Homicide Rewatch: A Model Citizen

 

Written by Noel Behn; story by Tom Fontana & Jorge Zamacona

Directed by John McNaughton

 

You’ve got to hand it to Tom Fontana. NBC asks for more life-affirming storylines; here’s the first episode since Night of the Dead Living with no murders or even dead bodies. NBC asks for stories that are more sexual; he gives them the first episode with an on-screen sex scene. Two in fact. And he does both of these things in an episode that is, in many ways as bleak and morbid as anything else and puts death front and center in a way it really just isn’t.

Let’s start with one real crime in this episode which is sadly even more pertinent today that it was in 1994. A black teenager named Lennox comes into the squad and tells Munch a long story about his brother getting shot. Except he didn’t see the shooting, no one’s dead and there’s no body. Munch, usually short-tempered, is angrier than usual. “You just wasted five minutes of my life. Five minutes that when I’m on my deathbed I’ll be wishing I had.”

In hindsight the major crime in this episode features what will be one of the more interesting trends when it comes to Richard Belzer’s character. Most of the best episodes that show Belzer to his best dramatic ability will not be the kind of murders that we will see the majority of the other detectives. Rather they will be crimes that have a hook that it built on rumor and deception and then leads to the kind of eerie case we don’t typically get with Munch. This is keeping with the nature of John overall, particular at leads to the kind of tragicomedy that is centered on the man.

Like most of these same cases he has to be dragged into it. He’s being driven by Howard to an alcohol awareness seminar (we’ll get to that) and they drive by the bus stop Lennox the kid mentioned. There’s no sign that anything happened but there’s a neighborhood clinic. Munch and Howard go in and they learn there was a shooting. Lennox shot Prescott, his brother with his own gun.

Munch ends up going to the hospital where Prescott is in a coma. His mother doesn’t know what happen and his two sisters are nearby. Munch and Howard go to the home where they find the evidence of the shooting but Lennox is still prevaricating, insisting there’s no gun. For the first time we see genuine anger. “When your brother dies, we’ll be back to charge you with murder,” he says as he storms out.

That night Munch, who can normally laugh off most murders, is melancholy. He thinks about the two sisters, who are still in grade school. He’s focused on how dead their eyes were and how they know they were next. Howard decides to turn the car around and go back.

When Munch goes into Lennox’s room he’s angrier than we’ve ever seen him in all season. He storms at Lennox and tries in his deranged way to reason with, telling him that next time it could be his sisters. Lennox says: “You want the gun? Take it. It don’t matter. They’ll just be another one tomorrow.” Munch smashes his fist in the wall, leaving a notable dent and walks out of the house. Both Lennox’s sister walk out with absolutely no emotion in their eyes.

Munch and Howard then get drunk with Munch saying, not for the first time, he’s going to quit. He intends to run the Waterfront, maybe go into business with his brother. Munch then gives another one of his rants, this one more on point then usual:

 

“We’ve got enough guns in Baltimore to fight World War III. But you know what, it’s absolutely fine. You know why? The right to bear arms. It’s in the bill of rights. You start messing with that, you might as well hold up a sign on the Statue of Liberty that says ‘Welcome to Iran’

Now it’s worth noting during this episode a character named Sam Thorne has shown up earlier and talked about a program called Toys for Guns and has been trying to get the detectives involved in it. “Guns go off, you get involved. Am I the only one who sees the connection?” (We will deal with the man and his fate in the next episode.) Munch has spent the entire episode proving the futility of that very statement. He’s done exactly what was asked of him and nothing changed. Even he admits he has no answers.

The episode also deals with another storyline that came across one way in 1994 and may have others with a different read on it now. Annabella Wilgus the white cotton glove killer, has been sentenced to a padded cell but is now suing the city of Baltimore for violating her civil rights. Named in the suit are Frank and Russert. Frank spends the entire episode incredibly angry because in his mind he sees nothing wrong with what he did. Annabella Wilgus got away with murder in his eyes and the fact that she’s now demanding money for it is the cherry on the crap sundae.

The courtroom scene that follows between Russert and Darin Russom is interesting now. Given what we already know about both the attorney and who he represents we naturally assume he’s just being another sleazeball. When he deposes Russert and gets her to tell exactly what we saw between Pembleton and Wilgus, right up until the moment she burned herself, and then asks her if he would have let Frank throw Wilgus on the floor to get a confession and Russert says of course not. “Burning is okay. But throwing someone on the floor is not okay. So much for civil liberties at the Baltimore Police department.”

Because this is a procedural we naturally want to hate this guy. But for what will be the only time in his entire career of representing the reprehensible Darin Russom is actually on the right side of history. The case is held over for trial but the city settles rather than have it go to that point.

This is also one of the few episodes in Homicide’s entire run where Frank looks something like a prick in a way that’s not flattering.  He refuses to acknowledge at any point that there might be some truth in what he’s done. His first reaction is to blame Russert (something I should mention a contemporary author later would) but in this case when Russert says Frank went over the line, she has a point. The fact that she was liable for what happened makes little difference to Frank (or some viewers) and he storms off and goes to the box.

Gee initially tries to humor him with the news (“The city actually thinks your worth $100,000) but Pembleton then turns on Gee. In what will be a sad recurring theme for Homicide the detective is more concerned what this means for his reputation rather than any consequences.

“I thought I had resolved all this when I first put the uniform on,” he tells Gee. “You do what you have to do to get to the truth.” He actually seems more upset that Annabella Wilgus manipulated him than the idea of having done anything wrong.

But no one’s exactly behaving well in this episode. The main story of A Model Citizen is ostensibly a love triangle and betrayal. In actuality it’s a story of two very creepy approaches to romances that bring certain ugly truths to life. And one of them unfortunately is about Meldrick Lewis.

Lewis meets a woman who does models for crime scenes named Emma Zoole, who’s here to work with him on a murder. Lewis is instantly taken with her and its clear Emma isn’t. He walks her through the crime scene and it becomes obvious to us that Meldrick is smitten and Emma isn’t. When they’re in the coffee room, Meldrick then tries to hit on her and ask her on a date. Emma politely declines and Lewis keeps pressing it even afterwards. You can see thirty years later just how badly Meldrick’s behavior is and the fact that Emma has soundly rejected him doesn’t change the fact he feels that he has a claim on her that no one else should touch.

It’s during this storyline that the show starts to subtly hint at an unpleasant personality trait of Meldrick: when he feels he’s crossed he can hold a grudge and he wants that trust reciprocated without having to give any in return. This is clear in a scene near the end of the episode where Munch, still depressed about everything involve Lennox is watching some children play basketball. For one of the few times on the show he actually tries to open a part of his soul – and Meldrick is so encased in the supposed slights against him he doesn’t bother to see the man who is partnering with him is in such pain. It’s clear that despite being partners with Munch in a bar and on the force, he can’t seem to see him as capable of the same problems he does. When he tells Munch he doesn’t want to partner with Bayliss anymore because of his ‘betrayal’ he doesn’t even bother to give an explanation. It’s another example of his selfish behavior. This time its relatively harmless. In later seasons it will have repercussions on the job.

Bayliss knows about Meldrick’s crush on Zoole but it’s clear the moment he sees her there’s a spark between them that’s immediate. After their first conversation, it quickly becomes clear that Emma’s has a view of death that is kind of creepy. The way she talks about how “you must find death fascinating” and the way she talks about seeing him on TV about Adena Watson is a little unsettling. When she invites him into a gallery where the art has been done entirely by criminals, he’s actually kind of repulsed. With good reason, Annabella Wilgus has a couple of pieces in there. When she says: “What if you could see inside the head of whoever killed Adena Watson?” it’s the kind of thing someone who didn’t know Tim as we do would recognize as poking a sore point. It’s only because of his attraction to Emma he goes in and he can only take so much before he’s invited to her place for a drink.

