The Sherlock Effect

So, I can’t really explain quite why I see it this way, but I see this novel in the terms of the BBC show Sherlock. I’m going to do my best to explain this so that it can at least somewhat easily be understood by anyone. Now, if you’ve never seen the show, I would really suggest that you do because it is quite amazing! It follows Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s very famous and eclectic character Sherlock Holmes and his adventures as a genius who sees details that no one else does and solves crimes that no one else can.

In my reading of The Talented Mr. Ripley I saw Tom and immediately found myself comparing him back to Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock describes himself as a “high functioning sociopath” in one episode of the show. I see this as funny, because as you go through the series, you learn that Sherlock does have the capability of empathizing, he simply chooses not to most of the time. I view Sherlock as a man who actually feels, and yet does not seem as if he cares. Tom, well Tom might also be in the same boat . . . Sort of. Tom eventually commits a well thought out, calculated, yet spontaneous murder due to the fact that he feels so much. One might assume that a calculated murder of one’s best friend would have to come with either a surge of extreme feeling or an entire lack thereof. It would seem that committing murder means that Tom does not care at all for Dickie, however, the act was spurred by an extreme feeling of loss and dejection. I think that Sherlock is the same way, I think that he solves crimes not only because he has the intelligence and the cold calculation to do it, but also because he inherently cares. Maybe I’m not quite explaining this right and if so I’m sorry I don’t know how to quite articulate it so that someone who has never seen Sherlock can understand it.

I also read the novel in such a way that it felt like I was watching a single episode of Sherlock. But I’m not talking about just any episode of Sherlock. This novel brought me back to one particular episode of the show. SPOILER ALERT! If you are a fan of Sherlock, and have not finished the second season of the show, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT READ THIS NEXT PART! When you read the end of the novel and Dickie is dead and the novel just sort of . . . ends, it’s as if Tom kills Dickie, the credits roll, and the audience is left thinking, “Wait! What? That’s it? That’s all there is?” There is this whole novel of internal action, of nothing really going on apart from hanging about Italy. Then, the action finally comes and as a reader you’re thinking, “HELL YEAH! There’s something happening! WOOHOO!” Then the climax (at the end of the novel no less) hits and you flip the page and there’s nothing left to read. As a reader you’re left wondering what on earth is going to happen next, and you aren’t given any answers. You are just left marveling. The end of the second season of Sherlock is the same way. The conflict between Moriarty and Sherlock comes to a climax—it comes to a do or die moment. As a viewer you spend the entire episode thinking that Sherlock is going to come out on top, because he is Sherlock after all and he is never out-witted. You wonder how Moriarty’s game is going to come to an end, how exactly Sherlock will solve the puzzle set before him. Then you see Sherlock and Moriarty duking it out on the top of a building. You think to yourself, “This is it, this is where Sherlock goes in for the kill, takes the victory!” And then, you are shocked—wholly and utterly shocked—when you see Sherlock step off of the building and fall to his untimely death. Watson runs up to his broken and bleeding body, and the episode, ends with a scene of Sherlock’s grave stone. As a viewer, at this point, you are FREAKING OUT! Thoughts are almost non-existent as you attempt to grasp the idea that Sherlock lost, that Sherlock is dead! You basically have that same feeling as with The Talented Mr. Ripley, “Wait! What? That’s it? That’s all there is?”

Final thoughts on Zombies.

Going into this section of the class I was not thrilled to begin on The Walking Dead. I was a huge resistor of the zombie fad. I had seen the first episode of The Walking Dead and hadn’t enjoyed it, and zombie paraphernalia had inundated pop culture. I was not impressed by any of it. Then, we got into analyzing it for class. Suddenly, I started seeing it in another light and I started to get into the plot and the story and the characters. I got hooked on this thing that I had considered simply a stupid fad.

