"Revenge Is Sweet and Not Fattening" Alfred Hitchcock - Revenge in films, comedy and even a musical

Minor spoilers for The Revenant, Rushmore, The Machinist and Munich


Often when watching a film based on a true story the viewer will often think, "I couldn't have done that. I wouldn't have been able to take it." Well in Leonardo Di Caprio's latest role in The Revenant that is certainly true, I couldn't have endured what his character did. I also don't think I could have endured what Leonardo Di Caprio endured just doing the acting. It looked really hard. The Revenant is a story of revenge and what a person will go through to fulfill their desire for vengeance. Di Caprio's character is brutally savaged by a bear and left for dead, his revenge sustaining him and certainly at numerous points I thought, "I would give up, I would die". After all what does the character have to look forward to? It's the 1820s so medical science is not going to do much for him. Still, perhaps revenge will be enough. Revenge is a well trodden topic in pop culture and rarely does it turn out well for everyone.

My favourite example of revenge in film is quite possibly the wonderful feud Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman's characters find themselves in in Wes Anderson's brilliant Rushmore. After Murray stole the woman of his dreams Jason Schwartzman's Max Fischer started a mad revenge against his former friend. A brief montage of their quickly escalating war is perfectly soundtracked by A Quick One While He's Away by The Who.

The greatest revenge fantasy (I'm hoping it is a fantasy) I have heard was from the comedian Paul Foot. I first saw Paul Foot at the 100 Club in London, Adam Buxton was headlining the gig and there were five or six acts on. One of them was Paul Foot. I did recognise Paul Foot from television, and if you have even glimpsed him once you will remember what Paul Foot looks like, but I didn't really know much about him. He did twenty minutes of material all on the subject of getting revenge on the landladies of Bed & Breakfasts and it is probably the funniest twenty minutes of standup I have ever seen. I love it when comedians have a short amount of time and instead of doing lots of short jokes put all their comedic eggs in one weird basket and Paul Foot did that. Paul Foot's revenge on the landlady was to put them through a complex themed nightmare which resulted in him smashing their collection of porcelain dollies including the precious "Super Dolly" with a tomahawk.

Rushmore is essentially a comedy and Paul Foot is definitely a comedian, and so the revenge can only go so far. It takes something more serious to get really into the depths of revenge. The Machinist is essentially a man taking revenge on himself. It stars Christian Bale as the eponymous machinist who is on some odd quest to destroy himself by losing as much weight as possible. Bale got a lot of attention as he actually did drop a lot of weight to play the role and Bale is almost skeletal in the film. He then put all of the weight he had lost back on and more to star in Christopher Nolan's Batman films then lost it all to be in The Fighter and then put on a lot of weight, and not in the attractive Batman way, for American Hustle where the first shot was of a balding Bale with a fat stomach.

The many different physiques of Christian Bale, I'll let
you work out for yourself which one was for Batman

I can only hope that Bale is never cast as someone with only one eye or hand as he may decide not to trouble the makeup and special effects teams and sort it out on his own. Whether or not such drastic weight loss and gain is a prerequisite for doing these roles I don't know and I would think it would be entirely reasonable for such drastic changes in appearance to be handled by makeup and special effects. I do think Bale is one of the best actors currently working. Anyway back to the film, why Bale's character is punishing himself is slowly revealed in the film and a shot of a healthy and normal weight Bale at the end of the film showed just how much had gone into his transformation.

Steven Spielberg's Munich is I think an often overlooked film and I am a big fan of it. Philosophically revenge is given pretty short shrift in most films, books etc, that ultimately you're harming yourself as much as those who've wronged you. and "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" is often hailed as the most wise advice. Munich is largely based on the true story of the murder at the 1972 Munich Olympics of eleven Israeli athletes by a Palestinian terrorist organisation. The film details Israel's response to this attack. Eric Bana is the Mossad agent (Israeli intelligence) who is tasked with hunting down those responsible.

Working in very secretive conditions the team set out across the Middle East and Europe killing their targets. Showing the slippery slope of vengeance more names keep getting added to the list, perhaps people who had nothing to do with the specific Munich attack but are enemies of Israel. The Israeli team, but particularly Bana, feel increasingly uneasy with the ever expanding list of targets and the each succumbs to the paranoia this life leads to - for example early in the film they put a bomb under someone's bed and one tells a story of a spy colleague who never slept in his bed and slept in the closet instead, for fear of a bomb being under his bed, something which Bana started to do towards the end of the film. The revenge Israel sought inevitably only escalated the violence and made the situation worse. All of the characters that made up Bana's team lost something in following the revenge mission.

Finally, something from a genre I don't usually like; musicals. Perhaps my favourite musical ever is Gutted: A Revengers Musical. The show was written by Danielle Ward and Martin White and is an over the top musical about a woman, Sorrow, whose parents were killed when she was a child and the terrible revenge she planned against the culprit - she will grow up, marry him and then kill all of  his family. Not only are the songs great it is funny throughout and a fun feature is that every character is named after a David Bowie song or lyric (Sorrow, Kook, Jean). The cast featured some of the best standup comedians going - Thom Tuck, Humphrey Ker and David Reed of The Penny Dreadfuls, Sara Pascoe, Michael Legge and more. Tuck, Ker and Reed played two sets of characters, the first set are three spirits that are there to help Sorrow carry out her revenge and then in the second half a trio of police officers sent to investigate the murders; they have the best song in the whole show, In We You Can Trust, in which they encouraged Sorrow.

The revenge obsessed Sorrow

The whole thing is free to download via Sound Cloud (Gutted Musical) as well as other work by Danielle Ward and Martin White (such as Psister Psycho - a musical about an insane arms dealing robot nun obviously). The best recommendation I can give it is that as someone who loves music but typically hates musicals I loved it.

Fan Theories - The X-Files, The Tommy Westphall Universe, Lost and more

Major spoilers for The X-Files, St. Elsewhere, Lost, The Shining

As I watched The X-Files the other day I noticed something slightly peculiar. The episode was Chinga, which is about an evil cursed doll, but what was peculiar was the actor playing the sheriff had appeared in The X-Files before, in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space', where he played a detective. I have looked it up and he has been in the show five times playing different characters. This happens quite often in television, especially American shows where they might have twenty episodes a season, But it perhaps offers an interesting additional insight. In the world of the show are they meant to be completely separate characters? The X-Files has had episodes about clones and about creatures that change their appearance, is there more going on here? The short answer is no, I'm sure the producers just knew he was a good actor so why not keep using him? There a lot of fan theories in television and movies, sometimes involving just the world of the show, sometimes more about how it was made.

