Retro Nostalgia: Metropolis (1927) and the Torment of Humanity’s Dreams
I’ve often wondered if there is something unique about the “serious” science fiction of the first 30 years on the 20th century (i.e., non-pulp work). Surely critics more familiar with the era can attest to this with some degree of authority, but since I do not have that experience, I must speak from what little authority I have as a reader and a relatively new teacher of SF/F literature. From this limited perspective, Fritz Lang’s remarkable 1927 film, Metropolis, resembles visionary works such as E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1908) and Karel Capuk’s R.U.R. (1920), each drawing in no small part from earlier SF writings, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or the lesser known Copellia by Arthur Saint-Leon (among others). The machinic imagination of mankind, in a sense, has always been a part of SF’s consciousness, right from the earliest “true” SF novel, Frankenstein, to the most important (stylistically and philosophically) productions of the era traditionally know as the “Pulp Era” — a more accurate label would be “The Formative Era.”* It is this machinic consciousness that I think defines the era’s most serious ventures in science fiction — serious is defined here as not written exclusively for entertainment purposes (see the works I’ve already mentioned as examples). For Metropolis, there is a deeply political motive behind the machinic elements: 1) the mechanization-of-man critique of the industrial revolution (imagined by Lang through the brilliant shots of bodies in perpetual motion while maintaining the “machine”); 2) the terror of the Other as imagined through the Machine Man (in this case, there is a third possible interpretation, which takes into account the film’s overtly religious imagery and the mythological allusions surrounding the feminized machine “monster”). Plenty of film critics have talked about these issues already, so there’s no point covering them in detail here if I have nothing new to add. However, so much of the important fictions of the era are so deeply concerned with the development of man in relation to his/her technology that it’s impossible to ignore the issue when discussing a film like Metropolis. In a sense, I think of Metropolis as what E.M. Forster might have written if he had turned “The Machine Stops” into a full novel, or, perhaps more accurately, the combination of Jack London’s political dystopia The Iron Heel (which I discussed here) and E.M. Forster’s technological consciousness. Lang’s film does not shy away from the profound terror that the marriage of religion (broadly speaking), politics, and industrialization (might have) produce(d) — bodies worn down, bit by bit, until there are no bodies left to move the machine (thus, the machine “stops”); class systems split between laborious dystopias (the under “world”) and glorious utopias (the great city of Metropolis itself);** the religious iconography of the broken utopian dream (all hail the machine) and the socialist revolutionary (she is our savior from evil, for she brings us messages from the heart, not from the machine); and the groundbreaking imagination of Lang himself, who made Metropolis into a reminder that utopia has a cost. No wonder, then, that these writers (Lang, Forster, and London, in particular) were never utopians, but realists who could not fathom the future without the immense, distressing struggle to shatter the machinic nature of man. Metropolis, as an example, cannot help but tear down the foundations of the Industrial Revolution’s grand dreams by stripping mankind of its humanity, literally and figuratively. On the literal front, Rotwang (the mad scientist) creates the Machine Man, steals the likeness of Maria (the virginal “heroine), and turns the machine into the perfect, sadistic “human” anti-revolutionary, determined to destroy the entire system. The theme is well known in science fiction circles: the inhuman is always already a threat to humanity’s “sovereignty.” Thus, the Machine Man’s destructive tendencies are simply a transplanted fear of the mechanization of man embodied in the distressed/ing “heart” of Metropolis. That Rotwange creates the Machine Man (and steals Maria’s likeness) for his own ends (revenge) is not insignificant. For a society that imagines itself as “utopian,” it cannot control the irrational core of humanity: emotion. On the figurative front, Lang’s repetition of mechanical choreographed “dances” suggest that adhering the machine’s “whims” (or, rather, to humanity’s desire to simplify the labor of life) is sacrificing the fluidity of the human subject. Thus, we are presented with men rocking back and forth in stiff, “perfect” motions, turning dials as if part of a giant clock, where each individual is a gear that must move at just the right pace to keep the entire system running. Quite literally, a segment of Metropolis’ people have sacrificed their humanity during their 10-hour work day to become the gears of a machine. Unlike the Machine in Forster’s short story, Lang’s machine is laid bare. We cannot unsee the machinic degradation of humanity, just as Freder (the “hero” of sorts) cannot unsee the lies told to him by his father (Metropolis is perfect; the workers are OK in their position and there is nothing wrong with the world as it is — enjoy your life, my son).