State of Horror Address: Teagan Clive

    Some things just inspire poetry. The acts of great men have inspired Homer in The Iliad, and Walt Davis in Sex Psycho; the beauty of nature inspired Wordsworth's "Rain Cloud" and Max Hardcore's "Peeing in a College Girl." Teagan Clive is one such entity. I have had the opportunity to see her twice and feel she's strong in the Force once. Both times I've seen her has been in b-movies, and each time she had even less clothing than they had plot. One is Interzone (1987) by Deran Sarafian, the other is Alienator (1990) by Fred Olen Ray.

    Teagan, if you've yet to encounter her in her brief cinematic oeuvre, is a modern, powerful woman. I don't mean powerful like Hilary Clinton, but more like the sasquatches of the WNBA. She has an immaculately-sculpted, muscular body that nears the boundary between "sexy aerobics instructor" and "where's the penis?" but keeps on the good side. Unlike many female body builders, her face does not resemble Jackie Chan's left foot or a frozen mop, but rather retains its voluptuous femininity. Her beauty is a strange but striking combination of the Grecian and the Californian ideals, except heterosexual.

    Armenian director Deran Sarafian knew that for his epic second feature, Interzone, a post-apocalyptic action adventure, he required the inspiration of a Homer and the visual splendor of the Sistene Chapel--but for only $2000. Thus was Teagan cast as Mantis, the sociopathic warlord who is constantly posing for an unseen Sports Illustrated shoot. Opposite Teagan is Bruce Abbot, a smug cross-breed of Bill Pullman and Elias Kotias. He plays Swan, a wheelin' dealin' douchebag who gets by on wisecracks and streetsmarts, like a white Morgan Freeman. But this descendant of Indiana Jones and Pinocchio is drawn, as all heroes must be, by love and prophecy into saving the treasures of the Interzone from Mantis.

    Interzone is an immensely fun movie that will do for your brain what a bubblebath does for your anus. But the highlight of the movie, and not coincidentally, the most Teagan-filled sequence, is--like the cleansing effervescence of my Ninja Turtles bubblebath--when Swan decides he must seduce Mantis to defeat her. As in real life, this triggers a five-minute montage of Teagan posing in silhouette while a band of harpists play an endlessly looping tune of about five notes. Once the posing is done, Teagan graduates, as any warm-blooded woman with Bruce Abbot would do, to blindfolding him then hand-feeding him bananas and sardines.

    What I'm saying is not just that Teagan happened to partake in this playful, creative, charming scene like a fat kid in gym class. I'm saying that that scene could no more be conceived without Teagan than the Gospels could without the Jesus, or the Mona Lisa without the prostitutes. The scene is composed from Teagan's unique features: her exquisitely-honed female form with its intimations of power even greater than William Shatner's testicles; her seductive femininity with its subtle vulnerability, not unlike a kitten with a shotgun; and her playful expression of sexual desire. What makes Teagan so extraordinary is that, like a cheesecake, she makes contradicting features complementary.

    In Alienator, Fred Olen Ray, like an Asian parent, takes these features of Teagan's and pushes them farther. Much like Crime and Punishment, Alienator is about a space criminal who escapes to earth. The Alienator is not, as Marx argued, the capitalist wage system, but rather a cyborg entity sent to retrieve the space criminal. Combining nearly-invincible super-strength and cosmic destructive powers with a highly-toned female physique, the Alienator can only be played by Teagan--with due apologies to Ernest Borgnine's supporters.

    Just as in Interzone, there is one sequence of Alienator in particular that both encapsulates and is directly inspired by Teagan--a Teaguence, if you will. In Alienator, it's a single shot of Teagan, in her full space armor as any self-respecting Alienator must be, reclining against a tree. She holds out her hand to a deer, perhaps grieving a dead mother--we just don't know--and it comes to her without fear or even lust. The shot combines the physical power of Teagan's physique with the opposing tenderness in her femininity; the Alienator's destructive potential with her gentleness toward the innocent and harmony with nature. In doing so, it almost spiritualizes these features, not unlike Patrick Swayze in Ghost; and it achieves a photogenic sublimity--photogeneity being, according to Delluc and Epstein, the very essence of cinema.

