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 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:56 pm
Because I want to a place to vent the worst of the worst, dang it. And rave about the best of the best.
So my throw-away space for books, movie adaptions, and anything story-related.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:56 pm
Mary Higgins Clark, for those who aren’t aware, is a world-renowned author of mystery, crowned the “Queen of Suspense” in the world of literature. Arguably, her fame as a suspense author began with her novel Where are the Children?, published in 1975. Her following novels showed immense originality, expansive imagination, understanding of motive, and skill in writing technique. Sadly, her most recent release, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, falls short of her legacy for many, many reasons.
Let’s begin with an introduction. One day Greg is playing with his three-year-old son Timmy in the park when he is shot by a cold-blooded “Blue Eyes” killer, who yells at Timmy “Tell your mother she’s next, then it’s your turn!” Blue Eyes runs away and evades capture, leaving an eyewitness, Greg’s dead body, and Timmy.
Five years later, Laurie, Greg’s widow and Timmy’s mother, has an idea for a new television series. It’s called Under Suspicion or something like that, and it’s about cold cases. Her series would gather the suspects and victims of cold cases, interview them, and ask them to recreate scenes from the crime. For her pilot episode she chooses the murder of the Graduation Gala.
The “Graduation Gala” was a party – although grand ball might be a better term – that rich Mr. Powell hosted for his stepdaughter and her three best friends twenty years ago when they graduated from college. There were hundreds of guests in and out that night, though the three honored graduates – Claire (the stepdaughter), Alison, Regina, and Nina – were the most prominent and they all slept over that night, staying up until early morning drinking and smoking. Also present in the house were Jane the housekeeper and Betsy, Mr. Powell’s wife and Claire’s mother – and the victim, found dead smothered by a pillow by Mr. Powell the next morning.
All four girls were harshly questioned to the point of abuse by the police, who were so certain one of them did it that they attempted to make them sell each other out. Eventually no adequate evidence was found and no one was charged, but the graduates were so traumatized they all hurried to move on with their lives and split to live in different states. They haven’t spoken since.
Twenty years later Laurie’s production company, eager for a hit pilot episode, and Mr. Powell, eager for closure of the death of his beloved, offer money to the graduates to return to the scene of the crime, be interviewed, and recreate some scenes. All are desperate for money, and tired of being treated like suspects, so they agree. As the shooting for the show begins, however, “Blue Eyes” returns and sets his sights on Laurie and Timmy to complete his revenge.
Now, here’s the first problem I personally have with the book, which isn’t necessarily a core issue: this premise would be fantastic for a whole series of books. Imagine: Laurie and her crew are returning characters who, through the filming of their episodes, end up solving crimes, each novel being the filming of a different episode. This would give Ms. Clark, or any author who took on the project, the chance to introduce a new cast of colorful characters each time, while gradually developing the TV crew characters throughout the series – much like in The Cat Who series by Braun. The fact that this story doesn’t happen in a whole series, instead a single book, is actually detrimental to the character development. The cast is HUGE! Besides Laurie, Timmy, “Blue Eyes,” the four graduates, Mr. Powell, Betsy (in an abstract already-dead way), and Jane, there’s John the chauffeur and blackmailer, Mr. Powell’s friend whose name I don’t recall, that friend’s wife Isabelle, Laurie’s father an ex-cop, the ex-cop’s friends who are still in the service, the TV crew, the makeup crew, Alex the criminal lawyer who interviews the participants, Nina’s mother Muriel, Alison’s husband Rod, and in an abstract way Regina’s father. That. Is a LOT. Of characters. It’s only one book. It would be fine if more of these characters were small stagnant ones, but all of the ones I listed have speaking lines, and too many of them are major characters whose actions and attitudes have consequences on either the mystery of “Blue Eyes” or Betsy’s murder at the Gala. Ideally, you’d want to feel at home with the TV crew, because you want to root for their TV series to succeed, since their boss (oh yeah, another small character) keeps threatening their jobs based on their success. But because you only have a couple short chapters and a group of short paragraphs of down-time with the TV crew, it’s mostly used for exposition, so you don’t really get to know them as people. The closest you get is Laurie – and I’ll expand on my problem with her in a bit. The characters you get to know the best are those connected to Betsy’s murder, but because there are so many of them and so much going on, you don’t really get to see them develop as people. They stay relatively stagnant the entire book, and the attempts at development that are made are completely half-baked.