There of course, the infamous sex scene takes place and we learn Emma has sex in a coffin. This is unsettling in 1994, but as we now know Emma is just slightly ahead of the curve. (To be sure, many of the people who do are devoted to vampires, but still…) This truly unsettles Bayliss but after she takes off her top he gives in. (“You’re not gonna close the lid on me are you?”)

The next day Bayliss is overwhelmed with guilt both about Emma’s fetish and the fact that he betrayed Meldrick. He intends to confess and come clean. But because the squad leaks like a sieve, Meldrick learns before Tim can confess – and its pretty clear that even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. “You’re a disloyal son of a bitch,” he tells Bayliss before storming off. One wonders if Meldrick had gotten to know Emma he would still have been as enamored of her or if this is just macho posturing. But the fact he still behaves like a child.

And it turns out Emma has been lying to Bayliss, she’s in the middle of a relationship already. (Open relationships were something that would have to wait until cable came around for television to deal with and even then it would be another twenty years before they dipped their toe in.) This bothers Tim even more, especially when he learns she’s dating a cop. By now it’s clear how messy things are going to get with this but he ends up back in the coffin with her by the end of the episode.

Yet even that is not the most haunting image. Before the end Felton has a conversation with Russert where he lets her know that things between him and Beth have been tense since he came back. Russert wonders if Beth knows he was sleeping with her. We’ll never get a clear image of this but we do see the results. The final moments of the episodes show Beau walking through his home to find it empty – not just of his wife and kids but all the furnishing and clothes, except for his in a pile. The final scene shows him walking into his bathroom to see the word “GOOD BYE” written on the mirror in lipstick. The image of Daniel Baldwin breaking down is one of the best scenes he will do on the show. (It would have more of an impact were it not for how Peacock does it…but it’s still powerful.)

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD:

“Detective Munch” Munch’s major comic subplot is when he attends the alcohol awareness seminar so that they can serve liquor. He shows up having told the leader: “It’s not every day one’s mother is crushed by an elephant.” (Apparently investigating a shooting isn’t a good enough excuse.) Munch behaves very much like a class clown in this seminar and ends up getting expelled – and banned for life. (Though to be honest given the way she talks about it, I’m kind of stunned this doesn’t happen more often.)

It was The 1990s: The opening teaser deals with Howard being upset that Romper Room; a TV kid show that had been filmed in Baltimore for more than 40 years is being cancelled. Howard mourns its passing while Munch seems to be miffed at its place in Baltimore’s culture (Romper Room, Bromo-Seltzer, the Star-Spangled Banner). Felto actually quotes the show but seems kind of bitter that his name was never seen in the magic mirror. “She never saw Beau.” Munch then opens up and shares his childhood memories with Judy Splinters who won the first Emmy. When he is mocked, he says: “Remind me to share more often.”

This incident, with the requisite name changes, can be found in Simon’s book. And just like on the show, the detectives never got the gun out of the house.

Hey, Isn’t That… By the time Joe Morton had made his first appearance on Homicide as Sam Thorne, the crusading newspaper man he had already starred as Jason on the 1974-75 series Feeling Good and as James Foster on the soap opera Search For Tomorrow. He spent much of the 1970s on TV series, including Sanford and Son as well as soap operas such as Guiding light and Another World. His breakthrough role in the world of film came in John Sayles’s brilliant sci-fi movie The Brother From Another Planet, though it didn’t lead to instant success. He was still doing small roles in films and TV until 1991 when he starred in another John Sayles film City of Hope and played Miles Dyson in Terminator 2. After that he would be cast in the short run series Equal Justice and played Byron Douglas III in A Different World. Not long before he appeared on Homicide he had just played Capt. McMahon on Speed. (I’ll cover the rest of his career in the next episode.

First Appearance: Laurie Kennedy as Felicity Weaver, one of the states attorneys for Baltimore. Kennedy had been actin in television for nearly twenty years during this period in such shows as Police Woman, and Emergency. She made the acquaintance of Tom Fontana in St. Elsewhere but her career started to take off when she played Pat Lawford in the mini-series Kennedy that same year. She was married to D. Keith Mano which helped to. She has also had recurring roles on all of the Law & Order franchises and appeared both in Oz and City on A Hill, both of which were written by Tom Fontana as well.

 

 

20 Years Later Richard Jeni's A Big Steaming Pile of Me Remains One of The Funniest Comedy Specials of All Time

 

 

So much of comedy, like almost all aspects of our popular culture, has been co-opted by the left who argues that it is supposed to be about ‘speaking truth to power’. I’ve often wondered what some of the previous generation of comedians might think.

I’ve recently had the great pleasure of rewatching one of my favorite stand-up comedy specials of all time Richard Jeni’s classic HBO special: A Big Steaming Pile of Me. And while he sadly passed away in 2007 before much of this became gospel, I know what he would say to this: “Oh my God. I’ve clearly been doing this wrong my entire life. I better retire right now before I get sued for false advertising! I yield the stage to my fellow truth-tellers!”

And because he was Jeni he would do so not with snark but self-deprecation bordering on apology.

Richard Jeni, like so many white male comics of his era, made some attempts to crossover into film and television. His biggest role on film was Charlie, the best friend of Jim Carrey’s Stanley in The Mask and he had a short run TV series called Platypus Man. But basically his entire career was in stand-up. Jeni seemed completely fine with that because he was very good at it. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Bill Maher and Denis Leary, his standup was never the harangue or lecture of the world with none of the smugness or preaching that seemed to be preeminent among so many of his colleagues. Rather his approach was affability and self-deprecation. This was not uncommon among many of his contemporaries: his style was not much different from Colin Quinn or Jon Stewart and not long after his tragic death John Mulaney would adapt a similar approach.

In that sense he never missed an opportunity to make himself part of the joke, something that his contemporaries such as Maher or Leary never were willing to do. One got that feeling in Steaming Pile which aired in 2005 and would sadly be the last work he would ever do. Joe Rogan called it one of his favorite specials of all time and 20 years after it debuted I couldn’t agree more.

The special aired not long after George W. Bush had been reelected President and we were dealing with both the War on Terror and the first real movement of comedians being the victims of backlash from the world for their jokes. Politically Incorrect had been cancelled and other comedians were dealing with censorship. Many of them – the overwhelming majority of them white males – were beginning to double down on their behavior and becoming more aggressive and baiting in their humor, waiting for the knives to come out. Jeni makes sure he confronts this on in his opening material – but as in keeping with who he is, keeps it light.

 

“Keeping my audience happy is the second easiest job in the world. The easiest: putting Michael Jackosn in the witness chair and creating (air quotes) ‘reasonable doubt’.”

Jackson was facing his most recent court challenge.

After a while: “It’s good to start a show with a little Michael Jackson humor. Because it’s good to have three, four minutes and the start of the show where someone isn’t pissed off at me.” He says this wryly not angrily, the only anger in Jeni is clearly mockingly and sly rather than strident. “Michael Jackson is the only person in America you can make fun of without pissing somebody off.” And then he goes on with an Irish brogue for reasons that will become obvious:

 

You wait a goddamn minute! You’ll be keeping your dirty mouth of the King of Pop. A man is innocent of child molesting until he’s proven guilty! And any man who says any different will be dealing with me! Father Murphy of the Boston Archdiocese!”

 

And Jeni’s audience explodes into laughter as he starts shadowboxing. When it dies out:

 

And that concludes our ‘not pissing off anybody’ portion of the show.

