Tag Archives: Darkness

Tales of Despair: Werewolves in Suburbia

This is a tale of depression, misanthropy and suicide. Of coming of age, and of dying. It speaks of the banality of modern society, and the terrible havoc of a demon from long ago.

In a basement, two sisters live. In the dim light, they dream of their escape, by flight or by death. In the waking world, they are disliked by all; in the dungeon of their home, their dislike is only for themselves, and for life. Though their parents live above them, they have little contact with them, and the disconnect between their lives is total.

And then, the eldest sister is mauled by the beast. They know not what the beast is, nor its provenance, but the girl’s transformation becomes slowly unmistakable. The physical is preceded by the mental and the emotional, and she turns upon her own sister, ostracizing her in favor of encounters that satisfy her newfound and ravenous sexuality, and her equally ravenous and terrible appetite.

Refusing to leave her sister to her fate, the younger girl pursues her, even as she starts down an irreversible path of death and destruction, beginning with the devouring of pets, and leading to the murder of a local girl. In a rare lucid state, the elder sister helps her sister bury the dead girl, but the realization comes to the younger one’s mind that her sister is not the person she once knew: she would eat the dead girl, given the chance.

Desperate to redeem her sister, her only soulmate, the younger sister discovers a possible cure – but it is too late. Despite barring her in their shared bathroom, her transformation has become too great, and she escapes, leading her to their school. Frantic, the younger sister follows her, encounters her as she seduces a boy, the only one who believes the truth of her transformation. In pain and torment, they subdue her, and drag her to their home, where the last dregs of their cure remains. But it is too late – her transformation is complete. Now a beast herself, the boy is murdered before her eyes, yet her devotion to her sister, terror through she now is, is resolute: she will cure her, or release her from her pain.

And in the end, of course, the cure is forsaken, and the girl, weeping, is left with no choice, and plunges the knife deep into her sister’s heart, listening to the beast’s slow and ragged breathing until, finally, it ceases.

Go watch Ginger Snaps.

Tales of Despair: The Road and the Unhappy Ending

There are so many creations in the realm of literature and art that draw inspiration from despair that they have, in some areas, grown a cult of their own. Entire genres are dedicated to these themes, and as far back as Shakespeare people have been fascinated by fate and the tragic ending. Macbeth is a perfect example of a tale which is very much doomed from the start – from the very beginning, we know there is no hope left for this man, and we follow him powerlessly to his doom.

In most areas of art, the artist is mostly, if not entirely, in control of their work. This allows a great freedom to take the story where it leads, regardless of the end. As a storyteller, it is with great relish – though also with great pain – that we can put our characters through a hell they sometimes don’t survive. Tolkien allowed Frodo to be scarred, physically and mentally, for the rest of his life. Orwell provided no escape for Winston Smith, and in the end he was powerless to stop himself from being reintegrated into the society he so hated. Stephen King is a master of the ability to push the darkness of a tale past the point of no return, whether it is Louis Creed graphically losing his son early in Pet Semetary and eventually driving him to insanity, or Paul Sheldon losing his entire leg to Annie’s madness in Misery. These are things that can’t be recovered from; for these characters, there will be no happy ending.

Yet there is one artistic medium in which it is much more difficult to avoid the inevitable ending upturn, and that is film. Particularly in the large-budget Hollywood industry, revenue is all-important in recouping the cost of developing the film, and the story ultimately falls to the demands of the crowd. In the end, most people just don’t go to the movies to feel bad.

What ends happening is that, with the exception of those few movies that are actually based upon novels (see the Stephen King examples above), it is almost impossible to find a movie that is willing to commit to the permanent destruction of their characters, and refuse to relent even at the very last moment. As scary as horror movies are, someone always survives. As moving as dramas are, someone always wins an insurmountable struggle.

Occasionally, you will come across a movie that goes halfway, and doesn’t quite provide quite the satisfying ending you might expect. Donnie Darko does this well – certainly not a happy ending, but one that somehow resonates nonetheless with a just fate. There are bittersweet endings, such as in Toy Story 3, with a conclusion we know is coming from the very beginning, yet somehow don’t want to face.

But there are very few movies that have the guts to go the full distance. In the end, there are few that can claim this credit as a stand-alone film (American Beauty springs to mind as an exception), but even in novel adaptations, the temptation to veer from the story can be overwhelming.

