For the Birds

This Halloween I watched Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds (1963). I had seen parts of it before, but I realized that I had never seen the whole movie from beginning to end. I remember people telling me how much it frightened them, but I honestly didn't find it find it that scary and would have a hard time classifying it as a "horror" picture. The scenes where we are all waiting for the birds to attack are quite suspenseful.

It had its moments, and it was an enjoyable film overall, but I won't include it in my any of my top-movies-to-see lists. My favorite scenes are the ones where the characters are walking to and from the school house with all of the ravens or crows perched on the monkey bars in the playground. Watching. Waiting. Creepy.

According to IMDB there is a remake in production that is due in theaters in 2009, starring Naomi Watts and George Clooney. It would be interesting to see with better special effects (visual and sound), but I don't have high hopes that it will be better as Hollywood doesn't have a great track record with remakes.

I searched for, found, and read the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier it was based on. I should say inspired by. Both had a coastal town attacked by birds, neither had an explanation for the birds behavior, and the endings of both left things unresolved. I am not saying that any of these are bad, it is just how it is.

Being a short story, it needed some padding to be a full length feature. Hitchcock added a few elements and made some changes that you typically find in movies made by Hollywood. Luckily he didn't slap on a happy ending or a pat explanation tied up in a nice little bow.

As to the additions and modifications, first there is a love interest. The book actually follows a man and his family and doesn't stray very far from his house the entire time. None of this man with a mysterious past (and possible mother issues), or single woman with too much money and time on her hands.

Second, the action was moved to the United States from Great Britain. Why we feel the need to Americanize things is beyond me. Orson Welles moved H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds in his 1938 radio program, as did Steven Spielberg in the most recent movie version. The first Peter Pan (1924) movie based on J.M. Barries' play and book actually did the same, completely loosing the British elements that are core to the story (but doing a pretty good job with everything else). Maybe they don't believe that we would watch a movie that didn't have the United States as the center of the universe - saving the world.

The only thing that the book had more of than the movie is types of birds. Probably due to the cost of the special effects, the movie really only had seagulls and crows (or ravens), while the town in the book was being attacked by all types of birds, from the sparrows to raptors. In the original story the characters learned from the radio that similar events were taking place through out the country as well.

I thought the Simpson's might have done of spoof of The Birds, but I realized it was actually from an episode of Arthur (based on Marc Brown's children's books). In it Arthur, Buster and their friends all watch The Squirrels on TV and become frightened of squirrels. (It even had a scene with squirrels gathering on monkey bars in a school yard.)

I tried to think of some other books or movies with nameless flocks of birds and really couldn't come up with much. I just finished reading Sabriel (1995) by Garth Nix, Sabriel herself is attacked by a flock of dead, black birds who are being possessed by the spirit of a dead magician. There are also some scenes in The Messengers (2007) starring a pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart with black birds watching and eventually attacking.

So there you have it. If you haven't seen the The Birds, or if it has been a few years since you have, you could start a tradition of watching it on Thanksgiving - a holiday that is even more fitting than Halloween if you ask me.

Of Red Tape and Paper Pushers

Recent events in the news and in my life started me thinking about bureaucracies. I realize that as organizations grow they need to have a structure of some sort with levels of specializations in order to be efficient. Unfortunately, it seems bureaucracies tend to forget their original purpose for being created and become intent on their self-perpetuation and growth for growth’s sake, often eventually undermining the very cause they were initially created for.

If terms such as pencil-pusher, paper-pusher and red tape, didn’t originate because of bureaucracies, they have gained their status and are continually used because of them. At their worse, the people within these organizations become depersonalized cogs in the organizational mechanics.

Bureaucracies set themselves up quite well for satire. Here are some of my favorite books and movies that include bureaucratic elements as part of the story:

Joseph Keller’s Catch 22 was published in 1961, and made into a movie in 1970, and set the standard for lampooning the military bureaucracy. The very phrase “catch 22” is now synonymous with rules and regulations bureaucracies tend to create. After reading it I challenge you to forget characters like Captain John Yossarian and Major Major Major Major.

Keith Laumer wrote a dozen or so books and an assorted number of short stories about Jame Retief, a lower level member of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne (CDT) who manages to solve galactic issues in spite of the diplomatic bureaucracy. His superiors always take credit leaving him in the same position. The first book was Envoy to New Worlds (1963) with the last being Retief and the Rascals (1993). Some stories are better and funnier than others, and you can read them in any order.

Douglas Adams published the first book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in series 1978. From what I remember, while commercial and governmental bureaucracy runs throughout all of the books in the Guide itself, the first three (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), and Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)) deal with it more directly.

In 1985, Monty-Python alum Terry Gilliam (the animator and only American in the troupe) released Brazil. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, with Jonathon Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins and fellow Python Michael Palin. This 1984-ish world has innumerable stabs at bureaucracy gone wrong from the ever-present ducts (and the required process to get them fixed), to mistakes made and unclaimed by departments more concerned with their own jobs, to the dehumanizing and dream-killing effects of the system, to paper shuttling tubes, to crowds of yes-men following management, to underlings fighting over office supplies and space, to one an unforgettable ending. (Make sure you don’t get the version with the TV ending if you haven’t seen it yet.)