 

He then begins to deal with the problems of everybody having their opinions in comedy but even this is mild.

 

And it used to be when people got mad at you comedy, they just wrote you a letter. Now I have a website and email and they can threaten my life by the hundreds.

 

Jeni then tells about why he’s had to deal with extra security and he said

 

There’s two things I do not like. The disgraceful practice of racial profiling…and guys wearing turbans on my flight.

 

He points out the arguments about turbans. He acknowledges I know that wearing a turban doesn’t make you a terrorist.

 

 “All I’m asking is that you don’t wear it for the three shitty hours we’re trapped on an airplane? Have you not been watching the news? You’re making everybody nervous. When you’re off the plane, make up for the lack of a turban!”

 

 

He deals with the issues of respecting religious beliefs gently. I’m a Christian. I don’t go bouncing on to a jet spiked to a big, wooden cross!” (resignedly) I suppose I have the right to do it…but it’s a narrow aisle, it’s a big cross.”

Then after having gone through this he has his ‘heckler’ say: “You’re not even a practicing Christian.”

 

He’s got me there. I’m a Catholic the same way if a cow’s born in a tree, it’s a bird. I wouldn’t say I’m a fanatic.

 

He justifies it by arguing that these reactions while unfair are primitive and rarely helped. He traces it back to one of our childhood fears of a monster being under the bed and why we don’t do certain things into our adulthood. This is a very lucid and rational response.

 

After this he gets into the politics and the very extreme and even though his material is 20 years old, it has barely aged.

 

“If you’re on the far right or the far left, you know what you’ve done? You’ve gone too far.

 

He says after 9/11 he decided to become a conservative and he moves the right of the stage:

 

“There they are. There’s your right-wing crew. A bunch of money-grubbing, greenhouse gassing, seal-clubbing, oil drilling, bible thumping, missile firing, right to lifing, lethal injecting hypocrites!”

 

(enormous laughter and applause)

 

There they are. People whose idea of a good time is to strap a dead panda to the front of a Lincoln navigator and running over everybody in a gay parade

 

(It’s actually frightening how foresighted Jeni was on that last one.)

 

Then he decides to go to the left side “with all these loony, lefty, liberal people.

 

He trots to the far left of the stage:

 

And there’s the crew. A bunch of bong-smoking, America-bashing, flag-burning, yoga-posing, incense burning, dolphin saving, salmon-eating hypocrites!”

 

(enormous laughter

 

“These are the sensitive liberal people who are always preaching of everybody’s ‘freedom of expression.’ Unless you say something that pisses them off! Then they can’t wait to tie your ass to the back of a Toyota hybrid and drive you to the Berkley campus and drop your carcass at the Berkley campus at the Fidel Castro building of Why America Sucks.

 

(Again incredible foresight.)

 

And lest you think Jeni is going to leave us moderates out he then moves to the center of the stage where he says he is:

 

“A bunch of flip-flopping, fence sitting, half-in, half-out, half-assed, not voting so they can bitch no matter who wins…Right here, guys!

 

Then he gets a little deeper: “But the ones who annoy me slightly more then all the rest of us are the trillionaire liberals. People who are going to change the world if they have to spend every buck of your money to do it.”

 

People who live in a mansion with 20 rooms that nobody lives in. They’re all air-conditioned. Got a pool that nobody goes in, it’s heated. Flying across the country on a twenty-person jet all by themselves because they don’t want to be late for a speech about energy conservation.”

 

He then gives them both a middle-fingered salute. But then he says something telling: “They remind of that asshole, what’s his name. Me! And you. Cause we’re all a bit hypocritical. We could all do more, but we don’t.”

 

He then talks about one of those infamous adds where it says for $9 a week you can feed a starving kid.

 

Everybody’s got the nine bucks; how do you not give it to them? You rationalize it. Somehow you gotta go…’that kid doesn’t look that hungry to me…How can you feed a kid for nine dollars a week? That’s impossible! A non-fat low-carb latte is $4.50….What’s that kid gonna due with two giant cups of coffee? I’m actually doing him a favor by not giving him that nine bucks because there’s nothing worse than being wide awake and starving.”

 

Anyone who has spent their lives listening to all of those heartbreaking ASPCA ads about mistreated animals but has yet to donate a dime can relate.

 

Eventually he gets to the War in Iraq, albeit indirectly:

 

A war starts and my liberal friends will go: ‘Dude, violence never solves anything. I go, eh, it solved World War II. I’m not saying it’s the BEST solution but it’s A solution…Violence is one of the only things that permanently solves anything.

 

This could be remarkable bleak, if accurate. But then Jeni takes away the focus.

 

“Have you ever been on vacation with six friends? Tried to decide where to eat dinner and then watch that war break out…But if one of you had a gun…it would be over. (He fires in the air) We’re going to Wendy’s!”

 

He then gets back to the war on terror and one of my bugbears. “You can’t have a war on a word? How do you know who you’re fighting against?

 

There’s clues. A bunch of Americans get killed, you turn on the TV, people jumping up dancing and singing, there they are.

 

Then after a dance number:

 

God you French motherf---ers!

 

And then drives the point home with one of favorite jokes of all time:

 

“When the Germans found out that the Americans were mistreating people in a prison, WHOA. They were this close to suing us for copyright infringement!”

 

In the hands of a strident, more lecturing comic (I have some names from the past, you have some from the day) this could become unpleasant and repetitive. But the thing about Jeni’s delivery was that he always came across like your next door neighbor telling you about the weirdest stuff he heard from his best friend and saying: “Isn’t this the funniest thing you’ve ever heard?” And in his tone, it always did.

 

Steaming Pile of Me has quite a bit of 2000s material that hasn’t aged poorly. He talks about how he admires Kevorkian but wouldn’t be his roommate,  how in a world with so much crime the government decided to “nail Martha Stewart’s ass to the wall!” (the special is worth it for that alone) his thinking the Vagina Monologues would be a ventriloquist show and his own arguments with the failures of being a white male. “You killed the Indians,” he’s told. “I think I’d remember something like that” he says.

 

Steaming Pile was Jeni final standup special that celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. (I didn’t realize that until I looked it up online.) Two years later Jeni would be dead. The man had suffered from schizophrenia much of his life and he would commit suicide. His death did strike me hard when it happened and I suppose I could look at this special with a sense of mourning.

 

But the thing is Jeni was always so cheerful in his comedy and in a world with so much tragedy and tumult in our everyday lives, I find myself hopeful in Jeni’s optimism, however misplaced it might have been. Perhaps that comes with one of the most famous routines from his bit where he things that they could fix America if they only had the right slogan. After going through some brilliant bits at the world of advertising he comes up with one that makes perfect sense even now.

 

Here it is: America! 20 million illegal aliens can’t be wrong. There it is!

 

The slogan is greeted with incredible laughter and applause. And for those who want to point all that’s wrong with that he puts up a wonderful bit in which he reminds that despite all of the things we say about there still aren’t nearly as many people – the trillionaire liberals among them – deciding to go somewhere else. After all where else could we take the flaky and buttery croissant and stuff it with crappy hand and lousy cheese and throw at you through a drive-thru?

 

Oliver Stone Has Spent The 21st Century Essentially Becoming The Best Friend of Latin American Strongmen. Why That Matters

 

 

In the spring of 2017 Showtime aired a series of interviews of Vladimir Putin done by filmmaker Oliver Stone. By this point in his career Stone had all but abandoned the kind of brilliant filmmaker that had made him one of the greatest directors during the 1980s and 1990s and increasingly become more of a left-wing propagandist in the few films he made. Part of me wondered what Putin was thinking when he agreed to sit down with Stone, considering everything that had happened in the aftermath of the 2016 election.

