Vicious Mythic Parties: Three Reviews

Halestorm: Vicious (2018)

Vicious (2018) is the fourth studio album by Halestorm, not counting cds of cover songs. Their last album Into the Wild Life got mixed reviews, largely because it wasn’t what fans expected. Lzzy Hale’s raw vocals backed by guitar, bass, and brother Arejay Hale on drums have been delivering basic hardcore power rock’n’roll since 2009. A few tracks on Into the Wild Life fit that description, but the band also experimented with various other sounds including country and pop. It wasn’t bad, but much of the fan base wasn’t happy. Fans have no reason to complain about Vicious. “What doesn’t kill me makes me vicious,” sings Hale on the title track. The rock is back. From the opening song Black Vultures to the speed rock “Uncomfortable” to the melodic “Killing Ourselves to Live” to the final sentimental (acoustic but un-silent) “The Silence” and everything in between, the album keeps the edge in sound and lyrics that rock should have “just to make you uncomfortable.” Thumbs Up.

**** ****

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor, and Morality by Mark Field

I didn’t watch Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer during its initial run of 1997-2003. Those years were tumultuous for me personally, and not in a good way. Even had I the time back then, I would not have been inclined to seek out a campy horror show that appeared to be aimed at teenagers. Only several years later did I idly give some reruns a view and find myself impressed. Yes, it is a campy horror show aimed primarily at teenagers, but it is intelligently scripted and funny. (The shoestring budget first season is admittedly shaky, but it was a 1997 midseason replacement, so there are only 12 episodes in Season One to get through.) It is a show adults can enjoy, and one soon notices that the monsters, demons, and vampires are metaphors for the challenges we all face growing up.

Lest one think that is reading too much into it, the reading is shared by cultural critics and by the creators of the show. There have been more academic studies (called Buffy Studies – really) on Buffy than any other TV show. Said James Marsters (who played the vampire Spike on the show), “I’m not at all surprised that the show in any form continues to live on. I don’t want to oversell this but it’s the same theme as Catcher in the Rye. It’s the same theme as Hamlet. How do you get through adolescence? ... I’m really glad Joss was able to find a metaphor to talk about something that is a serious subject with so much humor.” Whedon’s taste for existentialist philosophy informs the show (the vampire Angel, played by David Boreanaz, can be seen reading Sartre’s La nausée in one scene) along with the theories of Freud and Jung. Not always, of course. In the last episode of Season Four several main characters have meaningful metaphorical dreams; in each of them a fellow with slices of cheese makes a brief appearance. He doesn’t mean anything. Joss is just playing with the audience. Sometimes cheese is just cheese.

One of the more informative and accessible books on the subject is Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor, and Morality by Mark Field. In 682 pages he gives episode by episode analysis of the philosophical, psychological, and cultural references. I picked up the book mostly to see whether there was that much to say about a TV show. There is, because it is not just about a TV show but about philosophy, psychology, and culture. I sometimes find myself disagreeing with him, but always find his commentary thoughtful and perceptive. Whether you’re revisiting the show or seeing it for the first time, if you want, in effect, an annotated Buffy, this will do as well as any.

**** ****

How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017)

When writing about young people, authors often are tempted to set their stories in the places and eras of their own youth. It’s just easier to get the nuances right in everything from speech patterns to pop culture references. (A notable exception was Tom Wolfe whose ear for campus dialogue in the 2000s in I Am Charlotte Simmons was as on target as it was for 1960s hippiedom in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.) It’s a bonus for the storytelling if that era happens to be a particularly vibrant one. This is the case for author Neil Gaiman (b.1960) whose How to Talk to Girls at Parties, originally a scifi short story and later a graphic novella, is set in punk-era London. The 2017 film version stars Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Alex Sharp.

In 1977 Enn (Sharp) and his friends leave a Croydon punk rock club at closing time to find an after hours house party. Despite some wrong turns they find a house party, but it’s not the one they were seeking. These partiers are different. The boys assume they are some kind of cult from California, but they actually come from much farther away than that. They are manifesting in human form to accumulate certain types of data prior to “the eating”; the aliens have solved the population problem by consuming their own (adult) offspring. Gaiman’s original tale ends when the boys leave the party (“flee” might be a better verb), but this scene happens only 20 minutes into the 102 minute movie. The film’s plot continues as Zan (Elle Fanning), one of the aliens, asks Enn’s help to “further access the punk.” He is happy to comply with a little help from punk scene queen Boadicea (Nicole Kidman).

Gaiman’s short story is a tightly plotted and themed one: Enn fears the alien siren song even as he is drawn to it. (The metaphor of clueless young men fumblingly attempting to interact with women is an obvious one.) The movie by contrast goes off in multiple directions at once: part romcom, part 70s retrospective, part youth rebellion, part scifi parody, and more. The result is messy, but not really a bad messy. This is not a great film, but it is agreeably weird. That’s enough to earn it a mild Thumbs Up.

Trailer: How to Talk to Girls at Parties