![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/district_9_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C271&ssl=1\" "\\"They")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Missus and I saw District 9<\/em> on Saturday. I’m tempted to review it in full, but fear I’d reveal too much of its plot. So I’ll just say that District 9<\/em> is one of the, I don’t know… two or three best movies I’ve seen for the last 10 or 15 years — in any genre. It raises important questions about what it means to be human, and it leaves them dangling in the air, just daring the audience to answer them. And it does so in the context of a science-fiction, summer-blockbuster, mock-documentary-cum<\/em>-action film which should be a natural draw for audiences across the board.<\/p>\n Which may sound like a recommendation. You need to see it if you haven’t already<\/em>, right? But, uh, well… No<\/em>.<\/p>\n Why not? Because of the ick <\/em>factor: surgical close-ups; exploding bodies; individual and societal violence (and threat of same)… Some people might even be put off just by the, well, icky appearance of the aliens, who look like viscous love children of THE alien from the Aliens<\/em> films and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ick<\/em> factor all by itself can discourage someone not only from seeing a movie but from starting — or completing — a book. A movie which crossed a threshold for me was one called Bad Lieutenant<\/em>, starring Harvey Keitel: I never had a sense of what the courts refer to as “redeeming social value.” It was just one ugly damned film, ugly — icky — not just physically but spiritually<\/em>, if that makes any sense.<\/p>\n Books really have to work to discourage me, maybe because I tend to read books based on someone else’s recommendation and\/or what I’ve been able to glean from jacket copy, reviews, and so on. That said, I’ve never been able to finish a book by Gilbert Sorrentino called Mulligan Stew<\/em><\/a>. Despite all the quite justifiable praise the book has received, with comparisons to At Swim-Two-Birds<\/em><\/a> and such, and despite how much I… admired<\/em> what Sorrentino was doing, it just plain creeped me out. Can’t explain it. I’ve never gotten rid of my copy, either, because I keep thinking I need to read it. Just… can’t. It’s complete psychological ick<\/em> for me.<\/p>\n As a writer, what does the ick<\/em> factor mean to you?<\/p>\n Suppose you came up with a lightning-bolt of a story idea which, to explore fully, required you to write scenes you knew would be beyond the pale for a big class of readers you hoped to appeal to. Would you do it anyway? Would you tone it down, thereby diluting its impact but making it more acceptable to more readers? Is your internal mandate to Write What You Must<\/em> so strong that you’d never<\/em> dial back your plot’s or your characters’ intensity, disgustingness, evil, depravity, ick<\/em>?<\/p>\n Or would you never even undertake a story with important but icky<\/em> elements in the first place?<\/p>\n Given that icky<\/em> things (and people) happen to people every day, often in ways and for reasons important to understand (or at least not ignore), should<\/em> those things be off-limits?<\/p>\n _____________________<\/p>\n P.S. For what it’s worth, I think I get around the ick<\/em> factor by compartmentalizing: When I come across (most) godawful moments, characters, and entire scenes, I immediately stuff my responses to them into a dark closet.<\/p>\n This may or may not be a predominantly male trait. And it may or may not be a good knack to have: a facility for isolating emotional responses may make for a strong-stomached reader or viewer (like, “yay me!”), but it may also make one less able to summon up empathy, even sympathy<\/em>, for other people’s pain and difficulty (silence, and a certain shame-faced looking in the other direction).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Missus and I saw District 9 on Saturday. I’m tempted to review it in full, but fear I’d reveal too much of its plot. So I’ll just say that District 9 is one of the, I don’t know… two or three best movies I’ve seen for the last 10 or 15 years — in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,247,53,5,50,105,372],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-themissus","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-movies-media","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-language-writing_cat","11":"category-short-fiction","12":"category-style-and-craft","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1us","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5732"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5741,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5732\/revisions\/5741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}