Looking at so much of Stone’s work leading up those interviews I have a pretty good idea. “You know, I’ve spent so much time the last few years focused on the useful idiots on the right that I’ve neglected my oldest friends in America. If Michael Moore won’t agree to the interviews I’m sure Oliver Stone will.”

Particularly among the world of academics in the left there has always been a heavy Marxist streak that has never gone away no matter how much the world learns about the horrors of the Soviet Union (which they will always call a failed experiment). They continue to argue it in their economic theory, using academic terms such as neo-liberalism that frequently refer derogatorily to Democratic practices and lean in heavily towards their Marxist ideology. And well before the conservative movement leaned toward Viktor Orban and Hungary as an ideal model for their ideology, Naomi Klein one of the most famous leftists – and author of the Green New Deal –  signed a 2004 petition “We would vote for Hugo Chavez” IN 2007 she described Venezuela as a country where ‘citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives.” In her book The Shock Doctrine reviewers argued that the Chavez government would produce a bright future in which worker-controlled co-operatives would run the economy. By that time, the Chavez regime had experienced severe democratic backsliding, as he suppressed the press, manipulated electoral laws and arrested and exiled government critics. The murder rate increased significant and corruption in the police and government continued. Poverty, inflation and shortages continued throughout the decade. By that point he was essentially a dictator. At no point in her career did she ever back away from her position on Chavez despite the fact that Venezuela is now in worse straits then it was when he took over and his Vice President has essentially left the country in ruins.

It is fair to argue against the limits and weaknesses of America as a country but there is a line between legitimate criticism and essentially holding up as your model form of government leaders dictators and strongmen. And well before his interviews with Putin Oliver Stone had essentially made it clear in a series of documentary films that he was fine with them as models of government.

This became very clear in his first documentary South of The Border which he directed and was written by Tariq Ali and Mark Weisbrot in 2009. Stone traveled down from the Caribbean to explain the phenomena of the continent’s pink tide. He made it clear he wanted the film to explain Chaves who he said was wrongly ridiculed “as a strongman, a buffoon, a clown.” The film is an argument against capitalism being the factor in Latin America’s economic inequality. He suggests that the financial collapses such as that of the Argentine Peso (which lead to the successive resignation of two Argentinian presidents in 2001), combined with the Latin suspicions of drug eradication efforts (by America, of course) and resentment over the selling off of natural resources through multinational companies have contributed to the rise of socialist and socialist democratic leaders. He spends the film talking to, among others Evo Morales of Bolivia (who not long after his election became more of a strong man who attempted to abolish term limits, Rafael Correa of Ecuador (whose policies eventually led to a recession and was forced into exile after he refused to face charges surrounding the kidnapping of his major political opponent) Fernando Lugo of Paraguay (who would be impeached) Lula Da Silva of Brazil (we’ll get to him) and Fidel Castro. According to the AP Stone felt it unnecessary to present the case of the opposition in his film, much like Michael Moore didn’t bother with objectivity in Fahrenheit 9/11.

The reviews were decidedly mixed with Time pointing out the issues he chose not to raise with Chavez in Amnesty International “Attacks on journalist were widespread. Human-rights defenders continued to suffer harassment. Prison conditions provoked hunger strikes in facilities across the country.” It made it very clear that the film gave kid glove treatment to Chavez and his allies as opposed to the tenets of predatory capitalism. Magazines said that Stone essentially asked softball questions of South American leaders  saying, “Stone seems content to take virtually everything he sees at face value.”

Stone’s only reaction would be to argue that the criticisms were not founded in fact and to criticize various papers for attacking the Chavez government. He said his film celebrated ‘the triumphs of electoral democracy in South America in the last decade. The filmmakers made it clear that they blatantly supported the other side and it was to have “a sympathetic view of these governments. The film was writing by Tariq Ali, a proud Marxist who had already apologized for the Bosnian Genocide and would later be sympathetic to Brexit on left-wing grounds – while simultaneously criticizing the right wing for supporting it. Mark Weisbrot was the intellectual architect of the Bank of The South, a joint project by the major countries whose leaders are given such kid glove treatment in his film in 2009. It has never gotten off the ground.

For Stone this was the first in what would be called his “My friend the Marxist dictator series”. Having already made two short films about Castro he gave a film interview called Castro In Winter. Stone had several conversations with him in which he talks with the man after his filmmaking. The film was made for HBO but never aired because Stone says it was pulled due to pressure. It’s clear from the film Stone admires him. Stone makes no effort in any of his conversations as to explain why Castro essentially turned Cuba into a dictatorship. The most he seems to really care about is whether there was conspiracy in Kennedy’s assassination, which as we all know, is the only thing in Stone entire life that he cares about proving. That he has yet to uncover any evidence of in nearly thirty years of looking has done nothing to change that mindset.

Then after Chavez’s death, he made another documentary: Mi Amigo Hugo. Basically it’s all about how Chavez says nice things about Stone and he says nice things about Chavez. You’d think that after everything that was already known about Chavez by then Stone might have wondered if it was insensitive to write was a love letter to him. Yet that is basically what he chose to do.

By this point it should be obvious why Putin agreed to sit down with Stone. He knew Stone even if he was going to ask difficult questions, they would be few and far between. And indeed a review of Newsday makes it clear:

“Putin has a lot to say. Stone lets him say it. While the many points he makes are impossible to summarize, his motives are not. He emerges as an intelligent, sane, reasonable leader caught in the vortex of an occasionally feckless, often contradictory superpower called the United States.”

Stone makes no effort to challenge him on multiple subjects including the anti-LGBT laws of Russia or his treatment of his political opponents.” Stone’s interviewing is described as ‘embarrassingly generous”, idle chit-chat’ and that Stone not only failed to challenge Putin but essentially cedes him the floor.” Anyone who had seen Stone’s relationship with Chavez makes it very clear that’s kind of his approach towards dictators. Considering how much controversy would come from Trump’s obsequiousness towards Putin during the time this interview was airing, it’s maddening that Stone, a fierce Anti-trump critic, never saw the parallels. He might as well have shown footage of that first meeting and one could no doubt have seen little difference.”

But this is keeping with a man who in his The Untold History of the United States by telling the story of the Cold War era and basically choosing to omit the Soviet Union from that equation. America is always the aggressor; capitalism is always evil and the government is always working to take away power from the people. This is essentially the talking point of the left, but it’s shocking to see Stone basically be invited to governments where the exact same thing is happening on a socialist and communist level and chooses to look the other way. He essentially turns a microscope on America and putting blinders on for South America and Russia. He either doesn’t ask or assumes that the cost of a socialist utopia is “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.”

Stone’s work in what are propaganda for dictator enrages me on many levels. But as a film critic I find it incredibly depressing. This isn’t anybody making these movies; its Oliver Stone a man who was nearly a decade was one of the greatest directors when it came not just making cinematic masterpieces but movies with message that were box office draws. This is the screenwriter of Midnight Express, the man who had James Woods give a hysterical confession in Salvador, whose Platoon ranks as one of the great war films of all time. This is the man who gave us not just Wall Street but Talk Radio, who showed us levels to Jim Morrison in The Doors, who first realized the true potential of Tom Cruise as an actor in Born on The Fourth of July rather than a film star. His Vietnam trilogy was incredible; whose Natural Born Killers was only slightly ahead of the curve, and his Nixon showed a humanity to a man he had every reason to hate. And for all my issues with JFK as history – its pure propaganda – as cinema is a masterpiece.

