Posts about death

Jul102011

Death Takes a Holiday – Torchwood: Miracle Day


Death is the simplest and most obvious threat your protagonist can face, but you generally can’t kill them. In some fantasy it’s possible to get them back with magic, but first person point of view isn’t going to work so well if your main character is taking a dirt nap. (I’m very anxious to see where the Dresden Files takes this in the next volume).

It’s easy to raise the stakes in a book or movie by killing off members of the supporting cast. I have a hard time thinking of many action movies where the hero’s girlfriend survives. Family members are usually a goner the moment they walk on screen. In television, an ensemble cast is relatively safe. Headliners don’t die unless the actors are leaving. Then you get one or two fatalities as the seasons drag on. One show where you get the sense that no one is safe is Torchwood.

By the end of the third series the cast had been whittled down to two headliners and a few second tier characters. Now Torchwood is back, in a partnering between BBC and Starz. They’re certainly giving it some solid promotion. Even Denver has billboards advertising it.

Torchwood benefits from being a British series. Its seasons, or series, are shorter, meaning we don’t get stuck with a lot of padding. Conflict can remain at the forefront. Whene an American series might stick in twenty episodes to create a season, the BBC format is fine with six to thirteen.

The first episode of the new series, Miracle Day, changes the rules of life and death on us. People cease to die, regardless of their injury. Complicating things further, the immortal Jack Harkness can suddenly be hurt, indicating that the writers aren’t afraid to sacrifice even him if the story calls for it. By offing the rest of the cast from the first two seasons, Torchwood let us know that anyone can be a target. Putting Jack’s mortality in play also helps to break up one of the problems of immortal characters in television (usually vampires): the current crisis is always related to some aspect of their past. If Jack is no longer immortal then the cycle of unfinished business always coming back to bite him can end. I’m glad Torchwood is back, but I suspect the body count is going to rise again, so I’ll be holding on to my seat.

Oct52010

Giving Death His Due

Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I’ll stay
Were goin out where the sands turnin to gold
Put on your stockins baby, `cause the nights getting cold
And maybe evrything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe evrything that dies someday comes back

– Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City

Halloween is coming, and everywhere I look, death seems to haunt popular culture. The undead have ruled supreme over genre fiction for a good while. Some of the hottest shows on television involve bloodsucking monsters. Even the X-men are fighting vampires in the Marvel universe, which tells me that vampires have definitely jumped the zombie were-shark.

With so many dead walking about, I’m starting to think Death hasn’t just taken a holiday. He’s moved to Maui and taken up residence in Margaritaville. Characters keep sneaking back in the door well after they’re properly dead and buried. Zombie apocalypses happen so often in fiction that Hades is close to empty and insurance companies raise your rates if you live near a cemetery.

The idea that death isn’t permanent in comic books has become enough of a cliché that whole crossovers, like DC’s Blackest Night, have been devoted to putting some power back into the Reaper’s hands. The dead walk, talk, and romance the living so often I’m surprised they haven’t unionized under a chant of “What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Now!”

Heroes have a unique relationship to Death. They cheat him, beat him, often bringing their entire supporting cast along for the ride, at the cost of the story’s impact. When a series reaches a major turning point, or milestone, you need to see a price for the victory. Otherwise, it rings hollow. Heroes can descend to the underworld and return, they’re heroes after all, but doing so is a major effort.

Comics have third stringer death down. When a new creative team takes over a book, one of their first moves often involves killing off the supporting cast to make room for their own creations. Even then, return is always possible, should another writer see the need to bring a dead character back into play. Only the poor redshirts beaming down with Captain Kirk aren’t coming back. Usually nameless and indiscriminate, they’re convenient in their disposability. They stick out, like the sweet girl in the zombie flick, only there to die.

Sometimes heroes don’t return. They lose the fight or their victory is Pyrrhic. The good fall and stay down. Returning becomes the sole province of the villain, such as in Harry Potter, where resurrection is only made possible through black magic and wicked deeds. Great evils often re-arise in fantasy, putting themselves back together after long centuries, and a new group of misfit heroes must sally forth to save the day.

Whether it involves heroes or villains, when the gates to the underworld are a revolving door, it becomes difficult to create a world where death has meaning. The hard part is keeping the balance. I’ve read quite a few books where the stakes of the plot were high, but every hero and side character squeaks through. When you’re reading a series, and this pattern repeats book after book, you start to doubt that anyone can truly die. Fiction is strongest when it reflects reality, and the reality is that we must die. It is one of the incontrovertible truths of our lives, and it should be true for our characters as well.

Sep62007

Aronofsky, Alan, and the Fear of Death: David’s Response to The Fountain

The light right now, outside the bus window is perfectly golden. My copy of Everything is Illuminated just arrived and yeah, I saw the movie first.

I missed the Fountain at the theatre. I had intended to see it simply to take in its visual effect but I have to say, I really regret it now that I’ve seen the movie. There is much more to take in than simply the sight of it. It’s been a few weeks and I’m still thinking about it, so suffice it to say, I really liked it. My good friend Alan, over at randomtope, didn’t care for it but I think my expectations were a lot lower (which might explain why every movie I paid to see at the theatre this summer was a real letdown).

The theme in the Fountain that I connected with is the same theme that acted as a capstone for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: that of death and our extreme fear of it. In both narratives, the fear of death is the primary motivator for villain or protagonist (I’m not here to discuss Harry Potter so if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, don’t worry). I’ve been thinking a lot about the fear of death and why it can motivate us with such force, particularly when we’re not aware that it is the feeling in the driver seat.

My recent birthday filled me with a particular sadness and in trying to examine it, I found it associated with having gotten older without accomplishing certain goals, particularly that of finishing my novel and seeing it in print. At the bottom of it all was the fear of death. It is inevitable, unavoidable, but few of us can face with it with any measure of nobility of grace. The character of Izzie in the Fountain managed to do that. Her husband’s inability to accept such a thing and the heroic efforts he put forth to avoid it, are the source of the movie’s plot.

At the Fountain’s core it is an old tale: Enkidu’s death stirred Gilgamesh on a similar quest at the dawn of written literature. The biblical tree of life (nicely tied in to the Fountain) symbolizes our frustration with our inevitable end and how no way to stave it off is within our reach. Gilgamesh was told his quest for immortality was an overreach of human ego and he was robbed of the prize he journeyed so hard to find.

In fantasy, our characters cheat death. Sometimes they return from it, fulfilling a crucial component of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey or Plato’s actualization of the Philosopher-King. But even these characters must face the descent into death and a key element of their triumph is how well they handle themselves. Perhaps one of the reasons I like comic books is that they are a suspension of this cycle: characters die, sometimes repeatedly, but it just doesn’t stick. They return, just as Campbell’s hero must come back to enlighten the world or Plato’s Philosopher-King might return to the cave in an attempt to free others. In all of these cases, even comic books, the characters grow and change. Their brush with death has enlightened them, toughened them, scarred and given them knowledge.

I liked the Fountain and recommend it to you. Just don’t tell Alan.