Crudely Drawn Filler Material: The Simpsons in "Watching TV" (aka The Chattering Cyclops vs Wilson Bryan Key)

If the original Simpsons short that aired on April 19 1987 was all about establishing America's soon-to-be favourite family as a grotesque, if recognisably human subversion of traditional family values, then the second short, which aired on May 3 1987, cut directly to one of the concerns at the heart of their endearing dysfunctionality - namely, just how mutually besotted the family was with the blinkering light box at the forefront of their living room. "Watching TV" saw the genesis of a preoccupation that was to remain prevalent for a significant chunk of the series proper, and which would appear to bear out an argument presented by Wilson Bryan Key in his 1973 pop-psycho classic Subliminal Seduction - that the television set had become such a revered and omnipotent component of family life that it was practically a member of the family now. The TV, which Key identifies as "the one-eyed monster resident in every well-furnished living room", is clearly posited as the authority to which each individual Simpson will ultimately answer. Bart and Lisa time their petty squabbles in order to coincide with commercial breaks; Homer waxes poetic about the joys of family togetherness but obligingly submits when the box is talking. Throughout all of this, the TV screen throbs and pulsates with the sickening energy of a radioactive mutant. Just a typical night within the Simpsons' walls.

At its heart, The Simpsons has always been about the banality of television, and how slavishly our lives revolve around the chattering cyclops, right down to the show's opening sequence, in which the individual family members are depicted rushing home in order to amass before it on the couch (what are we to make of that, exactly? Is the implication that they are rushing home to watch themselves upon the box?). As viewers, our own relationship with the family's tube addiction is two-fold - we recognise the vapidity of their non-stop TV consumption while equally acknowledging the mirror they hold up to our own media-watching habits (after all, are we ourselves not participating in the same activity as these bug-eyed neon demons at this very point in time?). Writes Key: "Television is a major consideration as to when the family goes to bed (after the 11:00pm news), when the family goes to the toilet or engages in conversation (during commercials), when the family eats meals or snacks, what family activities will be on weekends (relative to games, program schedules, and sports seasons), when parents do or do not have sex (who wouldn't be tired after a night's hard work in front of the tube's window, pushing beer and potato chips down one's throat?)" (p.66)

Before we go any further, there is something I should probably clear up - yes, this is the same Wilson Bryan Key who wrote a series of books between 1973 and 1989 proposing that advertisers insert all manner of phallic and vaginal imagery into their campaigns in order to exploit our subconscious sexual desires and convert them into cravings for gin and designer jeans. Because deep down, you're a sexually frustrated dupe who can be aroused by strategically arranged images of ice cubes, and advertisers know exactly how to manipulate that Achilles heel to their own commercial ends. Nowadays, it's tough to encounter anyone who'll take Key's arguments particularly seriously, his body of work having been regulated largely to the slag heap of dubious 1970s pop psychology. Does this make Subliminal Seduction and its sequels any less obligatory reading? Of course not. Dubious or not, they're still entertaining as hell. If nothing else, Key taught me to look at the world a little more closely and to see the hidden smut in everything, and for that much I salute him.

Probably not.

The Simpsons' relationship with the TV, and its indispensability in maintaining the family's entire domestic equilibrium, had a major role in the conflict and resolution of the fourth episode of the series proper, "There's No Disgrace Like Home", which first aired on January 28 1990. This episode sees Homer pawning the sacred television set to fund a family counseling session, an act that seems egregiously out of character for him now but was entirely consistent with his characterisation in the Ullman shorts. Embarrassed by his family's unruly behaviour at a company picnic, Homer grows despondent over his perceived failure as patriarch, but his attempts to promote better conduct only cause his family to regress even further in social graces, to the extent that he transforms them into a legion of peeping toms whose voyeuristic behaviour petrifies the neighbourhood. "Why did you smite me with this family?" Homer laments to the omnivorous man upstairs, and is met with only silence. Instead, it is the all-powerful television that offers up salvation, in the form of a commercial for Dr Monroe's Family Therapy Center*, something Homer explicitly acknowledges when he reminds himself that, "the answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a glass; they're on TV!" He later assures Marge that Dr Monroe is reputable because "of all the commercials I saw, his was the best." The TV may have answered Homer's prayers, but paradoxically it also stands between him and his own credibility as family patriarch. Earlier in the episode, Homer had attempted to assert his authority by prying the family away from their TV dinner viewing (albeit an educational nature show, with narration mixing traditional notions of family values with the grotesqueness of nature: "The father of the family has worked all day to find this food for his children...unable to fend for themselves, the baby bald eaglets are dependent on their mother regurgitating food which she has found...") and ordering them to eat a traditional family dinner at the table instead. Homer effectively competes with the TV for his family's respect and attention, so it is hardly surprising, in this context, that he would be willing to sacrifice the TV to boost his own standing.

For the rest of the family, Homer's decision to pawn the TV constitutes a grave threat to their own sense of domestic stability; as such, during their counseling session with Dr Monroe, they are unanimous in identifying Homer as the source of their unhappiness (Marge even accuses him of driving a stake through the hearts of those who love him). By the end of the episode, Monroe has tired of the Simpsons and declared the family a hopeless case, but Homer holds him to his commercial's guarantee that they should expect either family bliss or double their money back. Ultimately, the two go hand in hand, for the final scene sees the family unified in their dsyfunctionality, proud that their eccentricities have proved financially beneficial - as Lisa so disarmingly puts it, "It's not the money as much as the feeling that we earned it." Marge is quick to suggest that they return to the pawn shop and restore that absent member of the family, the TV, to its rightful place, but Homer has other plans - he proposes they use the money to buy a new TV, one with a twenty-one inch screen, realistic flesh tones (ironic, no?) and "a little cart so that [they] can wheel it into the dining room on holidays". Far from wishing to keep the TV and family mealtimes in their respective territories, Homer now goes so far as to extend a place to the TV at the table. Thus, the episode closes with a truce between Homer and the TV, the two warring authorities having reached an arrangement that is mutually beneficial - the television is restored to its spot at the centre of the Simpson household, and Homer gets to claim a stake in his family's affections by facilitating that return in a new and improved guise (noteworthy is that the family's worship of television does not translate into a sentimental attachment toward the set itself, with the Simpsons' older model being left abandoned at the pawn shop). The ending reaffirms Homer as a breadwinner for the modern ages; he becomes the daddy bald eagle who works all day to provide for his family, only in place of nourishment he proves his patriarchal mettle by enriching their lives with the best possible televisual entertainment.

Five years on and another episode, "Homer Badman" of Season 6, would revisit the premise of the television having supplanted Homer as family patriarch, albeit from a much more madcap, sharper-toothed perspective that also satirises the media's tendency to create narratives to suit its own sensationalist ends. Here, Homer is wrongly accused of sexual harassment and undergoes a relentless crucifixion by the media, whom Lisa astutely identifies as being more interested in entertainment than truth. Nevertheless, seeing himself vilified on the tube, whose authority he is accustomed to trusting, proves deeply confusing to Homer. Bart admits to Homer that his own loyalties are divided - obviously, he would like to believe his father, but ultimately TV must have the final say, for it "spent so much more time raising us than you." Homer does not dispute this, agreeing dejectedly that, "TV's always right." In the end, salvation comes from an unlikely source - it's revealed that Groundskeeper Willie has a penchant for secretly videotaping couples in cars ("In this country it makes you look like a pervert, but every single Scottish person does it!") and can provide visual evidence of Homer's innocence. Homer is exonerated in the eyes of the TV-watching world, but he subsequently disappoints his family when he demonstrates that he has failed to grasp the obvious lesson from his experience about not believing everything he sees in the media.** "Homer Badman" ends, once again, with a moment of reconciliation between Homer and the TV, only here Homer goes so far as to physically embrace the set and fondly suggest that they never fight again. That the rest of the Simpsons clan are last seen slinking away in quiet dismay does not seem to matter, for the real hardship from this whole ordeal, for Homer, has come not from his friends and family's loss of faith in him but from his own inability to see eye-to-eye with what the TV is dictating. All Homer wants is return to a state of affairs where he can accept the Almighty Tube's interpretation of reality without question - for him to actually take the lesson suggested by Marge about not automatically taking the media's word for granted would be entirely counterproductive in this regard.

"Homer Badman" echos Key's warning that television, by its nature, does not foster individual thought or perspective; rather it thrives on the substitution of personal first-hand experience for a distilled recreation that has strategically filtered through someone else's lens for all-purpose consumption. He reflects that: "Everyone who watches the screen experiences precisely the same event...when you see a parade, a war, a concert, or whatever on television, you are not perceiving the event but a preprocessed and edited cameraman's, writer's, director's, sponsor's single-lensed version of the event communicated to viewers via only two sensory inputs - the eyes and ears." (p.66-7) Homer is at his most comfortable when allowing television to do his thinking for him; the recognition that the TV's presentation of events is a lie is disturbing enough, but what is really alienating about Homer's experience throughout "Homer Badman" is the knowledge that, in finding himself at odds with the media's image of him, he has been excluded from the overriding perspective that unifies TV viewership as a whole. As Key puts it, "The TV machine regulates time, channelizes or unifies perceptual experience and establishes (all subliminally) an entire range of desirable human expectations, value systems, identities, relationships, and perspectives toward the entire world." For Homer, to go along with the TV's take on events is to be part of a greater shared experience, to see and understand the world as everyone else does, to laugh at and disapprove of whatever the world at large is prompted to laugh at and disapprove of. Otherwise he is truly on his own, and this is frightening. Is it any wonder that he takes such giddy delight in rejecting the message that is explicitly extended to him at the end?

