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Film Essay (and Dear Dad Letter): George Clooney’s “The Midnight Sky” on Netflix

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Hey dad, so here it is:

The Midnight Sky, despite its setting, should never be mistaken for a science fiction story- any more than Shakespeare set in space should be called science fiction. The Midnight Sky is a ghost story, as much so as The Sixth Sense, A Christmas Carol or Interstellar, which also pissed off some sci-fi critics.

The Midnight Sky’s George Clooney and Caoilinn Springall

Like Insterstellar, George Clooney’s new Netflix thing explores the subjects of isolation, memory, lost love, world destruction, time-travel, “spooky action at a distance” and other supranormal phenomenon. It’s just messy.

Yes, dad, of course you are correct about how this film botches some important details regarding the physics of space, the design of machines needed to travel it, plus the specificity of language that should be used to talk about it. When you and I chatted by phone on Christmas day, I was merely sharing some brief, mindless enjoyment about this new George Clooney/Netflix film that I’d watched the night before. It was new, and it was on. I have time on my hands right now, dad. I’m unemployed, lost. Life is messy. I watch movies. I wander around my house reflecting on the detritus of my life. It was small talk, dad. Yes, of course, this film got so many of the space things wrong. Don’t they all?

Considering how much messy things and loose ends upset the uber-responsible astrophysicist Augustine (played by Clooney), a daughter could be tempted to draw some neat parallels with her own father. Throughout his entire life, he’s focused on his important work at the expense of human relationships. In one flashback, Augustine as a young scientist (portrayed with high seriousness by the gorgeous Ethan Peck), is let off the hook when his girlfriend confronts him with the news that she isn’t actually pregnant. He’s not trapped. The blocking in this scene is just heartbreaking. His back is to her the entire time. He never once looks away from his computer. Of course, she leaves him. There can be no relationship there.

In other scenes we flash forward to the present again where Augustine as a terminally ill, older man, watches everyone else evacuating the dying Earth, only to then discover the young, orphaned Iris- a stowaway. As he determinedly tries to contact any/all active space missions, his goal is more responsibly urgent than ever. He needs to find her parents so they can come back to retrieve her. He also must warn anyone who’s still out there somewhere that they must not try to return to a destroyed, radioactive Earth. The responsible thing to do.

The Midnight Sky’s George Clooney and Caoilinn Springall

You emailed me your thoughts, dad, after you’d also watched this film, and I was surprised to see it was so late at night.

Way past your usual bedtime, with or without wine. You declared, “its plot line was pretty clearly cribbed from Nevil Shute’s On The Beach”. I wonder if all archetypal stories, as retold and reshaped through the millenia, fall subject to your view that they are stolen if they’re not completely original. You urged me, “If you have not already read that, you should. Last thing he wrote, I think”. And I will, dad. I adore Shute’s word smithing and have enjoyed his books many times as a reader. Thank you so very much for the suggestion. I look forward to reading the last thing anyone ever writes.

So if I may continue… Initially, the plot’s injection of the young, mute Iris posits her as an inverse or ironic superego for Augustine because she is just so little, so mute, and so wholly dependent on him. It seemed a story choice basically to fuck with Augustine’s perfect, orderly, solitary world. In literary and psychological texts, the superego gets defined as a critical, condemning (or at least mature and parent-like) voice within a person’s own mind or psyche and has often been described as the “inner critic” or the voice of the critical father within a person’s own mindscape.

You paid for my college, dad. I paid attention to a few topics, at least to this one. The inner critic warns an individual that he/she must do the correct thing- the proper thing- the adult thing; Some thing or choice that will require restraint and sacrifice. Augustine’s got this in spades. With Iris in tow, he must heed his own conscience more than ever.

The Midnight Sky’s Caoilinn Springall

Today while browsing for more articles on this subject, I found legal mediation coach Elizabeth Bader, who writes often about these ideas. One of her articles captures the film’s biggest theme. Uncannily, it seemed she might have just watched this The Midnight Sky as well. She argues,

“In order to move to a place of compassion we each must dissolve the internal psychological structure known as the inner critic or superego”.

She is writing here about the practice of legal mediation to help people resolve their disputes (plus to keep them from clogging the court system)- – but, her goal is actually bigger. She seeks to address spiritual problems. Which I know you may be wary of as a scientist, dad. Yet, as she insists, this dissolving has to precede any conflict resolution. Even for loner scientists like Augustine. One can almost hear the jury in his head as it all plays out on Clooney’s face.

In almost an M. Night Shyamalan reversal, how touching it is then, when The Midnight Sky reveals we’ve been led on, just as Augustine has.

We learn late in the story that Iris has appeared as a ‘phantom’ to him all along. She was never really ‘real’ in his world, yet she does exist in the dangerous present as a very alive, very pregnant and very grownup comms officer named Sully of the Aether, a ship now dangerously off course and traversing dangerous space, trying to return to Earth from Jupiter’s newly explored, habitable moon.

The Aether has been out of contact with Earth for weeks since undefined radioactive incidents have destroyed everything on our planet (sans Augustine in his northern arctic holdout). As the Aether’s comms officer, Sully’s commission means she must establish contact with Earth and she is more relieved than anyone to finally hear a voice in the wilderness. And it’s Augustine’s responsible, parental voice at that. He insists the Aether must turn back.

Even more incredibly, Sully is actually the daughter of Augustine’s former love (whom he abandoned all those years ago). Sully’s mother told her all about him, gifting her with a moon rock that had once been his. As she tells Augustine this on their final, very touching and very long-distance call, Sully thanks Augustine for inspiring her entire career. She, too, is someone who has dedicated her life to finding new, habitable worlds. I was nearly in tears at this point. If you were similarly moved by any moment in the film, dad, I suspect you’ll never tell anyone. Not even mom.

The Midnight Sky’s Felicity Jones

If by now you detect neurotic daddy issues in me, dad, you would not be wrong. This film was surely made to entrap me. The majority of The Midnight Sky’s film stills on imdb.com are those pairing Clooney with young actress Caoilinn Springall (who plays Iris). These images of them together encapsulate something I read long ago about children and parents- something to the effect that children don’t so much need structured things to do with their fathers as much as they just need to be with them. My memory flashed back to instances of hanging out with you, helping you with projects. I learned to shoulder the bulk of your criticism because it meant we’d be together. I also learned to be messy, to act out, and to misbehave, because we’d then get to spend even more time together.

The Midnight Sky stops just short of spelling out for us that the adult Sully (played by Felicity Jones) is in fact Augustine’s real daughter, nicknamed Iris. As a youth who abjured relationships, parenthood and instead prioritized the ‘important work’ of seeking out other life-sustaining worlds, Augustine at the end of his own life’s arc is a man clearly haunted by his choices, in need of some type of supranormal intervention.

In defense of the The Midnight Sky as a ghost story, if the film’s totally improbable series of coincidences and connections doesn’t represent what Einstein condemned as “spooky action at a distance,” well then I’ll eat my hat.

Many good ghost stories make use of these tropes- because they work. Things about them resonate in the human psyche. I’m not sure where you stand now exactly in the flood of new research into quantum entanglement, dad, but the situation is heating up all over the world. And I know that you know it is, because whenever I visit, I see all the books you’ve been reading. It’s not lost on me that the particles themselves are not transported, but instead “what gets transferred from one place to the other is the information inherent to an indeterminate quantum state”. It’s just spooky. It doesn’t make sense that this could happen.

