Anyone who’s seen Guillermo del Toro’s recent movies—Pan’s Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies (and a two-part The Hobbit on the way)—probably expect anything spawned by that mind to be boldly imaginative. Del Toro takes risks and he paints large while paying attention to the most meticulous details.

So when del Toro teamed up with Chuck Hogan to write a vampire trilogy, fans understandably expected something crazy, crazy, crazy good.

With the first part of that trilogy, The Strain, fans do indeed get something good—but it lacks the crazy, crazy, crazy.

The book starts with the arrival a transcontinental jet at JFK. The plane stops dead on the tarmac. Air traffic controls and emergency responders can’t figure out what’s going on, so everyone goes into terrorist-response mode.

Enter Dr. Eph Goodweather and his assistant Nora Martinez of the CDC. They arrive as part of the response team in case of any biological threats. Goodweather is the first to realize, after a series of inexplicable events (of course), that what they face is an infection far worse than any mere virus.

Think “Vampire Apocalypse.”

Yeah, instead of a plague of zombies taking over the world, the premise del Toro and Hogan set up is that a vampire plague will take over the world.

Vampire plague aside, kudos go out to the authors for taking a radically different approach to vampirism. It’s so radically different, though, that die-hard vampire fans may have a tough time reconciling the authors’ take with their own thoughts about what a good, old-fashioned vampire is supposed to be.

Love their vision or hate it, del Toro and Hogan have at least one thing going for them: These are no mamby-pamby cute, sexy vampires who live tortured, tragic lives. The vampire lord of The Strain, Sardu, is nasty, calculating, and cruel. Whereas even Dracula had a little charm, Sardu comes across more like Max Shreck’s walking cadaver, Nosferatu—but bigger and meaner. And no sexiness.

Sardu has a backstory that might lay the seeds for sympathy in one of the subsequent volumes, but for now, he’s The Big Evil.

And therein lies one of the problems with The Strain. The book tries—not especially hard—to rise above genre fiction and be more of a mainstream thriller, but it just can’t quite break free of the trappings of horror. Sardu, for instance, remains a one-dimensional horror. The book’s central mystery bedevils everyone until a wise old man, Abraham Van Helsing–er, actually, Abraham Setrakian–shows up deus ex machinas-like with the answers. No one believes the hero until it’s too late.

Fortunately, the book avoids gratuitous depictions of graphic violence and focuses instead on mood and tone, which are big plusses (and del Toro trademarks), and the book is paced exceptionally well. But the imaginative firepower that one might expect from del Toro never really explodes with full force, and that keeps the book from becoming crazy, crazy, crazy good.

Is it fair to judge the book that way? I’d say, “No,” except splashed right across the top of the book is the phrase “From the creator of the Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth.” If the publisher wants to pimp that out, then del Toro has to live and die by the plug.

But judged on its own merits and not by the del Toro baggage a reader might bring to the book, The Strain certainly provides lots of chills, some believable characters, and an interesting premise. Those things alone make it a worthwhile read. The Strain doesn’t have to be crazy, crazy, crazy good to still be good.

Will del Toro and Hogan’s vision of vampirism catch on? I still don’t know if I’m sold (although, I admit, I’m looking forward to the next installment of the trilogy, slated for 2010). But one thing’s for sure: it sure beats teen heartthrob vampirism. These guys make the undead terrifying, just they way they should be.

Horror of the “gothic” variety that occupied so much of the conversation between Byron and the Shelleys (these would be the conversations that ultimately gave rise to Frankenstein) has traditionally traded in some easily recognizable tropes. Among the most common are your haunted places. Swamps and moors are always a little scary. Graveyards and crypts, of course. Transylvania.

And then there’s haunted houses. Dark mansions, castles on top of hills. Abandoned homes where terrible things once happened. Subdivisions built on top of Indian burial grounds. And so on. All these are other places – places off the beaten path, away from the streetlights, places removed from the guaranteed security of the normal. The message is clear, whether spoken or not: stick to convention – in place, in dress, in action and deed – and all will be well. Stray from the well-lit path and bad things can happen.

Not all artists bent on scaring the shizizzle out of us see the world in quite those terms, though. In particular, Tim Burton seems to see the conventional as a threat to bore us to death, and he finds redemption and a powerful beauty in the darkness. David Lynch is equally suspicious of normalcy, only whereas Burton finds it mainly soulless and empty Lynch sees it as sinister, a locus of profound menace.

(Note: As I’m neither a film studies scholar nor a real expert on either auteur, feel free to jump in with insights, arguments or elaborations of your own.)

Burton’s most memorable assault on convention came early in his career with the woefully underappreciated (at the time) Edward Scissorhands. All the houses are the same in ways that the neighborhood’s vibrant pastel palette from Hell can’t quite disguise, and the action illustrates the mind-numbing homogeneity of life in the ‘burbs. This is Burton’s vision of normalcy, and while it’s shiny and orderly and clean and even pretty in its own way, it’s a life without depth or texture. The visual field, like the emotional and spiritual landscape, is perfectly flat and two-dimensional.

Emotional, social and moral meaning enter this world only when the Frankenstein’s monster of the story – Edward, the freak from the haunted mansion on the hill, appropriately enough – finds his way to town. As it turns out, the construct/”monster” is creativity embodied, and for a time he brings the community novelty and joy. Then convention turns its ugly gaze on him, and the horror story begins a the thuggery of normalcy insists on driving out that which it does not recognize.

The world of darkness and death is a lot more interesting in films like The Corpse Bride. And who better to direct Batman Returns, a film where workaday Gotham is largely oblivious to the fact that its own dark spawn are waging a battle both for the soul of the city and for their own souls, which have been twisted by the city.

There is salvation in the oeuvre of Tim Burton. There is redemption. There is joy and happiness and beauty. But they’re not to be found in the places that most people look for them.

David Lynch’s cosmography is a little less hopeful. Whether examining a small town or a booming metropolis, he can’t help noticing that there’s always a seamy underbelly. Twin Peaks is an idyllic little town where you can always find friendly folks and a good cup of coffee (and hot). Fayetteville, NC (where Blue Velvet was set) may not be anybody’s idea of idyllic or beautiful, but it’s pretty “normal,” as America goes. And Big Tuna, Texas is apparently so pathetically dull that, in the estimation of one Wild at Heart character, the repulsive Bobby Peru is just about the most exciting thing to ever happen there.