The Keys of the Kingdom series by Garth Nix, has the main character thrust into the politics of the House (basically the center of the Universe). The first six of seven books have already been published (Mister Monday (2003), Grim Tuesday (2004), Drowned Wednesday (2005), Sir Thursday (2006), Lady Friday (2007), Superior Saturday (2008), and Lord Sunday (2009)). Within these stories, you will encounter characters with titles like “Thesaurus Minimus Second Grade,” and “Primary Paper Pusher on the Extremely Grand Canal,” and “Master Foiler in the Foil Mill of the Guild of Gilding and Illumination.” Every citizen of the House knows exactly what position they fill in rank from the Architect by number. The series started off with a bang, but in subsequent books it sometimes felt like Nix was being weird and clever just for the sake of being weird and clever, but things really started picking up in the last couple of books. The sixth book has some great bureaucratic moments including cubicle-bound sorcerers attacking another who is promoted as her cubicle is physically moved.

As I was looking for any other stories I might have forgotten about, I discovered that science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle created the following "law", which he calls Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

It is also stated as:

...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

(You can read about this Law on several pages on Pournelle’s site, including this one.)

Well, on that note, let me know your thoughts on bureaucracy and your life or our current state of affairs, and if you have read any other books, or seen any television shows or movies that deal with the ridiculousness of organizations that have achieved this level of efficient inefficiency.

Maximum Ride - Books 1 & 2

In March of this year I attended the Public Library Association (PLA) conference in Minneapolis, MN. One of the best parts of this was all of the free books. With our registration packet came two books by James Patterson - Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (Book 1) (in paperback), and Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever (Book 2) (in hardback). I hadn't read anything by Patterson and I put them in my to-be-read pile.

Later, as I was packing for a family reunion in July, I picked up the paperback to possibly bring along. I noticed that the chapters were extremely short, usually 2 to 4 pages long. I thought it would be a perfect book that I could be interrupted on at any point and not have to worry too much about losing the flow of the story, so I took it.

As I started to read it, two of my younger cousins remarked on how much they liked the books. One is a teenager, the other is in her early twenties and I know they have liked some of the same books and authors I have so I thought things were boding well for this series. Then I started getting into the book ...

The best part of the book is that the chapters are short, so it moves along at a pretty good pace and it is easy to read in short, interruptable chunks. Unfortunately, characterization and descriptions are sacrificed.

Before I get too far into my review, here is the basic story. (I will keep spoilers to a minimum, but there are going to be some - so be warned.) Six children are living on their own, hiding from "the School," a laboratory where they were genetically enhanced with wings and other abilities. In the first book the School finds them takes the youngest one back. The other five head out to rescue her. They get her out and keep running, looking for their parents along the way. The second book continues with them on the run, finding a potential ally and leading a "normal" life for a little while before continuing on the run. Now back to my thoughts on the two books ...

It took me several chapters before I realized the main character, Maximum "Max" Ride, was female. After that, it took me most of the book to connect the names and abilities of the other members of the flock, except for the youngest, Angel. I never really grew to care for them. Max had her moments, but that was it. Questions were raised about why the School let them escape in the first place, why they leave them alone at some times and pursue them at others, who are their allies and who are their enemies, etc. The first book seemed to end so abruptly without any answers that I decided to read the second book to see if any of the ideas were explained. They weren't.

There is an Empire-Strikes-Back type revelation at the end that seems to be forgotten or ignored in the second book, so I am not sure if it was a revelation or a ruse. A "major" death at the end of the first book turns out to be somewhat irrelevant by the second book as that character's clone is created. The first book is told from Max's point of view, and in the second book, the point of view changes occasionally. Unfortunately, it was not always clear that it wasn't Max telling the story at points so that made some parts a little confusing for a few moments.

I discovered that the library has the third book on CD, so I might eventually listen to it to see if any questions are answered, or if this is a Young Adult book version of the Lost series on TV.

While the books have a few twists on ideas, the ideas are far from new. On TV, you could have watched Mutant X or James Cameron's Dark Angel with Jessica Alba, to see genetically enhanced children/teenagers coming to grips with their abilities, hiding from those who created them, tyring to find out answers as to who they are, etc. Jessica Alba's character's name was even Max! These ideas aren't new to speculative fiction in print, movies, TV or comic books. In the past ten years, the animated series Batman Beyond had geneticists "splicing" animal genes with humans as well.

The flock is constantly being chased by Erasures - other kids who can morph into wolf-like creatures. These reminded me of the Fetchers in Garth Nix's Keys of the Kingdom series. The Fetchers are part dog, but they almost became comic relief in their inability to achieve their missions also. The fact that nothing works in the flock's favor, and that several events seem pointless and that there are more than a few gaps in logic, I finished these two books with the same unfulfilled taste in my mouth as The Series of Unfortunate Events left me.

This series (the fifth book is due out next year) is a best seller and has won awards, so perhaps I have just read or seen too many stories that are similar that the ideas If you haven't seen or read many of the books and shows I mentioned, perhaps this series will be fresh enough to you keep you going - and bring you to the movie that is supposed to be released in 2010 (maybe the screen writers will be able to improve on the story - we can hope). In the meantime, I would recommend you find something else to pass your time and engage your thoughts and imagination.