the seduction, or will participate in a fully consensual act. She might even have multiple partners. A strong character who happens to be female might also resist any sexual encounter, even though she herself remains a sexual being, as the parties throwing themselves at her are not what she is looking for in a sexual partner.

An SFC will fight her way to the death…so that her death furthers the story arc of another male character. This is commonly known as the women in refrigerators trope. A strong character who happens to be female’s death will be the culmination of her own story arc, any cultivation of other character’s arcs around her will be merely happenstance in light of the loss of an important figure in their lives.

An SFC will kick ass up until the final showdown, in which she will find herself cornered to be save by the token male love-interest towards the end. A strong character who happens to be female will save the world, the boyfriend, and kick ass in one fell swoop.

In short, the SFC is different from the strong character who happens to be female, because in most situations the SFC is a poorly-developed two-dimensional character with a poor and limited view of how to write female characters in general, and usually deployed as an easy means of projecting misogyny without getting too much heat from feminist groups and/or female readers. The strong character who happens to be female’s gender is purely cosmetic. Her gender does not factor into her strengths and weaknesses. She is fully developed and in control of her own destiny. In other words, a well-written character.

Some examples of the SFC might include:

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

Possibly the inventor of the SFC. The film versions are possibly even worse as they really truly do have her being saved by her love-interest towards the latter half of the film.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Let’s be honest, the author of the book and director of the original film (and possibly the American remake) were projecting rape-fantasies and violence towards women through the titular protagonist. For some reason this was overlooked by most audiences, who hailed the character as a feminist champion. My apologies, I wasn’t aware that it was acceptable to have excessive gratuitous scenes of rape and violence towards women so long as she gets revenge in the end, fights her way a little bit more, gets raped again, and then gets revenge again. Note of interest here: consensual sex in films has everyone in an uproar, but rape is clearly acceptable. What else can you expect though from a book originally titled: “Men Who Hate Women.”

Harley Quinn (DC’s New 52 Reboot)

The original Harley Quinn falls under the latter category of strong character who happens to be female. The original Harley Quinn represents the archetype of the woman in an abusive relationship who still manages to hold her head above water and survive despite having to deal with the difficulty of being in love with someone who does nothing but manipulate and abuse you. She was far from a role-model to young women, but remained entirely sympathetic, and her fans all secretly pined for the day when she would finally tell the Joker to scram.

The New Harley Quinn in DC Comics’ reboot did, and it wasn’t as exciting as we all hoped for. Her backstory has been rewritten and her costume revamped, and she’s been slowly remodeled into the SFC. A character who is supposed to look sexy but not purposefully (because you know, a woman who want to be sexy is just scandalous) and have a strong “girl-power” character arc and story, while at the same time being in a relationship where she can be conveniently saved by a male when things look too dire.

Nikki Sanders (Heroes)

I’m putting this here with some regret, as I did really enjoy this character, and found her to be one of the more interesting characters in the entire series. I hated looking at her with the knowledge that this character was also misogyny at work. Ali Larter did a wonderful job making her fully-developed and sympathetic while at the same time remaining fully strong and scary.

The problem with this character and why she fits into the role of the SFC, is that while being one of the most powerful characters in the entire series, the idea is that women cannot handle great power and it makes them go insane, buckling under the pressure of it. While the other male characters with godlike powers float through with great control and ease over their powers and emotions.

Now for some wonderful characters who truly are strong characters who happen to be female.

Barbara Gordon (Batgirl/Oracle), Storm, Spider-Woman, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, The Black Widow, Emma Frost, etc.

These are characters who though they may not always be victorious, they are very much in control of their own lives, and the appeal of their character does not depend on gender but on their personalities, character arcs, and strength. I listed primarily comic book characters because I think comics have a stronger tendency to show fully developed and realized female characters than Hollywood Cinema. The above list are probably a small handful of some of my favorite comic book women, villains and heroes alike.

