City of Green

When I read L. Frank Baum’s original The Wizard of Oz, his description of the Emerald City got me thinking. In that version of the Wizard of Oz, there was a city law mandating that all people entering the city must have sunglasses attached to their head. The shades literally locked over your ears (though they seemed to not notice the fact that the tin man and scarecrow don’t really have ears). The stated reason they gave for this was that the emerald city was so dazzling that you needed to wear the sunglasses or you would be blinded. Inside the city, everything was green, green buildings, green clothes, green horses, green-skinned people, everything. They even get Dorothy a green dress. Well, they have their audience with the Wizard and everything, and then leave the city, having the shades removed at the gate and Dorothy is surprised to find out that her dress has changed to white. Later they find out that the shades weren’t just shades, they were tinted green! The city wasn’t really as green as it claimed to be, but everyone thought it was because they were wearing green sunglasses! Now, there’s some inherent flaws in this whole plotline, such as the fact that they didn’t notice that each other turned green as well.

Anyway, imagine a race that grew up in such a world, where they were forced to wear green shades all the time. It’s sort of a specialized way of being color blind. It’s still monochrome, but instead of seeing in shades of gray, it’s shades of green.

But the most interesting thing would be the question of what happens when you take an adult, who’s lived their life in a green world, out of that world and let them see the full spectrum. The first question, and an interesting one, is whether they would be able to see the other colors at all. I took a psychology class in college, and one of the random tidbits I remember from it is that vision isn’t inherently built into our systems. It is learned through experience. They explained one experiment in which they put polarized glasses on a kitten and kept them on it for the first couple months of its life (probably not ethical these days, but the results are interesting nonetheless). When they finally took the glasses off, the kitten couldn’t see light that was polarized in the other direction! It had never seen that kind of light so its brain never learned to process it. I don’t recall if the cat developed the full optical abilities later in its life, but I think animals have to learn pretty early.

So along these same lines, would people who grew up in the Emerald City be able to see other colors at all? I don’t think they would. What would they see instead? Would they see everything, but shifted into the greenscale? Would non-green things be essentially invisible to them, hiding in giant blindspots? I’m curious.

Let’s assume that they’re physiologically and mentally capable of processing the full range of colors. Can you imagine what a wondrous time it would be, just taking them for a walk, showing them multicolored flowers, seeing songbirds, or even a rainbow? It would be like a drug! They would never want to go back to the Emerald City again! And if they did, and they told their friends about colors, their friends would laugh and think them crazy!

Would a monochrome society develop any differently than a full-color society? At least some areas would. Art would be viewed very differently. Florists would probably have much less demand. Marketing people would have to rely on other tactics rather than color of packaging. I’m sure there are many other ways. Can you think of any others?

Would people as individuals develop any differently?

Now, this idea was covered in some extent by the movie Pleasantville, but in a rather different way. In that movie, the main characters enter a classic 50s TV show, which is of course in black and white, and are stuck there for a while. But that is really a different thing. That society didn’t develop that way, it was an artificial construct by entertainment censoring standards in the 50s, as well as the lack of the development of color TV technology at the time. It wasn’t forced on them by their government, it was just how the artificial world was fabricated. Along with the lack of color were other oddities, such as no one being aware of sex, or toilets, or reading, and firemen that didn’t do anything but rescue kitties from trees. When color started bleeding into the world, it represented a loss of innocence, which some people thought was a good thing and others thought was a bad thing. It’s a great movie, but again, it’s usage of color is rather different than the Emerald Citizen concept. Emerald Citizens are otherwise normal people, knowing of copulation and defacation and firefighting.

In The Matrix, there’s at least one mention of Oz–not surprising of course with the parallel world analogy. But another parallel that might not be so obvious is that the cities inside the matrix tend to all be tinted green, as though seen through a green filter, just like the Emerald City. And in both cases, the populace is largely controlled by an uncaring dictator who controls them by misleading them.

Also, a friend pointed out an interesting side effect that might be visible to Emerald Citizens when they first see the outside world, assuming they are physiologically capable of seeing other colors. When you look at one color or image too long, then when you close your eyes or look away you often see an afterimage, everything still in the same place but with all the colors inverted to their negative–black becomes white, green becomes red, etc… So these people might see everything in tints of red for a while until their eyes cope and adjust.

