Haunted by Childhoods: Three Ghost Stories

Thandie Newton and Kimberly Elise in the 1998 Beloved adaptation

I started this blog post in August 2014. It's been in the drafts section of my blogger account since then - out of sight, but never quite out of mind. It began as a simple Halloween-themed rambling for my little-read blog: a selection of literary ghost stories. But as I wrote about each piece, I realized something connected them all, and not just that they were all ghost stories about children. I needed to stop and think about what it was I was trying to say.

Then I procrastinated for two years and just finally finished this post!

Anyways, when I re-read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein earlier this year, I was struck by Victor Frankenstein's anti-climatic, almost comical reaction to the "birth" of his creation. He sees that his creation is alive, panics, and...leaves the room. To sleep. He literally just shuts down, leaves the room, and goes to bed. When his creation seeks him out in his bedroom, he goes outside and sleeps in the courtyard. Then he stays away from his apartment for the day, hoping the thing will leave.

Oh. Never mind, don't want you after all.
BTW, check out my dick windows.

Victor's utter fecklessness in the face of crisis amused me, but also hit at one of my deepest fears. I don't have kids, and don't know if I will ever have one or even want one. But sometimes I picture motherhood, and I am terrified I would react just like Victor. What if I went through labor, held my new baby in my arms, and felt...nothing? Or felt revulsion? What if the crying, screaming, pooping thing got to be too much for me and I just closed the door walked away (just like with this blog post!)?

Victor's panic and denial are understandable (I mean, the reality that one has bestowed life upon a giant mutant corpse hits pretty hard), and he feels extremely justified in his actions, but his "child," just as understandably, doesn't feel the same way. The creation is never able to get over the pain of that early abandonment.

And there's the crux of the conflict between parent and offspring. The adult, with their adult mind, adult body, and adult words, exercises a lot of control over the life of the child. Their choices - whether made out of desperation, love, selfishness, or necessity - shape the child's very existence. Because children are, by nature, helpless, things are done to them; they have little to no agency.

It's unavoidable for parents and other adults to take actions that impact a child's life. And it's tempting to hush up, smooth over, or outright deny unpleasant things that happened (as Carol Ann Duffy captures in her poem "We Remember Your Childhood Well"). But the adult can't control how the child feels about those actions and what the child will eventually do with those feelings. The creation abandoned in Germany returns as a monster in Switzerland. Ben Solo becomes Kylo Ren. Christina Crawford pens a memoir. Kelly Clarkson sings a beautiful patricide of a song.

I think this uncertainty and tension shows up in our ghost stories. Children are easy to subdue, lie to, or abandon, but they remember.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

In 2006 the New York Times independently asked 100 writers, editors, and critics to name the best American piece of fiction of the past quarter century, and Beloved was the top selection. It's not hard to understand why once you've read Morrison's masterpiece, which explores the shame that haunts a nation and the skeletons hidden in individuals' closets. Inspired by the true story of an enslaved woman who escaped the South and later killed her daughter rather than return the girl to slavery, Beloved deals with what lead to that choice and its repercussions.

It's impossible not to sympathize with Sethe. As a slave, Sethe is raped and tortured, and later separated from her husband. Despite all this, she still manages the Herculean effort to get her four children to freedom in the North. When men arrive to bring Sethe and her children back to slavery, back to the place where she and her loved ones were brutalized, she does the most merciful thing she can think of: she attempts to kill her children before they can be captured.

Sethe with her returned daughter in the 1998 adaptation

She only succeeds in killing one: a toddler girl posthumously called Beloved. The slavers abandon their pursuit, and a local lawyer takes pity on Sethe and gets her released from prison. But her life, of course, can never be the same. Her two oldest children now fear her, and soon flee from home. The house seems haunted.

And then years after the awful event, the ghost of the child returns with the body of the young woman she would be but the psyche of the toddler she was. Her feelings about Sethe are complex. She's desperate for love and affection from her mother, but she's also furious about her murder, and embarks on a series of escalating acts of revenge. There's no reasoning with her why what Sethe did what she did and that the real enemy is slavery itself - her mother killed her, and she's hurt and angry.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

This novella by Henry James is a classic. A group of vacationers are staying at a remote country estate, and tell ghost stories to each other. One captures the audience's attention more than the others.