Larry Musser - this guy played five different characters in The X-Files

The best fan theory has to be the "Tommy Westphall Universe" theory from the tv show St. Elsewhere. It's not a show I've ever watched but at the end of the show it became apparent that the entire universe of St. Elsewhere existed only in the imagination of one of the characters; Tommy Westphall. That isn't the weird part, the weird part is that some characters from St. Elsewhere have appeared in other television shows, which would suggest they only exist in Tommy's imagination as well, such as Homicide: Life On The Streets. Currently The Tommy Westphall Universe blog has listed 419 tv shows as potentially only existing in Tommy's mind. Really though it can effectively cover all of film and television as any actor appearing on St Elsewhere was just a creation of Tommy, so it could follow that Denzel Washington is his creation, and all of the films Washington has made are his creation and that all the actors in all those different films are Tommy's creations and on and on.....
To see the complete list of shows and more ideas about the theory go to https://thetommywestphall.wordpress.com/the-master-list/

Tommy Westphall - who imagined hundreds of tv shows

There are three main fan theory categories that have been suggested for so many things they've become a little cliched:

1. It's just someone's fantasy - examples -Harry Potter, Titanic, Saved By The Bell, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Friends - all these and more have been suggested as the fantasy of one of the central characters or a large part is fantasy. Something like Harry Potter, where a person is whisked away from a dull or bad life into something new and exciting and where they are very special is a common psychological problem in people who have had traumatic lives. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is said to be largely the creation of Ferris's friend, Cameron, the neurotic stressed out, weirdo who created the figure of Ferris Bueller to allow him to do stuff he really wanted to do.

Ferris Bueller...this guy was a fantasy

2. They're dead - Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Rug Rats, Grease, Mad Men, Interstellar, Breaking Bad - this is perhaps the most common, a central character has died and the story taking place is either the dying dream of the person or their perception of the afterlife. In The Fresh Prince of Bel Air Will was actually killed in the fight shown in the opening credits and living in rich Bel Air was Heaven. Just looking up these theories I found the one about Rug Rats, in that all the children apart from Angelica, are dead most disturbing.

Will Smith...this guy was dead

For category 1 and 2 it should be a distinction made between films where this is a fan theory and what is actually supposed to have happened in the story, so far example Grease is a film where there is a theory that Sandy has been dead all along, but  in The Sixth Sense Bruce Willis's psychiatrist actually has been dead all along.

3. Everything is connected - Tarantino, Pixar universe- these are theories about connected pieces of work and how they share a deeper connection, for example with the works of Quentin Tarantino. It started with the idea that Kill Bill starring Uma Thurman as a member of a team of assassins is very similar to the tv show described by Uma Thurman's character, Mia Wallace, in Pulp Fiction, is Kill Bill simply the film of the fictional tv show from Pulp Fiction? It has since been expanded with Inglourious Basterds into something far more complicated, in this film Hitler is gunned down, set on fire and blown up, which is obviously different to reality and a theory suggests that in an alternate universe that is what happened. In this alternate universe as these acts of violence brought an end to World War 2 pop culture is far more violent and aggressive so films like Kill Bill or Django Unchained are made. So there are two types of Tarantino films - first the ones like Inglourious Basterds which are the audience seeing this alternate reality, and second type like Kill Bill which are movies from that alternate universe. Tarantino has recently confirmed that this theory is right insofar as Kill Bill is the film version of the tv show mentioned in Pulp Fiction.

The interconnected Tarantino films

The Shining is a film with so many bizarre theories they made a film about some of them, Room 237. What is the film really about? One of the most interesting theories is that it is Kubrick's confession that he faked the moon landing footage and while I don't believe this for one second there is a somewhat convincing argument.  The proponent of this theory goes to some lengths to show how everything in a Kubrick film is put there intentionally - another documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes showed the huge lengths Kubrick went to to get things exactly right - so why is Danny wearing a jumper with the Apollo 11 rocket on it? That was Kubrick's subtle clue that he had filmed the moon landing. Other theories include the film is all about the genocide of Native Americans, or that it's about the holocaust. Many peculiar little features are pointed out, the layout of the hotel doesn't seem to make sense and why does the typewriter Jack used change colour? And if you think that these odd little mistakes are just some oversight on Kubrick's part then you don't know Kubrick. As mentioned if something was in shot it was there for a reason, if that typewriter changed colour it's because it meant something to Kubrick.

The Shining - Kubrick's elaborate confession that he faked the moon landing

In terms of fan theories Lost is very much The Shining of the television world (but is certainly not it's equal in quality or originality). I gave up on Lost as I felt like the writers had no idea where it was going and that their plots were picked the same way South Park claimed jokes were written for Family Guy. Every week something new and weird popped up and there came a point where I realised the writers were never going to be able to satisfactorily explain it all. In fact, fans of the show had guessed the plot-twist, that they had been dead all along and the island was some weird purgatory, quite early on but this was denied by the writers. Lost is the perfect show for fans to make up their own theories as the show was so overly complicated and had all kinds of weird stuff going on and even when the "real" explanation was given fans have kept coming up with their own "better" theories.

Lost - there are far too many theories for this show

Here are a few of the suggested theories:

• The island is Hell, 
• The island is Eden (as in Adam and Eve Eden), 
• The island is Atlantis.
• The island is a broken time machine from the future.
• The island is an alien spaceship
• The island was created when the moon and Earth collided,
• The island is a "Truman Show" style reality tv show/board game played by powerful people/social experiment
• The black smoke monster is a cloud of nanobots 
• The whole thing is caused by the Y2K virus
• Clones!
• Dinosaurs!
• Zombies!

Increasingly some of these theories don't have much evidence behind them other than just being weird. The actual finale to the show was considered to be a disappointment by many as it failed to tie everything together in a pleasing way. I think to do that you need to know from the beginning what is going to happen and where the show is going and I can't help but think they just made it up as they went along. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica struck me as a show where the writers had planned everything out in advance and broadly knew what was going to happen every season but Lost just seemed to have the weirdness turned up to 11. In many ways Lost is similar to The X-Files in that The X-Files showed lots and lots of weird things happen and for all of it to make some kind of logical sense was impossible.

So we're back to The X-Files which is back on television and I am watching very closely to see if this guy turns up again.