Hard science journals and their writers are using too many metaphors that are probably too anthropomorphized for your liking. Maybe they should just stop it. Stop it right now. Just a few minutes ago as I played internet roulette again with some search terms on the general subject, I see that Jesse Emspak ‘s 2016 article in space.com is titled “Quantum Entanglement: Love on a Subatomic Scale” and its opening line fecklessly says, “ When talking about love and romance, people often bring up unseen and mystical connections. Such connections exist in the subatomic world as well, thanks to a bizarre and counterintuitive phenomenon called quantum entanglement”.

If these metaphors are stupidly facile, or worse- just plain wrong, who will put an end to them in the scientific literature? Who will take on that responsibility? Yes of course the science of quantum mechanics gets hijacked all the time by new-age ignoramuses. Of course I see this. I’m equally as guilty. You read all the physics books you can get your hands on and after all these years you still correct or debunk many old chestnuts that cross your path. Recently, you described to me how in one of your most recent articles, you thrashed some aviation “writer” who was still somehow insisting that Bernoulli’s theorem adequately explains lift and why machines can fly. Yet I suspect neither you nor he used any language of ‘love’ in your exchanges. Maybe it’s just inevitable that writing about quantum mechanics has to include these bad, or too human, analogies. Can’t something be done about this? Let’s keep love out of all important writing, shall we?

In isolation. The Midnight Sky’s George Clooney.

Ultimately, Augustine must make a perilous journey. He must go further north to yet another arctic base that has a bigger radio transmitter if he is to continue advising Sully on the Aether. Narrowly surviving a horrific accident while trying to save himself, little Iris, plus his portable blood transfusion machine, he must abandon it to a watery abyss. A sacrifice on a journey to redemption. In the film’s early scenes where he acerbically declines to join Earth’s other evacuees, his nihilistic, curmudgeonly responses mask a sort of martyrdom. He’s doing the right thing. After all, what other choice would be the correct choice for a terminally ill, older man when the Earth has gone to shit?

I’m reminded of those elementary school problems posed to us long ago- the ones that go, “given all the ages, sexes, health statuses and occupations of this group of people- who should be allowed on the lifeboat’s limited seats?” Clearly, these hypothetical problems can screw with a child all her life. Augustine has made the ‘correct’, adult choices his whole damn life, self-selecting not to evacuate with everyone else. It’s hard to imagine this character even enjoying his childhood. Augustine’s many responsible choices and sacrifices nest together like matryoshka dolls.

An older actor now, the wear and tear of life are carved into the lines of Clooney’s face. Even the stern, beautiful, but largely emotionless performances of Ethan Peck as the younger, always-driven Augustine drives home this toll of seriousness over a person’s lifetime. I found myself wondering if Clooney’s voice was partially dubbed over Peck’s, so that they’d even ‘sound’ alike. (more of my musing about this idea of the adult, mature ‘voice’ here). And lo- as I searched, a Hollywood Reporter article confirmed this was indeed true.

The Midnight Sky’s George Clooney and Caoilinn Springall

Mute, and wholly dependent on Augustine for survival, the young, innocent Iris is the balm to superego, yet also its constant prompt. It is she who helps Augustine soften his inner critic. A child, she holds no authority whatsoever. She giggles briefly during a game she initiates, as they flick green peas at each other over a meal, but she never speaks. She never condemns him. She never scolds him. She never criticizes.

Even her id is sweet and playful (compared at least to how many parents describe their male children). As she brushes her fingertips across delicate machinery and expensive computer screens, Augustine asks aloud why she must touch everything. He points out a room across the hall from his, that she must sleep in. She quickly creeps back into his room instead, dragging her sleeping bag, parking herself to snooze by his door. Her disguise is adorable- she is a cherub, an innocent baby with her open expression and her wide, kittenish eyes. She must be protected. She is a ghost of grace and mercy embodying forgiveness for a man who’s work is never done even after working tirelessly for years for ‘the common good’.

As I write these words on the cusp of 2021, Donald Trump has recently pardoned so many of his criminal allies, provoking wide outrage. Words including ‘craven’ and ‘corrupt’ dominate current articles condemning his actions. As I write this, I wonder about what forgiveness means in its many forms, and I read that traditionally, pardons are referred by the justice department (not lobbied for personally), and they are reserved for cases where it’s argued that mercy and grace are needed to mend torn social fabric. Whether or not Trump self-pardons before leaving office, and what results from it, will be for the political writers to chew on.

My focus is instead is intractably pulled to the immediate, inherent dynamics in family relationships- and the topics of connection, redemption and forgiveness. I’m reading other writers now commending the diversity of this film’s cast, and they are not wrong. In the many scenes of the Aether’s diverse crew played by Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir and Tiffany Boone, these characters enjoy holographic recordings in which they can ‘interact’ with long-absent family members. These scenes underscore that relationships and being together are the norm for humanity. One could argue that the isolated Augustine needed the ghost of a daughter to reach out to him across space.

Whenever we chat, dad, you definitely seem more at peace than you ever were during your working days. You’re still the supreme critic of what bad scientists, politicians, institutions and films are getting wrong, however, it’s obvious you’ve relaxed some about your own life’s treadmill. I love you, dad, and hope you too are able to let your conscience rest. I hope you can reflect on all the ‘right things’ you’ve done over your long career for your jobs, our family, our country, our world.

This is your own daughter (who like Sully, is physically many miles away from you, yet still entangled) acknowledging, like Sully does, your influence over my entire life, inspiring me also to do the big, challenging, responsible things. I also just want to be close to you. This essay is just me transmitting information inherent to an indeterminate quantum state. Hear me and know I love you. My life and thoughts are actually much messier now that Covid has ruined my industry and career of 30 years. Time feels relative. The Earth feels radioactive now. And I feel like the Aether, rudderless and lost in space, yet I’m encouraged by this film to just spend time with you and hear your voice, whenever we can.

Until and beyond then, all my love.

J

The Midnight Sky’s George Clooney and Caoilinn Springall

Costume Research & Practice for Fiction Writers: “What in the World are They Wearing?” Creative Writing Workshop- Jennifer McGrew, FYRECON 2017

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Handout, notes and a summary from our time together on Saturday, June 10, 2017:

 

These are some of my general outline notes, summarizing things we did and talked about and why.  They should help make sense of the combined materials, especially if you’re seeing all this for the first time and want to try some of these techniques.  Please feel encouraged to share your costume research/writing goals, strategies, challenges and triumphs in the comments. Happy writing, everyone!

 

1.       We read and analyzed excerpts from several pieces of fiction featuring wearables (I removed the authors’ names as well as the book or story titles so you wouldn’t be distracted by them). We summarized your thoughts on the whiteboard, then discussed your ideas. I’ve added scans of these plus the authors’ and publishers info at the end of this material.

 

 
2.     We summarized general costume research strategies and goals. Much of this material (pasted further down) is from Cunningham’s, The Magic Garment. We didn’t add too much to it, as her summaries are pretty comprehensive. The overlap in purpose for research seems to be equally important for both verbal and visual designers!

 

3.     We talked briefly about how critics and theorists define genres in fiction that features costume. Hopefully, a big takeaway for you here is György Lukács’ eventual assessment that the “historical novel” doesn’t actually belong in its own genre, but instead in the genre of “realism.” Perhaps knowing this can alleviate some anxiety whenever you encounter those heated debates about facile, poorly-researched “costume dramas” or “bodice rippers” vs. more esteemed “historical fiction.” Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how to present your book to publishers and/or your public, (though they may take issue with your definition).