The story starts with a governess assigned a strange job: look after two children in an isolated mansion, and no matter what, do not contact the children's uncle, who is their legal guardian. At first everything seems fine (as it always does). The little girl, Flora, is sweet, and her brother, Miles, who is away at school, is assured to be the same. Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, is kindly. The grounds are beautiful.

But then comes the news that Miles has been expelled from school for being "an injury" to the others. Mrs. Grose seems horrified and defensive, but not necessarily surprised. When the governess starts to see what she believes to be ghosts, she becomes convinced that they are the children's previous caretakers, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Mrs. Grose reveals the two had unsavory dealings with Miles and Flora. While what exactly happened isn't spelled out, sexual abuse is heavily implied ("Quint was much too free." "Too free with my boy?" "Too free with everyone!" / "He did what he wished." "With her?" "With them all.").

From The Innocents, a 1961 adaptation

None of the adults at the house spoke out during Quint and Jessel's tenure, and no one dared tell the uncle about it. The new governess now knows there were and are problems, but whether she's equipped to deal with those problems is another matter. As the children act out in increasingly alarming ways, she becomes convinced that the ghosts of Quint and Jessel are trying to possess them, and she focuses her energies on protecting the children from these evil spirits. Whether or not the ghosts are real, it's clear the children have been failed by the adults in their lives.

"The Bees" by Dan Chaon

In the Dan Chaon short story "The Bees," Gene has an ideal life. He lives with his wife, Karen, and their young son, Frankie, in the Cleveland suburbs. However, their household is suddenly plagued by a strange phenomenon: Frankie repeatedly screams in the middle of the night, waking his parents but not himself, and without an accompanying nightmare. Their pediatrician can find nothing wrong. The screaming episodes leave Gene feeling increasingly on edge, and he starts experiencing a buzzing sensation, like the sound of bees. He wonders if his secret past is playing a part in the disturbances.

Many years previously, an alcoholic Gene married his pregnant girlfriend, Mandy, when they were nineteen. He made a few attempts at being a father to their son, DJ, but could be cruel and short-tempered. He mostly saw DJ as an adversary, and abused both him and Mandy. After giving five-year-old DJ a black eye, he took off and moved far away - drunkenly crashing his car in process.

Gene eventually sobered up, but by then was unable to track down Mandy and DJ to apologize and provide financial support. So he moved on, and until the screaming incidents with Frankie, he has mostly managed to put his firstborn son out of his mind. As the screams and sound of bees continue, Gene begins to be haunted by visions of DJ dying in a fire. Is his eldest really dead...and even if he is, would that stop his desire for revenge?

"The Bees" was first published in McSweeney's #10, which was then republished as McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. You can read the beginning here.

Illustration for "The Bees" by Howard Chaykin

Image Info:

Beloved header image: Movie Stills DB

Frankenstein illustration with dick windows: Theodore Von Holt engraving for 1831 edition

Sethe and Beloved: Cineplex (Full disclosure: I have never been able to bring myself to watch the film due to certain scenes, but Matty Steinfeld has a passionate and informative defense of the film here)

Miles being creepy: The Ghost Central

Howard Chaykin illustration: from McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

Swiss Army Man: It's Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea

My saddle's waiting, come and jump on it

Swiss Army Man, the feature film debut of Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directors of music videos like Turn Down For What), sounds like a movie created on a dare: a man on a deserted island is saved by riding a fart-powered corpse. In that regard, it feels like it could have similar origins to Kevin Smith's Tusk, which came from a joke about a man demanding his roommate dress up and act as a walrus.

Tusk stayed in the throwback-horror genre, and while interesting in its own way, was not terribly deep or successful. Swiss Army Man could have played it safe (as safe as a farting corpse movie could be) by either staying in the gross-out comedy genre or going for a clinically detached symbolist interpretation. Instead, Daniels refuse to shy from either puerile humor or art, and they make something funny and beautiful in the process.

Response has certainly been mixed (walk-outs at Sundance were reported). I particularly enjoyed Onur Tukel's comic-format review (spoilers!). I didn't come to quite the same conclusions as he did, but it's a thoughtful, thought-provoking piece. Interestingly, despite his deep reading and admiration of the film, Tukel decides he didn't like it. I felt the same way about Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster - appreciation of its daring and art, but little actual affection. On the contrary, like the conqueror worm, Swiss Army Man has chewed and nuzzled its way into my heart.