Once The Walking Dead sunk its teeth into me, I was thrilled to come to class every day and see what new thoughts and ideas I would have about this story. After watching the first two episodes of the show, reading the graphic novel, beginning to understand comics better, and then finally playing The Walking Dead game in class, I began to really understand the pull of zombie literature. Usually, I wouldn’t say that playing a game was my favorite way of engaging the text, yet in this case, it was. I wouldn’t say that any text was better than the other (see my previous post for details on that) but I would say that the text that engaged me the most was the computer game. It felt like writing to me, and I liked that.

When watching the show, it was like I was sitting around a campfire, listening to the story being told by an omnipotent narrator. I was an observer of a story, I was a person sitting in the clouds watching the tale unfold.

Then, when reading the graphic novel, it was as if I was looking at the story and starting to fill it in with my own imagination—it was as if I was truly reading the story and forming my own content into it. In fact, I often paid very little attention to the graphics in the novel and went strictly from bubble to bubble reading the characters thoughts and conversations without acknowledging the depictions associated with them. I was reading the story that was written, but I was also adding my own imaginative flare.

Finally, when playing the game it was as if I was writing the story myself. It was as if I was sitting at my desk with my headphones in, putting pen to paper and writing my thoughts down as they flowed. The game made me the author of the story, the game gave me the control to create a story that was uniquely mine. The game gave me the power of authorship that the graphic novel and show did not, and boy did I like that (there’s a reason creative writing is my favorite thing and that writing is my major!) I made the decisions, I decided the path of the character. Playing it as a class was an absolute hoot! Everyone had the path that they wanted to take, but in the end it was the loudest voices who were heard, and their path was the one that we took. It was interesting to hear the way other people wanted the story to play out, and then see the way it would actually go. It gave us, as a class, a sense of authorship that was not only fun but funny to see play out.

Last week, and this week, on campus the game of Humans vs. Zombies is taking place (for a history and details on this game follow the following link: http://humansvszombies.org/) It’s just funny how as soon as we finish up reading, watching, playing, and analyzing a whole bunch of texts on zombies, the real life game of a zombie apocalypse takes place on campus. It would have been an interesting thing to ask the class to take part in the game and see how that plays into our analysis of the texts. I would have loved to hear how our class experienced the real life game in comparison to the texts we’ve already encountered. Alas, that isn’t the case, but it is food for thought!

Two Different Mediums, Two Different Stories

I love books. I love movies. I love movies/tv shows based upon books (even if those books are graphic novels). I am a huge fan of reading the books before taking the time to watch the movie or tv show. I do this because I like my mind to develop its own way of telling the story, creating the setting, and developing the characters before I see Hollywood’s depiction of these settings, the characters, the story as a whole. In terms of The Walking Dead, we’ve now examined two different mediums in which the story has been presented to us. We’ve spent a little time discussing which medium is better, and which tells the story more effectively for us, but I kind of see the argument as pointless. No form of the storytelling, to me, seems better than the other, and each of these two stories are exactly that—two different stories. Let me explain.

When I watched the show I was thrilled by everything it presented to me. I think the show picked on all of my senses. The music, the visuals, the story as a whole, intrigued me and pulled me in. It started off as a story about Rick, but even within those two first episodes it developed into a story about the whole group of human survivors left living within a universe in which a zombie apocalypse has taken place. In the tv show, Rick has been depicted as an upstanding, Western hero. He is the man who takes charge and has looked at the new situation he has been placed in and is going to live with his morals in-tact and strive to be a good and hard-working man in this new apocalyptic world.

When I read the graphic novel, I really got the story of Rick Grimes making his way in a world that has been overcome by a zombie apocalypse. In this story he has been depicted as a much more confused and struggling man who happens to be a Sheriff and is just trying to do what’s best for him, his family, and the rest of the survivors. The graphic novel grabbed my attention by presenting the story in a new and different way. It allowed my imagination to fill the scenes and characters with their own personalities that my mind developed for them. The graphic novel leaves the characters and scenes vague enough that my mind can take what has been given to me and run with them. I love that.

