When Readers Listen

When Readers Listen: Halloween Edition with Wes Craven

October 22, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs 2 Comments

When Readers Listen is a collaboration between Callie Feyen & myself, in which we challenge ourselves to really listen to a podcast and take something away from it.

This months podcast is from NPR’s Fresh Air: Remembering Wes Craven.

It’s October, the month of the spooky and scary. I don’t really buy-in to Halloween. I don’t do ghost stories, I’m not a huge fan of dressing up, and I certainly don’t watch horror films. It’s not my thing. Callie, on the other hand, spent many a sleepless night as a kid because of horror movies, specifically those created by Wes Craven. Her essay is 200% worth clicking over to read. It’s about fear and courage and learning to empathize with dark things – as she “finds what shimmers when [she’s] afraid of the dark.”

I cannot remember ever seeing a horror film, really. I tended to look at them as low-brow, unintelligent, and created solely for making money from another Hollywood cash cow. My approach to this podcast was much more academic, and I found myself intrigued by Craven’s approach to the genre – I would never have though there was so much philosophy that goes into a horror film.

Craven is responsible for the Nightmare of Elm Street and Scream franchises, neither of which I have ever seen. I went into this podcast blindly, knowing nothing about the films and nothing about Craven, other than he had recently passed away. Terry Gross at NPR had the chance to interview Craven on three separate occasions throughout his life as a movie maker, and this episode of Fresh Air is a compilation of those interviews.

Interview #1: 1980; following Gross’s viewing of “The Last House on the Left,” Craven’s first feature film and an experience that led Gross to ask the question: What kind of person makes a film like this?

Throughout their discussion, Gross finds Craven to be smart and articulate, and expresses her desire during the film to become non-reactive – to essentially detach herself from what was happening on the screen. Then she changed her mind.

And I figured, well, why should I use all that energy to undo an emotion that’s probably really appropriate? I mean, I figured it was probably appropriate to really be horrified at what I was watching.

Craven agrees with her, and goes on to tell his own story of childhood, when he had to kill a rat and his remembrance that the rat struggled so hard to stay alive. He knew that in his own films, killing couldn’t be stylized or happen off-screen: it needed to be true. His argument was that as a culture, we were becoming desensitized to actual violence – reports from the Vietname war were showing graphic bloodshed while families ate dinner and no one reacted. He wanted people to react.

Interview #2: 1987; “Let’s stop violence that is entertaining.”

What is the benefit of horror that is actually played out on screen, versus the antiseptic horror the entertainment had become used to?

Craven: I think the benefits of seeing that is that it reaffirms reality rather than reaffirming a fantasy. Too much of American cinema dealt with reaffirming fantasies… And my feeling was, it’s time to stop dreaming. And I guess that’s become the theme of my entire work – it’s time to wake up.

In the interview, Craven exposes the irony of people shunning him for his work, while supporting an actual war going on in real life.

I always found it an irony that, you know, the same people that would support a war or, you know, live a lifestyle that would require entire third world countries to be put in near-slavery would, at the same time, be appalled by somebody that did something that was only effective within a certain closed, dark room called a movie house. It was very interesting.

Interview #3: 1998; Craven as Hybrid Horror + Satire

Craven’s larger body of work is known for satirizing the very genre that it is, and as Craven says, it was a way to acknowledge the history of sexism and plain stupidity inherent in the genre:

You know, there’s all those cliches in horror films that, you know, we wanted to avoid and also acknowledge or stand on their head.

Gross & Craven also discussed how horror films seems to be a way for the culture at large to deal with fear outside of themselves: so many films were made about the effects of science because people didn’t know how to feel about the atomic bomb and other scientific advancements that seemed to come with a hefty price tag.

My Takeaways

People are not always what they seem – even horror film directors.
We should pay attention to when we decide to neutralize our reactions. What is going on that we don’t want to admit is real?
We should allow ourselves all healthy reactions: to horror, to sadness, to joy. We should feel these things because they are there to feel.
The act of watching a movie is a shared experience: the ability for dozens of humans to experience the exact same story is a powerful thing. I think this also applies to books, music, and visual art: anything that tells a story.

Are you a watcher of scary movies? If so, what motivates you to go?

And if you’ve listened to the interview, what did you think?

And don’t forget to check out Callie’s thoughts as well over at www.calliefeyen.com!

When Readers Listen: Outrage Culture

August 20, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs 2 Comments

Last month in the first blog of this new series, I confessed that I was not a podcast listener. I had tried to listen to them in the past and it just didn’t work for me.

Now? A month later, I am a podcast listener. I’m pretty sure it’s entirely because of the Greenlight Bookstore Radio Hour (their interview with Elizabeth Gilbert may be one of my favorite things on the planet these days).

So, I was really looking forward to our next installment of the When Readers Listen podcast series.

And I was a little disappointed.

The Longform Podcast episode #148 is an interview with Anna Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel. Holmes currently writes for The New York Times and is the editorial director of Fusion. This episode was title “Outrage Culture” and I was hoping for a discussion about just that: the odd, sometimes justified-sometimes not outrage culture in which we live.

And they only talked about that for maybe seven minute at the very end of the episode.

I love hearing about Jezebel’s first days and the ways in which the site challenged old media outlets to change the way they discussed mainstream topics, but I feel like the title of the episode was completely misleading. It wasn’t an episode about outrage culture: it was an episode about Jezebel, the career of Anna Holmes, with a little dash of outrage culture thrown in.