I saw the recent trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming conclusion to his Batman trilogy, and I remained profoundly disappointed at how passive and weak Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman seemed. Catwoman, though sometimes can be depicted as an SFC, is most well-remembered to me as being a very strong character in general. Batman almost looks weak in comparison.

Gotham City is full of mentally-ill and broken people with a mentally-ill and broken man struggling to protect them as best he can despite his own touches of insanity, and amid all the chaos and mayhem is a woman running around dressed like a cat, stealing jewels, and having a good time. She is one of the few Batman characters who hasn’t completely lost her mind. She does what she wants because she enjoys it, and doesn’t mind flirting with the guy who wants to take her to jail. She’s fascinating, seductive, and when she wants to be, a regular badass.

My favorite Catwoman actresses definitely fall down to Eartha Kitt and Julie Newmar, with Michelle Pfeiffer coming in at a close second. They owned their sexuality and the streets, and over the years there’s been a lot of wonderful actresses to play the character, including Gina Gershon and Adrienne Barbeau for the animated series. It’s a great character with a great legacy.

So, I don’t particularly understand Anne Hathaway’s near-asexual passive-girlfriend of a character in Christopher Nolan’s film. I don’t understand what is wrong with writing a woman who is sexual and threatening. I don’t want any more SFC’s. I don’t want to see another film about a woman kicking ass and getting saved by her boyfriend.

I want actual female characters who are strong, not a cardboard cut-out begrudgingly thrown us by patriarchal filmmakers.

A man in my town was killed

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

This week, a gay man in my small, relatively peaceful community was found murdered in his home. He’d been shot five times in the back of his head. His dog was covered in his blood, kneeling next to him, licking him, trying to wake him up. He wouldn’t wake up.

 

Police think it may have been a hate-crime.

 

I knew this many very little, only that he worked at a salon I would visit every few months to have my head shaved along the sides, and I would say hello to him, like I would say hello to anyone else who worked there. I knew he was gay, and was one of the only other few in my community who were out of the closet. I knew he was mildly attractive and he enjoyed coffee and Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

I wish I’d known him better, because now that he’s gone there’s this kind of emptiness around. It’s something that deeply upset me when I found out. I’d gone in the day after they’d discovered his body to get my hair trimmed, and the atmosphere about the salon was wholly different. Where before there would always be laughing, petty gossip, and gross Southern colloquialisms, there was now a funereal silence. What laughter could be heard was uncomfortable, as if trying to avoid a painful subject.

 

I was told that the man’s brother had come in earlier to pick up his stuff, and that he broke down into tears in the parking lot. The family is hoping that at least a tragedy of this kind will wake people out of their ignorance and mindless hate. I hope so. I hate to think of his final moments, of anyone’s final moments staring down the barrel of a gun, knowing what is to come.

 

The story left my boyfriend and my mother both fearing for my safety. I think I’ll be fine. I’m not afraid of these people, and I’m not too social. Very few around here know me or my business. I’m a private person by nature, secretive and reclusive.

 

These moments though, they shatter your illusions of safety, particularly when you share something in common with the victim. We were both out-of-the-closet gay men in a small-town community not known for its tolerance of homosexuality, or anything different of any kind for that matter. I believe people’s minds around here are changing and that things are slowly improving, but it is a grave reminder that they’ve still got a long way to go, and it’s still very dangerous for people like me to walk outside.

 

I’ve taken a while to blog about this, as I couldn’t find it in my head anything that I’ve wanted to say that I felt would be appropriate. I hardly knew this man, but it would have felt wrong to just use his story for interesting content in a blog entry. I do loathe how journalists capitalize off of shocking and terrible events in an effort to garner a mass audience, reducing someone’s heartache to cheap entertainment. I’m only blogging about it now as I feel I’ve been able to really feel the weight of that loss, to think about what it means to me.