A common charge made against the rise of television, by both Key and within The Simpsons, is that it has led to the death of conversation. When Sideshow Bob launches his one-man crusade to have television obliterated from the face of the planet (or at least all of Springfield) in "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" of Season 7, he explicitly declares his intentions to revive the lost art of conversation (and scrimshaw). Key would certainly agree with Bob, stating that, "With everyone perceiving precisely the same image on a TV screen, there are no unique perspectives for individuals. There is, therefore, really nothing to talk about. Try discussing a program you have seen on TV with someone who saw the same program. You can cover three hours of viewing in a handful of sentences." (Oh, if only that were so. Key passed away in 2008, so he never knew the pain and confusion of overhearing two work colleagues talk at length about the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Many of Key's statements seem charmingly quaint from a modern perspective.) There is a running gag throughout the series where, in order for the Simpsons to sit and reminisce about the old days, the TV must first be removed from the equation - a trip down memory lane cannot possibly hope to compete with the latest episode of Knightboat, after all. In "The Way We Was" of Season 2, Marge and Homer get to regale their offspring with the story of how they first became item, but only because the TV randomly blacked out as the family were watching "the bald guy argue with the fat tub of lard" (and Bart clings to the TV with all the desperation of a cocaine addict, insisting that if you stare closely enough you can still make out an image). In "And Maggie Makes Three" of Season 6, Marge purposely banishes the TV in favour of an hour of family reminiscing, but this has a slow start, for the Simpsons have now spent so many years huddled dutifully around the telly box that their memories are firmly entrenched in it - she opens the family album to find it filled with snapshots of the family watching Knightboat (a thinly-veiled pastiche of 80s action drama Knight Rider). Noteworthy is that the family are not unanimous in their enthusiasm for the show - Homer cheers it on with the excitement of a transfixed six-year-old, but Bart and Lisa are more indifferent and prone to pick holes in the internal logic of series; nevertheless, all three family members cluster around the TV every bit as obediently to watch a man chase starfish smugglers with the aid of a talking boat, as if there were really nothing better to do with their time.

The Simpsons repeatedly returns to the idea, expounded by Key, that the television stifles initiative and individuality, and yet television is an obvious emblem of stability in the Simpsons universe. It is the ultimate unifer (Key would say "pacifier"); take it away and everything crumbles. "There's No Disgrace Like Home" demonstrates just how integral the television is to maintaining relative peace and order within the walls of the family home; Homer's tactic of uprooting the TV in an effort to better his family has only detrimental consequences, and by the end of the episode Homer has seen the light and concluded that the answer to their problems is not to remove the TV but to make it bigger. By "Homer Badman", Homer's relationship with the TV has strengthened to the point that he has effectively placed it at the centre of the universe; his daily dosage of television viewing is more than just a means of whiling away a few hours but a matter of reaffirming the functionalities of the world and his own place in relation to this. By the time we get onto Sideshow Bob's attempt to eradicate television in Season 7, the gag has been expanded so that TV is no longer a family ritual or personal habit but the entire institution upon which modern civilisation is founded. "Would it really be worth living in a world without television?" queries Krusty the Clown, in contemplating the demands of his former sidekick. "I think the survivors would envy the dead!" Clearly, a perverse worship of the televised image pervades the entire culture of the series. Those who do not fall in line with this Springfieldian religion are posited as being deeply nefarious threats to society (like Bob) or doomed to a life of solitude and ostracisation (as was Homer during his brief rift with television in "Homer Badman"). And yet, The Simpsons is equally at pains to remind us that, by tuning into the show on a regular basis, we are participating in that very same culture. The Simpsons may be freakish little monsters, but so long as their adventures continue to occupy a place in our weekly schedules, they become objects of our own habitual TV worship.

To Key, part of what makes TV such a destructive tool is its practice of creating idealised models of human relationships, with which the viewer is expected to identify and emulate, often for the purposes of making product placement more persuasive. Key calls the television families of the early 1970s - My Three Sons, The Partridge Family, Doris Day and their ilk -  "superbly designed products of the merchandising imagination" (p.69), although he acknowledges that there are limits to just how much utopian fantasy an audience is prepared to swallow, noting that divorce and family discord were now so prevalent in American consciousness that the traditional two-parent family was already becoming a threatened species in the contemporary sitcom. Key proposes that "The real-life parent, passively stretched out before the tube before a nightly sunbath in stereotyped imagery, must appear to any child as the opposite polarity of all that is good, worthwhile and meaningful in the night's program schedule." It is a description that seems eerily befitting of the Simpson family's own would-be patriarch. Over its remarkably long lifespan, the animation in The Simpsons has become so clean and standardised (I would say plastic, were I in a less charitable mood) that it is easy to lose sight of just what grotesque little freaks the family were in their earlier incarnations. The characters were gross, ugly and flat-out unpleasant to look at, and yet there was something strangely engaging about their visual crudeness. In that regard, they were very much the subversion of what Key condemns as the impossibly idealised TV families masquerading as the real thing. The early Simpsons barely looked human and, being animated creations, are immediately recognisable as the products of fantasy, but a lot of the early acclaim they garnered was centred upon how much more authenticity they boasted over their flesh and blood sitcom counterparts. The series struck a chord in part because it was fixated on ugliness to the point where viewers were encouraged to feel an affinity with it. The characters are caricatures of the crudeness and vulgarity we fear are unshakeable facets of our own human conditions, and they are given a warmth and familiarity that makes us more at ease with the messiness of our own lives. Imperfection is much more fun when we have our favourite cartoon characters there to validate the perks of not being a demigod.

For all of the furore that originally arose over their so-called dysfunctionality, there is an extent to which the Simpsons embody a very traditional, old-fashioned model of the family unit, one that was already starting to look outdated by the early mid-90s. Indeed, there is little about the basic family structure that would appear to challenge more conservative notions of how a family should function. Homer may be an oafish slob who cannot possibly hope to compete with the television set for his kids' admirations (and by "Homer Badman" he had effectively regressed to being one of the kids himself) but he has held his position at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant for long enough to remain the family's sole breadwinner. By contrast, Marge's main purpose within the family is to be its nurturing, emotional centre. Homer and Marge are still married after thirty-one years, despite numerous challenges to their relationship (and would anyone really have faulted Marge if she'd dumped Homer as far back as the series' ninth episode, "Life on The Fast Lane", instead of going all Officer and a Gentleman with him at the end?). Key proposes that we are genetically predisposed to respond to certain family archetypes, which he sees as being symbolically coded all over the media, writing that, "The human need to project into or identify with the symbolic family structure is used by writers, directors, and other media technicians as a subliminal device to hold an audience's interest and attention and to an effect identification between media content and audience." (p.63) The archetypal family, according to Key, consists of four members: the Father (the family's political leader), the Mother (the family's spiritual/moral leader) and their two children, the Craftsman (who supports the family in a technical and/or artistic sense) and the Clown (who provides comic relief). Key argues that such archetypes are not restricted to actual biological families, nor are they restricted to their associated genders, and goes so far as to identify the pre-Sgt. Pepper Beatles as an example of an iconic foursome that the public found it easy to embrace because they rang so true of the archetypal family, with John being the Father, Paul being the Mother, George the Craftsman and Ringo the Clown. It is easy to see how the Simpsons fall in line with this model - Homer and Marge's roles are self-explanatory, Lisa is the Craftsman and Bart the Clown (appropriately, he worships a TV clown) - although that does leave us with the problem of where to place Maggie in this equation.

As per Key's model, Maggie is a fifth wheel, and perhaps she is quite an easy character to ignore (as Homer does, for much of the time) because she gets no dialogue (in the conventional sense) and she is seldom the focus of a Simpsons adventure. What purpose does Maggie serve in the series (other than to provide the punchline to the heavily-publicised mystery of Who Shot Mr Burns)? I think back to Key's description of the TV as "the greatest pacifier of them all" - in his words "a total substitute for thumbsucking and toying with one's genitals" (p.67) - and I am inclined to consider this in relation to Maggie's oral fixation and her attachment to a literal pacifier. For the most part, Maggie sits on the sidelines of the Simpson family, passively sucking at her beloved mouthpiece while the rest of the family fixates on the TV. Maggie is an addict of a different nature, although the object of her addiction is a double-edged sword. The pacifier is Maggie's weapon, and she uses it in lieu of any actual communication. Maggie's non-stop sucking has become her characteristic means of expression - she suffers terribly when deprived of it at an authoritarian daycare centre in "A Streetcar Named Marge" - and yet her need to have that pacifier in her mouth at all times is stifling to her personal development, denying her the incentive or physical capability of developing any genuine language. In that sense, the pacifier keeps her permanently an infant. On occasion Maggie will attempt actual language, eg: the ending of "Lisa's First Word", where she can be heard gurgling "Daddy" (courtesy of Elizabeth Taylor), but she is clearly contented with the status quo (as is Homer, who advises Maggie to never say a word). It is not hard to read a parallel between Maggie's pacifier addiction and her older kin's preoccupation with the television set. On the one hand, TV is a peacekeeper and a unifier, but in keeping its viewers sedentary and constantly feeding out of its paw, it has them stranded in a limbo where nothing much ever changes. TV is status, but it is also status quo. Episodes consistently end by reaffirming the formidable dominance of television as an institution - for example, episodes focused on Itchy and Scratchy might test the cartoon cat and mouse's prevalence in the lives of young Springfieldians, but will inevitably end with the characters right back where they started, stretched out on the living room floor and laughing themselves silly at what are essentially variations on the same ultra-violent antics. Characters can either accept television's place at the top of modern life's food chain, or risk ending up like the show's perpetual rebel with a cause, Sideshow Bob, as he laments about how his latest crusade came to an end so formulaic it could have spewed from the power book of the laziest Hollywood hack.