On a related side-story, I took a car trip with my older brother a decade or so ago. I wasn’t old enough to drive yet, so he did all the driving, and I tended to be lulled to sleep by the sound of the engine. On more than one occasion I woke up to find the whole world was tinted green! The effect faded after a few seconds or a minute, and then everything was normal again. It was bizarre! I recently found out that it was probably just another afterimage. I must have been sleeping in direct sunlight so that the sun glowed red through my eyelids. After hours of red exposure, I woke up, and opened my eyes, and everything was tinted green–the negative of the red filter provided by my eyelids. Crazy stuff. 🙂

Glimmer Train Winter 2009 & Zoetrope All-Story Winter 2008/2009

glimmer_trainzoetropeReading these two magazines was an attempt to broaden my horizons and learn more about so-called “literary” publications. I put literary in quotes because I don’t care for that label at all. Isn’t all writing literary? To me, it’s like labelling a section in the book store “The Good Stuff”, leaving the obvious assumption that everything else in the bookstore is not good. But that’s a topic of its own that I’ll cover another day.

Anyway, these two magazines label themselves as literary, making me question whether I ever want to submit to a literary publication. I don’t think my stories could fit in, if these two copies are the norm.

Among other things, each of these magazines cost me 9 dollars. Even the more expensive speculative novels don’t cost that much, and the expensive ones of those are often 800 pages! It’s worth it for a little market research, but I can’t imagine paying that regularly for a magazine.

Does anyone have any literary publications that they think are particularly good examples? I would love to read one that would make me want to buy a second copy. I welcome any input–if you suggest one that I can find a copy of, I’ll try to give it a read. I don’t want to make blanket statements about literary magazines without a well-rounded sample.

In these two issues, I only enjoyed one story, but it was the one published back in 1921, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. No doubt it was included more as part of a cross-marketing campaign, but I’m glad I read it. It’s rather dry, and doesn’t get very close into any of the character’s heads, but that was more of the style of the time, so I’m not going to criticize reading/writing tastes of a long-gone decade. I can tell even just from seeing the previews that they changed quite a bit from the stort-story, which is fine. The short story is a neat idea, but not nearly fleshed-out enough to want to spend two hours with. I’d been wanting to see the movie, so it’s raised my interest level.

The rest of the stories were pretty much all the same as each other, so I won’t list them off. It was clear that many of the writers have a whole lot of talent, I’m not disputing that. There were some great turns of phrases and some interesting moments that let the talent shine through, but I think they could write better: the talent’s there but they’re holding themselves back.

I tried to read these with an open mind, I really did. I’ll always be, first and foremost, a speculative fiction fan. Like so many things, this is just a matter of taste. I’ve like many non-speculative books and stories, but nothing quite hits that “sense-of-wonder” button like a good science fiction or fantasy. I didn’t try to compare these literary stories to speculative stories as that wouldn’t have been fair. I wanted to decide if I would just enjoy them on their own, not compare them to some other ideal. I really didn’t care for them, and while trying to examine why, I made a short list of things that seemed to be in common between many or all of these stories:

1. No cohesive theme. After I read something, I like to have a feel for the theme. That doesn’t mean it has to be spelled out with an explicit moral, like the ending of a fable, but I like to have a feel for what it was trying to say. Either these stories were trying to give it no theme or too many themes. Too many themes is just as bad as no theme, as each one is diluted by the presence of too many others. Perhaps they all had the theme “Life sucks”. That’s possible, but I don’t really care to read them in that case. I can get enough “Life sucks” themes by watching the news.

2. No plot, no climax, just a series of small things happening after another. Like ripping a page from someone’s journal at random. You see some of that person’s day-to-day struggles, but you’re told that these struggles have been that way for a long time, and nothing in the story hints that they will be any different in the days to come.

3. No attempt to get close into the protagonist’s point of view. My favorite stories are the ones that allow you to get into the protagonist’s head. This is why prose has the potential to be so much better in its way than cinema. Cinema allows you to see what happens, but well-written prose allows you to experience it. Instead of being told what happens by a seemingly impartial (and boring) narrator, the narration can be a lens through which you can see through the eye of the protagonist. There was none of that here. Each story told me what happened in that person’s life, without really letting me get into their head. Perhaps that’s the preferred way in “Life sucks” stories to avoid causing depression in yourself.
This somewhat relates to a previous blog post of mine, about cinematic descriptions:
http://steffenwolf.blogspot.com/2009/03/cinematic-descriptions.html

4. almost all are in 1st person. I’ve heard many editors complain about first person stories, how writers should generally stick to 3rd person. I’d never understood, but I think now I’m beginning to. I felt like first person was used to counteract the #3 on my list, getting close into the protagonist’s point of view. Rather than going through the difficult labor of making me see through the protagonist’s eyes, just use first person narration instead. After all, what’s closer into the person’s head than first person? The trouble is when first person is used as a substitute for #3. In one case, a woman is talking to her friend and the friend suspects her husband is cheating on her. She’s right, and it’s the narrating woman who is the other woman, but we don’t find that out until halfway through the story! When the protagonist withholds information from me that’s not mysterious, it’s annoying and distancing.

