Mysteries: Plan Versus Reality

"Does anyone have a plan like ours?"

Dr. Sloan doesn't pretend to be dumb. His intelligence is a given (doctors honestly aren't any more intelligent than other people but they are perceived that way). 

Most importantly, like many detectives, Dr. Sloan is a realist. He takes people and things as they are. He doesn't imagine conspiracies and murder until he is forced to imagine them. 

Consequently, he approaches a crime with few preconceptions. He isn't easily fooled because he isn't playing by a rule book to begin with. 

One of my favorite Diagnosis Murder episodes, "Till Death Do Us Part," starts with the murderers--a spoiled daughter and her clueless fiance--imagining the murder they have planned. They imagine themselves as slick operators who impress the wedding guests at their upcoming nuptials. They imagine the victim, the father, as a jerk. They imagine his second wife, the woman they intend to frame, as snide. They imagine the murder going off without a hitch as the detectives find all the clues they planted.

The episode then switches to the actual day. The couple are vain, pompous, disorganized, and kind of stupid. The father is kindly. The stepmother smooths things over. The two murderers keep making mistakes. Items that were supposed to be in certain places get lost. The dog laps up part of the poison. The maid vacuums. And so on.

 

The imagined plan extends to the murderers' self-delusions. The groom resents his father-in-law's rejection of his completely ridiculous business proposals. The bride asks her stepmother to fetch nail polish that is already sitting on her vanity (she never bothered to check the set-up). They don't see their own arrests coming because they believe so thoroughly in their smug version of reality. 

Dr. Sloan naturally finds out the truth. He was never party to the story the murderers invented about themselves. What he sees is not what they wish to impose on others' perceptions but what they actually did. He deals in reality.

 

I Act Dumb But I'm Smart: Columbo

A common trope in mysteries is the smart detective who acts dumb. 

Bones refers to this behavior quite directly when a few people point out to Brennan that Booth allows himself to be the physical guy who doesn't know stuff to give their relationship balance. Booth's behavior only works, however, because he is a fairly confident guy who doesn't mind how others see him.

Columbo is equally confident, even if he appears less so. He is also the quintessential detective of this type. His elf-like appearance, assumed bashfulness, and seemingly random stories about people in his family who may or may not exist disconcert others. Not to mention that supposedly forgotten "one more thing" that brings him back into the room.

Sometimes, the villains see through the pose/persona but even when they do, they can't entirely guess which way Columbo will jump, especially since Columbo manages--like Milan with red-zone dogs--to do something that every cell in the human body rebels against:

Columbo doesn't mind looking stupid if it helps him do what is necessary. 

One of my role models! Not caring what others think--while still aspiring to help others--is a great trait to emulate. 

Identity is More Than a Label

I mention in the previous post that what what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable epithets can change. Likewise, identity can change, not only with time but with context. 

A Numb3rs episode delivers a scene where David and Colby walk into a bar filled with Asian businessmen and scantily clad Asian women serving drinks. 

Colby says, "We're the only white people in here." 

Alimi Ballard's David chuckles and says, "Yes. Yes, we are."

Identity is more than a box on a survey form. In this context, the two FBI agents have more in common with each other than with anybody in the room. "White" isn't a slur or a brag; it's an acknowledgement of a culture--for good or for bad--tied to a particular institution.

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe: Objectivity as True Kindness

Many people have attempted to capture Nero Wolfe's personality. Among them are William Conrad, Francesco Pannofino, and Maury Chaukin. 

William Conrad plays Nero as a gruff guy with a heart of gold and even a sentimental streak. I'm not sure Conrad is capable of playing someone like Wolfe any other way, even if the director demanded otherwise. I watched Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe with Conrad's personality in mind and quite enjoyed the early episodes. However, I never entirely warmed to Lee Horsley as Archie. 

Jake and the Fatman is more or less the same relationship in modern (for the time) L.A. (then Hawaii, then L.A. again). I consider Jake and the Fatman more accurate to the Nero Wolfe universe, especially Jake as Archie: the raw, hands-on, physical guy who exhibits both respect and a certain irreverence for "the Fatman." 

Francesco Pannofino and Pietro Sermonti in the MHZ Nero Wolfe have decent chemistry as Nero and Archie. Pannofino also plays Wolfe as having a heart of gold, but the heart of gold is more buried than with Conrad. I quite like the MHZ production, in part because I love the house and also because the chef, as in the A&E production, is given equal screen time. Nero Wolfe's household is replicated, not merely his personality and cases.

