Title: American Gothic Tales

Editor: Joyce Carol Oates

Publisher: Plume

Year Published: 1996

This huge collection was used as a textbook for one of my graduate classes. The forty-six stories included follow the development and evolution of the Gothic genre from an excerpt of Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798 novel Weiland, or The Transformation through Nicholson Baker’s 1994 short story “Subsoil.” The collection is intended, as far as I can tell, to gather not only the more significant stories of the genre, but also important stories that may typically go unnoticed by most readers. It is the latter of these which makes this collection so special, I think.

When you think of Gothic literature, there are several authors which immediately come to mind. Names like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson, and even Stephen King and Peter Straub are just some of the more familiar names. Indeed, King’s story “The Reach” is, I think, one of his finest, and one of the best stories in the collection. These authors have become almost synonymous with the Gothic genre. Stories like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (Washington Irving), “The Yellow Wallpaper” (Charlotte Perkins Gillman), and “The Black Cat” (Poe) have all but defined the genre and are looked at with monotonous regularity by High Schools and colleges across the country.

There are fine examples from authors you might not expect, however. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is likely the best known of these, as Faulkner has included Gothic elements in many of his works. “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, however, is a wonderful example of the direction the genre went and how it began to become incorporated and even parallel other genres. Other authors known for writing outside the Gothic genre are Harlan Ellison, Don DeLillo, Raymond Carver, and Ursula K. Le Guin (perhaps the most accomplished and versatile author in the collection) have all been included with stories that range from borderline horror and science fiction to the just plain bizarre.

What is perhaps the nicest surprise, though, are the stories that Oates found from authors I am less familiar with. In particular, “Cat in Glass” by Nancy Etchemendy is a hauntingly wonderful story that turned out to be my favorite in the entire collection. Also strong, and significantly strange, is “Ursus Triad: Later” by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg, a superb appropriation of “The Three Bears” fairy tale.

All in all, this is an outstanding collection that serves not only as a chilling, entertaining compilation of short stories, but also as a reference book of some of the most important stories in the evolution of the Gothic genre.

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Film: The Happening
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo
Tag Line: We’ve sensed it. We’ve seen the signs. Now… It’s happening.
Review Summary: Move over, Uwe Boll… there’s a new sheriff in town.

The biggest mystery behind The Happening isn’t actually what’s happening… it’s why exactly I stayed in the theatre for the full 91 minutes. On the broadest of scales, the premise is fairly strong: An unknown substance is infecting the population of the Northeastern US and making them commit suicide. There’s a lot of potential there, I think. But when you boil it down to what Shyamalan actually put on the screen, it falls past weak and right down to laughable. And laugh I did, which I am guessing was not the reaction Shyamalan was hoping for.

To be fair, though, it’s quite a difficult conflict he is broaching. It’s beyond just Man versus Nature, as the nature of Nature has changed (ok… that was fairly fun to say). The rules don’t apply anymore, and no one knows what the new rules are all about. As such, this is (or should be), at it’s core, an adventure movie. The unknown needs to be discovered. Where the thriller part comes in is that if the unknown isn’t discovered, it will kill everyone. What makes this setup fail so spectacularly is that the unknown stays unknown and, because of this, never really achieves the status of “villain” the way it desperately needs to. Things are left in doubt for far too long for any kind of twist ending to be effective. If no one knows what’s going on, characters and audience included, the ending isn’t a twist,  it’s a revelation.

More importantly, the story of the Happening simply uninspired filmmaking. The opening is easily the strongest scene in the film, but then it quickly degenerates into little better than a late-night drive-in slasher flick that sucks the life out of actor and audience alike. Mark Wahlberg plays Eliot, a high school science teacher who doesn’t know why his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel) has become increasingly distant. When a deadly neurotoxin is somehow released throughout the NE United States, they run off and try to escape the strange events surrounding those who become infected.

The major plotline is, of course, the neurotoxin that is infecting everyone and where it comes from, what’s causing it, and why it makes people kill themselves in the most gruesome way possible. From the man who runs over his own head with a lawn-mower to the fellow who feeds himself piece by piece to a lion, the suicides show exactly how little imagination Shyamalan actually has. The were necessary, though, as without them there would have been nothing to distract the audience from the gaping holes in the storyline.

The secondary story is that of the relationship between Elliot and Alma and is horribly underdeveloped. Once the source of tension is revealed, the entire sub-plot becomes laughable in its utter foolishness. Not only is it wholly unbelievable that these two people actually like each other let alone love each other, it’s difficult to fathom that the frivolous nature of their “issues” results in the kind of emotional trauma Alma is suffering. The result is that neither Elliot nor Alma are particularly likeable characters, which, considering they are running for their lives, kind of sinks the film before it even has a chance to float.

It also doesn’t help matters any that Wahlberg gives what could be the worst performance of his career. It must be noted, however, that it is not entirely his fault, as he is horribly miscast as a sensitive, intelligent teacher. When he sticks to his wheelhouse roles of bad boy or tough guy types, a la Four Brothers, he is in his element and can pull off a solid and entertaining performance. In this case, however, he just doesn’t have the chops to venture so far out of his comfort zone. This is painfully obvious in his very first scene in the movie where he is teaching his high school science class, and sets the tone for each and ever scene thereafter. Although it must be said that his ludicrous attept to carry on a conversation with a plastic ficus gave me a much needed laugh.

As for Deschanel, she is largely dead from the neck up for the majority of the film, and her response to every emotional crises is to stare blankly off into the distance. A mannequin would have been a wiser casting choice, as then at least Elliot would have been forced to interact with Alma in a meaningful manner.

On the whole, The Happening is easily the worst film I have seen in the last ten years. Take a tip from Hitchcock, Shy… a thriller takes me up the stairs and shows me the door. Schlock-horror throws me head first through the door into an empty room. The empty room is a disappointment and now my head hurts.

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