 

I can’t tell you what went through his head. I can’t even tell you what he was like. I won’t pretend to know or miss him. I’m not one of those assholes who reduces their dead acquaintances to a facebook post.

 

I can tell you that his death upsets me. I can tell you that it leaves me with a sick feeling inside my gut. People have told me often that they are often not surprised at the depths to which humanity has sunk. Sometimes, I am jealous of their numbness, as I do not think I will ever get used to it.

 

In my head, I know what man is capable of. I bear a great resentment of most humanity, a creature I can hardly relate to in this modern age. Yet my heart is still burdened by these terrible things. I still feel sickness inside when I see it, especially when it hits you so close to home.

 

Read about a murder that occurred in another state and another time, and then read about one that occurred last week in your next door neighbor’s house. You might never have known that person, but you saw them. You waved hello. Had small talk. They were alive one day, and then they were gone. You feel guilty for not knowing that person better, as there’s a sense of a missed opportunity there, like you should have appreciated them more, and you don’t know why. They’re only gone, and a vacuum is left in their wake.

 

Every person is important, for that reason. Every life matters, no matter how few they touch, or how insignificant they seem. Even if all you do is wave hello to your next door neighbor, and then go to work, and don’t talk to anyone at all, even if you never form any close friendships. When you are gone, you will be missed. You have no idea how many lives you touch, you have no idea of the space you fill in this universe.

 

It would not surprise me to discover that this man was murdered by some gay-hating asshole, nor even would I be shocked to discover that it was someone he knew personally. That doesn’t make it any better. It only makes it worse. Anyone who would take a life is unworthy to lay claim to their own in my eyes, especially for so petty and stupid a reason.

 

We are not gods that we are fit to deem who is worthy and unworthy of life, even if we disagree with their lifestyles. I hope they find whoever did this, and I hope that they are locked away for life. I want them to be spending the last of their days rotting away in a prison cell with the expression on that poor man’s face haunting them long into the night.

 

Maybe that’s why I often write about violence, because in some way, violence has always been in my life. Even if I am personally not affected by it, it’s still all around me. It’s in every waking moment of my day. I will never be free of the chains of destruction.

 

There will always be terrible people in this world.

 

I wish a swift healing for the family of the victim, that their pain and suffering might not be too great in the wake of this loss.

Last House on the Left: Original Vs. Remake

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Here’s a confession,

 

I refuse to see the Last House on the Left remake. While I understand that it was critically lauded and deemed a commercial success and that Wes Craven remade it himself, I can’t get over the emotional power behind the first film. There was something that happened while they filmed it, something very visceral that occurred out of all the jokes and the winks and the nods that went on into its conception and eventual filming.

 

It became real. The shitty camera quality, the slow-pacing of it all, and the way you just watch these people transformed by the tragedy of the events that follow it transcends horror fiction and becomes a character study of human beings. I have only watched this film once, years ago, and images from it will remain forever burned into my mind.

 

I want to watch it again, only I have never felt my gut churned so deeply by a film. I’ve never felt the ugliness that film creates inside you anywhere else. It takes you to a disturbing place, dark and gruesome, and it’s not the blood and the gore I’m referring to, it’s the humanity. It’s watching people descend into something primal and disgusting and then carry on like nothing ever happened.

 

Moments like that cannot be repeated. Such is the case of art. In all of our analyses, all of our predictions and intellectual essays, dissecting each and every facet of art and what makes it work, there’s still that missing mysterious element we haven’t discovered. It’s the reason you can remake a film shot for shot by the original, have the same great cast, and use the same score and it still lack the power and the ferocity of its predecessor. There’s something unexplained that happens sometimes, the same as with writing a moving novel, or composing a song that brings grown men to tears. It’s magic almost, as there’s no other word to describe this missing element.

 

I still don’t consider Last House on the Left a horror film. If it is a horror piece at all, it is the horror of mankind, of the terrible things we are capable of inflicting upon each other.