So let’s take this step-by-step. So the graduates all agree to come to the filming of the pilot episode. As the chapters roll on, we are made aware of their backstories and their potential motives for murdering Betsy Powell (repetitively to an annoying degree, to the point where I start wondering if Ms. Clark has started to go senile and the editors have started to forget their jobs). Nina’s mother Muriel was dating Mr. Powell a long time ago, and when the three of them were at a restaurant Nina noticed and called her best friend Claire over, introducing her and her mother to Mr. Powell. Mr. Powell started dating Claire’s mother soon after. Muriel never forgave Nina for her actions and has made her life a living hell. She still lives in her apartment and uses her credit card to buy booze. Therefore, Nina could potentially have murdered Betsy in revenge. Regina’s father committed suicide when she was 15 and a suicide note she has kept hidden all these years revealed that it was because he had an affair with Betsy, who urged him to invest everything he had into Mr. Powell’s company, causing him to go bankrupt. Hence, Regina could have killed Betsy for revenge as well. Allison was the perfect candidate for a scholarship that would let her continue into medical school, but it was given instead to a rich student who dropped out two years later. It was believed by many that the scholarship was given to this other student because her mother ran a club that Betsy wanted into, so Mr. Powell donated a dormitory to the university. Allison muttered that she wanted to kill Betsy when she spent the whole Graduation Gala gloating about the girl who got the scholarship. Lastly, Claire, Betsy’s own daughter, knew about all of Betsy’s secrets, overheard Mr. Powell and her scheming together to spread destruction for their own gain. Most of all, Betsy gave Mr. Powell permission to molest Claire at night and even enjoyed hearing about how responsive she was. Claire was forced to live at home instead of dorming for this very reason, though everyone mistakenly thought it was because she was so close to her mother. Claire had lots of reasons to kill her mother. Mr. Powell’s friend whose name I don’t remember but whose wife’s name is Isabelle was having an affair with Betsy until he found out his wife was pregnant, at which point Betsy blackmailed him $2.5 million or else she would tell Isabelle who would either leave him or die of shock, and geez, can you blame this guy for considering killing her? And Jane, who was close friends with Betsy until hired by Mr. Powell, eventually fell in love with Mr. Powell herself. John (or Josh or Jeremy or whatever his name is) the chauffeur has taped the private conversations of most of the previously mentioned people and is blackmailing them all.
Starting to see where I was coming from with the lack of space for character development? There’s already so much that needs explaining – and everything I mentioned constantly repeated, eating up precious time. This is rather unfortunate because I have always loved Ms. Clark’s skill for portraying characters through their actions and words as well as their backstories. In this book, she seems to have forgotten how to move on from backstories. For one thing, it’s been twenty years since the murder, but all of these people are still obsessed. She tries to say that they’ve moved on in their own ways but have kept it repressed, which would be plausible. For example, Claire is supposedly finding fulfillment as a social worker, helping women and children who were in situations like hers. Allison is supposedly living a bitter life as a pharmacist taking care of her handicapped husband. Nina is a career movie extra and Regina has a successful real estate agency which she tends to when she isn’t competing with her ex-husband and his new wife for her son’s attention (more characters!). Supposedly these girls all moved on, but didn’t properly deal with the issue out of fear and shame. But, come oooooon, it’s been twenty. Years. TWENTY. Not five, not ten. TWENTY. Not one of these women went to therapy? Not one of these women tried to get in contact with the others? They’re all stuck in the past. They’re all completely stagnant. If Claire feels like she has to help people whose lives were ruined the way hers was, why didn’t she try to keep tabs on Regina, whose father was dead because of her mother? If Allison really only married her husband because he had a contract with the NY Giants that would pay for her med school, why did she follow through after he got in that crippling accident, for TWENTY YEARS, without any change? How has Nina managed to live with an angry vengeful drunk mother for twenty years? The most trustworthy character is Mr. Powell, and by association Jane. Their household has remained exactly the same, he has lived through the same routine, ever since that day. And no matter what the author tries to say, so did the girls – for twenty. Damn. Years. That is WAY too long of a time to be plausible.
So this is just one example of how stagnant these characters are, besides the fact that nothing changes during the TV process – not their attitude about the death of Betsy (all but Mr. Powell are grateful), not their attitude about their lives (each has a single ruthless goal), not their relationships with each other (impassive). Which, by the way, these four girls were best friends? Really? ‘Cause I don’t see it. They hate sitting in the same room together. They don’t talk to each other. They never share any memories or indicate that they care how they’re getting along. There is no evidence of love lost between them!
In fact, there’s no evidence of love in these characters at all. These are all horrible, horrible people – and I mean really cruel! When Muriel tells Nina that if she doesn’t give John the blackmail money she’ll tell Mr. Powell and the police that Nina confessed to killing Betsy, Nina goes to Rod – the crippled man who lives every day in excruciating pain and with the knowledge that he is desperately in love with someone who doesn’t love him the same – and tells him if he and Allison don’t pay for her blackmail money as well as Allison’s, she’ll tell the police something-or-other to incriminate Allison. Just because she says she needs every cent of the money she’s receiving to get her mother her own place to live so she can be out of her life. Yeah, because Lord knows it’s not like Rod could use that money on, I don’t know, medical bills! And as for Allison, she spends most of the book declaring how unfair her life is. She keeps saying to Rod, “You can’t know what it’s like to have your dream in front of you then have it taken away.” Now, at some point in the book she kinda stops in shock because she realizes, oh yeah, Rod had a dream and it was taken away. Only instead of leaving him with a nice stable respectable if less glamorous career, like in her situation, it left him with a body crippled with excruciating pain. Did I mention that? Now, potentially, this realization could lead to character development, and maybe to improving their marriage. But you know what? I’m still going to say this just makes her a horrible person, because somehow this slipped her notice for TWENTY. GAHDDAMN. YEARS. And after she has this realization she says something along the lines of “Maybe I stayed with him for a reason.” But we never have a satisfying scene where she actually says she’s going to try and make this marriage work like a real marriage. Instead we have the promise in the epilogue that she’s going to med school and he’s going to school to be a pharmacist. I swear, I don’t think she’s ever had sex with him. Muriel is all kinds of horrible for emotionally abusing her daughter, stealing from her, and even threatening to send her to jail if she thought it would let her become rich. But we don’t even get the satisfaction of seeing her be punished for being so horrible. Instead, in the epilogue Nina gives her all of the money she earned for being on the show. Every last cent. I’m sorry, but that’s not going to get rid of her, Nina. She’s going to overspend and live beyond her means and once that catches up to her she’ll be back in your apartment like she’s part of your furniture. Regina uses the money she earned, as stated in the epilogue, to expand on her real estate business and to spend lots of expensive vacations with her son while she gloats at her ex-husbands pricey divorce with his wife. At least Mr. Powell, after his shell of a philanthropist is cracked, is clearly maintained as a fundamentally slimey character. I can actually get some enjoyment out of knowing how horrible of a person he is and the fact that everyone justly hates him for it.
