How to Survive “It Follows”

Written to soothe Lisette Gallows, who is easily the worst person to take to a horror movie.

 

It’s common knowledge that the act of sexual intercourse attracts supernatural non-human aggressive persons (SNAPs). Being a sexually active young human-person sharing the same world with supernatural serial killers, werewolves, and other aggressive non-human persons, statistically means having a lower survival rate. Sex is so linked to death by SNAPs that some of us, eg. vampires, use sexual attractiveness as a means of luring more ill-informed prey. Indeed abstinence is an almost fool-proof way to avoid any supernatural encounter (provided you have aged out of that stage of early human development where your vulnerability makes you both cute and terrifying). But a different type of danger is exposed in the new documentary “It Follows.” Directed by David Robert Mitchell, “It Follows” explores what some less culturally sensitive human-people are calling “sexually transmitted monsters.”

As American human-persons, you may feel you have the right to engage in rampant sex with anyone at any time without risking death by dismemberment, blood loss, and/or non-consensual supernatural sex acts. We sometimes disagree. We understand that it can be frustrating when poor life-choices result in a supernatural non-human aggressive person slowly pursuing, and inevitably rape/murdering the human-person who made said poor life-choices. But always bear in mind, that the SNAP has feelings too and probably doesn’t like being referred to as a monster. In this spirit, we tracked down The Thing Which Follows as it trudged purposefully towards… some place in New Jersey, maybe Philly. We’re not sure who it’s after right now, some meat-sack. Point is, we wanted to show human-persons both the SNAP perspective and to give the same human-persons a rough guideline to weathering this particular threat. You know, so they’re still alive for the rest of us to eat later.

The Thing Which Follows, a well-known member inside the SNAP community, has always been somewhat shy and uncommunicative with its human prey. The Thing Which Follows shares the joy of the relentless pursuit with mindless-type zombies, but unlike the highly visible walking undead community, who enjoy hunting reasonably informed humans, The Thing Which Follows has generally kept a low profile. In the interest of human-person and non-human person relations, The Thing Which Follows agreed to be interviewed… well, not interviewed since it’s unknown whether it can actually speak. We sat down… we walked besides this interesting and integral member of the SNAP community and asked it… questions which it did not answer.

Listen, here’s what I know about surviving sexually transmitted monsters.

• Practice safe sex.

As discussed above, the most certain way to protect your fragile soul-shell is to never have sex. Like ever. The next best thing is to practice safe sex. And this is good advice to prevent attacks by all supernatural non-human aggressive persons. If you must have sex, always be in a safe indoor location. Avoid sex in cars, abandoned warehouse, parks and all other poorly-lit public places. If possible, be in a monogamous relationship before having sex, for at least three months. That should be plenty of time to detect unexplainable flights of terror, unusual paranoia, and possible death by blood-loss and rape before the so-called “curse” (we like to think of it as an invitation) can be unknowingly transferred to you. Also, it’s a good idea to talk openly with your potential partner about his/her/its previous experience with sexually transmitted SNAPs.

• Practice gay sex.  

It has been theorized due to the entity’s heteronormative and highly conservative values, The Thing Which Follows will not transmit its “invitation” during same-sex encounters. This has not been confirmed by traditional scientific study or occult research, but there have been no known cases of gays, lesbians, or transgendered human-people contracting sexually transmitted SNAPs. This advice only works for The Thing Which Follows; be aware that practicing homosexual sex makes you a target for vampires and fairies.

Perhaps this advice has fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps it’s already too late and you, unfortunate meat-sack, have already contracted a sexually transmitted SNAP and are checking the internet for a solution during a brief period of rest before The Thing Which Follows catches up with you. Again. Maybe check behind you just in case.

1) Pass it on.

2) Pursue a career in piloting and/or long distance trucking.

If for moral reason you cannot pass along the curse and you are content to live a sexless existence (how did you catch it in the first place?), consider lucrative career paths that will keep you from being in the same place for a long time.

3) Get good at calculating walking speeds, triangulation, etc.

It is possible with good math and discipline to triangulate you position so that The Thing Which Follows never has the chance to get close enough to you to feed. For example, if you drive two hours East to work and then drive one hours North-west to your recreational place, then drive one hour South-west to your sleeping place, The Thing Which Follows might not get close to you giving you eight hours of sleep, work, and play… oh humans still live in a 24 hour day? Fuck it, I’m bad at math and they’re just walking snack-packets as far as I’m concerned.