5. The opening sentence and paragraph have nothing to do with the rest. I like opening sentences best when they are like a topic sentence of the story–they tell what the stories about without giving too much away. For example, in the cheating story mentioned in #4, the story starts out by saying they got an unusual September snow, then spends the whole first paragraph telling about. The story has nothing to do with weather in general or snow in particular, so when the topic suddenly switched to cheating husbands in the 2nd paragraph it was annoying and disorienting. Did they stick that first paragraph on by mistake? If it had nothing to do with the story you could paste it onto the beginning of ANY story and it would make the same amount of sense.

6. no real ending or beginning. Most of the stories didn’t really have a beginning nor really have an ending. The stories began when the words started, and ended when the words stopped. Typically, the real story begins when something changes in the person’s life, and ends at some kind of resolution, whether it be death, or change of character, or the resolution of the actual conflict. Not so in these stories.

7. The stories all had a tone and them of “Woe is me ain’t my life terrible”. It’s easy enough to find these stories on the news, do I really need to seek out fiction that does the same thing? And I really hope the proportion of protagonists who hate their lives isn’t proportional to real people who hate their lives, else we are all in a lot of trouble!

8. Not in every story, but maybe 1/4 to 1/2, pedophilia is an element, whether it’s explicit sex or just creepy looks from teenagers’ dads. Maybe I’m just naive, but I like to think that it doesn’t happen to everybody as often as these stories would have me believe.

Invisible Formatting

Does anybody else hate MS Word’s invisible formatting? Where if you accidentally delete one then suddenly a big chunk of your file goes wonky? Does anyone know if there’s a way to reveal them?

Specifically I’m trying to post a story to a critique forum and just one phrase disappears though it’s formatting is totally identical to every other word in the document as far as I can tell. It’s the following sentence:

My jet touched down in Des Moines at eleven, and I walked into the diner at eleven thirty.

The “eleven thirty” at the end of the sentence disappears when I copy it to a particular forum. Blogger wouldn’t even allow the post because of HTML tags it didn’t like, so this is a retyping of it c(I’m not saying it’s Blogger’s fault, just further annoyance). That one sentence had about 100 lines of HTML formatting crammed around it.

A quick Google search reveals this is a common complaint about Word. Other word processors have an optional “reveal” that allows you to edit this stuff. *sigh* Why do I use Word again?

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

thelastcontinentThis book takes place on Discworld. For those of you who aren’t aware of this world, it is a magical world created by Terry Pratchett. Discworld is (not surprisingly) a disc, which is balanced on the back of four giant elephants, who are standing on the back of an even more giant sea turtle named Great A’Tuin who is swimming through space. Pratchett has written dozens of novels in this universe. He’s a great writer of humor fantasy. My favorite book by him is Small Gods.

The Last Continent, copyright 1998, chronicles the more of the perpetual misadventures of Rincewind the Cowardly Wizard. For him, running is the solution to nearly every problem, but somehow trouble always manages to find him despite his best efforts. This book occurs after the events of Interesting Times, where Rincewind traveled to the Aurient. At the end of that book the faculty of Unseen University tried to rescue him with a magical transportation spell, which went humorously wrong and transported him to the continent of XXXX (pronounced EcksEcksEcksEcks or Fourecks).

XXXX is also known as the Counterweight Continent, because it’s presence is only inferred by the locations of the known continents, and the assumption that the flat disc of the world has to have roughly equal weight distribution. Fourecks is remarkably similar to the continent we know as Australia, which perhaps isn’t so remarkable when you’ve read other books in the Discworld series and realize that many of the lands are distorted reflections of locations in our own world.

I didn’t like this book as much as I’ve liked most of his other books. I think I’ve become much more picky since I started writing, so this may be a reflection of that. To me, it’s not that easy to relate to Rincewind because he is so cowardly by definition, his reaction to any danger is to run like heck in the other direction. He doesn’t MAKE things happen, things just happen TO him. I would much rather read a story about a character that MAKES things happen. Even if he’s reluctant, I still expect it to be his own decisions that drive the story. Also, Rincewind’s never shown any character growth. He’s always been defined by his cowardice which hasn’t ever changed.

