Show Me the Love!
Page 11
And it’s not all just fast cuts. Certainly the frenzied action of battle lends itself to quick cuts. But for the coup de gras, that death cut needs lingering finesse as we watch the victim realize they’re about to die. Time slows down for a person in a life-threatening situation so show us that achingly slow progression towards the tragic end.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s quite satisfying to see the lover of Death and Destruction brought down by the very thing they planned to use against others. In Raiders of the Lost Ark we are first horrified and then we cheer when the evil Nazi’s face melts after the Lost Arc is opened. Similarly, you want to show us the expression of gleeful anticipation, the item itself, and then the shock, awe, and horror as he realizes his plan has turned against him.
Conclusion
Since all life must eventually face death, you will always have a connection with your audience when this is an essential part of a character or a story.
Be sure to make it increasingly clear whether your character is motivated by rage, madness, grief, or just plain morbidity.
The love of death and destruction creates great characters and dangerous situations – just the thing for your protagonists to overcome.
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Exercise #1 – Awareness
What is the most destructive person or event you can think of from myth, history, current events, or media?
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Exercise #2 – Writing
Write a short scene where one person does not want to destroy or kill but is urged to do so by someone else in order to save the day, save other people, etc.
Then re-write the scene where that same person is quite ready to do the destruction and the killing and have the other person trying to convince them not to.
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Further Reading
1491 – The Amearicas Before Columbus – Charles C. Mann
Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud
Decameron, The – Boccaccio
“Dirge without Music” [poem] - Edna St. Vincent Millay
Golden Compass, The trilogy – Philip Pullman
Inner Drives – Pamela Jaye Smith
Life Against Death – Norman O. Brown
Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Power of the Dark Side, The - Pamela Jaye Smith
Silence of the Lambs, The series
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work – Babiak & Hare
Symbols.Images.Codes - Pamela Jaye Smith
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
“War – huh! What is it good for?” article – Pamela Jaye Smith
Further Viewing
Addams Family, The
Battle of the Bulge –“When will the war be over?” “It’s the best of all possible endings, the war will continue forever and ever.”
Beyond Honor
Boondock Saints
Conan the Barbarian
Dark Knight, The
Death Takes a Holiday
Dexter
Dr. Strangelove
Fight Club
Friday the 13TH – the series
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The – entire series of books and films
Gladiator
Hotel Rwanda
Hunger Games, The
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
James Bond films – all those big bad guys out to destroy the world
Javier Bardem characters in No Country for Old Men and Skyfall
Killing, The
Killing Fields, The
Mad Max – the series of films
Meet Joe Black
Mummy, The - series of films
Night of the Living Dead
Nightmare on Elm Street, A – series of films
Predator
Quentin Tarentino – all of his movies have characters in them who are in love with death and destruction.
Saga of Bjorn, The - animated short http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV5w262XvCU
Silence of the Lambsk, The - series of films
Spawn
Zombie Apocalypse
Edward R. Murrow interviewing J. Robert Oppenheimer http://www.history.com/speeches/speeches-j-robert-oppenheimer-on-government-secrecy#speeches-j-robert-oppenheimer-on-government-secrecy // http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=see+it+now&p=4&item=T76:0013
J. Robert Oppenheimer
http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=see+it+now&p=4&item=T76:0013
http://www.history.com/speeches/speeches-j-robert-oppenheimer-on-government-secrecy#speeches-j-robert-oppenheimer-on-government-secrecy
CHAPTER NINE
Interspecies Love
A SUDDEN blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
William Butler Yeats - “Leda and the Swan”
With so much romance, love, lust, and just plain sex going on between humans and vampires, humans and werewolves, humans and zombies, and humans and who-knows-what, let us first define Interspecies Love.
If the human is mating with anyone that is now or ever was an actual human who has been compromised by a DNA override such as a curse, a bite, the phase of the moon, etc., that is not Interspecies.
Some creatures are on the borderline between human and non-human, such as fairies, elves, and gnomes, depending on the mythology and the story. In The Lord of the Rings for instance, all these races were humanoid and therefore their love affairs were not inter-species but intra-species.
In mythology there are myriad examples of humans mating with animals, angels, and dieties. A modern version is Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, where an angel falls in love with a human and gives up his angelic form to become human in order to be with her.