(On that note, though: the entire beginning of the book paints Mr. and Mrs. Powell up as well-loved neighbors that no one would suspect of wrongdoing. Everyone believes they are a happy nice and rich family. But throughout the book you realize just how much they did, how much destruction and abuse and – essentially – murder, and you start to wonder: just how plausible is it that an entire community hasn’t noticed all the misery they’re causing? Like, throughout all those years they never once started to question why it was their family kept getting richer while those around them kept going bankrupt, their daughters becoming quiet and traumatized?)
And Claire? Oh ho ho, Claire’s story infuriates me. First of all, if you wanted to help people who went through what you went through, again, why didn’t you try to keep in touch with your friends, all of whom had their lives ruined by your mother? I could accept this if it was indicated that it was out of guilt or shame. But Claire doesn’t show any indication of actually caring about these three friends of hers. (Though, as I mentioned, none of them do.) It’s more like they never met before now. And then on the first day of the pilot episode filming, she shows up wearing makeup that makes her look exactly like her mother used to. She does this with fiendish glee to upset and traumatize the people in the room whom she hasn’t seen in 20 years. But let’s pause with makeup, because for some reason this was a huge issue in the book. Claire usually, it’s stated, refuses to wear any makeup or hair product of any kind. She finds it emotionally exhausting. But in the epilogue it’s stated that she’s started therapy, and she’s finally able to accept that her child molestation and the horrible things her mother did are not her fault. Therefore, “She was able to start wearing makeup again and stop hiding her resemblance to her mother.”
… Wait. What?
As far as I can see it, I can only interpret this two ways. The first way is that Ms. Clark is, sadly, going senile, and she confused makeup with genetics. If Claire resembles her mother, it’s because they share genetics – a fundamental part of the body that cannot be changed short of expensive surgery. And yes, it’s true that if she wears her makeup a certain way she’ll remind people even more of her mother because that’s how her mother wore makeup. Makeup, however, isn’t a genetics enhancer. It doesn’t make your genes and looks stand out more. Makeup is a paint that you put over your natural body to disguise it or reshape it. If Claire really was trying to hide her resemblance to her mother, she could have used a different color for eyeshadow, lipstick, and eyeliner. She could have drawn her eyes and lips differently. She could have done any number of makeup tricks to make her face look completely different. If therapy is helping her embrace her looks and not “hide her resemblance” anymore, she should be wearing less makeup, not more, because by wearing more she’s just hiding the resemblance more!
The second possible way to interpret this is that Ms. Clark believes a woman without makeup is emotionally disrupted, mentally inadequate, or otherwise psychologically hindered, because Claire starts wearing makeup only after she starts therapy and starts being happy and moving on with life. (I would like to note that Claire was able to have a successful career without makeup, however.)
I wouldn’t talk about this so much if it weren’t for the fact that Ms. Clark does. Makeup is constantly brought up in this book, mostly in connection to Claire’s refusal which is for some reason a really huge deal (I understand she looks washed out on the TV, but the reaction goes beyond that), but also in connection to how the other women present themselves to the men they’re trying (or not trying *cough cough Allison cough cough*) to attract or to their own levels of self-respect – the higher the self-respect, the more makeup. For some reason there’s a mild obsession with looks and beauty in this book that I just find daunting and unnerving. Laurie’s strongest description isn’t that of a loyal mother, daughter, wife, or TV producer, it’s of being “movie-star beautiful.” Like many of Ms. Clark’s recent characters, Laurie is stunningly beautiful and for some reason that’s enough to make us realize we need to be rooting for her.