However, Maury Chaykin--directed by Timothy Hutton--captures the Nero Wolfe of the books best. Wolfe is not (merely) a gruff smart guy. And he is not a snarky, one-liner quip machine (see Sherlock and House). He is passionate and romantic, stating at one point that he gained weight to inure himself to that side of his character. 

More than anything else, he has a underlying belief system that makes him appear cold and uncaring but is, in truth, inexorably honest and right. He is more like Sherlock from Elementary, who points out to Kitty that letting people pay for crimes they didn't commit--however emotionally satisfying--is not in the long run good for anyone, including society. 

Ethics is the reason Wolfe refuses to let the spoiled heiress simply park herself in his home. He has let plenty of young women park themselves in his home when needs warranted. But Wolfe doesn't lie or play games or forget the long-term consequences of any act. He tells her the truth, even though he could have massaged the situation to give emotional satisfaction and still claim an award.

He exhibits true respect for principles. To Debra Monk, playing the wife of a murdered man, he states, "[The woman who got killed] is the one who asked for your promise. So the responsibility [for that promise and her death] was hers." He relieves the burden on the wife's mind--he later honors the dead woman's purpose in requesting the promise.

Again, the behavior may seem uncaring. But in fact, it is ultimately more fair, honorable, and human than any outsized emotional response. 

Archie--more impulsive than Wolfe--often disagrees with his boss. Overall, however, he is more likely to see things from Wolfe's point of view than not. In a Venn diagram of life, they see life through the same honorable lens. 

Barney Miller Memorable Moment: James Gregory

James Gregory shows up in a great many classic television shows, including Columbo. I love him best, however, in Barney Miller where he plays the "old-school" Frank Luger. 

Frank Luger underscores the true tolerance of Barney Miller--not tolerance for a select group but tolerance even for the loud, tactless, old-school, supporter of corrupt politicians, fundamentally decent Luger.

What I love the most with Gregory is his physical acting. Barney Miller reminds me of The Closer; when rewatching The Closer, I often get the impression that James Duff, the producer, told a guest star, "Just do whatever you want! What character type do you want to play?" 

I feel the same with the guest stars on Barney Miller. 

The images are when Luger discovers the panties that a male shoplifter stole. He calls the man a pervert, asks him who is going to vote for, waves the panties around, and then nearly walks off with them. 

The entire sequence is utterly hilarious, made more so by rapidly changing expressions on Gregory's mobile face. 

 

Don't Give the Audience What It Thinks It Wants

Re-post from 2011.

I recently posted about ignorant characters. I point out problems with such characters. What I don't mention is how the ignorant character is often preferable to the noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfectly good or perfectly evil character. 

The problem with the latter is how often filmmakers and authors do the equivalent of what Plinkett describes below--they make that noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfect character the focus of every prequel. 

Giving the audience what the audience (supposedly) wants is a mistake.

* * * 

In Plinkett's latest Star Wars' review (which is amusing though not as complete as the others), Plinkett, like always, makes a very cogent point.

Here is the cogent point in my own words:

Just because Darth Vadar became an iconic image of Star Wars doesn't mean the prequels needed to be about him. Just because Darth Vadar is important to us doesn't mean he was important to that universe at that time.

There is a writing conundrum here. Yes, it helps when you are writing a novel/short story/movie/show to use motifs and plot-lines and characters that people actually enjoy and recognize.

However, if all you do is stick together the most common motifs/plot-lines/characters, 9 times out of 10, the product will be a dud--or, at least, remarkably lacking in staying power.

Plinkett does a thorough job proving that, unfortunately, this sticking-togetherness is how Lucas approached the prequels. He took iconic images from IV, V, and VI and simply expanded and rehashed those images in the prequels even when the rehash made no sense.

So, for example, instead of the robe Obi-Wan was wearing in IV simply being the kind of robe people wear on desert planets, suddenly it became the robe ALL Jedi wear.

And instead of the training tools on Han Solo's ship simply being what was at hand, suddenly those tools became the way ALL Jedi are trained.

The result is unimaginative. And irrational.

It also highlights a very important principle. Classic motifs are good. Classic motifs backed by an actual vision are BETTER.

In a large, but not unmerited, segue, C.S. Lewis' Narnia series has been criticized for basically being a collection of every single fairytale/folktale/mythological image/motif C.S. Lewis encountered in the course of his extremely well-read life.

But as many critics, including Lisa Miller of The Magician's Book, have pointed out, it isn't the images and motifs that delight us, it is what Lewis did with them. He wasn't pretending to create new stuff; he was taking what he knew and rearranging it into a new pattern. He had a vision.

