Sunday, October 6, 2024
The Ray Bradbury Theater: The Screaming Woman (1986).
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Antigonish (1899): or The Man Who Sold the World (1970).
Like I say, I can't really tell anyone how common this particular type of reading practice is. I just don't know how many others study the narratives they like in the same way that I do. So it's kind of useless to ask me if this is anything like part of a greater phenomenon of literary practice. All I can tell you beyond this point is that this is what happened to me when I had the good fortune to read first an old, forgotten poem (I guess you could call it a children's rhyme), followed by song, also old, this one dating back to the start of the 70s. The name of the poem was Antigonish. It's one of those titles that no one remembers, even while there's something memorable about it. The sort of thing you hear in passing, and then wonder why the word popped into your head later on. The almost limerick style composition was written and published in the year 1899 by a now obscure poet and educator named William Hughes Mearns. The song that helped me understand Mearns' poem was The Man Who Sold the World, by David Bowie. I'm sure that's a juxtaposition few if anyone reading this would be expected to make. I know I wasn't. For the longest time, this forgotten poem and the chart topping song were complete and separate entities in my mind. I ran across Mearns' work in a collection of children's verse in an illustrated primer book whose title I know forget, except that it was edited by Jack Prelutsky.
The Bowie song I ran across by seemingly pure chance one night while staying up late watching a now defunct VH1 programming block. It was an entire program or segment dedicated to music from the 70s, as I recall. Somewhere between Ozzy Osbourne's Iron Man and being introduced to the music of Leo Sayer for the first time (yeah, VH1 was dedicated to it's eclecticism back then) someone in a broadcast booth somewhere made the now wise choice to air an old live performance that Bowie gave of the song way back during a 1995 MTV concert special. It was one of those things where at the time it had no greater meaning than just a way to enjoy a few minutes before dozing off to sleep. It was the kind of thing I caught once or twice, enough anyway, so that the song got lodged in my head. The sort of tune that recalls itself to your conscious mind, and you sort of remember it as being kind of interesting, yet you still don't attach all that much importance to it. What changed that for me was running across that song again in connection with Mearns' bit of poetic doggerel. What I didn't expect to happen was for Bowie's lyrics to help inform the meaning of Mearns' little rhyme. The result wound up as something that was less a pair of unrelated verses, and more like a complete and greater poem told in two movements. That's how I'd like to look at each effort, as two parts of a greater whole.
I do this first because the ideas that came about from pairing the efforts of these two artists in my mind suggest a rich vein of thematic ore that is just too interesting not to share. Another reason for looking at these two poetic attempts together is because each of them seem to share the same genre. In many ways, the placing of Antigonish and The Man Who Sold the World together is to create the kind of narrative that is more or less perfect as we get into the Autumn Festival season. What we have here is a kind of ghost story that I don't think either Bowie or Mearns intended to write. Yet when you pair their efforts up, what you get is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I'd like to know it's meaning.Sunday, September 8, 2024
The Tell-Tale Heart (UPA, 1953).
Its a mistake to claim that UPA was the first ever animation studio to base its films off of pre-existing literary source material. That honor doesn't even belong to Walt Disney himself, but rather to former newspaper comics illustrator Winsor McCay, who has to count as the first published author to ever use the then new medium of animated pictures to bring his own Little Nemo comic strip to life. From there, of course, Walt would go on to draw from the sources of European folklore and the Brother's Grimm to create some of his most iconic works. In this sense, UPA wasn't even trying to play catch-up, so much as just continuing the game of Follow the Leader. What continues to make their efforts stand out from the pack was in the type of literary models they used for inspirations. UPA was the first studio to take the works of of modern writers such as James Thurber, popular contemporary music, or as in the case of today's offering, popular works of Gothic Fiction. They did all of this in an effort whose goals were twofold. First, they wanted to prove that they had what it took to get out of Walt's shadow. Second of all, Bosustow and Company knew that the way to do that was to prove to the audience that animation could be used to tell stories whose subject matter was more mature than the regular cartoon fair.
It was with this goal in mind that one day Scott and Gable appear to have been the ones to hit on the idea of taking the work of one of the great pioneers of Horror fiction, turning it into a theatrical animated short, and getting none other than Oscar winning actor James Mason to star and narrate in it. The result was a 1953 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", and it went like this.Sunday, August 25, 2024
The Power of the Sentence (1971).
