Theme

Cross-posting with my writer website:

http://www.elizabethhuhn.com/2018/07/and-theme.html

 

I’ve been rewriting one of my manuscripts–yes, again. This particular manuscript has been through, no exaggeration, twenty distinct versions. This thing is nothing at all like the original. And as I rewrite it, I’m still finding my way. I’m trying to hit the right tone for characters, plot, and–importantly–theme.

I’m writing about the antebellum south. So, yes, there is a whole “can of worms” as far as themes go. It’s almost bottomless, the tangle of themes. But I didn’t want “slavery is bad” to be the primary theme, or at least not the only one. Not because it isn’t true–it is–but because it’s obvious to our modern sensibilities. Of course, that isn’t to say there aren’t echoes of the old sensibilities in the twenty-first century. But it always seems to underplay the complexity of reality to focus on that one theme. Like I said, it’s a tangled web, with other moral threads weaving in and out of the ugliness of slavery.

So one of my goals on this rewrite has been balancing the themes. I have at least two major thematic threads in this WIP (“Channing”). There’s the thread regarding slavery (y’all, it’s bad). There is also Caroline’s slow emergence from self-abnegation after a moment of exploitation–it’s the story of her losing her identity (and sense of agency)  and then finding it again. And it’s wrapped up with the issue of slavery, which is wrapped up with her husband, the one who exploited her. The trick is to not lean too heavily on one or the other and leave the other languishing for a scene–a chapter–two chapters. I don’t want it to seem like the characters have forgotten about a thematic thread in their lives while something happens with the other. It’s wrapped up with character as well, obviously.

I’m not much of one for moral nuggets–for moralistic nuggets. But I was pleased with the following passage, and I thought it summed up something important, bringing Caroline’s theme to its end. Now, I’ve edited it a bit for the sake of spoilers, but here it is:

There were different kinds of inheritances. Money was useful—vital, in fact. But what was more vital—what was the very stuff of life—was love, real love. Not the sort that Harry practiced, but the sort that was open and warm and had a sense of humor to it. The question was not whether she would give up her son’s financial future for her own selfish desires; it was whether she meant to provide him a life in which he could come to a full understanding of love. And she would give up anything—anything—for that.

How Aly Raisman Informed my Writing

Cross-posting with my other blog. In this blog post, I talk about what the recent “scandal” in the gymnastics world has meant to me as a writer (I don’t like the term “scandal”; it makes it sound like a lot of idle gossip; I just don’t know a better word for it at the moment). In a nutshell, the testimony gave me incredible insight into the psychological damage that abuse causes and the caustic atmosphere that leads to it. Perhaps this all hit home for me because, as a fan of gymnastics, I knew these young women so well as competitors. In any case, here’s the blog:

http://www.elizabethhuhn.com/2018/02/and-how-aly-raisman-informed-my-writing.html

The Virginia Room and Manassas Battlefield

Cross-posting!

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2723981786403936562#allposts

The Beguiled

Cross-posting with elizabethhuhn.com. A blog about the recent Civil War-themed film The Beguiled:

http://www.elizabethhuhn.com/2017/07/and-beguiled.html

Update on the Lock-keeper’s House

Cross-posted at elizabethhuhn.com.

I’ve written in the past about the Lock-keeper’s House, one of the oldest buildings on the National Mall in DC, and a remnant of DC’s less glamorous past.

I have two things to add. First, the work has gotten underway, thusly:

It kind of looks like it’s been patched up with cardboard and duct tape, though I’m sure that not what it is. Also, though the picture is bad, it says that the Lock-keeper’s House is moving “only 50 feet.” Which is good, I guess? It will at least get it away from the (very) busy street.

Second, there’s this article about the remnants of the Washington City Canal. The “lock” part of “Lock-keeper’s House” refers to locks on the Washington City Canal, which ran under what is now Constitution Avenue. I had no idea, but apparently you can actually kayak right into part of the old canal, in a tunnel under the street:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/washington-city-canal-outfall

I seriously want to do that someday.

