Fiction Friday #1

Tweet This flash has been taken down as it is out for submission!

Dorian Gray

Tweet I went to see the turgid, unmitigated disaster of a movie that was Dorian Gray on Sunday, and it's taken until now for me to feel sufficiently in possession of my credulity to compose an entry about it. I know, you may be (logically) wondering why I keep discussing films in a blog supposedly devoted to my writing career. Firstly, I have two degrees in film and it's a great passion of mine, and secondly, I believe that film faces the same technical problems as writing, in terms of pacing, structure, dialogue etc.

Now, Dorian Gray is somewhat unsurprisingly based on the genius work by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The original novel is an absolute delight, whereas the movie is a lacklustre blight on the face of the film industry. I'm often somewhat skeptical of adaptations, as few of them manage to retain the subtle subtexts and wide-reaching nuances of the original source, and I should have guessed by the trailer that the makers of this limp movie would have managed to strip everything out bar the basic plot, and refuse to replace it with anything that might go over the heads of the target teenage audience.

The novel is a meditation on the nature of immortality, of truth versus beauty, of the strength of morality and conscience when faced with the temptations of debauchery, but the film chooses to dispense with these to promote the message, "Wouldn't it be fun if you could do what you want?" Responsibility and principles are jettisoned for a selfish gratification of the ego. It's hardly unsurprising in our youth-obsessed times, when people inject botulism into themselves in an attempt to stave off the ageing process, that the film places heavy emphasis on the value and virtue of youth. It ties in nicely with that other cinematic debacle, Twilight, in which vampires stay forever young and beautiful.

It's simply a bad, bad film. The costumes seem somewhat wrong, and I cannot quite understand why the stylist decided to give Sibyl long red hair, when such an appearance in Victorian art would denote the woman as a prostitute, or 'fallen woman'. Victorian art was extremely preoccupied with the idea of the 'angel of the hearth', of the quiet, obedient wife who would run the household for her husband without complaint. Naturally this image appealed to the highly repressed Victorian consciousness, yet man was still drawn to her sinful sister, the harlot. This scarlet-haired temptress allowed men to be experienced before marriage, and represented those who had fallen from grace and would usually end up falling off a bridge into the murky waters of the Thames. Indeed, this is the same fate that befalls Sibyl, despite the fact that she is intended to be a shining beacon of virtue and innocence in Dorian's increasingly dark world.

Part of me wonders that Sibyl's hair is inspired by the fact that when Dorian first sees her, she is playing Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, although her appearance owes more to Ophelia in John Everett Millais' painting of the same name. Ophelia drowns herself, and Shakespeare hints that she does so as she is pregnant, and it's an eerie echo of the situation in which young Sibyl finds herself. I can understand the inclusion on the part of Mr Wilde, as he was clearly a genius, but I can't help feeling that any similarities featured by the filmmakers are completely accidental.

It is almost upsetting how easily the filmmakers tore the witty heart out of the novel, to replace it with a glossy absence of substance. Dorian's supposed debauchery seems tame compared to the goings on of most soap characters, and when we finally see the painting of Dorian in the final act, it looks more like Vigo from Ghostbusters II than a damning indictment of the havoc wrought upon a misguided man's soul. Where the book revealed the price to be paid for man's folly, the movie turns Dorian into a reckless pretty boy seemingly devoid of personality or charisma. Maybe if the filmmakers had taken a leaf from the diabolically bad League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and cast Stuart Townsend as Dorian (the only good thing about LOEG), then the film might have been saved. Otherwise, it's just a poor adaptation of an amazing book.

Buy the novel; ignore the movie.

Bye bye, short challenges...

Tweet I've been part of the EditRed writing community online for quite a long time now, having been introduced to it by a friend. I haven't been particularly active of late, having been partially deserted by my Muse, but I got a message from one of the top users, inviting me to take part in the final wee challenges. These challenges were flash fiction contests, restricting writers to a word count and given title, or first line. I used to really enjoy doing them as they always provided a nice little creative prompt, a nudge towards writing something when work on the larger stories appeared to have stalled.