Which brings me to stock cookie-cutter characters. As mentioned, Laurie is just the most recent of a current crop of leading ladies in Ms. Clark’s books who are described as movie-star elegant and beautiful. And it isn’t just the leading lady who’s being replicated in her books. The love interest, the child, and even the fatherly figure are becoming too common. If anyone’s read Let Me Call You Sweetheart, these characters may sound familiar to you, and you’ll be saying, “Hey! I liked those guys!” Well yes, yes you did, but that’s because that book took place back when Ms. Clark took the time to explore what those roles meant to the setting, the relationships between characters, and the plot. In Sweetheart, the roles of mother, lover, child, and father figure were played with and explored, with an included really big twist. As the mother and her potential lover got closer and fought harder together you wanted to root for them because you could see how much they were trying and you knew how much they deserved to be happy. You feared for the child’s safety because you didn’t know what would happen next, and father figure… eh, go read the book. But in Skin, and several other books, you get all of the cookie-cutter characters with none of the excitement or interaction. Alex is the intelligent capable suave man who falls madly in love with Laurie at first sight and gets his affections further enforced because she constantly says exactly what he’s thinking, which was affectionate in the first book but is now just predictable and creepy, to the point where when it’s written that they’re one day going to marry I can’t even be excited because I already knew that. The ex-cop, admittedly my favorite character because he seemed like one of the few with any genuine emotion, is a fatherly figure, but no one seems to change or be strengthened by his influence. Timmy is the innocent little angel kid with absolutely no faults whatsoever (I love children and I claim bullshit on this).
And can I talk about Laurie separately for a minute, since she is supposed to be our leading lady? Laurie is movie-star beautiful and widowed via violence – which I find kinda weird to be a recurring cookie cutter character, but whatever you and your maybe-therapist are dealing with, Ms. Clark – but you don’t see how it impacts her decision-making because 1.) her father is taking care of Timmy all the time and 2.) she’s constantly working on the TV show - and she’s damn bad at it; no one bothered to tell her it might be psychologically traumatizing to force the four graduates to wear replicas of the outfits they were wearing during the ball, the morning they found Betsy dead, and their abusive police interrogations. She’s a gahddamn oblivious ditz. Case in point, at one time she actually toasts “Blue Eyes” and says she hopes he’ll come kill her soon because she’s hoping that when he kills her he’ll mess up and get caught by the police before he can hurt Timmy. Now, in a way this is fine because a mother living under severe stress regarding a death threat made to her and her child after her husband’s murder would probably start cracking and saying desperate prayers like this during times of high anxiety – like shooting the pilot for a new TV series the success of which determines your status of employment. The problem is in any other Ms. Clark book, this would be where Alex (who had taken her out for a fancy dinner) reaches over and takes her hand and says “No, don’t toast to that, because if you die your father will probably have a heart attack like the doctors keep saying and who will be left to look after Timmy? Live so you can be responsible for your child and protect him.” Yet Alex doesn’t say anything. There’s a sentence or two where they resume eating and then that’s the end of the section. It’s written to try and shock you and make you sympathize with her but you know what? I can’t. That was a moronic irresponsible statement by a woman that was not used as potential character development. You could’ve used it and you failed.
Speaking of failure, you know what Ms. Clark failed to do in this book? Make me want to see the murder solved.
I’m not kidding. In every other book I’ve ever read of hers I can’t stop myself from reading because I just gotta know whodunit. They didn’t crown her the “Queen of Suspense” for nothing. But here’s why knowing the solving of the crime always mattered: the crime always had some kind of element of injustice to it. A child was wrongfully kidnapped, a life was wrongfully taken, a treasure was wrongfully seized. Even if there were books where the victim of the crime wasn’t well-liked, there was still a reason to believe that the perpetrator had a negative impact as a result of the crime and needed to be brought to justice. By the end of a book I could settle down knowing justice was served, the characters were safe, and all was well. But in this book? Betsy was Satan’s wife. Satan is still alive and well in the form of Mr. Powell, but he at least managed to pretend, to a degree, that he was a respectable citizen. The most common words used to describe Betsy in this book are “slut” and “whore.” She caused at least once suicide. She threatened to cause the death of a man’s pregnant wife. She ruined one girl’s career, consented to having her own daughter molested, listened to her husband describe the molestation, commented happily on how responsive her daughter was to the molestation – need I go on? This woman should have been put on trial numerous times, but never got caught or blamed for the many crimes she did, indeed, commit. So if she’s going to die, you need to give me a reason to solve her murder besides “death of an innocent,” because clearly she freakin’ deserved it. You need to give me a consequence: like an innocent person going to jail in place of the real perpetrator, or someone can’t claim insurance money needed to pay for surgery for their disabled family member until it’s proven it’s not suicide. Things like that, gimmee a consequence. There was none of that in this book – just a small reminder, it’s been TWENTY GORRAM YEARS since the murder and everyone is more or less okay in their own we-are-horrendous-people kind of way. Everyone hated Betsy. Everyone except Mr. Powell, who is Satan, is glad that she’s dead. So why should I want this crime solved? I have zero investment in this mystery.
Speaking of failure again, you’re probably wondering why I bothered to finish reading the book if I found it so horrible and mean-spirited and poorly written. Answer: I love kids. Timmy had a death threat hanging on his head. And while I thought that the old Ms. Clark would have written “Blue Eye’s” chapters with more skill and technique, there was still enough of an indication there to make me believe the man was dangerous and needed stopped. “Blue Eyes” was planning to kill both Laurie and Timmy on the final day of shooting for the pilot episode, so you knew this was going to happen at the end of the book. As “Blue Eyes” tricks Laurie, her father, and Timmy’s summer camp into letting him kidnap Timmy, you start to get those questions you used to get when reading Ms. Clark’s books: why like this? If his revenge was on Greg, why did he kill him first? If he’s killing Timmy last, what kind of problem could he possibly have with Timmy, who was only three years old during the first murder? Why was “Blue Eyes” gone for five years without striking? What’s his purpose and what is his endgame?
