American Predators

So the blog lives. I spend more time than is healthy, maybe, thinking about books I've read and films I've seen and so on, and I can only resist the urge to share the thoughts for so long, despite the very real conviction that to think anyone else has the slightest interest in them means I'm a stuck-up pretentious know-it-all. But here we are. Our books and films talk about us, express things that we couldn't express without the aid of characters, plots and metaphors. And once a text (that's the word I'll settle on, I think) is written and sent out into the world it takes flight, it can go anywhere, and if you hop on and stay on the then you can go there with it. It won't necessarily take your friends to the same places it will take you - in fact it probably won't. Nor does the text's author have any control over the destinations. This is what is meant (I think) by the whole death of the author idea. It doesn't matter if the author meant for you to read a text in a particular way - if it's there in the text you'll see it, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it.

I've got some examples. Here's one of them.

I watched Predator recently, for the first time in quite a few years. I was relieved to find that it's at least as good as I remember it - but as it went on I found myself seeing something I had never seen any of the seven or eight times I must have watched it as a teenager. I saw that Predator is a vicious and powerful indictment of the U.S. military and U.S. foreign policy. I have a feeling I'm not the first person to stumble on this interpretation, but here's my particular line of thinking on it.

Arnie and his pals are a team of elite, cigar-chomping, ultra-macho badasses specialising in rescue missions, sent into a camp of guerilla fighters in a South American jungle ostensibly to rescue a missing diplomat. The twist - which, for current purposes, is far more important than it appears what with the predator lurking around the corner - is that the kidnapped diplomat story was an invention designed to trick Arnie and co. into destroying the guerillas' camp before some kind of deal with the Russians could go down. In an adorably earnest attempt to act, Arnie makes it very clear how angry he is about the deception. For you see, he and his boys are a rescue team. They are not assassins, they are not murderous bastards, they're not in it for the violence and the smell of napalm in the morning. They are the reluctant last resort, grimly doing the duty that no one could or would.

Except... Predator is a cheesy '80s action flick in the grand tradition of cheesy '80s action flicks. In the wonderfully violent and explosive assault on the guerilla camp, Arnie has not one but two cheesy monotone one-liners! ("Stick around" and "Knock knock" in case you're wondering). The camera delights in showing us every gunshot, every explosion and every little secret soldier tactical hand gesture. This film is the ultimate expression of gleeful boyhood war-is-fun carnage. Arnie's outrage at being tricked into being on the wrong side of the all-important distinction between a rescue mission and a blow-up-the-badguys mission just doesn't ring true in the wake of the cheerful orgy of violence. To look at these characters symbolically, they are the American government's adventurist antics in Korea, Vietnam, wherever - marching into someone else's country in all their macho glory, covering their asses with the rhetoric of last-resort, they-forced-our-hand reluctance.

And then the Predator appears. And kills them all (or almost all).

But the Predator doesn't just kill Arnie's friends. It does so, crucially, without any remorse and without the pretence of any motive other than because it's fun, dammit. It takes its time, dragging out the kills over several days even though the whole team combined would be no match for it. It skins its kills, takes their skulls and spines as trophies. It won't kill an unarmed person, not out of compassion but because where's the fun in killing something that has not the slightest chance of fighting back? The final duel scene is thrilling because of how expertly it is handled - but also because the Predator is the perfect nemesis for Arnie. Because the Predator is Arnie - just with all the bullshit stripped away to reveal what he (and all action heroes of this kind) truly are: people who kill for fun. There's a particular shot, surely the most powerful moment in the film, where the creature takes its mask off and looks Arnie in the eye, unmasked and visible at last for the "ugly motherfucker" that it is, spreading its arms, screaming and pacing aggressively towards him (skip to 1:30). This ugly motherfucker is here to show the American hunter-killers what hunting and killing is all about.

Did the makers of Predator intend to say all of this? Or any of it? I highly doubt it (although it still seems more plausible than this, I have to say).

But it doesn't matter (and whether or not we would agree with the "message" even if it had been intended as a message matters even less). This is one of the ways it can be read, one of the places it can take us - or me at least. It's there on the screen, or perhaps in the subtle interaction between what's on the screen and what's in me. Either way it's there to be seen and, like a cloaked predator sitting patiently in a tree, now that I've seen it I can't unsee it.

Three Blogs as One

It's been a while since I glanced in the direction of any of my blogs. I realised I now have three, each ostensibly for a quite specific purpose. I decided that instead of create a new blog every time I want to publish something of a slightly different type, I might as well merge the three into one blog, and update it as I see fit with whatever happens to be in my head at the time. So behold as, like characters in a weird Japanese cartoon, my three blogs merge together into a mighty super-blog.

In 2010 you'll find attempts at literary criticism, formerly known as All Wound Up. In 2011 are a few pop-cultural musings, formerly called Gaps in the Road. And in January and February of 2012 is a text-and-photograph journal lasting about four weeks, called A Map of the Borderlands (this is the name I chose for the super-blog, because it's the coolest name).

As for the future, expect further half-organised thoughts on books, films, computer games and music, and perhaps the odd piece of fiction or unclassifiable rambling text.

I'll aim for an entry a week and see how it goes. Welcome to the borderlands.

Thursday, 16 February 2012

I clambered over the fence, and over the second fence, and I landed heavily but upright on someone's lawn. In front of me a hole in the ground spewed forth great thick cords of smoke that twisted in the wind as they rose. I looked at the house, pebble-dashed and smug, that sat at the top of the lawn staring down at me with its double-glazed eyes, and knew I would find no aid there. The sounds of the hunt were getting nearer, and I knew that I had nowhere to run. There was only one option, and it presumably ended in a fiery death - but this would be preferable to being caught by the hunt, and some deep instinct told me that this strange hole-in-the-ground had been put here for a reason, by an agent, natural or supernatural, who wanted me to escape.

And so I took a deep breath, thought of my wife, and jumped feet-first into the pit. The smoke enveloped me and stung my eyes, and I fell.

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

(I pass this graffiti every week, and I can't figure out where Nestle's Milky Bar fits into the teachings of Christianity.)

Do writers use characters as vessels for their own ideas? Do they put their less tasteful, less acceptable ideas into their characters so they can disassociate themselves from those ideas when necessary? Obviously I'm not advocating Tyler Durden's approach to modern life, just presenting it. I personally don't see the erotic side of drinking blood, but I think it's interesting so I write about it. But if you are able to dismiss your characters' philosophies, systems and habits, then you must have some of your own that you genuinely believe in. Do you? Or are you flailing wildly around in the literary world, looking for what you can't find in the real world?

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

I have nothing to say today, so how about a nice blank TV screen?

Monday, 13 February 2012

This has been there for a few weeks now. It's grey and cold today, but we'll soon begin the spiral climb into spring, flowers will bloom etc., and not long after that the wasps will wake up and fly around and menace us, like very small dragons, and it will be summer, and it will all be honey and jam, ice cream and cola, blockbusters and air conditioning and t-shirts, sunglasses and beautiful women walking the bridges across the Thames, long days and pleasant nights, afternoons on the grass with a green glass bottle and a Jeff Noon novel, and a blue sky more big as I can glean.

Sunday, 12 February 2012

Watched the BAFTAs in the pub. The Artist took seven awards, and I haven't fucking seen it so I can't criticise that decision. I have a headache and it's time to go to bed. And I'm thirsty. Ernest Hemingway once wrote "The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for". I agree with the second part, now and then.