Poe Had it Right...

Alright guys. It's Poe time. I always have loved the works of Edgar Allen Poe (I'm not that morbid though, I promise) as they are in a sense the precursors to many a great literary works to come. Think about it. Poe, although retaining a definite style, worked with many different genres; mystery, horror, romance, although I don't really think he worked with comedy much. Someone should've just given poor Edgar a hug.

But I digress... there are many things that Poe did right when it came to writing short stories, specifically horror stories. I think that hollywood could take a few hints from, hmmm, let's say, The Fall of the House of Usher. So let's take these factors that Poe used and make ourselves a horror movie. Brace yourself.

Okay. the first thing that we need is that creepy setting; one that tells the viewer/reader from the beginning that something is off. In the Fall of the House of Usher, Poe does this by setting the dreary atmosphere of the mansion, along with the strange contradictory detail that the condition of the house is good, although each individual brick shows the effects of decay. That sounds pretty undead, don't you think?

Next: the classic psychopath. That one character whose sanity is only so-so from the beginning; this opens up a plethora of plot twist possibilities. Are they the person to blame? Do they simply see what other people don't? Will all of the other characters lose their sanity? You don't know what's up with them! You know why? Because they're crazy! Boom. Genius.  In the case of the Fall of the House of Usher, this character happens to be Lord Usher himself; he seems to have known that his sister was not dead through his unsettling nervousness a long time before the narrator is even slightly suspicious. This, along with the setting of the house of Usher gives us a nice taste of dramatic irony.

And, with this lovely plot setup that we have, there is only one thing more that we need to get it all going; a reason for the main character to stay in the suspicious place which could cause harm to come upon them. Something that keeps them from just saying "hell no" and hauling ass out of that abandoned house. In the case of the Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator is concerned for Usher's health, and upon his request decides to not abandon his childhood friend in his time of need.

So, we have our creepy setting, our crazy person, and the thing that forces us to stay with our crazy person in the creepy setting. So when the time comes, that moment of blinding, intense terror has to be perfect. Our narrator without even thinking runs for his life out of the House of Usher, only looking back later to see it crumble to it's ruin.

Now, the ending is important. After the House of Usher is gone, the reader pictures the blood red moon, the deep, dark night... was it all a dream? Is the narrator crazy? A mysterious ending is key to a good scary movie. I find that the more I have to think about the movie/ story ending, the more it puzzles me, and the more it entertains me. So get obscure, Hollywood!

What's that? If I could change anything about the typical scary movie, what would it be? Well for starters, PLEASE, for once could y'all please kill off the brunette first? I'm tired of my sister blondes always dying first because of that one bad decision to separate from the group. On a more serious note, I would fix the amount of scary to amount of gore ratio. Just look at Poe; not a single instance of bloodshed is described in the Fall of the House of Usher, and yet, it's still a chilling and thrilling story. So get more creative, and less knife happy.

Thus concludes our adventure with Poe and his incredible gift with the genre of horror.

All Things Haunted

There are two types of people in the world; the people who deny the existence of dark forces in our world, and those who are either secretly or openly fascinated by the thought of said evil; maybe even obsessed with it. As American citizens, the idea is thrust upon us time and time again by scary TV shows, horror movies, supernatural documentaries, books upon books of encounters of the mysterious and unknown, and even the feeling you get when you walk past a neon "PSYCHIC" sign in the window of a less than well maintained building. I think it's safe to say that the majority of the American population can be described as the latter of the two options.

But why? Why especially Americans? What does this say about our culture?

Well there is the easily explained theory that us McDonalds lovin' Americans love to poke our noses in places where we really shouldn't be, but hey. This would be a really short blog post.

To see where this infatuation with dark forces, occults, hauntings, and all of the rest of that good stuff comes from, let's take a look at our roots. Think back to American colonization; one of the first significant (and quite dark) events in American history was the Salem Witch trials which were the result of the crazed paranoia of several quite religious protestants. And bingo. Religion. America has been a country full of religious influence since the beginning; but what people fail to recognize about religion is that with the presence of a god figure, representing all that is good and just and holy, we also entertain the idea of the devil, who stands for exactly the opposite.

And thus, the creepy, the weird, and the paranormal wriggle their way into past and present pop culture. There are shows like American Horror Story which nod towards the continuing tradition of scary story telling through the images that plague our television screens every October. There are the chilling bed and breakfasts spread across the southern states which tourists flock to in hope of seeing a ghost who was once a soldier in the civil war, there are the numerous books on the shelves of American libraries on topics such as witchcraft and occults for the brave and curious.

So don't be ashamed to express that interest that you have always had in whatever mystical occult that you read about in the third grade but were always kind of scared would pop up if you googled it. We are the offspring of a culture that is ever so curious and obsessive.

Ichabod Crane- The Hipster of all Anti-Heroes

The antihero; it is what it sounds like. Unlike the classic hero with rippling muscles and cheekbones that you could cut yourself on, the antihero is that one person who is just so unfit; so unexpected to be the one saving the day, or getting the girl, or winning that oh so coveted national championship in whatever it may be. The truth is, our precious antihero is not a new idea whatsoever.

In fact, it can be spotted in the earliest of classic American literature; in particular, the character of Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. As I recently read this work, I , quite surprisingly, found myself comparing the character of Ichabod Crane, introduced to the world in 1820, to the character of Carson Phillips from the movie Struck by Lightning, which just came out in 2013. With closer examination, I found several very antihero-ish characteristics that the two share.

1. Both share the combination of having one or several very defining and unique skills which they are known for with a small town environment; this is an ingenious trick that always sets the character up as if we already know them. Ichabod is the Schoolmaster as well as the leader of the choir. Ah, an intellectual and a musician! Despite his other quirks, we already like him a bit. Carson Phillips, a brilliant but stubborn and defiant teenager is known for being the writer of the school newspaper as well as the president of the writer's club. However, the two are different in that Ichabod is painted in a light that makes him look quite popular; but for Carson, as well as all the other high school social underdogs, the case is not the same.

2. Ichabod and Carson don't exactly have the purest of hearts when it comes to getting what they want; both are willing to do what they must to achieve their own happiness. Ichabod, who is "in love" with the beautiful and much more importantly extremely rich Katrina Van Tussel is ready to compete with the most macho of macho men, Brom Bones, in order to gain the extravagant riches which come with her hand in marriage. Carson, a student who will go to Northwestern and nowhere else, blackmails specimens at the top of the food chain into writing for a school literary magazine, the completion of which is sure to get him noticed.

3. Despite some fishy characteristics, we feel bad when our anti heroes leave. What? It's not our fault that they're the protagonists! We wonder what became of Ichabod Crane when he mysteriously disappeared after being haunted by the notorious Headless Horseman. We weep with Carson Phillips' mother at his funeral when he is inevitably (and literally) struck down in his prime.

But the question that I still ask is why? Why do we love our antiheroes so much? They're not always the brightest, or the most attractive, which is what we're usually drawn to; so what is it? The answer I always seem to find is that they remind us of ourselves. We recognize and identify with the brokenness we see in them. We bite our nails and wring our hands when they're in trouble. And if and when they emerge triumphant, we rejoice.

On than note, I leave you with one more movie clip. I hope you enjoyed this!