That being said, much of the draw to Pratchett’s books isn’t necessarily the character development, but the humorous situations. In that respect, I didn’t think this one had as much humor appeal as others. Most of the story was just a series of coincidental run-ins with mildly villainous characters that then served as origin stories for (for instance) cork hats, and some things that I’m guessing are likely Australian delicacies.

I think the biggest lack for me, is the lack of villains in the piece. When Rincewind arrives on Fourecks, he screws up history in some sort of vague way. It’s not immediately clear how, and is only vaguely clarified further on, but his changes have made it never ever rain in Fourecks. In parallel, the faculty of Unseen University (Rincewind’s alma mater) are searching for Rincewind and stumble across a passage through time to an island in the past where the god of evolution is working out how to make things evolve. This provides some laughs, but is an almost totally unrelated story to the story of Rincewind. Only in the last 30 pages are the stories tied together in the vaguest of ways, and a pretty random coincidence occurs that provides the resolution to everything.

All in all, it’s an amusing book with Pratchett’s signature sense of humor, but it lacks a cohesiveness that I expect out of a story. If you love Australia it might appeal more to you–I’ve never been there, so I probably missed out on some jokes. But if you’re just looking for a good story in general, I think you’d be better served picking up one of Pratchett’s other books like “Small Gods”, “Soul Music” or “Thief of Time”.

Wizard vs. Witch: Who’s the Real Villain?

While writing a story for JW SChnarr’s Shadows of the Emerald City horror anthology, I began to wonder why people assume the Witch of the West is the villain? I thought the same as a child, but looking back at that movie I don’t understand why she is seen as the villain at all. It can’t just be the maniacal laughter and green skin, can it? I’ve known several very nice people with laughs that could scrape the paint off a wall, but that doesn’t make them evil. And to discriminate based on green skin? I’d like to assume the makers of the movie weren’t selling a racist agenda in their children’s movie. I should note that the Witch in the original book did not have green skin, but she was described as being very very old, homely and having only one eye, so it could still be that she was assumed to be the villain just because she was unattractive or very old.

Let’s look at both sides, witch vs. wizard:

The Wizard is in a position of power where he has spent a lifetime misleading the public and frightening his citizens into submission. A little girl from a far-off land approaches him, asking for assistance, and his response is to send her on a mission to kill his most dangerous adversary. In return he makes promises that he’s incapable of keeping, giving snake oil presents to Dorothy’s helpers and then escaping before fulfilling his promise to Dorothy. His only explanation is: “I’m not a bad man, only a bad wizard.” That’s a terribly weak excuse considering the magnitude of his crimes. The Wizard escapes without providing his promised payment AND without paying for his crimes, and we think the story ends happily?

The Witch: The Witch’s eastern counterpart is dispatched without warning by a powerful child adversary who claims she didn’t mean to do it. But of course, that’s exactly what any child-assassin would say in that circumstance. And honestly, when was the last time an intact house fell out of the sky by coincidence? And if it were an accident, what are the odds that it would land on the Wicked Witch of the East? The Witch would be a fool to believe Dorothy at her word. Then, despite the child-assassin’s claims of innocence, the girl accepts a mission from the Witch’s greatest adversary to go kill the Witch. How can anyone fault the Witch for trying to kill Dorothy? It’s clearly self defense! Even in the moments of her death, the Witch has no reason to question her own judgment–somehow the girl knew her one weakness and used it with no hesitation. Dorothy claimed it was an accident, but again, what are the odds of that?

In a discussion with writer Jeanne Tomlin about this topic, she said the following:
“It’s hard to separate this subject from the very real persecution of women that witch hunts in Europe covered up. What you are looking at and questioning is some pretty basic sexism. Any time a female creature (especially in a Disney movie) wants power, then she is by definition evil since power by rights belongs to males. Blech. I prefer to concentrate on less depressing parts of fantasy.”

While there probably is some degree of sexism at play here, particularly since the source material was written over a hundred years ago, I don’t think that’s the whole picture.

If I had to pick who was the most powerful character in the story, I would say it was Glinda, yet she’s not portrayed as evil. She plays a positively depicted female in power, despite her ridiculous bubbly voice, and her unfortunate fashion sense (was that pink monstrosity of a dress EVER in style?). She’s the only one who is shown using magic of her own, even if she does show it by riding around in a bubble. The Wizard’s magic is smoke and mirrors, and the Wicked Witch of West seems to have no magic, save through magical mediums: the broom, the crystal ball, the monkeys. Glinda is the only one who shows any inherent magic, and she’s the only one who can determine the magical nature of the slippers. If sexism were the only agenda here, I think Glinda would be portrayed differently.

