I want my $0 back

[intertribal]

I mentioned a while back that I got a free copy of The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, through a give-away at SF Signal.  I've finished it.  It is one of the worst books I have ever read - but maybe I'm the wrong reader for it, because I don't read the action thrillers that this thing is modeled on. 

I suspect that a lot of readers are just happy that these vampires are not Twilight vampires.  Indeed, they are unmistakably fiendish, murderous, grotesque.  They even defecate as they drain you of blood!  While I sympathize with the "finally, GORE!" crowd, these vampires aren't really vampires either.  They're more like zombies.  Can you imagine Lucy shambling down the road in a bathrobe, flailing mindlessly for anything that's got a vein available?  No.  Vampires are supposed to have some degree of charisma, some amount of style - I'm the person who thinks Herzog's Nosferatu is one of the most gorgeous and romantic movies ever.  They are not supposed to be a sexless horde.  Yes, The Strain's monsters suck blood.  But they fit the zombie category better.  Same with the vampires in the I Am Legend movie.*

Onto the thing that really bothered me.  More than the bad writing and unconvincing battle scenes (several Amazon reviewers mention the improbability of an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor with broken hands being the kick-ass action hero that he is), more than the repetition of vampires attacking their neighbors and turtle-slow pacing: I accurately predicted what would happen to the main characters. 

The main character (MC) is a "handsome," "genius" CDC dude who's in the middle of a divorce.  He really, really, really wants to be around his son Zach, who is just like him, brilliant and intense, etc.  Unfortunately, his beautiful ex-wife (who was the one calling MC a "handsome" "genius"), who never understood him and was always second to his work, wants custody of Zach.  And she has a new boyfriend who MC thinks is trying to replace him in Zach's life.  New boyfriend is pathetic (works at Sears) and sniveling.  Also, MC has a new love interest, who also works at the CDC (has the potential to understand his brilliance!) and gets along with Zach.  

So I'm like, hmm.  Clearly new boyfriend is going to die a horrible death.  Clearly Zach is going to end up with his rightful father.  If not for the new love interest, ex-wife would also end up with the MC, but given the new love interest, she will also die to make way for the MC's new and improved family.  I knew this because it is the plot offered up by disaster movies such as 2012 and War of the Worlds**.

I was exactly right.  Not only did new boyfriend turn into a vampire, providing the MC with the opportunity to stab him repeatedly (I think this was actually narrated in the book as stabstabstab), but the ex-wife was turned into a vampire who now wants to steal away Zach, the bitch!  One of the final lines of the book?  "The custody battle for Zach was not over."  She escapes to presumably reappear in the second book, as the MC laments that she will "haunt Zach forever."  And the girlfriend?  She stays behind in the final battle to take care of Zach. 

This kind of thing really bothers me, and I'm trying to figure out why.  For one I'm not sure about a custody battle subsuming the end of human life in New York City.  And on a basic level, it seems unrealistic as hell.  Disasters - or genocides - are not typically wish fulfillment scenarios (imagine if instead of vampires, people were being annihilated by an army instead; imagine the outrage that would ensue from trotting out genocide as an excuse for the main character to get whatever he wants [assuming he's seen as righteous and not a war profiteer, of course]).  Then there's the nasty little "why are you so special that the disaster works out aces for you, when everyone else is dying?  why should I be happy for you?" feeling, like it just doesn't seem fair, or justified.  But of course who am I to criticize what someone else wants to do with their story?  Why do I even want stories to be fair/justified?  I wouldn't care if the MC wasn't also this heroic figure that we're supposed to cheer for - I love to hate Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22, for example - but this book is written in such a way that there's no negotiating what side you're on, no unreliable narrator, no perspective except for the MC's.  Maybe I'd prefer it if the MC was scheming to use the vampire apocalypse to get Zach, get rid of his ex-wife, impress his girlfriend.  Etc.  Sure, he'd be a dickface.  But he'd be more interesting.  It would seem more accurate.  The outcome would not be inexplicable. 

