The "New Weird" is the "Current Weird"

This week I read some stories from Three Moments of an Explosion.

            The first short story, Three Moments of an Explosion, offers what I think is a really perceptive view of the future. Mieville manages to fit in a great amount of speculation into only two pages. The idea that one day even decay will be turned into advertisement was an ironic idea that I found very entertaining. One would think that no company would want to associate themselves with rot and decay, and yet it could very well be a brilliant untapped marketing idea. It’s truly a weird idea, and yet no weirder than how we advertise nowadays. Once we exhaust all the advertising space on the nonliving, perhaps we will move onto the living?

            The death defying stunt in the second section is reflective of our current adrenaline-seeking culture. This section makes you consider whether in the future, immersive fiction such as books, movies, and video games will be enough to satisfy our desires for action and adrenaline. Or, will it just never be enough until there is a chance you could literally kill yourself doing it? In this section, this adrenaline-junkie culture is still something of a counter-culture, but its intensity is clearly exponentially higher than today’s counter-cultures. What must the mainstream culture be like to induce such a frightening counter-culture?

            The horror in this story comes from the question of our unknown future. It is impossible to know what the future will be like, and this in itself is frightening. Even more frightening is the knowledge that a bad future must develop sometime in the present, and yet we are essentially powerless to change as long as we have no idea what exactly it is that leads to our downfall. The only option seems to be to sit and wait as the world gradually grows worse. Or, perhaps it has already gotten worse, and yet like the people in Three Moments of an Explosion, we just take our reality for granted.

            The second story in the collection runs even further with the theme of “fear of the unknown.” In Polynia, giant icebergs float innocuously over London. There is danger in this, and also beauty. It’s implied that the existence of the floating icebergs is a sort of karma for global warming. There is ultimately no explanation, and no resolution. The icebergs are just there one day, and they stay there. After a while, people stop questioning them, and they become a normal aspect of life.

            Similarly to the first story, this story offers a question about our present. Is there something hovering over our generation with the potential to kill us that we have gradually ignored, or accepted as a way of life? All the signs here are pointing to climate change, but it could just as well be a symbolic representation of pretty much anything.

            These stories, while discussing a future or an alternate reality, do much to comment on the present.

Eastern Vs. Western Horror

In western horror, the “horrific” element often comes from the suspense of whether a character will live or die. This concept, however, doesn’t seem to exist in the traditional Japanese horror stories recorded in Kwaidan. In Kwaidan, fate and tradition are strongly ingrained in each story. There is little that the human characters can do to change their fates; if they are fated to die, then it’s going to happen regardless of what measures are put in place to stop it. There is very little question of who is going to make it through to the end of each story. In contrast, western horror gives characters more freedom to decide their own fates. The reason for this difference has to do with the nature of the “monsters” in each genre.

The monsters of western horror are often evil without any redeemable qualities, while the monsters of eastern horror are more like forces of neutrality. Early western horror relies on the dichotomy of good and evil to create a scary situation—and the only way the protagonist can escape said situation is to choose to align himself with the “good” side. In contrast, in Kwaidan it is hard to say which characters are good and which characters are bad. There is a much greater ambiguity of good and evil in eastern horror.

While both eastern and western horror ultimately have some sort of moral, the way this moral is arrived at differs greatly between the two sides.

Vampires.... and Relationships with Vampires

In early vampire stories, such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire is exclusively depicted as a solitary monster. However, in recent vampire fiction, such as Interview with a Vampire (which I read this week), or YA novels like Twilight or Vampire Academy, the vampire is defined by his or her relationships. When this shift happened, I have no idea, but it seems to me to be the natural course for vampire canon to take. The entire concept of a vampire is based on acts of intimacy – drinking blood, taking “life,” and oftentimes seduction – so it is no surprise that vampires have been adapted in modern stories to function as commentaries on relationship dynamics.

For example, a relationship between a human and a vampire will often be some sort of commentary on power imbalance. In Interview with a Vampire, Louis has a brief “relationship” with Babette in which he heavily influences her life. Despite Louis’ good intentions, he only manages to completely destroy Babette’s life – in addition, it was his vampire nature itself that caused her ultimate downfall. Louis and Babette’s relationship was doomed to fail not only because Louis was a vampire, but because he held too much power over her.

A relationship between two or more vampires is slightly different. Since all parties involved are (assumedly) equally powerful, the relationships between vampires are based on power struggles as opposed to power imbalances. For example, the relationship between the trio of Louis, Lestat, and Claudia at first reflects a (slightly dysfunctional) family. However, as the years go by, issues of immortality and commitment begin to arise and the trio begin to fight amongst themselves for control – over each other, but also over their own selves. Who will come out on top in the end is not always clear. Interview with a Vampire was interesting to me in that it showed Louis, who essentially represents humanity and is the most human-like out of all the vampires, having his own sort of unique skill set that allowed him to hold his own in these power struggle situations.

The lone vampire is still used, but always as a villain character. The scariness of the lone vampire character comes from the fact that they don’t have any relationships – no one to teach them right from wrong, no one to show them the rules, and no one to stop them if they go too far. The lone vampire threatens the safety of grouped vampires and brings chaos where there once was order. In this way, themes from the original vampire novels continue to persevere, even while the vampire genre as a whole has changed drastically.