So we finally get to the height of the action. “Blue Eyes” is taking his chance and swooping in, kidnapping Timmy from summer camp knowing it won’t be discovered that he’s missing for another twenty-four hours. (Long story.) As he prepares for his final act of vengeance, Timmy asks him what’s going on. And in the moment of final reveal, “Blue Eyes” states: “I could have turned my life around if your grandfather hadn’t been such a hard-a** cop when he was young. He arrested me for DUI the night before I was to report for the army even though I begged him not to. The army wouldn’t take me so I was forced to become a mafia hitman again. Your grandfather ruined my life! So I’m going to take away everyone he loves! And now that you know, get ready. We’re going to get your mother.”
… Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.
{rubbing temples} Let’s… let’s talk about the writing technique first. I did leave a couple sentences out and paraphrase a little because I’m doing this from memory, but for the most part I’ve recreated exactly how the villain’s grand reveal went. Besides the fact that a monologue to his victim is so overwhelmingly CHEESY and lacking of originality – which is made sadder from the fact that none of Ms. Clark’s earlier villains found a monologue necessary to explain their point – it’s written to be so… bland. I have trouble believing that he’s actually obsessed with this revenge of his or angry about being arrested all those years ago. He seems to be completely disinterested. And this reveal was, as a recreated, a text block. The reader really has to just read a paragraph of him monologuing and then abruptly deciding to get moving. It’s as if “Blue Eyes” in the book new how stupid he sounded and was trying to get the plot rolling again as soon as he could, since a rolling plot was a signature of Ms. Clark’s earlier books that is fairly absent here (again, everything being so damn stagnant and repetitive).
Next, his motives. I have always appreciated Ms. Clark’s fluidity and originality with her villains. Sure, occasionally some would overlap, but come on, you can only have so many types of evil in the world that aren’t so whacky that they wouldn’t belong in her books. Ms. Clark’s villains in previous books range from vengeance to necrophilia to misguided self-preservation to greed to lust… Every book was something and someone new. Some were teams, many were individuals, and not all were men. They didn’t all commit the same crime, and certainly not in the same way. And furthermore, Ms. Clark was always able to write so that the villain’s motives, methods, and mindset naturally came to the reader, sometimes as a surprise plot twist and sometimes as a gradual progression throughout the book. Without any jarring or unnatural detours, Ms. Clark demonstrated understanding of true literary villainy. Here, however, she fell short. “Blue Eyes” wants revenge on a hard-a** who stripped him of opportunity to become a better man. Fine, that’s an admiral villain backstory. He even carries it out fairly well. Kill Greg, and even though he’s less valuable as a son-in-law, it makes the cop (I really can’t remember if his name is Leo or not so I’m not going to try) really nervous for his daughter and grandson, to the point where he develops cardiovascular disease. Even better, he accidentally gets put back in jail right after killing Greg for a parole violation, and those five years of his lack of action just increased the fear and tension in his victims, so that by the time he’s free and continuing to feed his obsession he can really play on the cop’s potential self-destructiveness. But while in his life he has spent several stints in jail, he didn’t go to jail right away for that DUI all those years ago. Which meant he was free to take on his vengeance fairly soon after his arrest, which happened when Laurie’s father was a “young cop.” Since Laurie’s father is in his late sixties during this book, it’s fair to say that this happened anywhere between thirty and forty years ago. During that time the cop had his own wife and precious daughter, and “Blue Eyes” was a hitman for the mafia. If he wanted to take away everyone the cop loved, why didn’t he kill the wife and Laurie all those years ago? Why did he wait three to four whole DECADES before finally deciding to get revenge? Most serial killers have a trigger or “stressor” event that kicks off their escapades, but it’s never fully explained if he ever had one. It’s as if Ms. Clark expects us to believe he waited for Laurie to grow up, get married, and have a son before enacting his revenge, which is just… weird.
Combining this with the fact that the Graduation Gala cast don’t seem to have actually changed at all or sought to help themselves in any way for twenty years makes me think that Ms. Clark is starting to see whole decades as no big deal. If that’s the case, she needs to stop writing about young people.
Now, is telling an author to “stop writing” harsh? Well, maybe a little. So long as she has the mind sharp enough and the will eager enough, a storyteller should never be forced to lay down her quill. But the truth is she can’t go soft, either. She’s a big name in literature but that means she should be working just as hard as she did when she was a nobody, with editors scrutinizing every word, structure, and plot hole. That clearly didn’t happen with this book. Where were the editors who would notice how repetitive she was being about the possible motives of the graduates? Where were the people who would read it over and ask her questions like, “Why did Blue Eyes wait so long?” Where are the people who would look her in the face and say, “Your suspense about who killed Betsy is still strong but my desire to find out who is waning?” I’ll tell you where: they were sitting in Lay-Z-Boys counting the few green-backs the publishers pushed back their way. Because Ms. Clark isn’t a nobody anymore: she is the Queen of Suspense for crying out loud. She’s our generation’s Agatha Christie. Everyone knows her and everyone knows that she can write a good, suspenseful mystery. So no one has to work hard to polish and edit and tweak her works anymore because having her name on the cover is enough to make the book a best-seller. Don’t believe me? Take a look: on the cover of her newest releases, her name takes up more space than the title of the book does. You see what this mean? It isn’t the story they’re selling. It’s the author’s name. “What’s that book called?” “I dunno, but it says it was written by Mary Higgins Clark!” “Then it must be perfect!” Look, Mary Higgins Clark has many good reasons for having such a good reputation, but she has to be expected to keep working to keep holding it up. And while I think this is mostly the fault of lazy greedy publishers, I’m still mad that her technique and lack of character depth was allowed to slip.