Wonder Woman Review

Cross-posted with elizabethhuhn.com.

Ah, superhero movies. They’ve become as ubiquitous and constant as a the sound of a river flowing to the sea. The money, likewise, flows from the pockets of movie-goers into the pockets of movie executives. I like the occasional superhero movie. I mostly like the ones that don’t act like Superhero Movies with a capital S and M–you know, the ones that are just movies first.

Wonder Woman was one of those superhero movies that was a movie first. The “superhero” part did come back to bite it in the end (and by “the end” I mean the third act), but it succeeded spectacularly by really respecting the audience as well as the themes and making it work in a context that by all rights should be somewhat ridiculous (she’s a bloody goddess; her family are bloody Amazons, literal Amazons).

But what really got my interested going into this movie, much more than the fact that it was a female-led superhero movie or that it was Wonder Woman’s first big screen adaptation or whatever, was the World War I setting. I was a little disconcerted by the confusion the trailer caused. So many people seemed to think it was World War II. It’s a little upsetting that people can’t tell the difference in uniforms and weaponry. Also a little distressing was a video review in which the video reviewer quite sedulously avoided naming the time period the movie took place in, because he clearly had no idea when WW1 took place.

Which is one reason I was excited, because it would give a little more exposure of a wide audience to the Great War.

It didn’t disappoint. Overall, the depiction of the time period and the war was really good. Not only did they got the facts right–they mostly did–they also got the tone right and hit some of the most important themes and lessons that emerged from that war. Those themes inform and shape the entire movie, and they’re universal. The main theme: there isn’t necessarily a Big Bad you can kill to make the world Right again. We’re our own enemies.

The Great War was messy. It was messy in terms of politics and in terms of the deaths it caused. There was no good reason for the war, not really. it was simply a series of political dominoes that led to all-out war. In this way, it’s a perfect setting to explore the moral ambiguity of war and good versus evil. Unlike in the Second World War, there was no clear “Bad Guy”. Wonder Woman uses that to its advantage, for instance when Steve Trevor, Diana/Wonder Woman’s male counterpart, says that he’s done terrible things, too, in the service of what he things is ultimately right. This even filters down to a moment when Diana wants to go directly to the Front, but he pulls her back and says that first they have to deliver the notebook he stole. She still sees Good and Bad, and thinks that killing Ares will erase the bad. Steve sees a messy conflict where delivering information can be a thousand times more vital than storming No Man’s Land.

The political messiness was mirrored in literal messiness. The trenches were muddy and miserable places. The deaths were ugly and horrifying. Perhaps worst of all were the gas attacks, which were unleashed for the first time in April 1915. The gas would blind men and/or damage their lungs so that they drowned in their own fluids. It was, along with machine guns and tanks and airplanes, one of the new horrors of warfare unleashed in the Great War.

So I appreciated the fact that the MacGuffin (look it up) they chase is a new and improved version of poison gas to be unleashed just as the Armistice is about to be signed. I don’t know that it was handled particularly well, but I appreciated that that was the angle they took.

I liked that Steve had to keep emphasizing that this war was nothing like anything Diana had seen. I thought they did a good job depicting the ugliness and horror of the trenches and the war-torn towns, within the confines of a PG-13 superhero movie. As far as the time period–I thought they handled Diana’s interaction with a very unfamiliar world intelligently and without making Diana seem stupid or too naive. The scenes with her and the secretary were wonderful. And they give more than a passing nod to the fact that Diana is not dressed AT ALL appropriately for Edwardian London. In many movies like this, she would just walk around in God knows what and there would be a few gasps and then it would be okay. Nope. They had to make sure a few times that she wasn’t traipsing around in a breastplate and miniskirt.

