Saturday Nights with the Midnight Society

Most of us will remember our childhood television lineup very fondly. In fact, 90’s nostalgia apparently happens to be very in right now. Girls remember our crushes on Jonathon Taylor Thomas, guys playing with Pogs and everyone wearing those sneakers that lit up when you walked. The mid 90’s demonstrated that Nickelodeon was the go to place for the most popular children’s programming. While stations like ABC aired shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Nick just seemed to have the best selection. The channels offered shows like the variety show “All That”, the cartoons “Ren and Stimpy”, “Doug”, and “Rugrats”, sitcoms like “Clarissa Explains it All” and “Salute Your Shorts” and great contest shows like “Guts” and “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” However the channel also offered great supernatural TV. The shows that I remember particularly are Ah! Real Monsters, Alex Mack, Pete and Pete (in a magical realism way) and most specifically “Are you Afraid of the Dark?” All of these shows are great examples of supernatural TV in one of its most fun forms. In adult supernatural TV, the supernatural is always seconded guessed and sometimes, if not unconvincingly, can ruin a show completely. Due to the audience, children’s shows can allow for even the cheesiest supernatural elements and have a successful run.

“Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (intro linked) adapted the anthology series format, starting each show with several friends calling themselves the Midnight Society meeting by a campfire to tell scary stories. It aired regularly Saturday nights during SNICK along with three other shows. Now I don’t know about you guys, but I remember having to prep myself before watching the show to deal with how scary the episodes were. Even now, clips of the show will pop into my head and give me chills. The episode “The Tale of Laughing in the Dark” was about a kid who steals the nose of a cigar-smoking clown he doesn’t believe is real. He instantly regrets this when the clown comes to life. I wouldn’t hesitate to blame my fear of clowns on this particular episode. “The Tale of the Captured Soul” tells the story of a family who vacations in a house where the owners are slowly stealing the life of the visiting family through the mirrors. “The Tale of the Pinball Wizard” is usually one people remember, where a boy gets stuck inside a mall after dark and suddenly finds himself stuck in a life size pinball machine. While none of these plots seem particularly scary now a days and most if not all are borrowed plots, at the time, I always tuned in to scare my self to death every Saturday night.

The sad thing about this is, is today’s Nickelodeon is relatively barren of not just supernatural TV, but good TV in general. While Sponge Bob Square Pants has it’s moments, the channel is filled with shows like Drake and Josh and The Amanda Show. My younger sister watched shows like “That’s So Raven” and “Lizzy Maguire” that had a supernatural tinge, but they didn't air on Nick and played to an older audience. The show "Fairly Odd Parents" is particularly hilarious for older people who get the jokes, but I don’t see it having the following that 90’s Nick shows had when we were growing up. When they did revive “Are You Afraid of the Dark” recently it missed the mark of what the original show had tried to accomplish. While most of the Nickelodeon shows I watched growing up had a more surreal element to them, today’s shows are mostly lame varieties or sitcoms and this is truly a shame. 

If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.

First of all – I was lucky enough to catch “Sunshine Days,” one of the final episodes of The X-Files, on the Sci-Fi channel this week. Supercreep Michael Emerson (Benjamin Linus, everyone’s favorite d-bag from Lost) stars as a killer who is obsessed with the Brady Bunch. Good stuff.

However, what I REALLY want to talk about is “The Constant,” the 5th episode of Lost’s current (fourth) season.
(**WARNING: For those who are a little behind, or potential future Losties, DO NOT READ THIS POST. THERE ARE SPOILERS.** Sorry, but this episode was too good not to be talked about.)

This episode is a Desmond episode, which is always a good sign. Desmond is, in my opinion, not only a total babe with a sexy accent, but the best character on the show. (Proof: In Jack’s flashbacks, he drunkenly mopes around a hospital whining about his Dad and his ex-wife. In Desmond’s, he drunkenly sails around the world and travels through time.) The last time Des tried to leave the island, he did not succeed on his compass bearing and ended up back exactly where he started, drunk, exclaiming that the island was in “a bloody snowglobe”.

