Monday, May 25, 2009

"Dreams with Sharp Teeth"

That's the name of a biographical documentary film on and by Harlan Ellison. I just caught it on the Sundance Channel, and it will be shown a few more times in the coming week. The DVD will be released on May 29th. I would imagine the point of the multiple showings is to stir up some interest in the DVD. It worked; I have pre-ordered it from Amazon. It looks like there are enough extras on the DVD to make it worthwhile (as opposed to just saving the main film on the DVR). Full list at the Amazon page.

Plenty of Ellison talking; some partial readings; archive film of old interviews and appearances. Reminiscences of youth in Ohio, being a target of bullies. He describes how a child cannot explain the irrational to an adult: but there is no logic to bullies picking on someone. "Why you? Well, why in fact not me?" And the awful feeling, "like an icicle jammed into my chest," when his mother said, after one such attack, "You must have said something to get them angry." An early exposure to the problem of evil, and the futility of attempting to rationalize it.

All this and a lovely yet unobtrusive score, composed and performed by Richard Thompson on acoustic guitar, with some multitracking.

Update: Michael Totten, posting at Instapundit, has linked to an excerpt on YouTube. There are more.

7 comments:

blake said...

I like Ellison, but what are the odds he actually did say something to piss off his bullies? 100%?

Hector Owen said...

He certainly has got a mouth on him.

BUT: are you actually saying that big kids should have license to pound on little kids who say stuff that the big kids don't like to hear? Somehow I don't think so.

I didn't want to get into this in the body of the post, but the remark struck me as emblematic of the divide between those who took the attitude, after 9-11, that we, the US, needed to try to figure out what we had done to get "those people" so angry with us, and to mend our ways; and those who viewed the attack as an act of war, that needed a response rather than an apology.

Deep-voiced announcer: "When assholes attack — does your mother comfort you, or" tenor-voiced-announcer: "ask you to undertake a self-criticism session, in the hope that you may find the flaws in your character that brought on the attack?"

Maybe the assholes are just, you know, assholes.

Obama has put the country into the "apologize to the assholes and hope they will be nicer" mode. I don't think it's going to work.

Spell-checker here recognizes "assholes," but does not recognize "Obama." Does not recognize "Laodicean," either.

blake said...

Certainly, there are plenty of assholes who are just assholes. And a civilized world doesn't tolerate people being beat up just for being assholes.

And I did see the 9/11 connection. I haven't heard where the "angry young man" of Sci-Fi stands on it.

I imagine he is not Laodiciean about it.

Hector Owen said...

Certainly, there are plenty of assholes who are just assholes. And a civilized world doesn't tolerate people being beat up just for being assholes.

Oh, dear. Far too many assholes in these comments. And I started it, so it's my fault.

But — I was saying that the kids doing the beating were the assholes, not that the one getting beaten was the asshole. Though I suppose they could all be assholes. My take on this comes from being the smart kid who was no good at sports who got hit a lot. So I'm inclined to side with Ellison, here.

By the way, you lost the spelling bee by letting an extra "i" into your Laodicean. Gonna beat me up now for pointing that out?

One thing you never could say about Ellison is that he is Laodicean, about anything.

He hasn't had much to say about 9-11, that I can find, except in a book called September 11: West Coast Writers Approach Ground Zero. If I quote from it, he'll want to ding me for royalties; but you can search inside the book to read most of his contribution, which is a rant against religion. Maybe I can quote a little, "fair use" ought to cover part of a paragraph:

"Osama bin Laden and his crew of degenerate thugs, and Jerry Falwell and his cadre of sicko-pervo-freakos, with Pat playing the Gabby Hayes sidekick, all worship the same god. Not the gentle succoring Jesus, and not the kindly warmhearted Allah, but some third entity, some horned and astigmatic sulfur-breathing deity who battens on hatred and loathing and the spreading of Elitist snakeoil promising 73 virgins or the Pearly Gates, if only you will waste your lives in pointless denigration of everyone Pat and Osama and Jerry point to as enemies of the all-powerful God."

And so on. "Kindly warmhearted Allah?" A lot of Americans, including me and apparently H.E., didn't know much about Islam before 9-11. I would just as soon have left it that way.

In the movie that gave rise to this thread, Ellison reads a bit that can be found at length in the excerpt you can read here, in the intro to "Paingod:"

[He marched with MLK Jr, but now, ten years later:]

"But my days of White Liberal Guilt are gone. My days of championing whole classes and sexes and pigmentations of people are gone. The Sixties are gone, and we live in the terrible present, where death and guilt don't mix. Now I come, after all these years, to the only position that works: each one on his or her own merits, black/white/yellow/brown. Not all Jews are money-gouging kikes, but some are. Not all blacks are slavering rapists, but some are. Not all Puerto Ricans are midnight second-storey spicks, but some are.

"And we come to the question again and again, what kind of a god is it that permits such misery ... are we truly cast in his image, such an image of cruelty and rapaciousness ... were we put here really to suffer such torment? Let the Children of God answer that one with something other than no-brain jingoism. Mark Twain said, 'If one truly believes there is an all-powerful Deity, and one looks around at the condition of the universe, one is led inescapably to the conclusion that God is a malign thug.' That's the quote that caused me to write 'The Deathbird.' It's a puzzle I cannot reason out."

Well, you asked.

blake said...

I don't think I did ask! :-)

Shame about the moral equivalence, though. I think Ellison never really grew past the "angry young man" phase.


But — I was saying that the kids doing the beating were the assholes, not that the one getting beaten was the asshole. Though I suppose they could all be assholes. Me, too.

My take on this comes from being the smart kid who was no good at sports who got hit a lot. So I'm inclined to side with Ellison, here. I was also the smart kid who was no good at sports, but nobody hit me. School is like prison: You just have to be dangerous enough to make it not worth your while to mess with.

By the way, you lost the spelling bee by letting an extra "i" into your Laodicean. Gonna beat me up now for pointing that out? I never beat anyone up for being smart. I wasn't that kind of asshole. I did occasionally attack someone (much bigger) for trying to bully me. It wasn't fair, probably, but it served its purpose.

Hector Owen said...

I agree that the moral equivalency is distressing. In the film, Ellison proclaims himself an atheist, but I think he's more of an anti-theist.

Still and all, a very interesting character, who has made his life a story as interesting as his fiction.

Hector Owen said...

Department of ridiculous coincidences: Harlan Ellison's initials are the same as the abbreviation for "high explosive."

(Orchestra plays F minor chord for a quarter note, followed by E seventh)

COINCIDENCE?