But Twin Peaks has an evil spirit problem. The depiction of the debauchery loose after dark in Fayetteville was such that Lynch was allegedly encouraged never to come back. Willem Dafoe’s Bobby Peru is about as appalling a human being as you’re likely to see in a theater near you. And Lynch’s big cities are just about as uplifting as his small towns. The more normal and unassuming a place, the more likely it is to be haunted – either by the darkly supernatural (a frequent an element in these narratives) or by real people who are even worse.

To summarize, Lynch has a butt-ugly view of big towns, small towns, and one would presume everything in between. Hopeful types unwitting enough to wander into one of his films are rarely given anything to feel optimistic about (although I suppose you could argue that the vision at the end of Wild at Heart affords a bit of really confusing closure for Twin Peaks fans). At times it seems like he actually hates the people watching his work (that’s certainly the case in the scene that closes the final episode of the Twin Peaks television show), and at a minimum he has no qualms whatsoever about betraying the implicit trust between storyteller and audience that most American moviegoers take for granted.

In other words, normal Americans live in a horrorscape, and the best they can probably hope for is to live out their lives blissfully unaware of it, because ignorance is as close to happiness as they’re likely to get.

So, Happy Halloween to all of our normal, regular, happy American readers. As night falls on Samhain and the veil between our world and the world of the dead grows thin, perhaps you can take some secret pleasure in the idea that, in the estimation of two of our greatest filmmakers, your lives are as haunted as those who live in any village in any dark corner of Transylvania…

Tonight, tomorrow you will see people dressed up in their Halloween finest.  For your viewing pleasure I present others who are dressed up in their, well, regular party clothes.  But it might as well be for Halloween, right?

The following content is NSFP/W (what does NSFP mean?).  Click below for more….

Eden Muse in rainbow fashions!

Allen Faulkner.  And yes, those are hooks holding that metal contraption in place.

Ms. Easy sparks it up!

Quill the Clown as a barcode

Zombie: Don’t worry. Only people with brains
get eaten. You’re safe.

They aren’t sexy. They aren’t romantic. They aren’t tragically doomed.

In fact, they’re ravenous, violent, and virtually unstoppable. They ooze all sorts of bodily fluids. And they want to eat your brains.

So how come zombies are getting such mainstream media treatment?

As a culture, we love and loath things that go bump in the night. We have to have boogeymen, for all sorts of reasons. Because they touch deep psychological fears in profound ways, our boogeymen serve as a kind of moral check on behavior that laws and rules just sometimes can’t. At the other end of the spectrum, we seem to have a lot of fun being scared. Boogeymen do that for us, too.

For centuries, vampires used to serve that function. Bram Stoker’s Dracula serves as the very best example, but vampires existed in folklore long before Stoker immortalized the legends on paper. Fewer things unnerve the living than the dead, which is also why fewer things have been more taboo.

Since Stoker’s 1888 novel, vampires have enjoyed a rich literary tradition (and the web is full of armchair essayists trying to sound erudite by expounding on that long literary tradition). But then along came Anne Rice’s vampire Lestat, a tragic, sultry, sexy fellow who broke nearly every vampire stereotype. Lestat made vampires sympathetic—which was a huge game-changer for the genre. As a result of that impact, Entertainment Weekly recently named Lestat as the greatest vampire ever. (The Bela Lagosi fan in me nearly choked since all vampires have ever been measured against the stereotype Lagosi established.)

Since Lestat, vampires have made a smooth transformation from being terrifying to being sexy. The fact that every teenage girl in America now wants to be Edward Cullen’s undead bride serves as perfect proof. (Guys aren’t immune, either. Check out Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies if you think female vampires aren’t hot.) I applaud Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan for trying to reverse that trend in their new novel, The Strain, which tries to make vampires creepy again—but I fear they’re fighting a losing battle.

And so, zombies have shambled in to take the place vampires once occupied in those dark, irrational corners of our psyches. Zombies now serve as that psychological boogeyman that vampires, through their own sheer attractiveness, can no longer serve as.

There’s one key distinction, though. Vampires represented a certain kind of calculating evil. They made conscious choices about who they preyed on and why, which seemed unnerving and sadistic. It’s evil of the nastiest kind.

Traditionally, we think of zombies as evil, too (Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is a perfect example)—but in fact, zombies are mindless engines of hunger-driven carnage. Sure, they’re bloody, gory, disfigured, disheveled messes, and they act with single-mindless purpose to wipe out people. But they do it because that’s what zombies are wired do, not because they make intentional choices about it. There’s no willful violation of moral codes because zombies have no will. They are essentially forces of nature. A zombie basically represents Jack London’s impassive hand of Nature writ large and ugly.

In that sense, then, is the zombie any different than the financial collapse or the random act of violence or climate change? You can’t reason with those things any more than you can reason with a zombie. And when people feel as though they have no control over a situation, it shakes them in ways few things can. A zombie represents that same feeling, amplified to the Nth degree.

That’s a feeling most people can relate to these days. Zombies are tapping into the cultural zeitgeist.

Pop culture has latched onto that the way a zombie latches onto flesh—and fans have been feasting on it, too. It takes something terrifying and makes it fun (even being scared at the movies, even being creeped out by a book, are still basically forms of fun). As the trend continues, zombies actually become “safer” because people become desensitized. Believe it or not, that’s another reason why pop culture latches onto something like zombies: The process serves as a sociological “coping method.”

Eventually, Zombies will lose the primal power they’ve had (the same way vampires have). Their popularity will diminish, too, although it’ll never go away.

Who knows what’s lurking under the bed to eventually take their place.

Here is my next entry in the “Phone Artwork” series.  Again, the theme here is that everything from start to finish (including taking the original picture) was done on a mobile device.  And by mobile device I mean the device you use, amongst other things,  as a telephone.

Got zombies on the brain? Well, it’s better than having them eat your brain, so that’s a plus.

Zombies are a hot pop-cultural property these days. Woody Harrelson’s buddy movie Zombieland has been eating up theaters. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies brought Jane Austen back from the dead to become one of the year’s publishing phenoms. Marvel Comics is now on their umpteeth iteration of a Marvel Zombies franchise that, pardon the pun, doesn’t want to die.