This time, he’s heading to the mysterious freighter offshore in a helicopter, whose pilot is instructed by physicist Daniel Faraday (an awesome new character) to follow a strict compass bearing, or else “side effects” will occur. In a recent episode, we saw Faraday conduct an experiment that revealed that time moves differently on the island than it does in the outside world. This has been one of the biggest reveals of the series, and potentially explains a lot of things: perhaps this is why pregnant women are dying, and perhaps this is why it seems as though not as much time has passed when we see the Oceanic Six back in the real world.

When the helicopter hits turbulence, Desmond’s consciousness from 1996 enters his 2004 body, and his consciousness jumps uncontrollably between 1996 and 2004. Long story short, Faraday helps the “unstuck in time” Desmond. We learn that Faraday had been studying time travel, which does not occur physically but occurs within the consciousness. The writers did their research, because some of these theories are actually somewhat grounded in reality. Here is a very interesting article on said topic from Popular Mechanics. Dealing with time travel is tricky, especially when you want to avoid creating a temporal paradox, which we’ve seen dealt with before in “Back to the Future.”

Basically, the answer to Desmond’s problem is to find a “constant,” something important to him in both 1996 and 2004 that can anchor his consciousness in time. And of course, his constant ends up being his true love, Penny. (Even when Lost gets cheesy, it’s still great.) Penelope Widmore is a great character (and she looks a lot like Frank Black’s wife on Millennium). She is the great love of one of our principal protagonists as well as the daughter of possibly the most evil man on the show, Charles Widmore, the man behind the plot against the island. Penny is one of the few connections between those on the island and the outside world, and the show’s producers have said that she is an extremely important character in the overarching mythology of the show.

My roommate also pointed out to me that the final season of Felicity, another J.J. Abrams show, had its protagonist traveling through time, and the only person who believed her was her true love. Awww.

EDIT: I just found this and I had to share it with you all. Pretty awesome.

Buffy reading & assignment

Next week we will be viewing and discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh joy! Because we will be slightly abbreviating our cobverage of Buffy, I'd like to generate some discussion/response to the articles on htis blog. As you might expect, you will evaluated on your response participation as if we were having an in-class discussion. As well, I would like to have a one-page response combining reaction to/thoughts on the following two articles for Tuesday (you may email this). Along with reading the Krzywinska article in the reading packet ("Hubble, Bubble, Herbs and Grimoires") for next Tuesday, be sure to check out Jason Winslade's article on Slayage.tv, Teen Witches, Wiccans, and “Wanna-Blessed-Be’s”: Pop-Culture Magic in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since the topics are similar, you might consider comparing and contrasting the two articles.

There are a plethora of sources on the web on Buffy, and many academic articles. Slayage has an undergraduate page as well, for junior scholars to submit essays for online publication.

And for the true fan, you can purchase collectible action figures!

End is the Beginning: Post-Apocalypse in TV

So we have been talking this week about the millennial anxiety and the End of the World, but what about the stuff that happens after the end of the world. That's right, I'm referring to the Post-Apocalypse.

There seems to be a proliferation of this genre that wants to look at the world after a cataclysmic, "End of Days"-esque event happens. In recent memory, the series Jericho comes to mind, a show about the lives of citizens in Jericho, Kansas after 23 nuclear missiles detonate across the country and leave the world in blackout and disarray. The wonderful, but short lived, Firefly often refer to Earth being a dead planet, devoid of life, which is why we set out into space, another post-apocalyptic theme in popular fiction.

It's no surprise this is such a popular theme. I did some digging into the Book of Revelations, as well as into some other popular scriptures and theories concerning our impending doom, and none clearly state the death of all humanity as we know it. Therefore, there should be this flicker of hope that in the face of such a disaster that a few will survive, and this brings about two thoughts: 1) Will I be one of the survivors; and 2) What will it be like. These two questions, I believe, perpetuate the post-apocalyptic genre as a whole.