Every writer has to have a vision. Without the vision, the writing sags. And should the writer give up that vision to satisfy the audience's supposed desire for an iconic image, the audience will feel the vision dribbling away.

The writers did NOT make

Frasier a repeat of Cheers. 

Which is one reason why writing to satisfy fans doesn't always work. The fans LOVE a couple of minor characters, so the writer(s) make those characters a bigger part of the drama, and, hmm, what do you know, the show is less satisfying.

On the other hand, refusing to give the audience what the audience wants out of sheer "BUT I HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT" perversity isn't too smart either.

The solution is writers who give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision. This, of course, isn't easy, but I see two solutions:

1. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when they like what the audience likes.

If you want to write romance novels, it helps if you like romance novels.

2. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when the writers and the audience agree on what the writers are trying to do.

To clarify this second point, not all novels/stories/movies/shows have to focus on the latest popular topic: vampires, for example. People vary; interests vary. There are a lot of audiences out there to satisfy. I would argue that people want much of the same thing within their separate genres, but that leaves a lot of room for individual creative vision-making.

Hey, there's even room for those people who think that reading stream-of-consciousness profundities about Life in Middle Class America is NEW and DIFFERENT! (Shhh, don't tell them they are being pandered to.) The point is, the writers and audience agree that that is what is going on.

In other words, the rules are agreed to--even when the rules are Monty-Python randomness.

Back to characters--the connection between this repost and characters is that giving the audience the characters they love as ALREADY those characters, despite the movie or book being a prequel, destroys the characters. I found Jill Paton Walsh's The Attenbury Emeralds a disappointment because it presented a young Wimsey as already ahead of everyone else in the mystery. There was no learning curve. He met Charles Parker but didn't learn from Parker, a policeman already. 

In truth, I think filmmakers read into audience engagement something that isn't necessarily there. Yes, we like Gandalf's wise remarks to Pippin. We also like Gandalf's snappishness. And we like his confession to Galadriel that he is afraid. We like the noble, semi-omniscient bloke. But we like the imperfect, struggling bloke as well. 

 

As my obnoxious (but accurate) fifteen-year-old self said, 

"If everyone is special, then no one is special."

If there is no contrast between the character THEN and the character NOW, there is nothing for us to delight in. 

Joseph of Old: So Many Versions!

I keep moving this post around. To what author should Joseph of Old be assigned? 

I decided to assign him to "Mann" for Thomas Mann, who wrote Joseph and His Brothers and Joseph in Egypt. 

Joseph's story from the Old Testament is a fantastic one! It is one of the most intact of the narratives in Genesis and is considered by some scholars to be the Bible's Odyssey or Iliad: a seminal piece of literature that has been told and retold.

There are numerous media retellings out there. When I was growing up I adored a recording one of my brothers owned [borrowed] of Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I knew all the lyrics to every song. I saw the musical as teenager and naturally watched the Donny Osmond version.

I later watched a non-musical version with Ben Kingsley and Paul Mercurio. However, my favorite is the New Media Genesis Project version. Films associated with the project came out in the 1980s: Bible stories in which a narrator in English relays the story as the actors speak in Aramaic and other languages. One reason I like their Joseph interpretation is that the final scene isn't a joke. 

I do love the musical but the serious confrontation between Joseph and the Brothers--the building of tensions as Benjamin is accused of theft--turns into a calypso song, which irritates me. I don't care if people want to sing about famine--and I own the hilarious Quentin Blake book of the musical, full of skinny cows.

But the final set of scenes deserves something other than a joke. Joseph has reason to be uncertain of his father's survival, Benjamin's survival, and how his brothers will react to his reappearance. He is battling with lingering anger and uncertainty and the rationality that comes with age and forgiveness. He is a fully fleshed-out human being. Very relatable! 

There's a reason the tale lasted and got collected.  

Despise not caring for that scene, the Donny Osmond version that mixes the classroom with action and presents a delightful narrator is worth watching--one can see why Donny Osmond was such a hit!

 

Give Characters Jobs: Numb3rs

In a commentary on Numb3rs, Rob Morrow complains about shots that position an actor at one point in the room, just to have the actor  start walking as the camera begins to roll. 

Why are they coming from that direction? What are they doing? Why? 

Either Morrow or another actor comments that directors prefer to have characters do stuff, not simply stand around waiting to deliver their lines. In an early episode of Numb3rs, Alan Eppes (Judd Hirsch) is feeding a bird while he talks to his sons rather than simply standing (conveniently) in the same room. 