*** That these sorts of narratives appear frequently in the two or three decades after the turn of the century (20th, rather) seems somewhat expected, if only because we have the gift of retrospection. The Industrial Revolution (the 1st and 2nd, really, since there were two distinct “moments”) promised a “new” world (a frontier, if you will). Lang is just one of many who apparently didn’t see the “good” in the “new.” What he saw, if Metropolis is any indication, was the death of the human as an autonomous subject. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that the same arguments are being had about the digital technologies of “tomorrow.” Is our increasingly digital (read “networked”) culture yet another threat to human sovereignty, or will we weather this just like we did the Industrial Revolution? Let’s wait and see who tries to be the next Fritz Lang… ————————————————————– *The first 20-30 years of the 1900s were instrumental in
Retro Nostalgia: Mars Attacks (1996) and Its Detached Timestamp
Long-time viewers of science fiction film will likely recognize Tim Burton’s homage to 50s/60s SF cinema. How could they not? From the narrative undertones of the Cold War’s nuclear fears to its borrowing and twisting of the narrative structure of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and its 1953 adaptation, which helped solidify a developing SF cinematic aesthetic (the Orson Welles radio drama certainly stuck Wells’ terrifying tale of alien invasion in the public consciousness beforehand), the film is in every way a mockery of the 50s and 60s.* But it’s not simply the politics or the narrative that make the 1996 alien invasion comedy Mars Attacks! an amusing bedfellow of or foil to the 1950s (and 60s). Rather, its visuals are an at times direct parody/assault on the material and social logic of the era, despite having no clear temporal placement of its own — after all, the film is neither set in the 1950s, nor the 1990s, and instead merges or maps the span of historical time over itself (a palimpsest). Part of the reason I am mashing the 50s and 60s together here is because Mars Attacks! is never fixed to a specific decade. It is, in a sense, trapped in the limbo of transition between two cultures we like to think as distinct, but which bleed into one another. The Beehive (B-52) hairstyle, after all, didn’t gain popular momentum until the 60s, despite existing as early as 1954. There are times when the film veers a hard right into 60s territory (most notably through cars and the flashy fashion of Vegas that conjures images of a somewhat neutered, caricatured Hunter S. Thompson), but it frequently bounces back, merging the two periods — both understandably important to SF cinema — into one incoherent mishmash. I’ll refer to this as the 50s Transition to save space (roughly the late 50s to the early 60s). A primary example of this assault on 50s Transition culture is the aptly named Martian Girl played by Lisa Marie (seen in the above image). Her swaying, robotic walking style, her absurd hair style (a greatly exaggerated B-52), and her eye-catching pointed breasts are all digs on the visual culture of the 1950s Transition. She is at once a clone of the era and a play on the sex symbol of the era: Marilyn Monroe (minus the hair). Or, perhaps, a mix of Monroe and another female icon of the time: Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The exaggeration of the Martian Girl’s features — to the point of perfect exaggeration, even — seems, in my mind, to make light of the hyper-commercialized culture that arose at the turn of the century and solidified after WW2, one which hyper-sexualized certain “ideal” forms of women, fashion, etc. (or, to put it another way, created a specific set of images for the era that were hyper-sexualized). After all, she is, in every way, a “perfect” 50s Transition girl. Except that she isn’t. She’s a grotesque perfection that draws attention to the fact that she isn’t real. Her features are too perfect. Too exaggerated. Blame it on the aliens for translating their own genetic monoculture onto our own. Much of the film’s fashion aesthetics draw upon the transitional era, almost to comedic effect, sometimes by exaggeration and sometimes by simply cloning things that already existed. Some of this is deliberate. Annette Bening, for example, modeled her performance as Barbara Land on Ann Margret from Viva Las Vegas. The resemblance is clear. This shouldn’t surprise us, of course, because the mish mash was intended by the writers and Burton himself, who imagined Mars Attacks! as an homage to 50s scifi flicks, with a heavy dose of mockery. Whether they intended to critique the culture of the 50s Transition is hard to say. I like to think this was an unintended consequence of transplanting a cultural period into a different cinematic paradigm. Rather than stare with nostalgic eyes at a bygone era, we are compelled to think about what made the 50s Transition fascinating and thankfully dead at the same time. I could probably say more about this topic, but I won’t. That would require tracing all the ways Mars Attacks! explores 50s SF and the 50s Transition period (as mockery, parody, or direct homage). Maybe for another time! ————————————————- *The 1953 adaptation of War of the Worlds was nominated for three Academy Awards and has since been included in the Library of Congress catalogue.
