Reader's Rights: The Idea Preservation Imperative

I believe in the power of ideas. In fact, I would actually go even further than that: I believe in the preeminence of ideas. They aren't quite as important as human life and comfort (although there are some exceptions) but beyond that, creative thoughts are incredible gifts.

I've already talked about the act of finding value, especially as a creator and a critic, in even the most unlikely of places. And, what's more, I've written a couple fan fiction pieces that attempt to put into practice my prattling: one based upon Twilight, the other based upon "Manos" The Hands of Fate.

This book definitely exists. Really.

It should be obvious from this, I think, that I hold fanfiction in a particularly high regard; on the same level, in fact, that I hold more traditional forms of critical analysis. Both occupy the same space in culture when it comes to interacting with ideas. They use similar techniques of analysis, similar methods of picking things apart, often act as either homages to good works or dismantlings of bad ones. The fact that they engage the reader in different ways does not, ultimately, make them different processes. It's just that fanfiction ends up creating its own complete text at the end that someone else can analyze, whereas criticism just holds a mirror to the original. In a way, fanfiction might be considered more productive, in the end, than criticism because of the way it produces something new that can be built upon in the end.

You can write a fanfic of a fanfic, but you can't write a fanfic of a critical essay.

Probably.

Well, alright, maybe Godel Escher Bach counts as a fanfic of a critical essay. Ah.

Anyway, the point is, these types of texts are important because they uncover and preserve good ideas. But unless you've got a narrow exception like Godel Escher Bach or the notes to The Waste Land or an Umberto Eco essay, criticism doesn't do the one thing that fanfiction can, even though it's using largely the same processes.

It doesn't take that golden, glowing kernel of an idea and nurture it into something new.

And that's a power that we have an imperative to put into use when the original author of an idea can't put that idea into use.

See, sometimes, for whatever reason, a creator cannot or will not explore one of their ideas to its fullest extent. This doesn't even mean that something has fallen through the cracks, necessarily. There's nothing in Scorsese's recent film Hugo that strikes me as conspicuously omitted--it's a tight film, as my collaborator Leslie the Sleepless Film Student would say. But there are still ideas there that could be explored from another angle. The nature of the Great War could certainly be explored further, and the trauma driving the Stationmaster (it seemed clear to me that he was shellshocked, no?). This is an area where fanfiction can serve perhaps more effectively than criticism, because it allows the viewer to not just analyze the character's psychology but to add to it and imagine, in more detail, just what his history and experiences are made of.

So, this is an area where fanfiction can fill in some gaps. It's not exactly what I would call an example of the sort of moral imperative I'm talking about, though.

Something like writing a "Manos" The Hands of Fate fanfiction is.

What makes the difference is that what good ideas there are in "Manos" are in danger of being lost. The film itself is already in rather poor condition, and I doubt anyone has watched it recently without the hilarious commentary of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew. If there are any creepy moments at all in "Manos"--and I assert that there most certainly are--they are in danger of vanishing, and what we might learn from the film could be lost.

This is where the Reader's Right of Fanfiction kicks in. We've got an idea on the verge of vanishing into the cultural haze, a certainty that the creators of the film (if any are still alive) will never revisit the film's ideas, and a platform--The Internet--where fans can share and explore their takes on the film. In that situation, readers have an ethical right to take everything in the film and run with it, copyright be damned.

The Idea is preeminent above all else.

But, alright, "Manos," though I love it so, isn't the kind of sparkling gem that's going to convince a lot of people, I suspect. So, let me use an example that has a few more fans, and is a bit closer to my heart, though it's still not exactly what you might call an elite masterpiece of artistry.

I'm talking about the storyline for the game Magic: The Gathering.

For the uninitiated, it might surprise you to know that Magic has a pretty intricate backstory--one I've been following for quite a while now. The idea is that there are countless worlds, each unique and magical, that make up the Multiverse known as Dominia. These worlds are closed off from one another... unless you are a Planeswalker, a being capable of stepping through the void between worlds, a being capable of exploring the Multiverse in all its wonder.