I'm a big fan of characters having jobs, and I've always liked the fact that Numb3rs gave its guest experts stuff to do (other than being the Big Bad of the week). Chris Bauer as Professor Galuski, for example, is a useful character. He bridges the two worlds of academe and FBI since he visits locations with agents; discusses speed and velocity and other matters with Charlie; and gives Alan a bosom buddy, someone who takes a less intellectual, more hands-on approach to engineering problems. 

Themes naturally arise from these interactions, such as understanding based on abstract theory versus understanding based on experience. 

Give a character a task--all kinds of positive writing possibilities will follow!

Death in Fiction is Still a Cop-Out

I have written elsewhere (and often) about how death in fiction is a cop-out, 90% of the time. There are exceptions. But most of the time, killing off a character is a failure of imagination, an adolescent shriek of "look at my deep thoughts!" 

It's obnoxious.

*Spoilers*

The end of Professor T, Season 3, is a great example of what I mean, and it points to the difference between truly mature writing and adolescent writing. 

At the end of the season, Professor T's cop prodigy dies (or is nearly killed--the scene is presented as a death with Professor T and the fiance hovering over her body and Professor T reverting to his OCD behavior). 

I wasn't sad. I just sighed. Then, I really sighed because I'd lost respect for the writers but I happen to like Ben Miller...so now what do I do if there is another season? 

And I realized the difference between this type of "ending" and the show Bones. 

Years ago, I read a review (I wish I could remember the reviewer's name!) that stated that with Bones, whatever happens, you know people will keep going. Vincent gets shot. The characters mourn, put up a plaque, and remember him. Sweets is killed. His on-again/off-again girlfriend goes on to have his baby. Brennan and Booth evoke his name quite often. He isn't forgotten. Hodgins becomes wheelchair-bound, adjusts, and becomes the literal king of the lab.

But shows like Professor T--and Ballykissangel--treat a death like the ultimate resolution, as if all of the episodes and the characters' arcs have been leading up to...a moment of shock. 

It is VERY adolescent. It is also a great example of "killing off one's gays"--that is, killing a character JUST so other people can react to it and the reader can have a moment of social awareness.

There were other, far more interesting ways, to get Professor T to revert to his OCD behavior. Death was a cop-out.

Mysteries on Cruises and Planes: When They Work, When They Don't

The problem with mysteries on cruises and planes is that unless the mystery is tied to the cruise or plane, it really doesn't matter that it happens on a cruise or plane. It could happen anywhere. 

Sometimes the mystery is tied to solving the mystery before the cruise docks or plane lands. In one episode of Bones, Booth wants to arrest the malefactor before the plane lands in China; before then, the plane is still "American soil." 

Overall, however, such time crutches are not exclusive to transportation. They can be tied to dawn breaking or night falling or rain coming or a holiday beginning.

Sometimes the mystery is tied to the cruise sinking or the plane crashing. The latter is VERY COMMON (see at least one episode in every mystery show ever, including Murdoch Mysteries). The first is less plausible than the second. One reason that passengers were slow to get off the Titanic is that it is actually surprisingly difficult to sink ships absent a bomb or an iceberg that rips past ALL watertight compartments. Many ships that hit icebergs in the early twentieth century stayed afloat for several hours, long enough for everyone to be rescued.

(Note to those who fear planes: even plane crashes are statistically rare if one considers the numbers of planes that take off and land every day.)

Sometimes, the setting provides the "cozy" manor house option--a passenger is killed and the only suspects are the  passengers in first class. Murder She Wrote provides a decent episode of this type with several hilarious "plane" moments, including a smuggled dog!

And sometimes, the mystery is tied to conditions of travel--one of the best is "Unfriendly Skies" in Season 1 of CSI: Las Vegas (see image above). The mystery is about why/how a passenger died on the plane, and the explanation is connected to conditions of going way up in the air.

Likewise, Columbo's cruise episode involves an intimate knowledge of ship procedures--so being on the ship does matter. 

Still--it's hard not to ask, "Why not wait for the cruise to dock?" Even in "Unfriendly Skies," the investigation takes place AFTER the plane has landed.

Consequently, one of the most common cruise tropes is the use of the boat to smuggle something, leading to spy passengers who confront each other during the voyage. Scarecrow & Mrs King provides one of the best episodes of this type, the aptly named "Ship of Spies," which takes place on a marriage cruise.  And, of course, Spy X Family's cruise ship arc! 

Hey, I treat the spaceship in my Myths Endure on Mars series like a cruise liner, and a mystery takes place on it! 