Retro Nostalgia: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), the Hero Scientist, and the Possible Utopia(?)
There’s something truly nostalgic about SF narratives that make the scientist the hero. There aren’t a lot of those narratives left, if we’re honest. Characters use science, sure, but they are rarely the creators of science, or its purveyors. But not the old school SF movies. Oh no. In a lot of those stories, scientists are front and center. They’re occasionally the bad guy, but they’re always the ones figuring things out, discovering the new and amazing things about the world. Even in Forbidden Planet, in which the main scientist is, for all intensive purposes, the villain (well, not really — his id is the villain), the romanticism of science and the scientist is crucial to the plot. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) falls into the positive variety of these pro-scientist films. Most of us know the story, primarily because it was recently remade into what I can only describe as a film without any substance: an alien named Klaatu appears on Earth, which terrifies the hairless ape creatures; Klaatu desperately tried to make humanity listen to him, but in the end, he’s forced to use the threat of annihilation to, we hope, bring humanity in line — for self- preservation of course. Throughout this somewhat dystopian plot — aliens telling us we have to shape up or die is hardly utopian, after all — we are gifted with several reminders that the scientists are the true “rational” ones on Earth (hang in there — I’ll critique this later). There are two perfectly solid examples of this, which I’ll approach in semi-chronological order. First, there’s Dr. Barnhardt, who is effectively the “most intelligent man” in the continental United States (or, at the very least, the smartest man in D.C.). When Klaatu first seeks his help, he discovers the Dr. working on a complicated math equation on a chalkboard — perhaps one of the most common cliches of science given to us by movies (Indiana Jones, anyone?) — the purpose of which is never explained. But the reason Klaatu wants Barnhardt’s help is because the regular folks haven’t exactly been forthcoming. Let’s face it, when your first day on Earth is spent getting shot by a bunch of trigger happy young men riding on tanks, and then shoved into a hospital and kept there against your will, followed by a long-winded explanation that your puny little alien brain — which managed to get you 250,000,000 miles across space — can’t possibly comprehend human politics…well, you’d probably skip town and seek out someone who just has to be rational. And Dr. Barnhardt, it turns out, is supremely rational. He not only has science smarts — though not nearly as much as Klaatu, with all his math magic — but he also recognizes the utter stupidity of provoking an alien race into using violence as a communication method. When violence, trickery, imprisonment, and rampant fear-mongering (hooray yellow journalism) are the societal response to your presence, it makes a lot of sense to respond in kind. But Dr. Barnhardt desperately wants to avoid that. He convinces Klaatu that perhaps a non-violent demonstration would look better and then proceeds to set up a meeting between Mr. Alien and a bunch of unnamed, but certainly important scientists. In other words, the only ones who actually take Klaatu seriously as someone genuinely interested in Earth’s well being are scientists. The military just wants to shove Klaatu under the watchful eyes of unsophisticated, disinterested guards and subject him to nationalistic politics; the scientists want to help Klaatu make his point. Oh, and since I haven’t mentioned it yet, you really can’t avoid the 1951 political message here. By 1951, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were the only countries actively testing nuclear weapons, though certainly not the only ones working on them. The rise of atomic/nuclear weapons so concerned the world that it led to the Cold War (which you all already know) and to Oppenheimer (who worked on the Manhattan Project) declaring the invention of the atomic bomb a grave mistake: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. Ironically, Klaatu’s race literally became the destroyer of worlds (he’s our second science example, actually). By the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu has no choice but to warn humanity that if they continue on this destructive, nuclear path, they will compel his species to neutralize (annihilate) the Earth for the benefit of everyone else. But in his final speech, he also tells us one crucial fact: science has provided the resolution to the natural inclination towards violence among intelligent life (I interpret his words to suggest that there are other intelligent species out there). Thus, Gort, the “monstrous machine” of the story, is little more than the product of scientists to curb violent tendencies — there are many like it that sit around as a giant deterrent against poor behavior, which has somehow created a peaceful society that is both supremely powerful and disinterested in violence except when the equilibrium of their society is threatened. So much for that narrative about nuclear weapons, right? After all, if the reason behind nuclear armament is to deter your enemy from attacking you, then Gort is little more than a giant, walking robotic nuke (minus the radiation). If we’re honest, this is all a remarkably utopian view of the scientist. So many novels and films have tried to imagine utopian societies and failed miserably, either intentionally or because utopias simply don’t work. But is there something inherently dystopian about creating your own self-“cleaning” agent? If Gort is a society’s solution to