In short, why did I hate this book so much that I’d rather take a walk down Peach Street with Scarlet O’Hara, the biggest b***h in literature? Well, the characters are mean-spirited dressed in the robes of victims, or just so bland that I can’t root for them at all. The murder of Betsy has absolutely no consequences to it besides bettering lives for a lot of people, so there’s no reason for me to want to have the murder solved – not even closure for the suspects, because again, they are all horrid people. “Blue Eyes” had such potential but ended up being left to waste. The writing technique was not up to Ms. Clark’s standards, the timing of the story is way too off, there are heavy implications that looks are necessary for a woman to be good, healthy, and stable (including makeup), and this book was not a book series, limiting the time I had with the many many MANY characters. In summary: I felt like I was walking into a restaurant where I eat often, but instead of the excellent experience I usually have, the waitress kept bringing me my side salad over and over, the cook sent my meal to me raw, and the customers at the surrounding tables kept leaving their checks on my table telling me if I didn’t pay them they would beat their children.
I love Ms. Clark’s work, but I think I will go back and read her old stories, and view her new releases with quite a bit of hesitation.
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Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 12:38 pm
Let's talk about marketing in storytelling.
To begin, marketing is a kind of storytelling, isn't it? It's a choose-your-own adventure. Your choice is, get this product or no? And depending on the marketer, your result for "no" varies from "Eh, too bad, you'da liked it," to "OMG UR DED." But people also use stories to disguise their marketing (albeit very poorly). Sometimes something starts as a storytelling venture and then develops a franchise – like Disney. And sometimes a franchise latches onto storytelling as a way to market while making money – basically making people pay to see their advertisements. For the record, I personally don't have much against this – everybody's gotta eat – IF it's done well. So basically what we need to do is determine if the story you're listening to is, yes, trying to sell something, but is doing it through skill and genuine storytelling, or if they're just being lazy and running one long advertisement.
With that said, now let's talk about Barbie.
Barbie has been under fire in recent decades for promoting unhealthy beauty expectations in young girls. Personally, the only misconception Barbie gave me about the female body was that we have no sex organs. (Not kidding, I was totally unaware of the vulva until it started bleeding.) Also personally I think the African American dolls should have naturally thick and curly hair instead of just dying blonde Barbie different colors. Say what you want about Barbie, however, one thing still holds true: she is probably one of the most open-ended toys available for young girls. I haven't been keeping up with the recent generation of merchandise, but for my mother and myself, Barbie had endless options, everything from kitchens to campsites to teacher to veterinarian to ballerina to astronaut. And more importantly, no matter what dresses you bought for your daughter, if your daughter had a Barbie, that Barbie eventually reflected what she wants to be, who she wants to be. My Barbie, for example, did an awful lot of taking care of Kelly and going on adventures with her horse. And hosted a housing facility for the disabled Barbies who had barely survived my aunts' play years. Also diplomacy because she was a princess who actually did something, damn it. (Not gonna deny reenacting her wedding to Ken a couple times though.) If you weren't a girly girl, neither was your Barbie. That's why at some point Barbie started using the phrase, "Be who you wanna be."
(Oh, also boys. Sorry, gents... as progressive as I try to be, I didn't grow up with brothers so I forget to include you sometimes. But yeah, boys can find ways to express themselves with Barbie and Ken too.)
I remember when the first Barbie movie came out. Barbie in the Nutcracker came out in 2001. Yes, they sold toys based on the movie: Barbie as Clara, the nutcracker himself, the little kid sidekicks... You had the dolls and outfits, of course. So yes, Mattel made money off of Barbie not just by the movie itself, but by the merchandise it sorta-directly advertised. But here's where my point begins to show: Barbie in the Nutcracker was a good movie. Not an earth-shatterer, by any respects, but entertaining, and with a decent lesson for the children watching. It opens with Barbie helping Kelly rehearse for the ballet The Nutcracker, and when Kelly is about to give up out of frustration, Barbie tells her Clara's story as a motivation to keep trying, because if you give up you'll never find out what you're truly capable of. If you're a dancer you like the dancing, but even if you don't Barbie (as Clara) is a mature, calm, yet growing and learning role model for the story. The movie may not raise any huge questions about the universe but it's a good morale for children. So in this movie, storytelling was being used for marketing, but they didn't excuse themselves from creating a good story. Yay!
Too bad the Barbie movies didn't stay that way.