However, I made sure that (1) the mystery is related to the conditions of the spaceship, both the passengers on a particular voyage and the murder attempt's method; (2) the mystery still ends on the planet. 

After all, too many times, it feels like the ship or plane is simply window dressing--not that different from the train in Murder on the Orient Express. The suspects could all be in a snowbound manor or on an island...

Yup, Agatha Christie did those too! 

Accountants as Heroes: The Auditors and The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter

Van Dine famously wrote that murder is the only satisfactory problem for a full-length mystery. And generally speaking, most of the Golden Age mystery writers agreed with him. Sayers challenged the notion with a suicide and a second-degree murder. She also wrote a few short stories--as did others--in which theft was the main mystery.

However, generally speaking, the form relies not only on murderers but on Columbo type murderers who plan meticulously and cover up their acts and even murder again.

And many, many mystery shows follow suit.
 
The Auditors, however, makes accounting malfeasance the dirty secret. There is a murder in the wings and several attempted murders/assaults. But the main issue is people stealing money for their own greedy reasons.

And it works!

It works because the stakes are fairly high. Entire lives can be derailed by the scheming, grifting, and lying carried out by management and employers.

In fact, one of the reasons that I like these heroic accountants so much is that their concern about money is not some manifestation of greed. Quite the opposite! By focusing on how things get paid for, they show a greater concern for real people and real solutions than so-called compassionate and sensitive people who look down on such "penny-pinching." The theme here is one I tackled in my story "Golden Hands," a take on Rumpelstiltskin: why assume that the king doesn't have good reasons to want more money? 

In The Auditors, the main character, Shin Cha II, is a man on a mission. He appears ruthless but is motivated by an exact understanding of the crimes and their cost. His prodigy, Goo Han Soo, is a friendly, kind young man who comes to understand his mentor better. 

*Spoilers.* 

The Auditors also supplies good villains; in fact, the eventual primary villain's  psychology is disturbingly familiar these days: I'm so righteous, my sins are necessary to combat the unrighteous. 

And The Auditors gives us some ambiguity. The department is semi-pitted against a member of upper management, Hwang Dae-woong, who turns out to be a supporter in the end. 

The tension between Shin Cha II and Hwang Dae-woong is fantastic since Shin Cha II is a "by the book" operator while Hwang Dae-woong doesn't see the harm is some nepotism, some minor grifting, some handouts. To him, that's the oil that keeps business running. However, he is inherently a moral guy: some actions truly are unimaginable. The two characters are frenemies and provide some of the best and funniest scenes in the series.

So The Auditors is well-crafted. And it provides a nice variation on the detective hero! 

Another great accountant character is Seiichirou Kondou from The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter. One of the best scenes in the light novels and manga is when Seiichirou must persuade the court that his ideas about how to handle the miasma will actually save money--a long-term solution as opposed to housing and clothing and rewarding the Holy Maiden. Another great scene is when he persuades the prince to impress the Holy Maiden by using his income to do stuff for her.

Accountants in both series are cool. However, in terms of sheer dramatic entrances, Shin Cha II wins here! 

More on Characters: Types and Stereotypes

Books on writing often tout that all good writing is character-driven and that all good characters are complex. Complex characters have names and backgrounds and hobbies and tics. If they are angsty/"realistic" characters, they have dark pasts and foibles and unrelenting grief. 

But stories can be told in many different ways.

(1) Good writing can rely on types

(2) Types and stereotypes are not the same. 

(3) Good writing can also rely on stereotypes. 

(1) Tolkien relied on types. Agatha Christie relied on types. Shakespeare relied on types. Tolkien created types. So did Whedon when he invented Buffy (who is actually a deliberate reversal of a "type").

(2) Types are not the same as stereotypes. The difference is the universal quality. Types can move between cultures. Miss Marple is very English, but her type is still recognizable in her descendants, Mme Ramotswe and Mrs. Pollifax (Gilman).

Malahide gives Alleyn nuance.

A stereotype, on the other hand, is a cliche specific to time and place. Ngaio Marsh claimed she was using characters (unlike Christie), not types in her mysteries when actually she was using stereotypes. Don't get me wrong--I enjoy Marsh, but I don't think her characters are transferable beyond a very specific time and place. Alleyn belongs specifically to his upperclass English milieu and there is little of him that survives beyond it. He is a collection of time/place-based cliches: the reticient, fastidious, upperclass British detective working amongst worshipping subordinates in the 1940s to 1950s. 