 

4.    You created some new sample paragraphs by combining a few (randomly chosen) costume periods and terms from sections in Wilcox’ book with descriptions of visual and psychological costume attributes in Cunningham’s book. Your sample paragraphs were so creative and awesome in response to the prompts!
 

 

Each paragraph was a great new synthesis of visual content and meaning, shall we say, things from column A plus things from column B, driven by an both an emotional perspective and an action. Our first one was “surprise,” when you had your character from the French Revolutionary period surprise a group of others. The second asked you to work with the emotion of “jealousy,” using some clothes from 1930’s France that names designers who created them (in Wilcox’ book). Really fun and productive.

 

5.     We discussed some strengths and weaknesses of analogy, the operating principle underlying many of the choices writers make when building their characters’ worlds as well as their wardrobe. We read an excerpt about caricature and analogies from Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. In your writing, you, too, are also borrowing existing systems of wearables, technology and culture, as well as perhaps inventing new systems that will have analogues with objects and systems already in existence. Your whole mental process requires equal amounts of creativity and consistency.

 

 
 
6.     Finally, you generated a list of ten new fantasy/alien words which we used to fill out a mad-lib that I made for us. This was to underscore the importance of analogy- – in getting around to getting the words you really want in your work. If the fast technique works for you, you can write your ideas out fast, then later edit and swap placeholder words with new ones you invent, or specific terms you discover while researching specific historical periods!

 

 

First, the Research: What is it that you’re actually searching for?

 

 

Factual info: History, current events, science, craft. Diligent effort required.

 

 

 

Evocative info: You need to have an open mind so you can free associate among sources that share, illuminate and project the essence of your plot, characters and theme.

 

Cunningham lists the following in The Magic Garment: Principles of Costume Design, 49-51. We didn’t add much to this list.

 

 

Social mores of the time and how these affect dress and manners.

Views on courtship and roles of men and women.

Erogenous zones of the body and areas considered sexually provocative.

What colors were used and why?

What materials and dyes were available?

What kinds of work were performed?

What leisure activities were enjoyed? Permitted?

Were special garments worn for work or play?

What differences were established between age groups, married and unmarried, rich and poor?

What was the political system under which the characters lived?

What religious beliefs were held?

How did these beliefs affect dress and manners?

What assumptions were made about people based on their dress?

How did they view themselves in relationship to the world?

 

My Thoughts on Fruitful Sources for Fiction Writers (in some ways, this reverses the typical hierarchy, or prioritization of “sources”that designers usually draw from when they create live, staged or visual performances).

 

1.     Illustrations based on period paintings.

The ones in costume history books and textbooks, etc. These books generally include good basic historical outlines of wearables, great starting points for period research, plus definitions of clothing parts and pieces. Often in black and white drawings (these won’t prejudice you with any use of color because ultimately YOU are the definer of color). Gives you some basic vocabulary and a great lexicon of terms you can play around with as you write. (I’ve brought along R. Turner Wilcox’ The Mode in Costume and James Peacock’s The Chronicle of Western Fashion to show.)

2.     Writers discussing what people are wearing in their own time periods.

Especially opinion-pieces, editorial style writing and political cartoons! These give you interesting insights into partisan points-of view plus how language and terms get used rhetorically, especially when a writer has an ax to grind. We looked at a political cartoon from the late Victorian era in which tightly corseted women appeared in caricature as ‘silly geese.”

3.     Actual costumes in archival or museum collections.

(costume designers often consider period paintings to belong to this “primary source” category, too). Find yourself stunned and awestruck at the beauty and history in front of you when you’re looking at real period costumes. Great for evocative inspiration.

4.     Specific histories written by real scholars about particular subjects.

(I’ve brought along Charles Henry Ashdown’s History of Arms & Armour, Reay Tannahill’s Sex in History, and Valerie Smith’s The Corset: A Cultural History as examples of these).  Important features of books like these include historians’ disagreements about terminolgy and/or how and why certain fashions prevailed, how items were worn, by whom and why.  Also important to note is that these types of reliable authors always historicize their subjects. In other words, they don’t (or at least try not to) impose current sensibilities, customs or opinions on their historical subjects or periods of interest.

 

 

 

Next:

Some charts from Cunningham’s The Magic Garment.

 

In our workshop, we had you experiment with a few of these charts in several writing prompts. We asked you to initiate an emotion and an action using several costume pieces and parts you selected (ones we pulled at random from Wilcox’ The Mode in Costume). The workshop idea here is that sources such as these, used together, can give you great ingredients and ideas for invention.

 

Cunningham: Expressing personality and character traits with costume

 

 

 

Cunningham: Major color associations of western European and American Cultures

 

 

Cunningham: Historical color symbolism

 

 

Cunningham: Effects of texture

 

Cunningham: Expressing age and rank in costume features

 

 

Cunningham: Advancing and receding effects of design elements and principles

 

Try them all- use your delicious wordsmithing!

 

Describe how the light and its direction illuminates your characters and makes them emotionally “look” to others. Use shapes and textures of clothing and its parts to define your characters’ personalities, motives and inner conflicts. Use colors to make groups of your characters aware of the ‘otherness’ of other groups! Use all these and have fun playing with them (Don’t forget, there are many more interesting charts in Cunningham’s book and you can pick up a copy through Amazon for about eight dollars…. It didn’t seem proper to scan tooo many of her pages, even though we are using them for educational purposes here!).

 

 AND

 

Don’t. Forget. Your. Synonyms.

 

If you’re drawn to a word or concept in Cunningham’s charts, consider expressing it with analogous words! For example, check out all these synonyms for the word, ‘silky’.

 

Next, we’re talking more about analogies.

 

 

If your characters are hominid-like, they’ll likely need clothing to fit two arms, two legs, etc.  If their biology is more alien, you’re going to need to create a new system of clothing for them and their world.  This next excerpt from Surfaces and Essences is funny and demonstrates the use of analogy in caricature or in its extreme forms.  You can use this method along whatever exaggerated sliding-scale you wish when you apply borrowed historical systems you’re researching, or inventing some brand new ones for your characters and their worlds:

 

 

Next, I’ve written us a little mad lib.  

We’re going to play with analogies some more by swapping words with new ones you invent for us:

 

    1. Swear word or curse phrase in an alien or fantasy language

 

    1. Alien or fantasy male first name

 

    1. Male clothing item in an alien or fantasy language

 

    1. Name of an alien or fantasy tribe

 

    1. Name of another alien or fantasy tribe

 

    1. Alien or fantasy female first name

 

    1. Alien or fantasy female article of clothing

 

    1. Name of alien or fantasy female’s tribe

 

    1. Name of alien or fantasy deity

 

  1. Name of an alien or fantasy yearly holiday

 

(I’ll search for the one we filled out in class- it’s great. If I can find it I will definitely update this post).

 

 

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     “__________!”, ________ spat in pain and disgust.

 

     His newly bartered for _____________ was completely ruined. Blood, inextricably mixed with some sort of mysterious looking green slime oozed fast from his cut, then kept right on bleeding through the jagged rip in his clothing.

 

     “I’ll never pass for a ___________ now,” he moaned.