You might suppose all aliens would fit the bill. But not all off-planet beings would qualify. Some are still quite human, such as Leeloo in The 5TH Element, who has four times the DNA of Earthly humans. She’s just more human than humans, rather than being of a separate species. The Star Trek series is filled with lots of alien - but humanoid - beings [Romulan, Vulcan, Klingon, etc.] who mate with humans just fine – as Captain Kirk proves again and again.
Interspecies Love is an excellent story device through which to make observations on and suggestions for the way we humans treat each other, both as individuals and as societies, nations, and races. It is also a clever way to portray the more animal-like aspects of our human nature.
The Defining Myth
“...the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose....There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6: 2 & 4
Ancient astronaut aficionados frequently quote these verses as proof that this planet was visited by aliens. Between this and the angels they do have a curious case.
Exemplar Movie
Avatar
Why it exists (evolutionary back story)
There comes a time in the progress of evolution when increasingly complex diversity requires a new taxonomy. At that point there is a separation of the species and interbreeding is no longer possible. If it were then all creatures might just be a huge muddle of mixed-up genes and who knows what you’d end up with – which has inspired a number of stories such as The Island of Dr. Moreau and the Jessica Alba TV series Dark Angel where she is part-feline. These stories are not such a far cry these days when we’re putting chicken genes into tomatoes and spider genes into milk cows. Who knows what m
ight have happened had Nature not laid down lines over which the genes cannot naturally cross.
Until fairly recently it was thought that early humanoids such as the Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals did not interbreed either with each other or with homo sapiens sapiens (us). New evidence reveals that we all did. You probably won’t be too surprised to learn that many humans have Neanderthal genes. Jean Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear series posited this interbreeding and the breaking away of the different groups to pursue their own track, leaving the older types to fade into pre-history.
Some imaginative versions of humanity’s source calls for off-world aliens doing genetic manipulation on the local primates to create modern humans. Depending on the nature of those aliens this could be Interspecies. But if you watch Stargate, the last episodes of Battlestar Gallactica, or read Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you find a feedback loop of humanoid-to-humanoid.
How it works (physiology & psychology)
If you ascribe to the idea that genes have their own agenda and are always searching for fresh DNA and stronger immune systems, then surely some humans have at times looked upon favoured animals and said, “Yes, let’s be more like that!” Typically though they tended to eat the hearts and body parts of the creatures rather than mate with them. Lying down with a lion doesn’t have quite the appeal of slow-roasted lion heart. But you can see how the stories would be spun around the hunter’s campfires.
Parallel with and opposite to the physical drive to enrich the local gene pool is the psychological drive to keep it pure. A persistent tendency among invading peoples is to categorize the people they invade as “not quite human”. They are animalistic, heathens, pagan, primitive, and not worthy of being treated like humans. There is also a tendency for the invading males to mate with the invadee females. It seldom goes the other way. And you seldom hear anyone pointing out that if the locals are “not really human” then is your mating with them bestiality?
How it serves us now
Is this preparing us for alien contact? Is it an artifact of ancient astronauts doing breeding experiments here on Earth? What is the truth behind the longevity and strength of this concept? It is a long-lived tendency as evidenced in cave paintings, in hieroglyphics on Egyptian temple friezes, sculpted on Mayan pyramids, and preserved in the folklore of cultures around the world.
The concept is still used to justify people’s maltreatment of other humans because they are “not like us”. Genocide is just a short step away.
Dirty jokes abound about people having sex with non-human species, particularly farm animals.
And really, you’ve just got to ask...what’s the deal with alien anal probes?
Examples in Myth and Legend
Sphinxes, griffins, centaurs, gorgons, Anubis and other such Egyptian gods, mermaids.... With so many part human/part animal creatures in the myths of the world one begins to wonder if there might not have been some facts behind the stories. Is it racial memory, the preservation of deep history in myth, the fanciful telling of science experiments gone bad? Or perhaps a misunderstanding of the complexity of evolution and the branching of the tree of life from single-cell life forms to today’s humans? Many very interesting, fun, exciting, inspiring, or scary stories center around some mix of humans and another species.
Greek king god Zeus was a rampant womanizer of mortal females, immortal females, and half-mix females. Seduction was often easy because, well, he was king of the gods. Often though, the mortal girls knew about his goddess-wife Hera’s jealous rages and preferred not to be turned into a cow. Zeus disguised himself for many of his affairs. As a bull, he kidnapped young Europa. As a swan, he seduced Leda, who bore him Pullox and Helen (later of Troy).