Cannes aftermath

Daniels open the film with a shot of the ocean. Soon we see floating pieces of trash bearing desperate messages: someone has had a boating accident. On a very small, uninhabitable island we find Paul Dano's disheveled, sunburnt Hank preparing to hang himself from the mouth of a cave. He hums a song to steady himself, but is distracted by the sudden appearance a body (Daniel Radcliffe) washed up on shore.

Startled, Hank falls from the cooler/gallows he's standing on, but manages to break the noose in his determination to reach the man, whom he hopes is still alive. He's not. A rumbling gives Hank hope, but it turns out to just be gas the bloated body is expelling. "That's funny," Hank sighs before taking the dead man's belt to use as a replacement noose. But before Hank can hang himself (again), the body, continuing to fart wildly, shows off a neat trick: it can propel itself in the water. Hank runs down the beach and - using the broken noose as a lasso - triumphantly rides the corpse out to sea.

Hank wakes up on a Pacific Northwest shore and goes off in search of civilization, carrying the body on his back (Dano apparently did actually carry Radcliffe through much of the film) and sometimes talking to it. To his alarm, it starts talking back. Hank names his new friend Manny and tells him about life, sex, pop culture, his deceased mother, his distant father, and his crush (using hikers' garbage to make educational props) as they look for home. Along the way, it becomes clear how lonely and unsure of himself Hank has been. And Manny's abilities continue to develop and surprise (for example, his penis works as a compass). Will the duo be ready to rejoin civilization by the time they make it back, and will they want to?

A bed of clover...and poop

Dano's and Radcliffe's performances are masterful, funny, and affecting, and Daniels capture the Pacific Northwest's coastline and redwoods in all their glory. Andy Hull and Robert McDowell's powerful, infectious score is a critical part of the movie. If the Oscars refuse to consider Dano's work in the farting corpse movie, they should at least acknowledge that score.

The Atlantic's David Sims is being fair when he writes in his otherwise glowing review that, "The downside of [the story] is that this is an indie film recycling an age-old indie trope - that of the introverted, lonely white dude, unlucky in love and pining for a silent woman who isn’t afforded similar agency by the plot." As Mary Elizabeth Winstead was pursued by an awkward Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim, here she's pursued by an awkward Paul Dano. In that, it does feel annoyingly familiar and twee. I mean, look at these fucking hipsters who directed it.

That said, I saw a lot of myself in Dano's Hank. Like, a lot. Like...maybe despite being completely romance-adverse, I've seen someone on the bus and imagined our courtship, proposal, and wedding even though that might not be what I actually want out of life. I've never dressed up as a bus crush and made out with a corpse, though. I swear.

I swear

My Interpretation (Spoilers!)

I read the movie as a twist on the "life before your eyes" concept. I think Hank's opening suicide attempt was successful. When he first finds Manny, he tells the body that he had hoped when he died he would see the life he wished he had - full of music, friends, parties, and a lover. With Manny filling multiple roles, Hank gets to see all of that.

The final part of the movie, when Hank and Manny stumble into the backyard of a freaked-out Sarah (Hank's bus and instagram crush) and are soon besieged by law enforcement, the media, and Hank's father, confused me on the first viewing. Having thought about the film and seen it a second time, I think this part is Hank finally accepting himself and his reality.

He's been fantasizing about getting a second chance to talk to Sarah on the bus and having that interaction blossom into romance. But he finally realizes that even if he did get a second chance with Sarah...she's perfectly happy with her husband and child and would understandably be majorly creeped out by some stranger obsessing over her instagram photos. He realizes he wasn't really in love with Sarah, but that he wanted her happy life. He realizes that and accepts it, just as he realizes that even though he'll never have the connection he wants with his father, his father still loves him. Hank's acceptance of himself (symbolized by him admitting, with relief and delight, to farting in front of the crowd) gives him a final moment of peace as he dies.

