1991 Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs was released to great commercial and critical success eventually winning 7 Academy Awards including a sweep of the ‘Big Five’ some only three films have accomplished.

In addition to accolades the film also drew protests and criticism directed towards the film’s serial killer antagonist Jame Gumb. Protesters picketed theaters and there were even concerns that the national broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony might be disrupted. The fictional Gumb stalks, abducts, kills, and skins women in pursuit of making a ‘woman suit’ to fulfill a twisted and erroneous self-image as a transsexual. The script goes out of its way to lay out that Gumb is not a transsexual but rather his distorted self-hate had created the self-deception. Furthermore, the audience is informed that Gumb was not born a monster but made one by years of systematic abuse. Something very true of serial killers. Both the transsexual and homosexual communities presented grave concerns that the character perpetuated harmful, disparaging, and untrue stereotypes about gay and trans people. Such a viewpoint is quite understandable given cinema’s history with the gay community and their frequent depiction as dangerous deviants. I will leave it to the reader to determine for themselves if the script did enough to separate the character of Jame Gumb from the hurtful stereotype. What is important to this essay is that there were public protests about this character and the man he was depicted.

Pulp Fiction released three years 1994. A collection of sensationalist short stories connected by a common collection of characters Pulp Fiction also garnered commercial and critical success winning one Academy Award for its screenplay and the Palme d’Or at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

In episode 5 of the film, The Gold Watch, boxer Butch, on the run from the mob after not throwing a fight he had been bribed to fix, finds himself and the local mob boss, Marsellus Wallace, captured and imprisoned in the basement of a pawn show by Maynard and Zed.

Maynard and Zed abduct, rape, and enslave unwary men and Butch and Marsellus are their next victims. While the pair are busy raping Marsellus, Butch breaks free, kills Maynard, and leaves Zed to the torturous death Marsellus plans for the rapist.

Pulp Fiction faced no protests over the psychopathic raping homosexuals characters of Maynard and Zed. No picket lines outside of theaters, no threats that might derail the live broadcast of the Academy Awards. Maynard and Zed inspired none of the outrage seen just a few years earlier with the character Jame Gumb.

Why?

There’s no genius, albeit criminal, psychiatrist explaining that Maynard and Zed are the products of cruel systematic abuse. There’s no backstory, no establishment of the history to serve as a reason for their horrific acts. The pair are presented fully formed, without comment or elaboration, and no one protests.

There is something that makes these two characters stand out from every other character in the film. Despite the film being set in Los Angeles Maynard and Zed from the moment they speak their first word are identifiable as southern. And there lies the answer to the lack of outrage and protest.

Their southern identities are the dominate ones overriding all other associations and characteristics. Harkening back to the classic adventure film Deliverance all manner of sadistic behavior can be explained with an accent. Characters speaking in such a manner can be stupid, cruel, or rapists, and it is simply accepted as true their nature.

Both The Silence of the Lambs and Pulp Fiction are masterworks of cinema, and both reside in my library, but it is always instructive to examine what we accept without question.

First off, I am sorry that there haven’t been updates the past couple of weekdays. I just haven’t had a lot to write about on this blog before I go to work and perhaps it is because the work on my novel is going very well. (My minimum word count goal for the end of this week was to be at 30,000 words and I will be just north of 33,000. Yay team me!)

Later today I am going to be picking up from my local library branch a copy of as play Pools Paradise: A Farce in 3 acts by Phillip King. Now I am not the type of person who just sits around and reads plays for entertainment. Go and see them yes in pre-covid times but read them, not so much. What makes this different is that way way back in 1979 I appeared in a community theater production of this play.

This what I mean by I must be getting old, the reliving of things from my teenage youth.

I had a tremendously fun time acting in that play. The rehearsal where one actor flubbed a line in the climatic third act but the cascade from that out of sequence line delivery altered the next person’s line and then the next, tumbling out of control until it came around to me and not only did I have to work out the right line I had to do math on the fly in my head so the number that I said would actually match up to where we were in the characters countdown toward victory. The opening night when a prop clock flew off the stage, as it had during final dress rehearsal during which the director had advised the actor that if it did that the director would return it to the stage and that the actor should NOT leave the stage to get it. Or course she did, bouncing it off the tips of her fingers sending it rolling up the aisle where she chased like a kitten.

For a few months now I have been thinking about that play, what I remember from it and so on. Last week I discovered the city library has a copy and I had them dispatch to my local branch. It will be curious to see what I think of it reading something I spent so much time on 43 years ago.

Not going to chat about news, political, or world events this is my 2021 and how it went.

First off and best I did not lose anymore dear friends to this thrice curse plague. Nearlyeveryone I know has been vaccinated and that is quite important to me.

Thanks to the fantastic scientific advancements of the last few decades and my day-job within the health care industry I received my vaccinations and boosters quickly and while I have not yet fully relaxed public gatherings, I have returned to seeing film in the cinema.