Now I have to go into a few things I did not like, especially in regards to the time period. While the scene of her crossing No Man’s Land is awesome to see, I just . . . don’t quite believe it. I suppose she’s basically bulletproof, but I don’t think that even with super speed she could dodge that many guns firing on her at once.

The Germans appeared to be very Nazi-like. This isn’t really accurate. While they were militaristic and had, in some ways, precipitated the war, they were not evil like the Nazis. So it rubbed me the wrong way to make them mustache-twirling villains.

Speaking of mustaches, and this isn’t entirely related to my critique of the depiction of the time period, can we talk about David Thewlis’s mustache? It worked just fine while he was Sir Patrick. But later, when he revealed himself as Ares? Then it did not work at all. It looked silly. Anyway, more on that twist later.

I was also a little baffled that the bad guy–Not Ares–was named Ludendorff. Why? Ludendorff was a real man, a real general in WW1, and he did not die in the war. He died in the ’30’s! So why make him a real person but have him die twenty years too early and be an evil bastard? Why not give him a different name? Also, aside from the oddity of being named for a real person but not being that person at all, he was kind of a useless character, and what was with that crazy white stuff he kept sniffing? There seemed no point to it.

There were a few plot holes that even I noticed, especially in act 3. For instance, Dr. Poison (who was a weak villain) appears to create a HUGE amount of her newest poison in about 24 hours. How does she manage that? And what is the crazy aircraft that its put it, that Steven flies to its–and his–doom at the end? The one he crashes in at the beginning–little more than a few sticks and some canvas–is more typical of the period. The one that holds the poison gas is . . . not.

Speaking of the poison gas . . . Well, first of all it’s basically the third act of The Dark Knight, substituting the Bat Wing for Whatever the Hell Steve was Flying and atomic bomb for poison gas. The same goes for this as for the bomb in Dark Knight: fallout. Just because he flew it up into the air and exploded it doesn’t mean that the poison gas wouldn’t effect those in the area. It could fall out of the sky like nuclear fallout. Second, there must’ve been some better way to dispose of it, surely?

Still, that sequence is saved by the interactions between Steve and Diana before he leaves. We actually care about both characters and about them together (the actors have great chemistry) so I was willing to happily overlook the somewhat questionable assumptions we were asked to make.

My biggest issue was the descent into a sloshy CGI Big Fight Scene. It’s apparently required for every superhero movie, but they’re all the same and mostly they are just a lot of noise. In this case, it was rescued by the fact that at least no cities are being destroyed and, again, we care about the characters. But I didn’t care about Diana and Ares (with his silly mustache) frolicking around in CGI glory amoungst CGI flames and explosions.

This may be a crazy idea, but I would have had no Ares. I would have had Diana kill Ludendorff and realize that there is no Ares, and that’s the arc. She learns that she was placing her trust in a magic-bullet kind of theory that was a myth. Of course, it’s a superhero movie, and the idea that there is no Ares wouldn’t jive with what has been established on this world (Zeus and Amazons and whatnot). So I don’t think my idea would work for this movie. But in a slightly different context, I think that would serve the story best.

I think those are all my observations.

Why the Civil War Happened (And Why it Matters)

Cross-posting with elizabethhuhn.com, but here it is in full:

 

I am not a particularly political person. Or maybe I should say, I follow politics obliquely, and I have opinions, but my opinions are somewhat all over the place. I’m ambivalent about most issues–I sympathize with both sides. I also hate confrontation, so I never (ever) talk politics. If you ask me, I’ll tell you something like the above.

BUT.

But when you start saying shit about the Civil War that is not only nonsensical but does untold damage to progress being made recently in a very important area of popular and historical consciousness, well . . . well, I get angry.

Recently, President Trump said the following:

TRUMP: [Jackson] was a swashbuckler. But when his wife died, did you know he visited her grave every day? I visited her grave actually, because I was in Tennessee.
ZITO: Oh, that’s right. You were in Tennessee.
TRUMP: And it was amazing. The people of Tennessee are amazing people. They love Andrew Jackson. They love Andrew Jackson in Tennessee.
ZITO: Yeah, he’s a fascinating…
TRUMP: I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. And he was really angry that — he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, “There’s no reason for this.” People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War — if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?