While zombies don’t have the long literary tradition of, say, vampires, there’s been plenty of recent zombie-lit out there to feed your brain. Here are a few recent favorites:

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith—This really is Pride & Prejudice with random zombie mayhem inserted into the text, although the zombie stuff is more background noise than anything else. The story will be going along just like normal, someone will encounter a zombie and slay it in a demonstration of impressive fighting skills, and then the story will continue along as though nothing happened. There are lots of ninja references, too, because of course ninjas and zombies are like peas in a pod. If you go into it knowing the book’s a lark, you’ll do fine, although the joke does get old about two-thirds of the way through the book (or perhaps sooner).

Zombie Notes: A Study Guide to the Best in Undead Literary Classics by Laurie Rozakis—If Undead Lit is your thing, then this study guide is a must. “[M]any details about classic literature get hazy with the passage of time,” Rozakis explains. Her book looks at “the effect of the undead on great books,” such as A Zombie Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Moby-Dick, Zombie Whale by Herman Melville, and A Tale of Two Cities Overrun with Zombies by Charles Dickens. Yeah, the premise is an obvious rip-off of P&P&Z, but like zombies themselves, some ideas just never stay dead.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks, illustrated by Ibraim Roberson— The book’s teaser says it all, really: “They’re coming & they’re hungry.” A follow-up to Brooks’ seminal and deadpan-funny Zombie Survival Guide, this book puts the “graphic” in graphic novel. Ostensibly a book that recounts major zombie outbreaks through history, this book is really just an excuse for gruesome zombie carnage. Think axes, skulls, brains, and intestines in meticulously detailed black and white. (As a side note, Brooks’ novel World War Z is brilliant modern classic that recounts the world’s fall during a zombie apocalypse.)

Patient Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel by Jonathan Maberry—“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world,” says Maberry’s hard-knuckle hero. “And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.” So what’s wrong with the world? How about zombies as weapons of mass destruction? Maberry tries to do a little too much by tackling an ambitious premise and establishing characters for what he obviously hopes will be a new series. (“A” Joe Ledger novel? C’mon, it’s “the only” Joe Ledge novel!”) Still, it’s a thriller of the first order. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger’s strike team from Predator combined with Dirty Harry’s attitude, sprinkled with new, gritty James Bond sensibility. With zombies.

PLUS: Don’t forget about Zombie Haiku!

The other day our friend MentalSwitch offered up a delightful little post entitled “Hello Nurse!” It featured a photo of an attractive model dressed as … well, hell, rather than me trying to describe the shot and failing miserably, why don’t you just click on over there and see for yourself. But before you do, please be forewarned that the photo is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!!

Ahem. Well, actually, its worksafeness (or unworksafeness thereof) became the topic of some discussion here. Initially the pic was posted without a cut, meaning that the image itself would appear on the front page of S&R. Later, after some complaint and brief deliberations, we moved it behind a cut with the dreaded “NSFW” tag, indicating that the content would most certainly get you fired if it were accidentally viewed by any decent, God-Fearing American^® co-worker. And since way too many of our readers work in places where others might be looking over their shoulders, this was a practical concern. As one colleague put it – and we’ll let that colleague name himself if he wants to – “if the wrong person had walked behind me with that image up on my screen, I could have been walked out the door that day, no appeal.”

Such is the reality for millions and millions and millions of people living here in the Land of the Free^®, the Home of the Brave^® and the Birthplace of the Religious Freedom^®.

As badly as it griped me to see such a fine, artistic photo hidden behind a cut like some tawdry porno you’d pay a Times Square carney a dollar to see (price adjusted for inflation), I also had no interest in seeing any of our intelligent, hard-working readers escorted out of their places of employment at gunpoint.

However, my colleague Dr. Slammy suggested that the all-too-standard NSFW tag – the Modern American Internet’s version of the Scarlet Letter – was a lingering stain on the credibility of the artist, and in due course I (apparently being ill of will and sharp of tongue) was enlisted to pen what you may take as an official Scholars & Rogues policy position.

Briefly stated, when you put an artist behind the Scarlet NSFW, you convey a general social verdict that shame should be attached to the work. It is not fit for general viewing; it is likely to be deemed offensive to some people; and those who choose to click the link, well, that’s between them and Jesus.

It does not matter whether such a judgment is reasonable. For instance, in the case of “Hello Nurse,” what really is there to be scadalized by? Let’s take a close look:

What is the supposed objection? The subject is of consenting age. No aberrant sexual acts are depicted. Hell, she’s not even partially naked. No vajayjay showing. No boobies. She’s not fondling herself (at the moment, anyway). There is an aspect of the erotic in her pose, of course, but let’s be clear here: whatever obscenity might arise from the communication of this image lies entirely within the mind of the viewer.

Goddammit, people, you can see more NSFWing imagery any goddamned night of the week on any goddamned channel on television during goddamned prime time. If this is NSFW, then the publishers of every fashion magazine available in America need to be hung in the public square right fucking now!!!

Oh, I’m sorry – is my invective NSFW?

It is true, as another of my unnamed colleagues pointed out, that good art seeks to provoke. MentalSwitch isn’t an especially in-your-face artist, but it is also true that his work routinely challenges convention in ways that are guaranteed to provoke, and it’s not hard to conclude who the targets of his critiques are. As he explains in the notes accompanying a portrait of “Lizzy”:

If all Christians were like this guy then the world would be a better place. On the other hand, if all Christians were like this guy we wouldn’t even recognize Christianity anymore….

Well played, that.

Welcome to 17th Century Salem, folks. Welcome to neo-Puritan America, a land where dismemberments and flying body parts and mushroom clouds and elected officials intentionally and strategically lying to their constituents are cool but a woman wearing four times more clothing than every teenaged girl around every swimming pool in the United States is NSFW. Because she looks suspiciously like she might enjoy sex in a non-missionary position. And sex is not to be imagined. Pictures that might make us think of sex are not to be condoned.

In neo-Puritan America, millions of people wake up every morning praying that the Lord will afford them an opportunity during the day to be offended. Hypocritical offense is next to godliness and the Constitution apparently has a clause about the right not to be exposed to anything you don’t like. Lawyers will be summoned. Human Resources policies will be invoked. Sinners will be terminated. And Hester Prynne will have a red NSFW branded on her twitchy, hellbound little ass, BY GOD!

In case the theme of my rant hasn’t yet made itself apparent, the Scarlet NSFW brands the wrong person. Those whose visions challenge are to be positioned behind the screen of shame, while those who are afraid of ideas have their narrow prejudices reinforced by official policies and unspoken self-righteous bullying.

We will know America has finally attained a measure of enlightenment when the reverse of those statements is true.