Glinda and Dorothy are both portrayed very positively, but every single major male character has a major flaw that mars his character: the heartless, the brainless, the cowardly, and the impotent. Granted, it may be a stretch to call the Tin Man and the Scarecrow male, but they were referred to with male pronouns in the book, and were played by male actors for the movie.

It seems to me that the sexism of Witch vs. Wizard is perhaps not so much a fault with the filmmakers, but is due to assumptions made by the viewers. Looking at it objectively, it seems very clear to me that the Wizard is the villain because of his behavior.

What do you think? Do you think the Witch is the real villain, or the Wizard, and why?

Wicked–Novel vs. Musical

wickedmusicalwickednovelWarning: some spoilers ahead!

Wicked, the novel by Gregory Maguire
(the review of the musical is much further down)

Let me start by saying how much I love the land of Oz. I’ve always been fascinated by Oz, and by Wonderland, ever since I was a kid. I don’t know what it is about these strange parallel worlds that fascinates me so much. Maybe it’s because they were some of the first really speculative stories I was exposed to as a child. In any case, anything in either of these universes is almost an automatic hit with me, but Maguire has managed to write the only Oz story I’ve ever hated.

I read Wicked a few years ago, and hated it. Then I saw the play last year and LOVED it. I decided to give the book another try, just in case I’d been wrong. Nope, I still hated it. The book has almost nothing at all to do with the play, other than sharing the same characters and a couple settings.

For those of you aren’t familiar with the premise of the book, it’s a retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from a new point of view–the Wicked Witch of the West. He attempts to explain why the witch is perceived as wicked, how she came to own the west, how she came to be called a witch, etc… Honestly, with a premise this great, how could I not like it? I have plenty of reasons.

The book is split into several sections, each basically covering a portion of Elphaba’s life (Elphaba is the Witch of the West’s name). But it often seemed like all the important events were occurring off-camera. We see part of Elphaba’s life, then it skips 5-7 years between sections, then Maguire works the events of those years into pace-killing infodump summary that made me want to skip ahead. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.

Not only that, but each section introduced a whole new cast of characters–who for the most part were not seen either before or after that section. So I felt like any characterization of them was just a waste of time.

Sure, there were a few major events that happen on-camera, but even those were hard to get into. Part of it was the head-hopping. The predominant style these days is to choose a single POV character for each section/chapter of a book, and stick entirely with that character. I think this is a very positive trend, because I think it can be so much more immersive. I like to see the world through the eyes of the character using the narration as a lens. It’s a hard thing to do as a writer–trust me, I know–but it’s a worthy goal, a writer’s Everest. But the head-hopping in this book killed any potential it had. By head-hopping I mean that the point of view (POV) jumped from person to person within the scene. Elphaba would mentally describe Glinda for a paragraph, and then suddenly Glinda would mentally describe Elphaba, etc… I find it distracting.

SPOILERS!

And Maguire’s use of sex constantly annoyed me. Now, I’m no prude when it comes to sex in stories, but the sex has to serve a purpose just like everything else. It has to carry its weight. Sex can be a great tool for characterization, showing motivation, exploring relationships between characters. But instead of using sex to enhance the characters and plot, Maguire’s uses sex like pink flamingo lawn ornaments–it’s only effect is to distract and annoy. You can’t go a chapter without the subject coming up in the strangest of places. Perhaps it’s a countercomment on the total lack of sex in the film and book? I don’t know. A way to ensure that it didn’t end up on the kid’s rack? Could be. For instance, about 1/3 of the way through the book, many of the characters go to the Philosopher’s Club, a cultish sex club reminscent of Eyes Wide Shut. But neither Glinda nor Elphaba went in. Boq the munchkin, who had been a major character in the prior section, went in, but we barely see him for the rest of the book. Fiyero, the Winkie who becomes Elphaba’s only love, goes in but he seems unaffected by his experiences inside there. Crope (or is it Tibbet?) goes in, and gets some kind of STD and wastes away from it, but he’d always been a minor character. On the subject of Crope and Tibbet, both of those two were just token homosexual characters with no individual personality, as if they were an afterthought to meet some sort of equal rights requirement from his publisher. I got the impression we were supposed to gasp at the idea of homosexuals in Oz, but no effort was made to make them into real characters.

