John Russell Dunn

Entertaining and encouraging through the written and spoken word.

Blog

The Dark Side of Dystopia

by Leave a Comment

I’ve enjoyed dystopia for several years. While I’m no expert, I am amused when people call any book or movie with a dark premise or setting ‘dystopia.’ I probably sound like the woman in the Blues Brothers: “We have both kinds of music here: Country AND Western.” But there are definite distinctions between dystopia and post-apocalyptic literature. Dystopia explores man’s attempts to create the ideal world but fail miserably, often due to the avarice or power hunger of whoever finds themselves in charge. One aspect of the true dystopic book is what I call the compromise. Whether they intend to or not, authors of true dystopia create such a controlling environment, such an onerous mind space, that people are forced to violate their own deepest values in a pragmatic attempt to survive.

Brave New World tells the story of Bernard Marx who criticizes his society as horrific and distasteful. While visiting a “Savage Reservation” on vacation, he meets two non-natives there, a European woman who had been abandoned there by her tour group and her son. Marx brings them back with him and then enjoys the fame and glamour of being their rescuer and sponsor. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag compromises his good guy status when he escapes the authorities by allowing an innocent man to be cornered and executed in his place.

The most horrific example is in Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which Winston Smith and Julia, his supposed love, are arrested. In one of the most disturbing and memorable scenes in literature, his interrogators approach Smith to close a metal cage with a hungry rat inside around his head. The torture is bad enough, but then Smith screams, “Do it to her!” This is all before Julia is revealed as an agent of the Thought Police.

I was reading the Gospel of John this morning and realized that Imperial Rome was amazingly dystopian. With the Emperor cult, words and expressions were as deadly as outright acts of sedition. Pilate was frightened of Jesus’ answers. It might seem outrageous to suggest, but he may have been closer to becoming a disciple than Governor Felix ever was. But Pilate was caught between Rome and the Jews. In order to keep his position, he had to speak the right words, do the right things, thread the needle between warring factions. In doing so, he turned the King over to be crucified, in spite of his wife’s warning and his own better judgment.

Jumping the Shark

by Leave a Comment

The phrase ‘jumping the shark’ was coined by Jon Hein to describe a television series or a celebrity that does something far enough out of their brand to damage their future prospects. It came from an episode of the television show Happy Days in which the character Fonzi water ski-jumped over an aquarium tank with a shark in it. (I happened to see the episode, not realizing it would become a byword for bread-and-circuses desperation. I remember thinking that hitting a piling or the wharf with all those spectators posed a greater risk than a half-minute (or less) swim with a startled shark.) Anyway, the ridiculous act was so far out of character and setting that is sounded the death knell for the series.

I bring this up because some novelists seem to outgrow their editors. I say ‘outgrow’ in the sense of “too big for their britches.” There comes a time when authors, gravid with self-significance, believe their advertising copy to the extent that they become impervious to editorial advice.

Traditionally, the editor served a gatekeeper role to control what comes to the publishing house and what goes out to the public. Even before e-publishing, writers could amass a strong enough platform that they could ditch their publishing house. That reduced the editor’s ability to have a heart-to-heart with their colleagues. This is even more likely now when people can push several buttons and make their musings available to the world.

The editor still serves a necessary pressure-cooker role in the publishing process, keeping undercooked or unpalatable dishes away from the consumer.

[I considered calling this blog post ‘Jumping the Editor,’ but didn’t want to be misunderstood.]

Voter Registration

by Leave a Comment

The other day, I got my new voter registration card, a perforated section of a larger piece of card stock. It looked like it had been printed with a dot-matrix printer.  The difference between the driver’s license I recently received and the voter registration card was pretty striking. Our driver’s licenses do heavy identification duty. Yes, I know you need something like a driver’s license to even register to vote, but every year we hear people gripe about low voter turn-out. Maybe if our voter registration cards were more substantial, more impressive maybe, we might see people take voting more seriously.

Driving Lessons

by Leave a Comment

I’ve enjoyed helping my kids learn to drive, but we’ve had our share of exciting moments. Once, I was waxing eloquent, telling my daughter that her primary job was to keep her passengers comfortable. She glanced at me and said, “But dad, I don’t have any passengers right now.”

Of course, I did the same sort of things to my father when I was learning to drive. On the freeway once, I drove past a line of cars that were stopped for a backed up exit. I was doing 50 or 60 within two feet of fuming, impatient drivers. If anyone of them had pulled into my lane, I would have been toast. I remember an ambulance coming up behind me with its lights going. I drove right up onto the sidewalk. My dad was too flabbergasted to scold me like I deserved. Another time, I pulled around a corner too fast and swerved half-way into the oncoming lane before correcting. My dad just hung on and laughed.

What exciting moments do you recall from learning to drive? What do you recall about teaching someone else to drive?