4) Pass it Along.

Seriously, keep it going. The Thing Which Follows is fairly reasonably as far as SNAPs go and won’t kill any of you, if you all just keep fucking. Did you ever stop and think that maybe we in the SNAP community needed a surefire way to keep you young people making new food? That’s The Thing Which Follows. We know, it’s not pleasant. We don’t like it either. It’s really awkward at parties.

5) Pass it along to a prostitute and/or sex addict.

Prostitutes and/or sex addict will certainly pass the invitation along to a client and/or prostitutes. This gives you crucial distance from The Thing Which Follows. Also, if the meat-sack the prostitute and/or sex addict passed the invitation along to dies, The Thing Which Follows will be transmitted back to the prostitute and/or sex addict and be transferred again, possibly without ever being noticed.

Pro tip: Use a high-end escort to stick it to “the man.”

6) Go to another country and pass it along to a prostitute.

Try Japan. We hear it’s lovely this time of year and The Thing Which Follows has never really gotten a chance to travel out of The States and its been stuck in Detroit for a while now. Let it explore new flavors… of culture.

If The Thing Which Follows does manage to feed on the high-end escort and/or sex addict you hired, it will have a long soggy walk back across the ocean to you. Maybe it will give up. I mean it’s physically impossible for it to give up, but maybe you’ll be tore to bits by a werewolf, bitten by a vampire, or devoured by a zombie before then. After all, you are a young, sexually active human person, something will eat you soon.

 

7) Give up.

Have you considered giving up? Maybe you’ll like being dead. I hear it’s peaceful.

Really, do you have anything to live for that’s better than… I don’t know, providing nourishment to your local chapter of supernatural non-human aggressive predators. Think of the lives you could save if you donated your blood to a vampire! Or distracted a werewolf on Bingo night at the senior center. You know, since you’re going to die anyway. When The Thing Which Follows catches up.

Dublin Dykes: Why Doesn’t the Devil Steal Lady-souls?

The difficulty lies not in the new ideas but in escaping the old ones. – John Maynard Keynes

     My partner and I had a strange fight the other night centering on the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson. It’s a modern play, set in modern Dublin, and it’s a great story.  The work requires five men, and is about four men having a boy’s night in when the devil joins them to win one of their souls in a game of poker. Sweetness has a problem with proposing to direct the play, because it requires five men and zero women.  Women dominate his program, like most theater programs, and he feels it is unfair to put on a play that more than half the population can’t audition for. My answer was to “gender swap”, that is change the pronouns and have one of the characters be a woman, or “cross-gender cast” or to have women play men. Sweetness had a hard time articulating why he didn’t want to do either of these things, why he would rather put on a different play than allow woman to cross the gender line in The Seafarer. He said that play is about male power disputes, ex-girlfriends, brothers, etc. I argued with him because to me the idea of a bunch of Dublin women gathering around to talk about their ex-girlfriends, drinking problems, and the murder they committed years ago was thrilling. But Sweetness insisted it would be a different play.

Forgetting the illegality of gender swapping a play not out of copy-right, I was left feeling confused and uncomfortable with the conversation. Sweetness isn’t sexist, but his arguments about why a male-centric play like The Seafarer had to remain played by men and about men made too much sense to me. Does that mean we should never perform “The Seafarer”? I hope not, because it’s a great play.  But this conversation got me thinking about other plays that are only played by men because they are about “male themes.” It occurred to me that the modern feminists’ battle for women’s equality is not only a battle with current media, but also with the great works of the past.

With a few outstanding exceptions, the great literary works of the past are about men. Most likely, this is because it was writers writing about themselves and most writers in the past have been male.  While I think that a feminist should be more tolerant of sexism in the classics than in modern plays or films, I wonder if this isn’t creating a kind of anti-woman feedback. These male-centered older works are more studied than modern pieces, more available to perform, and as a result are very formative not only to audiences but to writers in the audience.