In the meantime, I mentioned something about a policy, so here it is. Since, as I noted above, we have no interest in damaging the careers of our readers, and since we’re smart enough to know the reality of many workplaces, we’ll be placing things that we believe might offend the average granny-panty neo-Puritan behind a cut. But when we do, understand that it is not the artist whom we are indicting. It’s the Scarlet Letter crowd.

In addition, don’t be surprised to see NSFW replaced by NSFP – Not Safe For Puritans. (My original idea, Not Safe For Repressive Puritan Asshat Jesus Nazis, was deemed a bit unwieldy.)

At Scholars & Rogues, we don’t shrink from challenges. We’re not kept up at night by the unconventional. And we are absolutely, positively not afraid of ideas.

And we will not quietly pander to those who are.

Edgar Allan Poe is – despite or perhaps because of  his proclivity for writing scary stories – one of our most beloved writers. Chief among Poe’s charms for the reader is his ability to grab us with a riveting opening line. As proof of Poe’s rare talent for the stunning opener, here for your Halloween Arts Week pleasure is a sample of great opening lines from the master of terror….From “The Tell Tale Heart”:

“TRUE! – nervous – very, very nervous I am and had been and am; but why will you say I am mad?”

From “The Fall of the House of Usher”:

“DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

From “The Pit and The Pendulum”:

“I WAS sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.”

From “The Black Cat”:

“FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.”

From “The Premature Burial”:

“THERE are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust.”

From “The Masque of the Red Death”:

“THE “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood.”

From “Hop-Frog”:

“I NEVER knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking.”

From “Ligeia”:

“I Cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering.”

From “The Cask of Amontillado”:

“THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could ; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

From “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”:

“‘_CON tal que las costumbres de un autor_,’ says Don Thomas de las Torres, in the preface to his “Amatory Poems” _’sean puras y castas, importo muy poco que no sean igualmente severas sus obras’_ — meaning, in plain English, that, provided the morals of an author are pure personally, it signifies nothing what are the morals of his books. We presume that Don Thomas is now in Purgatory for the assertion.”

I’ve said nothing of Poe’s poetry, at least a line or two of which almost all of us know. The opening of “The Raven” may be the most famous opening lines in American poetry:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore–
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
‘Tis some visiter,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door–
Only this and nothing more.’”

But here are a couple of others you may not know that also meet E.A.P.’s high standard for opening lines:

From “The City in the Sea”:

“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne/In a strange city lying alone /Far down within the dim West/Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best/Have gone to their eternal rest.”

From “Ulalume”:

“The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere -
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:”

You can read all of these stories and poems plus many more at this excellent Poe site.

I WAS sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

When most of us think of Halloween movies, we tend to think of horror flicks, psychological thrillers, or bizarre mind-benders. The Nightmare on Elm Street, for example, or What Lies Beneath, or 12 Monkeys. But since 1993, a stop-motion animation musical has become as much a part of American Halloween culture as any horror franchise.

Boys and girls of every age
wouldn’t you like to see something strange
Come with us and you will see,
this our town of Halloween

So begins the opening song of what is perhaps the most misunderstood Christmas movie of all time, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Yes, I’m serious. For all the references to pumpkins, death, trick-or-treating, and the Boogie Man, The Nightmare Before Christmas is actually a Christmas movie. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last 16 years and are unfamiliar with the plot, here’s the basics (spoiler warning).

• Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King and unofficial leader of Halloweentown, finds his annual Halloween hijinks unfulfulling.
• Jack discovers “Christmastown” and decides to claim Christmas as his holiday instead of/in addition to Halloween.
• Jack convinces the residents of Halloweentown to help him, but Sally thinks that something is horribly wrong.
• Sally tries to convince Jack to abandon his plans for Christmas, but after he doesn’t, she has a premonition of just how bad it’s going to go.
• Jack has Santa Claws Claus kidnapped, and he starts delivering the presents that Halloweentown made for Christmas around the world.
• Jack has an attack of conscience, rescues Santa, and restores Christmas to its rightful place.

This isn’t a plot of a horror flick, or a thriller, or even a brain-bender. It’s a plot of redemption, of discovery, of caring. The two main characters each have a conscience, even if one of them doesn’t recognize it until it’s almost too late. Halloween movies view conscience and caring as a weakness that get you killed, imprisoned, or driven insane. It’s Christmas movies that illustrate the power of caring for your fellow people (although perhaps “people” shouldn’t apply to the various residents of Halloweentown).

And there’s no such thing as redemption in a Halloween movie – you survive and drive off/kill the monster, or you die a gruesome death. Redemption and it’s related theme of renewal are cultural themes of Christmas. Christians say that Christ was born to save us, and he saved us through his sacrifice and resurrection, not with a chainsaw or by traveling through time to harvest virus samples. And the Winter Solstice, the darkest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, presages the return of the sun and the renewal of the earth and life itself.

That’s not to say that Nightmare doesn’t have Halloween elements, of course. It does, after all, take place in Halloweentown and is largely populated with a cast of Halloween miscreants (vampires, witches, a mad scientist, scarecrows, monsters, and the aforementioned Oogie Boogie Man). And while Jack rescues Santa from Oogie’s chamber of Halloween horror, he does so by killing Oogie. And this is after Jack sings:

And for the first time since I don’t remember when
I felt just like my old bony self again.
And I, Jack, the Pumpkin King.
That’s right, I am the pumpkin King! Hah! Hah! Hah!
And I just can’t wait until next Halloween
’cause I’ve got some new ideas that will really make them scream
and, by God, I’m really gonna give it all my might!
Uh-oh, I hope there’s still time to set things right….

So Nightmare isn’t your standard Christmas movie. It’s not A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, or even The Polar Express. It’s not sickly sweet and heavy on the moralism like It’s a Wonderful Life, or brain candy like White Christmas. It’s more along the lines of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the related Scrooged, or the 1964 version of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer – scary and disturbing on several different levels, but with a good message.

So by all means, enjoy your Nightmare at Halloween, but perhaps you should watch it yet again during the Christmas season, as it is truly intended.