And now that genius is gone forever, buried in the idea of showing the full weight of the leftist agenda. It was true even in many of the fictional movies he’s made this century; W lost the nuance Nixon had; Money Never Sleeps made blunt what was subtle in Wall Street and films that should have been character studies like World Trace Center and Snowden were essentially polemics against the American’s dynamic. All of his energy seems to be alternating between the lie of the American dream in his fictional films and documentaries and essentially propaganda for the worse strongmen in our society but who Stone seems willing to forgive their atrocities in exchange for access. For someone who admired his work even when I disagreed with some of the politics in it, it’s like watching one of your best friends start claiming the government is using mind control in the television – which sadly, seems to have been just below the surface of Stone all the time.

And just as the last decade has done nothing to convince so many on the far right to back away from their positions involving MAGA we see a similar parallel with Stone in his most recent film. Lula looks at the story of Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva. Lula was covered in South of The Border. When he ran for office on 2003, his platform plank argued that Brazil should not pay its foreign debt unless linked the payment to the audit – which worried so many that even a partial default would have a ripple through the economy. Many of the reforms he advocated for have been applauded by the left, including free school meals and public funds in education did little to improve its quality. His project to eradicate hunger was quickly cut after several months and fell far short of education. His housing aid programs ended up failing to relocate people in locations prone to floods and mudslides. By the time of Stone’s film Brazil was the eighth largest economy in the world but as the Wall Street Journal noted, the public sector was bloated and riddle with corruption, crime was rampant . And deforestation efforts were worst during his first four years than in any period since 1988. He was also a major supporter of Communist nations like Cuba and China and was a public supporter of Iran’s fundamentalism. He also stomped down on freedom of the press to the level since it had been under its military junta days and was involved in constant corruption scandals. Perhaps what may have drawn Stone and his like to him was his saying before a G-20 summit “the economic crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes” something which would make him catnip to people like Stone.

Eventually he was found guilty of charges of bribery and corruption and was sentenced to 9 and a half years in jail in 2017. He went to prison in July of 2017. He was released from jail in November of 2019 and his sentence was annulled in 2021. He ran for a third term against his incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and was elected President on October 2022. Since he resumed his tenure, he has doubled down on relationships with China and has increasingly made overtures to Putin. Furthermore he restored ties with Venezuela and Chavez’s former vice president Nicolas Maduro.

Stone’s most recent film about him deals with, according to imdb.com, “his extraordinary path to regaining Brazil’s presidency in 2022 after a 19 month imprisonment. It also refers to ‘the cautionary tale of the increasing danger lawfare poses to democracies around the world and an examination of one of the great political comeback stories of our time.”  You would think Stone would have been concerned about the optics of making a documentary about a disgraced former president with ties to Russia who had been sentenced to prison and then releasing it during the lead-up to the 2024 election. None of this matters to Stone, who essentially does the same thing he does with every single leftist strongman he ‘interviews’. As one reviewer puts it Stone’s film argues the same basic trajectory of so much of his point of view: “left good, right bad, U.S. the worst”

This same review made it very clear where Stone’s principles were. When the film was screened at Cannes Lulu had fired the head of the state oil company’s CEO, causing further economic uncertainty for Brazil. Stone only seems to be interesting film. According to one reviewer “it’s beyond simply being biased – its about how uninteresting such biased portrayals can be. It’s another in Stone’s increasing line of empty films on subjects worthy of deeper levels of examination squandered in favor of yet again centering upon the filmmakers own predilections and prejudices.”

Stone has essentially become the kind of man who does puff pieces for strongmen and whataboutism. He doesn’t even care about whatever good these figures might have done only to argue the bad things they’ve done are justified by the evil American overlords.

At this point it would not surprise me if Stone decides to devote his final years to his epic film Uncle Joe, telling the story of how a former seminarian from Georgia rose to power in Russia to become one of the most beloved leaders of all time. This film will be set mostly in America and feature how the brave men like Henry Wallace and Harry Hopkins who saw the brilliance in his vision were overcome by the warlike imperialists such as Winston Churchill and the illegitimate Harry Truman who denied Stalin’s perfectly reasonable requests and led him to liberate Eastern Europe against the evil west who wanted to put up a red, white and blue curtain around places like Germany and the Balkans. For those who might consider this as ridiculous this is essentially the message of his Untold History of the United States which basically considers Stalin a man of his word.

I grant the absurdity of this premise but I would much rather have any film like this as opposed to these endless propaganda of the so called democratic socialists that have, for all intents and purposes, left South America in worse shape then they were when the pink tide began. All of the countries in South of the Border have essentially become ‘failed experiments’ and yet another long line in arguments of the failures of extreme left-wing governments on the national scale. All of them became Latin American versions of the Eastern bloc with wreckage left in their wake. Yet if Stone is any indication, there seems to be no admission that this is a sign that extreme left-wing governments only end in dictatorship and oppression.

No one denies the very real threats to democracy in America and the world. But unless one’s only exposure to South America in this century was the films of Oliver Stone, the logical conclusion is the far-left is just as much one to the far right. There’s no sign that Stone seems willing to back away from that. I truly hope other people don’t go through this particular looking glass. Sometimes night is night and black is black.

Massachusetts & South Carolina in the Sectional Crisis, Part 4: Kansas-Nebraska and the Disruption of the Political Order

Even before Douglas’s plan reached the floor of Congress, Sumner and two other powerful Northern senators Salmon Chase and Joshua Giddings were working with three anti-slavery congressmen to draft an attack on it.

Titled ‘Shall Slavery Be Permitted in Nebraska” it pungently accused this new state as ‘a gross violation of a sacred pledge’. While in regard to the new territory, it’s argument of slavery taking hold were unlikely to do the climate and cultural sensibilities, it was on firmer ground tracing the history of the Missouri Compromise and how this would destroy its foundation.

On January 23 Douglas proposed a new bill declaring the Missouri Compromise had been superseded by the Compromise of 1850 and was declared inoperative. Nebraska was to be divided into two territories: Nebraska and Kansas. Some committee members protested not having sufficient time to study the bill’s new provisions or even read them. Douglas rebuffed those concerns and presented them on the Senate floor the next day.

On the Senate floor that Monday Chase slyly rose and requested for a delay of a week to study the bill. Douglas acquiesced, agreeing to take up the measure on the 30^th. That same day the appeal was published in The National Era, the major abolitionist paper in Washington. The Baltimore Sun speculated that the bill would likely clear the Senate but it would struggle in the House. Rhett’s Charleston Mercury complained that the renewed anti-slavery agitations of the north proved the 1850 compromise was merely a ‘hollow truce’.

When debate began on the 30^th an enraged Douglas took the Senate floor. Before an overflowing galleries he erupted with an invective primary at Chase and Sumer who he referred to as the ‘Abolitionist confederates’. Castigating them as acting in bad faith he argued that the Compromise of 1850 did in fact supersede the Missouri and that the issue extended to a ‘higher and more solemn obligation related to ‘that great fundamental principle of Democracy.”

During February Douglas constantly met with Democratic party leaders to debate strategy, occasionally invited Southern Whigs to the discussion. Chase, Sumner and Seward were the major opposition while Butler and his F Street Mess took the key roles in supporting the bill they’d helped draft.

Sheer numbers were enough to get the bill through the Senate as it passed by a margin of 37 to 14. When it reached the House, its crafty opponents managed to bypass the Committee on Territories and assigned it to the Committee of the hole. It languished for weeks behind fifty other measures until the administration and congressional supporters managed enough votes to get it released. Finally on May 30^th, floor manager Alexander Stephens of Georgia brought it to a vote. It narrowly passed 113-100. Pierce signed into law on May 30^th.

