Fallen Gods (A Revolution!)

I miss the days when people had new things to say and they were actually important, and moved you, went inside and rearranged a few vital organs, shifted things around, and left you a changed person, feeling different, like you'd experienced something special, even sacred. All those movies that come out of Hollywood anymore are products on an assembly line. They're not good products either. They're like the shallow, empty people you meet sometimes. They have nothing inside, no soul, no life. They slap them together and throw them out into the world, but they are anything but memorable. I don't remember them, not the way I like to remember things, thinking on them fondly, enjoying them the more I think about them. I'm trying to forget them. Will anyone else remember them a hundred years from now, even? Doubtful. By then, they'll be remade a million times anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Is anyone paying attention? Does anyone care about immortality anymore? And I'm not taking about the fifteen latest vampire romance novels that have infected the nearest bookstores, either. How about horror movies where no one in its mindless, shallow cast is over the age of nineteen? Is it so hard, honestly, to make a horror movie with an adult character who cares more about where their next fix is going to come from, their next beer, or some one night stand because the carrot is louder than the soul? Does substance even come into play? Thankfully, we can turn to Independent films, or Sundance, even Foreign Films. Some people do care, thankfully. I know I'm not alone. You're there with me, aren't you? The artist who pens with passions, who creates from within. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit.

The publishing world, the publishing houses, the big names, the New York conglomerates are no better. They are the same empty, sludge-churning factories with diseased shit on their assembly lines for another vapid generation to consume. They have no flavor, no taste, and at the rate it goes, it's amazing anyone can keep up or remember the latest, soul-killing trend. It is more than sickness. It is more than disease. It is Lucifer holding the contracts, the pen for you to sign with. And we are giving in, selling out for the merest sake of momentary, even monetary pleasure. Lifelessness is what it's all about. Entertainment with no purpose but to satisfy a selfish, sterile need. It is the death of the writer, the artist, but more importantly, the visionary.

Have you seen these ungainly, unattractive mass market paperbacks, the ones taller than the average ones that go for $7.99? They throw $9.99 price-tags on them, and you open them up, seeing more white space than black ink. Makes for more pages, thus the higher price-tags, and this, they will tell you is adult fiction, but they are more like a kid's book. I feel like I'm reading a teen novel whenever I open them up, and they put all the big names on them: Stephen King, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Nora Roberts, Jim Butcher, and James Patterson. People will buy them and the publishing houses know that, and they do. I work in a bookstore, so I see the crap coming in, and these days, it's just Disgust with a capital D. How much was Rowling's Deathly Hallows when it came out in hardcover? $40.00, which is higher than my electric bill. If you love to read and you can't afford to read at the publishing house prices, and want to feel like you're actually reading a novel, you go to the library or the used bookstore. The taller, ungainly mass markets are the example of the sickness breeding through the publishing world. It's the reason King's books have bigger print than most of the others you see, if you haven't noticed. For the last ten years or more, every King novel has been puffed up with more pages and bigger typeset. (Don't get me wrong, I love Stephen King, but they are taking advantage of his popularity, like every other best seller's popularity, and they are doing it at the expense of the consumer, we all know that.) It jacks the price up, and people don't care because it's Stephen, and the publishing houses know this, and people are going to buy him. Now, I understand perfectly, that some people can see it better, the larger print, the elderly for example, and this is what they will probably tell you, but we have the trade paperback sizes at $14.99, so I'm not really buying into it (no pun intended). Hardcovers are plenty large enough to read. I'm just saying.

For example, when was the last time you saw a really great cover, an artistic cover, an imaginative, thought-provoking, soul-stirring cover on the front of one of your favorite books? It doesn't happen anymore. It's all photographs now, or a brush stroke, a blend of color. Nothing says imagination and fantasy like a great contemporary photo. Don't you agree? A pair of feet because the word 'Standing' is in the title, for example. That's pretty clever, if you ask me. When I look at it, I think, "Wow, now there's a publishing house who cares about their author, who is really going out of their way to represent, support, and describe this entire story by a picture alone, not to mention all the artists who must not have any work because of this cheapskate concept to market new fiction." Well, we're all starving anyway, so we should be used to the shaft. So, if you're looking for great artwork to represent your fantasy or horror novel, or let alone, anything remotely imaginative on any level whatsoever, you will have to look to the shelves of yesteryear. "Just run outside and take a picture of some random person walking down the street of the city." "Sounds good to me, boss. I'm sure at some time during the novel, someone must be walking down the street in a city somewhere in the world, so as far as representation goes, we're fucking nailing this shit!" It's bound to happen. I personally like the photos of faces, which is basically like saying, "This is exactly how the main character looks, so don't imagine anything different, even though the author said she was blonde, and this girl on the cover has black hair. That's not important. So don't think it." At least that's the message I'm receiving. Why do I want to waste my time imagining people and places, when I can have the cover do that for me? That's what I'm reading fiction in the first place for, after all. I get it. Not too difficult to understand. This is what you're telling me, by your assembly line, and your Publishing House stamp. You have sold out. Your authors have sold out. Hollywood has sold out. It's a cheap, empty, soulless, yet all consuming business. And each and every one of us is buying into it, granting it power. Yes, we, the little people, the forgotten, the few, the voiceless, the unheard.