In 1937 Lost Horizon, Howard

is the Terry character.

(3) Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses stereotypes in Herland. Van is the questioning (good) and progressive intellectual of his day. Jeff is the soft-spoken idealizer of women. Terry is the brash, domineering he-man. They are specific to a utopian polemic and don't need to function much beyond that.

More importantly than types versus stereotypes, Gilman is consistent. She could be more critical of Van (as my Terry is) but once she establishes their characters, she doesn't suddenly change mid-way through the story, forcing them to behave a certain way, so she can achieve an end. Terry's obnoxiousness is grounded in a particular perspective that doesn't vary and isn't inherently conspiring. Terry never lies, and he isn't deliberately scheming. In fact, Van feels some sympathy for Terry, trapped in a world that is outside his comfort level.

I believe that being fair with the reader is 90% of what keeps a story a story, rather than a lecture. I generally dislike "character remembers an important clue from years earlier" moments. But IF the story establishes that such memory retrieval is possible, then having the memory resurface doesn't bother me as much. 

Stereotypes can not only be fair, they can be very funny. In the Monk episode "Employee of the Month," almost all of the characters are stereotypes: the inept stock boys, the weedy manager, the disgruntled retail worker. The stereotypes are so accurate, so right-on, they are hilarious, but they are hilarious within a very specific time, culture, and place. A type, like Monk himself, has more universal qualities. Monk IS the Sherlock Holmes of his time and place and therefore, carries within him the universal qualities that made Sherlock Holmes universal. 

So stereotypes have their place. However, to truly invest in a story, types are more useful in long-run than stereotypes. In my critique/tribute to Herland, I give Terry not only more background but stronger arguments. He doesn't merely stand in for something; he considers what he wants and thinks. 

A human being faced with a new world potentially provides a universal experience. 

Animals That Talk and Why the Blogger (Mostly) Doesn't Care for the Trope

Re-post from 2005.

In a recent post about horses, I comment that I prefer books about animals to include humans. 

I'm not a huge fan of books which use animals exclusively (no people). The animals do all the same things humans do and wear the same kinds of clothes and have the same kinds of relationships and the only difference seems to be that they live in burrows or whatnot but otherwise, they are really just humans with furry faces. 

And I don't get it.

I'll leave Watership Down alone since I've never read it and I saw only 1/4 of the movie when I was a kid; I got so scared, my mom took me outside and let me run around the lobby and eye the candy counter. But I have never understood the appeal of Brian Jacques' books (and please don't hate me, Brian Jacques' fans!) As far as I can tell, it makes precious little difference in Brian Jacques' books whether the heroes are mice, rats, frogs, humans, coyotes or whatever.

Let me elaborate.

In Beatrix Potter, the animal-ness of the animals is intrinsic to the plot. They may be temporarily "dressed up" but they always revert to their animal natures, and their animal natures are at the crux of the stories. Peter Rabbit is acting like a rabbit, sneaking into the farmer's garden to steal cabbages. The squirrels in Squirrel Nutkin act like squirrels. Sure, they talk but their animalness is never forgotten. You couldn't replace Peter Rabbit with George Ape. (Speaking of simians, the same is true of the Curious George books.) C.S. Lewis does this in the Narnia books. There's no point in the animals acting human; there are plenty of humans acting like humans (poorly and nicely) to go around. [And I quite enjoyed Zootopia, especially the "naked" animals, since living arrangements are connected to animal-ness.]

Having written the above, though I don't much care for anthropomophized animals overall,  at least with Beatrix Potter and H.A. Rey and Lewis, I get it. 

I still prefer my protagonists to be human. Even that old-time classic The Wind in the Willows didn't change my mind. Really, I'm a humanoid-chauvinist.

After all, why write a book about frogs or moles or rats acting like humans when, voila, you could do a book about humans acting like humans!?

Here's what I think may be the answer. The appeal (and C.S. Lewis says as much in his autobiography and in Out of the Silent Planet) is the idea of animals and people being pals, hanging out. It isn't the biology that people like (a la Gerald Durrell); it's the image of animal-ness (or creature-ness) within the human sphere: something you can buddy up to but won't eat you. Similarly, many people like the idea of conversing with animals, as if animals would say more back than "Mine. Mine. Mine." or "Feed me. Feed me. Feed me NOW." The lion or badger or panda is a friend.