These two different depictions of the same general tale are alike and different in so any ways. The differences between the two texts are so large that I see them as two separate stories. Neither text tells the exact same story. One has an entire tank scene that the other does not have. One has Shane dying where the other one hasn’t gotten to that yet (even after the first season comes to a close). I can say the same thing of many of my favorite book series that have been turned into movies, movie franchises, or tv shows. The transition from text to the big screen changes so many of the elements of the story that I no longer see them as the same thing. If you want some examples you should take a look at The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, The Mortal Instruments, or True Blood. This is something that as a class we are overlooking. We are looking at these two texts as if they are the exact same, and I see them as two separate texts telling two separate stories. In fact, it was extremely well-put by Craig the other day in class—the graphic novel tells the story of Rick Grimes while the show tells the story of a whole group of survivors set in the same universe.

Zombies, Zombies, Everywhere

There are different types of zombies that one might experience in literature, and by our definition that includes movies and tv shows. You might encounter the same zombies we are seeing in The Walking Dead—slow-walking, brain eating, mindless undead humans. These zombies might have some part of human left in them, but you really don’t know. All you know is that these pseudo-living creatures of death are wandering around the world, looking for living things to eat. Walking Dead zombies were once humans who have been infected with the zombie virus, and now are these undead creatures who are in some form of decomposition who wander the earth simply looking for brains to chomp on. But then, you might encounter some different types of zombies, or zombie-like creatures, and how do these play into the overall zombie culture and literature? Well, I’m just going to try to explore that here.

Now let’s take the White Walkers of Game of Thrones into consideration. These creatures, whose origination is unknown, descended upon Westeros and killed all in their path. Those that they killed could be reanimated after death to do the White Walkers’ bidding. Eventually the people of Westeros defeated the White Walkers and drove them back to the farthest North, and built a wall between the North and Westeros to keep the White Walkers at bay. I digress; these characters are essentially the living dead as well. These creatures were never, and will never be human (although the people that they kill do become mindless zombies that the White Walkers can control). White Walkers have a humanoid figure, and act zombie-like, but are entirely different from anything we’ve seen in zombie culture before.  They have long white hair, gray, wrinkled, skin pulled taut over their bodies and seem to have a mummified appearance. I consider the White Walkers to be zombies for all intents and purposes.

Next, let’s take a look at the zombies of the novel, and movie, Warm Bodies. In this particular piece of work, the people who become infected with the zombie virus, become zombies. They stumble around, seemingly mindlessly, looking for brains to eat—sounds like a typical zombie movie, right? The difference between these zombies is that the movie is set up so that the audience gets a peek inside of the zombies’ minds. It shows us that zombies are not mindless. So while these zombies share the basic characteristics of the stereotypical and often played-out zombie, the zombies of Warm Bodies are just a little different. These zombies have thoughts, but they have no recollection of being human. Another odd thing about these zombies is that in order to feel human, in order to have human memories, they must eat a human’s brains. When a zombie from this movie eats a human’s brains, they acquire that human’s memories and they get (if only for a moment) to feel human again. SPOILERT ALERT! These zombies become human again through finding love. This is a concept that I don’t think any other zombie literature has ever explored before, which makes it infinitely more interesting to me. In addition to these zombies that can get their humanity back, there are zombies that can descend into a darker and more gruesome type of creature than your original zombie. In the movie, these are referred to as Bonies. These creatures are what a zombie becomes once their skin has completely decayed. These creatures have no skin, no eyes, no ears, and are extremely fast. In addition to these twists, Bonies will eat absolutely anything with a heartbeat, and have no humanity left, and are therefore irredeemable. Again, and interesting twist on the average zombie tale. 

So no matter where we turn, we might find zombies in the literature we are reading/watching. And no matter where we turn, we might just find a new twist on these old characters. It intrigues me to think about how/why/when these characters became the object of popular culture obsession, and how/why/when these undead creatures shifted from simply mindless brain chompers to the different types of zombies we see them portrayed as in more recent popular culture. Their story has changed over the course of the decades and that's an interesting thing to think about in terms of how stories are told and what literature is. I am excited to see how the graphic novel plays into this whole storytelling of the zombies and even the human element of the tales.