Del Rey doesn't seem to have kept any close contact with this particular artist. He was one of the most prolific storytellers and anthologists back during the Silver and New Wave eras in the history of Science Fiction. His role as an editor made it essential that he keep in close contact with a long list of who's who in the field of Speculative Writing. For whatever reason, David Locke is the one name that no one ever seems to have bothered to keep track of. It's possible to know more about guys like Del Rey than it is this one obscure byline on a title page. Even the scant piece of information that Locke was once (still is?) a Fulbright scholar doesn't tell us much, as its an international program attached to numerous academic institutions. So any information about where Locke came from, what schools he went to, where he graduated from, or whether he maintained or continues in these academic settings would be so much guess work I might as well be creating a fictional character. The only true statement I can make about him is that he is a name that has all but vanished off the literary map. All that's left is his story about a very peculiar classroom lecture, and so I thought it might be interesting to look into it.
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Vanishing Point: Doctor of the Soul (1986).
The whole show was very much a textbook example of the successful follow-up from a parent program. Much the same way as the character of Frasier Crane was able to take on a life of his own after Cheers. In the case of the show under discussion today, Vanishing Point grew out of the success of a previous Canadian Broadcasting radio entry known as Nightfall. That earlier series was a classic example of the late-night Horror anthology. A version of Tales from the Crypt for the theater of the mind. It became enough of a ratings hit that eventually the CBC was ready to try and build a sister project. This one would share the same late night anthology format as Nightfall. Even some of its episodes would echo the previous entry in terms of genre and situation. However, it was made clear right away that this new project wouldn't just be imitating the same ideas. Instead, the new series was to be free to explore as much of the terrain of the fantastic as its writers wanted or felt they could get away with under a radio budget. In other words, it didn't always have to be straight-up Horror. Sometimes it could be Sci-Fi, Urban Fantasy, and even the occasional narratives delving into nothing more than slices of life. It was going to be less Tales from the Crypt and more Twilight Zone for radio, in other words.
The result is a series that really seemed determined to explore as much of the range of the theater of the mind as possible. It's an entry from this forgotten bit of Canadian broadcasting that I'd like to take a look at today. Tonight's play is written especially for radio by David Helwig and concerns one of the greatest conundrums that mankind continues to grapple with. So if you'll join us for tonight's journey into the unknown, I believe we're do for a most unusual appointment in a psychiatrist's office.
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Suspense: One Hundred in the Dark (1947).
For instance, I can remember a time when it seemed like J.R.R. Tolkien was everywhere. Not just confined to an out-of-the-way weblog as the typical thing you expect to find nowadays, either. I'm talking this guy was everywhere. This was true not just in terms of the breakout impact of the original Peter Jackson trilogy, either. Even before all that, right at the very turn of the 20th century into that of the 21st, it seemed as if Middle Earth was busy enjoying its own fan led pop culture renaissance. You had an endless treasure hoard of popular fan studies, and various scholarly critical texts about Professor T and his writings being placed on retail shelves not just all over the American continent, but also in places like Great Britain, France, India, you name it. In that sense it was a true international phenomena. A case of fans worldwide coming together to create a grassroots phenomenon that worked as a shared pop cultural treasure that was able to unite myriads of people the world over in the celebration of nothing more than just a very good piece of literary art. Are you kind of maybe starting to see what I mean when I talk about the difference between pop culture then from now? The major difference seems to rest on the fact that the former version of it truly was inclusive. This updated 2.0 model, however, just seems to exist for the sole purpose of creating a siloing effect on its users.
Forgive me for saying this, yet I don't think Tolkien's works would have stood a chance if this mainframe setup was in place way back when. He might have still had his fandoms. However, they would have been reduced to what they are now. Just a few scattered pieces of get togethers in chatrooms and the odd occasional blog post here and there, and none of it would have reached the fever pitch that would have allowed Jackson and the rest of his cast and crew to mount not just a successful but impactful showing as they wound up with. Of course, I'm sure others will argue that at least this setup would have meant that none of us would have to sit through the ongoing botch job that is The Rings of Power or whatever the Game of Thrones franchise has become. I can't help thinking that all of this later stuff is the result of pop culture becoming corporatized a bit too much for its own good, however. We seem to have stumbled upon a cautionary lesson in allowing our enthusiasms to get perhaps just a bit too popular. Maybe the real education here is to know when to guard the stories that matter from getting too out of hand. Whatever the case may be with all that, there are still some aspects of pop culture from the past that have a way of astounding you with their seeming resiliency.For instance, I am still amazed to learn that there are a great many fans out there of the broadcast medium or format known as Old Time Radio. I'm talking now about a very specific and identifiable period in the history of American entertainment. For those who may not have a clue what I'm talking about OTR (for short) is best described as pretty much the first major breakout media format in an era before television or the net. It belonged to an age when all of the world's news and entertainment was limited to to the contours of a small squat box with speakers in it wired to a transmitter powered often enough by what I can only describe as a variation of the electric light bulb. It often lit the box up right well enough whenever it was turned on and working to full capacity. However, the providing of light in a room wasn't the real purpose for this kind of fixture. It was there to make the box talk. That's how radio used to work in an pre-wireless era. Rather, let's say that most of our grandparents did have a form of wireless. There just wasn't a single scrap of anything digital about it. It was all analog.
