Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Deconstruction: Night of the Living Dead Christian 7

The vampire next door...

Welcome to the detailed (and, unfortunately, spoiler-rich) review of Night of the Living Dead Christian. For a briefer review that doesn't give anything away, read the main review. If you're curious, here's a discussion of why I'm doing this.

This is a rather long bit of reaction, so I'm breaking it up into sections. Hopefully that will allow for more bite-sized discussions. So, now that you've all been fairly warned, we'll pick up the deconstruction after the jump:


Two things happen at this point: first, Hibbs (android) and Culbetron (mad scientist) point out that Narrator-Matt's neighbor (and high school pal) Lara is a vampire, and might have something to contribute to their quest. This is news to Matt, but should have been pretty obvious to everyone else - readers included - from Lara's first appearance. Second, Matt's wife is leaving the house to buy Halloween costumes with the kids, and they give a pretty strong indication that Narrator-Matt isn't as involved with his family as he should be. As a plot point, this may actually be more important than the fact that Borut the werewolf-hunter has figured out who the werewolf is; Narrator-Matt’s wife Krista tells them that as well. The boys promptly abandon their search for a snack and head over to Lara's house, to see if the vampire knows anything that might help.

Lara, as it happens, knows Borut - and so immediately invites everyone inside. She then sits down to talk with Narrator-Matt and Luther the werewolf, revealing almost immediately that yes, there is a cure for vampirism. Before explaining it, she tells them a bit of her story: that her high-school boyfriend and later husband Jake was a vampire, that he didn't love her but only acted charming when he wanted something from her; that after years of him sucking the life from her, she started coping by becoming like him, and took to sucking the life from other people. It's not the same sort of abuse that Luther (apparently) inflicted on his own wife and daughter; Luther's abuse is never clearly described, but seems to be more violent-and-scary than draining-and-manipulative.

I'm not an expert in domestic abuse, but from what I do know that strikes me as a distinction without a difference - a difference in focus, maybe, but not in kind. Which makes it doubly odd when Luther repudiates Jake's behavior: the first time I read it he seemed to be saying that he would never do anything like that, when in fact doing things like is exactly the problem with his lycanthropy and the reason he wants to be cured. On a second reading, Luther seems to be saying that he would never go so far as to make his wife a werewolf like him, which makes a lot more sense. (It's still a difference of degree rather than type, but it's actually a very believable response coming from an abuser: "Well, yeah, but at least I'm not as bad as that." And Narrator-Matt rightly points out that he might say that now, but if his wife had stayed it was really just a matter of time before he crossed that line.)

So - and this is something that troubled me about the book - being a monster appears to be directly tied to spousal abuse. Luther lost his wife because his monstrosity caused him to abuse her; Lara became a monster because her boyfriend/husband abused her. Narrator-Matt keeps getting hints that he's a monster, too, and his wife and children have just warned him that he's very much absent from their lives. Admittedly, that pattern doesn't seem to hold for the zombies, so perhaps I should say instead that spousal abuse is associated with being a self-directed monster. But having Luther’s monstrosity and Lara’s monstrosity both be tied to abusive marriages seems to me to dilute the differences between the kinds of monsters.

This does put an interesting spin on some elements of vampire mythology, though. The fear of mirrors and sunlight is, in this milieu, essentially a result of a guilty conscience - they're ashamed to look in mirrors, and sunlight is far too revealing to be comfortable. Garlic doesn't affect them, which makes sense; why would it bother them? They're affected by crosses, because crosses are holy and they are sinful.

And basically, after an encounter in which Borut killed Jake the abusive vampire-husband, Lara went looking for a cure for her condition. She found a church, and spoke with the pastor, and slowly started recovering her humanity. At this point, Borut arrives at Lara's house, Lara hands Luther a business card for the church that helped her, and our heroes escape while Lara stays behind to hold off Borut - using her vampire powers, which she still possesses strongly enough to be immune to bullets.

That last bit is interesting, as it suggests that some of these curses - vampirism, lycanthropy - could become blessings if their more troublesome elements were tamed. ("Hey, it's a start, right? The goal, of course, is to be like you - the Daywalker! You got the best of both worlds, don't you? All our strengths... none of our weaknesses.") I'm not sure if this is a deliberate thematic point, though, or whether it's mainly there as a way to keep the action moving along in the proper direction. (Later note: now that I’ve finished the book, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.)

12 comments:

  1. That last bit is interesting, as it suggests that some of these curses - vampirism, lycanthropy - could become blessings if their more troublesome elements were tamed. ("Hey, it's a start, right? The goal, of course, is to be like you - the Daywalker! You got the best of both worlds, don't you? All our strengths... none of our weaknesses.") I'm not sure if this is a deliberate thematic point, though, or whether it's mainly there as a way to keep the action moving along in the proper direction. (Later note: now that I’ve finished the book, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.)

    For the record, I was hoping that the aspect of how Matt conceived of the monsters was going in this direction, too. That was part of the reason I found myself liking the book. He actually added a fascinating twist to the usual vampire mythology that totally could have worked.

    Then...well...then we met the psychologist...

