Adam-Troy Castro

Writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Stories About Yams.

 

The Alternate Scenario Trump Envisions For that Night at Pulse

Posted on June 18th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro
When the gun nuts — a specific demographic separate from “gun owners,” that Donald Trump has just joined for expedience — claim that the Orlando massacre would have been cut short if the nightclub’s patrons been armed and able to return fire, it’s hard to tell exactly what scene he and others envision.
 
Set to a pounding drumbeat on the dance floor, the various people dancing with abandon exactly as they were, except with guns in their shootin’ hands?
 
You don’t even see that at country-western clubs.
 
Too, let us not forget that this club served alcohol, that some there must have been drinking to excess even without considering what other recreational drugs they might have been on, and what Trump and others are advocating is that when you go out to get wasted on a weekend night, you really ought to also have access to a firearm.
 
On top of this, on top of this, we have the knowledge that the club security was strapped, and it changed the outcome not at all.
 
The image we have here, that the NRA and its apologists want to advance, is that nobody should ever be out in public, ever, without firearms at hand, and that if they happen to get shot because they left their weapons in a handbag or in an ankle-holster they didn’t get to because they were cut down too quickly, it’s their own fault for not having one of those TAXI DRIVER spring-loading gadgets that slam the handgun into their palms at the instant it occurs to them that they might need to ventilate somebody; and this is the life they want for this country.
 
Trump’s eager embrace of this alternate world, for votes, is especially noxious because, let’s face it, these scenarios need never play out for him. Not when he can walk inside a gauntlet of eagle-eyed security men; not when he lives in buildings with security, not when he spends his life in guarded enclaves. But he is eager to let the poor shoot it out.
 
It may be the most cynical me-too of his historically revolting campaign.

Tags: , , , , | Category Life Wisdom, Politics

The Book As an Unfamiliar Object From An Alien Civilization

Posted on June 17th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

Among the many monstrously anti-literate things said to me by folks who saw me reading books, statements to the effect that people who read books don’t have lives, that reading is for fags, that I was a Poindexter or a nerd or so on, the conversations that have long horrified me most are those with people to whom the idea of a novel is apparently a brand new one, never once encountered before.

“What is this?”

“A novel?”

“A what?”

“A book. A story.”

(flipping through it looking for pictures) “Wow. There are a lot of words.”

“Not too many to read.”

“And this is, like, a story?”

“Yes.”

“You mean like in a movie?”

“Yes.”

“And people read this?”

“Yes.”

“How do they know it’s a story?”

“They went looking for one. Or they read the back cover blurb.”

“How do they know to do that?”

“Because that’s the way back cover blurbs work.”

“Why’s your name on the cover?”

“Because I wrote it.”

“You wrote all these words?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to tell a story.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what I do.”

“And people read this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m good at it.”

“How do they know that?”

“Because I’ve done it many times before.”

“How come there aren’t any pictures?”

“Because most books don’t have pictures.”

“How do you know what’s happening, then?”

“You read the words.”

“All of them?”

“You could read only every other word, but then it probably wouldn’t make much sense.”

“Did you draw the cover?”

“No. An artist did that.”

“Why?”

“They paid him.”

“Oh. Well, it’s a good drawing.”

“They paid me, too.”

“Who?”

“The publisher.”

“Who?”

“The people who print the book and sell it to people who want to read it.”

“How did they know to get you to write the book?”

“Because I’ve done it before and they know I’m good at it.”

“People really read this? All of this?”

“Yes.”

“You should give me a free copy.”

“No.”

Adults, man. I am not even exaggerating. Being a non-reader is one thing; that’s your prerogative. But not even having the slightest idea what a book is, even in theory…! As an adult living on this planet.

I have had this conversation many times, and no, I am not exaggerating.

Tags: , | Category Books, Commentary, Frequently Asked Questions, Sneaky Metaphors

On Moviegoers Who Ignore the Story To Get to the “Good Parts”

Posted on June 16th, 2016 by Adam-Troy Castro

A movie thread encountered on a friend’s Facebook wall included a reply that, in all seriousness and with no leavening irony, painted THE GODFATHER and THE FRENCH CONNECTION in particular, the movies of the early seventies in general, as the dark age that STAR WARS rescued us from.

Gad. God. Gad.

When I reacted with horror, somebody said, “To be fair, Godfather and French Connection are BORING. I can’t even get through all the talking in Connection to get to the cool car chase.”

Gad. God. Gad.

I think what may be going on here is akin to what happened when I showed somebody the great John Sayles film, MATEWAN. There’s a lengthy sequence where two sympathetic characters have been manipulated into thinking that a third is a traitor, and that their only option is to kill him. Maybe ten minutes on screen of inconsequential conversation, leading up to the moment of truth, even as, elsewhere, another character finds out that they’ve been played and races to alert his friends that the assassination will be a bad mistake.

Incredibly tense.

Immediately after the assassination is called off and the two would-be killers react with relief at not having to do this awful thing, my friend said, “When will something happen in this movie??”

To me, everything that had gone on before that was apocalyptic. He didn’t even realize anybody was in danger. He just thought the movie was marking time.

Another friend said this to me three quarters of the way through JEAN DE FLORETTE. “Does this movie EVER start?” On that occasion, there were four other rapt individuals watching it in the same living room, and they all said, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you get that major stuff is happening here, that crimes are being committed and that there‘s a tragedy looming?”

I got that verdict from a young man exposed to TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE for the first time, who started saying it while Bogey and Holt were still hanging around that Mexican town, bumming handouts. “Nothing’s happening!”

Look, plenty is happening. You are watching the trap these men are in, you are seeing how Bogey burns through any money he gets the second it’s in his hands. You are seeing who they are and you are getting your first clues to how they will react to the prospect of wealth. THAT way, what happens next will matter. But he was incapable of seeing it.A lot of what goes on in great, great movies is not on the surface. It’s beneath the surface, the shadow of the shark as it glides through shallow water, even if the actual dialogue spoken obscures it.

In contrast, a lot of today’s movies are made up of declaratory sentences, meaning all lying on the surface for somebody with a pool net to scoop from the ripples. They’re made so that they can perfectly understood even when your eyes are focused on your texting.

A lot of what goes on in great, great movies is not on the surface. It’s beneath the surface, the shadow of the shark as it glides through shallow water, even if the actual dialogue spoken obscures it.

The problem is that for too many of you, brutalized by too many productions that take place all on the surface, *dialogue* is just the shit you have to sit through while awaiting the next set of explosions.

I have actually heard that from kids in their early teens, but also seen it in adults: “I don’t actually pay attention to the talking parts.”

Which is fine if the only movies you see are the ones which have heroes who are dressed like heroes fighting bad guys who are dressed like bad guys, and the action scenes comprise more than fifty percent of the total. I can understand the appeal of this. You can in many cases “follow” a James Bond film, or one like it, just by zoning out during the exposition and waiting for the next car chase sure to come along in ten minutes; you won’t get any other story values, but sometimes there aren’t any. (And sometimes there are.) What you won’t do, if this is the way you’ve trained yourself to consume a movie, is get anything else. You won’t know that when Indy talks to Belloq in that Cairo café, he’s in deadly danger though no guns are drawn; and you certainly won’t get that the one coal miner, misled by company propaganda, is about to unnecessarily murder the other in MATEWAN. Nor will you ever be able to appreciate the fine dance of manipulation that is THE MALTESE FALCON.

Telling stories is a skill. So is following them.

And what we’re seeing is that many folks have allowed that later skill to atrophy, to a horrifying degree.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Category Commentary, Movies, Sneaky Metaphors, Writing

 
 
 

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