 

     Sweating and cursing more, he unfastened and took it off as quickly as he could, then scrabbled through his napsack for something to stop the bleeding. Looking around wildly, he ducked at a sudden noise. The ___________ might still be in this area, and they were hungry for revenge. They’d shoot more arrows at him again, enjoying any occasion they had to do so. He kept his head down. Hastily, grabbing ____________’s __________ out of his bag, he pressed it, wincing, hard against his wound.

 

     “Oh the levels of irony,” he muttered to himself. “This hurts like hell, but nothing’s ever hurt me like that stupid ___________ female. I was an idiot to think she’d ever stay true. Or that she’d ever even tell the truth about one single damn subject. I nicked her lacy girl thing once when she wasn’t looking and have been carrying it around for two years ever since, for this?? This?? I’m an idiot.”

 

     He sighed as he remembered how her naked skin looked without it on, luminescent but still somehow rather like a shark’s under the moonlight . Tying it, finally, around his wounded limb, he knew he needed to move. He knew he’d better get back to the outpost quickly and find a good tailor. And probably a doctor. He’d bled before, that’s for certain, from minor skirmish wounds and clumsy accidents, but this greenish-oozy blood put the fear of _________ in him and his deadline for passing as a _______________ at the  ________________  was approaching fast.

 

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We’re getting near the end, so What are some of YOUR costume writing challenges, triumphs and payoffs? Would love you to share these by keeping in touch with me and posting comments!

 

Below are four different writing samples (truncated ones) that we read at the beginning of the session. The idea was for you to get your mind working to identify operations and principles the writers used in creating their systems of wearables. In most of these cases, there’s an analogous Earth antecedent or origin.

 

 

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Here’s the first one: It’s

Hartmann, Gregor. “What the Hands Know.” Fantasy & Science Fiction.  May/June 2017, pp. 145-162.

This was on the Free Stuff Table downstairs at FyreCon registration! I love free stuff. I picked it up, started thumbing through it, and found this part containing wearables that seemed quite interesting to talk about. Makes me want to run this by a physics professor and ask how a non-Newtonian thing could operate in another context.

 

 

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This next exerpt is from Starship Troopers and you can read this whole novel online! In fact, I URGE you read it. An important, important book and NOTHING like Verhoeven’s film (even though the movie is kinda fun in its own way). This book is actually a study in civics and moral philosophy, and I wonder if it’s more relevant than ever, given our current political and social climate. If you like, let’s read it together and discuss! It’s been a long time since I’ve really sat down and read the whole thing.

 

 https://7chan.org/lit/src/Starship_Troopers_-_Robert_Heinlein.pdf

 

The historians can’t seem to settle whether to call this one “The Third Space War” (or the “Fourth”), or whether “The First Interstellar War” fits it better. We just call it “The Bug War” if we call it anything, which we usually don’t, and in any case the historians date the beginning of “war” after the time I joined my first outfit and ship. Everything up to then and still later were “incidents,” “patrols,” or “police actions.” However, you are just as dead if you buy a farm in an “incident” as you are if you buy it in a declared war.

 

But, to tell the truth, a soldier doesn’t notice a war much more than a civilian does, except his own tiny piece of it and that just on the days it is happening. The rest of the time he is much more concerned with sack time, the vagaries of sergeants, and the chances of wheedling the cook between meals. However, when Kitten Smith and Al Jenkins and I joined them at Luna Base, each of Willie’s Wildcats had made more than one combat drop; they were soldiers and we were not. We weren’t hazed for it — at least I was not — and the sergeants and corporals were amazingly easy to deal with after the calculated frightfulness of instructors.

 

It took a little while to discover that this comparatively gentle treatment simply meant that we were nobody, hardly worth chewing out, until we had proved in a drop — a real drop — that we might possibly replace real Wildcats who had fought and bought it and whose bunks we now occupied.

 

Let me tell you how green I was. While the Valley Forge was still at Luna Base, I happened to come across my section leader just as he was about to hit dirt, all slicked up in dress uniform. He was wearing in his left ear lobe a rather small earring, a tiny gold skull beautifully made and under it, instead of the conventional crossed bones of the ancient Jolly Roger design, was a whole bundle of little gold bones, almost too small to see.

 

Back home, I had always worn earrings and other jewelry when I went out on a date — I had some beautiful ear clips, rubies as big as the end of my little finger which had belonged to my mother’s grandfather. I like jewelry and had rather resented being required to leave it all behind when I went to Basic… but here was a type of jewelry which was apparently okay to wear with uniform. My ears weren’t pierced — my mother didn’t approve of it, for boys — but I could have the jeweler mount it on a clip… and I still had some money left from pay call at graduation and was anxious to spend it before it mildewed. “Unh, Sergeant? Where do you get earrings like that one? Pretty neat.”

 

He didn’t look scornful, he didn’t even smile. He just said, “You like it?”

 

“I certainly do!” The plain raw gold pointed up the gold braid and piping of the uniform even better than gems would have done. I was thinking that a pair would be still handsomer, with just crossbones instead of all that confusion at the bottom. “Does the base PX carry them?”

 

“No, the PX here never sells them.” He added, “At least I don’t think you’ll ever be able to buy one here — I hope. But I tell you what — when we reach a place where you can buy one of your own, I’ll see to it you know about it. That’s a promise.”

 

“Uh, thanks!”

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

I saw several of the tiny skulls thereafter, some with more “bones,” some with fewer; my guess had been correct, this was jewelry permitted with uniform, when on pass at least. Then I got my own chance to “buy” one almost immediately thereafter and discovered that the prices were unreasonably high, for such plain ornaments.

 

It was Operation Bughouse, the First Battle of Klendathu in the history books, soon after Buenos Aires was smeared. It took the loss of B. A. to make the groundhogs realize that anything was going on, because people who haven’t been out don’t really believe in other planets, not down deep where it counts. I know I hadn’t and I had been space-happy since I was a pup.

 

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The next text is from “Custom Fitting” by James White (a novella I’ve been grappling with for a long, long time now in my life as well as in my profession as a tailor and costume designer. I have a lengthy essay about it– and related things– a text that’s been through many changes and might even get published somewhere, someday). I’m somewhat stuck at the moment.

But I scanned the whole text of White’s novella and it’s here:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxQ1h_8DGhfWR1dRd0ktWmtuU2M/view?usp=sharing

 

It is the ONLY assigned reading I ever give our costume shop interns. I’ll discuss this with you if you contact me and want to have a serious chat about it:)

 

 

 

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This next one is from Stephen R. Lawhead’s Taliesin (The Pendragon Cycle, Book 1). New York, EOS, 1987. Print.

It’s from one of our shop’s interns, Nathan. In prepping for this workshop, I asked him, “Hey so what are you reading right now, and does it have parts detailing what characters are wearing?”  He was kind enough to make these scans for me!

 

 

 

WORKS CITED (AND SHOWN DURING OUR WORKSHOP).

 

Ashdown, Charles Henry. An Illustrated History of Arms & Armour. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1988. Print.

 

Cunningham, Rebecca. The Magic Garment: Principles of Costume Design. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press Inc., 1989. Print.

 

Hartmann, Gregor. “What the Hands Know.” Fantasy & Science Fiction.  May/June 2017, pp. 145-162.

 

Hofstadter, Douglas R, and Emmanuel Sander. Surfaces And Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. 1st ed. New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2013. Print.

Lawhead, Stephen R. Taliesin (The Pendragon Cycle, Book 1). New York, EOS, 1987. Print.

 

Peacock, John. The Chronicle of Western Fashion from Ancient Times to the Present Day. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Print.