We can't talk about the post-apocalypse in television without making mention of Japanese Animation. The proliferation of these themes in Japanese Animation can much be attributed to the anxiety surrounding the bombings of Japan in World War II. The bombs were Japan's own personal little apocalypse and to this day the country still remembers them well. As time goes by, at least one show or movie devoted to these themes come out yearly. The most well-known of these, I believe, would be Akira. Taking place in a post-WWIII Tokyo, Japan has suffered another cataclysmic casualty in the form of yet another bomb. Having rebuilt again, the new Neo-Tokyo is now a hotbed of crime and gang wars and insurrection that cannot be held back. Another less known title was Hokuto no Ken, or Fist of North Star, after yet another world ending disaster, the whole planet has become a desert, and the few people left living, are left impoverished and barely clinging to life. With no order, gangs and other criminals roam the land doing whatever they feel, desecrating life along the way.

It is no doubt that often the picture of these worlds are gloomy at best, with little order or sense of restrictions, but the fact that people can still hang on to life despite how terrible it might be, I believe is a triumph of the spirit that viewers respect. I hope to see more from this genre as the years go on.

Paranormal State

This show was brought up a few times in class, but has yet to really be discussed.

I’ve been a pretty loyal watcher from the beginning, due to the correlation to Penn State University (The Paranormal Research Society [PRS] featured on the show is compiled of a group of Penn State students) and my general interest in ghosts and hauntings.

For those of you who haven’t seen the show, or haven’t devoted much thought to it, here’s a basic synopsis:

[Monday nights, 10 pm, A&E] A team of Paranormal Researchers from Penn State University travel to different locals on the request of people experiencing paranormal phenomena. The show focuses on host Ryan Buell, who’s now working on a second degree at Penn State, as he leads viewers through the process of paranormal investigation. This process commonly revolves around interviewing the victim/subject of paranormal experience, bringing in a renown psychic (more on that later) to flesh out the story behind the paranormal experience, holding a sort of séance at “dead-time” (3:00 am) in which to communicate with any spirit or demon present, and then concluding with usually a blessing placed on the residence and a summary by Ryan Buell.

The show is a half-hour docu-drama, according to A&E’s Paranormal State website.

This mixture of documentary and drama lends to the shows, oftentimes, excessive media effects. These effects include a distortion on Buell’s voice, to make him sound as if he’s speaking into a tape recorder (leads more to misunderstanding than anything else) as well as strangely distinct, possibly volume-altered, sounds that occur during “dead-time” séances. And its half-hour format is effective and possibly necessary since most episodes leave the viewer with very little to prove that they’ve just watched something paranormal occur, but due to the short time-frame of the show, it’s presented almost as if the PRS couldn’t fit in everything that occured. If you’re hooked – like I unregretfully am – this format sucks you in every time.

Some things that do boost the credibility of the show (if anything can) are the two main psychics Buell often utilizes, Chip Coffey and Lorraine Warren. Whereas you might not recognize Coffey’s name, Warren was one of the investigators of the Amityville Haunting case. These two are great, regardless of their psychic abilities; they’re also fun to watch. Coffey sometimes gets possessed and that’s always a treat (there is a great episode where Warren and Coffey are working on a case, Coffey gets possessed and Warren slaps him out of it) and Warren is very sweet and also very old.

Something the show lacks is general clarification. There are often demons or spirits or psychic children, but not so often is the explanation as to why they may exist, how, or what the difference is between something like a demon or spirit. Another thing is Ryan often blesses the homes where paranormal activity has occurred, in the vein of Catholicism. The “why” of this, over other religions and ceremonies, is never discussed.

All and all, if the show isn’t believable, it is personable, and definitely will make you question the next time you see something out of the corner of your eye, or that door that seems to just keep closing by itself.

Psychics: Real or Fiction? Who knows!?

Psychics. Are they real? Is it possible that one can know something, or sense something, that they could not otherwise using their normal five senses? Or is it all based on the belief in mysticism and a few parlor tricks?