And the premise of this book is for us to try to understand the Witch better, right? Well, by the end of the book she’s actually more despicable than I had thought she was in the movie/original book. In the movie/book, I think the Wizard is the villain, not the Witch. Think about it. A little girl goes to the Wizard for help. He says he’ll help, but only if the little girl acts as an assassin and goes to kill the Witch. Dorothy doesn’t want to do it, but feels she has no choice. After that, the Witch’s actions are all self-defense. She knows Dorothy is her intended assassin–what is she supposed to do, sit and wait for her to come and kill her? We as viewers know that Dorothy could never intentionally kill anybody.

But in Wicked, what really convinces me that she’s a bad person is how she treats her son. She’s not entirely sure he’s her son (long story), but when she leaves the convent (another long and uninteresting story) the other nuns make her take the child with her. The narration makes it very clear that he is her son, referring to Fiyero as the father, etc, so we know he is. But whether or not he’s her biological son is beside the point. He’s her responsibility either way because she’s accepted custody of him. But she totally ignores him. She has no idea where he sleeps (on the floor in one of the children’s rooms), what he eats, what he does (lives in constant torment by the other children). He’s so unloved that he will do anything for approval, including getting kicked around by the cruel other children. Elphaba sees this and doesn’t care, nor does she lift a finger to stop it. One day Liir (the boy) is playing hide and seek with the other children, and one of them convinces him to hide in the fishwell, where he can’t get out on his own. Then the kid leaves him there where he sits for DAYS and almost dies. During this time Elphaba doesn’t even realize he’s gone! It’s this that really convinces me she’s a villain. I liked some other aspects of it, but this is what really made me hate her. I couldn’t like anyone who treated their own child that way.

END SPOILERS!

Apparently somebody liked the book, because it’s already spawned two sequels, “Son of a Witch”, which I’m assuming is about Liir, and I saw a new one about the cowardly lion.

Wicked the musical

As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing that came of Wicked the book is that it gave someone the idea to make Wicked the musical. This play is great! I like musicals in general, and this was better than average. It was everything the book should have been. Instead of being a meandering, slow-moving plot about a despicable character, it tells us about an Elphaba that I can actually relate to. The play is much more focused on the relationship between Glinda and Elphaba, which gave it a much stronger core. In the book, the two were only anywhere near each other in one section. The musical is focused around both of them, starting at Shiz, the college they both went to, and progressing to their meeting of the Wizard. From there, their paths diverge, but they are still both relatable. They both want to change the world, but Glinda tries to do so by society-approved advancement through government, and Elphaba tries her own radical ways. We already know how this works out for them, of course, but I still rooted for Elphaba because she was clearly a good person at heart with a good cause.

There are a lot of amazing songs in the soundtrack. Particularly noteworthy are “What is this Feeling?” where Galinda (it’s spelled Galinda in the early scenes where she insists on an aristocratic air, and Glinda in the later scenes where she’s more down to Earth) and Elphaba profess their immediate loathing for each other and “Popular” where Galinda gives Elphaba a much-needed makeover. Galinda/Glinda was played by Kristin Chenoweth on Broadway, who some people might know as Olive Snook on the now-cancelled TV series Pushing Daisies. She deserves special mention because she plays such an amazing Glinda the Good Witch. Spot-on, the voice, the look, everything is perfect. I didn’t actually see her in the part but she did an amazing job on the soundtrack, and she is perfectly suited for it. Also good songs are “The Wizard and I” sung by Elphaba, and “A sentimental Man” sung by the Wizard. Some of the lyrics were very impressive with their clever rhyming. For instance, the Wizard: “There are very few at ease with moral ambiguities…” And Glinda: “Don’t be offended by my frank analysis. Think of it as personality dialysis. Ever since I’ve become a pal, a sis–ter, and advisor, there’s nobody wiser. One slight pause in the middle of sister and it all works.

Now, I should note that the play deviated from every other version in major ways. It wasn’t particularly faithful to any of the other renditions. But the ways it veered off the beaten path were so compelling, and they made such sense with the world of Oz that I didn’t mind at all.

For one thing, the origin story of the scarecrow and the tin man were totally different, but the way they were changed tied them very closely to Elphaba’s story. Their original backstories were fine for the original book, because they didn’t have to be tied closely together to the witch.

SPOILERS!

The Tin Man in this rendition turns out to be Boq. While they’re in school Boq has a crush on Galinda, but she convinces him to take pity on Elphaba’s sister Nessarose, because Nessa’s in a wheelchair. He asks her out, and then never has the nerve to break it off. She becomes mayor of Munchkinland to the East, and eventually labeled the Wicked Witch of the East. She’s so afraid that he’ll leave her that she never lets him leave, always keeping him cooped up even though he wants to travel. He feels smothered, and one day during an argument between Nessa and Elphaba his heart gives out on him. Elphaba tries to save his life, and using the Grimmery, the magic book given to her by the Wizard, which she barely understands, she tries to find a spell that will save him. Instead of healing him, the spell changes him to a form where he doesn’t need a heart at all–the Tin Man.