Maybe that's what the Daniels meant, or maybe not, but that's what I saw in the movie. To close on the closing lines from e.e. cummings' "maggie and milly and molly and may,"

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea




Image sources: 
Paul Dano riding Daniel Radcliffe like a water pony
A day at the beach
Sleepy Daniel Radcliffe
On the bus

Dream Cast - Frankenstein

TFW your dad is the sullen youth in your relationship

Just over a week ago, on a Thursday, I was getting ready to go to work. Having just finished Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice trilogy, I needed a new read for my commute. I grabbed my high school paperback of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein off the shelf. I'd been thinking about re-reading it for years, and recent Byronic research for something I'm writing and the fact that my sister watched and related to me the awful James McAvoy Victor Frankenstein movie made the novel fresh in my mind.

By complete coincidence (or was it - ominous music) that day, June 16, is the day some astronomers think Shelley first dreamed up the basis for her story.

From my vague remembrances of the book, I knew it was different than our popular conception of the Frankenstein story, but I had forgotten just how different it was. There's no castle, no Igor. Victor Frankenstein makes his first monster in his apartment at university and his second, unfinished monster in a crude hut in the remote Orkney Islands.

I had also forgotten (or just couldn't appreciate at the time) just how great the novel is. It's groundbreaking, compelling, thoughtful, and ambitious. Boris Karloff's monster is rooted in our pop culture, and Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein will always be a favorite of mine, but I found myself wishing for an adaptation more faithful to Shelley's vision. Not only in theme and message, but in the 18th century setting and the powerful landscapes she describes in Switzerland, Germany, and Scotland.

Like I did with Wuthering Heights, I spent a lot of free time picking out my dream cast for my dream Frankenstein miniseries. Here are the fruits of my imagined labors:

Robert Walton - Nicholas Hoult

Who is Robert Walton? Good question! Walton is our narrator narrating other characters' narrations, much like Lockwood (who?) in Wuthering Heights. I didn't cast Lockwood in my Wuthering Heights dream cast because nobody cares about Lockwood, but I'll shrug and go to bat for Walton.

Frankenstein is actually an epistolary novel, a series of letters Walton sends to his beloved sister. He's setting off on a dangerous quest to find a shipping route through the North Pole, and is so excited! But, he tells his sister, although surrounded by men, he's sad not to have a special guy friend whose eyes he can gaze into as he reveals his feelings. :( Fortunately, one almost immediately shows up on an ice flow! This Elsa-sent buddy is none other than Victor Frankenstein, who eventually tells Walton his story. Later, Frankenstein's monster will also get the chance to unload on Walton.

Why use an actor like Nicholas Hoult for this comparatively small role? Because I think it's important to see how Walton is hearing Victor's story and what lessons he takes away from his encounter with the Monster. Although he's been somewhat blinded by his affection for Victor, does his meeting with the Monster alter his opinions? Walton doesn't put any of those final thoughts on paper, so it would be up to the actor's face to communicate Walton's mind. Any wide-eyed young actor could be slotted in this spot, but someone like Hoult could add depth.

Victor Frankenstein - Paul Dano

One thing that stood out to me about Frankenstein, when re-reading, is just how feckless Victor Frankenstein is. He's not exactly a man of action. Yes, when he discovers the secret to life, he passionately and manically works on his creature, but when it isn't what he wanted, he decides his best course of action is...avoidance. He literally just abandons his new, awake, conscious creation on the table and goes to bed. When the confused, lonely monster finds him in his bedroom, he sleeps outside and waits for the thing to leave his apartment.

This response isn't out of character for him. We've already seen him shrug off communication with the people he loves most in the world simply because it's not what he wants at the moment. Later, when a servant in his household is falsely accused of the murder of his little brother - a murder he knows his Monster has committed - he half-heartedly argues for her innocence without implicating himself in any way. When the Monster demands that Victor make him a companion, promising he'll take his new friend far from human civilization and live a vegan life in South America, Victor agrees...and then procrastinates for a year on the project while worrying about it the whole time.

Yet despite the fact that this entire disaster - which all of Victor's loved ones end up paying for with their lives - is literally of Victor's making, the depths of his despair do provoke pity. Dano could handle the range of this character - from fevered curiosity to sullen passivity to mental breakdowns - without campiness.

Frankenstein's Monster - Richard Armitage

While a green-skinned, boxy-skulled Frankenstein's Monster has become the popular image, Mary Shelley describes a creature who was supposed to be handsome - ravishing black hair, good teeth - but comes off as horrifying due to his outlandish size, runny eyes, and yellowish skin that clearly belongs to a cadaver. With some special effects (makeup, Andy Serkising, or both), naturally handsome Armitage could pull off this unsettling mix of greatness and ugliness. Also, while the Monster is usually depicted as inarticulate and lumbering, Shelley's monster has superhuman speed and grace.