And then there's the whole Hooray for Patriarchy aspect of it all.  Mothers are pretty much all doomed in The Strain, and by doomed I mean "turned evil."  There are two female characters of any importance - the ex-wife and the girlfriend, both defined entirely by their relationship to the MC - and the ex-wife goes bad, of course, while the girlfriend is billed as this sort of tough, smart counterpart to the MC but is really just the MC's toadie and on-call baby sitter.  She mostly stands back and screams in horror.  Two other female characters at least appear repeatedly: a blood-sucking lawyer turned vampire who eats her neighbor's kids (and then hunts her own kids) and just wants to get rich off lawsuits, and an unstable OCD-afflicted housewife who kills herself when her husband becomes a vampire (because she needs him to survive).  Contrast with the only vampire who shows any degree of complexity and morality - OCD housewife's husband, who nobly chains himself up in the shed so that he won't hurt his family.  D'awww.  Maybe this would make a good Father's Day present or something.  Certainly not a good Mother's Day present.  A father's love is protective, self-sacrificing, virtuous.  A mother's love is possessive, harmful/deadly, frightening.  What the fuck, you know?

* I suspect that somebody who's well-versed in the I Am Legend story could argue that it influenced The Strain, but that somebody is not me.
** To give W of the Worlds credit, though, it doesn't kill off mom's new boyfriend (or mom, but mom only dies if there's someone to take her place anyway).  I also appreciate W of the Worlds for clearly showing Tom Cruise's character's flaws - i.e., showing why his wife got a divorce, why he doesn't have custody.  In the case of 2012, though, mom's new boyfriend actually steps aside and then dies so that the "real family" can be together. 

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, did Steven Spielberg direct that? Because that's the level of Womanhate I associate with Spielberg. WTF.

Certainly not a good Mother's Day present. A father's love is protective, self-sacrificing, virtuous. A mother's love is possessive, harmful/deadly, frightening..

WHY is this so common WHY? C.S. Lewis had some of this. Motherlove is horrible, gooey, a deformed thing. But Fatherlove. Well, it's divine, isn't it. (And I am a fan of C.S. Lewis, not a hater, fwiw.) Is it all down to people needing to break free and come into their own in their teen years or something? And so having to make motherlove seem monstrous?

And the whole idea that there's a "right" family and a "wrong" family, please. Dad could love New Girlfriend and New Girlfriend could be awesome, and that still might not be the family that Son would want to live with. Or Son might like to live with Dad even if he doesn't have a girlfriend. A kid's wants aren't always going to align with the "best from a fiscal and long-term stability" point of view, you know? Maybe the dude working at Sears really gets son's addiction to WoW.

And the girlfriend screaming like a little sissy? Please!!

I'm so outraged now, I'm gonna have to go get a cup of tea and fume.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Spielberg did W of the Worlds, but not 2012 (that was Roland Emmerich). Care to expand on the Spielberg Womanhate thing?

It could very well be Freudian, or something. I think it's the supposed gooeyness of motherlove, you know - it seems kind of mushy and sticky and messy, whereas fatherlove is like... rigorous and clean and upstanding. I think it's almost more along the lines of: mothers suffocate (and raise weak little boys), and fathers inspire/serve as role models/make a man out of boys, etc. My mother has talked some about this too. Plus, you know, women are monsters, etc.

Ha, yeah. What bothered me intensely about this book also was that Zach the Son barely ever expressed any affection for his mother, and the authors take pains to point out how well he gets along with dad's New GF. And even the Son's internal dialogue is about how pathetic mom's New BF is.

The whole thing is just... bile-inducing. Every time the main characters took center stage (as opposed to the side/secondary characters who'd appear just to kill each other off), my reading enjoyment would just plummet.