    Perhaps you will think I'm going too far. But there is no denying the real importance of the photogenic in cinema. And Teagan's body and elegant movements are powerfully photogenic, leading to unforgettable moments of fun and charm in what could have been forgettable movies. I don't know where Tegan is now. She, like Sylvester Stallone and Matthew Broderick, has not acted since 1990. But she was a b-movie Muse while she was active, and her few contributions deserve this long overdue recognition.

P.S. Come back, Teagan!

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Troll 2

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the last of my critiques.


Film: Troll 2 (1990)
Subtext analysis: Feminism


Troll 2 is ostensibly the story of a little boy in a normal American family who is getting warnings from his dead grandfather that all is not right in chosen vacation-spot, the town of Nilbog. It turns out Grandpa Seth is right: Nilbog is 'goblin' spelled backwards, you see, and everyone in the town is a vegetarian goblin who wants to turn humans into plants to eat them.

In truth, of course, Troll 2 is about so much more. It is about an oppressive family structure brought under an objectifying, feminizing gaze in the absence of a sufficiently effectual patriarchal figure.

The film begins with a subversion of the fairy tale romance, an androcentric form geared for the male mind to view the woman as a sex object prize. In this version, a "boy" named Peter meets goblins in the woods and instead of fighting he begins to run away. After falling and going unconscious, he awakes to a beautiful female. Here the narrator tells us, "Peter was bewitched by that gaze, and it was that look that deceived him." We are instantly, in this prologue of the film, brought face-to-face with an alternative gaze, the female gaze. The male narrator presents it as a threat. Indeed, the beautiful female turns out to be a goblin, who turns Peter into an edible plant for she and the goblins. The male is made into an object that can be consumed by the feminine gaze. This whole fairy tale is a cautionary tale told by a grandfather to his grandson--the males preparing themselves against subversive feminine power.

Tellingly, the next moment the boy's mother walks into the room, flicks on the switch, and the grandfather disappears. She informs us the grandfather is dead. The patriarch is absent. She also warns the boy to stop fantasizing about his grandfather's presence. In this family, the mother is clearly dominant. The father is an ineffectual softy: a sissyboy. Our introduction to him is reclining in a feminine pose chatting on the phone, as if Fragasso were worried we would be unable to figure it out on our own. The other family member, the boy's sister, Hollie, is shown lifting weights: a powerful female, she dominates her dorky boyfriend Eliot and fights for authority over her father.

With this all set up, this androcentric family unit, as well as an RV full of Eliot's friends--teenage boys told by Eliot that Nilbog is full of lonely, sexually liberated, beautiful women, making them perfect representatives of the agents of female objectification--all head out to Nilbog.

The reality is that Nilbog is the goblin kingdom. From the first fairy tale prologue, goblins are already associated with feminine subversion of the patriarchal order and the male gaze. This is emphasized when we discover that the queen of the goblins is, in fact, an ancient druid sorceress who uses the powers of Stone Henge. This is important, because it was the role of Hellenic-Christian culture that gave women in society a role of subordination. Pre-Christian Europe gave women a stronger role in society. This sorceress is therefore effecting a purgative solution to the Patriarchal-Christian problem of society.

The apogee of this role the Goblin Queen plays is the most stunning set-piece of the film. One of the teenage boys watches a television screen of dancing women. This is a perfectly exemplification of what Mulvey calls the Male Gaze. Women are being displayed as sex objects for his scopophilic gratification. Suddenly the television is taken over by the powers of the Goblin Queen, who has made herself look particularly young and seductive for this conquest, strutting provocatively with a cob of corn. She breaks the forth wall and demands the teen leave the RV to find her, which he does. She takes complete control of the situation, dominates him, makes him take her corn in her mouth--as if she were taking phallic power of the situation. His gaze is destroyed under a swell of popcorn--symbolic of cinematic voyeurism--while she prepares to kill him.