Mavericks: The Rules Were Not Made To Be Broken

Spoiler Warning - Major spoilers for The Shield, L.A. Confidential
Minor spoilers for House, Hot Fuzz

In one episode of House a mean hospital administrator guy tried to get House kicked out of the hospital. It was made clear with camera angles and emotive music that he was most definitely the bad guy. And before the hospital board he put forward his case - House was a drug addict, House not only broke ethical guidelines he broke the law, he refused to do things that were his job, he insulted other staff and patients and I quickly found myself agreeing with him; House should be fired. There were others on the board who tried to put forward a case for House, stating that he was singularly brilliant and did things no one else could do but they had a pretty weak case. Ultimately though House was impervious to this, because he was a maverick, and television loves mavericks. House is a genius who doesn't play by the rules! As with most jobs, but especially medicine, the rules are there for a very good reason and while people idolise mavericks on television I think most people would be uncomfortable if they had a maverick GP who didn't play by the rules.

Mavericks are a very common trope in films and television, they are exciting, unpredictable characters, who do things their real-life counterparts couldn't do (often this is for very good reasons). Many mavericks are abrasive and rude and have poor people skills, they have substance abuse problems and have problems dealing with authority, despite often working in areas with very rigid authority structures.  The Fast Show played with this trope with adverts for a new programme called Monkfish which constantly showed a tough, uncompromising, belligerent maverick who morphed from police officer to doctor to vet in each new version of the show

Medicine is a curious field to want mavericks, given the years they spend learning the rules and procedures, but it is a fictional phenomenon that extends to many other careers. The most obvious is with the police and just about every fictional police officer from Dirty Harry to DCI John Luther were a law unto themselves and their films and shows make the argument that as they are on the side of righteousness, it's okay to break the law.

• Harry Callahan, Dirty Harry one of the earliest examples and often cited as the classic example of the maverick cop. The careful and considerate Sarah Lund, the main police officer in The Killing who doesn't even carry her gun is a million miles from Callahan, who goaded criminals into using their guns so he could kill them.
• Bud White, L.A. Confidential, uses violence and intimidation to get what he considers justice and is then used by the corrupt police chief to beat up his criminal competitors.
• Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, The French Connection, was far more dangerous to members of the public than many criminals by his insane car chases.

• Gene Hunt, Life On Mars, the stereotypical 1970s policeman, very happy to frame people he doesn't like and no time for any woolly liberal ideas. Hunt is an odd case as he is only a maverick in  comparison with John Simm's modern Sam Tyler.
• Axel Foley, Beverley Hills Cop, does not take police work at all seriously.
• Martin Riggs, Lethal Weapon, a loose cannon with a deathwish.
• Vic Mackay, The Shield, in the first episode he murdered in cold blood another police officer so his side business of being a drug kingpin wasn't uncovered.

Some of these films and shows do criticise the maverick cops - Vic Mackay in The Shield is shown as absolutely corrupt and every season he seems to get into even murkier water, Gene Hunt is the exemplar throwback to dodgy police officers of the past whose reckless ways lead to innocent people ending up in prison and Bud White's tendency to ignore the rules made him easy prey for  a manipulative superior.

Mavericks in the military seem to be rarer and often depictions of soldiers etc. punish the idea of a maverick, you wouldn't want to be the maverick in the training part of Full Metal Jacket. However, in Top Gun Tom Cruise's character had the call-sign of "Maverick" to really emphasis his unpredictable maverick credentials. I definitely don't want a maverick in charge of a multi-million dollar flying killing machine. If we're going to have flying killing machines at all then I want level headed unadventurous types at the controls. That said, virtually the entire cast of Top Gun shouldn't be allowed near weapons, so obsessed with proving their superiority over  others and treating the whole thing like a very fun game.

The completely unreliable pilots of Top Gun

I've never really identified with maverick characters as usually I could see why the rules existed. They are few and far between but I much prefer anti-mavericks, these are people who can follow rules, work in teams, have good manners but are also very good at their jobs. When an anti-maverick appears in fiction there dedication to  doing their job properly is made into an interesting character quirk, rather than what you would expect. There are two perfect examples of these anti-mavericks.  The first is my favourite fictional depiction of a police officer, Nicolas Angel played by Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz and he is the quintessential anti-maverick.

 Angel was a brilliant police officer; intelligent, dedicated, incorruptible, who trained and studied hard, who understood both the letter and the intent of a law. He did his paperwork and he understood the importance of paperwork. He was not a maverick. He didn't break the rules. At one point in the film when giving a speech to schoolchildren he cited the importance of procedural correctness when enforcing the law. Angel was the perfect police officer. Angel's partner, Danny Butterman, was more interested in the over the top antics of maverick police officers in films like Bad Boys where any arrest those two actually made would be challenged by any lawyer for the litany of things they did wrong. In films police officers see themselves as being the one "who cleans the garbage off the streets" whereas Angel is commended for building positive links with the community. Best of all, Angel is a police officer who while trained to use guns, and has used them, does not like them. He is a very un-macho example of a police officer.

The other brilliant example of an anti-maverick is Amy Poehler's character Leslie Knope in Parks & Recreation. She actually had many of the same problems as Hot Fuzz's Nicolas Angel - fantastically good at her job, liked following the rules and struggled to coexist with colleagues who didn't share her level of commitment and brilliance. The idea of making Leslie brilliant at her job, and actually brilliant at most things she set her mind to, wasn't apparent at the beginning of the show and at first she was just weirdly obsessed about her job and her burgeoning greatness made the character make far more sense. It also changed Knope from somebody who could be pitied into someone who was impressive.

Sadly, I don't think my anti-mavericks will take off in quite the same way as their more rule averse colleagues as without the brilliant writers and actors behind Hot Fuzz and Parks and Recreation they could be a little boring.

The Never Ending Story of Putting Things In The Right Order

After having spent a productive morning organising my DVDs (just films, television is in a separate category) I was struck by how this relatively simple task was made far more complicated by my OCD tendencies. OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (or as Tobias Funke would call it The OC Disorder) and in the past decade or so has went from a little understood condition to something very familiar in the lexicon. According to OCD-UK 1.2% of the population of the UK has OCD, which works out as around 750,000 people. OCD has become something that many people will say they have when what they probably mean is they have OCD tendencies. OCD can take many forms but is basically suffering from intrusive thoughts; to use myself as an example I can get very concerned about checking doors are locked, that I turned the oven off, that sort of thing. When I am out I will get an intrusive thought that "did I lock the door?" and I will be anxious, worried that I didn't do it and all manner of terrible things will happen because of my mistake. If I don't go back to check I will often become more and more anxious about it.