The Simpsons has been on the air for just shy of three decades now, and within that time relatively little has changed about the content of the series, for better or for worse. But then the media landscape has changed considerably since Key and The Simpsons' respective heydays. What with the advent of catch-up TV and online streaming, "appointment television" of the nature depicted in the series' opening sequence is no longer such a prevalent facet of day-to-day life. Why on earth would the Simpsons be in such a rush to get home for their show when they could watch it a few hours later on demand, at their own leisure? We still turn to our favourite electronic toys for our endorphin fixes, but these days the tablet and the iPhone have replaced the television as the main objects of our affections. Key's Sideshow Bob-esque assertion that television is a threat "every bit as disastrous for the future of mankind and what we have come to call civilization as is pollution, overpopulation, or atomic and biological warfare," (p.68) might seem hopelessly naive to the reader living in the age of social media. As a love letter to the age of television, The Simpsons was slow to catch onto the rise of personal computers and the internet - the Johnny Cash-voiced space coyote was at pains to point out to Homer, in 1997, that he did not have a computer - and perhaps it's not a coincidence that the series' evergreen touch started to be called into question at around the point that interest started to shift away from the television screen and onto the PC Monitor. Nevertheless, in the era of Fake News, etc, some of The Simpsons' teachings about the media's role in dictating our world perspective (as in "Homer Badman") may remain as relevant as ever. Perhaps instead of fondly embracing our TV sets (or tablets and iPhones) it wouldn't hurt to call the little light boxes out on their nonsense sometimes. Or to go out and run a marathon or something. Life is short, kids.


* I used to think that the dysfunctional family depicted in Dr Monroe's commercial were hilarious, but now, no way, they just hit too close to home. That's not funny, that is my life.

** It is a little hypocritical for the family to get as hung up on it as they do, mind. Given that they themselves were at one point prepared to believe the TV over Homer.

Shit That Scared Matt Groening: No. 10 - The After Hours (The Twilight Zone)

"10. That "Twilight Zone" episode in which the woman gets locked in a department store after closing, and the mannequins come to life."
~ "49 Things That Frightened and Disturbed Me When I was a Kid", Matt Groening (Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #1, 1995)

Here's an installment of STSMG which didn't require an arduous amount of background research on my part. Matt isn't specific enough to provide the title, but I knew exactly which episode of The Twilight Zone he was talking about the instant I read his synopsis. It's "The After Hours" of Season 1, an episode which, alongside "Time Enough At Last" and "To Serve Man", would be a strong contender for the series' most well-known and celebrated of all-time. "The After Hours" first aired on 10th June 1960, and proved such an iconic component of Rod Serling's legacy that it was later remade in 1986 as part of the 80s Twilight Zone revival. This classic tale delves into a relatively new concern that was haunting mankind as we edged ever deeper into consumerist culture - what if those unnatural doppelgangers we encounter on our daily shopping excursions, store mannequins, have minds and wills of their own rattling away inside their fibreglass forms and are secretly observing us with envious eyes? Are these uncanny beings harmless props, or unpleasant reflections of our own hollow materialism?

"The After Hours" sees its ingenuous protagonist, Marsha White (Anne Francis), head up to the ninth floor of a department store, on what Serling's opening narration describes as "a most prosaic, run-of-the-mill, ordinary errand" - namely, she intends to purchase a thimble for her mother. We all know that "prosaic", "run-of-the-mill" and "ordinary" are not terms that nestle readily with the Twilight Zone, and sure enough, Marsha begins to sense that something is awry early on when she deduces that the elevator attendant (John Conwell) looks to have been lying in wait especially for her, ignoring the countless other shoppers in the store in order to give her a private ride up to floor nine. It gets even spookier when Marsha reaches the ninth floor, which looks empty and disused, and is served by a hair-raisingly curt sales clerk (Elizabeth Allen), who appears to have a personal bone to pick with Marsha, despite Marsha's insistence that this woman shouldn't know her from Adam. Marsha gets the thimble she seeks, but finds it suspicious that the ninth floor had no hint of any other people or merchandise in sight. Later, Marsha realises that the thimble is scratched and takes things up with a sales supervisor, Mr Armbruster (James Millhollin), who informs her that the department store does not have a ninth floor. Marsha spots what she takes to be the sales clerk who sold her the thimble but discovers, to her horror, that it is actually a mannequin with the sales clerk's exact likeness. Marsha becomes faint and is taken into a back room to recover, but the staff forget about her and leave her locked in the store after closing. Marsha comes to and attempts to escape, but finds herself back on the mysterious ninth floor, where she is besieged by the store mannequins, who become increasingly animated and speak to her, imploring her to drop the pretense. Finally, Marsha is met by the sales clerk from earlier, who asks her to think back and remember who she really is. With some prompting, Marsha recalls that she too is a mannequin who was permitted to live the life of a normal human for a month (as is a customary aspect of mannequin culture, although only one mannequin is allowed to do so at a time and they each have to wait their turn), but forgot her true identity and did not return to the store when her time was up. The sales clerk was next in line for a month-long getaway and was frustrated that Marsha's amnesia caused her to lose some of her own allotted time, but she forgives Marsha and goes her merry way. Marsha is left in the company of the elevator operator (also a mannequin), who asks her if she enjoyed her time in the outside world. Marsha responds that it was "Ever so much fun" and becomes inanimate. The episode closes on a punchline involving Mr Armbruster, who is wandering through the store one day and spots Marsha in her mannequin form, causing him to double take.

A key factor in why The Twilight Zone has remained such an enduring classic over the decades, and the gold standard by which all subsequent paranormal anthology series are inevitably judged, lies in its penchant for a well-crafted twist ending. Not every single TZ twist worked or holds up today, but when they did hit home, they ripped in with such spine-chilling ferocity that the teeth marks they left embedded in popular culture remain throbbing and raw (the ending of "To Serve Man", for example, is still shocking, despite being such an iconic twist that most viewers have ample chance to steel themselves up for it in advance). Still, it's fair to say that a high percentage of Twilight Zone twists were variations on what was effectively the same basic formula - ie: the protagonist thinks they're one thing, but they turn out to be either ignorant or deluded and by the end of the episode must come to terms with the fact that they're something else entirely. On paper, "The After Hours" hinges on such a whimsically hokey scenario that it could easily read as a parody of this kind of twist. Serling appears to be leaning upon the tongue-in-cheek in his closing narration, when he poses that, "it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street?" It's all very well to suppose that the random stranger you pass on the street may be a deeper or kinkier soul than you perhaps take for granted, but Serling cannot seriously be suggesting that they might secretly be animated shop mannequins masquerading as humans. Most Twilight Zone scenarios are obviously quite out there, but they resonate because they have something to say about human nature (occasionally, you will get an episode that attempts to supply a rational, down-to-earth explanation for its strange phenomena, such as the psychoanalytical "Nightmare as a Child" and the series opener, "Where Is Everybody?", but let's face it, we like our TZ best when it's spooky and a little inexplicable). In the case of "The After Hours", it's not immediately clear if there is a deeper message, beyond the very basic (and very versatile) one of "Things are not always what they seem", and yet the story is an immensely affecting one. It is a ludicrous outcome, and yet it works beautifully, chiefly for the haunting line it evokes between the real and the artificial, between energy and inertia, between living and merely observing. It's hard to overstate just how invested we become in the plight of this audacious mannequin who wanted to be human. Consider Serling's final words on Marsha - "in her normal and natural state, a wooden lady with a painted face who, one month out of the year, takes on the characteristics of someone as normal and as flesh and blood as you and I" - and notice the curious dual mention of "normal" therein. Here, Serling appears to be commenting on the superficiality of outer image, with the troubling inversion that Marsha's flesh and blood human exterior is exposed as the synthetic veil and her inert, wooden state as "normal and natural". In order to be truly real, Marsha must abandon all pretensions of being human and become the artificial other. Much like a consumerist who assumes that donning a new jacket can make them into a whole new person, Marsha's attempts to reinvent herself holistically by changing her outward appearance amount to little more than a frivolous game of play-pretend, one that is brutally undercut by the fellow mannequin who asks her who she supposes she's fooling.