In the meanwhile, two of the teenage boys are dealt with by the Queen, turned into plants. One boy, to emphasizing the impotence, emasculating force the Queen turns on him, asks, "And why can't I move? There must be a logical explanation for all of this." Logic, the tool of masculine intellectual domination, fails; this character, Arnold, is made into the Queen's houseplant for her to gaze on, "my pretty flower." The food the goblins give is, thus, a subverting force, feminizing: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

The family is also being terrorized by the goblins, initially in the guise of townsfolk. As long as the mother is in charge of the family, they are useless to fight back. The only force in the diagetic context with power to fight the goblins is Grandpa Seth--the ghost of patriarchy. He gives the boy, Joshua, the tools to fight against the goblins. Eventually, all the family members give in, ending with the mother, and they even hold a seance to summon Grandpa Seth's aid. This is a reversion of the family unit to patriarchal forces, a counter-reformation against the subverting forces of femininity.

Grandpa Seth brings the boy to touch the stone of Stone Henge, which takes power away from the Goblin Queen. They must do this all as a family. Grandpa Seth emphasizes this is the power of 'goodness' over the goblins. The notion of 'goodness,' a Christian notion, which has historically demanded female docility, virtues of caring and submission. The few moments we are allowed to see into the goblin mind, however, give us good arguments that their way has a goodness of its own.

After defeating the goblins in this way, the family attempts to return to a mundane life. Immediately upon entering the driveway, the father blandly states he must check in at the office. The seed of subversion has been sown, however. Entering the house, the mother is turned into a plant and quickly consumed by goblins before Joshua's eyes, "They're eating mom!" The last line is, "Do you want some, Joshua?" Does Joshua want to see things with new eyes, risk accepting the goblin point of view?

The maker of this film, Claudio Fragasso, appears to ultimately sides not with the hegemonic forces, but with the subversive, alternative forces--the goblins. On the other hand, it is worth considering that the character of Grandpa Seth, and his grandson Joshua, are the most sympathetically viewed characters in the film. Grandpa Seth, the missing patriarch, taints the entire world with his absence. There is a sense that, "If only Grandpa Seth were here," the goblins could not possibly triumph.

Despite the ambiguities of Fragasso's position, or perhaps because of them, this film is especially worthy of consideration as a work of critical cinema, a cinema critical of the normal, voyeuristic cinema that has dominated cinema from the beginning. This film is potentially empowering and consciousness-raising. Enthusiasts of feminist filmmaking, or of experimental, alternative forms, should hold Troll 2 in high regard.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Manos: The Hands of Fate

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the fourth of my critiques and the one you've all been waiting for.

Film: Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Subtext: Marxism

Made just one year before Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise and just two years before Bernardo Bertolucci's Partner, Manos is a delirious plunge into the same dialectical terrors of bourgeois oppression and of the futility of proletarian struggle.

The film concerns a family--a man, a woman, their prepubescent daughter, and their poodle--looking for a holiday resort. By chance, they stumble upon the lair of the High Priest of Manos, The Master, who lives with his servant, Torgo, and his six wives.

This set-up immediately reveals to us the class struggle. The Master is the bourgeoisie, the land-owner--he is the thesis. Manos, meaning 'hands,' an evil deity who is never seen, clearly represents the power of labour: the means of production. The Master has the power because in his hands are the means of production; this gives him power over others around him and even, he claims, immortality.

Enter the typical American family--the antithesis--a car full of consumers. They meet first with Uberservant, Torgo. Torgo is shifty, full of nervous habits, who takes care of the place "while the Master is away." Torgo is one of the dominated: peasantry, proletariat.