Retro Nostalgia: Forbidden Planet (1956) and Romancing the Science
I have never seen Forbidden Planet. It’s one of those films that SF enthusiasts say you have to see, but I have never made the time to do so. Until now… As a first time viewer of a now-50+-year-old movie, I find it necessary to offer a number of concessions: 1) I cannot expect the visuals to meet contemporary standards of “realism” (limited budgets + limited technology); 2) I cannot expect characters to develop in ways that are anything but consistent with a 1950s cultural milieu; and 3) I must accept pseudoscience. That’s more or less how I came into the film. After all, if you watch Forbidden Planet, you’ll become aware of the limitations of the cinematic medium during the 50s, the rampant, almost “rapey” sexism that was all too common during the “glory days,” and the laughable nonsense that passed for “science” then (and still passes for “science” today). And yet, for such a campy film, Forbidden Planet does something that only the best SF films do: eloquently visualizes and explores the science of a future world, even if, upon further inspection, much of that science is impossible, unexplained, or downright false (it was the 50s, after all). The opening scenes, for example, imagine a future in which FTL is possible, but not in the fanciful and convenient way of Star Wars, which wouldn’t appear for another 20 years. Rather, the crew reminds us of two important things: traveling to other stars takes an extraordinary amount of time and deceleration is not a “cakewalk.” Navigators must set the deceleration process on a “timer” and climb into the anti-gravity pods to wait the process out. Nothing is every quite explained. How do the pods work? Why do they turn strange colors and “disappear”? We just don’t know. The film is littered with these moments, from explanations about the alien technology to incredible closeups of the navigation systems of the reconnaissance ship, etc. Moments like these serve to rationalize the irrational things to come — in the case of Forbidden Planet, we are meant to accept that one’s “id” is capable of manifesting as an unstoppable, invisible monster (provided one’s mind has been manipulated by alien technologies). They are also what one might call “scientific excess,” the necessity of which is readily apparent: what I’ve already suggested (so we can rationalize the irrational) and to establish the science fiction frame (this is not our world; it is a future world). This is not unusual in science fiction film. I cannot speak for the wide range of SF film leading up to the release of Forbidden Planet in 1956, since that period is hardly my forte. However, many classic SF films have gone to almost masturbatory levels to establish scene/setting through scientific excess. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) provided us with two extraordinary sequences inside massive, moving sets, the object of which was to mimic for the audience how artificial gravity (and stasis pods, for that matter) might work on a visual level. The scenes are beautiful, if not a tad dated, and perform exactly the same function as the opening minutes of Forbidden Planet (we’re meant to accept the unexplained monoliths and the Starchild). Alien (1979) and parts of Aliens (1986) are similarly focused on the technological mechanics of the future. The former contains no dialogue until nearly 6 minutes into the film, instead focusing on a) the computational abilities of the Nostromo (which haven’t aged well), and b) the long process of waking from stasis. Aliens reverses this imagery by showing the decrepit condition of the Nostromo‘s escape shuttle, which salvage crews must cut into before they can extricate the sole survivor of the previous film — a person nobody was expecting to find anyway. Rather than focusing on how technology has “advanced,” the sequence focuses on how the very technology that made the previous film possible has remained static in time, providing the necessary jolt of reality that Ripley will need to reach the next stage as a hero. The result? We’re drawn into the world so we can more easily take that leap of faith when the seemingly impossible alien(s) show up. Contemporary SF films no longer do this. There are exceptions, of course, but almost all SF films these days focus on setting, vague definitions of character, or imagery. While technology exists in these films, it is often backdrop, not scene-starter. The characters interact with the new world, but they are disconnected from it — disengaged, if you will. Even the latest Star Trek film tossed aside the pseudoscientific jargon that made the franchise the subject of many linguistic jokes; Abrams opted for a flashier, more “agile” narrative in what I can only assume was an attempt to breathe (or bleed) new life into the franchise. I’m not sure why this trend apparently died off. Budgetary reasons? Were audiences disinterested in the extraordinary details many SF writers/directors put into their work because of pacing concerns? Your guess is probably as good as mine (unless you’re an SF film scholar and have answers). One thing is for certain: it’s a fascinating and illuminating SF trend. Perhaps we’ll get something like it again one day…
Retro Nostalgia: The Dark Crystal (1982) and the Necessity of a Remake