Often I get two steps from my front door and go back to check I have locked it (incidentally I always have locked it), when I check the door is locked this creates relief from anxiety which reinforces the behaviour of going back and checking so the next time I leave the house I have an even more anxious feeling and will go back and check and this perpetrates a cycle of intrusive thought-anxiety-checking behaviour-relief which constantly gets stronger and stronger I don't say I have OCD because I can get by in my life without this being too much of a problem. If I am at work and I have an intrusive thought about locking the door I don't leave work to go and check, it doesn't really interfere with my life. To people who have OCD having the intrusive thought about the door and not checking is a terrible ordeal and I am fortunate my tendencies are so easy to deal with. The comedian Stuart Goldsmith made a joke about dyslexia, or rather the way comedians portray dyslexia, which would be amusing situations would arise as the sufferer misreads a sign and goes into the wrong set of toilets or whatever. Goldsmith pointed out that this is not what dyslexia is but is often what comedians say dyslexia is because that is funny (but incorrect). This is how I feel about OCD, that there is real and terrible OCD and the more everyday "OCD" desire for things to be neat and orderly often mined for comedy effect.

Anyway, as I was going through my DVDs I was hit by a number of categorising problems and my OCD tendencies kicked in, If I categorise them in the wrong place then my whole collection is wrong. Before we even get to specific problems there is the basic idea of how they should be categorised. In High Fidelity the main character tried to organise his records autobiographically, meaning that he had to remember how he got the record to know where it should go. I have never tried that but I did used to organise my CDs by how much I liked the artist and so any reorganisation became a heartbreaking set of decisions - did I really like The Smiths more than David Bowie? The next step would have to abandon even the idea of grouping the artist's various CDs together and treating each album individually. Thankfully I abandoned that system and adopted one based on the alphabet.

But to specifics, first, I have three James Bond films, should they be sorted alphabetically and independent of each other by title - Casino Royale, Goldeneye and Skyfall, or should they be put together and put under B for Bond. If the answer is together in this little block of Bond films how are they organised? Alphabetically, so Casino Royale, Goldeneye, Skyfall? Or chronologically from the year they were made - Goldeneye, Casino Royale, Skyfall. Or should they be put in the order of the Bond story which could be argued would have Casino Royale first as this was Bond's origins story but I have no idea which would come next. Some filmmakers seem to have been out to intentionally cause problems for example I own X-Men, X-Men 2, X-Men: First Class, X:Men Origins - Wolverine and The Wolvervine. Should The Wolverine which is part of this story be put under X for X-Men, or W for Wolverine?

And what about box sets of stuff? Against my advice my partner of twelve years, Spooky Reading Girl (SRG for short), bought a boxset of Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, the last one of these is considered by many to be the worst film ever made. Spooky Reading Girl is a term the comedian Jackie Keshian came up with to describe her own book-reading obsessed childhood and so is very apt for my partner. SRG and I have a shared DVD collection although interestingly we each insisted on maintaining separate book and CD collections. You may want to guess when I mention the DVDs in this collection which are hers and which are mine. SRG had not seen the last two films in the Batman box set and I had. SRG's position was perfectly sensible that it was cheaper to buy this boxset than it was to buy the two good films - Batman and Batman Returns. I felt this is an example when less is more and would have paid more money to just have the two good films.

I also own Christopher Nolan's trilogy of Batman films as well as the animated films Batman: The Dark Knight Return Parts 1 & 2 (based on the graphic novel which I would highly recommend as The Dark Knight Rises and the upcoming Superman Vs Batman film were hugely influenced by  it). So I have three sets of Batman films, do they all go under B? I settled on the Batman quadrilogy is under B, as is Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Parts 1 & 2 but the Nolan trilogy is under D for Dark Knight as I, and indeed others, call it the Dark Knight trilogy.

I also started imagining my own peculiar film seasons based on the idiosyncrasies of our DVD collection. There is the decidedly uneven "Three Americans Trilogy" - American Beauty, American Dreamz and American Hustle. There is the Numbered Collection that started with Nigel Winterbottom's superb 24 Hour Party People followed by romantic comedy 27 Dresses and to end a double bill of not quite zombie horror 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later.  There is the spectacular Man & Men Season - A Serious Man, A Single Man, The Man Who Would Be King, The Man With Two Brains, The Third Man, The Men Who Stare At Goats and No Country For Old Men. And there is no surer sign of the inherent sexism of Hollywood (or perhaps mine and SRG's sexism) that in Woman & Women series there is just The Women.

Having completed the reorganisation I was hit by the final obstacle of friends returning DVDs they had borrowed that have lost their place in the collection and until I come to do it again will remain frustratingly out of place; showing up whole thing as the doomed to fail enterprise that it is and that I shouldn't let it bother me.

My History Of Horror - An Overlooked Genre Of Cinema

Spoiler Warning - some spoilers for The Exorcist, The Babadook, Rosemary's Baby and The Ring

I've previously written a blog about how I consider musicals the worst genre of cinema (and I stand by that) but horror is also an area of cinema that I don't know much about. I was given a very poor introduction to horror through films like Halloween and Child's Play and I maintain that they are awful films. I've never really cared for any of the "slasher" films and I don't like Scream - although that might be more because I was less aware of the conventions they were playing with. A few years ago I watched a very interesting series A History of Horror made and presented by Mark Gatiss. I'm a big fan of Mark Gatiss and despite not knowing much about horror it was very interesting and it did kindle my enthusiasm for getting better acquainted with horror.

I don't like having such gaps in my cinematic knowledge so I sought out horror films that might be worth watching. One of the first was Rosemary's Baby, Roman Polanski's classic horror film about satanists trying to bring forth the birth of the antichrist. I loved the film and the creeping sense of terror and paranoia that took over Rosemary as she slowly became aware of the plot to make her child the antichrist. It is another film that told the viewer don't trust anyone and the closer they were to you just meant they could hurt you more. For a large part of  the film it is unclear whether the satanists are really in touch with the Devil or just think they are. The behaviour of Rosemary's husband was typical not just of being involved a satanic cult but also an abusive husband; belittling Rosemary's opinions, keeping her from seeing friends and family, and trying to control more and more of her life. The shocking conclusion to the film is that Rosemary does give birth and the baby is indeed the child of satan and as the film ends it seemed that Rosemary had agreed to raise the child.