When Torgo lays eyes on the young, pretty American wife, however, he gets ideas of revolt. "The Master wants you," he tells her, "but he can't have you. I want you." He wants to be free, to take control of his own life, to wrest the means of (re)production equally into his hands. The spirit of communism walks in Torgo.

This class struggle between Torgo and the Master is later emphasized as the Master tells Torgo he cannot have a wife of his own because, "You're not one of us." Torgo is low-class, proletariat, destined for service only. Torgo often says the Master has six wives, he doesn't need any more. Of course, need has nothing to do with it: class inequality exists because the means of production (Manos) are in the hands of the few, the Master. Torgo has no wives.

When the Master gets air of the rebellion, he awakes his six wives, that they might perform sacrifices upon the rebels, the unwanted, and maybe take a wife or two in the process. This generates rebellion even amongst his wives. Some refuse to kill a child, some are pleased to kill everyone. These wives are like the aristocrats, some of whom gave their support to the bourgeois to their own destruction, while others fought but wound off no better.

Soon the Master has punished Torgo, burning off his hand--hands being symbolic, in this film, of power--and subduing his rebellious first wife. His first wife believes he is impotent, saying she does not fear his power. The Master, however, does have all the power.

In the meantime, the family is attempting to flee. The capitalist consumers do not want to be caught up in the struggle, in the Revolution. They are afraid. However, finding they have no resources--finding they cannot indulge themselves without the product of the producers--they return to the house of the Master.

Attempting to join into the Revolution far too late in the game, the whole family is overcome. The bullets do not work: Manos really does give immortality to the bourgeoisie. The father is made into a servant, replacing Torgo, who has fled into oblivion (being entirely impotent without his hands), and his wife and daughter have both become new wives of the Master.

This film is special in that it is one of very few Marxist dramas in which the victory belongs to the bourgeoisie. The film's dialectic is such that the consumers arrive to the ordered bourgeois plantation. The plantation's conditions offend the delicate sensibilities of the consumers, who then instigate a revolt by their horror. Where the thesis of the bourgeois Master and antithesis of the consumerist family might have unveiled a synthesis of revolution, this is not the case; in this synthesis, the consumers are swallowed up into the bourgeois domination, the Revolt is suppressed.

If ever there was a true Marxist horror film, then, Manos is certainly the first and possibly the only. While not handled as competently as Bertolucci's 1900, it stands as an offset, showing the other possible course--the more realistic course, perhaps, given recent history. It is recommended for the interested to watch 1900 and Manos: The Hands of Fate as a doublebill.

Because the film does not provide the Revolution, however, it can be argued that the film is the thesis, and Warren has made the audience--we ourselves--the antithesis. If there is to be a synthesis, the synthesis of Revolution, it is to be carried out by us. The action of revolution, as Lina Wertmuller argued, cannot take place in film, for the film is passive; the Revolution must be in reality. The horror of the film places the onus of revolution on us.

This film is highly recommended for Marxist analysts, film studies groups, and for comrades who are preparing for the triumph over capitalism. It could well be watched alongside Wertmuller's Swept Away for a similar depth of insight, with less attractive actors.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Dr. Giggles

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the third of my critiques.
Thankfully, this film wasn't so awful after all.

This Analysis Contains Spoilers

Film: Dr. Giggles (1992)
Subtextual analysis: Classic Psychoanalytic Theory (no Lacan)

Ostensibly a gory, above-average slasher, Dr. Giggles is an investigation into the potential for repressed psychosexual trauma to destroy individuals, families, and even whole towns.

The first frame of the film is a quote from medical pioneer Hippocrates, indicating that extreme treatments are required for extreme illnesses. Indeed, in this film we shall be witness to extreme treatment, in the form of the battle against the titular doctor, against extreme trauma.

The film begins with the doctor escaping from a mental institution, where he had been held--held out of sight, out of mind. This is the first manifestations of the repressed trauma's potential for destroying order. The doctor slices his way to freedom and heads to his home town.