The Scarecrow turns out to be Fiyero. He is engaged to Galinda for quite some time, and works in the military for the Wizard. But he defects in order to save Elphaba’s life. He’s captured by a troop of soldiers and they carry him away. Elphaba casts another spell to try to save his life, casting a spell that his bones may never break, that he’ll never die, and will not feel pain. Thus he became the scarecrow.

The Nessarose portrayed in the book and the play are totally different in almost every way. They’re both crippled, but with totally different disabilities. In the book, she has no arms. This makes her very dependent on other people–she can’t even walk unless someone helps her balance. While in the play she’s in a wheelchair. Book–she’s a religious zealot, following the religion of her father, but using it to become a Tyrant in the East. I couldn’t find anything about that Nessa to like. Play–she’s very sweet and it’s easy to feel bad about her bad fortune in life. It’s very sweet when Boq asks her out to the dance, and I really enjoyed seeing her face light up, even though I figured it would end badly one way or the other. Again, Maguire seemed to go out of his way to make sure every character was totally unlikeable. Just because a character is labeled as a villain doesn’t mean they can have no redeeming qualities!

END SPOILERS!

Obviously I feel very strongly about these two versions of this concept. I guess the other positive thing I can say about Maguire’s version is that it certainly got me aggravated enough to give me a topic to go on about.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

wonderfulwizardI read the original story by L. Frank Baum. I don’t think I’ve read this since I was a kid, if even then. I thought it was reasonably good, though it, not surprisingly, had a dry explanatory tone that is common in older literature. Also, there’s a lot of “As you know” dialogue. The scarecrow is constantly saying “I’m too dumb to do ____”, and similar statements from the Tin Woodsman and the Lion. What interested me most were the differences I noticed.
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
(just in case anyone hasn’t read this book from 1900!)

1. The ruby red slippers from the movie are actually silver. I suspect they made them red in the movie to show off their new color technology.
2. The Tin Woodsman is quite ruthless, beheading animals left and right, including a wildcat which was doing nothing more than chasing a field mouse. I’m sure they cut this to avoid blood.
3. The Lion is actually lion-shaped, not people shaped. Not a surprise there, since they had to have a guy in a lion costume.
4. The Emerald City is not really emerald. Everyone in the city must wear sunglasses by law that are locked onto your head, supposedly to protect you from being blinded by the dazzle. But the glasses are secretly tinted green, so everything looks green.
5. The Wicked Witch of the West does not use a crystal ball, she has just one eye which can see everything. Also, her skin is not green.
6. The Wizard takes on a different form for each of them–a giant head, a beautiful fairy, a ball of fire, and a 5-eyed 5-armed rhino-headed beast.
7. The Wizard gives them different gifts than the movie, though they are the same sort of “snake oil” placebo gifts.
8. It’s not all a dream in the book.

Actually the ending is quite amusing. Dorothy’s apparently been gone for quite some time, because Henry has had time to totally rebuild the house. Dorothy appears in the yard, Aunt Em finds her, and the first and only thing Em says is “Where did you come from?” That is a strange reaction for your dependent who has been missing for at least weeks, presumed dead in a tornado, that suddenly appears out of nowhere.

Three Theories of Time Travel

This post is intended to open speculation about time travel. As far as I’ve seen, there are three main theories of how time travel works, depending on what you’re watching/reading.

1. Time is a slate–anything can be can be changed! Be very careful, you might prevent your own birth. (ala Back to the Future). Paradoxes are a major problem–if you change antyhing you could prevent yourself from going back which would keep you from going back to prevent yourself from going back–and so on.

2. Time is a tree. You can change things, but all you’ll do is create an alternate timeline. That is by making a change you just force yourself down a different branch. You can’t prevent your birth, but you can send yourself down a branch where you were never born. (ala Back to the Future II, which doesn’t seem to use the same concepts as Back to the Future)

3. Time is written in stone. Whatever happens in the past has already happened, observed events are 100% unchangeable. For me to believe in this one, I feel I also need to believe in a higher power (a fate or a god or what-have-you) to make sure everything is neat and tidy. (ala 12 Monkeys)

To me #1 is unlikely. If this were the way time travel worked, the space-time continuum would have ripped a long time ago, or a long time from now, which amount to the same thing when you’re talking about the space-time continuum.