Even as a kid, the idea never appealed to me. I wanted a lion cub, yes, but I never thought it would like me. My attitude was reflected in my reading material. As mentioned, I didn't much care for Wind in the Willows. I love the Narnia books but mostly for the people and their quests. I read Animal Farm and yes, it's great, but I couldn't get into the movie. I adore the movie Babe, but I think Babe is an exception. (The animals are very animalish and the whole sheep-herding thing is necessary to the plot--that is, it isn't pigs and sheep and dogs pretending to be humans; it's pigs and sheep and dogs acting very piggy and sheepy and doggy. Beside, James Cromwell is so very, very great.) As mentioned in the previous post, I read and reread Black Stallion and then Frog when I was younger, and I loved them but never picked up another horse book except Black Beauty, which bored me senseless. I quite enjoy the older BBC version of All Creatures Great and Small but honestly, the thing I like best about it is that the vets actually put animals down.

Let me clarify that.

No, I don't like watching animals get killed, but I like people treating animals like animals and not like people in animal clothing.

As far as I'm concerned, my cats consider me a food bowl and their degree of love ends about two feet past the food bowl. They aren't little people. They're animals. They're kind of dumb; their learning capacity is about the same as a two-day old amoeba. They are more fun to watch than fish and less involved than dogs. But they aren't people. If they were people, I'd want them to get jobs and pay part of the rent. Not to mention the fact that they puke on my rugs and never change the litter box and like to play "I'm on this side of the door/now I'm on this side of the door" twenty times a day. One endures this with toddlers because they grow up. One endures it with pets because they are cuddly enough (and company enough) to pay off the downside. (And you can leave them for long weekends.) With anyone else, the house visit would end very quickly.

Which may explain my complete disinterest in the possibility of me and my cats exchanging views on the universe. [I do love the manga series A Man & His Cat, in part because the cats are treated like animals, not little people, but mostly because the story has expanded to include everything and everyone in the main character's universe!]

Art for Art's Sake: Sister Boniface

I have mentioned elsewhere that in my younger days, I had a somewhat low opinion of "art for art's sake" since it seemed mostly an excuse for people to write whatever they wanted and then expect other people to admire it. "Art," I tell my students, "is about an audience." People CAN write whatever they want--and I've come to believe that there is, in fact, an audience out there for everyone and everything--but art is more than a diary entry.

However, in the last few years, people who love LESSONS and LECTURES and POLEMICS and LABELS seem to be taking over all areas of life, not just politics and certain types of religion. Consequently, I think that art for its own sake--for the sake of composition and narration and show-don't-tell and sound and characters and plot and setting and tropes--should be praised and promoted. 

One of my favorite defenses of art for art's sake comes from Sister Boniface, Season 1. In defense of Operation Q2, an invented show obviously based on The Avengers with Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee, Sister Peters passionately proclaims the following:

Operation QT isn't blasphemy. It brings millions of people so much joy. There's nothing unholy about that. Every week, the heroes in the story fight evil and win...God gives his blessing to these good people in the practice of their art.

I love what Sister Peters proclaims, not only because it is a defense of art for art's sake but because of what she is defending: a kind of kitschy, schlocky television show. It's a great defense of art AND of "just because others don't like it doesn't mean I shouldn't!" 

Morality in America: Spike & Dexter

Repost from 2008

In P.J. O'Rourke's commentary on Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. O'Rourke refers to a prior work by Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith expounds on morality: what it is, how it works. According to O'Rourke, it is difficult to understand The Wealth of Nations without understanding The Theory of Moral Sentiments; Smith's arguments in Wealth largely rest on accepting the truth that human beings are ultimately self-interested, even if they shouldn't be. Socialism doesn't fail (massively) because it is inherently evil; it fails because it doesn't take human nature into consideration (but, rather, tries to wish it away).

Rereading O'Rourke reading Wealth led me to musing on the nature of morality. Morality, to an extent, is something people can't see or label. It is either a mass of action (that is, it is quantifiable only over time) or a state of mind (there is a third option, which I will get to later). In other words, although morality results in observable behaviors, it is rooted in something that is beyond observation--Smith, for example, believed it is rooted in imagination, the ability of humans (unlike animals) to empathize, to imagine another state of being from their own.

To be extremely general, morality in our culture is rooted in law or in thought. In Dexter (specifically, the first season), morality is imposed on Dexter externally: the law of Harry (his foster father). Dexter does not feel, or claims not to feel, a sense of right and wrong (the character is complex enough to make this issue somewhat debatable), but he has enough self-preservation and respect to follow his foster father's external law. The accumulation of Dexter's actions make him a moral person (i.e., it is not the randomness of his actions but the totality of his actions that matter: observable behaviors over time form the abstract claim, This man is moral).