Mannequins make for persuasive horror antagonists, not least for the strong vibrations they tend to give off of the uncanny valley - we created mannequins in our own image, so there's a subconscious level on which they inevitably register as a threat to our own identity - but, nevertheless, it is integral to the success of "The After Hours" is that the mannequins, while sufficiently spooky, are not villains. This is in stark contrast to the 1986 remake, which plays the same scenario as a straightforward horror and has the mannequins harass Marsha relentlessly (here played by Terry Farrell) as her body slowly reverts to its mannequin state. In both cases, the mannequins' rationale is the exact same - Marsha has used up her permitted month in the outside world and must now surrender the privilege to the next mannequin in line - and yet the remake abandons all sense of camaraderie among its plastic people, presenting them as mindless, pitiless drones who'll use whatever means necessary to restore the status quo. The remake also diverges in that Farrell's Marsha does not willingly accept her true identity as a mannequin and opposes her supposed brethren every step of the way; her motivation, this time, has less to do with her being overly enamored with the human way of life than with her aversion toward the horrors of subsisting as a motionless object. The 1986 version works as an exercise in pure suspense, but compared to the 1960 original it feels emotionally and thematically rather shallow. The 1960 version is enigmatic precisely because it resists courting more straightforward chills. There are some extremely unsettling sequences, notably those extended, near-silent shots of Marsha treading through the empty department store, which assumes a very different aura during the titular interval, when all of the human souls have gone home and unwittingly abandoned it to the unearthly forces that have free reign in their absence. It is a classic exercise in making the mundane appear nightmarish (there is also a moment in which Marsha is startled by her own mirror reflection, which provides a nice bit of foreshadowing as to her human exterior being the real intrusion). In the end, though, the mannequins themselves are not malevolent, and as such the episode only needs to make them so scary, yet they are consistently otherworldly - even when they assume their human forms and line up smiling at Marsha, there's something eerily stilted and artificial about their mannerisms. We are confronted by the fundamental wrongness of this world, and yet for Marsha, and for narrative purposes, it signifies truth and authenticity, the stripping away of all that is fake and cosmetic. Once Francis's Marsha has been exposed for what she is, she realises that there is little point in fighting it.

Francis's Marsha finds acceptance among her fellow mannequins, if not esteem (there's something very revealing in how they noisily abandon her, save the elevator operator, to bid farewell to the sales clerk as she heads off for her own month of masquerading). She is rendered an observer twice over, for even among mannequin society she is swiftly forgotten and left stranded on the sidelines (we learn very little about how Marsha has been occupying her allotted month as a human, other than convincing herself that she has a mother who needs a thimble, yet it is the quiet solitude in which she is left to resume inertia that makes her insistence that it was "so much fun" so heartrendingly convincing). The greatest irony of "The After Hours" is that it is when Marsha becomes the other that we truly recognise her as one of us. She is an eternal observer who longs to be a participant, and who, forever taunted with a lifestyle unattainable to her, finds fulfillment only in the realm of dreams and fantasies. What could be more authentically human than that?


Does it frighten and disturb ME?

"The After Hours" is a superb piece of television, and its reputation as one of The Twilight Zone's strongest installments is well-deserved, although I would hesitate to rank it as the series' scariest (for my money, you can't beat "The Hitch-Hiker" in that regard, even if the twist there is fairly predictable and telegraphed early on). There's some detectable horror to be had from the notion that mannequins are supernatural beings who come to life and patrol our public spheres when our backs are turned. The fact is, though, that these particular mannequins are all so delightfully genteel. They're not out to hurt or punish Marsha for her transgression; they simply want to remind her of who she really is so that their own way of life can be restored to them. The ability to live as a human, just for a month, means as much to them as it did to Marsha, and you can't fault them for demanding it back. Ultimately, this is one of those TZ scenarios in which something that appears threatening turns out to be quite benign (I'd cite "The Hitch-Hiker" as another example, only Leonard Strong's character frankly does remain sinister to the finish, even when his true identity is made clear).

Is it more frightening and disturbing than the 1987 movie Mannequin? That's a discussion for another occasion.

Shit That Scared Matt Groening: No. 35 - Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp

"35. Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp."
~ "49 Things That Frightened and Disturbed Me When I was a Kid", Matt Groening (Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #1, 1995)

I'd like to think that, as a species, we've progressed beyond the stage where we're comfortable with seeing primates dressed up in people clothes and paraded around for our own entertainment. At first glance, a show like Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (an early 1970s spy spoof in which all of the roles are "acted" by chimpanzees in coats and silly wigs) feels like a relic of a bygone era, the kind of grotesque sideshow attraction that would not appeal to modern sensibilities. But then again, it doesn't seem so long ago that TBS attempted something very similar with Monkey-ed Movies, a collection of skits from 1998 in which costumed chimps performed spoofs of contemporary feature films, and which was later expanded into the short-lived series The Chimp Channel in 1999. Clearly, our fascination with self-parody achieved through molding our hairy cousins in our own image lies more deeply ingrained in our culture than we might like to think. It took the UK a long amount of time to fall out of love with the legacy of the "Chimpanzee Tea Party", the long-running public show first hosted by London Zoo in 1926, in which chimpanzees were dressed up and encouraged to drink tea for the amusement of zoo patrons. Although discontinued by London Zoo in 1972, the concept lived on in a popular - and controversial - series of TV ads for PG Tips which ran on until the early 00s (when they were replaced by the T-Birds, a cast of claymation birds brought to life by Aardman Animations).

It's because chimpanzees are so intelligent, and so like us, that seeing them embrace the full catalogue of human behaviour resonates so strongly with us. It tickles our funny bone, but there's undoubtedly an element of the uncanny in it too - the grotesqueness of these "manpanzees" coming as uneasy reminders of both our own fundamental animal nature and the freakish absurdities of our civilised rituals. The suited chimp bridges the gap between human and animal, making us realise what wildly distorted and eccentric beasts we really are. But then, it's because chimpanzees are so intelligent, and so like us, that there are so many additional ethical considerations to be taken into account when making them perform for our own amusement. Having ANY animal perform purely for spectacle's sake raises important questions, of course, but it gets particularly problematic when it comes to our closest relations. A "no animals were harmed in the making" disclaimer might not be enough, in their case. Above all, chimpanzees are social creatures, with their own complex hierarchies and behaviours. Even if the chimps receive a high standard of welfare during production (as I understand the chimps used in Monkey-ed Movies and the PG Tips ads did), too much time spent forcing a chimp to behave like a human can seriously damage that chimp's ability to fit in with and interact with other chimps. In our pursuit of cheap giggles, we risk stranding the unfortunate simian in a kind of no man's (or ape's) land, unable to function as a member of its own species and, due to the dangerously aggressive tendencies of adult chimps, not at all suited to a life among people.

Thus, it's with some trepidation that I approach the next item in STSMG. Speaking as someone who would prefer to see an end to the use of chimpanzees in entertainment altogether, I knew that Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was not going to sit easily with me. Even my enormous love of 1970s kitsch was unlikely to move me beyond that unease. For now, though, I will try to suspend my stance on performing chimps and attempt to judge the series on its entertainment merits and, above all, its ability to unnerve young children.

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was a TV series created by Sandler-Burns-Marmers Productions that aired on ABC between September 1970 and January 1971. It was essentially a reworking of Get Smart, the affectionate secret agent parody created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry in 1965 (two of the creators of Lancelot Link, Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, had served as writers on Get Smart), with the twist that all of the characters were chimpanzees. Sounds cute, huh? The chimpanzee cast was trained by Frank Inn (who went on to work with Benjean the dog, better known as Benji, and had a minor onscreen role in one of our all-time favourites here at The Spirochaete Trail, Benji The Hunted), and their chattering mouth movements were synced with dialogue provided by three voice actors - Dayton Allen, Joan Gerber and Bernie Kopell - with Malachi Throne supplying narration. Lancelot Link originally followed a variety show format, in which the spy segments were combined with bloopers, Laugh-In style interstitials and Warner Bros cartoons, although the series was later edited into a more straightforward format for syndication, with the cartoons removed. The show's Wikipedia page makes the (as of now, uncited) claim that, in its original incarnation, it was also broadcast with a laugh track that was taken out of the syndicated version. All I know is that the episode of Lancelot Link I watched on YouTube did not come with a laugh track, and that disappointed me so - if you know about my own love/hate relationship with the sitcom laugh track, and of its roots in one of my earliest childhood phobias, you'll know that there could be no surefire way to make the experience any more freakishly surreal for me.

Like Get Smart, Lancelot Link revolved around the ongoing battle between two agencies, one a force for good, the other for evil. Our CONTROL equivalent was A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil), for whom the titular Link worked as a top agent, alongside his partner, Mata Hairi, and under the leadership of big boss Commander Darwin (in a predictable but still charming running gag, Link would routinely greet Darwin with the catchphrase, "What's your theory, Darwin?"). Standing in for KAOS were C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for the Underworld's Master Plan), led by the nefarious Baron von Butcher (a pastiche of Ludwig von Siegfried from Get Smart - appropriately, Kopell, who played Siegfried in the aforementioned series, provided vocals for his chimp counterpart) and comprising a broad range of ethnic/national stereotypes, including Wang Fu, Ali Assa Seen (see what they did there?) and Dr. Strangemind. There are tertiary characters, like the host of Link's favourite TV show, Ed Simian, who was obviously a pastiche on Ed Sullivan (check out how the chimpanzee in question accentuates its jaw movements during his "really big shew" bit). Lancelot Link was a product of its time in many ways, although certainly none were more telling than its incorporation of a bubblegum pop band, The Evolution Revolution (actually the alter egos of Link and Hairi, with two additional band mates, Bananas Marmoset and Sweetwater Gibbons), who were shoehorned in to provide psychedelic musical interludes and some handy merchandising revenue on the side. In the style of The Archies, The Banana Splits, etc, the fictitious Evolution Revolution landed their own tie-in LP, Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution, released by ABC Records in 1970.