For example, take Shakespeare.  I can list off some awesome Shakespeare heroines, Beatrice, Portia, Katherine (if you argue that “Taming of the Shrew” is about her self-growth and I would), etc.  But even if you make the case that these women are the central characters (I would suggest that in most cases they are not) most of these plays are comedies and therefore not considered Shakespeare’s greatest works. The works I studied in high school were the tragedies Lear, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet and the history play Julius Cesar. As I was typing that I couldn’t help but notice there’s only one female name and Romeo and Juliet, when rightly preformed is the tragedy of the family not to mention poor Julie’s got to share her credit. Most of the Shakespeare I see preformed is those tragedies with the inclusion of Othello, Macbeth, and a few extra histories, Richard the Third, Henry the Fifth. I can’t think of the last time I say Taming of the Shrew advertized, let alone The Merchant of Venice or Measure for Measure, two “problem” plays that have very active female characters.

Now, there’s no way to time travel and bitch-slap the bard for being sexist.  Writers of the past were as much responsible to their times as we are (and in general Willy was fairly progressive what with the sympathetic treatment of Jews and Blacks and general cross-dressing and bewailing woman’s plights). Many amateur companies perform classics because they are out of copy-right and cheaper to perform, so we’re more likely to see male-centered plays than the more modern pro-female plays.

It seems to me that the role of the modern feminist in art is not only to create new work, but also find a way to combat the accidental sexism of older pieces. One easy solution to this is to creatively gender swap the great authors who were writing before the advance of feminism.  There many instances, particularly with the classics where gender swapping works beautifully. I recently saw a Tybalt who was a female. The inclusion of a violent active woman in Romeo and Juliet highlights Romeo’s weakness, the families’ hatred, and Juliet’s obedience. Gender swapping is a nice way to handle the plethora of women auditioning for a show and the pittance of men, and it instantly creates a character with interesting layers.

In addition, since mostly theater-going audiences know these classics, gender swapping puts things in a fresh perspective.  If Faust is a female, for example, she is not only struggling to gain more knowledge, but also combating the sexism of the day and her sexual desires for other women. Personally, I’d like to see a female Iago.

Some artists, like Samuel Becket, insist against gender swapping.  This is a problem particularly with modern playwrights (since I’m pretty sure Sweetness is right and it’s illegal).  There is a class of playwrights and directors who hold to the Becket-ian belief that there is only one way to do the play, the right way, the way the author wrote it. This means that Martin Macdonough’s The Pillowman will never be about a woman who writes violent children’s stories that her retarded sister reenacts, and The Seafarer will never be about four Dublin dykes, both of which would be wildly entertaining for me. And writers have the legal right to expect that.  Gender swapping can change the character and the play in significant ways.  But when it doesn’t, for example with an absurd-ist plays like Waiting for Godot, this is remarkably frustrating to women who will never get to perform the choicest parts of great works.

Though, as it turns out four women have waited for Godot, they just had to do it as men without the pronoun change. That was the conclusion Sweetness and I came too; if he did propose The Seafarer he could cast women who could play the roles as men. Cross-gender casting is not illegal and I’ve seen it used to great effect. A recently saw a version of Ajax, which emphasized Ajax’s physical power, by casting the role of his opposite warrior, Odysseus, as a very slight woman. Most of the other soldiers cast were also women of short stature playing men.

But should we expect actresses to be content getting powerful roles, roles where they get to talk about God and death and glory, only when they are playing men? My next frustration in theater comes from the plays that are written with woman as main characters. There’s not a lot of classics that even fit into category. Oscar Wilde’s plays generally feature female protagonists and so do a great many ancient Greek plays.  By and large, though plays about women seem to be about the relationships of the family.  Independence, The Mai, A Doll’s House, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, and The Vagina Monologues all have very strong female characters that would be exciting to play and watch.  But all these plays are about… “female” issues.  Women’s relationship to men, to their parents, to their bodies or their children.  Even in the ancient Greeks plays about women doing amazing things Medea, Lysistrada, and Antigone, these heroines are doing what they do for men, husbands or brothers and they are doing it through children, sex, and household duty.

Now, I love these plays.  These are also great plays and should be performed more.  All plays should be performed more.  But I’ve been in play/screen writing workshops with women who only write male protagonists, because they think people are only interested in reading about men and boys. Stories about men and boys are not about ‘women’s issues’.