 

Steele, Valerie. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 2007. Print.

 

Tannahill, Reay. Sex in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1980. Print.

 

Vincent, W.D.F, and R.L Shep. Tailoring Of The Belle Epoque. 1st ed. Mendocino: R.L. Shep, 1991. Print.

 

White, James. “Custom Fitting.” 1976 in Stellar #2, a science fiction anthology published by Random House division Ballantine Books.

 

Wilcox, R. Turner. The Mode in Costume. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958. Print.

 

Williamson, Gordon, and Darko Pavlovic. German U-Boat Crews 1914-45. 1st ed. London: Osprey, 1999. Print.

 

NOTES and Outtakes

 

-mostly notes to myself in prepping for this workshop-

 

Remind attendees about György Lukács’ views regarding the “historical novel” actually not being its own genre, but belonging to “realism.” Should make them heave a sigh of relief. Maybe?

 

Soooo much anxiety about “historical fiction” vs “costume romances” or “bodice rippers”. Do we talk about this?

 

Novel vs. the short story form. The latter more archetypal in nature. Theory and criticism re: these forms. Probably more interesting to me because of what I’m grappling with at the moment. Save discussion of this for another time.

 

LOTS of interesting articles about genre, critical theory, costume and apeshit hair-splitting. These are indeed interesting but it seems a better choice to abstain from too much academic stuff and just really focus on workshopping some useful tools instead. Yes. Do not include all these links. Too esoteric for this setting.

 

Workshop Overview

https://www.fyrecon.com/schedule/

 

In this interactive workshop we’ll be analyzing excerpts from several pieces of fiction, discussing strategies and challenges involved in doing costume research, summarizing how critics and theorists define genres in fiction that features costume, plus we’ll discuss some strengths and weaknesses of analogy, the operating principle underlying many of the choices writers make when building their characters’ worlds as well as their wardrobe. If you’re creating fiction, you can use many of the same costume research strategies used by performing arts designers when you develop your characters and what they’re wearing. To encapsulate all these topics in our final conversation, we want to talk about your specific questions, challenges and triumphs with your own fictional characters and their wearables.

early mad-lib draft

 

“Dammit!”, Horatio spat in pain and disgust. His pants leg was completely ruined. Blood, inextricably mixed with some sort of mysterious looking green slime oozed fast from his cut, then kept on bleeding through the jagged rip in his clothing. “I’ll never pass for a scroundling now,” he moaned. Sweating and cursing more, he unfastened and took it off as quickly as he could then scrabbled through his napsack for something to stop the bleeding. Looking around wildly, he ducked at a sudden noise. The armadillos might still be in this area, and they were hungry for revenge. They’d shoot more arrows at him again, on any occasion they had. He kept his head down. Hastily, grabbing Svetlana’s blouse out of his bag, he pressed it hard against his wound.  “Oh the levels of irony,” he muttered to himself. “This fucking hurts like hell, but no one’s ever hurt me like that stupid Tanzanian female. I was an idiot to think she’d ever stay true. Or that she’d even tell the truth about one single thing, ever. I stole her lacy girl thing and have been carrying it around for two years for this?? This”?  Looking at the weird blood now clotting it and tying it finally around his limb, he knew he should move, and fast. Determined, he knew he needed to get back to the outpost and find a good tailor. And probably a doctor, too. He’d bled before, from minor skirmish wounds and stupid accidents, but this greenish-oozy blood put the fear of Ralph in him and his deadline for showing up at the christmas party was approaching fast.

 

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My pic and bio- from https://www.fyrecon.com/presenters/

 

 

Production Designers Can and Should Help You Develop Your Script: (What I mean when I say I work in script development).

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script_revisions

Writers and producers bring scripts to my colleagues and me so we can write bids for costume design, production design and line production. We do this for a fee because we ask that our clients be serious, plus our time and expertise is valuable. You’re probably familiar by now with Josh Olson’s famous I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script, and we, too, usually say no to doing too much work for free. If you’re paying us and treating us as serious associates, though, we are very interested in helping clients develop their scripts, and we take this job very seriously.

However, we may not be able to do our best pre-emptive work by the time someone finally arranges to come in and talk to us about costumes, locations, sets, props, miniatures and practical effects. Our shop is sometimes a script’s final destination instead of its first. And this is not always a good thing for two reasons: If made with the script as-is, the final film product may really suffer from low production values. You should have seen us sooner. Plus, our responses to scripts are sometimes not what writers and producers want to hear. In a sense, the buck may stop with us.

This is neither funny nor punny because our work is sometimes negatively categorized as “below the line” of the usual “executive” production team. But we are your necessary eyes, scholars, hands and co-creators. As artists and art directors, we are materialists, bringing your script to life. The things we create for the world of your film need to be as beautiful and as credible as your script is. We are super-nerdy like that and are passionate about splitting hairs over historical facts, arcane subjects, how things come to be made in your film’s world, and so on. Like you, we are consumers who love  good film and we will always play the devil’s advocate about your script’s content. We’re artists, and we owe it to the medium we love, so we won’t mince words.

Here’s how the script development process usually rolls inside our production design studio:

I am interviewing you!  I have to believe in you and your product.

I’ll first ask you where your script is in its development.

Have other eyes seen it, how many, and whose? What were some responses those readers had? How many rewrites has this script been through? How many issues or problems with your script do you already think you’ve resolved and how did you do it?  Who else is already attached- meaning other producers, director, crew and talent? Who is your distributor and what are the specifics of how this film will be released and viewed? Where are you with your budget?

If you think it sounds like I’m interviewing you for a job, you are exactly right!

If I agree to sign myself or my shop on to your production and design items for your film, it means I’m investing in your film. I’m attaching my name as a producer or costume designer to your project.  The stakes are high for me, my colleagues and my staff. So your script needs to have a good story and must actually be produce-able.

But since everything’s negotiable, too, we might be willing to produce the physical assets your film needs at a lower price-point if you already have a marketable director or actor attached. I might also agree to take some of our payment on deferment.

Sometimes we work as mercenaries in the production design business.

If you already have a decent budget, our shop might agree to create your film’s physical assets just for the work, regardless what we think of your script. We’ll do this sometimes during slow months or in-between big projects.  We may stipulate through an agreement that you will show us a rough, then a final cut, and we reserve the right to omit our association in the credits if the end product’s a real dud.

Those things being said, as production designers and art directors, we want to create a quality product, so we’re never going falsely praise a script that has issues!

Before I’ll even write you a bid or consider breaking down your script into my spreadsheet that includes head-counts for characters and extras, their costume changes and costume multiples for continuity, I may confront you about some of the following common issues and I will ask if you’ll consider rewriting before you go into pre-production

The “common issues” include some of these:

Your script is too wordy.

Your story’s not being told with enough visuals and action. Film is a visual medium and your story should be told that way. As designers, we are film consumers, too, and we know overwriting when we see it or read it. I’ll go see theater if I’m craving a story told predominantly through dialogue. There’s always a Shakespeare or Sam Shepard production playing somewhere. I want to see that you know how your action, shots and cinematography are going to tell your story.

Your script contains awkward anachronisms.