Oh, you would love how Zach the Son

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Just ignore the last sentence, there, lol.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

K--only saw this after posting :-P

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

It was actually the thing about how he doesn't show affection for his mom. It just got absorbed by another paragraph.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I would love how Zach the Son what?!

Re: Spielberg, I'm only talking about the movies from Long Ago, but man, they were enough to turn me off him permanently: ET, in which there were two cool, imaginative boychildren and one little girl child whose only idea of fun was to dress ET up like a doll (why couldn't she be playing pattycake with him? Or taking him for walks? Or giving him tea? But no, in Spielberg's mind, the only thing girls do is dress dolls.) Then there was the wife in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, who didn't **get** that her husband was being called by aliens--and it was only the guy who got to go flying off with them. (I really felt sorry for all the people who didn't get to fulfill their alien-programed desire to go meet the aliens. Seemed so unfair that only what, two? Do.) And then there was Goonies, in which, again, the boys are into adventures and stuff and the girls are only into icky-poo things like kissing.

What else. I mean, I didn't even like his version of The Color Purple, and it's pretty hard to make THAT story antifeminist. But in some scenes the women, again, just come off as gooey and pathetic. (Though, to be fair, the strong female characters come off as strong. But it's The Color Purple; if all the men are bad, pretty much, then you have to make some okay female characters.)

I never saw Schindler's List...

But it seems like you've seen a few of his later movies. So: Are boys and young men creative, exploratory, open to new experiences? Are women interested only in marriage, boyfriends, and social status or material goods?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, for me, Spielberg is backed up a bit by Jurassic Park. The female scientist Ellie is the one that wants kids, that is true, but she's not only interested in kids - she's also a paleo-botanist and cares about what's making the triceratops sick and angry about funding for the dig and reasonably tough (when I was a kid I loved the part where the old white billionaire dude is like, "I should be the one to fix the breakers... because I'm a... and you're a..." and Ellie's like, "Look. We can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back."). And then the little girl is basically only interested in being a vegetarian and a computer hacker (and saves everybody else's ass once, saves her brother...).

The Lost World... is also backed up by Sarah Harding, who's way, waaaay more intrepid than any of the men (arguably to a fault). The little girl doesn't seem to care about anything in that movie except gymnastics (?) and survival. She's kind of wallpaper though. Don't remember Artificial Intelligence too well, but I do remember that the fundamental, pure relationship in that one is between robot boy and his human "mom."

We should just not discuss Indiana Jones. Whole big can of worms with me... but the gender dysmorphism of those movies is wretched. I actually broke up with a guy because he preferred Willie (Temple of Doom) to Marion (Raiders - and even she wasn't great). Sort of kidding. Spielberg also did Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, which I consider some of the biggest odes to militaristic patriarchy... ever. So. ET I just found boring (didn't notice gender dynamics TBH), but Close Encounters... yeah, that ground my gears. But you know, men are space-farers, women are too emotional for all that!

There was this great discussion (http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/short-story-club-trembling-blue-stars/) on Torque Control last year about this - I think you'd get a kick out of it.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

That was the weird thing about JP. He flipped the characters of the kids from the original story. It was the boy who was interested in dinos.

But yeah, the absolute worst thing that Spielberg did with that fourth Indiana Jones movie to exemplify his daddy/mommy issues was to introduce the character of "Mutt". The whole story arc made better sense to have Indiana find out he had a long-lost daughter, who would have been more like Marian. Spielberg/Lucas botched it, and together, Lucas and Spielberg hung up their sign over the door to the treehouse which read "Girls Stay Out!" What a couple of losers.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yep, I found it strange when I read the book JP - but I think Spielberg made the right call on that one. I thought Book Lex was sort of a non-entity. And I liked that in the movie, both kids were essentially smart nerds about different things.

I never thought about a long-lost daughter, but yeah, that would have made for a more interesting evolution.

Torque Control

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, that discussion was very interesting. And the story sounds dreadful.