Looking through Matt's list, one can identify a running theme in which he was frightened and disturbed by media in which animal mouth movements were synced with dialogue to give off the impression they were talking (he gives two other examples, which I'll explore in due course). It must be said of Lancelot Link that all the suspension of disbelief in the world won't have you buying into the notion that any of the dialogue is actually coming from the chimps in question, even within the reality of the show. The primitive lip-syncing, while playful, rarely convinces on any substantive level, resulting in a jarring dissonance between what the viewer sees and what they hear. In that sense, Lancelot Link feels strangely reminiscent of the Woody Allen film, What's Up, Tiger Lily?, in that it has it the aura of an assortment of found footage (albeit very peculiar found footage, involving chimps dressed up as people) taken out of context and redubbed for comic effect (in actuality, the dialogue was ad-libbed exhaustively on set in an effort to keep up with the primates' unpredictable chattering). It makes for extremely bizarre viewing, although one certainly cannot deny the talent of the chimps involved. For the purposes of this entry, I watched one episode, entitled "No Business Like Snow Business", in which Link and Hairi go undercover as ski instructors in order to retrieve a stolen diamond from C.H.U.M.P., and not only do they waddle around on skis but for the story's climax they even engage in a toboggan chase. I've made it clear that I am no fan of seeing chimpanzees used in this manner, but there's no doubt that, for better or for worse, what Inn managed to get from this cast was nothing short of eye-popping.

Lancelot Link takes itself about seriously as you would expect from a series about chimpanzee espionage, and there's an evident improvisational streak whereby numerous gags were shaped and dictated by the antics of the cast, leading to some weirdly convoluted dialogue exchanges and odd plot digressions in which the chimps struggle with props and to put on clothing (the aforementioned "No Business Like Snow Business" has a moment where the plot is put on hold in order to milk as much mileage as possible from Link putting on a ski hat incorrectly). Random coughs, sneezes and even singing are also common tactics for covering additional mouth movements. Needless to say, the actual story hangs together rather haphazardly in all of this, but then I doubt that anyone who watched Lancelot Link did so because they anticipated a riveting narrative.

Lancelot Link inspired a range of tie-in merchandise, including a series of comic books, although the show itself had only a short lifespan. I've no idea how well it performed on the ratings front, but I suspect that it was ultimately sunk by the expense and sheer complexities of the production (trained chimps don't come cheap, and when your entire cast consists of trained chimps you're going to require a generous budget), which would have made any additional seasons too laborious to be worth the effort. It was a wild burst of inanity, but probably never destined to last.

Does it frighten and disturb ME?

All in all, I could see people enjoying Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp as a mindless bit of 1970s fluff - the chimps are cute, the corny dialogue and non-stop ape puns do raise the occasional smile and the production is bright, colourful and most importantly, surreal as sin. What also sticks out is that this was blatantly a labour of love. Somebody cared enough to bring this incredibly complicated (from a production standpoint) chimpanzee spy pastiche into the world. Ultimately though, there's no getting around the problem that all this effort and expenditure was in aid of what is essentially an elaborate circus sideshow, of the kind that I personally would prefer to see consigned to the history bin. Lancelot Link doesn't exactly creep me out but, owing to the nature of the series, there is something about it that I find inherently unsettling.

Squatter's Rights (1946)

Earlier this year, I took a look at The Painter and The Pointer, the 1944 Andy Panda cartoon that left a young Matt Groening grappling with some serious mental scars. And now I think I may have found that cartoon's Disney equivalent. Like The Painter and The Pointer, Squatter's Rights revolves around a dog getting pestered by two scrawny little nuisances while his squeaky-voiced owner remains oblivious to the full extent of his misery. Somewhere along the line the dog ends up with his face on the wrong end of a loaded shotgun. Neither short is for the faint of heart.

For the most part, Squatter's Rights plays like a tamer version of The Painter and The Pointer, except that it somehow winds up with the sicker punchline of the two. In fact, this feels like the ending The Painter and The Pointer should have had, had it followed its depraved vision all the way to the max. Mickey and Pluto have gone up to their winter cabin for a change of scenery, unaware that disease-spreading vermin Chip and Dale have taken up residence inside the stove in their absence and aren't keen on relinquishing their accommodation. War breaks out between Pluto and the chipmunks, while Mickey remains wholly oblivious to the root cause of the problem.

Squatter's Rights is notable for several reasons:

• It marked the Mickey Mouse's first post-war appearance in a theatrical short, following a three-year hiatus after Pluto and The Armadillo in 1943. By this stage, Mickey Mouse shorts were becoming fewer and farther in between, as Donald Duck and Goofy supplanted him in the popularity stakes.
• It was the first occasion in which Mickey was voiced by Jimmy MacDonald. Walt Disney had long provided vocals for his signature character, but by 1946 he was becoming too busy with other projects (not to mention, his nicotine addiction was starting to take its toll and his vocal range wasn't quite what it used to be). Squatter's Rights marked the beginning of the transitional period in which the torch was passed to MacDonald, who took over full-time as Mickey in 1947.
• It was Chip and Dale's second appearance - their first being in the 1943 short Private Pluto, in which they were likewise pitted against the hapless hound. You can tell that this was an early outing for the chipmunks because their character designs and dynamics have not yet been refined - here, Chip and Dale look completely identical (Dale was later given a red nose and larger teeth to make him distinguishable from Chip). For the most part, their characterisation is also indistinguishable here, although we do see signs of their separate personalities emerging early on in the short, when one of the chipmunks is clearly shown to be more bossy and sensible than his lazier, more carefree companion.
• It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short film at the 19th awards ceremony in 1947, but lost to MGM's The Cat Concerto, starring Tom and Jerry. I can't really object to that. The Cat Concerto is a stone cold classic. Squatter's Rights is a solid cartoon but doesn't really represent the best for any of the associated characters.

I've encountered a fair number of people in my time who don't like Chip and Dale and think that the karma police of the Disney universe frequently permit them to get away with murder because they're cute (people who initially knew them as the valiant heroes of the 1980s TV series Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers are sometimes surprised to look back and observe what little bastards the sciurines could be in their earlier incarnations, although they're far from the only classic Disney characters to have undergone something of a rectitude makeover - if you only know Huey, Dewey and Louie from Ducktales then you might be shocked to discover what a trio of proper little sociopaths they were back in the day; my theory is that Della had started medicating them come the Carl Barks comics). I would strongly disagree, although I do concede that the dynamics in their earlier appearances didn't quite hit the right balance, chiefly because they were up against the wrong nemesis. Although initially conceived as adversaries for Pluto, Chip and Dale quickly made the switch to being the omnipresent thorns in Donald Duck's side, and enjoyed a far more prosperous career because of it. After this, there were two further shorts in which they faced off against Pluto - Food For Feudin' (1950) and Pluto's Christmas Tree (1952) - but I doubt that Chip and Dale would have had nearly as much longevity as characters had they limited their repertoire to creating havoc for Mickey's faithful chum. Their chemistry with Donald tended to be a lot better, and there's something infinitely more satisfying about seeing them come to blows with the irascible fowl than with Pluto. I think it comes down to the fact that Pluto is too much of an innocent, whereas Donald is not (even so, you do get the occasional short in which the chipmunks harass Donald for no good reason, such as Crazy Over Daisy from 1950), which is one reason why Squatter's Rights ultimately leaves something of a sour taste.

Squatter's Rights does not seem to know (nor care) which characters in this equation it intends for us to root for; Chip and Dale might initially come off as the underdogs, but their tactics grow increasingly devious as the short goes on (to the point where they're setting Mickey's toes ablaze and getting a real kick from it to boot). Meanwhile, Pluto does cast a handful of malevolent glares in the chipmunks' direction (and gets eerily excited at the thought of dousing the tiny intruders in kerosene), but he's too intrinsically sweet-natured to be convincing antagonist material, and surely we're not supposed to be rooting against the prospect of Mickey Mouse (of all characters) having an enjoyable vacation in the cabin that's rightfully his (the fact that he possibly intends to devote a part of it to blasting his rifle at innocent wildlife notwithstanding)? In the end, this is a simple battle of conflicting ids; Pluto grows increasingly exasperated in his efforts to evict the chipmunks, while Chip and Dale become ever more cutthroat in their attempts to hold onto their residence, and Mickey has to deal with the inevitable calamity. As noted, Mickey never learns that there are rodents in his property (besides himself) and misconstrues all of the strange occurrences as being down to Pluto's bad behaviour. Thankfully, Mickey is not Andy Panda (or Andy Panda's evil, Shamus Culhane-created doppelganger), and he's not actively mean to Pluto, even when he incorrectly deduces that Pluto was responsible for setting his toes on fire. In this scenario, Pluto finds up with a shotgun in his face when Mickey steps out to get more firewood and Pluto chases the chipmunks around the cabin, only to bump into the rifle while pursing them across the mantelpiece. Pluto gets his nose stuck in the barrel of the shotgun and discovers, to his horror, that the trigger is directly adjacent to the hook on which the gun has been mounted, meaning that he cannot jar himself free without the risk that it will fire. Pluto's best plan is to hold perfectly still, which is easier said that done when the stool on which he's standing is none too stable. Pluto's shotgun dilemma occurs toward the end of the short, so it isn't as disturbingly drawn-out as Butch's comparable predicament in The Painter and The Pointer, but the tension is no less excruciating. Pluto's plight is further underscored with an unsettling visual gag in which Pluto looks up at the mounted moose head above the mantelpiece (bagged and stuffed by Mickey?) and imagines his own head stuffed and mounted in its place (although, if that gun were to fire then it's probably optimistic to suppose that there'd be very much of Pluto's head remaining).