I guess what I’m missing is the voice of a powerful female character not speaking about her rights or her relationship to her family.  I want a female monologue about the nature of power, or God, not just about rape and childbirth. Where are the plays about the devil stealing a woman’s soul?  Or women searching for their place in an absurd universe?  Who is writing the tragedy of Eleanor of Aquitaine or Katherine the Great?

     In the world of theater and the arts, it is the duty of feminist playwrights to create new plays that feature women, not only in their homes and gardens, but tackling the same problems that the great male characters of old did.  Themes of power and greed, the search of honor and justice, the search for God or happiness.  Modern audiences want to see these tales from a female point of view.  In addition, it is the role of feminist directors to find a way to balance out the male-dominated theater by including these plays and gender swapping the classics, not just because not enough men auditioned, but because yes a woman can play Tybalt or Iago.  Hell, really shock the audience: make Romeo a chick. You’d barely have to change the dialogue.

Jack Frost, The Friend Zone, and Happy-Endings

Let me begin by saying this has nothing to do with Rise of the Guardians.  I love that movie and will mention it several more times, but this is actually about an earlier version of that mythic character.  These brain-thoughts are about Jack Frost.  No, not the one with the dead dad.  No, not that other one about the serial killer.   This one made in 1979:

He’s not actually as gay as he looks…I think

As a kid, I couldn’t get enough of this movie.  I thought it was the funniest, coolest movie ever and as an adult, I have no idea why.  When I watch it now, I just laugh at the sexism and the silliness of a time before children’s movies were made to entertain adults as well.  I’ve seen it more on TV this year, than I ever did as a kid (due to Rise of the Guardians, which is a great film).  I like to think that it was never that popular when I was a kid because of the blinding sexism, but it was probably because of the “sad” ending.  Spoiler Alert: Jack doesn’t bang the chick.

I don’t know how recognizable this movie is to you modern kids, so I’ll give you the basic run down which neglects the groundhog because that freak never made any sense to me.

RUN DOWN:

Jack Frost is light-hearted fun-loving sprite who is invisible (Rise of the Guardians totally takes this idea, takes a flying leap, and make it a jaw-dropping depressing character motivation).  He is one-of-a-kind, playful, can whistle up the wind, fly, and is invisible to humans which bothers him because he likes to play with them (sound familiar, Rise of the Guardians?).  One of the residents in Jacks favorite town is Elisa (you know she’s the romantic lead because she doesn’t have an accent, unlike her parents and everyone else in her world).  One day while Jack is stalking Elisa, she goes to play on a frozen lake with bunnies and squirrels and shit and suddenly, the villain, King of the Cossacks (once again late 70s) appears talks to himself through an iron puppet like a bat-shit crazy mofo, and makes the healthy decision to ride his iron horse over the ice.   The ice breaks, nothing bad happens to the villain because it’s still early in the movie, and Elisa is about to go over a waterfall on a piece of ice (don’t worry the bunnies and shit are safe).  Faced with her gruesome death, Jack Frost saves her by freezing the waterfall and flying her down to her furry friends (who seem to be taking bets on how she would die)  Her reaction: “Oh that was fun!” (Rise of the Guardians did the ‘no dying horribly, we’re going to have some fun’ part of Jack Frost so much cooler).  She calls him a hero and all the problems start.

Being called a hero put ideas in Jack’s head.  He goes to Father Winter and begs to be made human through a very disturbing song.  Winter says he can be a human but not a mooch.  Jack’s got 3 to 4 months to get a house, a horse, a bag or gold, and a wife or he has to go back to being an overworked slave.

So Jack becomes human and sucks at it.  Trips on ice.  Forgets his name.  Learns that he picked the worse place in the world to be a capitalist, because the King of the Cossacks will never let him have a house, horse, or gold.  Now, he could conceivably go about working on the wife bit and make a convincing argument with Father Winter not to separate him from his beloved wife.  Instead, he announces in the gayest way possible, “Kubblah Kraus has Got to be overthrown.”

So he tries to over throw him and he sucks.  He only succeeds in getting the pretty girl close enough that the villain falls in love.  After a heart-felt conversation with himself through his puppet, Bat-Shit Crazy kidnaps Elisa to woo her…but he’s going to wait just so he can ruin Christmas.