Your script has anachronistic technology references, dialogue, attitudes or enculturated behaviors that don’t fit. A Harvard-educated scientist with redneck speech leaves me scratching my head unless your character is behaving ironically. And cell phones don’t belong in films about the 1980’s any more than feminism and political correctness belong in the 1880’s. Unless your story involves time-travel, these are distracting and your product may suffer from the old Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman problem. Revise your script. Don’t be a historical revisionist just because you want to further a personal agenda. We see this a lot in scripts from Utah, actually. Please. We want to be moved by your story, not preached to.

Your script is too populated with supernumeraries.

Your script has superfluous characters whom you drop in as bit players but don’t include later. As is said in so many creative or expository writing workshops, “don’t drop the thread.” If it’s a speaking role, make a decision about that small town store owner who exchanges philosophical barbs with your main character. Or that frat-boy bully who runs interference in your protagonist’s goal to get the girl. Their interactions are dropping hints for your audience, so don’t abandon including these characters in your story’s resolution. If you can’t do it, cut them. Wrap up all your loose ends.

Your main characters’ motivations aren’t clear and aren’t resolved.

After reading your script, I might code switch into my old theater director’s persona and flatly ask you, “What does character X need?” And how does your script further resolve (or not resolve) that character’s needs and desires? If you’re not sure and can’t verbally sum this up succinctly, and if your script is also unclear about these motivators, how will I know how to design the right costumes for this character as he or she proceeds through his/her journey? How will our production designer know if the props or set pieces are correctly designed and chosen?

My design and producing colleagues and I love great film and collaborating with great artists and writers.
In a part II of this thread, I’ll talk more about the process of designing for film projects once I have a firm handle on (as well as belief in) your script.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cosplay and the Problem of Marxism But Were Afraid to Ask (The Idea of A Cosplay- History, Portability, Artisanship and Commodity)

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Cosplayers Ryan and Janessa as Hiccup and Astrid. Salt Lake Comic Con, September 2014. Costumes made by Jeremy L. Bird. First place: Intermediate Category. Photograph courtesy Robert Hirschi, official cosplay competition photographer.
Cosplayers Ryan and Janessa as Hiccup and Astrid. Salt Lake Comic Con, September 2014. Costumes made by Jeremy L. Bird. First place: Intermediate Category. Photograph courtesy Robert Hirschi, official cosplay competition photographer.

I watched in admiration as our technical cosplay judges at this year’s Salt Lake Comic Con actually GOT UP out of their chairs and walked around to the front of their table to touch and get a closer look at the costume details of Hiccup and Astrid, made by Jeremy L. Bird (yep, her name is Jeremy) and worn in the competition by her son Ryan and his girlfriend Janessa. Their costumes were definitely amazing, taking 1st place in the Intermediate category.

It had been a long stretch that day, overseeing the preliminary cosplay adjudication, the cosplay first aid station, the stage show and competition, and watching our judges’ polite and helpful interactions with sooo many contestants- most of these interactions made from from behind their table, in seated positions.

I definitely paid attention to what was happening here.

The materials used in Hiccup’s costume, Jeremy said, only cost $150, but as all the judges agreed, the work featured the use of some expertly cut and assembled bleach bottles, sculpey and an assortment of repurposed fabrics and household materials she’d expertly put together in a faithful, realistic replication of the character.

Salt Lake Comic Con technical judges Kamui Cosplay, Aaron Forrester and Daniel Falconer checking out the details of a contestant's costume and giving personal feedback. Photograph courtesy Robert Hirschi, official cosplay competition photographer.
Salt Lake Comic Con technical judges Kamui Cosplay, Aaron Forrester and Daniel Falconer checking out the details of a contestant’s costume and giving personal feedback. Photograph courtesy Robert Hirschi, official cosplay competition photographer.

Raw materials can be costly in our current era of personal cosplay, but interestingly, the cosplay artisanship itself tends to be more rewarded or appreciated than the value of materials used. If someone uses pure gold in a costume’s armor or a skin that’s inexpertly crafted or rendered, who cares? However, if someone fashions a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and it has gorgeous workmanship, the item gets great kudos and big attention from admirers and cosplay judges alike.

We’re presently witnessing something that parallels the historic economy of materials and artisanship, as it simultaneously raises that timeless “art vs. craft” question, not to mention the question of “value”. Consider what young Juan says in one of my favorite novels, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, about the lecture of Mr. Dubois, his high school ethics instructor:

He had been droning along about “value,” comparing the Marxist theory with the orthodox “use” theory. Mr. Dubois had said, “Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.

“These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value – the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives – and illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.”

Dubois had waved his stump at us. “nevertheless – wake up, back there! – nevertheless the disheveled old mystic of Das Kapital, turgid, tortured, confused, and neurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompous fraud Karl Marx, nevertheless had a glimmering of a very important truth. If he had possessed an analytical mind, he might have formulated the first adequate definition of value … and this planet might have been saved endless grief.”

Sometimes I use parts of that quote above during public presentations or when I talk to producers and corporate people about what’s actually involved in designing and building costumes. But I can’t claim the idea is something most people really understand, unless they are also skilled- very skilled and accomplished- at some sort of trade. Most may not have been as indoctrinated as I was in college with Marxism.

Artisanship didn’t always outweigh the value of raw materials in all trades: the idea of A painting is, historically, a newer one. Arguably, our contemporary idea of A cosplay has evolved on a somewhat parallel path in terms of how a costume is situated in public or private space, as well as the materials, expenses and talents behind these works. M. Anna Fariello details the shift in perception and commodification of art and artisanship during the Renaissance in an excellent essay, “Regarding the History of Objects,” in which she reminds us that painting evolved in response to specific economic social forces. In the renaissance, Fariello says, those not born into aristocratic families could now buy class.

“The development of a merchant class, combined with a wider acceptance of secular humanism, allowed individual wealthy patrons to commission personal portraits, which, in turn, became tangible symbols of their wealth. To accommodate a patron’s desire for a personalized and portable status symbol, artists adapted methods used to create traditional wood altar-pieces to a smaller format, the painted panel. Thus, the idea of a painting was born”. (10)

The expansion of the merchant class changed everything.

The exploding popularity of cosplay in our highly mobile, commodity-hungry population mirrors this now.

The idea of portability is key, and one can purchase or make the trappings of class for him/herself. A costumed person is a self-contained mobile unit, and any painting on a wood panel travels better than a permanent fresco or painted ceiling. A renaissance family who buys that painting on a board can still display its status, even if it relocates across town. Even if it’s a religious triptych of three images hinged together, the message is mobile.

Example, above, of a hinged triptych by Hans Memling. It’s mobile propaganda: designed for a community’s learning and moral edification, plus it displays the status of the person or family who commissioned it. A hinged triptych could be loaned out and it could travel to poorer churches out in the boonies – to churches that maybe couldn’t afford to commisison artwork of their own.

Historically, costumes, too, have stepped off the traditionally more stationary, pious, elevated stages of church steps and naves into secular theater spaces, public arenas and streets. We may be enjoying a renaissance now of 1960’s “happenings,” given the spontaneous performances you witness at any convention. Dramas communicated through costume, though, are still largely propagandistic from the top-down but they also work from the bottom-up, meant for the social programming and moral conditioning of whole populations. Now costumes are out there on secular occasions and convention floors and the individual cosplayer or costumed performer has become the buyer as well as the salesman. Cosplay artisans purchase their own class and status while simultaneously pitching the intellectual property belonging to corporations ranging from DC to Disney.