The differences between the original Monster and the pop culture Monster aren't just visual. Shelley's is intellectual and complex. Just two years after his "birth," he's not only able to speak, but is a clever, erudite man who can talk circles around the sniveling Victor. His capacity to do good seems greater than Victor's, yet he is the one who chooses to murder again and again - not Victor. Like his creator, he is excellent at rationalizing his actions to himself and identifies with fallen angel Lucifer from Milton's Paradise Lost. I'd love for an adaptation to show the tragedy and humanity of this iconic creature.

Elizabeth Lavenza - Lea Seydoux

The orphaned daughter of Italian nobility, Elizabeth is adopted from an impoverished foster family by the Frankensteins as their "niece" and betrothed to Victor when they are both small children. It's an odd arrangement (like, don't do this today), but she loves her family and they love her. She keeps the family going after Mrs. Frankenstein's death and passionately advocates for the falsely accused Justine.

As with Justine (below), Elizabeth's virtue and strength make Victor's selfishness all the more visible. It would be all too easy in an adaptation to make this character a wilting violet doormat of a victim, which is why I'd want an actress of Leydoux's mettle to take the role (and be backed with a great writer and director, since this is my dream).

Henry Clerval - Sebastian Armesto 

Victor and Elizabeth grow up with their best friend, the less financially fortunate but romantically minded Henry Clerval. Happy, generous Henry loves stories about knights and heroes as a child. When he finally attains his dream of going to university to study Asian languages, he puts it off for a year without a thought to tend to Victor, who has suffered a nervous breakdown. Henry is sweet and oblivious, happily prancing across Europe on a road trip with Victor, who gloomily frets and collects body parts.

When thinking of whom I would cast as this character, I couldn't help but remember how - in a matter of moments - Armesto made hapless, puppy-eyed Lieutenant Mitaka memorable in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sadly, Frankenstein's Monster will finish what Kylo Ren started. :( 

Justine Moritz - Morfydd Clark

Justine, a young woman scorned by her mother and brought into the Frankenstein family as a servant, becomes an early victim of the Monster when he frames her for murder and she is sentenced to death. Her grief and bewilderment is heartbreaking, and it would be easy to make this minor character a one-note victim. However, her ultimate courage in the face of death is in contrast to Victor's continued cowardliness. I'd trust Clark, from Love & Friendship and Josie Rourke's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, to show both innocence and strength.

De Lacey Family

After being abandoned by Victor and chased by terrified villagers, the Monster hides out near a cottage. The inhabitants are the De Lacey family, and Shelley gives them a rich backstory. They are an aristocratic French family living in exile in the German countryside, and they consist of the blind patriarch, daughter Agatha, son Felix, and Felix's Arab-Turkish fiancee Safie. Despite suffering hardships that have left them in poverty, they are a loving, kind, musically gifted group. By spying on them for a year, the Monster learns how to speak, how to read, and the basics of human history. He comes to love the family and desperately wants to be accepted by them. Alas, his introduction to them goes horribly wrong, and he is rejected out of fear again.

I'd cast grizzled, stately Hugo Weaving as De Lacey; Adele Exarchopoulous and Jamie Bell as his two dutiful children; and Mandahla Rose as joyful Safie.

Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein - Ralph Fiennes and Sheryl Lee

Mr. Frankenstein is a loving father who is distraught as he watches his oldest child descend into depression and then more severe mental illness. He's at a loss to determine the cause (no one suspects their child has learned the secret of sparking life and used it to make an eight-foot-tall creature that keeps killing people), but he doesn't give up on his son. At one point he has to travel from Switzerland to Ireland to pick up a hysterical Victor from a small-town prison, and he's completely supportive the whole time.

Even though Sheryl Lee's scene in Winter's Bone was brief, I was drawn to her warmth. I can see the Twin Peaks star as the matriarch of this adventurous, welcoming family. Given all that happens, it's probably a blessing this character dies of scarlet fever before everything goes to hell.


Image info:
Header image: Richard Armitage in Robin Hood, Paul Dano in War & Peace
All actor headshots: IMDB