Chip and Dale didn't deliberately set Pluto up to this, of course, and they do look genuinely concerned when they realise what kind of a mess he's in, so at first I was expecting them to come to Pluto's aid, thereby making peace with the mutt and enabling all four characters to come to an amicable arrangement in which they could have share of the cabin. But nope. The chipmunks just sit back and gawk as Pluto struggles with the shotgun, until finally something gives and the gun ends up firing; Pluto slips free of it just in time to avoid getting his brains blown out, but the gun falls and hits him on the head, knocking him unconscious. It's then that Chip and Dale come up with the deranged idea to pour ketchup (sorry, catsup) over Pluto's abdomen, thus simulating a gruesome gunshot wound. Mickey returns and finds Pluto out for the count with the shotgun spread across his inert body and lots of red gushing from his gut, and breaks down into tears, assuming his friend to be dead. Pluto comes to, sees Mickey in distress and reflexively starts comforting him...then he looks down, becomes aware of his own predicament and freaks out, believing that he really has shot himself in the gut. The short ends with Mickey rushing the wailing Pluto out into the snow to seek emergency help, erroneously believing him to be bleeding to death, leaving Chip and Dale to rule the roost once again. The chipmunks laugh at how swimmingly their prank went and congratulate one another on a job well done. Obviously none of the characters were actually harmed in this scenario, and Mickey and Pluto are going to feel mighty silly when they finally do reach the emergency room, but still, that's pretty sick, dude. It's a strangely unsettling end-note for a cartoon that doesn't quite go the full hog in terms of nastiness in the build-up, and it rounds off with more bite than the otherwise crueler The Painter and The Pointer, which doesn't really produce a memorable punchline after its own nightmare scenario reaches its inevitable breaking point.

PS: If you're one of those people who like to think of Chip and Dale as a gay couple (and I know there are a lot of you out there) then Squatter's Rights should be right up your alley in that regard. Not only do we see the chipmunks sleeping in the same bed, but they even share a random kiss at one point. Hurrah for sciurine ho-yay.

What Murdered Mike's Murder?: An Overview

 

Two years ago, I concluded my case study of The Ladd Company's "Tree of Life" logo with the promise that a review of one of the company's lesser-known pictures was in the works. I sincerely hope you didn't hold your breath on that. The gestation process has been long and slow (thanks in part to the sound on my old VHS copy of the film suddenly deciding to become borderline inaudible shortly after I wrote that) but finally I'm making good on my promise. Thus, I present to you the first installment in "What Murdered Mike's Murder?", an idea I've had sprawled across the back-burner for almost as long as I've been running this blog. Here's where I'll be looking at a film that got brutally gutted, firstly by unimpressed test audiences and then in the editing room in an earnest (if futile) attempt to manufacture a crowd pleaser and finally got a sniff of indifference from the critics before the world obligingly forgot that it ever existed. It is not a perfect film by any means - and yet is a film that echoes its subject matter perfectly in so many (inadvertent) regards.

I find myself endlessly fascinated by Mike's Murder, a much-ignored feature film from director James Bridges, who is probably most famous for his nuclear disaster thriller The China Syndrome (1979). Released in 1984, Mike's Murder is a low-budget drama focusing on the dingier side of Los Angeles - the side populated by thieves and hustlers and crammed full of perilous dead ends. The story was apparently a very personal one for Bridges, who'd known a number of people who were killed for their involvement in the Los Angeles drugs trade. He remained haunted by their deaths, which were not deemed notable enough to make the news headlines and stayed hidden away within the homicide notices of local papers, compelling Bridges to make a picture revolving around that sense of lives being casually rubbed out and going largely ignored by the wider world. He had great ambitions for Mike's Murder, which he envisioned as a highly experimental piece with an unconventional narrative structure, but this was all offset by a disastrous test screening in early 1983. Audiences did not take to Bridges' arthouse sensibilities, with nobody in that initial, 1,200-strong test audience seeing fit to give the film their vote of approval. Bridges was so unnerved by their response that he delayed the release of the film for a full year to allow time for extensive retooling. Mike's Murder was given a full, top-to-bottom makeover in order to remove as much of that arthouse DNA as possible, and the end result is a film that blatantly shows the cracks and the glue, and which takes on a peculiar life of its own all because of it.

Mike's Murder centres around the relationship between two individuals living low-key lives within the cracks of Los Angeles society - Mike (Mark Keyloun), a drifter-cum-tennis instructor who supplements his income by hustling drugs on the side, and his would-be girlfriend Betty, a young bank teller with a more promising career trajectory ahead of her (she's played by Debra Winger, our good friend from Black Widow). Mike and Betty first meet upon the tennis court and share an intimate evening together, but their relationship never takes off thanks to Mike's errant lifestyle, which obligates him to keep a low profile and to be constantly on the run. He and Betty cross paths every so often, each time bringing the renewed hope of a fresh start that invariably goes nowhere. Eventually Mike meets an unnatural demise, as the title promises he will, and when the news reaches Betty she sets out to investigate - although the story never really comes together as either a mystery or a thriller. In fact, "never really comes together" would be an apt description for so many facets of Mike Murder. It is a film about a relationship that is waiting to happen, but never does, much as the film itself seems to take place on a largely monotonous sideline, from which it catches the occasional glimpse of something happening off in the distance, but is only prepared to move in so far for a closer look (as per the American Film Institute's entry on the film, this was a stylistic choice on Bridges' part, for he was booking to simulate the experience of watching the Los Angeles underground it evokes from the detached perspective of a vehicle passing through). It has very little narrative momentum behind it; the particulars of Mike's murder are not especially compelling, and the film's attempt to manufacture a dramatic third act, in which Betty is confronted by Pete (Darrell Larson), a treacherous associate of Mike's, is wholly unconvincing and does not lead to a satisfying pay-off (although it does incorporate a pretty slick moment in which Betty is able to fend off Pete by feigning an earthquake). Bridges' film positions itself as more of a character study than a mystery, with Betty's investigation being less about unraveling the truth behind Mike's disappearance and seeking some form of retribution than about gaining a fleeting window into the life of the man who had her transfixed for so long, but whom she never had the opportunity to understand in any kind of substantive detail.

Mike's Murder is a film about the haunting suggestion of what might have been, and precisely what makes it such a fascinating (and frustrating) experience is in the puzzle it inadvertently imposes upon the viewer as to the picture that might have been, had those early test audiences been a smidgen more favourable. Watching Mike's Murder, one is struck by just how unevenly it unfolds as a narrative; the curious time skips which seem purposely designed to confuse the viewer as to how much time has elapsed between Mike and Betty's sporadic encounters, the disjointed, episodic structure of the earlier sequences, complete with ominous fade-outs which become less prevalent as the story goes on. It's in these opening stages that we get our most tantalising glimpses of the picture that Bridges initially wanted to make, and it's probably no coincidence that these constitute the strongest moments of Mike's Murder - when it is a film about two souls wandering in and out of one another's lives, exchanging vague pleasantries and then going their separate ways, never getting close enough to satiate their mutual longing for intimacy. Mike's arc might be where all the danger and excitement is (ostensibly, anyway), and yet it is Betty's perspective that rings the truest, the most engaging sequences being those in which we catch Betty in the mundane comfort of her own home, where she's greeted by intermittent telephone communication from Mike. The first act shows Betty having to bond with Mike from afar, getting the occasional glimpse into his precarious lifestyle while she herself moves up in the world (in that she receives a promotion throughout the course of the film). The film's atmosphere is well-sustained at this point, evoking a contrast between the seediness of the Los Angeles underground and the city's sunny, glamorous exterior, and - more often - the sheer banality that lies in between. Once the titular event occurs and Betty switches into amateur sleuth mode, the film becomes significantly less interesting (Paul Winfield's charming performance as a gay record producer with whom Mike was also romantically involved notwithstanding). The sequences in which Betty retraces Mike's old haunts have a fun, noir-ish feel, but the story has nowhere to go and is basically just spinning its wheels for the remaining hour. We got to spend enough time with Mike prior to his demise to know that he's not an amazingly deep or interesting character, and the scant revelations gleaned by Betty on her travels - his bisexuality, his love of Polaroids - do little to alter that. There is a concurrent narrative thread regarding Pete's increasing desperation in the aftermath of Mike's demise, since he figures that he's next on the hit list, which ultimately prompts him to seek out Betty and put her at direct risk at the only point in the film, but this fails to generate narrative tension. Mostly, Pete's involvement comes off as a contrived attempt to raise the personal stakes for Betty, in a manner which comes dangerously close to undermining the deliberate mundaneness which characterises the rest of the picture. What genuine pathos the film is able to eke from Mike's demise comes from the distinct lack of drama surrounding it, and from the revelation that his murder is nothing more than part of the milieu in a city where near-identical stories are playing out on a daily basis, as hinted at by one of the figures encountered by Betty, an aspiring Chippendale dancer named Richard (Daniel Shor), who informs her that Mike was one of multiple friends he lost this week to drug-related causes. As I say, the film doesn't have the narrative momentum to function as a thriller, yet it is obligated to masquerade as one thanks to the rigorous efforts to reign it into a more routine structure. This was not a picture destined for conventionality, yet it has had conventionality awkwardly thrust upon it, and what we are left with is a curious end-product that never seems happy with itself or settles into any kind of consistent shape. As a narrative, Mike's Murder does not satisfy, and yet it leaves a lingering impression by virtue of its oddness; it is a portrait of loneliness, alienation and, ultimately, survival (on Betty's end of things, anyway) with an obvious hole where something more should be.