Okay, the King of the Cossacks kidnaps the girl.  He totally carries her away on his horse to his castle in the snow.  She doesn’t really fight him that hard.  I can’t tell if it’s a result of bad animation or sexist storytelling, but I’ll move on.

You might expect this to be the part of the movie where Jack Frost uncovers his awesomeness and saves the girl thus proving his love for her and becoming her knight in golden armor, right?  Nope.  This is where the actual knight in golden armor shows up.

As evidenced by the fact that he gave her a real rose for Christmas and not an imaginary gift, Sir Ken Doll apparently banged Elisa in the past (or maybe just lived nearby).  The knight takes on the entire army of iron men things and saves her.  Her contribution is to run towards him with her arms outstretched (which is more useful than running away, I guess).  Having saved her, Sir Ken Doll falls into the snow, inexplicably wounded through his undented armour (I guess that’ll show him to use a soft metal for protection against iron robots).  He is taken away to be nursed back to health.

Oh, and Jack Frost, because he still sucks as a human, is captured.  Bat-Shit Crazy announces, he is going to send a thousand iron men to kill everyone… because he wanted the girl or something… his motives are unclear.  Jack has time to count each iron man as they march out before he goes back to being an invisible sprite and saves the day by whistling up “the storm of the century.”  Buries the iron robots in the snow like zombies… well, twitching eclectic zombies… I like zombies and wanted to bring them in.

He makes it snow for just long enough that Elisa and Ken Doll fall in love (nursing-back-to-health is a valid dating strategy) and decide to get married at the “first blossom of spring.”  At least she’s sad that her “sweet good little friend” has mysteriously disappeared (read: was killed brutally by the villain).

Eventually, through some freak roof accident, Kubblah Kraus is knocked out, Jack can imitate the villain’s iron puppet voice, and thus makes all the iron men go lemming over a cliff.  Then Jack… either ducks or donkey kicks the King of the Cossaks out the window.

Jack then takes over.  The castle is his house, the iron monstrosity is his horse, the peasant’s gold is his.  All he needs is the woman and he’s a real boy forever.  He goes to Elisa’s father (not her oddly) and finds out she is getting married to Sir Ken Doll. Jack is surprisingly unbitter about this, turns back into invisible sprite thing and kisses the bride as she walks out of the church, then flies off to bang either the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, depending on how you like your Fan Fiction (thanks again, Rise of the Guardians).

And that’s where the kvetching starts.

KVETCHING:

Well, not with the fan fiction… that’s just silly.  Who would kvetch about fan fiction? The issues are with the not-happily-ever- after.  I’ve noticed that a lot of my fellow uber-judgmental-ists have been remembering one of the characters from this film, Elisa, as a heartless bitch.  Clearly, she comes from a place more evil than the Evil Queen from Snow White , the Evil Fairy in Sleeping Beauty, and the Evil Stepmother in Cinderella  combined!   How dare she leave the weird-looking nice guy in the friend zone and get her happily-ever-after on with some pretty boy in golden armor?  The slut!

This is the reaction I’ve seen from modern adults taking about this movie out of nostalgia when they take their kids to see Rise of the Guardians.  I’ve read it in forums, now and just to see how ingrained this happy ending thing is, I’ve talked up the movie with most of my friends and showed it to some that have never seen it.  Including a pair of raging feminist lesbians.  They still felt cheated at the end and thought poorly of Elisa, usually using disparaging sexual words (which is a strange thing we do to women; no matter her short coming we put it in terms of her physical appearance or sexual attitude, ever notice that?)

I am stunned 1) by anyone else who even knows this movie exists and 2) by how passionate people could get about a movie that they admitted was silly and out-dated.  One of the main flaws people attribute to this movie is that she ends up with the Ken Doll and not Jack Frost.  Jack doesn’t get the girl and that’s offensive somehow.

I’m getting more and more frustrated by this, because it’s totally not Elisa’s fault that she doesn’t end up with Jack Frost and what’s more, I think a good message to throw around in our children’s films sometimes is that love can’t be earned.

First off, to the point of Elisa being a bitch/slut/blonde/ whatever female slur applies to you:  she is not a prize.  Yes, she is a weak character.  She does not save herself from danger (or even fight back).  She waits for a literal knight in shining armor to do it for her, but that doesn’t make her the same as a house, horse, and gold.  Those are things you can earn.  Love is not.