And finally, everything worked out just fine.
Christmas was saved, though there wasn’t much time.
But after that night, things were never the same—
Each holiday now knew the other ones’ name.
And though that one Christmas things got out of hand,
I’m still rather fond of that skeleton man.
So many years later I thought I’d drop in,
and there was old Jack still looking quite thin,
with four or five skeleton children at hand
playing strange little tunes in their xylophone band.
And I asked old Jack, “Do you remember the night
when the sky was so dark and the moon shone so bright?
When a million small children pretending to sleep
nearly didn’t have Christmas at all, so to speak?”
And would you, if you could, turn that mighty clock back
to that long, fateful night, now think carefully, Jack.
Would you do the whole thing all over again,
knowing what you know now, knowing what you knew then?”
And he smiled, like the old Pumpkin King that I knew,
then turned and asked softly of me, “Wouldn’t you?” (closing narration from the soundtrack)

Lyrics from The Tim Burton Collective

Image Credits:
Touchstone Pictures

October 30 is Frankenstein Friday.

Like a lot of kids, I could not get enough of monster movies. On Saturday afternoons, I would hunker down on my living room couch to watch Creature Double-Feature on our small black-and-white TV.

I loved Godzilla, Gorgo, the giant ants of Them!, War of the Worlds, and those delightful shock-fests from England’s Hammer Studios with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

But none were better than Universal’s classics: The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Bela Lugosi as Dracula; Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man; and of course, Boris Karloff as Frankenstein. Watching Colin Clive scream, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” remains one of the most thrilling moments of movie magic ever filmed.

Those movies were so creepy because, unlike today’s horror films, they left almost everything to my imagination—and my imagination can be a whole lot scarier than anything Hollywood can dish out. It’s no wonder audiences back then found those classic monster movies shocking and truly scary.

But the beauty of a story like Frankenstein is that it succeeds on so many levels. The movie captured my imagination as a kid, but as I grew older, I began to appreciate the subtleties of Mary Shelley’s novel.

For one thing, her creature is an eloquent, thoughtful being who’s ugly but graceful. That’s a stark contrast to the lumbering Karloff, who had steel bars sewn into his costume to make him move so stiffly. Karloff’s monster barely uttered anything beyond growls and snarls, and when he does learn to speak in Bride of Frankenstein, it’s in short, choppy sentences.

More importantly, the book asks big-picture questions that are still highly relevant: Just because we have the technology to do something, should we do it? What role do ethics play in science? What is the cost of failure—and the price of success? What makes a human human?

Frankenstein raises questions about parent/child relationships, class struggle, commitment and responsibility. The text is rich with themes worthy of exploration and reflection.

We sympathize with the creature when the villagers chase it through the forest with torches and pitchforks for no reason other than they’re scared of it. After all, the creature is different. It’s not inherently evil, even though the villagers insist on casting it that way. As viewers or as readers, we feel uncomfortable at the injustice of it. The poor creature—if only they would just leave it alone!

But what’s really sad—or perhaps really horrible—is that Frankenstein happens around us every day. Angry villagers drive someone out of town just for being different: for being black or Hispanic or homosexual or foreign or poor. And when that happens, we have a tougher time seeing it for what it is and a tougher time feeling sympathy for “the creature”—especially if we’re the villagers.

* * * * *

But if it sounds like too much work to engage Frankenstein on those levels, there’s nothing wrong with sitting back and letting the story capture your imagination the way it’s been capturing imaginations for nearly 200 years.

The book has never been out of print. It’s one of the most adapted pieces of literature ever written.

Movie versions include seven Universal films, including the first three with Boris Karloff; an equally long-running series from Hammer Studios, starting with Curse of Frankenstein, featuring Cushing and Lee; a version directed by and starring Kenneth Branaugh, with Robert DeNiro as the Creature; and most recently a version from Hallmark Entertainment.

There’s Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. There’s Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Frankenstein and the Creature from Outer Space, and even Frankenhooker.

The first film version, though, came from the man who invented motion pictures, Thomas Edison. One of his first movies was a ten-minute production of Frankenstein.

There are songs written about and inspired by Frankenstein. Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” has almost-instant guitar-grinding, wawa-peddling recognizability, and Aimee Mann’s “Frankenstein” reminds listeners that “It’s rare that you ever know what to expect/from a guy made of corpses with bolts in his neck.”

And let’s not forget Herman Munster on TV, a role that made Fred Gwynn famous.

The first stage version appeared in 1823, just seven years after Mary Shelley published her book. She was excited at the chance to see her story staged. The play was such a success that it was revived in 1826, the same year the first foreign-language version of the play appeared. Today, no less than a dozen stage versions exist.

If anything can be said of Mary Shelley’s story, it’s that after nearly 200 years, it has a life of its own. “It’s alive! It’s alive!” indeed.

* * * * *

Several years ago, a community theater I worked with decided to include Frankenstein as the kickoff to its tenth-anniversary season. I was immediately drawn to direct the project because of my lifelong love of the story. Of the many scripts available, we settled on one by Victor Gialanella because it sticks closely to Mary Shelley’s themes.

Other scripts tend to stray too far from Shelley’s story. One reason is that Boris Karloff’s shadow is verrry long. Almost everyone who hears the word “Frankenstein” thinks of Karloff’s flat-topped creature with bolts in its neck. As a result, most versions try too hard to go out of their way to not be like Karloff.

Shelley’s story sometimes gets sacrificed as a result. The emphasis gets shifted to the spectacle and the horror—after all, those kinds of elements make for good movies and plays because they’re exciting to see.

But the meat of Shelley’s story is in all those big-picture questions. After all, what makes each of us “us” is different. It only stands to reason that we’ll each have our own answer to the questions “Who am I? What makes me me? Where do I come from?”

Frankenstein’s creation asks this of his maker. Mary Shelley’s novel asks this of its readers.

It’s the most important question any of us can ask.

I know where at least part of me comes from, and these days, I can sometimes still be found there. Only nowadays, I am curled up on my living room couch watching old monster movies with my 9-year-old son. It’s like taking a trip down memory lane while simultaneously opening the doors of imagination.

My son got a little scared by Karloff the first time he saw Frankenstein. He and hid under a blanket, trying to decide whether it was safe to steal a peek. I chuckled.

He was just one more victim of Frankenstein’s 200-year-old legacy—just like me. Just like a lot of us.

Enron, which is packing the Royal Court Theatre nightly before it heads off to the West End at highly inflated ticket prices, is worth it. It’s a bit disenheartening that Lucy Prebble, whose second play it is, can turn out such an accomplished piece of work at such a tender age—she’s all of 28. But it’s great theatre—it covers the bases, it’s pretty funny throughout and highly funny in spots, and if it overdoes some of the symbolism at time, it captures how Enron fit into the American imagination of the time. And it moves right along, without a dead spot all evening. Prebble understands that Enron is a quintessentially American story, one of a business so intertwined with politics and funny money and that curious belief in unfettered markets that no one ever seems to learn from. That she is able to turn this story of a confused mixture of greed and ideology into a fine theatrical evening is a considerable accomplishment.