#3 can only work if there’s a higher power, because something needs to decide what events are “allowed” to happen.

#2 is the most likely in my mind, though it opens the door to another discussion–alternate realities. Each branch of possibility creates new realities that may exist only in potentia. Changing events instantiates these realities.

Movie Review: Push

Push Movie Poster
Push Movie Poster

Nicely enough, The Curse did not manifest itself too strongly this time. My wife and I have been plagued with a particular curse that follows us to events–concerts, hockey games, movies. You know that one guy in the stands that is so annoying you have to assume he’s never been in public before? The next time you see him, look in the seats immediately surrounding him, because we’re guaranteed to be right in front of, behind, or next to him.
This time wasn’t too bad in that regard. true, 5 of the other 10 people in the movie theatre were seated together in the row just behind, and they did laugh uproariously at the most unusual times, pretty much whenever anybody died, but at least they didn’t talk throughout it, and I didn’t hear anybody getting intimate (yup, that happened once during “Eastern Promises”, during Viggo’s nude fight scene and let me tell you, that is the last scene in any movie I would expect anyone to be turned on–it wasn’t that kind of nudity!)

I just saw Push today at the MoA. I went with low expectations, just looking for something to do. I was reasonably satisfied with this one. I think they made good use of the premise, and took it as far as it could go. That’s all I could ask for. Most of all, it provided what the previews had led me to expect. Plenty of action, shiny spec fx, and a relatively good plot. For me this was a great premise. I’ve always been interested in plots about people with extra abilities–X-men being a particular favorite.

The premise is this: In WWII, the Nazis tried to create armies of supersoldiers. They failed, but in the following decades, other governments set up research programs to continue this research. They categorized and trained those with abilities, mostly mentally based. The two main characters are Nick and Cassie. Nick is played by Chris Evans who you may know as Johnny Storm from the 2 recent Fantastic 4 movies. He’s a Mover, a telekinetic (each class of people has a clever little name like this). I wouldn’t say he’s the best actor in the world, but he didn’t turn me off either. Cassie is played by Dakota Fanning. She was reasonably good, though I could’ve done without seeing the preteen in a mini-skirt throughout the whole film. She’s a Watcher, someone who can see glimpses of possible futures. They’re both on the run from Division, the US organization that tries to control these special people: Nick because his father was killed by Division when he was a boy, and Cassie because she wants to rescue her mother from Division where she’s been held captive. They (and everyone else) are looking for Kira, a Pusher. Pushers are the most scary kind, they can make people believe and do whatever they want to. On a random sidenote, Kira looks almost exactly like Kim from Kath and Kim (who’s played by Selma Blair).
Most of the move takes place in Hong Kong, which I thought was particularly cool since I’ve been there a couple of times for business trips.

The main things I didn’t like about this movie:
1. too much preteen Dakota Fanning in a mini-skirt
2. At least twice they used a real fakey solution to a near-death situation: the protagonists are about to be killed, but an enemy Watcher says “no, don’t kill them, that could change the future” so they let them go to fight another day. It made sense in the context of the movie, but it still felt cheap, like the writers had written themselves into a corner and just needed a quick fix to get them out.
3. This requires a spoiler, so if you want to see the money you might not want to read on.

SPOILER ALERT

3. About halfway through the movie they realize the enemy Watcher is better than Cassie, so they have to find a way to be totally unpredictable. So Nick writes bunch of instructions for everybody in sealed envelopes, including for himself, and then he has his memory wiped by someone with that ability. Again, it made sense in the context of the movie, but it was rather annoying at times, because NONE of the main characters had a clue what the plan was. They just opened the envelopes and did what they were told to do, and everything worked out in the end.

The rest of the movie:
The whole object of the movie is to find a serum that boosts abilities to a much higher degree. Division wants it so that they can create their own army and keep others from finding the serum’s secret. Cassie wants it so she can use it bargain for her mother. A Hong Kong crime family, with many henchmen with abilities, is the third side.

The fight scene at the end was just awesome! With all three sides of the conflict there, it was very chaotic. With Pushers, Watchers, Bleeders, Movers, etc.. all fighting against each other, deflecting bullets. Kira was really scary in that scene, using her mind manipulation to turn enemies against her and recruit soldiers to protect her.

The ending was relatively happen, with open elements to guess what you will. Nick and Kira ended up together, though I had to wonder how you could ever trust someone who could manipulate your mind to that degree. All in all, I really enjoyed it.