5 Short Stories

Mark fainted in the hallway. While falling he cut his wrist on a vent. He woke to see the blood and shut his eyes again, only slower this time.

To please her ever-sickening husband, Millie made him French Toast-his favorite dish-every single day. Secret ingredient: good vanilla. Actual secret ingredient: motor oil.

George returned late from work. He parked in the garage and closed it. He shut his eyes only for a moment and slowly breathed in the fumes.

Evelynn collected many books. She could not walk through her house. Trying to reach the kitchen she bumped a stack, which toppled. She laid there, calling out in vain.

Jason was cutting a pear. It dripped from the counter. He bent over to clean it up, slipped on the moisture. Skewered, bleeding, he thought, "I don't even like pears..."

I had a difficult time deciding what I could use as a theme for my stories. I had a lot of good ideas but none of them went together, there was no order. Finally, I heard a story on the news about an accidental death of a woman and then I had the idea for “slow deaths at home”.  The ideas took a while to formulate and the way to write them took even longer, but I was very careful about how it was done. I tried to never reveal too much or give the story away too early. That was something that I appreciated about the short stories that we read previously- they were never too revealing and often required some inference out of the reader.

As far as the pictures go, I wanted them to take place moments before the death of each person. Each photo takes place in a moment where there is still a slight chance for each person to live, but death ultimately appears imminent. Once again I made a decision to not show faces, except for one simply because the face was too good to pass up. But that was a last minute decision that had not been previously planned on. Reason? It was totally genuine. My gracious friend was completely exhausted and I felt I need to capture that.

I created four of my stories, but one of them was inspired by something I had seen on television and been absolutely disgusted by so I decided to use it. I had seen a television show all about the addiction of hoarding and saw one where I woman had been trapped under some boxes and never was able to free herself. Since she kept mostly to herself no one ever came looking for her and she died under the boxes. I decided to do the same, only with books because the girl in my photo reads about 100 books a year and I just felt like warning her.

Similarly, four of my stories are accidental death and one is a murder. I actually didn’t choose beforehand to do it that way, that’s just the way the story played out when I wrote it. I think I liked it the best it was a surprise even to me. I had intended for this man to make the French Toast himself and accidentally poison himself, but eventually his wife just showed up in my mind to finish the job herself.  I think it works in the series of stories though, because amongst the surprises, I think it is the biggest. 

"The Iron Sea" - Keane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJGspad5uhw

This song is one that I have listened to for 8 years and never really nailed down what I thought about it or what it meant to me. Not until recently. When deciding on the song for this project I had actually chosen another, but after I had a late-night conversation with a friend, the meaning suddenly revealed itself to me.

The revelation of the pain and the hurt she’d been hiding in plain sight was almost overwhelming to hear about. But when she spoke about it I began hearing this song and suddenly it was all making sense to me. It was as though the song had been waiting all those years for her to come to me. I had to tell her story. The connection between my images and the music stems from the long, drawn-out notes coming from the keyboard and the guitars. They were a symbol to me of her imprisonment by her own feelings – they just seem to go on and on. Going along with that, the whole song has an eerie, almost alien sound to it. Again, this is a reflection of how she felt about being so consumed by this situation. She never imagined she would have been caught in it, but it sneaked up on her, “like a snake in the grass” as she put it.

I chose to never show her face. The reason was twofold: First, to not reveal the identity of my friend, who others in class may know. And the second was an attempt to convey a message and communicate emotions without revealing them through facial expressions. Instead, I used the rest of her body, mostly the feet and her hands.  I once saw it done in Catch Me If You Can and have always wished to try it.

Whenever I finished the song I never felt good. I think it was because it doesn’t exactly have a resolution. Similarly, neither do the images. Not every story ends happy. Not every story really ends. She may be living this story for the rest of her life. 