The particular drama I'd like to share with you now comes from the days when the radio was king. That time was known as the format's Golden Age, when the Theater of the Mind served as America's idiot box of choice. What's stunning to learn is just how much from that period still survives in archive form, and how much of it has made its way in and onto the digital realm. It's seems that this easy availability is what accounts for the widespread awareness of a style of entertainment that doesn't even manage to get so much as a passing mention in the news anymore. It seems to be a testament to the power of online fandom that it can help resurrect the reputation of a long forgotten form of storytelling. With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to look into a sample offering from the Golden Age of Radio. It's an episode of an anthology series known only as Suspense. From what I can tell of this program, there might have been a time when it was the highest rated show on the airwaves. Whatever the case, tonight, we offer, for our listening audience the story of Owen Johnson's "One-Hundred in the Dark".
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Rudyard Kipling's Finest Story in the World (1891).
This fascination with how and why stories are made might be described as perhaps one of the guiding purposes of this blog. It's all tied up with this unshakable curiosity I have. The best way to describe it might be to form it in the shape of a series of questions. Why do stories exist? What makes them work so well when the writing is good? Also, what makes it all fail in various ways? In other words, I seem to be fascinated just as much with the craft and imaginative inspiration that fuels the art of writing every bit as I am with reading a good example of the finished literary product. To cut it all short, I seem to be a by now incurable bookworm. The kind of guy who takes the full ramifications of that title seriously and without a trace of irony. I suppose that in itself is ironic, yet it's just the way everything has turned out for me. And so here is this blog, and the fascination still remains. How do good stories get told? It's one of the considerations that powers the engine of this meager little site, and I'll probably still be asking it long after this article is no longer in my rearview mirror. Sometimes a reader like me gets lucky, and runs across an actual literary artist whose mind is caught up in the with the same fascination of where do the stories come from? One famous name who shares this enthusiasm was an author by the name of Rudyard Kipling, of The Jungle Book fame.
I've written about him once or twice on this blog. What's interesting about guys like Kipling is that there's a sense in which he can be said to conform to type. He's a problematic mind with an undeniable well of imaginative talent and creativity sharing the same mental office space with the kind of small-mindedness of, say, an H.P. Lovecraft. The key difference (however much or little this counts) is that Kipling never seems to have been as virulent in his opinions as Lovecraft, even going so far as to count the actual native inhabitants of both India and Arabia as among his closest friends. The result is one of those studies in contrast, a natural sense of humanism and empathy coexisting somehow within the politics of the British Raj. The result is this strange picture of the artist as a kind of borderline figure, someone with a foot in two opposed worlds, and always struggling with how to hold each in the proper balance. There's plenty worth talking about on that score, and maybe we'll have a chance to discuss it here as we go along. Right now, it is enough to repeat what I've said above. Kipling is unique in being one of the handful of artists who are just as much fascinated by why and how stories are told, just as much as he is interested in getting as much of the finished product on the page as far as possible.This topic of why and how stories are made held such a fascination for him, that it eventually resulted in one of those stories about the making of stories. The difference is the interesting twist that Kipling brings to the table when it comes to describing the writing process. I call it different, yet maybe that's not quite so much the right word. Perhaps when you put the writer's thoughts on the art of writing into the plainest life-size terms as possible, what you get is no more than the same thoughts of theorists like Coleridge and Jung. However, even if this is the case, it's the way in which Kipling describes the creative process, and most of all, the way he talks about where do the stories come from that makes for such an interesting idea to unpack. This, then, is Kipling's tale of "The Finest Story in the World".