Um, holy shit, guys. Holy, effing shit. The level of wrongness is mind-blowing. Let’s begin picking this apart.

I think it’s okay to bypass the first part. Jackson did love his wife, Rachel. He literally fought duels with people who bad-mouthed her, because her marital status wasn’t exactly free and clear when she married Jackson, and that fact haunted her the rest of her life. In fact, Jackson blamed her detractors for hounding her to death. And I’m sure people in Tennessee love him. Hey, he’s an interesting and charismatic, if controversial, figure.

The last paragraph, though. Whew. Let me count the ways that this is wrong, factually and on a larger, theoretical level.

1. JACKSON WAS DEAD DURING THE CIVIL WAR. DEAD. Deceased. No longer with us. Pushing up the daisies. Six feet under. He’d kicked the can, given up the ghost, gone on to a better (worse?) place. [Insert the parrot skit from Monty Python.] He WAS NOT SAD ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR because he WAS DEAD. Dead, dead, dead.

2. Yes, we would have still had a Civil War. There were many reasons for the war, most of them much, much bigger than one man. Now, back in the 1830’s, when Jackson was president, there was the Nullification Crisis and he told South Carolina to sit down and shut up because he loved the effing Union and he would personally shoot everyone dead in the entire state if that’s what it took to keep them from seceding. And, yes, the bullying worked. However, that obviously did NOT solve the underlying issues, and the next twenty years only deepened the divide. Not even Jackson’s considerable force of will could have prevented war. Even if he’d bullied the states into staying, it would have only postponedthe reckoning, because SLAVERY. That’s why. BECAUSE SLAVERY. Yeah, that little thing. You know, SLAVERY. More on this below. The fact is that even if he had been alive–and he wasn’t–he couldn’t have stopped the tide of war.

3. He was a very tough person.Yes, yes he was. He carried a bullet in him most his life and fought (and won) several duels. He defeated the British at New Orleans. Tough guy. But . . .

4. He had a big heart. That, sadly, is debatable and probably untrue. You see, Jackson was a slaveholder (SLAVERY), which is a black mark against him (though, in my opinion, not actually enough to condemn his entire legacy and/or erase him from the historical record like some people seem inclined to do). Oh, yeah, and there was THE TRAIL OF TEARS. To be fair, I don’t think he meant to send all those people on a death march, but that was what happened when he forced them off their land in defiance of the Supreme Court. (The Court told him he couldn’t evict the Cherokee, and legend has him saying, “Mr Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it”.) Yeah, he was “tough” in this instance too. Tough enough to cause the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Cherokee. How delightful. Big heart, right?

5. People don’t ask that question, but why was there a civil war?Again, holy eff. I mean, holy effing eff. There are tomes and tomes and tomes about the causes of the Civil War. There are entire conferences devoted to that topic. It is discussed in classrooms across the country (I hope, at least!). People are discussing this in a major, massive way, and they are relating it to the problems that still plague us today, because these things are related. Just because a certain someone isn’t aware of it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Now, given the breathtaking level of historical idiocy in this country, I’m afraid that not enough people ARE aware of this crucial (VITALLY IMPORTANT) discussion. Some people have gotten the entirely wrong idea about the causes of the Civil War or just don’t care. But there is a discussion, a massive discussion that is ongoing and relevant to today’s politics.

6. Why could that one not have been worked out? You’ll forgive me, but this requires some more colorful cussing. I’m going to go and yell a bit and come back. Why could “that one” not have been “worked out”? Jesus.