Halloween is a good opportunity to seek out horror films and I picked three- The Exorcist, The Ring and The Babadook and I felt this represented a good range of horror films, a classic Hollywood film, a more modern example in The Ring and absolutely bang up to date with The Babadook. As with Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist is a classic film that I had wanted to watch for some time. I was a little disappointed with the film but bits of it were excellent. Essentially it is the story of a demonic possession and is one of those films that is stitched into culture and parts are so familiar from parodies and other films it has influenced. It also had an excellent soundtrack which turned a rather innocuous tune into something deeply sinister.

 The stand out performance was of the mother of the possessed child and she excellently portrayed the exhaustion and panic that someone going through such a process would have. To the film's credit they spent a long time with doctors pursuing a medical or psychological explanation and it was only in desperation that they turned to an exorcism. Another brilliant move was to have Father Karras be a trained psychiatrist and was as skeptical as anyone about demonic possession.

Next up was The Babadook.This film dealt with some very dangerous territory; what if a parent hated and/or resented their child? The film is about a mother and her young son. the son was going through a difficult time in that he had a lot of nightmares about monsters and so would be unable to sleep, meaning the mother couldn't sleep either. The mother relied on the tested method of reading to her child to get him back to sleep and on one occasion the child picked a book neither of them recognised - The Babadook. It started off being very jolly and the sort of thing for children before completely changing tone and scaring the child senseless. What followed was the Babadook, a sort of ghost and/or monster terrorising the family, who has been seemingly summoned by the reading of the book. At one point the monster seemed to even possess the mother and the possibility of her killing her child is raised. The issue of resenting and or hating the child is skilfully dealt with. The mother's husband died in a car accident driving them to the hospital so she could give birth to the child. Even before the terror of the babadook the mother seemed to be close to some sort of breakdown. When the Babadook possessed her this tension is ramped up and at some points seemed to be on the verge of trying to kill the child. The film dealt with issues of mental illness and depression very well and some people have suggested all the bad things are only happening in the mother's mind.


And so to The Ring. This is the original Japanese version which everybody seemed to agree was far superior to the American remake. I was on the understanding this it was a very scary film and while I enjoyed it I didn't find it particularly scary. I think many of the things I found odd about the film are probably just conventions of Japanese cinema. For example out of the blue one character stated he was psychic and that was never explored or questioned it was just accepted. One character, an elderly Japanese man, is one of the worst actors I've ever seen and whatever he tried to do seemed completely unreal and staged; at times reminded me of the Richard Ayoade's brilliant comedy performance of Dean Lerner/Thornton Reed.

Thornton Reed Bad Actor

There were also some moments that felt more comedic than horrific. Some time ago I watched the recent Japanese film 13 Assassins and while for most of the time it was a very serious, sometimes brutal, samurai film there were odd comedic moments that didn't match the tone of the rest of the film. The initial idea of watching a cursed tape that will lead to your death was very good, especially if like me you're watching it on dvd, but I was surprised at how quickly the characters accepted the curse was happening. Something the four horror films I've mentioned all have in common is children. Obviously in Rosemary's Baby there is a baby, in the Exorcist it is a young girl who is being possessed, in The Babadook the child is one of the two central characters and in The Ring the fact that the main character's son watched the tape has raised the stakes considerably. It is no surprise that anything where children are going to be harmed makes everything a bit more dramatic.


Bringing it back to Mark Gatiss I suppose I did watch some horror on television; namely The League of Gentlemen. Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Jeremy Dyson formed the bizarre sketch troupe in the mid nineties (and won the Perrier award at the Edinburgh Fringe) and although it was first and foremost a comedy it had plenty of horror. There was the mysterious butcher selling an unknown and addictive "meat", the odd family of toad enthusiasts with their twin daughters who act like the sisters in The Shining, the gypsy circus ringmaster who kidnaps women (who apparently many do find terrifying) and, of course, the proprietors of the local shop who only serve local people. I didn't like the show at first as I think I expected a normal comedy and found it all very weird but I stuck with it and found it to be one of the funniest programmes on television. Mark Gatiss is probably better known now for his contributions to Doctor Who and Sherlock but I still think of him as one of the League of Gentlemen. Shearsmith and Pemberton continued to work together and produced the even weirder Psychoville where horror is far more part of the show and the brilliant Inside Number Nine which at times forgoes comedy altogether and episodes will just be horror (and sometimes oddly emotional as well). Each episode of Inside Number 9 is it's own story with new characters, the hook being they all take place in a place denoted by the number '9'. The first series had an episode almost set entirely in a cupboard with people playing 'sardines', whereas the next episode had virtually no dialogue and relied on silent comedy. The second series has continued in this vein with all kinds of different settings.

 The assorted League of Gentlemen team have always worn their references and influences on their sleeve and I think I must have missed many of the horror references in their work (I did catch the episode of Psychoville which was a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Rope in which the story took place in realtime and is about people hiding the body of someone they've murdered).

A less funny example of horror television is American Horror Story. I am years behind with this show and only just watching the first season but was intrigued when I learned about how each season works. The first season is very much focused on a particular house that the lead characters move into to. But each new season keeps the cast of actors but has them play completely new characters in a new location and a different theme. So the first season is mainly about this house, Season 2 an asylum, season 3 a coven of witches and so on. Again it took me a little while to get into the show but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wouldn't say it has been scary as yet but I am considering skipping season 2 completely as anything set in an asylum really freaks me out, whether it be One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest which is a brilliant film that I own but have only watched once or the episode of Peep Show where they keep trying to get each other sectioned under the mental health act.  I do feel that not watching a horror show because it might potentially be too scary can only be a strong recommendation.

So far getting more into horror has only been a good thing but I am sure there are plenty of bad horror films waiting to be watched.

Life Is Wasted On The Living - Death and Dying in Film, Television and even Shakespeare

Spoiler Warning - major spoilers for Inglourious Basterds, Supernatural, Heroes, Star Trek Into Darkness & Star II: Wrath of Khan and I, Claudius
Very minor spoilers  for - Pushing Daisies, Casino Royale
I hesitate to call these spoilers but for American Beauty & Sunset Boulevard some information is divulged that you may not know; Hamlet -I know it's hundreds of years old but it will be spoiled, and Valkyrie - it's a true story so EVERYONE will know how it ends but this will also be spoiled.