The movies were already starting to decrease in quality by 2005, when The Magic of Pegasus came out. In this particular movie, there were lots more instances of marketing – a greater number of cute sidekicks and gizmos and characters with different dresses and forms. The story wasn't totally awful, and it attempted to teach, once again, the story of bravery, as well as learning that good deeds are done with kind hearts and not vengeance, but by this point Barbie as a character was starting to fall short of role model material, her kind and calm nature being replaced by "funny" sarcasm and impatience. Also the movies started to transition from their presentation style, no longer portraying Barbie as a storyteller in her own stories, but now as an actress starring in movies – which, to be fair, is kinda cool, but it eliminates the need for a moral, and that makes it harder to grasp the lessons we're supposed to be learning from these movies beyond "be brave" and "be kind."
Barbie movies didn't decline in a steady line. Barbie in the Twelve Dancing Princesses was very good, showing the power of sisterhood when their family is threatened. But it's been unsteady, and that's a problem, because now it's hard to tell what you're going to get. After all, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, or a movie by its title... Most of the time. By the time Barbie in the Princess and the Popstar was released, it started to become obvious what you were getting yourself into.
Why do I feel compelled to rant about this? Well, as I mentioned, as a child I very much enjoyed and valued the stories in the first five or so Barbie movies. I recently decided to start rewatching the newer movies to see what Barbie was up to – and let me drive my previous points home by describing the movie I made the mistake of starting with: Barbie Princess Charm School.
Oh, dear God, why.
The movie opens with Barbie – as Blair – opening her neat little cafe shop to the tune of a song explaining how you can tell a girl's a princess: "She doesn't need a crown." (Oh, by the way, every time a marketable toy shows up on screen, I'm going to show a picture of the toy below. I'm a little shocked I couldn't find a playset cafe but don't worry, there's some to come.) Blair has to work very hard because her mother is sick with the crippling pale-and-weak-coughing syndrome mothers seem to get, and her little sister is still in school. As is explained later, they are a very close family, ever since Blair was discovered on the mother's doorstep as a baby.
Emily (the little sister, also adopted by this single determined mother) is very excited on this particular day in their supposed-to-be-wrong-side-of-the-tracks apartment (it's next to an inner-city track and everything, they even show the graffiti-covered trains going by) because today is the 144th Princess Procession. It's the annual day when princesses and lady royals go to Princess Charm School. Princesses, born into royalty, go to "earn their titles," and lady royals are those born commoners who go to learn to become the princesses' trusted advisors. Each year there is a lottery to choose a commoner to become a scholarship lady royal, and this year Blair is chosen, because Emily's been putting her name in for her every day for the whole year.
Blair resists going, under the argument that she doesn't belong with the other girls due to her humble appearance and her responsibilities, but she goes to Princess Charm School with the hopes of being able to afford a better life for her family. (No toys for the mom or sister, by the way.)
Oh, also because security shows up at her door the moment her winning is announced on television to take her away THAT MINUTE in her fancy carriage.
Yeah, good luck not getting killed or kidnapped riding in that thing with one security guard through this inner city you supposedly live in.
Blair is unceremoniously dropped off at Princess Charm School to make her entry needlessly I'm-the-new-girl nerve wracking. She looks up into the hallway and – wait a minute.
What the hell is this ish?
Yeah, apparently the students all have little fairy assistants flying around. These fairies all exist for the primary purpose of helping these students keep track of assignments, outfits, school functions, playing rule-breaking pranks on students... They have their own personalities but apparently don't have free will. That's... freaking creepy. And that seahorse mutant in the picture isn't even in the movie so I don't know what the HELL that is.
Well, anyway, the headmistress introduces Blair to her Personal Princess Assistant, Grace, the pink fairy who can't do her job right. I guess they gave the scholarship student the broken model. The headmistress also shows Blair parts of the school, from the old castle to the new buildings with digital classrooms, ballrooms, and a spa section. Because yeah. Mani pedis. The headmistress also witnesses the school dog, Prince, who used to belong to the royal family, knock Blair over with happiness, despite his usual shyness. She leaves Blair in Grace's hands with a warning: only 27% of lottery students make it to graduation.
To apologize for staining Blair with a cupcake, Grace shows Blair her locker. "It has everything a princess student needs! Pens, paper, makeup mirror, sparkle purse collection, and of course emergency pumps!" *clicks the heels* Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. "THEN we have your beauty supplies! Jewel-encrusted hair brushes, diamond lipstick, oh I love this perfume!" Grace throws the perfume and Blair catches it, accidentally spilling some of it on Delancey, future princess of Gardenia (the country), who hates Blair because she's a lowly commoner and "doesn't get it." (I don't get it, though, her best friend Portia is constantly high and dumb as a brick.) Delancey's mother is one of the more influential instructors at the school, related to the long-lost royal family. After chewing Blair out, she leaves her to finally change into her uniform via magic locker, which they build up as though you can buy it but apparently they never got around to actually selling. They do, however, sell the bedroom she goes to where she meets her roommates, Ilya (I think?) who's very shy and a musician, and Hadely (I think?) an outgoing positive sportswoman.
At an opening ceremony, the Headmistress explains that they have to succeed in the semester to earn "real tiaras" (they're given training tiaras in the meantime) as princesses and lady royals. Because apparently in this world "princess" is something you're born to, but you have to pass a test to actually get crowned. This is where we also get some background information: Dame Devon (Delancey's mother) is the sister-in-law to Queen Isabella, who sadly died, and she's been living in the palace ever since, getting her daughter ready as the next one in line for the throne. Hadely and Ilya tell Blair about "legends" (inappropriate word there, it's only been roughly 17 years, it's more like rumors) about how Dame Devon was a lottery winner no princess picked to be her lady royal, and Gardenia's magical crown, which glows when placed on the head of the true heir to the throne, and that Queen Isabella's daughter Sophia didn't actually die.