I'll be sad to see them finish, but I thought I'd have a bash at the penultimate challenge. Given the title of 'One Last Dollar' and a maximum word limit of 150 words, this is what I produced. Enjoy.

The Final Destination

Tweet So I'm back from the cinema again. A friend and I originally intended to see Dorian Gray (despite the fact that The Picture of Dorian Gray is my favourite book and it shall no doubt have been utterly butchered in its translation to the big screen) but it wasn't on at either of the Cineworlds in the West End so we went to see Final Destination 3D instead.

Now, for those unfamiliar with the franchise, each film essentially begins with a big disaster sequence, which is in fact a premonition had by one of the characters. Their subsequent freak out leads several people who should have expired in said disaster to avoid their impending doom, although Death then stalks throughout the rest of the plot, offing them in the order they should have died in increasingly implausible and ridiculous ways. Its fundamental message is that you just can't cheat Death...though one would wonder why on earth one of them would have the premonition, and then the subsequent visions which hold clues to how each of the survivors will die, if they were just going to die anyway. Does the Grim Reaper get a bit bored with his/her endlessly mundane task, and seek ways to spice things up a bit? I'm surprised - humans can usually think of enough inventive and creative ways to kill each other, without Death having to step in and start squashing people with plate glass or garotting them with a shower cord.

Anyway. The film wasn't entirely bad, even if it was entirely formulaic, but it did feel a tad too much like an extended health & safety video. The moral of the story is...always store your tools safely, don't leave containers of flammable liquid open and near anything which could cause them to topple, look both ways before you cross the street, and basically watch what you're doing. There. Now you don't need to see it, and I've probably ruined business for all of those godawful companies that get you compensation when you've done something idiotic at work.

Becoming A Writer

Tweet I finally finished reading Dorothea Brande's seminal text on creative writing last night. Becoming A Writer was first published in the 1930s, yet the wisdom contained within is still just as relevant today. Most writing texts concern themselves with the mechanics of writing - grammar, character, dialogue, setting etc. While these elements are clearly important, being able to implement them can only occur in the first place if you've managed to establish a set routine, and flicked that switch in your brain that allows you to write whenever, wherever. Essentially, this book is intended to help flick that switch. Brande is more concerned with the personality problems of the fledgling writer than the technical errors and it is these which she seeks to help the writer to overcome.

The language is a little old-fashioned and her insistence that the author is always referred to as 'he' is a tad annoying but considering the age of the text, it's still an immensely readable, useful book that prompts the writer into doing exactly what they do best - write.

Fearless

Tweet I have never been a big fan of spiders. I wouldn't say that I was ever arachnophobic, especially since I can quite happily catch an errant eight-legged visitor to my flat using a glass and a coaster, before depositing them safely outside, but I just don't really like them. So it was with a mixture of dismay and fascination that I met a Chilean Rose spider at an animal handling session at Wingham Wildlife Park in Kent on Monday. The handler started us off with a pair of cute baby lemurs, before progressing to a young raccoon, then a baby alligator, and finally a royal python, before bringing out the finale.



At first, I decided not to handle her (she's called Rosie). However, I remembered that I have a reputation as being fearless to defend, and so thrust my phone at my mother with the instructions to take a photo, before sticking out my hands. I can honestly say it was bizarre, but not a bad experience. She was so light that I could barely feel her sitting on my palm, and the fact that she was furry simply let me look at her as a fuzzy creature instead of a spider.

I don't think I'll ever actually like spiders but now I think I'm a lot less worried by them.

Inspirational Flashes

Tweet A single shoe sits in the gutter, sheltering beneath the bumper of a battered VW Polo. The cracked red leather is spotted with splashes of dried mud. A dead spider floats on the stagnant water that pools in the shoe.

Whose shoe is it? Why is it in the gutter? How long has it been there? What happened to the owner, or even the spider?

It's moments like these that remind me why I write.