That said, there were still some good quotable from this episode, especially concerning the section actually about outrage culture:

“[outrage culture] wasn’t as pronounced when I [Holmes] was around … I think that Jezebel contributed to what I now call ‘outrage culture,’ but outrage culture has no sense of humor. We had a hell of a sense of humor, that’s where it splits off. … The fact that people who are incredibly intelligent and have interesting things to say aren’t given the room to work out their arguments or thoughts because someone will take offense is depressing to me.”

One thing that Holmes does mention is that in 2008 when she was running Jezebel, there were never any threats directed at her because she was a woman – not like there is now with things like Gamergate. When asked by host Aaron Lammer why she thought this was, her initial answer was “I don’t know.” She then went on to say that it was because gender issues and gender politics weren’t a mainstream idea, and that once they became mainstream, men were having to deal with them and they didn’t want to – so they went on the offensive as opposed to just ignoring it as had been the case.

It was an interesting concept to me: I’d not thought about these sort of attacks as being purely because the issues were out in the open more than before. I just hadn’t considered it.

And now I am.

It might take a while for me to digest this, to really mull it over and decide what I think about, but the podcast was worth listening to for that one thought-provoking nugget, if nothing else.

And that was the extent that outrage culture was discussed in a podcast titled “Outrage Culture.”

It was such a brief time period that I didn’t even have notes to show you like last time.

And just like last time, I’m listening and writing alongside Callie Feyen. I’m curious to read what she has to say about the differences between the title and the content, and if there even was a break in there for her – or whether or not it mattered to her! Maybe I’m just stuck on something miniscule. :)

What’s your favorite podcast that you’ve been listening to lately? Should I give it a go?

When Readers Listen: May We Have Your Attention, Please?

July 23, 2015 by Abbigail Kriebs 4 Comments

I have an off again, on again relationship with podcasts. I want to be as in love with them as everyone else, I really do. But I dislike listening to audio things other than music. I’m still not a fan of audio books. I do not listening to news videos if there is a transcript available to read instead. I read faster than I listen, which sounds silly, but it’s true.

So when Callie came to me with the idea of listening to and writing about a podcast once a month together, I said “Yes! This is the thing that will make me fall in love with podcasts, finally.”

So far? So good. Although the first one was pretty short (less than 20 minutes), so we’ll see as things go on; if they get longer and I find it harder to pay attention.

And the first podcast, our choice for July? About distraction. Of course it is.

Without further ado…

New Yorker “Out Loud” Podcast, July 6th 2015 – May We Have Your Attention, Please?

Joshua Rothman and Andrew Marantz discuss theories of distraction and the benefits and drawbacks of concentration.

Well, then. This episode is about distraction: is it good? bad? What is it, exactly?

The first definition was “anything I didn’t mean to attend to.” But this leaves no room for daydreams, when your mind wanders aimlessly and stumbles upon a brilliant (or not so brilliant) idea, for when you really need to just tune out the world and think inward.

So Definition One was a bit of a bust. Maybe the opposite of distraction is WORK? Distraction is anything that is a waste of time. But what if it looks like work? For me, this is often the case. Email, cleaning, note-taking, researching… they all “look” like work, but really they are often distracting me from my real work: writing.

Everything is a Decision

One commentator mentioned that everything we do is a decision: and I agree. If we allow ourselves to be distracted, it is because we have decided that Thing 2 is more important to us than Thing 1, our priority, at least in that moment.

For me, as a writer, this is a tough pill to swallow. If I’m bemoaning my inability to make progress on my novel, is it my own fault? And not the fault of all the extraneous circumstances that I tend to blame it on? Work, lack of sleep, events outside of my control… you know the drill.

Then, too, it is harder to create than to consume. Creativity takes more energy, needs more space to breathe before it becomes fruitful. My decision to work full time a distraction? It is of course hindering my novel progress – but is that really a decision that most of us get to make? Or do I have to settle into the realization that writing is always going to take up the odd hours of life, and I need to find a way to make a few more of those odd hours happen?

Being Un-Distracted = Accepting the Circumstances

When we are not distracted – when we are paying attention and being fully present – it is because we have accepted the circumstances we are in. I know a lot of mothers discuss this part of raising a family: the constant reminder to be present when with your children, rather than constantly distracted from the most important with what seems like the most important – laundry, dishes, supper.

For me? I made two promises to myself this year: to blog every Tuesday and Thursday and to finish my novel. The novel often gets set aside because of the deadlines of the blog… and since I’m not willing to break my first promise to myself, I am going to have to accept the circumstances that blogging brings: I will not finish my novel as quickly.

And I need to be okay with that.

The Ability to Focus is a Muscle

What distraction seems to boil down to is whether or not we can control what we are distracted by. In the podcast, one of the commentators says:

We are called upon to be more attentive these days… When we have to concentrate and shape our own stories, distraction is more threatening.

As we write our own narratives in our life, distraction plays a role in keeping us from writing the best narratives. I’m not advocating that there is no room for downtime, that nobody needs a Monday evening of nothing once in a while. But we ought to be mindful of what is keeping us from our greater goals: is it games on our iPhone that mean nothing in real life? Is it shopping on a Saturday instead of reading something enlightening?

The decision is ours. No one else can make it for us. And everyone needs to pay attention to different things.

I think this is what makes life hard: the constant deciding, the constant second-guessing. I think that’s maybe why the podcast ended by asking if distraction is really a problem of self-acceptance. If our distractions are abhorrent to us, is it us merely us wishing we were different? And should we?

What is your definition of distraction? Is it one of these here?

Make sure to click over and read Callie’s post about this same podcast – she’s got some excellent thoughts about being too productive, the book Walk Two Moons, and how we rarely know what we are going to write about when we actually sit down to write.

Next month? The Longform Podcast – #148: Anna Holmes.