The interactions of these Planeswalkers, the normal beings that inhabit the planes, supernatural entities, and the core mechanics of the Five Colors of Magic knit together to create a  complex, fascinating fabric of a narrative. And certainly, many of the individual threads are broken in one way or another, what with plot holes, dumb storylines, bad writing or editing, and so on, but generally the storyline is a compelling thing for one reason. To borrow the words of my good friend Jon of Everyday Abnormal:

"I've followed from the beginning. Somewhere, somehow (probably from Richard Garfield sitting in on one too many Planescape sessions), WotC stumbled onto an amazing, unique fantasy world... one that was all fantasy worlds. It was a setting that offered up nearly limitless storytelling possibilities. There were ups and downs, but there were amazing concepts and wonderful stories told within it."

Yep, that about sums it up. It was a world that was all worlds. The potential there is astounding.

Or, it was.

Until the novel line got cancelled a few months ago.

Whoops.

The game will go on, of course, like my heart (ahem), but there doesn't seem to be much hope of us getting the kind of detailed narratives that held the storyline together in the past. I could be wrong, of course, but as of now, the actual long form stories--and even short stories, according to the Creative Director--are things of the past.

Now, are you starting to see why I think this idea of the reader's rights and duties to preserve an idea is so strikingly important?

A little over a year and a half ago, I helped to kickstart a fan project known as the Expanded Multiverse. The idea was to take the spaces in Magic's narrative that couldn't be feasibly filled by the creative team, and fill them in ourselves. The lofty goal was to create a secondary fan-generated canon that was cohesive, well written, and in-line with the established world and stories. A few days ago, when we first got the news that the novels were effectively as over as The Internet (although we didn't hear the news from Prince this time...) I concluded that the Expanded Multiverse was done for as well.

And then, as I got to thinking, and as I read some of the other responses from people on the forums, I realized that the exact opposite is the case: the Expanded Multiverse is more important than ever. The cards aren't going away, the settings aren't going away, the game will continue to explore at least an outline of a plot each time new cards are released... so, we effectively have all the tools we need to build a storyline ourselves.

Now, of course, it's important to recognize what this does NOT mean. It doesn't mean a reader is entitled to mooching off a creator's money. JK Rowling has apparently said that fanfiction is acceptable to her as long as no one charges for it, and that seems to me an ethical model. After all, what I'm advocating here is the primacy of ideas, and limiting access to those ideas by slapping a price tag on seems rather counterproductive, even without considering that you are kinda ripping off someone else's stuff. That ethic, of course, carries over to my own work: I take the Creative Commons license on this site very seriously.

So, I would never suggest that those of us involved with the Expanded Multiverse should get paid (unless Wizards of the Coast decided to throw some money our way, which, hey, I'm not going to say no to, necessarily). But we are still doing an important thing: we're ensuring that the bright kernel of an idea, all the bright fragments of thought that make the storyline so powerful, don't go to waste simply because the company can't economically justify printing books that only a handful of people read.

It's also not a condemnation of creators. As I mentioned with Hugo, there's nothing in this ethic that implies a failure on a creator's part, simply a lack of a particular path chosen. Sometimes that is certainly the result of lack of skill, but the imperative to explore otherwise lost details is not an insult in and of itself. (And I really wish authors would quit taking it that way.) If anything, it's a gesture of respect to someone that created an idea worth exploring.

So, this is, perhaps, a manifesto of sorts for one of the core reader's rights. There are others that I've got bouncing around my head, but this should suffice for now. I need to stop talking and let you get to work.

After all, there are so many ideas out there waiting to be explored; get out there and explore them!

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Hands of Fate... or Hands of Poor Life Choices?

Normally I don't do broad, overarching movie reviews--I tend to focus more on particular scenes or themes within a movie--but I thought I would kick off my month long celebration of the spooky, strange, and uncanny with one of the most incredible films of the last few years: Manos. Of course, everyone and their grandmother has been praising the film since July, but I want to take a look at some of the deeper character interactions and decisions.

The first thing worth noting is the way the film takes advantage of the immigration debate. I'll be picking out the particular scenes where this theme emerges, but the most obvious place is the title--"Manos": "the hands". It's no accident that the title is Spanish, just as it is no accident that the action takes place somewhere in the American southwest.