When I first saw The Dark Crystal over a decade ago, I recall feeling amazed by the story. As kids, I think we have a tendency to open ourselves to imaginative possibilities that adults have closed themselves off to (possibly because adults have “seen it all”). Watching The Dark Crystal as a kid was like jumping headfirst into my own imagination.* Re-watching the film brought back some of those mostly-nostalgic memories, in particular because the world of The Dark Crystal is a fully realized one. There are enormous sets, moving plants and critters, unique characters, and astonishing puppetry. It’s hard not to marvel at how much effort went into making this film. The problem? Time has not been kind to Jim Henson’s 1982 classic. Unlike The Labyrinth, which survives its ancient green screen and sometimes stiff puppetry largely because it is a quirky fantasy flick for kids, The Dark Crystal simply doesn’t hold up as well. The stiff puppetry, a product of the time more than anything else, reminds us that we’re looking at, well, puppets; to suspend disbelief, we have to trick our minds in ways we generally wouldn’t have to. This is true of almost all of the characters, with exception to Fizzgig, whose rambunctious behavior offers a few purely comical moments.** The rest? Stiff. Their mouths barely move and their facial expressions are limited. That said, you’ll find nuance in the bodily movements of the characters; the puppet masters — ha! — did their best to make up for the lackluster facial performances by turning those bodies into canvases all on their own. I’ll never have that kind of skill, which is why I admire it so. I say this not because I think The Dark Crystal is a bad movie. To say that, I would have to dislike much about The Labyrinth, even if I acknowledge that the latter receives some leeway due to tone. For its time, The Dark Crystal was ambitious, to say the least. It took all the glamour of the Jim Henson puppeteer studios and merged it with the mythical narratives of epic fantasy. Critics were right to liken it to a Muppet version of a Tolkien story (The Hobbit, perhaps). It has the right kind of characters, world, and elements to facilitate an epic fantasy narrative, right down even to the somewhat cliche “chosen one” plot line. Most of these things work in its favor. The film made $30mil in profit, though its sequel, Power of the Dark Crystal, has been in development limbo since the 80s, and it remains one of the highest grossing Henson films ever made. I bring all this up because I think that it’s time someone remade The Dark Crystal. Hear me out, if you will. I’m not a fan of remakes. In fact, I think most remakes shouldn’t exist, though the almighty dollar will keep them coming for decades to come. But The Dark Crystal is the type of film that would benefit from modern technology, set design, budgets, and so on, in part because its original format, though beautiful for its time, has not aged particularly well (and don’t get me started on the annoying voice over that explains everything that has happened in the world up to the start of the narrative proper). Contemporary puppetry, when properly funded, can produce more advanced characters and designs with developed facial features and facial mobility. Those characters who seem somewhat stiff will come to life in a way they never have before. The result? Characters we all can easily connect to. We’ll still know they’re puppets, but we’ll suspend our disbelief more readily if the characters look, move, and act like real people. Just look at what they did for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (skip to 7:05): And that’s not even the best they could have done. With advances in animatronic technologies and so on and so forth, you could create characters that practically cry on their own. Throw in a little CG to help blend the sets and character together — and no more than “a little” — and you’ve got a mixture for what might be the most ambitious remake ever conceived. Of course, if Hollywood tried to remake The Dark Crystal, they’d probably CG everything and leave out the puppetry — assuming the Henson company would let them. I think this would be a grave mistake, but it’s not like Hollywood is afraid to send out stinkers and pretty everything up with lens flares and explosions these days. My only hope is that remaking The Dark Crystal will do honor to the original and add new life to a world that deserves the best adaptation possible. There’s so much to love about The Dark Crystal, from its classic heroic quest to its complete absence of human characters*** to its settings, scenery, and depth. Who wouldn’t want to see it re-imagined once more? This is where everyone chimes in with their thoughts. Do you think a remake of The Dark Crystal would be a good idea? This is the most adorable character in the entire movie. Fizzgig! —————————————————– *No wonder I couldn’t get enough of Fraggle Rock as a kid… **He’s sort of like a dog thing. It’s hard to explain. ***If not for the fact that I desperately want to see this film remade, I might have talked about the curious absence of human characters in The Dark Crystal. Perhaps for another time…
Retro Nostalgia: Legend (1985) and the Power of Innocence