We are next introduced to our heroine, Girl, and her boyfriend, Boyfriend. Girl is somewhat stand-offish around Boyfriend. A group of libidinous teens appear, inviting Girl and Boyfriend to a creepy old house (the site of trauma, as creepy old houses must always be in art). Girl is then shown with her family doctor, who reveals to us the cause of her troubles: it's her heart--a valve has gone wonky and she must avoid stress.

The motif of the heart is important in the richly woven web Manny Coto weaves in Dr. Giggles. For the next scene is of Dr. Giggles, in the basement of an old, dilapidated house (the "creepy old house," naturally). The basement is always symbolic of the subconscious. This is the place of repression. The doctor begins beating the wall with a mallet, revealing a secret area--the depths of the subconscious, the place of secret things hidden from the conscious mind. It is also the home of the Id.

Indeed, in this office, the doctor looks at an old photo of his father, and we are given a flashback. The traumatic past is being bubbled forth. The long-suppressed memories are kicking. It is revealed the doctor is the son of a doctor, a doctor, we're eventually told, who went mad when his wife's heart also went wonky. He began killing patients to save his wife with a heart transplant--the trauma for the town. The son helped. The town then killed the father--the trauma for the doctor.

At this same time, Girl and Dad have a chat revealing the trauma in Girl's life. It seems Mom died from a routine surgery. Girl is afraid of surgery and has a heart problem. Dad, however, has already found a woman, Stepmom, with whom Girl has passive aggressive sparring.

Now we discover how three psychosexual traumas are linked. The town's trauma, Girl's trauma, and Doc's trauma. The heart represents the place of trauma, hidden as it is within the chest. Girl is afraid of surgery, so as not to bring forth her secret love for her father--her heart. Her superego forbids it, just as for the sake of her heart she is forbidden from drinking alcohol, coffee, having sex with Boyfriend, or doing anything strenuous--lest she discover she loves her father.

The teens meet, as arranged, at the creepy old house, Traumasite, we shall call it. Two teens are locked in Traumasite and dispatched. A nosey dog-walker is dispatched. So is another teen couple. Each murder has a medical motif, indicative of the medical source of all three traumas.

All the while, a rookie cop and and old cop have no idea what is going on. In truth, the old cop has an idea, but refuses to accept it. He is the symbolic defensive mechanism of the town's trauma repression. He reacts violently the more he is pressed. The rookie, like an analyst, needing to know, pushes forth and discovers the trauma: the Doctor is alive--shown effectively in flashback cutting his way, as a child, from his dead mother's abdominal cavity, where he had been hidden.

Indeed, this last image is hamfisted. The doctor, called Giggles because of his childlike giggles, is fixated in the oral stage (many of Doc's kills involving inserting phallic objects into orifices, peering through holes--mouths). He giggles and takes what he wants, because the child has an underdeveloped ego and superego; it is pure id, appetitive. There is nothing sexual in the doctor's motivations, then.

Learning of the heart problem of Girl, Doc becomes obsessed with her, due to her similarity to the trauma. Doc specifically states his purpose is to cure the town, because it is sick. Indeed, Doc's presence is both symptom and cure for the sick town and the sick girl. He wants to cure the girl's broken heart. However, the doctor is the trauma.

Doc finally captures Girl, after killing Old Cop. Now that Old Cop is dead, the defense mechanism is removed. It is now possible to get to the trauma and destroy it. However, it is trying to destroy itself. Trauma pulls towards Thanatos, rather than Eros.

The Doc takes Girl down into the basement, into the secret room--in fact, it is not a secret room, but a secret hospital. This is pure expressionism; it is so implausible, it must be taken as purely expression of the depth of the subconscious disturbance. Rookie follows into this subterranean hospital, through a waiting room full of dead, heartless bodies--casualties of the trauma.