The results were felt almost immediately as the fragile peace that had held for nearly 33 years flared at the reversal of turning free territory into a possible slave state. The larger consequences were for the Democratic Party nationally. Almost since its foundation the South had been guided by the succor of the fact that it had been guided by a party sympathetic to their needs. The 1854 elections devastated it nationally. The Democratic Party lost an enormous 69 seats in Congress and was now almost exclusively a Southern institution.

Indeed the 1854 elections showed that the two-party system that had held for nearly two decades was falling apart. A part known solely as the Anti-Nebraska party gained 22 seats throughout the northeast and the so-called People’s party gained nine in Indiana. But the biggest shattering of the status quo was felt in Massachusetts.

The Whig Party had managed to hold together in the state after the 1852 elections. There had been a conflict between Charles Francis Adams of the Free Soilers and Henry Wilson of the Whigs. The bigger problem that his state faced was a new movement.

Set up as a secret society of nativist sentiment who responded to queries about their organization simply “I know nothing” a new party had formed that one very clear policy – xenophobia. An influx of a 100,000 Irish migrants entering the state that now consisted of 25 percent of Worcester’s population and half of Boston’s, their mere presence was a symbol of transforming an unwilling New England. Based on future events, one wonders if New England would have been such a bastion for abolition had their biggest city been similarly proliferate with free slaves.

Curiously for elements of a party that was fundamentally xenophobic it also took positions that the far left would later not be uncomfortable with. These including hostility to exploitive industry, entrenched elites, government intervention to ensure the rights of workers, temperance, women’s suffrage – and a strong anti-slavery.

During 1854 as Congress was pushing the Kansas Nebraska Act towards passage, the Know-Nothings gained strength in Massachusetts as more and more citizen gravitated to the party banner – including large numbers of Free Soilers. Henry Wilson himself joined a Know-Nothing Lodge as a means of educating himself on the movement and gaining access to its leaders.

In the state there was now a new fault-line: those who were willing to compromise to deal with the rising force of the Know-Nothings and those who abhorred. The biggest members of the latter were the old aristocracy including men like Robert Winthrop and Edward Everett, one of the old style Whigs of the state. The latter included Henry Wilson, one of the Free Soilers.

Of all the Massachusetts figures Wilson may have been the most attuned to the idea of what would become known as realpolitik. He was just as devoted to the idea of antislavery as men like his rival Adams but he also knew well enough how relatively small the Free Soil constituency was, He understood that the power that mattered was derived from the votes of the citizens, pooled from whatever resources were it hand, and dealmaking, maneuvering and compromising – words that men like Sumner in particular had little use for. And that meant accepting the inevitable rise of Know Nothings in his home state.

Indeed trying to serve as a counterweight to Sumner to try and control him, his fellow Senator Edward Everett quickly learned that this was impossible. After being pressed by both Sumner and his increasingly anti-slavery constituency for not being strong enough on the issue, he resigned late that month.

During this period Wilson had been capitalizing on the internal tensions in the Whig Party to try and build a coalition. In July of 1854 he and a small group of Free Soil Officials called a party convention in Worcester to attempt to lure anti-slavery Whigs and disaffected Democrats to their cause. This by and large was a failure. What was more significant was the adoption of the new name ‘Republican’, aligning themselves with a group of anti-slavery fusionists in Wisconsin and nominated Wilson as its candidate for governor.

Wilson had been negotiating with a local Know-Nothing to leader for a fusion movement of his own. While he didn’t received an endorsement for governor, they were willing to do so for him to be the new Republican Senator. He would bow out in early November in what was considered a backroom deal to put him in the Senate when the Know-Nothings prevailed. They did so that fall. Meanwhile they would capture every seat in the State Senate and almost all in the State House. The entire Congressional delegation for the state of Massachusetts would be made up of those who had been endorsed by Know-Nothings, including seven Republicans Wilson had put forward as nominees

Massachusetts state wide power structure had been completely overhauled in less than two years. The Democratic Party and the Whig Party were essentially dead in the state, and in the Senate were two of the country’s most prominent anti-slavery figures.

South Carolina was dealing with a different issue during this period: not so much political chaos as drift. The state was now defined politically not by what it stood for but what it didn’t. It was going to secede in the immediate future and it wouldn’t alone but no one knew if the peace would last. Political torpor filled South Carolina, underscored by the man who chose to fill the seat that Rhett had vacated. The legislature would replace him with a sixty-seven year old Senator named Josiah Eveans, a man who held strong unionist sentiments. He had been supporting by the two leading unionists in the state: Benjamin Perry and James Orr.

The two men had offered an antidote to the South’s predicament. They knew the South couldn’t compete with the north, which left them with just two responses to the anti-slavery agitation: secession or submission, The plantation owners wanted it that way because they favored secession and the planters could enforce because they enjoyed a disproportionate amount of power relative to its actual size. But the South wouldn’t be locked in this position if it would expand and diversify its industrial base, modernize its financial system and its outdated agricultural practices, improve education and bust up the planter oligarchy. In a sense Perry and Orr were offering a vision for a ‘New South’ which included the state becoming more aligned with the Democratic Party.

This idea was abhorrent to Rhett in every way possible. But at this point he no longer seemed to have any leverage in the legislature. Rhett’s name was placed into nomination by his friends for the Senate seat. He received a mere seven votes on the first ballots and none thereafter. Rhett withdrew from politics for a time.

So much of Rhett’s behavior seemed to be based in the belief of an independent southern empire that would reemerge as a slave state imperative in the face of the North. He saw that the South only had two choices: independence or ruin. And when they chose ruin, he would no doubt be turned to for leadership. That seemed unlikely even as the crisis over Kansas began to flare up.

When the new Congress met in December of 1855, they were in a position they had been in back in 1849: they couldn’t elect a Speaker. A stand off in 1849 had taken three weeks. This one took more than 3 months.

The Democrats controlled just a third of the seats in the House. There were 108 Republicans and 43 Know-Nothings. But these broad categories had so many subcategories including ‘straight Whig, Know Nothing/Whig, Know Nothing Democrat, Know Nothing Free Soil and Anti-Nebraska fusionists many of whom sought an exclusively Northern – and overtly Anit-Southern Republican Party, To get to a majority of 118 votes seemed difficult – and it was impossible.

As in 1849 the members agreed to a plurality outcome. On February 2 Nathaniel Banks, Massachusetts Free-Soiler who would soon become a Republican captured the Speakership on the 133^rd ballot 103 votes to 100. Banks didn’t receive a single vote from the South.

After the vote William Aiken of South Carolina, who had been the primary opponent of Banks, demonstrated his amiability by escorting his rival arm-in-arm to the Speaker’s chair. It was a scene as a strong signal of Republican assent which well outdid the stature of the man. Even a Boston paper published that Banks ‘changed his politics with as little remorse as he would change his flannels’. Within three years he had been ‘a Democrat, a Know Nothing and a Free Soiler, and had betrayed each. Far more troubling to the South was the rise of a party that was founded on the cause of abolition and, more frightening, a purely Northern party. The larger problem as a Congressman pointed out was the idea of a Speaker being chosen purely by sectional votes. No such party could claim to be national by that definition but even as a regional party it was supplanting the fading Whigs as the primary opposition to the Democrats, themselves struggling with their national identity. In just a year the new Republican Party had become one of serious contention.

In the next article I will deal with how the struggle over Kansas led to one of the most notorious moments in Congressional history – one of which Massachusetts and South Carolina were at the center of.

