The guilty party in The Innocents

'The Innocents' is a 1961 British gothic psychological horror film starring Deborah Kerr, based on the 125-year-old novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, with a screenplay smeared with the buttery fingerprints of Truman Capote and, to a lesser extent, John Mortimer. The psychological underpinnings of the film's screenplay have made it the subject of numerous critical and scholarly essays, particularly in the area of film theory and it was selected by The Guardian as one of the 25 best horror films ever made.

Quite a pedigree. Which makes you wonder who the hell am I to wade in with my pennyworth.

And it's quite a simple criticism really, having rewatched it a few days ago. And it has nothing to do with 'psychological underpinnings' (can you tell I culled much of that from Wikipedia'?) but from a writerly perspective. I've mulled on why it simply does not work for me as a film (and, I seem to dimly remember, as a book). 

There's somebody missing.

Let's just precis the first act. Miss Giddens (Kerr) becomes governess to two orphans on a large country estate, the previous incumbent having died. Whilst her charges are generally angelic, she grows disturbed by their occasional odd, and oddly adult, behaviour. She is also disturbed by disembodied voices and apparitions she—and only she—witnesses. She concludes that these are the ghosts of her predecessor and her lover and are in possession of the children so they can physically continue their relationship. She determines to rescue them from this possession.

And therein lies my problem. What on earth would make Debs come to such a bonkers conclusion as a first guess? The kids are playing up and there are ghosts around. There's nothing, nada, zilch, zip that links the two. Not a smidgen of a suggestion unless you cook it up in your own mind.

The only way that I would buy this line of reasoning in any way, shape or form is if either she had exhausted all other possibilities, or somebody put the idea in Miss Giddens' head. It is too great a leap for somebody to make, at least in one step, and I'm not sure what the 'other possibilities' are here as I'm inclined to tick the 'unrelated' box and deal with each issue separately. Which makes me think we need somebody whispering this concept into Giddens' shell-like.

Okay, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces was published decades after James wrote his story, and wasn't the go-to in Hollywood when the film was made as it was when, say, Star Wars was being story-boarded, but even so... it describes established story elements rather than inventing them afresh. The mentor has existed for ever.

Without a mentor, possibly an unreliable mentor, to plant the idea of possession in the governess's mind I'm just left unempathetic and unengaged as she goes off on a bonkers one. Maybe that's the idea: horror movie as clinical observation of somebody's cheese sliding off their cracker. But I always regard the main character as being my proxy in the storyworld, as the eyes I see that world through. Their going mad means my going mad. That makes it my cheese sliding off my cracker. No dice.

When I first learnt story structure under an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (okay, a writer of an Oscar-nominated short), one of the many things that stuck in my mind (far less red wine had flowed under the bridge) was that protagonists' thought processes must be clear and reasoned, even if, say, driven by gut instinct, whereas antagonists can display leaps of logic worthy of a wuxia hero. Bond must show his workings, whereas only Blofeld's allowed to act like a loose cannon.

How much better, then, to have a mentor figure whispering in Miss Giddens' ear: when the children act like that, they're not the children, they're possessed by the spirits of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, and for Miss Giddens to come to think, slowly, over the course of the second act: that's ridiculous, but wait, that does accord with what's happening, and there it is again, that's the only conclusion, it can't be anything else, the children... they're possessed, I have to help them...

Truman! Truman!! We're gonna need a rewrite...

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2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

In space no-one can read about not being able to hear you scream

As if the transition from summer to autumn isn’t bad enough, we’ve decided to make this year’s even more painful by revisiting George ‘you can never have too many cute furry things’ Lucas’ Star Wars ennealogy (go on, look it up; I had to).  Yes, it's a classic, but not only have we lost the middle chapters in their original form and now have to put up with ‘improved’ versions - improved like when your kid brother improves your mint 1972 Dodge Challenger with go-faster stripes using permanent marker - but, most crucially, we have the initial ‘is the hor d’oeuvre meant to taste of sick?’ barrier to vault named Jar Jar Binks.

Not that this post has anything to do with Jar Jar, but it’s a hobby horse I like to exercise at any opportunity.  Consider its legs stretched.

No, this post is nothing more than a simple observation on the Fourth Estate and its role in the Star Wars storyverse: it doesn’t have one.

I don’t know about you, but I’m swimming in a media world. I check the headlines on my phone each morning whilst making tea; I’ll read online news with a mug of the aforementioned char in bed; and something news-related will play on the television at some point in the day, every day. And I don’t think I’m at all unusual in this (apart from the working-at-home luxury of being able to take my tea back to bed of a morning).  In fact, I’ll contend I’m behaving like the majority of people from Vladivostok to Tierra del Fuego.  I’d also argue that if you took away access to news, as happens in the less enlightened parts of our planet, people will react in a variety of ways, including seeking to overthrow you with extreme prejudice.

But none of that happens in the Star Wars storyverse. Which, when you think about it, is weird.

That means of communication exist is clear - grainy blue holographic images play out in real time from travellers who only left days or hours before throughout, so there’s every opportunity to dispatch the Kate Adie of a long time ago and a galaxy far far away to report back.  What few screens they have don't appear to be any good for, say, watching a decent sci-fi movie in high-definition, but given the ability to produce starships and huge cities, the infrastructure of broadcast media must be easily within their grasp.  But even without screens, they've surely invented the printing press.  Or does moveable type post-date faster than light travel in this world?  Only that would help explain why the Senate need a commission to be sent to Naboo to establish the facts of the invasion rather than simply turning on a tellybox to get minute-by-minute coverage.

There appear to be no newspapers, television, nor equivalent of an internet.  Nor is there anything in the way of advertising or marketing (compare and contrast with Bladerunner's prescience), even though every third person is some sort of vague 'trader'. And there seems precious little interest from the populace in information of almost any kind, from baseball results to celebrity gossip.

Which makes them strange, parallel creatures to us, the humans looking like humans but clearly under the skin lacking some basic human circuitry...

Oh, hold on. I just remembered. It's all a fiction created by someone who will only worldbuild what's directly necessary to the story - social structures, faster-than-light travel, tax laws, TAX LAWS! - even if the other stuff talks to basic human wants and needs, and its absence creates a screaming, inexplicable void.

But cute, furry creatures... you can never have too many of them.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic. 

Medium rare

I've been published, I've been podcast, and now - a whole new medium - I'm going to be performed on stage...

Actually, I don't know if I'm going to be performed proper, or just read out with immense panache, but either way, the Delta Literary Arts Society have taken my flash The Ultimate Vegan Curry for their "horror/sci-fi themed dramatized event, Killer Verse" and will do with it as they please. Something wonderful, I trust.

And, in case you're wondering, the delta in question is, I think, of the Fraser River just south of the (genuinely, I'm not just saying it) wonderful city of Vancouver.

If you go, let me know how it goes.

#

Click on the images or search on Amazon.

You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.