What is “that one”? I’m guessing this means the causes of the war. Why couldn’t the causes have been resolved in a way other than war? It’s a very basic question, and not without merits for someone who knows nothing about history or the war (like, say, an elementary school kid). “That one” is not exactly one thing, but let’s be clear: SLAVERY. The causes of the Civil War are not as simple as they may seem (though, still, SLAVERY). As Lincoln said, both sides had some blame in the sin of slavery.

However, the cause was slavery. Now, you may hear differently from some people, and you might hear hedging and side-stepping. States-rights, some might say. The right to do what? Own slaves. Differences in culture and economy. Caused by what? The slave economy. There are ancillary repercussions to slavery that caused rifts in and of themselves, but they basically all lead back to the original sin of SLAVERY.

So why could that not have been “worked out”? This makes two implicit assumptions: that people didn’t try very hard, and that there was, in fact, a way to work it out. People did try. Starting with the Constitution, very intelligent men and women attempted to address the slavery issue. The Constitution shunted the problem down the road with the overly optimistic hope that slavery would die out naturally and/or that future generations would be able to solve the problem. Well, future generations tried and failed. There was the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. With every compromise, passions heated, and the rhetoric intensified–it didn’t solve anything, it just bottled things up until at last it exploded.

You see, astute people understood that confining slavery to a certain place or granting more and more “rights” to slaveholders wasn’t going to fix anything. There are many complex reasons why, but essentially, there cannot be a country divided between free and slave states. The slave holders can’t keep their slaves in check if the slaves have somewhere to run, and no state is truly “free” if slave-holders can bring their slaves into that state and even purse their escaped slaves into that state. Slavery demands an entire political and social framework to uphold it, or it become untenable.

Now, let’s look at an example of an attempt to work it out: Kansas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 organized Kansas as a territory on the basis of popular sovereignty. The people of the territory would get to decide whether it would be free or slave territory. The result? A small-scale civil war, in which people flooded in from slave and free states in order to sway the vote. They set up rival governments and had rival constitutions, and there were battles and sieges and massacres.

Sometimes, there is no compromise.

Or, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “I believe the government cannot  endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved–I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. ”

7. SLAVERY. For God’s sake, slavery. This is so important to where we stand today as a nation in regards to race relations. Essentially, this is the only rebuttal needed to the nonsense uttered by the president.

Don’t believe me?

How about this, from the Confederate Constitution: “In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”

Or this, from the vice-president, Alexander Stephens: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. ”

No, but please, tell me about how this could have been worked out.

 

Butler Island, Georgia

I’m cross-posting again with my other page, www.elizabethhuhn.com. Please see my newest blog entry, about Butler Island, Georgia, the place that inspired my (as yet unpublished) novel, Channing.

Writerly Wednesday: When Novellas Attack

This one is a cross-post with my main author’s website, http://www.elizabethhuhn.com.

Go ahead, follow this link, if you dare, and find out what happens . . . when novellas attack. It’s the frightening tale of a novella that turned into a novel.

In the meantime, here’s a pretty picture to tide you over:

Moving Towards Preservation on the DC Lock-keeper’s House

A while back, I wrote about the Lock-keeper’s house in DC. It’s the oldest building on the Mall, and among the oldest in DC. It’s a remnant of the place DC used to be, a place of good intentions and poor execution. At the time I wrote, it looked like work was imminent to repair and move the building. It’s currently pretty sad-looking, all boarded up with barred windows and broken glass. It sits an arm’s length from Constitution Avenue, one of the main arteries of the city, with all the traffic that entails. When work finally gets underway in about a year, the building will be moved back from the road (hurrah!) and rehabilitated as a visitor/information center (hurrah!).

Here’s the most detailed article I found on this (there isn’t a whole lot of media interest in this, I’m afraid):

Historic Lockkeepers House To Make Moves On The Mall

This photo–taken at a rare moment of light traffic on Constitution Avenue–shows how close the house is to the street and how close it is to other landmarks like the Washington Monument.What you can’t quite see if the broken glass and bars on  the windows.