It's also no accident that the majority of the initial character building takes place on the road, distant from the house where the action takes place. This is more a suspense than a horror film, in that respect. It takes the time to lavish attention on each character--from the weak and vapidly religious Margaret, to the arrogant, hypermasculine Michael, to the spacy and disconnected child Debbie. The scene where Michael asks for directions, in particular, tells us a lot about his wild west attitude and macho persona (and of his antipathy toward the migrant workers they run into), which Margaret simply quietly accepts.

The strangeness of the house itself is very subtly done, and reminds me a little of similar techniques used in the much lower budget Marble Hornets. Torgo's fateful, bizarre mantra of "It'll be dark soon; there's no way out of here" is visually demonstrated by the seeming single shot out the car window of Michael driving away from the house only to arrive back at the same spot while Margaret becomes more and more panicked.

And then, of course, you have Torgo himself.

Ah, Torgo. What can we say about Torgo?

This is probably the most interesting role that Ledger has done since The Joker, and, in some ways, it works quite well as a reprise. He's again playing a psychologically disturbed character that he imbibes with incredible depth and complexity through extremely minor cues of posture and intonation. The difference is that while previously Ledger was playing a genius improviser that constantly tried to stay on top, here he plays a stuttering, emotionally broken hybrid between man and beast.1  It's worth noting that Ledger's skin here is darkened and tanned so that he begins to resemble the other migrant worker characters. Again, the movie is playing on Michael's--and the audience's--fears here.

This helps explain some of the more overtly unsettling sexual elements of the film. Consider, for example, the unconscious Brides. Or blank-eyed Debbie lounging in a disturbingly provocative way with the massive black dogs. Or the hands that grope both Margarette and Michael in the night.

The key to all of this is the fact that the real menace comes from the pale white Master, played magnificently by an almost unrecognizeable Orlando Bloom. The whole movie has set itself up as a masterpiece of xenophobia, after all, so when the Master finally awakens and turns out to be a well-spoken, white, aristocratic American lad, the audience's perception of the film totally reverses. The latter third of the film is a complete deconstruction of the beginning two thirds, with Torgo attempting (and, of course, failing) to act as Margarette's savior2 and, of course, the Rescue scene, where the seeds Michael sewed at the beginning of the film come to harvest. As Michael staggers through the desert, he sees a light of a truck. It is the Mexican truck from earlier in the film. We get that one shot of the cop and the migrant worker talking, they notice Michael, and, with a look of condemnation, they simply shut off the headlights. And Michael is lost in the noneuclidean desert once more.

What do we learn from all this, then? Well, the movie was clearly marketed to middle class white Americans, and I think the undertones of racial fear and tension are pretty clear. The deconstructive ending suggests quite strongly to me that the filmmakers intended us to see Michael and company as proxies for our own fears, and when they are punished for their bigotry, their arrogance, and their inability to see past the immediate to the powerful people that pull the strings, we are punished as well. This is a film that doesn't want to make friends with its audience. This is the second meaning of the title: "Manos" is not just the worker's description of The Master, or Torgo's dark, schizophrenic faith, or even, as the promotional material suggests, the hands that pull the strings of each of the characters. The hands pull our strings as well, and like puppets we dance to the tune of this brilliantly manipulative film.

1Incidentally, he's been compared to a faun, but that seems like a rather odd anachronism given the tightly composed nature of the film. I would note, rather, the way he looks kind of like a hairless, faintly scaly rat, and note the way he grasps and stutters and licks his lips with that long tongue, and suggest that perhaps he is meant to be a Chubacabra.

2The image of Torgo, burning and melting, his face a rictus of fury, and the blackened hand marks on The Master's neck, strike me as some of the best film images from the past few years... 

I feel that it is fitting, somehow, that I am beginning this spooky month with a ghost film. And, of course, with an exercise in mindbending confusion. If you're curious about the real "Manos" The Hands of Fate I highly recommend watching the classic MST3K version. As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days. Oh, and I'm looking for guest entries this month, so if you have something interesting to say about things that generally fit the theme, send them my way.