The Trolley Problem is a set of famous thought experiments designed to bring up moral dilemmas and have people examine their ethical decisions. The classic example is to imagine yourself the driver of a runaway trolley (tram) and further down are five people working on the track. The only thing you can do is divert the trolley onto another track but this track has one person on it. Whatever you choose to do at least one person will die. The second part of the thought experiment is to imagine yourself as a doctor with five patients who all need different organs to survive and there is a sixth person who is a donor match for all five people but is perfectly healthy and unwilling to donate their organs. Is it morally right for you as the surgeon to kill the sixth person and give the other patients the organs they need? Most people think it is okay to move the trolley onto another track but wrong for the surgeon to murder one person for their organs but they both have the same outcome - five people alive in exchange for one dead person. These philosophical problems were dealt with adroitly by a programme called Pushing Daisies; it was an odd programme in which the central character, Ned, had the power to bring people back to life, all he needed to do was touch a dead body and they would be resurrected and touching them again would kill them. Ned used this power to help solve murder cases with a private detective he knew and they would split the reward. There are a few strings attached to Ned's power. First, if Ned resurrected someone and touched them again they die and will stay dead. Second, if Ned doesn't touch the person again and allowed them to live somebody else will die in their place. If we compare this to The Trolley Problem most people, I would think, would be of the opinion Ned shouldn't bring someone back from the dead permanently as that would mean another person would die and Ned is taking action that will cause someone's death even if the number of dead and alive people stayed the same. A scenario they never covered with the Trolley Problem was what if one of the people is Anna Friel?  Such an oversight is typical of philosophers and when Ned learned of the death of his childhood crush - Chuck played by Anna Friel - he had to decide what to do. Not surprisingly he chose to bring Anna Friel back to life.

There are a lot of deaths in pop culture. Arguably, there should be a lot more, according to the IMDB only five people died on screen in The A-Team despite frequent gunfights, explosions and obligatory car crashes. The A-Team had a similar attitude to Tom & Jerry in regards to death in that no matter what happened the viewer knew that everyone would  be okay. Flattened by an anvil? Wait till your body pops back to normal and walk it off. Your car flipped over and crashed upside down? You'll be fine.

Supernatural has so overused the plot of one of the two central characters dying it has taken any tension away from the show and it is even referenced that they have in fact died off-screen many more times. As Supernatural has added angels to their roster of supernatural creatures this issue has only gotten worse. In regards to what happens when you die Supernatural has shown, briefly, both Heaven and Hell and they are distinctly cliched. However, as the show has featured any number of gods outside of Christianity it is possible if you believe in Valhalla that's where you go when you die and so providing endless possible afterlives.


Heroes suffered from this problem as well in regards to Nathan Petrelli dying at the end of every season although admittedly in the first season he is only presumed to be dead but is saved by the popular fiction trope of "magic blood" this not being actually magic but blood somehow imbued with superhuman healing powers and a simple transfusion is enough to undo virtually all damage.

Some characters are entirely immune from whatever happened in the plot - they will return. The two most obvious examples being the Doctor in Doctor Who and James Bond. The Doctor can regenerate and the new run of Doctor Who also seems to have done away with the idea that he has a certain number of lives. Bond is in some ways more interesting in this regard as the character is a human with no special powers. Bond was written as the ultimate Cold War spy but when this ended in the early 90s Bond carried on. In Pierce Brosnan's time as Bond he is referred to as a "cold warrior" and a"dinosaur" meaning that times had moved on and Bond hadn't. To make matters even more complicated Casino Royale is an origins story for Bond as it started with Bond getting his "00" status which he already had in the other films...but Casino Royale is set in the present day and they were in the past...but in those he has his "00" status...so when is this all taking place? This has lead to the curious theory that the name "James Bond" is actually a codename and passed on to new spies. This would explain how Bond has been fighting spies since the 1950s and is still relatively young and radically changed his appearance every few years.

One of the best screen deaths is in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. In order to save the ship and everyone on board Spock sacrificed his own life. Using his Vulcan logic he decided  that to lose one life to save many made sense. This was genuinely a shocking death when I first saw it. Of course, the next Star Trek film, Search for Spock, had Spock brought back to life. This is a particularly interesting example as in the latest Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness a similar scene played out but in this version it was Kirk who sacrificed his life instead of Spock (again they used "magic blood" to heal him). Now, I hate the JJ Abrams Star Trek films. I hate them with a passion that goes beyond all reasoning. I am very happy to agree with the joke from The Onion Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable' , in the sense that those films don't feel like Star Trek; they feel more like Star Wars. Star Wars is the over the top space adventure with funny robots and magic powers whereas Star Trek has more of an ideology of exploration and cooperation where you learn about alien civilisations. I love Star Wars and Star Trek but they should occupy very different universes. When Kirk died in Star Trek Into Darkness I was happy (even though I knew they would bring him back) and when I watched the film I wanted Khan to win. The "death" of Kirk  was nothing compared to the "death" of Spock.

American Beauty and Sunset Boulevard both played with the device of in voiceover at the beginning of the film a character informed the viewer that they are going to die. Usually voiceover in a film would suggest the character is going to survive as they are "telling" you their story. Certainly in American Beauty I was shocked by Lester's death even though I knew it was coming. In Sunset Boulevard there is such a sense of dread I was never able to forget this information.  I'm a big fan of the film Valkyrie which is about the plot hatched by German army officers to kill Hitler - the fact that the audience knew Hitler survived did not lessen the tension in the film. The viewer's knowledge of the ultimate failure of their plot only gave more poignancy to their sacrifice. Kenneth Brannagh's character always believed their plot would fail but that it was important to try, if nothing else to show that not everyone in Germany agreed with what Hitler was doing. Inglourious Basterds is a really good film with a couple of terrible bits to it - the first being the message that to deal with Nazis you have to be worse than they are - and secondly, in their Hitler assassination film they do manage to kill Hitler. In fact, they manage to kill him three times as the explosives left by Aldo Raine go off, two of the Basterds shoot Hitler and Shosanna's cinema fire all happen. It is something of a cheat for them to successfully kill Hitler as everyone watching assumed that all the plots failed and so you are hugely surprised when he is killed.


Some things just like to kill everyone and be done with it. In Hamlet only one major character is left alive. If we start with Hamlet's father's then it goes
King Hamlet = ear poison
Polonius = stabbed
Ophelia = suicide (drowned)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern = killed by King of England
Gertrude = poisoned
Claudius = stabbed and poisoned sword
Laertes = stabbed with poisoned sword
Hamlet = stabbed by poisoned sword.