As noted, Mike's Murder was born from Bridges' own experiences of having acquaintances vanish abruptly from his life due to their involvement in the Los Angeles drugs scene, so it shouldn't surprise us that his original conception was for the film to focus overwhelmingly on Betty's perspective. Indeed, one of the reasons why that early telephone conversation between Betty and Mike proves so effective is because it puts the viewer in a position where they, too, are at a distance from Mike, only able to glean whatever cagey details about his circumstances he cares to disclose to Betty -  a sensation not sustained elsewhere in the film, where the narrative intersects freely between Betty's daily routine and Mike's adventures in hustling (until Mike's luck runs out and his narrative thread is usurped by Pete). The film's AFI page describes Bridges' original cut as a "subjective film", complete with a number of flashbacks and fantasy sequences that were ultimately removed in response to test audience feedback, although Wikipedia and the film's IMDb's trivia page (not the most reliable sources of information, I'll grant you) both specify that the original intention was for the film to have a backwards narrative - in which case, it appears that the film would have opened with the titular murder already having occurred and from there traced things back to the inception of Mike and Betty's relationship, and to their one night of genuine intimacy. This puts the viewer at a significantly different starting point, for the implication is that Mike's character would have been presented as a mystery that was slowly revealed to us over the course of the film - the "real" Mike behind the violent (yet alarmingly routine) killing might not have been any more deep or interesting than in Bridges' final cut, yet the entire point, one assumes, would be to convey the extent to which Betty remains affected by their fleeting encounters, and by his abrupt erasure. We look back from Betty's perspective, attempting to fill in the blanks and assemble a portrait of Mike based on her meagre first-hand experiences and other characters' recollections; the promise of what might have been versus the stark and unfulfilling reality.

Rearranging a film designed for backwards chronology to run in a more linear fashion is not a task to be undertaken lightly, and I think this accounts for why Mike's Murder winds up falling so flat on the narrative front. The overall story may be exactly the same, but our perception and the overall meaning of the film are inevitably going to change depending on where we enter in and where we ultimately end up, and this is one of the things that most intrigues me about Bridges' film - its implications about the drastic differences that changes to the narrative layout can make to a picture. One of the most popular films to utilise the reverse chronology technique would of course be Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000), the stylish neo-noir that gave the then up-and-coming director the much-needed exposure that ultimately led to his becoming a Hollywood favourite (although, contrary to popular belief, Nolan did not invent the technique, which has long been a favourite of experimental storytellers - Harold Pinter had already successfully applied it in his 1978 play Betrayal, which was adapted into a film starring Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodge in 1983, itself echoing a narrative device used by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart for their 1934 stage production Merrily We Roll Along, and I'm sure there are earlier examples still). If Mike's Murder was indeed intended to follow a similar narrative format, then I am reminded of that "The Beginning of The End" edit that you can access as a hidden feature on home media releases of Memento, which plays the events in their true chronological sequence (warning - some spoilers for Memento will follow). Although this "chronologically correct" version of Memento makes for interesting companion viewing besides the official release, there are multiple reasons why it could not hope to function as a substitute for it. "The Beginning of The End" is as tediously, joylessly straightforward as a narrative can be - everything we are informed in advance is going to happen happens, until finally we reach our painfully abrupt conclusion and the experience halts. There is no mystery, and no sense of betrayal at the end, because we've known all along that the protagonist's mission is founded on a lie. More than anything, it bears out just how much of the film's impact hinges upon the novelty of its narrative form. Memento benefits immeasurably from keeping its viewer suspended in a state of perpetual uncertainty; too much clarity, and the whole thing crumbles.

In the film proper, the backwards narrative serves two important functions - firstly, to provide a structural reflection of the protagonist's unusual mental state. Our hero, Leonard (Guy Pearce), was the victim of an assault which left him brain damaged, resulting in a condition called anterograde amnesia, meaning that he is unable to create new long-term memories. Leonard's long-term memory up until the assault remains intact, but he has no means of remembering anything that has occurred since and is dependent on a system of carefully-managed visual cues - tattoos, post-it notes, Polaroids* - to keep him grounded within the present moment. This is particularly important, as Leonard has lofty ambitions of tracking down and exacting personal revenge on his mysterious assailant, whom he also believes to be responsible for the death of his wife (Jorja Fox). Because the narrative unfolds in reverse, we share in Leonard's temporal blind spot, never knowing exactly what has led him to his immediate predicament and having to rely on the meagre clues at our fingertips to keep our sense of narrative coherence afloat. Like Leonard, we experience the constant dislocation of existing only in the present, although unlike Leonard we do have a memory of sorts - we have the luxury of understanding where his story is ultimately headed and this in turn affects what sense we are able to make of the present, notably our perception of Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a figure who wanders continuously in and out of Leonard's journey and whom the viewer is primed, from the start, to see as untrustworthy. Which us leads onto the format's second function - to engineer and purposely misdirect the viewer's expectations. Because we have spent the entirety of the film sympathising with Leonard's plight, it only heightens our feelings of betrayal at the end when we discover that Leonard has, in actuality, been deceiving himself, and by extension us. As it turns out, Leonard would sooner exist in his own custom-built narrative than come to grips with the reality of his situation, his unending compulsion to play judge, jury and executioner seemingly having more to do with shielding himself from a few unpalatable truths than with avenging his wife's death. An exercise in audience manipulation, Nolan's film evokes in a broader sense the manner in which memory colours our perception of the present, and how this relates to our sense of purpose and identity - a dangerous business when so much of our comprehension of past events rests on misinformation and misdirection (in some instances quite willfully). Leonard may be an extreme example, but Nolan uses him as a metaphor for the kinds of self-deceit we are all posited to practice on some level.

Mike's Murder concludes with yet another confusing time skip, with Betty having returned to her home some undefined time after her encounter with Pete, now finally ready to pick up the pieces and move on with her life. Her memory of Mike still haunts her but she has found a more positive way to incorporate that memory into her life going forward. Playing that story backwards, the film becomes less about Betty's resilience than about investing the deceased Mike with a life and humanity; the attempt to trace Mike back from his afterlife as a series of static images acquired by Betty at the end of her arc and locate the individual who was lost in all of this. It becomes a story about necromancy and tearing open old wounds as much as survival and moving on. Still, as per the AFI page, the re-editing process was a lot more complicated than just a simple rearrangement of the order in which sequences ran (if it were as straightforward as that, then I might have had a crack at creating my own fan edit by now). Entire sequences were pulled because they were deemed too violent or distasteful, including one in which Betty visualises Mike's brutal killing (this was probably a good call, as the titular murder is more effective for not occurring onscreen in any shape or form) and a moment in which Mike and Betty engage in mutual masturbation during their telephone conversation (which would account for why that particular sequence fades out so abruptly). Additional sequences were also shot and incorporated into the final edit, including most of the footage focusing on Pete's side of the story - this does not come as a revelation, given how awkwardly his arc meshes with the rest of the narrative (although, curiously enough, the AFI does stipulate that "Debra Winger was not involved with any of the reshoots", implying that the gratuitous climax in which Betty and Pete face off was always intended to be a part of the feature). The irony is that Bridges was apparently satisfied with the changes and believed that they had resulted in making Mike's Murder a stronger picture, although the film opened up to tepid critical reception and was swiftly banished to a black hole of deep obscurity. I cannot blame the world for its indifference - as a standalone piece, Mike's Murder is not particularly successful. It's a bit limp as a character drama, despite occasional flashes of style, and its retroactive attempts to make the film more narrative-driven are conspicuous and misguided, so that the ugliness of Pete's story ends up detracting considerably from whatever subtle poignancy the doomed central relationship might have brought. And yet, we know that this is not the film as it was originally intended to be. It could well be that Bridges' original cut was entirely deserving of its disastrous test screening and that the edits did improve (if not salvage) the experience - but the fact remains we'll never know, and it's that unknown factor that transforms the film from a relatively uninspiring drama and into a tantalising curiosity piece.

I note that even the promotional artwork was drastically different (and a lot more kickass) for earlier conceptions of the film.

Adding to the mystique of Mike's Murder would be the crossed wires surrounding the film's music. The original cut contained a pop/new wave soundtrack by English musician Joe Jackson, but this was to prove another casualty of the extensive re-editing, which discarded much of Jackson's contribution in favour of a more conventional orchestral score by John Barry (although portions of Jackson's soundtrack do survive in the final cut). Jackson's soundtrack wound up seeing the light of day as a commercial release anyway, thanks to record company A&M's unwillingness to hold off the tie-in LP in accordance with the film's production delays. Jackson's soundtrack was released in 1983, and by the time the actual film showed up in 1984, the LP plainly reflected a version of the film that no longer existed. It is as is the two products had wandered in from alternate timelines. Thanks to the Jackson LP we have some tangible evidence, that we can actually hold in our hands, of the Mike's Murder that might have been.