Tarantino: Changing History

History will tell us that Adolf Hitler’s death came at his own hands in April of 1945 due to the fact that the Allies were rapidly approaching and he was sure to face charges for all his crimes against humanity. However, Quentin Tarantino would have us believe something completely different. He would have us believe that Adolf met his demise in a movie theatre in France at the hands of an American Jewish soldier named Sergeant Donny Donowitz, more fearfully referred to by the Nazis as “The Bear Jew”. Donowitz, is of course a member of the notorious Basterds, a group of Jewish American soldiers sent to Europe- behind enemy lines- to harass and terrorize the enemy in any way possible. Of course he, and the Basterds, are also not real. Many critics have dismissed the film Inglourious Basterds as “ahistorical” or “entirely too fantastic” to be considered a true piece of art that is worthy of any sort of praise. This thought stemming from the notion that history cannot be changed and attempts are wasteful.  However, Tarantino’s bold reinvention to the end of the Second World War not only is a tremendous work of art, but is even better than reality. So how does Tarantino get away with blatantly changing historical events?  His use of dark humor and a musical score reminiscent of a Western are his greatest tools for changing the past.  Also, the fact that he not the first to do so, also lends some credit to his decision.

            I would not consider Inglourious Basterds to be a comedy, but rather closer to a dark comedy at best due to its extremely violent and graphic nature, but most films made about World War II like Saving Private Ryan or The Great Escape are much more serious in nature. Saving Private Ryan is considered by many to be the most realistic portrayal of combat ever put on screen(excluding actual combat footage). Inglourious Basterds plays ball a little differently. Scenes of combat are much more theatrical-the flying blood, exploding wounds and scenery- create a disconnect from the actual events that took place and replace it with something out of a young boy’s vivid imagination. The film is also is full of eccentric characters like the American Lieutenant,  Aldo Raine, “The Apache”(Brad Pitt) or Nazi Colonel Hans Landa, “The Jew Hunter”(Christoph Waltz). Each of whom have extremely distinct-almost out of place or other-worldly- dialogue that could easily be found in a Coen brothers film. Dialog from each character deals with serious subjects of war, conspiracy, murder and even racism. Yet their character, delivery, and mannerisms cause the film to be more lighthearted than its heavy subject would normally be. An excellent example of this would be a conversation between Raine and Landa where Raine corrects and then explains to the Colonel how to properly use the word bingo.  Again, this creates this slight yet fantastic disconnect from reality and ventures into a grounded fantasy. 

Similarly, the musical score in this film is something that could have easily been found in any one of Clint Eastwood’s many Westerns. Borrowing from that genre, Tarantino is able to create more of a Sherriff-vs.-Villain approach to the situation. The music subtly informs the audience that the Basterds, or the heroes, will meet with the villain, Hitler, at the conclusion of the film in an extraordinary shootout. And of course, we know that in Westerns the hero almost always wins(3:10 to Yuma anyone?). So the music in a small changes the genre of the film to Western, thus lending to the possibility of fantasy and allowing Tarantino to make the changes necessary.

            Another point I wish to make it that Inglorious Basterds is not the first film to change history for its plot. CSA: Confederate States of America is a film that explores what the United States would be like today if the South had won the war and slavery still existed. This film examines the consequences of what a changed history would look like today. Inglorious Basterds is actually brave enough to show just how history would have changed without showing any of the consequences. Then it leaves the job of speculation up to the viewer and begs the question, “How would the world be different if Hitler had been killed on year earlier?” So many possibilities.

            Quentin Tarantino effectively and violently changes history in his film. His brilliant use of humor and music are able to create a superior reality. The story he wrote may be fantasy, but it is the ending that humanity wanted. It is the ending that the Jewish people deserved: a brutal and poetic act of vengeance carried out of by one of their own in order to destroy a ruthless dictator who had murdered millions. His real death was cowardly and anticlimactic, thus, killing him in a movie theatre through film was far more poetic and deserved. Tarantino should not be derided for his brave inventiveness. He should be thanked for it.