(A different subtitle might say this: “A World of Oppositions, Stricken By Their Equilibrium.” This, of course, assumes I will follow Jason Sanford‘s story-title-generation process for these features. I’ll leave artistic license aside for now…) One of the curious things about Ridley Scott’s 1985 fairy tale — appropriately entitled Legend — is how desperately it clings to its fairy tale origins. I do not mean “desperate” in a negative sense; rather, I see Legend as trying to avoid falling into the trap of its own making precisely so it can maintain its format in a way that benefits the fairy tale that is its heart. Thus, what begins as a saccharine childish fantasy of naive, star-crossed lovers from different worlds (Princess Lily from the Court of Men and Jack from the Court of Nature) falls into the abyss of its darkest undercurrents (love, betrayal, darkness, blood, and utter wickedness) before it is righted by a terribly cheesy narrative reversion (it was a sort-of-dream) and a return to normalcy — Jack and Lily part, presumably to repeat similar events the next day, always a step away from “completing” their relationship (marriage, more or less). It’s perhaps because of this structural necessity that I love Legend in ways befitting greater works. Despite the narrative tricks, the sometimes too-cutesy plot points andcharacter quirks, and so on, I am drawn to the narrative’s return to a static universe. True, the Lord of Darkness and his wicked goblins (Blix, expertly played by Alice Playten, still terrifies me)* disrupt the perfect world of Jack and Lily by assassinating one of the two living unicorns and shrouding the world in cold and darkness, but all of his damage is instantly reversed in the last 10 minutes of the film when Jack is allowed to jump back into the forest pool and retrieve his love’s ring. The only indication that anything ever happened is the convenient arrival of Gump and his dwarf friends — themselves aids to Jack in his quest — with the two unicorns. Only even in that moment the world is magically righted again, because the unicorns cannot, as far as the film makes clear, magically rebirth young in a matter of seconds, thus proving to us that the only true change to the world is that of memory. Historical time is disrupted to return us to a special alternate world of “perfection.” For lack of a better term, I am calling this necessity for a static fairy tale world (a utopia, perhaps) the politics of innocence. Legend never shies away from its affair with innocence, reminding us from the start that Princess Lily (Mia Sara) is naive, perfect, inquisitive, and ultimately unaware of the very real dangers in the world — one of her “royal subjects” even tells her so in the opening scenes. Jack (Tom Cruise), too, suffers from this naivety, though with at least some awareness that certain “codes of conduct” should not be broken — which is exactly what he allows to happen. Innocence is so central to the story of Legend that it even dominates the conscious thoughts of the principal villain: the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry). In a revealing scene — because, why not, right? — he admits his unquenchable desire for Princess Lily, calling upon his faceless father for advice, who tells him that he must “turn” her to darkness. After all, the very person whose existence as an “innocent” was required to end the joyous reign of the unicorns — Lily being a diversion and temptation of sorts — must be the object of focus here, not because she’s a woman, but because she embodies a certain fairy tale stereotype of a woman. I don’t want to read this movie as a stereotype of ideal womanhood** — naive, innocent, and in need of controlling. Why? Because I think a more compelling view of this film is to imagine how it operates through a variety of innocences, some of them products of a misogynistic fairy tale tradition and others governed by the profound static-ness of Legend‘s world. Nobody is left unaffected by the power of innocence, whether Jack, who cannot seem to grasp the fact that Lily is a “free spirit” who has no concept of boundaries (perhaps because she is a rebellious youth); the Lord of Darkness, who is compelled by desire to cross the social barriers befitting a, well, lord of darkness; or even the unicorns, who are just as tempted by Lily as by Jack (who, it appears, they trust well enough to let him know where they will be). This is the profound power of innocence, whether embodied in the ideal image of Lily (virginal, free, beautiful, and sweet as rain) or in the internal philosophy of a fairy tale, where innocence destroys itself, only to be reborn exactly where it began. Legend is only static because innocence is cyclical. For the world to return to its original place — a world of life, beauty, and wonder — no trace of the real consequences of the temptation of innocence can remain. It’s an almost childlike reversion, if you will — as if Legend were the child that had to be returned to us, pre-influence (say, pre-Janet Jackson). The audience, however, can’t return. Ever. The world might right itself, but we will always remember, like parents remember their children’s experiences, that something has occurred and that, just as innocence and light are cycles of power, so too are the darkest recesses innocence and light produce. The Lord of Darkness is right: he is in all of us, and he will return one day, perhaps in a different form, but returned nonetheless. Regardless, historical time shifts, because we know the history as it actually happens, and narrative time swings back around to start all over again. Rinse and repeat. Stepping out for a moment, I think it’s interesting to consider how this might apply to the narrative if we consider Legend either as a children’s fable OR as an adult