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  2. I don't think there's any reason people would be satisfied being a monster of any kind unless there was some payoff or advantage to them. I did intend there to be variety in dealing with these issues... what Robert, Lara and Luther are doing about their monstrosities and the degree to which things change in their journey are different. I do think that sometimes the things we wrestle with are perversions of strengths we have... although it's hard to come up with a way that would be true for Luther.

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  3. "I don't think there's any reason people would be satisfied being a monster of any kind unless there was some payoff or advantage to them."

    I think it depends. There's an awful lot of fiction out there that certainly seems to idolize monsters: as romantic partners, as something people want to become, and often enough both. (Twilight is the big example, but Twilight is part of a much larger genre of dark fantasy and supernatural romance... okay, maybe that's two genres. Whatever. Or consider the Underworld movies.) Monsters are the Bad Boys of the superhero genre - not always, but often enough.

    Even when the monster must ultimately be repudiated - and I'm thinking of Milton's version of Satan in Paradise Lost, now - it's still frequently more dynamic and interesting the heroes and other forces of good.

    And there are plenty of fictional examples of the half-monster as a hero, or antihero. After all, in a world where the monsters are real - and far more powerful than human beings - then the ideal position is to be monster enough to match their power, but human enough to retain your morality. See, for example, Blade - or the not-quite-human version of Ripley in Alien Resurrection, or if you can handle anime try Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

    And while I'm throwing out recommendations, do yourself a favor and find a copy of Clive Barker's Cabal if you haven't already. It was made into a movie - Nightbreed - but for the love of all that's holy, do not start there. Get the book, read the book.

    ...But I digress, and there actually was a point I wanted to make here. Oh, right:

    Even in the context of your metaphor, there could be advantages to being an incompletely cured monster. Being bulletproof is obvious, but consider: you've spent all your life being kind, and generous, and giving. And because that's all you've tried to do, you've become a target for every bully and user and taker who sees you. And finally, having been victimized by these monsters for so long, you become a monster yourself: you give up on being kind and generous, because it's never gotten you anywhere and it only invites other people to make you miserable. You become a bully and a taker and user, a terror to the people around you. And then you find that you still aren't happy. Sure, you hated being taken advantage of, but taking advantage of others isn't satisfying either. So you start working your way back towards being a decent person - less of a monster.

    But somewhere in the middle, there, you find a better a point. A point where you're human - trusting, and vulnerable, and giving - most of the time... but where you still have enough monster in you to see when someone is trying to make you a victim; where you're still monster enough to show fangs and claws and gleaming red eyes when they start to cross your boundaries, and even use those things if they don't take the hint.

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  4. But somewhere in the middle, there, you find a better a point. A point where you're human - trusting, and vulnerable, and giving - most of the time... but where you still have enough monster in you to see when someone is trying to make you a victim; where you're still monster enough to show fangs and claws and gleaming red eyes when they start to cross your boundaries, and even use those things if they don't take the hint.

    Weird. I wrote a post about exactly that subject. It boils down to, "Being an asshole is a tool. If you use it too much it costs you, but if properly used it can be extremely helpful."

    This is why, on a lot of levels, I wanted to like the book. It's also why, on a lot of levels, I can't like the book, because Matt's conclusions about the nature of monsters come from a totally different place than mine do.

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  5. Hey guys--

    Either we're agreeing or I'm missing something... this is pretty much exactly where Lara lands, right?

    I know Blade and Ripley. And I did have the unfortunate experience of watching Nightbreed. I read the first of Barker's children's books and did not like it at all, and I'm afraid between that and Nightbreed I've never given him a second shot. Mistake? What's his best work?

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  6. Either we're agreeing or I'm missing something... this is pretty much exactly where Lara lands, right?

    Yeah, pretty much.

    The primary difference is that it doesn't seem that Lara's supposed to be happy and/or comfortable there. She still gets hounded by Borut. She still sits around feeling guilty. She can't accept that sometimes you just need to let the monster out.

    Basically, if I were writing the book, Lara would be the hero. She'd be Ripley or what's-her-name-played-by-Summer-Glau-on-Firefly ripping through the Rievers or Lyta Alexander using her mind to stop the Shadows or whatever. We'd be cheering her on as she kicks ass, takes names, and works through her issues. In NotLDC I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be weeping for her. That's the disconnect.

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  7. And yes, I'd give Cabal a shot. Admittedly, I was a lot younger when I read it, but it pretty important to a whole little group of us back in college. There are other Clive Barker books, but that was the big one for me.

    Which children's book did you read? I rather enjoyed The Thief of Always, but I can see where it wouldn't be to everybody's taste.

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  8. ...And you know, now that I think of it, I should probably do a post on Cabal and why we loved it.

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  9. Oh yeah! I forgot the Thief of Always. I actually liked that one. It was Abarat that I disliked. I don't even remember why I hated it so much.

    And Nightbreed might have suffered because I was super, super excited about it. I don't know if you read many comics, but for several months leading up to the release they had these insert advertisements with full photo cards that had descriptions of each of the night breed and it looked so awesome. And then the movie badly disappointed me....

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  10. I actually read the Nightbreed comic for quite a while - it was how I found the book. I was lucky, I think: I found the book well before I found the movie.

    The post-movie Nightbreed comic was mostly pretty meh - not awful, but not that great, either - but it picked up just towards the end: right before they canceled it. Figures, really.

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