From the beginning of the movie, she is in love with Sir Ken Doll.  I know I’ve stripped him of the dignity of his name, but that fact that he has a cleft chin and perfect hair does not defeat the fact that she was totally in love with him before she ever really meets Jack “Snip”.  And Jack Frost knows this.

While Jack is shameless eavesdropping, which is a perk of invisibility, he over hears this delightful tidbit.

Mama: You are so romantic, Elisa.  Find yourself a good solid husband and settle down.

Elisa: I will.  When my knight in golden armor comes along.

Her love is expressed in all the typical late 70’s clichés of children’s entertainment.  She waits for him faithfully.  He gives her roses.  She nurses him back to health.  He’s a knight.

Elisa marries the man she chooses which is shockingly progressive for this movie.

Secondly, and a lot of my friends missed this, Jack is a chauvinist who has the opinion that a woman is on par with house, horse, and gold.

Just after Elisa says she waiting for the knight in golden armor, Jack hears this:

Papa: Knights!  Aren’t you in love with anybody yet?

Elisa (with a flippant laugh and toss of her clayish hand): Only Jack Frost.

At this expression of love, Jacks pointy hat jumps to attention (in no way is this a cartoon hard-on).  But does he fly off to Father Winter at this point and beg for humanity so he can express his love to Elisa?  No.   He only thinks to pursue her after he’s saved her (earned her).  As he sings to Father Winter to convince him he is lonely and in love, his fantasy is of Elisa’s serving him dinner!

Moreover, he never tells her the truth.  He never says, I’m Jack Frost and I’ve come into human form out of love for you, which might have impressed her a little more than him failing to storm the castle.  It’s really the only way out of the friend zone; she can’t be impressed by your sacrifices and gestures of affection if she doesn’t know you’re only doing them because you love her.  For all Blondie knows, he is a tailor.  Jack broke the first rule of all children’s role models which is to always tell the truth about who you are.  Be yourself and all that crap (unless who you are is selfish or whiny, then you need to grow-up…but that’s not this movie).

Say, the first two points don’t matter.  Elisa will marry the guy who saves her more, because that’s the logic of a late 70s romantic female.  If she’s keeping count of the times she’s been saved.  It goes Jack Snip: 0.  Sir Ken Doll:1 (that we know of) and Jack Frost: 2.  Clearly, to get his happy end in, Jack just had to tell her that he was Jack Frost and had earned her.

We, as an audience, feel like Elisa is a bitch for not ending up with Jack at the end, although she is clearly in love with another man and doesn’t really know Jack that well.  We feel cheated because we know it was Jack Frost who saved both of them (and the entire town) when he sacrificed his humanity to become a spite and snow the iron soldiers in.  I don’t think we’re keeping a subconscious tally of Jack versus Sir Ken.  It’s out of compassion for the hero’s goals.

We sympathize with Jack’s loneliness (out-dated chauvinist prick that he is).  We want him to be happy at the end and to accomplish his goal.  He is a nice guy, he has made sacrifices, and damn it, the movie is about him.  He has to get his happy-ending.

So we feel cheated of that goal accomplishment, when he doesn’t get the reward we see in every child’s film.  Rudolph guides the sleigh and forgives years of bullying because he’s a celebrity now and there’s a girl reindeer who likes him.  The Grinch is re-made into a modern film and now there a girl Who who likes him.  The hero, [insert name of little boy/girl/old man/judge/skeleton], believes in Santa and discovers the true meaning of Christmas and there’s someone who likes him (you get a cookie if you followed all those movies).  The weird-looking nice guy wins the beautiful woman’s heart.

But if Jack had married Elisa at the end and achieved all his life’s goals, he would have accomplished exactly what Kubblah Kraus would have.  He would have stolen the woman away from the man she was in love with out of a sense that he deserved her.  And we don’t really want that as an audience, do we?

Besides, Elisa is so sweet in the movie, she probably would have married him if he asked.  Just to keep him human if that’s what he wanted.  There might have been a weird threesome involved, since clearly both Sir Ken Doll and Jack were flamers.  And come to think of it by lover-earning logic, Jack Frost won Sir Ken Doll too…but I’ve digressed into what if territory.