(A bit of full disclosure first—I worked at Citi for a number of years, and while I had no direct contact with the Enron people or any of the deals that Citi brought on their behalf, including the now notorious partnerships that ended up sinking the company, I knew some of the people who did. It was not Citi’s finest hour. Of course, Citi was having a lot of things go wrong around then, so it was just one of a whole raft of problems that came along that came close to sinking the bank.)

The story is fascinating enough, as anyone who has seen The Smartest Guys in the Room will know. Sleepy gas pipeline company becomes global trading megastar, or something along those lines. We don’t actually see much of that process, though—what sort of company Ken Lay had built before the arrival of Skilling. So we don’t really get a sense of how transformative Jeffrey Skilling was when he came into the company, although Prebble does try to lay this out early on. But Prebble does what appears to be a pretty good job of showing how driven Skilling was, and how it changed the company from a bunch of traders to a bunch of sharks. Sam West (son of Timothy) plays Skilling as a nerd, and he’s surrounded by several nerds as well, including the equally odious Andrew Fastow, who was to become Enron’s Chief financial Officer and was directly responsible for the fraudulent partnerships that led to Enron’s downfall. Sam West’s performance is nicely done—we pick up immediately that he’s a nerd, but he’s also a really, really smart one, and he won’t be happy until everyone realizes how smart he really is. So here are these nerdy guys growing this company into an American powerhouse, with old Texan gas guy Ken Lay—a nice turn by Tim Piggott-Smith—in the background, beaming away, playing golf with both Bushes. What could possibly go wrong?

We get to see pretty much all the relevant action, including the raping of the California ratepayer, all passed off as just business in Bush’s America. Well, it was Clinton’s America too, it has to be said. But he was sandwiched by a pair of Texas oil guys for whom there was no amount of government intervention into the energy business that could be justified. Prebble alludes to this, but British audiences often have such a weird idea of America and how it works that you never really know if the British understand how thoroughly trashed America was during this period. (Most British I know still think of the Republican Party as being more or less equivalent to the Tories, when in fact the Republicans have actually moved to another planet.) It doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the play, however, if this point isn’t brought out more—Prebble keeps things moving right along.

We know how this turns out, of course—Skilling resigns (and eventually goes to jail), Fastow turns state’s evidence to save his own skin, and Ken Lay dies at an extraordinarily convenient time for Ken Lay (although tales of sightings in South America are legion). Part of the joy of the play is how nicely Prebble strings it out for us—there’s lots that could have been included, or is only referred to in passing (that notorious plant in India, for example, is worth a play in its own right), but the play holds together pretty well on its own. Some reviewers have complained that the symbolism Prebble uses is a bit heavy—debt-eating Raptors, for example. I found them, if not cute, at least appropriate. These are people who named their deals after Star Wars characters, after all. And how else can you theatrically display a story about, at its heart, accounting fraud? This is an American story, and American stories tend to be large scale, so throwing in a bunch of obvious symbols, surrounded by the occasional song and dance routine, fits right in. It’s Texas. But more than Texas, too, as Prebble points out—a recurring theme of the play is how willing, enthusiastic even, Wall Street was in suspending its disbelief about what Enron was doing, long after it became clear that something was very wrong.

We wondered about the audience, which seemed to mostly people in their early 20s. All of this is history to them—2001 was a lively year for financial scandals, and these kids would have seen this stuff on TV—or not, which seems more likely. What 13 or 15 year-old in their right mind watches the financial news? Well, Skilling and Fastow probably did, which tells you about as much as you need to know about them. And as events of the past several years have amply demonstrated, it wasn’t just Skilling and Fastow—they just got there earlier.

New technology brings new creative outlets.  If you had told me ten years ago that I would be taking pictures and doing artistic manipulations on my PHONE I may not have believed you.  Yes, this piece (posted in the spirit of Halloween) was shot and fully edited on my iPhone.  It sort of reminds me of the closing scene of the director’s cut of Brazil (not the love-conquers-all version) and that’s okay.

When we think about Halloween and art, we sort of automatically think of film. And why not. We have a decades-long library of movies designed to scare the pants off us. But there are some bands out there working the shadows with their music, as well. While it’s unfair to dismiss so many talented artists as Halloween acts – because talented and unconventional is cool 24/7/365 – it’s also true that during this week the veil between the mundane and arcane grows thin.

So, to help you prepare your playlist, here are some of our scary music favorites.

First, from Toronto, one of the absolute best darkpop bands in the world, The Birthday Massacre. This is their video for “Blue”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sadly, Switchblade Symphony has parted ways. Their music still haunts our dollhouses, though. This is “Clown”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you need a little rock & roll vampire fantasy in your life, let us recommend Seraphim Shock’s “After Dark”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Finally, let’s close with a band that more of you might be familiar with – here’s “Sober,” from Tool:

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘Tis the season for ghosts and goblins and jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treaters, and all the candy corn you can eat.

But for my family, the Halloween season holds a special “tradition of terror”—The Glowing Orange Pumpkin of Doom.

The Glowing Orange Pumpkin of Doom usually first appears in late September, in someone’s front yard. Soon, as if on the ends of an ever-growing invisible pumpkin vine, he starts popping up in yards and on front porches all over town.

The pumpkins are, of course, those plastic illuminated lawn ornaments that you can get at any department store. Over the years, it’s come in several designs—sometimes with a big, friendly face, sometimes with spooky eyes and a jagged sawtooth grin.

My daughter was maybe six or so when we first cast those illuminated pumpkins as something insidious and evil. Every time we would see one, we would pretend it was the same one keeping pace with our progress as we drove along, popping up here and there.

“Oh no!” we would cry in mock horror and dread. “The Glowing Orange Pumpkin of Doom!”

“He’s laughing at us,” my daughter would say, interpreting the pumpkin’s smile as the grin of an evil genius ready to spring a trap on us.

But there would be some nights that we’d go out and drive around to look for Glowing Orange Pumpkins the way we’d look at outdoor Christmas lights in December. Each time we’d see a Glowing Orange Pumpkin, we would pretend we had to make a quick getaway before he used his horrible powers on us.