But time for classes! Like walking with a book on your head. Gonna be graded on that. But what's this? Dame Devon makes eye contact with Blair, gasps, and when prompted, kicks Blair out of class? And verbally tears into her? She even tries to get her expelled, but the headmistress chooses to give her tutoring instead, teaching her confidence on top of her character. (Words the headmistress is constantly using. She also quotes Eleanor Roosevelt a lot.) Yeah, 'cause those dancing and manners and poise classes are about confidence. Cue training montage. Not kidding.
Next, boy drama! The prince school students are called to help teach dancing classes, and Prince Nicholas finds Blair charming, and they exchange sarcastic quips. And breakout dance session the headmistress approves of. Scene barely lasts 3 minutes but hey! Doll!
Despite Blair's success with tutoring and princes, Dame Devon is still trying to ruin Blair's chances to graduate, so she sends Delancey's fairy to tear up Blair's, Hadely's, and Ilya's uniforms. They can't go to class without their uniforms and if they skip they get an F. But Blair remembers headmistress' Eleanor Roosevelt quotes and uses the uniform scraps to make new outfits!
(By the way, those two not-Barbies aren't even what her friends look like. One's supposed to be Asian. And those don't look like the uniforms they create. LAZY TOY MAKING)
While exploring the palace for class, they find a portrait of Queen Isabella as a princess and GASP! That's Blair! But why do they look so much alike? And GASP! A picture of the queen, king, their infant daughter, and a puppy who looks like Prince the dog! Hadley states the obvious, and Blair passes it off as crazy, but Delancey, who's listening in and hears Hadley accuse her of being in on the conspiracy of the royal baby abandoning, starts to get some serious doubts. Especially when her mother announces in front of the whole class that she, as princess, is going to bulldoze the poor section of the country (picture of Blair's house included) and replace it with parks. When Blair obviously objects, Dame Devon recommends that she leaves school and gets her family ready to move. Blair makes a run for it while class continues. She's about to leave, but gets the sense that something is wrong and decides she's going to prove her right to the throne, to save the poor section of the kingdom.
She and her roommates, on the night before coronation, make a plan to break into the palace and search for the long-missing magical crown. They're delayed by a fire drill, during which Dame Devon plants evidence accusing Blair and her roommates of stealing her jewelry, and under her direction Delancey claims to be a witness to their crime. They are detained until after the coronation ceremony, due to the lack of time beforehand for an investigation. Headmistress offers Delancey the chance to be honest about her status as witness, but Delancey (who's modified her uniform by now) is frightened and silent. BUT! Delancey acts high-and-mighty, taking the prisoners from the guard, and gives them a map to the vault where they can find the crown. Apparently she doesn't want to be crowned but somehow can't do anything herself to stop the event. Like conveniently going missing for a day or so to give the friends time.
Insert mock-Mission Impossible music. They break into the vault using Hadley's athletic skills but get locked in by Dame Devon, then use Ilya's music skill to break the code to get out again. (Oh, and a smart phone.) And Delancey prepares to be crowned with the magical crown that won't glow when it's put on her head, which... didn't Dame Devon want to PREVENT that by locking the crown away? So why let Blair break in so you could use it when you don't want it seen again? Oh whatever here's Delancey's coronation gown, which she wears while stalling for time very inefficiently, by adding to the ceremony instead of actually causing an outroar by calling out her mother or anything useful like that.
We have a final confrontation where they squabble over the crown, until it's finally in Delancey's hands, and Delancey has to choose – justice or mother? She crowns Blair, the crown does some magic BS, she gets a new outfit.
After Dame Devon gives herself away in a violent outburst to her daughter, she's arrested. Blair says literally two sentences about how she's an ordinary girl but every girl has princess potential, then chooses Delancey to be her lady royal, because she's literally the only option. Then we have a dance party. And a family reunion.
And that was Barbie Princess Charm School. I don't think I even have to describe what's wrong with the storytelling. There's barely any in it! It's marketing after marketing after marketing with no lesson, no moral. Some lines here or there about how every girl's a princess, which means absolutely nothing – no discussion of what a princess IS. The closest we get is "confidence and character," but what makes good character according to this movie? Tea sets and ballroom dancing with books on your head.
(Still the wrong uniform, lazy toy makers.)
Characters literally exist just to sell toys and barely have significant scene time, and then there are some characters that don't even get the courtesy of toys – namely Emily and mother – because they don't have fancy ball gowns. The setting has no history or taste to it, just commercialism. And there's nothing redeemable about Blair – we watch her "transform" but into what? She was already born a princess, she's just a victim of kidnapping.
I don't even know what else to say about this. Just read the above and ask yourself, where is the adventure? Nothing in here took us by surprise, had us guessing. It was formulaic, predictable, and bland. And the amount of glitter they put on it is worse – it just makes it obvious that everything here serves to sell toys and nothing more. This movie is a glorified shop window.
Do yourself a favor and stick to the earlier Barbie movies.
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