Rookie manages to distract Doc long enough for Girl and Boyfriend to make a getaway. The stairs fall. The subconscious does not want to let go. It wants to subsume consciousness. Girl, with the help of Boyfriend--perhaps symbolic of consciousness, but this analysis should not get carried away--escape into consciousness and may now be at peace.

Furthermore, with Stepmom dead and Dad recovering, the world seems rosy for Girl. The has left trauma in the subconsciouss, the Traumasite has been exploded. What remains? The trauma does. It attacks again while Girl is getting surgery for her heart. Again, Girl triumphs and kills Doc with medical implements.

Dr. Giggles is thus less a slasher than an expressionistic psychodrama, in which the subject recovers itself through a process of self-analysis, engaging with the trauma at the Traumasite, in the subconscious, with the aid of Rookie and Boyfriend--analysis and consciousness--to free herself from trauma and ready herself for the becoming well, ordered in life, represented by the surgery. Hippocrates was right, 'for extreme diseases, extreme remedies.'

This film is recommended for students of psychoanalysis and literary departments for a fascinating depiction of psychosexual trauma playing out in a cinematic field.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: The Beast of Yucca Flats

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the second of my critiques.

Film: The Beast of Yucca Flats (1965)
Subtextual analysis: Queer theory

In The Beast of Yucca Flats, filmmaker Coleman Francis brings his audience a startling depiction of heteronormativity defending its hegemony against deviations from its sexual standard.

The film begins with a pre-credit sequence of a beautiful, slightly androgynous woman coming out of the shower. She is then killed by an unseen man. This sequence sets the stage for the films thematic concern with repressed homosexuality bubbling up into violence.

After the credits, we are shown a Russian scientist, who has lost his family, bringing scientific secrets to America. He is chased by Russian spies into Yucca flats, where A-Bomb testing is being done. The explosion transforms him into a monster that desires only to kill. Or so it seems.

The scientist has just lost his family. This alienation from a normal family is not the cause of, but is caused by, his becoming a monster, thematically speaking. For in this film, the constant, clipped narration insists on equating science and 'progress'--the 'whirlwind of progress.' Characters are referred to as 'caught' in progress. Science is not itself in this film; it is a symbolic stand-in for liberality in society; that is, the beginning of alternative lifestyles.

The scientist is transformed into a monster by 'science'; he has come out of the closet, and for society, this is a transgressive figure, because uncategorizable, neither male nor female. He is a monster. Hence, he is chased into Yucca Flats bringing secrets to America. The secret of his homosexuality. His becoming a monster is his coming out of the closet.

The first killing the monster performs, then, is naturally upon a heteronormal couple. A young man and a young woman stop along the side of the road with car troubles. The monster kills first the man then the young woman. This is a semiotic enactment of the fears of heterosexual society that homosexuals are destructive of family.

The heroes of the film are then revealed, Jim and Joe. Joe is the first to discover the bodies. He then drives to Jim's house and calls him down. Though Jim--Jim Archer, to emphasize the phallic masculinity of his character, the one who aims a phallus and shoots--is found in bed with a beautiful woman, he instantly leaves the bed upon Joe's call.

We are even told that Jim and Joe patrol the desert together seven days a week. Jim and Joe are, as is emphasized by their similar-sounding names, repressed homosexuals. They love one another, but cannot reveal it. They are the perfect team to do battle with the monster--the monster they cannot face in themselves. It is the monster because, in Julia Kristeva's terms, it is Abject--it is what they themselves potentially could, and perhaps will, become.

At the same time, we are introduced to a family of city-folk passing through. The children feed soda to pigs and notice coyotes around the road. The narration states that the coyotes are being driven from their grounds by missile testing. Again, this is emphasizing how science--social progress--is destructive of the order of nature; for pigs normally don't drink soda, and coyotes normally avoid human settlements. Hence the arguments of conservatives that homosexuality is against nature.

This family stops along the road and the children become lost. The father goes looking for them, worried. The worry is the exposure of children to the monster of homosexuality.