This death toll may seem excessive until compared to I, Claudius. The classic BBC series based on the books by Robert Graves told the story of Claudius, a minor member of Rome's imperial family who somehow became emperor.
Marcellus = poisoned
Augustus = poisoned
Germanicus = poisoned
Agrippa Postumus = stabbed
Gaius Caesar = poisoned
Lucius Caesar = drowned (murdered)
Sejanus = stabbed
Tiberius = suffocated with a pillow
Caligula = stabbed
Drusilla - murdered by Caligula
Livilla = starved to death (murdered)
Messalina = decapitated
Castor = poisoned
Claudius =  poisoned

And I am sure I have missed off some deaths as there are just so many and the amount of poison being splashed about will make even the least paranoid person worry about what is in their food.

Heroes & Villains, Debauched Wolves and Serial-Killer Killers: SPOILER WARNING for Legend and Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enermy Number 1

Contains major spoilers for Legend, Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 and minor spoilers for The Sopranos, The Wolf of Wall Street and Dexter

I recently watched the new Kray twins film Legend as well as the two French films made about Jacques Mesrine - Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 and both of these films portray real life criminals who enjoyed some measure of fame, or infamy, with the general public as well as maybe some admiration and envy. How film and television portray real and fictional criminals is scrutinised a great deal and it is easy to make such people appear more like lovable rogues and outlaws than criminals. The makers of Legend did themselves no favours in calling the film Legend instead of perhaps Criminals or A Film About Violent Men Who Murdered People which I admit isn't as catchy. That is not to say I disapprove of Legend, I enjoyed the film but I thought the filmmakers had perhaps bought too much into the legend of the Krays.

The portrayal of crime and criminals has been a problem for a long time - Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Sopranos, Scarface and Casino all showed gangsters in a way which could see their lives as aspirational (and yes I know that not all of those are based on real people). They were rich and powerful people who did what they wanted, when they wanted. Of course, the characters often met unfortunate ends which you might think would put people off but apparently losing everything - money, freedom, family, life - is not enough of a downside.

In the film Legend both of the Kray twins are played by Tom Hardy and his performance is the best part of the film. The brothers were different from each other in many ways - Ronnie was an openly gay gangster with severe mental health problems and was prone to violent outbursts. Reggie was charming and polite (or at least could play at being those things) and he was the one in charge and seemingly in control but also a talented amateur boxer who could be just as violent as his brother. If these characters were anything like the real-life Krays, then these were interesting people and a dramatic story could be told about how these brothers became the most powerful criminals in London.

Films can be made about thoroughly terrible people without endorsing the things they did. The film Downfall shows Hitler's last days in his bunker as his empire collapsed and that film certainly does not glorify Hitler. Legend does show both of the brothers doing terrible things for which there is no excuse - Reggie beating his wife (although the actual violence isn't shown) and Ronnie's out of control attacks on any number of people. The film at least tries to show that they weren't just businessmen and that the people who suffered weren't just other criminals which is a defence often used by gangsters. At the beginning of the film as Ronnie walked the streets of London and everyone he passed had a friendly chat with him, near the end a barmaid spotted him across the street, stopped dead and then ran in the opposite direction which shows how much his image has changed to the people around him.


Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 Trailer

Jacques Mesrine was a notorious criminal in the 60s and 70s,  presumably well known in France. So prolific were his criminal activities that just one film wouldn't do and two films were made starring Vincent Cassel as Mesrine. After I had finished watching the films I instantly went online to see if Mesrine had done the things the film showed, and broadly speaking it seems he had. He did sneak a gun into his own trial and escaped, taking the judge as a hostage, he did rob two banks at a time, he did wear elaborate costumes to escape detection - he was known as the Man of a Hundred Faces by the French press. From the beginning it seemed Mesrine wasn't interested in being just another criminal; he wanted to be something more. Throughout the film he showed almost suicidal daring and never did what was simple, easy or clever but made his life far more complicated and harder so as to live up to his own image. To some people he was a French Robin Hood as he supposedly had a code where he targeted only the rich - however like the Shadow in Blackadder he never got round to giving it the poor. He escaped from prison three or four times, including a maximum security prison, and when on the run from the police as "public enemy number one" would arrange interviews and photoshoots with the press.

In Legend the film ends with both Krays heading to prison and in the Mesrine films with the title character being shot by the police - I would say without doubt that in the film Jacques Mesrine was murdered, ambushed by the police at a traffic light in his car he was shot many times by heavily armed police without warning and no attempt made to arrest him or even talk to him (whether this was what really happened is far less clear). Mesrine had stated how he would not be taken alive and would fight if cornered and had already proven himself very willing to kill police officers. Both the Krays and Mesrine sealed their fates as they were too famous and made the authorities look foolish. The Krays flaunted their wealth and success and the inability of the police to do anything about them - they were celebrities. Mesrine reveled in his fame and constantly embarrassed the authorities and towards the end of his career became more politically minded - at least in the excuses he gave for his actions.

Comparing the Krays and Mesrine, Mesrine is certainly a more dashing figure, an outlaw rebel, he robbed banks and frittered away the money; to him there was no end point in having made enough money to be rich for the rest of his life he would always be compelled to commit more crimes. But even if he was more dashing, he wasn't Robin Hood, he murdered people, he kidnapped people, and if it was fame rather than money that motivated him, does it make him  a better or worse person? Comparing Legend and the two Mesrine films I'd definitely say the latter were more successful in simply showing the subject's life and letting the viewer judge.

I do struggle with this idea of films and television glorifying gangsters and I like to think that if people see a gangster in a film as cool that they realise they're just watching a film. When I watch Goodfellas I do not think about how good their lives are as I can never escape the fact that they hurt people and that is no way to make a living. The Sopranos showed a lot more of the lives of gangsters than films can manage; films last a couple of hours whereas someone who watched The Sopranos watched eighty-six episodes with each being around fifty minutes long. Inevitably a dedicated viewer would identify with the characters. The first episode of the third season starts with an episode taken entirely from the point of view of the FBI and their efforts to install a listening device in Tony Soprano's house. In the episode the FBI perform their duties entirely legally, they obtain the necessary warrant from  a judge and go about their work professionally yet when I watched it I couldn't help thinking "Bloody FBI, trying to bug Tony". The viewer knows Tony is a dangerous criminal and is without a doubt guilty but I took his side against the FBI. The Sopranos focuses as much on Tony's family life as his criminal life and he is a very well-drawn character; he seems real. People often struggle to deal with complicated figures and when people are genuinely evil we can struggle to deal with information that would contradict that - so if it is revealed Stalin gave a lot of support to animal sanctuaries people are confused - how can a brutal dictator and murderer also care about animals? So in The Sopranos we see Tony often being generous, at times being a good father and husband and yes, even being kind to animals, as well as being a violent criminal. It is this dissonance that allows the viewer to see Tony as a good family man who is in difficult circumstances which drive him to do awful things or a bad and violent person who likes to act the part of a caring individual either to manipulate people or salve his own conscience. There is also the third option of a complex person who can be different things at different times; a person who is not all bad or all good. He is a person you could spend a perfectly pleasant evening with and then he would go out and murder someone; which I imagine is what such people are like in real life. I consider The Sopranos to be one of, if not the, best television programme ever made and a huge part of this is the "shades of grey" existence of the characters. The show doesn't glorify them but shows them as real people.