In a similar case of bird-to-human mating Christianity portrays the divine Holy Spirit as a dove, visiting the mortal virgin Mary – the result being Jesus.
In Cretan myths Pasiphae was the wife of King Minos. Minos was given a white bull that he was supposed to sacrifice to the gods. He treasured it and didn’t sacrifice it. The angry god caused his wife Queen Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull and mate with it, using a device created by Daedalus. The result was the half-human half-bull Minotaur. Daedalus then built the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was imprisoned.
Joseph Campbell tells the tale of a native American princess who marries a buffalo god to help save her people.
Oscar Wilde’s “The Fisherman and the Mermaid” in his Fairy Tales book is a version of the Irish stories about selkies, as in The Secret of Roan Inish. Selkies are seals who come to shore, shed their skin and take on the appearance of human women. Hide the skin and she stays human; if she puts it back on she returns to being a seal.
Examples in History and Current Events
A wicked rumour was put out about Catherine the Great that she died when a beloved horse weighed too much for the harness holding it above her bed and it crashed down, killing them both. Serious historians wave this off but the Czarina was however known to have lots and lots and lots of very human lovers.
These sorts of accusations and aspersions are always being cast about, particularly about people who handle animals.
And as above, this concept is too often used to oppress other people by categorizing them as animals.
Though we have no real-life cases at this point, hundreds or thousands of years from now there might be plenty of examples of human earthlings mating with off-world species. It can certainly make for intriguing sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural stories.
Examples in Media
His Monkey Wife by John Collier is an amusing and pointed allegory for miscegenation. In this book an Englishman comes back from Africa with an astonishingly literate female chimpanzee who is in love with him. [Collier also wrote the screenplay for Hepburn-Bogard film The African Queen.]
Avatar is an excellent example of technologically advanced cultures taking advantage of other beings who are seen as “less than”. There is interspecies romantic Love between Jake and Neytiri and a generalized mutual respect and love between the human scientist Grace and the Na’vi.
In The Lilttle Mermaid a fish-girl gives up her voice in order to get legs and be able to walk on land and marry the prince.
The first Alien film shows female human crew-member Lambert being brutally and fatally raped by the Alien. Earlier, the male crewman Kane was orally raped and in the grossest case of interspecies breeding ever, gives birth to the new alien as it bursts out of his chest.
In Babylon 5 of the aliens had “multiple sexual appendages” which others found fascinating, not scary.
Examples in Music
"Earth Girls are Easy" - Julie Brown
"The Man Who Fell to Earth"
Symbols
Two very different versions of the same thing in juxtaposition: eyes, hands, sex organs, etc.
In Avatar the helicopters and the flying dragons well represent the differences between the humans and the Na’vi.
Mixed creatures such as centaurs, sphinxes, mermaids, etc.
Key Element – The Shining Action
The kiss and the transformation because of it - like frogs turning back into princes. There is the look of wonderment [Starman] or the look of astonished terror [Alien].
In Galaxy Quest when human Fred Kwan and Thermian Laliari embrace, her “appearance generator” is over-ridden by her true form and an octopus tentacle comes up behind Fred and wraps him in an embrace. She gives him a questioning look that says, “You okay with this?” He swoons into her arms, both humanoid and octopoid.
The actual mating act, as with Leda and the swan [Zeus] from the Pompeii mural.
The birth of the offspring with characteristics of both parents’ species, as in Rosemary’s Baby.
Written Descriptions
Alien species can be the metaphor for human groups and conflicts between them. In District 9 the sharp delineations of white-vs-black apartheid were played out with the humans-vs-aliens. In Alien Nat
ion the Newcomers were stand-ins for issues of racism, immigration, gender discrimination, and sexual orientation. The book series Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and The Golden Torque series by Julian May both offer deep commentary on human customs, myths, religions, and prejudices through the use of interspecies interactions.
Compare and contrast – how are their heads/limbs/mouths/sex organs alike or different? Make the descriptions either wondrous or horrifying, depending on the nature of the impending relationship between the human and the alien.
Show the differences before you get them together. Laliari in Galaxy Quest; when they forget to turn on their Appearance Generators, the earthlings see the Thermians in their true form of tall, upright walking octopii not even faintly resembling humans. In Starman the ball of light took on the form of Jeff Bridges by absorbing his DNA through a lock of hair. It’s still an alien, it just looks human. The alien and the earth woman make love and she is impregnated with the seed of her cloned late husband.
If positive results -- a stronger bond to something higher and different.