Sadly, Bridges died of cancer in 1993. He made two more pictures after Mike's Murder, Perfect (1985) and the Michael J Fox vehicle Bright Lights, Big City (1988). His death would appear to eliminate all prospects of us ever getting a director's cut reflecting his original vision for Mike's Murder, but then the film's failure to leave any kind of dent in popular consciousness may already have put pay to that. Let's face it, you'd never heard of Mike's Murder until you read about it here. I'd only heard of it because I'm such a Ladd Company obsessive. Even the man who sold me my (terminally decrepit) VHS copy of the film remarked upon my obvious eye for obscurities. The film was never likely to have mass appeal, and yet I've found myself going back to it time and time again, ever more intrigued by this dreary little drama that doesn't quite get itself off the ground. Like Memento, it presents the viewer with a puzzle of sorts, but unlike Memento, it's not a puzzle that one can possibly hope to solve. No amount of gazing into the film's assorted narrative and stylistic voids will leave us any more enlightened as to the film that Bridges originally set out to make, and which, if you squint, you just about catch enough teasing remnants of lurking in the final piece. It's a mystery that sucks you in - not the total non-mystery as to what became of Mike but the greater question as to what happened to Mike's Murder. The film ends up languishing in a hazy kind of no man's land - too straightforward and unadventurous to stand out as anything particularly visionary and yet too odd and unconventional to cater to mainstream tastes. It seems destined to satisfy no one, and therein lies its bizarre appeal.

Oh, and I finally gave up on trying to force my old VHS to behave. Fortunately, Mike's Murder has been released via the Warner Archive collection on a region-free disc, so the film is at least easy enough to get hold of nowadays.

*As a Polaroid hobbyist myself I must confess that it frankly bugs me that Leonard appears to get immaculate Polaroids every time, despite the fact that he shakes them so vigorously - which, contrary to popular belief, does not do them any good. NOBODY gets immaculate Polaroids that frequently, particularly when they treat their prints so haphazardly. What can I say, it's just not fair.

And The Cuckoo Comes (The Advisory Circle)

Of all the phenomenons I've encountered throughout my years as an internet junkie, none have proven more personally enlightening than than the strange and devoted cult followings surrounding the great British institution of the public information film, or PIF. To put it bluntly, there are numerous people out there who are weirdly fascinated by those grim and often downright grisly educational videos that took big wet (and possibly rabid) bites out of their psyches as children; when I discovered just how deep that fascination ran, I felt a peculiar sense of belonging. It was as if something I'd been carrying around with me since early childhood - more specifically, since the point when some road safety gurus came to my preschool and gave out colouring books filled with images of unwary nippers getting plowed down by cyclists - had finally clicked into gear and found its rightful place in the world; as if some confusion I'd buried deep within my soul had suddenly attained clarity. At long last, I was with my people.

The allure of the PIF, on the surface, has to do with the dark side of nostalgia and the omnipresent disturbance that hung over what were supposedly our salad days. The PIF taught us that death and destruction were lying in wait in the most mundane of places, and the malaise it triggered was so deep and pervasive that we feel almost inclined to give ourselves a pat on the back just for having survived to adulthood. I would argue, however, that a significant part of that fascination lies less in the surface horror than in a deeper unease still, one that as children we were unable to articulate or comprehend and wound up lugging around with us in our subconscious; that is, the mystery as to why the adults would be so sadistic as to inflict such images of terror upon our tender young minds in the first place. Perhaps that was the most troubling aspect of all regarding the PIF - the sheer incongruity of having this distastefulness forced upon us by the very authority figures we were encouraged to see as respectable and upstanding (teachers, police officers, librarians and their ilk). I suspect that, on a unconscious level, those early PIF encounters might have seen the birth of our very first experience in not quite trusting authority; the folks who assure us that they've got our best interests at heart and that this tiny bit of psychological scarring isn't going to hurt (much). These were the demented minds who supposed that the best way to reinforce the concept of road safety awareness among small children was to gift them with images of colour-in carnage. In the same way, the PIF reveals the sickness and sadism of authority even when they're looking to present what would appear to be perfectly laudable messages.

Electronic musician Cate Brooks is one PIF devotee who took this malaise and channeled it into an art form; in her case, into a project known as The Advisory Circle, which to date has released five albums via the Ghost Box label, whose mission statement, according to the official website, is to explore "the misremembered musical history of a parallel world." The Advisory Circle's debut album, Mind How You Go, which saw the light of day in 2005 (and was later repressed as a revised edition in 2010), displays a particularly evident love/hate fixation with the PIFs that dogged the nightmares and afternoon teatimes of the Dark and Lonely Water Generation. Distrust of authority is a recurring theme throughout, right from the short opening track, "Logo", where a slightly off-kilter female voice assures us that The Advisory Circle is all about "helping you make the right decisions". It becomes particularly salient in the track at the very heart of the album, a beguiling curiosity piece entitled "And The Cuckoo Comes". Here, another slightly off-kilter female voice chips in atop a slew of swirling and discordant synths to recite a pseudo-educational passage on the comings and goings of the seasons. The owner of this voice is, alas, not credited, but she sounds innocuously reminiscent of Vicky Ireland narrating a segment on the BBC Schools program Words and Pictures, only crossed with the bristling contempt of a school headmistress who's grown weary of her charges. Her voice is ostensibly non-threatening enough that a casual listener may not even pick up on the track's trickery to begin with. And yet, with attentive listening its sinister nature becomes apparent. The implicit message of "Cuckoo" is to be wary of the voice of authority, for here authority is selling us a pack of lies. This is what she tells us:

In the summer...well, it's usually cold and sometimes it snows. The winds blow. In the autumn...the flowers are out, and the sun shines. In the winter...the leaves grow again on the trees. And in the spring...the winds blow, and the leaves fall from the trees. And the sun shines.

The leaves grow again on the trees and sometimes it snows.

And the cuckoo comes...

Joseph Stannard, covering the album in an article on The Quietus, identifies this track as, "the point at which the voice of authority becomes the voice of confusion. Common sense breaks down." But there is something a lot more troubling going on here than the sheer wrongness of the dialogue. "Cuckoo" is disturbing in its presentation of the cycles of nature, which have been purposely carved up and rearranged so that the seasonal cycle feels less like an unending process of renewal and regeneration than one of inescapable chaos. It represents the seasons as being at constant loggerheads, with each new season disrupting or contradicting what has come before it. The leaves grow on the trees in the winter only for spring to come along with its cold winds and blow them all down again. The autumn brings flowers and sunshine but the trees will remain bare until winter's fleeting return. In the end, the seasons all blur together into one eternal stretch of deadening futility. Creation is followed by destruction, nothing lasts for long or flows in any coherent sequence and the very fabric of reality begins to break down. And "Cuckoo" impassively coaxes us into accepting this as the natural order. For not only is the seasonal cycle in "Cuckoo" severely out of whack, but there is something eerily hypnotic about the track's increasingly garbled mantras, as if its true purpose lies in convincing the listener to surrender everything they understand about the world and to accept this distorted vision of reality in its place. With enough beleaguering, authority could convince us that black is white and get us killed on the next zebra crossing. If it didn't have our health and safety so firmly at its heart, of course.

And the cuckoo?  It is likely a reference to this traditional rhyme (which also - one assumes - provided the basis for Simon & Garfunkel's "April Come She Will"):

"The cuckoo comes in April,
She sings her song in May,
In the month of June she changes her tune,
And in July she flies away."

The above rhyme is likewise concerned with the cycles of nature and the passage of time, and with the inevitability of change but also the consistency with which these annual patterns are able to keep on replicating themselves. In The Advisory Circle's track the cuckoo's appearance is presented as a punchline of sorts; on the surface, the coming of a cuckoo sounds like a laughably innocuous way to round of its sequence of dread, and yet "Cuckoo" depicts it as the inevitable culmination of this never-ending chaos, so that the harbinger of spring becomes the harbinger of doom. This sinister presentation plays into the split personality of the cuckoo (or at least the personalities we have ascribed it), as a bird that is, on the one hand, synonymous with spring and with new life and regrowth. And yet this romantic emblem is also a brood parasite whose breeding habits fly in the face of everything we assume to be true about maternal instinct. If you happen to be a reed warbler then the coming of the cuckoo would be a very disastrous thing indeed. The brood parasitism of the cuckoo evokes nature at its most freakishly topsy turvy - as many an ornithologist can attest, the sight of a tiny reed warbler raising an enormous cuckoo chick is borderline surreal, the adult bird going about its business entirely oblivious to the fact that this gigantic imposter has mass-murdered its own biological offspring. "And The Cuckoo Comes" is a track about distortion but also duality, and the chaotic undercurrent it suggests is perpetually lurking beneath the apparent blissfulness of green and pleasant Britain, and which might occasionally manifest itself in the absurd (yet sinister) sight of that infant cuckoo occupying the warbler's nest. There is a strange and unfriendly world out there, which is precisely why the oversight of an authority like the fictitious Advisory Circle should prove so appealing. And yet Mind How You Go also evokes the paradoxical manner in which such authority, in attempting to impose order and understanding upon the chaos, merely heightens our confusion and sense of dread. Ah well. Stay safe. And if it's summer...don't be tempted to cut across any frozen ponds as you make your way home tonight.