At the same time, Jim Archer has decided to enter a plane to hunt for the monster by rifle. He spots the father, assuming the father is the monster, begins shooting. This is only too appropriate. Jim is unconsciously trying to destroy the very family form he has deceived himself into trying to belong to; he is unconsciously aiding the monster.

Meanwhile the monster watches the children bending over a pool to drink. As he does, he holds his large stick horizontally, pointing his phallus at the vulnerable boys. When the boys detect him, they run screaming, while the monster waves his stick.

The boys hide in a cave--taking shelter in the womb, in a vaginal opening. The monster cannot find them there, though it comes right to the opening itself. It cannot plumb the depths of femininity. It merely tosses down its stick in representation of sexual frustration.

As the boys make an escape, Joe and Jim have a showdown with the monster. They shoot it--with their phallic guns--and the monster begins to wrestle with them. Joe and Jim wrestle with their latent homosexual desires, and eventually heteronormativity triumphs, as they destroy the monster--though Joe, the most effeminate, is almost overcome.

The final shot is of a rabbit wandering before the face of the dead monster--Coleman Francis emphasizing the triumph of the natural over the unnatural.

All throughout this film a mysterious voice-over renders the proceedings abstract. Though we know it is Jim shooting the father from a plane, the narrator states, "A man runs; somebody shoots at him." The universality of the events are thus brought forward by Francis, who is trying to incite the fear of the family-destroying homosexuality alternative lifestyles, "progress," is ushering in.

There is no missing the strong attack of this film. For a greater understanding of the way heteronormative discourse is used to discourage and diminish the esteem of alternative sexualities, The Beast of Yucca Flats is highly recommended to gay/bi/lesbian groups.

What a load of hooey.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Monster a Go-Go

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the first of my critiques.


Film: Monster a Go-Go (1965)
Subtext: Post-colonialism

Monster a Go-Go is a deep, probing investigation into the conflicts between imperialist oppression and dominated, colonized races that strive to attain their own autonomy and authenticity, rather than be assimilated and lose their Otherness.

The film concerns a space shuttle that has been sent forth to investigate space, to prepare space of colonization. This mission reverberates with 16th century imperialist exploration. As with those explorations, the ship returns, bearing something dangerous for the Empire: the Other. This Other is a monster, possibly the very astronaut first sent out--just as colonialists eventually become a part of the culture they colonize--that begins killing people it finds with radiation and strangulation.

The Empire, Western European society, in this film is represented by two parties: the scientists and the military. Scarcely has there been more adequate representation of the theories of Michel Foucault. Foucault postulated that Truth is a function of Power; that the group with the greatest power determines what is true or false. The military, which is symbolic of power, has at it's command science, which determines what counts as true or false.

The presence of the Other always creates between itself and the Empire what is called Difference. While the autonomy of the Other depends upon the survival of Difference, the Empire's Power depends upon the destruction of Difference.

Thus in Monster a Go Go, Difference is represented by the radiation that emits from the monster. This radiation is referred to by one of the scientists as 'contaminating.' In one scene, the monster appears to sunbathing women, who run away, afraid of contamination by the Other. Otherness is not acceptable to the Empire.

Initially the monster is in the wild--representative of the savage, uncivilized state Western society presumes is held by those it hasn't assimilated. In the wild it kills only those that emerge from cars or helicopters, indicating a rejection of industrialist forces of conformity.

Finally, however, a scientist manages to take possession of the monster, where he gives it an antidote to try make it normal. This is an obvious reference to education, whereby the 'savage' or non-westerner is made to think according to European standard--the standard of Truth prescribed by Power. While institutionalized in this manner, the monster does no harm, and things go quiet.

Eventually the monster rejects its bondage and escapes the institution, running back into the wild, where it proceeds to terrorize with its Otherness, again killing a truck driver.

The monster then goes into the city. The city is the center of civilization. The presence of the Other in civilization's center risks contaminating civilization with savage Otherness. Hence, the radiation, we are told, can contaminate everyone within a fifty-mile radius.