Constant Reader April 2025 (YA): The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson

 

 

It’s now more than half a century since Stephen King shattered the literary world with his first published novel Carrie. At this point I don’t think there’s a person alive who doesn’t know the story of Carrie even if they’ve never seen anything related to it or read the book. The story of a loner, teenage girl, the victim of bullying by her fellow students when she experiences her first period and has no idea what it is. This leads to her learning of her telekinetic powers which are known to no one. A female student, feeling guilty, arranges for her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom. One of the students who bullied her decides to enact a personal humiliation on her by having her named prom queen. Then when she gets on stage she is covered with pig’s blood. In an act of sorrow and vengeance, the blood soaked Carrie decides to inflict a massacre of her fellow students before going home, killing her fundamentalist mother and eventually dying.

We’ve seen DePalma’s groundbreaking original film. We’ve seen countless, lesser remakes. There was a musical which failed and eventually made it to Broadway: “Carrie after the prom” has become a pop culture point that everyone knows. That’s why it may come as a shock to those if I were to tell you that not one of these adaptations has ever accurately retold Carrie. And that’s because King’s first published novel broke more rules  then you know.

In King’s novel, we see everything that happens in DePalma’s film and remakes – but that’s only roughly half the novel’s length. Much of the rest of the story is told through excerpts of various stories told perhaps years after the massacre: there are Congressional hearings, various non-fiction stories written afterwards, interviews with survivors, excerpts of officials writing guilty letters and in the case of Susan Snell – the woman who convinces her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom, which leads to her being vilified by the masses as a scapegoat – a self-titled book in which she tries to give her account of events.  As King himself acknowledged as early as Danse Macabre he knew that his novel as was couldn’t be faithfully adapted the screen and that DePalma’s decision to make the movie he had was the only one possible. And considering that it was the box office success of the movie even more than his original novel that helped him get his initial success, he can afford to be magnanimous.

Still in all the years since the original film came out, no one has ever tried to retell Carrie the book on film or TV. Which is right, because in that form it may be unfilmable. The only way to properly to pay tribute to it is to retell in another book. And that is what Tiffany Jackson has done – magnificently – in her YA novel The Weight of Blood.

Now at no point in the book does she directly allude to King (though there are some Easter eggs that King fans will locate and love) and that’s actually fine by me. Writers have been retelling the stories of Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald in YA settings perhaps in order not to scare their intended audiences off. And people keep retelling King’s novels in updated films and TV shows to a modern setting every few years: recent films have tried to put Carrie in the  21^st century. Why not do so with the original novel?

The story is retold in much the same format: we see the action in the present, police interviews after the fact, a tell-all book has been written years later. And in keeping with today’s setting the impetus for the book comes from a true crime podcast called simply “Maddy Did It”, set eight years after the original events which took place in 2014. (King’s original novel, for the record, was set in the not too distant future: the events are listed as happening in the mid-1980s and the books take place in 1987-88.)

The more substantial changes – the ones that are more likely than most to draw furor from purists – are how Jackson chooses to tell it. Her main character is Madison Washington who like Carrie White is someone who has been easily bullied at her high school her whole life. Carrie was raised by a fundamentalist mother who had kept her so isolated from the world she had no idea what a tampon was; Maddy is raised by a fundamentalist father who doesn’t allow his home to have cell phones, internet or cable. Their only entertainment is through VHS recordings of movies that are no later than the 1950s and TV shows no later than the 1960s. Under normal circumstances I would approve of this upbringing – but the fact that Maddie has no idea of how much the world has changed since then is a big, red flag particularly because it is that model of a woman that is the only kind her father approves of.

Now we reach the bigger twist. As with Carrie, the town Maddie lives in is a very small one with only 1100 people – but it’s not in liberal New England but rather very rural Georgia. And not the kind near Atlanta, this is a town where even the integrated parts are basically segregated.

That leads us as to how Maddie’s powers become public knowledge. The first lines everyone seems to say in the aftermath is “It all started with the rain.” And Maddie seems to be terrified of even a chance of it when she goes outside on May 1^st 2014. Then she gets soaked and she has no chance to fix her hair in gym. She goes to class – and the bullying begins when everyone thinks she has an Afro.

You see Maddie Washington’s secret is one that is the reason her father really loathes her. She’s biracial and has been passing as white for her whole life. The rain has revealed her deepest secrets and it makes the bullying she endures even worse that be told to ‘plug it up’. This is when the first episode of telekinesis takes place in King’s book. It is far more obvious to everyone something has happened but it is written off because this is the 21^st century. Everyone in the classroom dismisses what happens next as an earthquake and the bureaucracy’s more upset that the teacher can’t explain why her classroom was wrecked. In the original novel the bureaucracy is more sympathetic to what happens to Carrie. In The Weight Of Blood, the school sends Maddie home and its only after the moment of bullying goes viral that the school is forced to act.,

The great thing about The Weight of Blood is because it is 1) a reimagining of an iconic novel and 2) tells you in the first pages exactly what is going to happen and how, is that it is basically immune to spoilers. Jackson is aware of this fact and because of this she can develop the source material to the modern era and be both faithful to it and add wrinkles. With that in mind, let me give a refresher course as to who’s who.

Poppa Washington is like Margaret White deeply fundamentalist who learned his upbringing from his mother who was clearly as big a monster as Margret White was to her daughter. (In a nod to the original novel, we know little about her except she’s originally from New England and like Margaret White, there’s a possibility the father has supernatural powers in his family.) Wendy Quinn, a graduating senior, is the counterpart of Susan Snell, who spent much of middle school bullying Maddie but now wants to smooth things over by arranging for her to go to the prom. Her boyfriend Kendrick Scott is modeled on Susan’s boyfriend Tommy Ross, in that he doesn’t want to do it originally but finds himself charmed by Maddie. The biggest difference is Kendrick is African-American but has gone out of his way to associate more with the white students then the African-Americans. Jules Marshall, the school bully who goes out of her way to make Maddie’s life miserable – and then doubles down on it – is the model of Chris and she and Wendy are best friends like Chris and Susan are. The two of them split when Wendy makes her plans to smooth things over but Jules is far more toxic and narcissistic than Chris was.

Hanging overall of this is the shadow of race, which in 2014 Georgia is very prominent. It’s clear that Springville is a ‘sundown’ town and has never let it go with the siren from the nuclear power plant the same one that used in the 1960s to give permission for white supremacy. The racial issues are far deeper in the school, and the town even has a segregated prom, a white one in the country club and ‘an all-together’ prom that’s mostly for African-American students. This has been going on for decades and it is Maddie’s exposure to it that causes Wendy to try and paper things over by integrating the prom. This doesn’t make either the white or the African-American students happy.

  Blood also makes clear of the pressures of parents across the board and while Maddie has the worst one, all of them are struggle. The Scott family has focused in entire attention on Kendrick, making sure his football regimen keeps him up and out and making his own path. Mr. Scott has clearly focused everything on his son, to the point he doesn’t feel he has any choices in life. He’s happy she’s dating a white girl because in his mind it’ll get him further. The Marshall family is the richest in town and they don’t seem bothered by Jules’ horrific actions and only object when the punishment is that severe. Wendy’s position is the most heartbreaking because her parents are struggling to get by and not long before the actions of the novel take place, he’s lost his job in the town. There’s a sense that Wendy has focused all of her attention on Kendrick because her family has basically ignored her and doesn’t have money to help her future. The irony is that she is framed in the book as being selfish even though she needs to survive.

Now I’d like to move one of the themes that King has about his first novel. He makes it clear that he never personally held Carrie responsible for her actions that she was forced into by a series of events. This is clear for Maddy Washington but Jackson is telling a more interesting – and likely satirical – story about racial politics in America.