After all, the Glowing Orange Pumpkin of Doom can spit pumpkin seeds at our eyes to blind us. He can breath fire from the candle that’s inside all jack-o-lanterns. He can reach after us with its gripping vines.

My son has been in on the act for the past few years, and he loves pretending to be just as terrified as his sister and I.

A couple years ago, we got a Glowing Orange Pumpkin of Doom for ourselves. We never put it out until the beginning of October and only after we’ve seen someone else put out theirs. After all, we don’t want to be the ones responsible for unleashing evil upon the world.

If I’m out in the evening, my son will make sure our Glowing Orange Pumpkin of Doom is lit up to meet me when I come home.

And while I’ll feign horror as we always do, I’m actually glad to see the Glowing Orange Pumpkin. Like a bright orange beacon in the night, it lights my way to the front door and the people in the world I love the best. That’s the season’s best treat of all.

ArtsWeek continues.  Halloween is in the air. So is health care reform. Maybe you can imagine this dedicated health care professional extracting the deductible from your wallet with a hemostat!

[Semi-NSFW]

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If you’ve been attacked by a werewolf and have survived, then you need a copy of Ritch Duncan and Bob Powers’ new book The Werewolf’s Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten.

While lycanthropy is inconvenient at best and terribly dangerous at worst, Duncan and Powers contend that it’s something a person can successfully manage. Through proper precautions and care—including cages, restraining systems, and livestock—a lycanthrope can live a full, rich, successful life. Otherwise, without the advice offered in the manual, a lyc is doomed to be an object of scorn, attracting mobs of angry, pitchfork- and torch-wielding villagers.

The Werewolf’s Guide works as a humor piece because Duncan and Powers play it straight, with casual matter-of-factness: werewolves are real. “Unlike the rest of society,” they write, “werewolves happen to have a condition that, three times a month, causes their bodies to almost double in size, triple in strength and agility, grow a mass of tightly woven fur, and transform from an unremarkable human being into a savage, wild animal resembling (but distinctly different from) a wolf, whose behavior patterns are generally dictated by voracious hunger and rage.”

There’s no supernatural mysticism to lycanthropy. “The blood and saliva of werewolves contain a contagion that acts upon the pituitary gland,” the authors explain. “After you’ve been attacked, this contagion travels through your bloodstream and causes your pituitary gland to release a rare and normally dormant thyroid-stimulating hormone called lycantropin.”

Max Brooks’ 2003 The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead worked for much the same reason. People who’ve read both books will find it impossible not to draw comparisons between the two, right down to the cute little illustrations in each one. In that context, Duncan and Powers’ book feels derivative—it’s just different enough to be worthwhile, but it owes its very existence to Brooks.

That said, The Werewolf’s Guide is brain candy enough to stand on its own as fun escapism. Duncan and Powers are sophisticated with their werewolf construct, and they explore it with a surprisingly elaborate level of detail. They cover a gamut of topics that ranges from “romance and the modern lycanthrope” to “Of God, the Devil , and lycanthrope faith” to “keeping secret, keeping safe, staying alive.” The book includes interviews with werewolf hunters and with “fur chasers” (humans who have fetish-like obsessions with werewolves).

At 236 pages, the joke maybe gets old after a while, but kudos to Duncan and Powers for thoroughly thinking through their approach. The book is light enough that most readers can probably barrel through it in just a couple sittings, which should be enough to keep the humor fresh.

The Werewolf’s Guide offers plenty to like for lycs and non-lycs alike.

On October 31, 1989, I was teaching my 8th-grade reading class a good and simple lesson.
“In your writing, try to avoid absolutes,” I said. “Don’t use words such as always, never, and impossible. It’s much better to say something is highly improbable.” Then I sat back, smiled, and let the wisdom I had imparted settle upon their impressionable minds.

“But some things are impossible,” said Dan, who hadn’t said anything else all year. I was prepared for this.

“Dan, the Guinness Book of World Records lists a guy who ate a tree! Piece by piece, he ate the whole thing. He also ate a bicycle.”

“Was he French?” asked Dan. “If he was, it doesn’t count. They’ll eat anything.”

“Remind me to talk later about stereotypes,” I said. “The point is, most people would say it’s impossible to eat a tree or a bike, but he did it. The Guinness folks were so impressed, they no longer accept such gastro-adventures for consideration. Nothing is impossible.”

“I don’t agree,” countered Dan. “Was the bike a ten-speed?” Can he eat a tree in one sitting? Did he use salad dressing?”

“Ten-speed?” I asked. “What’s that got to do with it?”

But Dan ignored me. There was a lot of chop in the educational waters that day because he was soon joined by a chorus of agreement, but I didn’t break. I bent until it hurt, but I didn’t break.

“Nothing’s impossible,” I shouted. “Now… shut up and do some grammar!”

That night, we placed a bucket of candy on the front porch, a futile gesture since we were so far in the country no trick-or-treaters ever came by, and the coyotes preferred our garbage. I remember that it was hot that night, this was Tennessee after all, so I turned on the air conditioner. The cool air that rose from the vents brought with it the stench of death.

I checked the mouse traps. Our house was bordered on three sides by a cornfield, and mice would occasionally risk some variety to their diet. Bold they were, for we had three cats, Tabby Hunter, MCKC (multi-colored kitty cat) and the Other Cat. The Other Cat was a giant black tom who appeared one day and wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t let us pet him, but he kept the skunks away so we gave him food and water. But he never came inside and I hadn’t seen him that week.

The traps were all empty so I took a flashlight and went outside. Nothing was in the yard or beside the road, so I removed the metal door from our cinder block foundation and peered into the darkness under our house. There he was, as far from me as possible, lying on his back with his four feet straight up in the air. The Other Cat had died.

“Poor thing,” said my wife, who had come up behind me silently.

“Yes, poor thing,” I agreed. “How long do you think it will take before he degrades? I mean, before we won’t smell him anymore?”

“What are you talking about?” she said. “You’re going to have to crawl under there and get him.”

“No,” I said. Between the opening and the Other Cat, over a span of 80 feet, was a ghastly Kingdom of Spiders. I could see their nasty webs hanging from the bottom of the floor, some as thick as barge ropes. I also knew that somewhere in there was the loathsome Spider Queen with whom I had waged a lifelong battle. I often greeted her ambassadors with broom and boot. Spiders don’t forget things like that.