The Wolf of Wall Street was criticised a great deal in that it glorified the people it depicted. In TWoWS Leonardio Di Caprio played Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stock broker who made a huge amount of money by taking advantage of people and breaking many, many laws (the film is based on a book written by the real Jordan Belfort, and learning that he is a real person and not a fictional creation is like learning that Cruella Deville is real and 101 Dalmations was based on her autobiography). As well as showing the staggering wealth Belfort and his cronies accumulated the film also depicted the lives of excess that they lead -partaking in drugs, prostitutes and wild parties. These "wolves" also showed a contempt for anyone who wasn't like them, anyone who wasn't rich and taking advantage of other people, they also showed a level of decadence that was truly appalling, literally throwing money around, paying women to have their heads shaved, and all manner of juvenile and disgusting pranks and games. Like most recent Martin Scorsese films it is very long, 180 minutes and there was another hour that Scorsese wanted to put in but couldn't justify a four hour film. I felt the length was justified as you spent a long time with these awful people and their awful lives and the never ending party just ground you down and you saw just how far off the rails they had gone. The atmosphere at Stratton-Oakmont, the company they ran, seemed very much like a cult, or maybe just those posh secret societies at Oxbridge we keep hearing about. The company had bizarre initiations and a cult of personality had developed around Belfort.

It is interesting to see Scorsese, well known for making traditional gangster films, making a film about white-collar crime. If we compare it to Goodfellas, in my opinion the best gangster film ever, Jordan Belfort is Henry Hill, the youngster drawn into the criminal life, the over the top broker played by Matthew McConaghy (being in a Scorsese film is part of his Terrible Romantic Comedy Actor Rehabilitation Scheme he's been involved in the last few years) is Robert De Niro's James Conway, explaining the madness of the system to him and Jonah Hill is Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito, the member of the group who is so crazy he worries the other crazy people.

In the past few years we have seen the damage the financial institutions of the world can do - the Mafia can break your legs and burn your business down but Wall Street can ruin whole countries. In Britain Ed Miliband's supposed anti-business stance effected the stock market and dire warnings followed from the rich and powerful that Miliband as Prime Minister would cause financial chaos;  which doesn't sound too dissimilar to scare tactics deployed by gangsters. Belfort ruined people's lives, he intentionally preyed on people and lied to them to get their money, and as is pointed out in the film this isn't usually just against rich people playing the stock market but working people trying to invest money wisely for their future. I am sure there are people who watched TWoWS who wanted to have Belfort's life of excess and wealth but they aren't people who I would want to spend time with. TWoWS reminded me of a sketch from Mr. Show - Mr. Show - More Money Equals Better Than as the characters in it had no measure of success other than money. As much as I hate most of the characters portrayed in the film I do think it is a really good movie with Scorsese showing the emptiness of their lives but I do wish that the real Jordan Belfort wasn't given a cameo in the film.


There is an example of glorifying criminals that troubles me far more than any of the films or programmes about organised crime - Dexter. I was a big fan of Six Feet Under and Michael C. Hall was brilliant as David Fisher and as he played the eponymous Dexter I decided to give it a try. Hall's character in Six Feet Under couldn't be further removed from the character he played in Dexter, in the former he was a pleasant, nice and cautious man, and if he was a little tense or wound up the idea of him hurting anyone was ridiculous. Dexter seemed worth watching just to see how Hall would handle this new and very different character.

For those who don't know Dexter is a show about a serial killer who kills serial killers - or at least that was how it was described to me. Dexter actually targeted people he deemed to be deserving of death, sometimes they are serial killers, sometimes they are not not. In one episode in the first season Dexter goes after a person who has been on trial a number of times for killing people in his car while drunk. It comes out that the driver doesn't care and he will continue to drink and drive. Now, the driver is a bad guy who should be in prison, but is he is deserving of the torture and murder (and yes Dexter tortured his victims) that Dexter inflicted? This person never meant to hurt anyone; he doesn't care and is still a risk to people, but he wasn't trying to kill anyone. This is a distinction most legal systems acknowledge but one that Dexter, the character and the show, aren't interested in.

The first season ended with a little voice over from Dexter where he said that if he was found out and all of his crimes came to light, yes, he would be arrested and put in prison but at the same time many people would think he had done a good thing. He had killed people who deserved it. I think the message of the show is in line with this idea, that, yes in reality, you shouldn't go round killing people, but if they're really bad people it's sort of okay. I disagree with this idea wholeheartedly and I might be a bleeding-heart liberal but everyone deserves a trial, everyone deserves justice. I have had many conversations with people who do think this sort of thing, that society needs such a person who will act in extreme ways when the "system" fails. I only watched the first season of Dexter and in all fairness the show might go on to explore these ideas but I don't think I could take any more of it. Much more interesting "serial-killer killers" are found in Seven Psychopaths which in a five minute murder spree montage does more to address the morality of what the serial-killer killers are doing than Dexter managed in the twelve episodes of the first season. And don't even get me started on what Dexter is saying about free will and nature versus nurture in how it sets it up that Dexter was always going to be a serial killer, it was inevitable, and the best way to handle the situation was his adoptive father to train him to kill the "right" people...if nothing else it's bad parenting.


Podcast Recommendation:
I love podcasts - they make commuting, housework and waiting a thousand times better. As this blog has been about crime my recommendation is the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Two people contact the podcast with a problem that they want "Judge" Hodgman to solve, it could be something very practical, a matter of etiquette, anything really. They call in to the show and Judge Hodgman and "bailiff" Jesse Thorn listen and Hodgman will give a verdict. It's always funny and often surreally brilliant - an argument between two brothers about how to deal with the bat infestation in their house is amazing, one brother suggests hiring exterminators, the other...well he doesn't really see what the problem is. Aside from the case being discussed it's worth just being able to listen to John Hodgman talk about stuff as he is one of the funniest and most informed people I have ever heard, he's sort of an American Stephen Fry but nerdier and weirder.