This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in a character that doesn’t have a counterpart in King’s novel: Kendrick’s sister, Kali. Kali is essentially a militant African-American and makes it very clear she holds everybody white and black to a ridiculous high standard. This is true even in her own family: she goes out of her way to taunt her father with what she considers his pacificism in racial aggression and her brother by his decision to keep quiet and try to survive rather than be more militant. But tellingly she has no real sympathy for Maddie either; Maddie has been bullied her entire life – as badly or possibly worse than anyone else in Springville. The moment she learns the horrible things happening to Maddie what she cares about is what this represents to her not Maddie. Indeed when Kendrick starts dating her she says Maddie ‘chose to be white’ not knowing a single thing about her life story. (To be fair,  neither does anyone else.) By this point Kendrick, who has been making an effort to know Maddie,  calls her out:

“Kali, be honest: if you had known she was Black, would you have accepted her, tried to be her friend, or even talked to her?”

Kail raised an eyebrow. “I would’ve accepted her if she acknowledged her light-skin privilege.”

“Privilege? They threw pencils in her hair? How that’s a win?”

“You don’t get it!” she snapped. “Maddy wasn’t born with the stacks up against her. She’ll get things I never get, let into rooms, I couldn’t even dream of all because of the way she looks.”

“So she should be left defenseless? You’re the one always saying we need to support each other…I’m not the one treating her different because she’s light-skinned. You are!”

Kali, it’s worth noting, manages to survive the entire experience but there’s no sign at any point in the future she seems the least bit affected by it the same way the rest of the survivors have. This is true even in the aftermath of the prom – which she doesn’t attend and only learns about while the chaos is unfolding. She is outside the event protesting with the local Black Student Union. (In a great satiric joke, there are only ten students protesting the prom and while its clearly there because of media attention, only two local affiliates show up not even bothering with a live feed.) When the horrors begin to unfold, she cares very little for the white or black students who end up being killed in the aftermath: she only cares about her family – and tellingly, blaming Wendy who she holds responsible for everything that happens.

Left out of that is a telling reference that Kali goes out of her way to make sure that the footage of Jules’s actions gets to the college of her choice, playing a direct role in what happens. She understand that her father has pressured them but she can only see that through her own lens:

“Their fathers expectations were a weight he silently carried. A weight that made him choose survival over culture. And still she loved him through all his blind, ignorant transgressions. Could she make that same peace with a girl pretending to be white?”

We never learn what Kali thinks about what happens to Springville as a result of the horrors that unfold – she’s never interviewed in the podcast, even though she’s alive. But you do get a feeling she what she thinks near the end.

This brings me to a darker, more interesting subtext of the novel. The events of Springville have been blamed on looting and rioting, despite the results of the commission and the witness testimony. The podcast is attempting to get to the truth of what happened and is titled Maddy Did It. The irony is in a direct sense of things Maddie is responsible for everything that happens – but she gets away with it because of liberal guilt.

Now I need to give something away. Maddie Washington’s fate is unknown and she’s presumed dead, unlike in Carrie where she’s definitely dead. In the novel we get a clearer picture but how and why I will leave unsaid. Instead I need to point out that even in the immediate aftermath of the carnage that happens a few people want Maddie to get away. In the case of Kali, she only accepts Maddie as black once she sees her as a victim of racism – and you wonder given her loathing of her home town she has a bit of the chickens coming home roost mentality. When Wendy finds out just enough of Maddie’s life to feel sympathy for her – though nothing near the whole picture – she does so because of her own guilt, which is basically put on her by Kali. By the end of the podcast one of the podcasters – an anthropologist from Sydney – choosing to argue that Maddie is not responsible but society is:

“What you unconsciously left out is how societal racism played a large role in the incident. Which, as a white man, would be rather typical. Even if we took race off the table, identity would still be in play. Because if she had been who she was meant to be from the start…in fact if everyone involved was allowed to be their true authentic selves without fear of recourse or ridicule, none of this would have ever happened.”

This is the kind of discussion that we expect from academic circles, particularly progressive ones  One of the podcasters then asks the natural question:

“…did Maddy’s punishment truly fit the crime? Was it fair that other victims, both black and white, were caught in the crossfire?

“And I would counter if racism is ever truly fair? There are always consequences seen and unseen. I gather its one of the reasons the state worked so hard to brush this under the rug. Because if people knew revenge of this magnitude was even a remote possibility, there would be far less incidents of racial injustice in the world.”

This is very much the attitude of extremists on both sides: the ends justifying the means. This would be cold considering the reader has seen the carnage Maddie inflicts firsthand; that a person who’s actually talked to the survivors who have shared their traumas in graphic, horrible detail and  can still say that with a straight face, shows the kind of coldness of so many academics. I can just hear so many of these people who shared their trauma with this podcast hearing this final episode and saying: “That bitch doesn’t get it.”

It's possible that The Weight of Blood is referring to in a horror setting what a later YA novel I analyzed in January Running Mates did in a more satirical one. In this case everyone in the novel, in the present and the future, only sees in Maddy through their own world view. The only person in either timeline who truly cares for Maddy is a teacher named Mrs. Morgan, who is horrified by what happens to her and is just as upset with the plans to include her in the prom. She is the only person who cares about the students rather than society and she’s also the only one who goes out of her way to help Maddy. After everything that happens she still tries to help her and Maddy ends up killing her without even noticing it.

The novel also has so many subtexts open to interpretation. Maddy’s father reveals in their final confrontation (again everyone who remembers Carrie knows this is canon) that he spent his life trying to protect her from the horrors of the world. We’ve already seen how utterly grotesque, abusive and backwards that style of parenting is and how it’s made Maddie who she is. But it’s worth noting that the moment she learns the true about the real world, it becomes just as overwhelming and horrific to her – and is almost certainly a major factor in what happens immediately after the prom.

Then there’s the very stark argument made directly by one of the podcasters and indirectly by Kali throughout the book. Again much of this looks at the world in a purely binary lens that sadly exists in academia and so much of contemporary protesting. The argument Jackson has some of her characters mak is that the racial divide in our country is so great that there is no reconciliation that is possibility and the only ‘rational’ response is to burn it all down.

Perhaps that why I do see Maddy as a victim, I can’t truly see her as an innocent bystander either. Like Carrie White she may not have meant to create a massacre but once she got started she was willing to leave a path of destruction in her wake that killed hundreds of people, burned down much of the town and could very well have led to a nuclear disaster. What happened to Carrie White was terrible but it doesn’t make her innocent in the events that happened. Adding the burdens of racism to the equation doesn’t do the same for Maddy Washington – and I’m not entirely sure she shouldn’t be punished for it. At the very least she deserves a day in court like anyone else and even if race were a factor in her conviction, I’m not sure I would have minded if it meant the world being safe from her wrath.

And it’s worth noting when the action takes place: May of 2014. That is while we’re still in the Obama Presidency and just a year before Donald Trump arrives on the political scene. The podcast takes place eight years later, during the Biden administration and after eight solid years of protests against racial injustice at every level that have, by any real standard, accomplished nothing except move much of the country – particularly in the regions of America like Springville – further away from conciliation. No one has learned anything but Springville except what they want to learn/ Perhaps that the real reason the final episode is titled “There are No Winners Here.”

It's a measure of any great book that you come away asking these kinds of questions at the end. You may feel, like the podcaster and professor, that the town of Springville suffered the consequences of American racism that still need to be paid out. You might also come away, like so many of the survivors, with the feeling that they even given their responsibility, the punishment far exceeded the crime. I have my conclusion; readers may draw their own and that will certainly differ upon their age, race, or gender.

Perhaps I should let King himself have the last word. At the end of Thinner which he wrote under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, one of the last lines is “Everybody pays, even for the stuff they didn’t do.” Maybe that’s the clearest way you know this novel hails the King: that’s a sentiment that, one way or another, everyone who survives The Weight of Blood might end up considering whether or not they agree with it.