“You aren’t going to bring up that silly Spider Queen idea, are you?” asked my wife. She never understood Nature. “Because if you’re afraid, I’ll go get him.”

I let her. She was only four feet into the blackness when the screaming began. I grabbed her ankles and pulled her out.

“Release her, vile fiend!” I screamed, but it wasn’t the Spider Queen. It was a snake skin, caught on my wife’s watch. She has this thing about snakes. You know how girls are.

That was when I had my moment. A man seldom gets the opportunity to find out how brave he is. It was time to face my fear. I was going in after the Other Cat. I was going to be brave, that was settled, but I didn’t want to be foolish, so I girded myself for war.

First, two pairs of pants, three shirts and a sweater. Next, I donned hip waders, a winter coat, my fleece toboggan and elbow-length industrial strength welders gloves. I had a rake in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Welder’s goggles to protect the eyes and I was all set. A spider would need to be huge indeed to get a fang into my flesh. I was ready. I could barely move, but I was ready.

Ten minutes later, I had crawled almost the entire distance. The rake had been an effective weapon against the spiders. I’d taken out one that was about as big as a catcher’s mitt, and the rest had retreated. But I was getting angry, and I had good reason. I was crawling on the bones of my home’s foundation, in the dark on Halloween night, hot, tired, trapped in some horrible Edgar Allan Poe story with a dead black cat that never liked me anyway. I began to curse. When I was close enough, I lifted the rake and it hovered just above the Other Cat’s body, about to drop. What I didn’t realize was that I was directly under the main bathroom of the house. The very instant the rake touched the cat, my wife flushed the toilet that was just above my head.

If there is an Olympic event for scooting backwards on fingers and toes, I want in. I covered 40 feet in less than three seconds. The sound was so loud and near that it took several seconds for me to realize what had happened. I returned to the body, placed my rake over it, and retreated with the Other Cat. The spiders laughed and laughed.

When I was out, I placed The Other Cat in a garbage bag and walked through the back cornfield toward the railroad tracks that ran behind our house. After a quick two-word benediction (“Jesus Christ!”), I swung the garbage bag over the tracks and into the trees beyond them.

As I made the trek back to the house, I was chuckling at how stupid I’d been. Spider Queen? What was I thinking? And then it hit me. A rogue idea that just came from nowhere.

What would I do if something in those trees threw that dead cat back at me?

What a strange thought. It was, of course, ridiculous. It was, let’s face it, impossible. But hadn’t I said, that very day… and I was running, running as hard as I had ever run before. Ears of corn ready for the reaper pummeled me, but I didn’t mind because they were in front. What was behind? What was so very close behind me? I hurtled into the house with such force I tore the screen door off its hinges. My wife lost her grip on a huge Tupperware bowl of pop corn that made a blizzard in our kitchen.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Something!” I replied, rather pathetically. “I have to lock the door.”

I have tried many times since to understand why I ran. I wasn’t a child, after all, I was a grown man. But that didn’t matter that night. It’s really very simple. It was the dark that scared me. The same dark that hid under my bed when I was a child. The dark that lurked in my parent’s closet and under my grandparents‘ staircase.. The awesome dark that rested between the stars had reached down that Halloween night to tap me on the shoulder just to see if I would still jump.

And I did. And I do.

Well, ArtsWeek sure has been fun, huh? Great posts, great reviews and interviews, great photography – makes you wish it happened more often, doesn’t it?

Well, there’s no rule that says it can’t. So let’s do it again, and this week, in honor of Samhain (that’s “Halloween” to most of you), let’s focus on the darkness that lies within us all….

The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise a photo exhibition currently at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Gallery. The exhibition runs through November 2009.

In our time they are a brand: three artistic African Americans from one family, who captured Washington, the District, this community of freedmen. Their images spoke clearly: here are our efforts, our military men, our debutantes, our ministers, our friends, our tuxedos, our cotillions, our geniuses, our great minds, our children. Our lights, our cameras, our work. – A.J. Verdelle

Verdelle is speaking about Addison Scurlock and his two sons George and Robert Scurlock of Washington, D.C. Addison Scurlock’s photography has been called the visual record of W.E.B.Du Bois’ strategy to uplift Black America by the “Talented Tenth.” Du Bois’ vision included an active and successful middle class whose behaviors and practices effectively countered prevailing racial stereotypes about African Americans. The images created in the Scurlock Studios inspired optimism in the African American community of Washington. The images were more than a response to racial stereotypes but a testament to the dreams and hopes of those pictured. These portraits were about how the person wished to be known and remembered.

There was a special “Scurlock look” – dignified, mature and sophisticated. Addison understood how to light the beautiful variety of African American skin tones. The son George Scurlock attributed the Scurlock style to three qualities – posing, lighting, and retouching – with the final image being fine-tuned on the negative itself. The Scurlocks used a large-format five-by-seven inch view camera with five-by-seven film backs. This yielded large enough negatives to permit retouching.

For nearly ninety years Howard University retained the Scurlock Studios as its official photographer. The resulting body of work presents Howard University as a vibrant institution of diversity and intellectual vigor. Those many decades saw visiting dignitaries such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marion Anderson, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, Mary McLeod Bethune and Jackie Robinson. Their work not only graced the University but the press as well.

In 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Washington erupted in waves of violence and riots. In response George Scurlock took his camera outside their U Street studio and recorded the neighborhood reaction. His images capture the National Guardsman with rifles and firefighters battling a blaze a few doors down from the studio. One of the images remaining from that period was a sign the Scurlocks displayed in their exterior display case that said “Soul Brothers All the Way.”

Addison retired in 1963 and sold the business to his two sons. He died the following year at the age of eighty-one. His work became known outside the African American community only after his death. Towards the end of Robert Scurlock’s life the vast collection of Scurlock Studio work was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution. The collection includes more than 250,000 negatives and 10,000 photographic prints along with cameras, studio and darkroom equipment, nearly a century of business records. Much of the collection has been digitized and is available to research on-line.

Here are a few of my favorites from this gorgeous collection.

Addison and Mamie Scurlock 1910-20

Charles Tignor Duncan 1930 – as an adult he went on to work on the landmark Brown vs Board of Education, first general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Dean of Howard University School of Law and advisor to Walter Washington during his tenure as mayor of the District of Columbia.

Lt. Alma Jackson 1945

Flappers at Griffith Stadium 1928/29

Howard University Baseball

The curator of the collection adds his thoughts here.