The military at this point is given command. Where socializing forces of education have been rejected, sheer institutionlized Power must be turned against the Other to bring it into conformity or to destroy it.

In the meanwhile the scientists are trying to figure out and analyze the monster. If Knowledge can explain away Difference, to place the Other under a reductionist microscope, its autonomy is held in check.

However, the scientists do not succeed. The film ends with the monster cornered by the military and the scientists, only to instantly vanish. It has no place in the ontology of the Empire. If it will not conform, its very existence is not acknowledged.

In a final, puzzling moment, we are told that the astronaut has actually been found in a boat out to sea, alive and normal. The monster, then, was both a monstrous doppleganger, indicating how the Other and ourselves are potentially the same; and both the astronaut and not the astronaut, to emphasize the potential within each individual to return to attain one's own autonomy outside of the bounds prescribed by Western hegemony.

Topping off this whole tale is a voice-over in the style of a cautionary educational short, or a piece of propaganda. The narration announces, prior to each death or accident, a trite, cautionary statement, "if only," to emphasize the errors surrounding the treatment of the Other. It is vehemently on the side of Power, warning the viewer of the dangers of allowing the Other excessive freedom: a reactionary statement to the rights moments of the '60s, at which time this film was made.

The final lines of the narration solidly emphasizes the victory of Power and Empire, and its ability to dictate what is true and real, "The lines between science fiction and science fact are microscopically thin." Indeed, it is Power that decides what is fact and what is fiction.

This film is recommended to all rights groups as a reminder of the oppressive forces that one must fight against for one's cultural and personal autonomy. It is worth watching for its ideological power, capacity for consciousness raising, and empowering, sympathetic depiction of a being completely erased from existence simply for being different.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Intro

I love subtextual film criticism, especially when it's fun, when a guy knows how to write in a readable, charming way. What I love the most about it is that it doesn't have a fucking thing to do with what the writer or the actor or the filmmakers intended. It just has to work. And if you can make your case with as few exceptions as possible, then that's great.
- Quentin Tarantino, on subtextual (i.e. ideological) criticism.

At this point, I'd only been writing reviews of films I like. This is very safe territory for me. I thought it was time I beforced to review films I don't like. So I asked some friends to suggest any film they might want me to review--no matter how awful or vapid--and I would try to find something positive to say about it by providing a different type of subtextual analysis for each film.

These were the rules I stipulated.

1. Film must be over an hour in length.
2. Film must be made between 1950 and 1998 (inclusive).
3. Film must be horror.
4. Film must be readily available, by netflix or, ahem, torrent.
5. Film must be available with English audio or subs.
6. Suggest only one or two films per person.

From Monday to Friday on week in December, 2008, I wrote an analysis per day after viewing and taking notes on each of the films I was suggested.

Monday: Monster a Go-Go
Tuesday: The Beast of Yucca Flats
Wednesday: Dr. Giggles
Thursday: Manos: The Hands of Fate
Friday: Troll 2

You can read my conclusion on the long week of analyzing these subtle masterpieces, as well, in the epilogue.

Gertrude Stein's Night of the Living Dead

Remaining fragments of the single horror story written by the great Gertrude Stein, found in archives by yours truly.

...but if, when the living dead is there, then there is living dead in that place that it is. This and thats afford the living dead great pleasure. Although the living dead would, if they knew that they were that they were what they were, would to the place for this, yet the living dead is a living dead is a living dead is a living...
...the farmhouse was that it is to be with those that still are of what was, but the living dead is to be if only the living dead had not been but is. That is who, what, where those it is that what is where. The living dead are most opposed to being shot in the head. To be shot in the head is opposed by the living dead. They die from that. The living dead die if shot in the head and become the dying dead, then the dead dead, the dead dead being the future of the dying dead and that the future of the living dead, if and only if shot in the head...

The rest was lost to moths.