Sunday, April 28, 2013

"All that matters now are the people we care about."

I've been coming up with and shooting down ideas for posts all weekend. "Well, I'm not sure I can talk about this without going into detail about my freelance gigs..." "Well, story topic doesn't reflect too well on me..." "Well, this story doesn't reflect too well on this other random person who... well, you never know..."

I've been thinking about Jurassic Park lately. A couple weeks ago Girlfriend grabbed her 2-D glasses (to shield her from 3-D-induced headaches) and we went to see it in 3-D, since that's the way it's in theaters. While it was sort of interesting, I don't think the third dimension added much, except (of course) an excuse for getting it back in theaters. This would be my second time seeing Jurassic Park in theaters, the last time being back in the day, when I was 8.

We rushed out on a Thursday because it was the very last day that our local theater was screening the movie, and we had the unique pleasure of being literally* the only people in the theater. That meant we could actually... well, talk through the whole movie. About the movie, mind you, and it enriched the experience. I'm glad we were able to.

Anyway, I noticed a few things. First of all, I noticed that Jurassic Park really is an excellent movie. It came out 18 years after Jaws and I think Steven Spielberg did much the same thing for another generation here.

Second, the special effects still hold up, 20 years later. In exactly one scene I thought the dinosaurs' skin wasn't as detailed as it would be in a movie made today, and they were occasionally slightly "floaty," but all the other examples of these flaws that I can think of were more egregious and happened in movies years later. If you had told me Jurassic Park was a product of 2008's CGI tech instead of 1993's, I could have believed you.

Last of all, now that I've filled my brain with meta knowledge in the intervening 20 years, I can start thinking about the underlying morality of the movie. I don't mean the message that everyone remembers, and that an entire generation took to heart--that we absolutely should not clone dinosaurs even if we could and even though it would be completely awesome. I mean the more subtle, probably unintentional, morality that a movie ends up displaying when its plot revolves around killing off the cast.

I would dare to say there's always an implicit morality in any story where the cast gets slowly picked off, either entirely or in part. Who lives and who dies? This is how we find the moral lessons of thrillers.

It's worth pointing out that which characters live and die changes dramatically between the original book and the movie adaptation. Presumably that changes the morality quite a bit, but I'm only going to talk about the movie, because I saw it this decade, and I dare say more people saw it than read the book.

Obviously, I'm about to talk about who lives and who dies in this movie, so spoilers ahoy.

At first blush the sorting algorithm of mortality seems congruent with the moral that the more likeable characters keep repeating: respect for nature wins in the end. Genarro, the "bloodsucking lawyer," is the most excited by the chance to exploit the dinosaurs for profit. He is ignobly noshed on by a tyrannosaurus. Nedry disregards the danger of turning off the fences, and even insults one of the dinosaurs' intelligence to its face--a mistake that no one else makes. He is then puked on and eaten.

So far, so good, but then the model breaks down. The next two deaths are Arnold, the non-scuzzy computer guy, and Muldoon, the game warden, and the only person who seems to "get" the velociraptors. If anyone should survive based on the respect-for-nature model, it's him--and incidentally (book spoiler) in the book, he does.

So what gives?

Well, to be fair, Jurassic Park is a popcorn thriller, and not much thought was probably given to the meaning of character mortality beyond what would please the audience, but having realized that and looked into it anyway, I was a little dismayed by what I saw. It's, quite simply what Dr. Sattler says to Hammond while he eats ice cream and muses about his flea circus: "All that matters now are the people we care about."

And that, it would seem, is it. Dr. Sattler's ambiguously romantic life partner survives, as does the charming mathematician who flirted with her, as do Hammond's two grandscamps, who are protected more directly by Dr. Grant's grudging psuedopaternalism (and whose affection in turn saves Hammond).

Who dies, then? Nobody likes Genarro or Nedry. Arnold and Muldoon are likable but professional. Since they're competent and emotionally unattached to anyone else in the movie, they're treated as protectors of the central cast, like the electric fences, and removed to raise the tension in the final act.

So as much as I loved the movie, I was a little saddened that in the end it doesn't seem to matter, really, that people died, since they weren't anyone we cared about.

I guess the only real thing to be done about an observation like that is to do better in the next book, movie, or whatever, that we make.

* Yes, literally. People who know me already know what I mean when I say "literally," but if you're just joining us, I'm unabashedly pedantic about that word. So I mean exactly, actually, and unhyperbolically what I am saying here.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

More work. Enough work? Work.

For the first time I can remember, when Spring Break came this year I really wished I could put it off. My freelancing had slowed down the week before and, all things being equal, I probably would have chosen to stay home and look vigorously for more work. But the vacation was set, and plane tickets were bought, and in fairness to my friends, it really was better to go see them--I like my friends.

And the time for vigorously searching for work came as soon as I got back home. Nervous as I was following the dip in my income, I didn't expect the work to come in as fast as I would have liked. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I've actually built up enough experience that people are willing to hire me, or maybe I just needed to redouble (re-triple?) my work search for a few days, but I actually got plenty of work after a few days, and I seem to have established a new pace for paying work.

Some of what I've landed is even creative, although as usual it's work-for-hire and the product won't be mine. (This remains why I have never bid on a straight novel or short story writing job. I can write novels, and want to, but when I do, they will be mine. Hengist & Undine is mine, and even if it only turns $1 profit that dollar is going to be mine, too.) I'm not certain right now if I can even brag about any of it, but if I find out that I can, you might hear here about some more places you can find writing of mine.

It's a weird thing about freelancing: you often have to hunt your work, and sometimes the hunting takes as long as the work itself. It's kind of exciting--I don't know if it's the sort of excitement a person wants all the time, but it makes you feel like you're actually doing something to stay alive.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

A week best finished

Since I came back from Seattle there's been the cold (mine), the other cold (not mine), the money stress (everyone's), the repair guy in the bathroom for two days, the bilateral pulmonary embolism (not mine), and taxes. I'm not even sure I have anything to say about it. I'm just glad the week is over.

On the plus side, yesterday was Hyattsville's 127th anniversary, celebrated with a fair and fireworks, both of which were loud, bright, and pretty.