Baring All?

I happen to be reading a book entitled Writing for Comics with Peter David which just happens to be written by Peter David. Just to provide a brief biography, Peter David is a comic book writer known for his work on The Hulk, Supergirl, X-Factor, and other better or lesser known Marvel and DC comic titles.

May I say that I absolutely love comic books? I don’t care that I’m currently 21 years old and about to move across the country to hunt for work. I grew up on comic books and the myriad of 90’s cartoon spin-offs on the Fox Kids Television Network. But, for me, comics were never just… well, comics. I loved how the characters came alive and leapt off the page. They were very real seeming, and each character seemed to illustrate some aspect of my life or the world around me.

For Example, one of my favorite X-Men characters:

Gambit: A Cajun with a mysterious past in the criminal underworld. He can kinetically charge any object just by touching it and plug it so full of energy that it explodes. Basically, he can make bombs out of anything. Pretty cool, so cool in fact, that he is featured in the upcoming movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The coolest thing about him though was always his nonchalant attitude. He was a man of mystery and confidence. I always wanted to be like that as a child and young teen. I wanted to be that mysterious man, the one who everyone wanted to know more about, but couldn’t pry any more information out of than was allowed. I wanted to be that slightly dangerous, yet good, card wielding Cajun. Call it fantasy or catharsis if you will, but as a child, I empathized with this character. He was an extension of a hidden longing within.

So as I’m reading this book, Peter David goes into a discussion of how to create a character and how to create characters that are compelling for the audience. Here is a quote that particularly struck me:

“Don’t hold back. Writers have to be willing to metaphorically drop their pants and invite the world to take its best shot. If there are aspects of yourself that you really don’t like, be willing to explore them within a fictional construct. Not only might you create a compelling character, but you might find out interesting things about yourself.”

~ Peter David

So here’s the catch, am I brave enough as a writer to expose my inner demons to the world? Is that something I want to risk? I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, thinking about how this applies to my writing and my future in the film industry (and any storytelling industry, honestly) and I’ve come to the conclusion that this has been what I’ve wanted to do all along. I often say that I want to create stories that reveal things to people which they didn’t know about themselves before, that I want to expose the corners of the room that are currently hidden in shadows. So yes, this is exactly what I want to do as a storyteller. My goal though, is to create characters that can live in dreams and goals and aspirations just like so many Marvel characters did in my childhood. To do that takes time, courage, and self-examination. It may involve going places that I'm not comfortable going or writing difficult characters and situations, but in the end, it's worth it. If I can create characters that I empathize with, then I can create characters that the world empathizes with as well, and in so doing, maybe we can learn a thing or two about ourselves.

The Corpse Bride

It’s been a while since I’ve posted again, so I thought it was about time.

This past week, I watched a movie on the advice of my best friend, The Corpse Bride. The basic plot is this:

A bumbling but inwardly talented young man, is betrothed by his parents to a woman he’s never met. Fearful of his impending marriage, he realizes upon meeting his fiancé for the first time that here is a woman who, despite all of his fears, he can love and she him. Reassured by this realization, he still can’t get his vows right and goes on a walk deep into the woods to practice. While doing so, he finally manages to repeat his lines while placing the wedding ring on what looks like an exposed root, only to discover that the root is in fact the decaying remnants of a human hand.

Still with me?

What results is a strange visit to the underworld with Victor's new bride, (remember the hand? It belonged to someone) the Corpse Bride, and Victor's desperate attempts to return to his betrothed above.

It’s actually quite a brilliant film in many ways. Unlike many stop motion films which employ clay to create and pose characters, or all too common today CGI assisted animation, Corpse Bride was filmed using expertly crafted models from the UK with a complex gear mechanism within for incredibly subtle motion control.

Plus, Tim Burton’s fingerprints are all over it. It may be bizarre, but it’s bizarre in an incredibly imaginative way. One thing I admire most about Tim Burton’s directing style is that he truly lets his imagination reign free. Plus, if you’ve ever seen him in a “making of” featurette, his hair is crazy! This gives me hope for the future that Hollywood isn’t completely biased against directors with big, curly hair ;)

From a technical perspective, this film is a drool fest (kind of like another model based animation that recently came out aka Coralline).

From an emotional standpoint, The Corpse Bride is even more powerful as it looks at the nature of relationships and romantic endeavors. One particularly touching moment for me was a musical number in which the corpse bride laments the fact that despite her best efforts, Victor will never love her the way she wants him to. It’s such a tremendously sad moment, especially because, in all honesty, there’s no particular reason why Victor and the Corpse Bride wouldn’t be perfect for each other (other than the obvious fact that she’s already dead). They get along well. They share the same sense of humor. They even play piano together beautifully. But he’s in love with someone else, and there’s nothing that she can do to change that fact. Summed up in this one musical number is enough rejection and internal pain to last a person their whole life.

This really just got me thinking about a lot of things, and one thing that crossed my mind was what it must feel like to be someone left at the altar. Just think, you’ve invested so much time and emotional energy into one person, proposed (or conversely been proposed to), intending to spend the rest of your life with them, and then at the very end, they change their mind. What must that feel like? Where do you go from there? Do you just keep going like before and hope that one day they change their mind and decide to marry you? Or do you call it all off completely? How hard that must be.

Today I watched a short propaganda video with my dad which was created by a small Christian ministry. The main purpose of the video was to warn families of the dangers posed by the media based out of Hollywood and the "war on family values" and Christian culture that it represented.

A few things:

1) The piece was incredibly outdated. If you judged by the particular clips used as examples, you'd think that MTV was the only television channel in existence. Given when it was made, I can understand how concerning MTV would be for Christian parents. But today, it's a little unreasonable to base your entire understanding of the media on one television channel which, quite frankly, isn't even top dog any more as far as teen and college interest is concerned.

2) The acting was horrible and even worse than that found in most typical Christian movies. One would think that if you're going to make commentary on films and art, you should actually be good at, say, making films and art. This is one reason why it's so hard to take Christian commentators on the media seriously these days. I understand your points and even agree to a certain extent, but the fact is that you still are unable to present a viable alternative to mainstream media, even with your Christian subculture that you've created.

3) The propaganda piece pretty much just strung together as many creepy or bizarre clips as it could in montages without any context or explanation. You had clips ranging from Chucky to the Terminator and Poltergeist. So of course Hollywood and the media are going to look freaky. You're only showing freaky things.

4) As a tie-in with number 3, the movie took the most extreme examples of Hollywood bias against Christianity and biblical morals and presented it without any counter-evidence. Further, it inferred an argument that anything which looks disturbing or may be emotionally disturbing was somehow anti-Christian or anti-biblical. This just simply isn't the case. If you were to take the Bible and turn it into a movie, there is no possible way that it could be made into anything rated below an 'R'. The Bible is not PG-13. Heck, even one of the best crucifixion stories told on film to this date, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" earned an 'R' rating. So this philosophy that only things which are family friendly are worth watching is false.

5) The movie essentially argued that the purpose of art was to present something lovely to its audience (referring to Philippians 4:8). And while this is perfectly acceptable in one's thought life, we live in a world in which human beings require God's convicting on matters of the heart, and art is one tool which the spirit chooses to do so.

For me, personally, I want to create films that do disturb, and disturb in such a way as to provoke my audience to action and change. I want to foster movies which shine as beacons in the room, lighting dark corners and exposing shadows for what they are. I want to uncover those monsters lurking in the closet and under the bed. Because, frankly, I feel like human beings are really good at hiding things from themselves. I know I am. It's up to the artist to show us those things which we don't want to look at ourselves.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. More to come.