Spike from Buffy Seasons 4-6 (that is, Spike post-chip/pre-soul) also has an external law that prevents him from killing humans (Spike is a vampire). I personally think more could have been done with this issue. However, Whedon and the Buffy writers chose instead to argue the second root of morality: no matter how good Spike behaves, he is never moral because he never feels moral. He is displaying positive moral behavior against his will.

This perception of morality has its roots, I think, in religious discourse, but it has spread through our culture to become a kind of emotional absolute. The religious claim states that a person who accepts certain laws or ethical obligations will be motivated to make moral choices. After all, external forces only work so far. A society where people did not feel any desire to do good would destroy itself fairly rapidly.

Unfortunately, that claim has morphed to mean, If I feel good, I must BE good, which, as Adam Smith would have pointed out, can get entirely abstract and self-referential--which is why law and college instructors ask for evidence in essays, not just confessions. (Which doesn't negate the need for, say, students to feel personally motivated to do well.)

Spike & Dexter can't be separated since both concepts of morality are necessary, and used, in our society. And since both cannot be applied in all contexts, knowing how they work could help people determine how they should be applied, socially-speaking.

Allowing for both moral approaches brings me to a third concept of morality, which is more abstract and yet more grounded--morality is choice. A choice can sometimes occur over several days, weeks, or months. On the other hand, it can also be made in an instant. In both cases, it happens in time and is purely mental. We can't see it; we only know what results from it. Yet it does produce results. 

Morality as choice brings the two other concepts into harmony. It allows people to distinguish between unintended morality (which is still beneficial to society) and intended morality (which is necessary for our own moral growth). For instance, I would argue that post-chip/pre-soul Spike exhibits intended morality when he refuses to help Gloria and gives up Dawn. He is motivated by his love for Buffy rather than by an internal code of ethics, but he makes a choice--he uses imagination or empathy to place himself in Buffy's shoes.

In the first season of Dexter, I would argue that Dexter's morality is proved at the very end of the first season when he chooses his sister over his brother--he chooses to obey the law of Harry rather than thwart it.

But, of course, that immediately begs the question, Was Dexter NOT behaving morally before when he kept the law of Harry? Well, yes, he was, so . . .

This is why I'm not a philosopher. I'll let O'Rourke, paraphrasing Smith, have the last word:

Adam Smith did not think we are innately good any more than he thought we are innately rich. But he thought we are endowed with the imaginative capacity to be both, if we're free to make the necessary efforts.

Great Sitcom Moment: Running in Airports

In "Wedding Planning," Last Man Standing, Mandy and Eve have a great exchange where Mandy describes the trope of the couple that make up by running to each other in airports. Eve comments that post-9/11, that trope is no longer possible. "The terrorists have made it harder to fall in love."

The episode includes a notable insight by Mandy when she reflects that Ryan "running away" from Boyd and Kristin turned him into a guy who could come back and be a decent father and husband. Generally speaking, deadbeat dads are not usually reformable but Ryan was young enough--and Kristin un-angry enough--to justify their later relationship. I find it entirely plausible that Kristin and Ryan may even have been in contact over the missing years.

The episode also has a great Christmas-New Year's-themed line from Mike when he states, "We've got to figure out how to forgive this boy."

Stop the Christie Murder: Christmas & Murder

A popular myth insists that murders occur more around holidays. 

I doubt it. However, the myth is so common that mystery writers regularly use it: put a bunch of non-complementary personalities together in a single house...MURDER! 

*Spoilers*

"The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" does not entail an actual murder. It is one of those occasions when the detective forces the villain to react by faking a robbery or death or suicide. If the police did it, it would be called entrapment. When private detectives creates these scenarios, they still come off as rather extreme. 

Poirot likes to fool the villains and I often accept the plot device as "hey, that's fun!"

"The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding," however, is a little creepy since the person who supposedly dies is a girl in her early teens. Granted, her "death" is arranged by her and her cousins (to supposedly fool Poirot). But Poirot plays along. It is rather unimaginable that everyone would just laugh and say, "How cute" after the fact rather than punching Poirot in the face. 

The Poirot episode is rather enchanting, however, since it delivers a full plate of English Christmas customs from going to church to singing carols to charades and Christmas crackers.

To avoid Poirot being punched in the face, my prevention detectives reveal that Bridget isn't dead. Moreover, they let the villain get away with the jewel well beforehand. Once they do, they nab the villain for theft. Collected evidence will trace the original theft to him as well. 

Not as exciting! But there are the festivities to get to.