The Road, however, is not one of these. It is in every possible way as bleak and terrible as the novel it was based on, and doesn’t stray from its course even at the final stage. In a way, the shattered world in which our characters live give us little reason for hope form the outset, but a vast canon of apocalypse tales (thank you, John Wyndham) has taught us that at least some sort of redemption awaits at the end. At first, we want to believe that salvation may, in fact, lie at the coast, despite there being no evidence other than the father’s words. When the father becomes ill, we expect this as the twist, the seat-edger. What happens from there, however, is the push too far that casts the whole story into despair. There is no redemption, and even as we watch the boy watch over his father’s body, there is still some tiny hope that maybe we’re wrong, and that he’ll come back.

This ending has earned The Road the dubious accolade of being my favorite movie I would never want to see again. I fell in love with it visually from the very first scene, and the impeccably executed plot was riveting. But as a father, the ending cut a little too close to home, and I watched the credits roll through a pretty thick veil of tears. I want to watch this again…but perhaps not any time soon.

In the end, of course, we are allowed at least a brief reprise from despair in the form of the family that take the boy in. Yet they are a poor substitute, and the genuine love and caring the boy has lost in his father is irreplaceable. Ultimately, the closing message seems to suggest that kindness itself is irrelevant; in a world such as this, there is truthfully survival – or death.

Tales of Despair: My Dying Bride and the Destroyer of Hope

Weeping with you. Arms around them
Flowing with you. Without your men
Keeping with you. Feeling their shiver
Drowning with you. Deep in this river

Tired and lonely. Sitting and staring
Weak and filthy. No longer caring
Wasting to nothing. The rubble of you
Hoping for something. Poison where love grew

People. Feel her mind
She is broken
People. Fill your eyes
Her body is broken

Leave me be, with my memories
I can still see all the lovers of me
I still know those feelings

You’re still mine, my lover
I watch over you
Goodbye my lover
No sorrow. Please, no tears

Holy and fallen. Watch yourself die
Fade and wither. Long lost the fight
Tremble to sleep. Her man long gone
Years, and still weeps. Never forgotten

My Hope, the Destroyer

© 2001 My Dying Bride

It would be impossible for me to write of despair without at least mentioning the beautiful and doom-laden music of British band My Dying Bride. From a musical point of view, there is little else in all the canon of recorded music that is so inspiring of – and inspired by – despair and misery. Over the past twenty years, My Dying Bride have filled the world with misery, in a series of beautifully recorded and artfully written albums and songs. The mastery of these albums is, as much as the musical style itself (slow, morose, often heavy, with achingly tragic vocals), the imagery dredged up by their dark and evocative lyrics. Though they rarely tell a story (The Light at the end of the World is a wonderful exception), the visions painted by these terrible words have endured in my mind for years, and it is these I would share with you.

“My Hope, the Destroyer” is a part of their 2001 album The Dreadful Hours, and is the culmination of an hour-long soundscape of doom. Metaphor and reality blend interchangeably, and from the opening strings, a scene of such utter bleakness is painted that it blackens the very world around you:

There is a man, eyes red and swollen with many tears, arms out to a soul that is not there. In a room, dimly lit, he feels himself drawn ever deeper into a corner of blackness, and the world above fades into utter nothingness. So has he been for days, and now he has not the strength to crawl of the unlit void into which he has been carried away. Voices pass around and over him, and they are distant, unheard and meaningless. Their sound is cold, and bring no comfort.

As this man is ever drawn down a stream of unconscious and black, twisted claws of despair rise from the deep, and he comes to pieces, and is undone. In this dying, he sees his woman, in white on a ground of black stone, stained in red, and the bleak faces of people and demons gather and stare. He is there, again, and in his arms she is lifeless. In the rain, the gray and the red above, the twisted faces of the past stare down, and mock him.

He is carried away on the sea of ink, and there is a stone, upon it a word, and below it a death. The tree above is leafless, and the raven does not move. Water drips on the stone, and it is not rain.

And in the fading twilight of his life, his every thought has ever been bent upon this moment, and turning back on a life of many years, all hope failed that one night, and tears have filled all the nights since.

Such are the scenes in my mind, every time I hear this song, and I am given to wonder – what tragedies inspired music of such despair?