novel « broken abbey

29Sep/09Off

“Urban Gothic” – No Signal

Screenwriter John August has an interesting little post on cell phones in the movies. It includes a great little montage of movie clips showing phones not working, getting smashed, etc. Why on earth do I care?

Brian Keene has this very problem in Urban Gothic. In an era where it seems everyone has a cell phone, how does a writer deal with it?

By my count, there are six teenagers in Keene's book, each of whom has their own cell phone. They get trapped in an abandoned (haunted?) house that's in a bad neighborhood, but it's a suburb of Camden, New Jersey. Not exactly in the middle of nowhere. It's actually well covered by AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Yes, I checked, but not as any sort of petty criticism of Keene.

I think he does a good job of dealing with this problem. But first, I really want to understand why it's a problem?

For a horror writer, the problem is one of salvation. If you have a cell phone, then you're never really cut off from the rest of the world. The underlying assumption seems to be, that at any given moment, if things are too rough, the character in trouble can always just call for help. Is the problem unique to cell phones? I don't think so. To me, the problem is more fundamental, often summed up as 'if you show a gun in act one, it better get used by act three'. If you show a character using a cell phone early on, then when the shit hits the fan, they better pull that cell phone out again and start dialing.

Keene has this problem. The story opens with his characters using their cell phones as teens today would (or close enough). The reader knows these teens all have cell phones. How does Keene deal with it? He does a few things. First, he makes the neighborhood they're in so bad, that by the time these kids go to make their first call for help, we believe that even if they reach the police, they're not likely to come. Second, he uses the 'no signal' / 'weak signal' approach. And even though, as I said earlier, these kids are in a suburb of Camden, NJ, they are trapped in this insanely old house in the middle of the projects. It's an overused tactic, but it does still work - at least I bought it. The house is old enough. The cannibal clan who lives there has taken the time to modify the house into a relatively complex labyrinth, complete with spiked pits and movable walls. Maybe they did also insulate the walls or do something to jam cell phone signals. Making or buying a cell phone jamming device is not beyond the capability of some of the cannibal characters. Third, he treats some of the phones as secondary victims, often 'dying' with or before their owner.

So Keene uses multiple tactics to tackle the cell phone question, and I think that's what makes it work for this book. It's not just 'oh, btw - cell phones don't work here'. It's that they don't work, they're fragile and get knocked off with their owners, and 'oh, btw - even if they did work, you're in the shittiest part of town, so bad that even the cops won't go there after dark'.

But, is that the only solution? Can this be treated like the 'gun' problem? If the reader never sees the cell phone, does that remove the need to use it or address it? In Keene's book, it wouldn't likely be enough. I think anyone who's not been living in a box the last ten years would expect that, in a group of 6 teenagers, at least one of them has a cell phone. At least.

In his post, John August poses the solution of 'Don't write movies in which characters would call for help.' That's very difficult in the context of horror, because it almost always involves making at least one character helpless at some point (brash generalization, but bear with me). But, would it also be possible to create a character who wouldn't have a cell phone and have it be believable? That, to me, would be an interesting challenge - to create a believable character who does not own or cannot access a cell phone.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hung up on cell phones or the 'no signal' thing. The interest is more in terms of how much does a reader assume about our characters, and how much can we manipulate those assumptions. If I have an old man as my main character, and never show him using a cell phone - when he's in dire jeopardy and needs help, does the reader call foul if I don't have him try a cell phone? What about a backwoods survivalist? A farmer? A twenty-something who has spent the last 5 or so years travelling the world and working on a fishing boat?

Update: According to "Did You Know 4.0", 93% of US adults have cell phones (see 2:35). Makes it hard to develop a believable character who would not have a cell phone.

Tagged as: cannibalism, horror, novel Comments Off

24Sep/09Off

“Urban Gothic” and The Minotaur

Brian Keene's recently released Urban Gothic brought to mind the myth of the Minotaur. A group of teens are thrown into a labyrinthian house whose twists and turns extend far below the ground in a neglected neighborhood. Their first encounter is with a hulking, deformed creature whose strength seems insurmountable.

Keene tells this story from multiple points of view, and I think that worked really well for the fast-paced action. I noticed, too, that Keene give the reader an immediate indication of POV change by having the POV character identified, in most cases, in the first sentence of any section change. I noticed it because I was looking for it, but I don't think it was in any way repetitive or distracting.

In many ways, this book felt like a typical teen-scream horror movie. Teenagers, lost, creepy house, cannibals running loose. Lots of blood, death, people making bad choices that lead to their death. But I don't believe these elements are just by chance.

Teenagers are, by their very nature, in a transitory state - in the midst of a journey from childhood to adulthood. It's important to me because it places the characters in a state where the reader expects them to make mistakes and learn lessons. The creepy house and the labyrinth that stretches out beneath it are also important, as it builds the confusion, gives a physical manifestation to what teenagers experience.

What really stood out most to me, however, is the constant reinforcement of the first two words of the novel: Shit Happens.

In Douglas Winter's book, Stephen King: The Art of Darkness, Winter talks about King's naturalistic approach to plot. I like how Keene puts it better - shit happens. Keene forsakes the idea of having to provide a logical explanation for the events in his novel. And really, what explanation does the reader need? It's a standard "Cannibal Clan" trope, and it works just fine. Shit happens - these kids take a wrong turn, wind up in the wrong neighborhood, encounter the wrong people, and all but one wind up as dinner. As one character thinks to herself in the very beginning: Shit happens. And when it does, things get fucked up. This isn't to say the story is without plot, but the plot revolves around action and escape, not the clan itself.

I mentioned earlier that the book made me think of the Minotaur. There were a lot of mythological symbols that I picked up on in just the first few pages. Whether or not it was intentional, I can't say. But I think it draws the reader into a frame of mind that prepares them for the bizarre and brings the reader to accept that, in the end, there is no explanation. One of the elements I found - the teens get lost when the drive decides to leave Pennsylvania by crossing the river into Camden, NJ. The crossing of the river could be viewed as a crossing into the underworld. Keene goes on to describe hookers as living dead, there's technological failure (car breaks down), and a general decay into chaos.

Another interesting parallel with the Minotaur story is how the final escape is made. Early in the story, one of the kids overhears two of the Cannibal's talking (while butchering one of his friends - sweet). One comments to the other that he hopes they don't make it to the basement and find the only way out. Well, that's what draws the survivors to the basement, where they spend the large part of the book looking for a way out, and most getting killed in the process. But, just like the Minotaur story, the only way out seems to be back the way they came. I say 'seems' because, a minor character, I had half-expected one of the characters to tie a string. I think it worked as a plot device, a way to keep the characters moving, but I felt a little confused. There's a minor character, who I'll discuss in a later post, that does manage to find his way into this underground labyrinth from a 'back door' of sorts. But, this door it seems to be one way, only letting someone come in, not get out. And it's right near the house. I was a little confused, not because the kids had to go back, but because I was never clear on whether or not the cannibals knew they were being overheard and intentionally lured the kids down, or if there really was a back door down there somewhere.

Whether or not Keene used the Minotuar myth as a framework for the story isn't really something I'm trying to comment on. Rather, I think the Minotaur myth is reflected in a subset of our modern horror stories as the teenagers trapped in the scary [woods, cabin, hotel, house, etc], chased by the [axe murderer, cannibal, guy with one red shoe, etc].