It is the same with the injudicious, romantic vampire trend. I must see fifteen new vampire novels a day come into the store. Some of them are good bakers now; they take care of the kids, walk the dogs, have supper on the table when you get home, they have dating advice on how best to spend a night on the town with your vampire lover. They are all so fashionably dressed, too! Why wouldn't you show him or her off to all your friends or mom and dad? Isn't that sweet! I miss the days when monsters were monsters. Nowadays they are nothing more than sappy, overly sensitive fairy-tale beings, who just happen to have a fetish for blood. Sure, I'm sold. They are anything but monsters. They make me want to blow my nose with magic tissue paper and ride bareback through a field of pansies on a unicorn while sprinkling magic powder behind me. Does anyone have any glitter from the 1980's? I'm thinking of using a curling iron on a werewolf's hair, because God forbid, it is just so snarly and tangled and dirty, and why don't we just put a few ribbons and bows here and there, blow dry it to give it fluff and volume, and give you a nice warm bath, because, face it, you stink, you big, hairy oaf, and why do you have to eat people on top of all that? You can get just as much nourishment in the produce isle at the nearest grocery store. We are all vegetarians now, and we need to set this example through vampires and werewolves and the walking dead. "But mom, he's really nice! He doesn't eat people!" "Oh, that's nice, dear. We'll certainly have him over for supper then!" And, oh, what about love! This girl here just happens to have a thing for the undead and hairy creatures with bad breath and blood under it's fingernails. And, of course, she's drop dead gorgeous. Talk about luck! What a coincidence that is! Does anyone have a lollipop? Maybe we can hold hands and skip down the street, get some cotton candy at the amusement park. My friends are great, they'll accept you, because after all, being different is okay! Even where monsters are concerned!

I have my own tears for the readership that is America and what people consume as far as entertainment, but I know I can't speak for everyone. Vampires are the biggest sissies to grace the pages and movie screens anymore. And werewolves are a close second. Zombies will be next, if they aren't already. Oh, wait, there is the Jane Austen zombie books, Jane Austen Vampire Killer, and a million other dark, and bloody, stake-driving versions of Jane Austen eating someone's brains, or something like that, so yes, I think that trend is covered, there, too. Point being, monsters are now the good guys, and I have never been more repulsed. That is the cross that frightens me, make's me retreat to the crypt and my own earth-laden coffin. Was this the evolution of the horror story we were hoping for, we had visualized! Maybe, like all trends, it will die, too. I hope to live to see it. Or better yet, be a part of it!

Prose is dead; poetry, too. Vision has gone black and cold. It's a farce anymore. Some of it, granted, is intended, but not all of it is. Even serial killers have turned moralistic, killing the Evildoers, much like Rice's vampires after a time. Isn't that sweet, that all these nefarious creatures are making our world a better place? I think it's sweet. I think it's like one of those Valentine-heart candies you give your sweetheart for that special day. I get warm and fuzzy inside when I read about them or see them on television. "Oh, look honey, serial killers are now setting a great example for our children! The world is now a perfect place." Sure, I get the message. I get it loud and clear. That doesn't mean I have to like it. And if money is all that's important, and selling out for your own sake is the key to your success and happiness, then more power to you. You are rich and successful at the expense of taking advantage. But that's the kind of world we live in, isn't it? Drive that yacht, sail that boat knowing no one in a hundred years is going to remember, let alone care about you, what you created, or who you were. You made your quick mil, now go lie down and die like the rest of them. James Patterson can do it. Why can't you? Literary thought will revolve around all this soon enough. They'll be teaching it in schools. That's how frightening it is. After all, James Patterson just pays people to write his books for him. I think that's pretty cool. I think if I could pay people to create my work for me, so I could go off in the sailboat fulfilling my own trendy needs, I would know true bliss, too. There is no such thing as value or principle. Get yours when you can at anyone's expense, even your own. That's the motto. That's the message! Where are the true artists anymore?

I return to writers no longer living: Poe, Hawthorne, London, Hemingway, Dickens. You remember? Of course you do. Some were fortunate. Some died broke. Did that stop them? No. Though, I will defend some contemporary poets: Peter Straub, Jonathan Carroll, Elizabeth Hand, John Crowley. M. John Harrison, thankfully, who are traditionalists in their own right, and true artists of their craft. These people are saying something and it is beautiful. And, of course, to all of us, the smaller brethren, this band of brothers and sisters, who believe in the same! You know who you are! I smell a revolution. Art to move, to change the world, to inspire, to evoke beauty, because beauty is available and experienced in every shade, light and dark. I miss the things it used to say, and every now and then, through a song, a movie, a piece of artwork, or literary prose, you can catch a glimpse of it, speaking through someone new, but it gets harder to see these days. Tear down the walls! Bring Hollywood to its knees! Make it pay for its depravity, it's stentorian insults to our empathy and intelligence! Burn down the walls of the publishing houses and rebuild them with walls of passion, creativity, and new things to say! We need raw, brutal honesty, fearlessness and your shame! Truth! Some of us still have values and children to turn to, to hope for, examples to set. It makes me dream for another time. What Hollywood and the publishing conglomerates represent, in the position they're in, is a disappointment at best. To have all that power, like every feeble-minded tyrant and king before them, makes me hang my head in woe. I see a future of fallen gods! Can you hear the people sing? Are we nothing more than fucking slaves?