What exactly does it mean to be a psychic? It is believed that a psychic individual can sense things (such as events in the past, present, or future) that they had no involvement in, nor could they have otherwise known about, or sensed using their normal five senses. It is believed that certain individuals possess what is called extra-sensory perception (ESP, as it is commonly called).

Can these powers really exist? Many claim to possess such powers, and even many more believe very strongly in its existence. The question is, has there been any concrete scientific evidence to suggest that there might be some kind of extra sense in some individuals? So far the answer to this question is no. James Randi, a former magician, turned paranormal skeptic, has been studying this for many years. Randi has said in interviews over the years that he wishes that he could be proven wrong, that science could be proven wrong, but it has not yet happened. In fact, his education foundation has for many years allocated one million dollars as a prize for any person who can prove under controlled circumstances that paranormal activity exists. No one has been able to claim the prize as of yet.

I am sure you have heard about psychic detectives before. You have probably heard how some police departments use psychic consultants on a regular basis to help solve crimes, and to locate victims, often with much success. The truth of the matter is that these claims are greatly exaggerated. In fact, no psychics have ever officially been given credit for helping to solve a crime by the F.B.I. or other law enforcement agency.

You can find a brief overview of psychic detectives here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_detective -or-
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/police-psychics.html

Many of these so-called psychics are actually more like private detectives. They may receive inside information that helps them with their miraculous answers to the unanswered questions to the crimes. USA Network actually has a television show mocking this very idea, called Psych. It’s a comedy about an aspiring detective who solves crimes using his excellent observational skills, and then purports to be psychic in order to aid police in their investigations.

Despite the lack of scientific evidence, it is not that hard to find individuals who swear to the belief in psychic abilities. Why do people believe in something so strongly despite lack of evidence, or rather strong evidence against something? I think it comes out of a search for answers to the unexplained, or the unbelievable. If you recall, after 9/11 a 16th century “prophet” called Nostradamus came into popular culture. People looked to the parallels between his vague writings of his supposed prophecies for answers as to why 9/11 happened. This is probably why shows like Millennium were, and still are, very popular. It plays on the hope that there is more to humans than meets the eye. It allows us to believe that we too might possess some kind of extraordinary gift, and gives individuals a chance to fantasize about it.

This is of course a very basic summary of psychics. There is so much more information than I could fit into such a small blog post. But to answer the question, do psychics exist? Scientifically speaking, probably not.

For more information, you can start by looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic

The 90's and Disaster Movies

After last class, I started to think about other examples of where we've seen pre-millenial tension and anxiety, and it didn't take too long to remember the crap ton (roughly 7.99993 times greater than a metric ton) of disaster movies that started to downpour upon us starting in the mid-1990's.  With the rise of computer graphics during this time, responsible for stunning visual effects sequences in movies like Jurassic Park, and perhaps some influence from the coming new millennium, a revival in the disaster genre had been sparked.  

One of the first successful movies to come from this was Twister, and that reminded me of a made for tv movie that I had forgotten about until just now... Night of the Twisters.  I was a little obsessed with this movie back in the day (it was on then Fox Family almost constantly).  For those unfamiliar with the plot, here's a little refresher, straight from IMDB: 

"A Nebraska farm community is plagued by a storm with a series of tornados acting against normal patterns. Dan is left at home to look after his baby brother Ryan along with his friend Arthur while Dan's mother is at work. His stepfather goes to check on his grandmother. When a tornado destroys the house, Dan and Arthur attempt to re-unite the family."

This movie, and many others that followed (Independence Day, Deep Impact, Volcano, The Perfect Storm, just to name a few) really played on some of the fears society were having leading into the year 2000, and with the idea of an impending apocalypse, interest in these movies were massive.  Even now we still like to see Earth get its ass kicked in as many ways possible, Cloverfield being one of the more recent examples of disaster movies.  If an influx in disaster movies leading up to a possible apocalyptical millennium, then perhaps we're going to see a similar increase in world destructiveness in movies leading up to the next expected end of the world date in 2012.  

A little info on disaster genre

AND the best clip from Night of the Twisters

(yes, with the flying fridge of death!)