Fariello describes how prior to the 15th century, materials were typically more expensive than the artist’s time, talent, or the painting process itself. Substances such as gold, lapis, rare pigments and chemicals could be hard to come by, plus they were expensive and difficult to process. Guilds heavily guarded their secret formulas and manufacturing processes for making things like pigments and glazes (8).  In the 14th or 15th century, a patron commissioning a new painting might indeed pay by the square foot, much like we’d pay for expensive slate flooring at the Home Depot today. The selection of which laborer or tile-layer should do the job might sometimes be a secondary consideration. Thus, many paintings created prior to increased availability of materials were typically commissioned only for permanent structures, churches, civic buildings, and public places. Places– that had most often held significant religious and cultural value.

Similarly, value placed on theatrical costume by guilds who staged elaborate mystery plays, religious in nature, followed these trends. The fierce nature of guilds’ competition with other guilds fostered a keen artisan eye and rigor related to dramatic staging and accouterments. One could say we’re seeing history repeat itself in the form of group cosplay, skits and multiple characters who compete together. Robert Huntington Fletcher’s account of medieval theater contains some interesting reflection about how simple, symbolic and suggestive most of the set pieces were compared to the costumes that were given great details, elevated priority, and they were even stored from year to year in expensive caches. He provides some bookeeping evidence:

“In partial compensation the costumes were often elaborate, with all the finery of the church wardrobe and much of those of the wealthy citizens. The expense accounts of the guilds, sometimes luckily preserved, furnish many picturesque and amusing items, such as these: ‘Four pair of angels’ wings, 2 shillings and 8 pence.’ ‘For mending of hell head, 6 pence.’ ‘Item, ink for setting the world on fire.’ (110).

Above, a great example of a group or “Guild” entry: Galaxy Quest group. Salt Lake Comic Con, 2014.

In performance parlance, we could say that the idea of a cosplay has fully evolved along with our current era of democratized technology and availability of inexpensive materials. But the message of the dramas are no longer super-relegated to Christian themes or characters. We do publicly celebrate ingenuity and frugality- those great American values. An awesome Iron Man costume made from cardboard is impressive, but it’s even more impressive when the maker has skillfully used time-consuming techniques with bondo or woodfiller putty, plus endless hours of sanding and expert painting to create seamless, reflective beauty so that the cardboard resembles shining chrome.

No longer in service to only religious dramas or even Hollywood icons, costumes have now and forever entered public space and now everyone can participate, purchasing or fashioning their own, even if what is usually being sold (the branded character) merely feeds back into the larger economic food chain. Guilds still form, compete and re-enact a new set of stories designed to teach our communities valuable moral lessons. We are still being conditioned to display our status or talents while actively consuming and selling each other messages that during medieval theater used to come to us from scripture (and still come up in student essays about Spiderman’s big challenge to reconcile “great power with great responsibility”). And so it goes.

Salt Lake Comic Con cosplay technical judges Melissa Spencer, Aaron Forrester and Tia Dworshak check out a contestant’s amazing outfit. Photo: Robert Hirschi

Works Cited

Fariello, M. Anna and Paula Owen, ed. “Regarding the History of Objects” Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft. Ed. Anna M. Fariello and Paula Owen. Rowman & Littlefield. Plymouth, UK 2004. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Objects_and_Meaning/b4nuAAAAMAAJ?hl=en

Fletcher, Robert Huntington. A History of English Literature. Boston, Richard G. Badger/The Gorham Press, 1913. books. https://archive.org/details/historyofenglish00flet/page/n5/mode/2up

Heinlein, Robert. Starship Troopers. https://archive.org/details/starshiptroopers0000robe_r5e7

Click here for more of Robert Hirschi’s photos

The Bastards of Wrestling: Salt Lake’s Most Intelligible Spectacle

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Saturday afternoon TV wrestling broadcasts always made us girl children yawn and groan.

But as an adult (and recent convert) I’m urging you to go experience wrestling, especially if you claim there’s nothing new or fun to do in Salt Lake City. It’s the best extant form of commedia dell’arte around, and if you’re a kinesthetic learner like me, you’ll appreciate the fact that this league, the UCW- ZERO is local and is smallish in scale, and you’ll also hope in some small way that it never gets any larger.

To better wrap my head around the social text that I experienced live last night, I revisited another one from my checkered past and I’m recommending Roland Barthes’ 1957 essay “The World of Wrestling” here as a primer for our full sensory and learning immersion.

Ready?

 

Who Cares About Fakery? It’s All Theater

Barthes explains how wrestling is a theatrical act. It’s what everybody already knows, but I felt compelled to re-read him because what I’d most remembered him doing was arguing back at wrestling’s detractors (among them, probably whiny little girls like me who ‘hated’ wrestling and who no doubt complained, “I don’t understand it”). It’s quite the contrary, in fact, as Barthes argues. Wrestling is sublimely understandable, because every single element in wrestling has an “absolute clarity, since [the spectator] must always understand everything on the spot” (20). Everything at a wrestling event is based on understood signs within a system of signs. “In wrestling, nothing exists except in the absolute, there is not symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively” (25). He’s called wrestling an Intelligible Spectacle.

http://www.ucwzero.com/
http://www.ucwzero.com/

A perfect introduction for a newcomer ought to include something like my own neophyte experience at the local league event last night, on the front row of folding chairs barely eight feet away from the ropes. At this distance and degree of liveness, the sheer athleticism, endurance, fantasy, melodrama and showmanship finally manifested for me. Both television and cheap seats at the opera fail to show audiences just how well-choreographed, rehearsed, skillful and dedicated these true entertainers are. The sweat drips and flies. These wrestlers and their audience shills fight and get dangerously close to the spectators- plus their faces, close-up– are completely hilarious as they sometimes nearly break character, all making the the case for your necessary proximity.

Even the Jumbotron would fall short of showing you what is really happening. For a beginning wrestling spectator to “get it”, you need to initially get as close to the action as you can, so you’re in on all the jokes and tropes. Awestruck by this local league of muscle-y, spandex-clad athletes performing, punching, leaping and body-slamming for each other as well as their audience of about 100, in a converted warehouse just off of west Redwood Road, I clapped, air-punched and shouted right along with the crowd, many of them costumed for the Halloween weekend, or perhaps just organically emulating the stock characters of Duck Dynasty, the trailer parks and other boroughs of American reality, mythology and commedia.

 

Theater? Yes. But Definitely Athletic Theater!

Fake fights? Maybe. But required athleticism and skill? Lots. Some of the moves and series of moves in any fight are agreed on in advance, as my client Martin Casaus has told me for months now. He’s the lead roster star with the UCW- ZERO league. Other moves are improvised during the match. I could almost make out, so I thought, which series of moves were staged and which were improv moves.

Martin Casaus, from http://prowrestling.wikia.com/wiki/File:Martin_Casaus_1.jpg
Martin Casaus, from http://prowrestling.wikia.com/wiki/File:Martin_Casaus_1.jpg

Even though as my promoter/producer friend Johathan King assured me, it’s all “stunt man stuff,” the unmistakably remaining fact is that it’s always dangerous. Sitting together on the front row, we found ourselves talking about careers in wrestling and how as stock characters go, he says the “villains’” careers never seem to last as long as those of the “good guys,” which seems puzzling and in need of further investigation because Barthes argues that unlike sports, wrestling, has no winner (19). It is not the function of the wrestler to win, says Barthes,“it is to go through the motions which are expected of him” (20). Jonathan, describing himself as a major fan, detailed some harrowing injuries that particular players in this league had experienced during their careers –and this had me statistically wondering about who gets injured more– the good guys or the bad guys.