Re: Torque Control

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read it. Annoying stuff, and rightly or wrongly, it's because of stories like that that I don't read SF.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong that I now want to change my LJ name to "stabstabstab"?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

LOL!! No. No, it's not.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Poop. Beat me to it.

This comment is full of neologisms.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Disaster as MANwish fulfillment is one of my more recent rabid hatedoms. But, gods, it is rabid. Particularly the riffing on The Road primacy of Father!Love vs. mother love. It makes me want to write a story and kill the little boy. Or kill the man right off. Yes, I like that better.

I almost want to rewrite Hare Water out of hate. I won't, but the idea is attractive right now.

But that wasn't the thing on which I wanted to comment. The thing that caught my attention is a thought about vampires that I would like to echo - they should be both grotesque and charming. They should be a trap that you know is a trap, something that, as they are speaking to you, display obvious good reasons that you shouldn't be letting them to talk. And you should be attracted and repulsed, both in equal measure, at the same time. Not because of Sexy!Danger, but because they are horrible as they are charismatic.

Re: This comment is full of neologisms.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

No, I'd kill the little boy. Kill the seed. If the man's killed off then he's just martyring himself. I think you discussed this at some point in your LJ :P

Yep, I'm with you on vampires. I mean, the problem with Twilight is that they're not menacing/dangerous AT ALL. But the problem with these Strain vampires is that they're not charming at all! Of course, I do think to some extent authors should be free to reinterpret myths as they like... but at the same time I also appreciate an author staying with the basic idea of a mythological creature and putting it in a different context (From Dusk Till Dawn), or using different characters (Let the Right One In). Otherwise it's like... calling 'em vampires seems to be an attempt to cash in on people's familiarity/expectations.

Re: This comment is full of neologisms.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Also, on the MANwish (MANwich?) fulfillment thing: I suspect this hits the same vibes that inspire the psycho, anti-government militias and survivalists out there that make me want to hide in my basement. I mean, there is a palpable, creepy sort of nihilistic sexism running through some post-apocalyptic stuff, especially older stuff (actually thinking of William Hope Hodgson here, even though I like his "House on the Borderland" very much). Like with all of society's stupid institutions gone, humans can return to the natural way, the way "we were meant to be": men as unabashed patriarchs, women as breeders. *vomits*

Re: This comment is full of neologisms.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

And then that one step further into Gor.

*Also vomits*

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I agreee, it's an awful book and the few workable ideas just highlight how poorly executed they are, mostly due to the Hooray for Patriarchy! aspect and florid but lazy writing.

I hoped it might be good pulp as the first section with the plane was a clever update of the deserted ship from Dracula and somewhat suspenseful. I suspect they wrote that part to get the book deal, then phoned in the rest.

The hype for this book is it's a new twist on vampires which is gritter and defies conventions, but as you point out, it's utterly conventional mostly due to HfP! elements. Dr. Hero Scientist and his two motives/rewards (hot babe and son) are clearly immune to hazard in this installment, because he's The Guy. Were this at all interested in messing with conventions, he'd be dead halfway through and maybe the colorful minority would be the only one standing.

Also: the idea of vampires as parasites is hardly new and done with actual researched plausibility, interesting twists and less sexism (though still some, depending on your POV) in the YA novel Peeps. It also manages to cram all its thrills into a single book of 312 pages of 12 point plus text.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the part with the plane was ok, although it immediately reminded me of that pilot episode of Fringe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_%28Fringe%29) Even at that point, though, I could not handle the info-dumping about what the parts of the plane look like, what this person's job entails. I just can't handle that kind of writing.

That's something that I meant to mention - Gus was the only character I actually liked and wanted to follow. I wish this could have been all about him, in fact. Hell, he even ends up in a more interesting place than the others.

Ah, yes, Scott Westerfeld. Someone I've heard good things about, but never read.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Because there are few things more icky than people's divorce-driven revenge fantasies?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is probably true.