Since mid-May, when I treated myself on my birthday, I have seen 20 feature films in theaters and with one more today that will bring my 2021 total to 21. (updated the count as I had forgotten the 1 film I had not watched at an AMC Theater)

I completed my first murder mystery novel. It is of course science-fiction set aboard a generations starship which after 200 years of utopian coexistence faces its first murder. That novel is out on submission and here’s hoping 2022 brings a bit of good fortune on that front.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe shows began streaming on Disney+ and while I have not loved all of them nor have I hated any of them. WandaVision remains the one I enjoyed the most and the one I respect for taking the biggest of swings at doing something different while The Falcon and The Winter Soldier stuck me as the most standard approach of the attempts.

June witnessed another milestone in in aging as I had cataracts removed from both eyes. I am now seeing far better than I have in decades and the experience was quite interesting. Overall, my health was stable and fair during 2021 with all my chronic conditions well managed.

2021 was not the year of liberation that I or many of us had hoped for and its tragic and stupid that this nation saw more deaths from the pandemic after the introduction of the vaccines than before it but personally I and my friends thrived.

Since mid-October when the annual period for Medicare Advantage plans opens for the next year’s enrollment opens up I have been working quite a bit of overtime. This is good when it comes to the paycheck and helping out my teammates as we bury ourselves in the mountain of work that comes at us but this week it seems I hit a wall and have throttled back by overtime hours. I could feel that I was perilously closed to igniting a chain of migraines and that would be no good for me or my work. Now, getting back to a normal schedule I can resume some of the activities I have placed on hold such as more writing, I never fully stopped but drastically reduced the hours, attend writer group meetings (virtually of course), and perhaps even relax a little.

This is a good day to initiate this transition. Today is my sweetie-wife’s birthday and our 14th wedding anniversary. Definitely not a day for overtime and rising out of a warm bed at 5:30 am.

Just a few random quick thoughts before I head out to my day-job.

Katla ended well. While one of the characters provided a scientific sounding explanation for the strange events and doppelgangers a few selected shots and sequences I think refute his theory. In my opinion the entire Netflix series is well worth watching.

The Republican Party continues its drift towards authoritarianism. I say drift because I believe that most elected pols are not choosing their direction but rather utterly terrified of their base and loses their positions are pushed by the currents that are generated by the most devoted bad actors. At this time nearly the entire party is comprised of invertebrates.

Next month is the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival which last year was entirely virtual and this year attendees can choose to be in person or online. I have my tickets and plan to be in person at the Frida Theater in Santa Ana California.

People who have heard me talk about story construction know the importance I place on endings. The end of the tale is where theme, plot, and story unify into a meaningful and satisfying whole. It is also where David Lowery’s The Green Knight fails in its quest to be great cinema.

The Green Knight a cinematic adaptation of the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, starring Dev Patel as Gawain, nephew of the king, who I the script is never named, who longs for the honor and respect of a knight but who spends more time in brothers than at mass. During Christmas celebrations the mysterious Green Knight, played in perfect casting by Ralph Ineson, offers up a game to the king and his Round Table Knights. He shall let one of them strike any blow they wish and claim his war axe as their prize but in one year’s time they must seek him out and receive a blow from him equal to the one they delivered. Gawain, desperate for a tale worthy of retelling, steps forward and delivers what should have been a mortal blow but magic is at work and the Green Knight is not killed. Gifting the prize to Gawain the Green Knight departs leaving the young man with the quest to seek him out at the next Christmas and receive his mortal strike. The years passes quickly and at the next Yule Gawain departs to find his destiny with the majority of the film’s two hour run time devoted to his travels, encounters, and adventures under the growing shadow of his doom.

The Green Knight is a lyrical, symbolic, and metaphorical piece of cinema. The cinematography is lush, colorful, and mysterious with every frame a lovely painting of light, hue, and shadow. This is not a film shot to be clear but to be beautiful and in that goal is succeeds beyond measure. The performances, save Patel’s, are not meant as realistic human portrayals but rather expressions of the mythic folklore presented on the screen leaving on Gawain’s as the emotive naturalistic performance. The film takes place in a world of magic, monsters, and mystery but while special effects are utilized in the telling of the tale, they are not the drivers of the experience. The overall mood of the film is contemplative, and it seeks to burrow into the ultimate human condition, knowledge of our mortality, rather than distract with spectacle.

Where The Green Knight falls is in a rewriting not merely a reinterpretation of the legend’s conclusion and in doing so stripped away the myth’s meaning ending on a confusing, ambiguous conclusion that failed to satisfy. The more familiar you are with the original myth the more likely the ending is going to anger you. Subtle establishment of silent characters would lead someone familiar with the tale to expect the traditional end only to have it stripped away.

I enjoyed The Green Knight, but the altered ending spoiled what might have been a masterpiece of mythological cinema.

The Green Knight, released from A24 pictures, is currently playing in theaters.