 

It’s Never About Fair Fighting

Barthes argues that wrestling is NOT a sport. It is a spectacle. And he’s correct, in that this variety of performative, stagey stuff with its flamboyant costumes, bragging personae and their scripted insult-spewing, never involves a real or “fair” fight, like ‘real’ Greco-Roman style or Olympic-style wrestling (the sort that adolescent girls also largely ignore during high school). Case in point, my client Martin has long described for me how these fights are staged, and the personas (and often outcomes) are clearly underscored from minute one. I’m glad I finally took the opportunity to see a live event, as he’s urged me for months to do. I found myself marveling at the transformation taking place before my eyes.

A respectable guy with a day job as a stockbroker, Martin Casaus, nearly naked and muscles rippling, enters the space, parades around the audience, title belts slung over both his shoulders, monloguing loudly about his prowess, achievements and his titles, as the crowd heckles and chants “o-ver-rate-ed! O-ver-rate-ed!” As a “villain” of wrestling, akin to an Il Capitano from the classic forms of commedia dell’arte, Casaus is just full of himself, full of bravado, strutting and basking in his own glory, even while the crowd chants at him, “You’re an asshole!” “You’re an asshole!” It’s such great theater. The sort where the audience is not required to sit quietly in the dark with hands politely folded in their laps.

 

Bastards and Good Guys: Everyone Suffers, and It’s For Our BenefitNacho-Libre-p01

The bastard or villain is the one who usually suffers, says Barthes. His body itself reveals all his “actions, his treacheries, cruelties and acts of cowardice” (23), however, in this local UCW- ZERO league, the sheer physiques of the “villains” seemed often mismatched with those of the “good guys” in terms of their muscle definition and mid-life tummies, or lack of them. They’ve plenty of pure physical variety to go around with all shapes and sizes.

Though according to Barthes, “the physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed contains the whole fight” (23). I think he must be at least implying that the fighters are costumed accordingly. If we’d been watching a western, we would have seen white and black hats. In the case of last night’s matches, by far the funniest “villain,” Suede Thompson, stood out with his costume’s actual use of sueded panne’ velvet amidst a sea of clingy, shiny spandex worn by everyone else. “Persona” seemed far more communicated through postures, posing and speechifying. Overall, it was a feast for the eyes, this hyper-masculine ballet of both real and mock violence.

 

I Show You My Victory and I Show You My Defeat

Defeat and Justice go hand in hand, Barthes claims. Defeat is not an “outcome”, but a “display” (21). Defeat of the bastard “is a purely moral concept: that of justice” (21). The displays of suffering at the fights last night were equally distributed. Everyone winces, contorts and oomphs when their heads are grabbed in mock neck twisting or slammed into the ropes or onto the mat. The facial acting alone and feigned helplessness are priceless.

 

Cheating: It’s Morally OK

The most riveting was a blended-gender fight, something I never expected. It featured Lacey Ryan, one of the coolest, toughest girls I’ve ever seen. 

Lacey Ryan, Wrestler. From http://www.socialregister.co.uk/lacey-ryan/
Lacey Ryan, Wrestler. From http://www.socialregister.co.uk/lacey-ryan/

When she “won” in what presented itself as a fair fight against her male opponent, a “villain,” I was reminded that Barthes argues that the defeated must deserve the punishment (21) which is why the “crowd is jubilant at seeing the rules broken” (21) as long as it is just. This all had me wondering how “taboo” it might be and in what context if in a fight, a female actually lost against a male opponent. In other words, how PC is co-ed wrestling these days? I winced, watching that particular fight, in much the way I winced watching Hit Girl get the crap beat out of her in Kick Ass. In both cases, I know everything possible was being done to prevent real injury but I worried nonetheless. In wrestling, Barthes insists, the “Exhibition of Suffering” is what the fights are actually all about (22). Last night’s fights revealed everyone’s suffering, and Martin was hit pretty hard on the head with a folding chair during his final match. What we actually watch wrestling for is the “great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice,” says Barthes, and just like in theater, “wrestling presents man’s suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks” (23). 

That chair itself told the true story of its own injury, its metal backrest bent and nearly unrecognizable. I flinched all evening at both the real as well as the simulated violence. One thing’s for certain, to be in wrestling you have to be fit, and tough. Asking Martin about what their gentlemen’s agreement is within the league and about how hard they can hit one another, he confided once that “it’s easier to hit guys harder the better you know them. You go easier on the new guys, because you haven’t become as good of friends yet.”  Villains or Good Guys, everybody’s a friend within the league, he tells me. Once again, Barthes has told us about the performance of wrestling –that defeat isn’t an “outcome.” It’s a “display” (21). Defeat of the bastard “is a purely moral concept: that of justice” (21).The defeated must deserve the punishment (21) which is why the “crowd is jubilant at seeing the rules broken” (21) as long as it is just. Will Martin seek personal revenge because his opponent “cheated” and hit him with a chair? No. But I’m told that the ensuing next round of fights will begin with this very premise.

The fights last night concluded with a costume contest, in which a young boy, clad in a China-made superhero costume complete with “muscles,” was awarded first prize. His opponents: Several adults. Talk about cheating or bending the rules.

 

 

Payment in Full: Congratulating Your Heroes

As the evening wrapped, spectators lingered and thronged around the doors, waiting for the fighters to emerge. Meanwhile, costumed kids took to the ring and practiced the “moves” they’d witnessed just prior. Watching in amazement, I saw them pull their punches, slapping themselves or stomping to make the loud “thuds” of stuntman legend. I’d asked Jonathan King if the league makes any money or if the roster members make any. He tells me that for the most part, the admissions charged and members’ dues and the school (yes, a wrestling academy- in case you’re interested and want to enroll!) make the league self-supporting. But, he also tells me, the fighters live for audience feedback at the end of a night.

vintage_wrestlerHe recounted some details of the recent 10-year anniversary event he’d produced for them, at a much larger venue in which they’d had an audience of about a thousand spectators. I asked if the league was truly ready to perform on this scale again or make the leap to mainstream tv broadcast or cable. I asked if the league’s reluctance to do this might be related to money, logistics, or maybe even ‘stagefright.” “Stagefright,” he answered.

Last night’s whole event reminded me of how a small group of friends and their extended comrades can enjoy a fun evening of karaoke together, yet only a small marginal few would feel truly comfortable at the crowd-level of, say, an American Idol competition. Indeed, some of the local “love” for the spectacle as well as the players might get lost in bigger venues or those far from home. As we waited for the fighters to emerge from backstage after last night’s event, Jonathan suggested I tell some of them what I admired about their particular moves or stunts, that that’s the feedback and reward they really cherished and lived for.

Not being well-versed in most or any of these moves, I gushed stupidly.
“Wow- amazing,” I stuttered as I met some of the wrestlers in person.
God, I’m such a dork.

I did ask Martin, though, “Hey, holy hell, where did you actually get hit with that chair?”  “Right on top of the head,” he said, pointing at his bean.  “Well at least it shouldn’t affect your tailoring,” I quipped back.

It’s actually nice to know and care about these performers in person, something a local league and small-scale community allow you to do.

 

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Here’s Roland Barthes’ book, Mythologies, that you might find interesting. His essay, “The World of Wrestling” is here.

And check out UCW-ZERO’s facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/UCWZERO  and come to the show dates with me http://www.ucwzero.com/