Movie break: An early, still-tasty entry in the area of film black humor: The Ladykillers (1955), Part 2 of 2

The 1955 film should be understood as enjoyable on its own terms, and not so much something by which to compare the Coens’ 2004 work

Part 1 is on my other blog, here.

Subsections below:

The theft: quite different between the films

The crooks’ comeuppance is more chaotic in the older film; the dumping-off-bridge nexus is different but emblematic for both films

The tail-end is remarkably similar in both films

Conclusion

The theft: quite different between the films

One big difference between the 1955 and 2004 versions of The Ladykillers is how the theft is managed. It happens about one-third of the way through the 1955 film, while it is further along in the 2004 film. The way the Coens have the plot element of the men needing to tunnel underground from Ms. Munson’s house to a nearby casino’s underground counting house is, I think, a potent way to introduce a lot of plot development, and helps beef up the 2004 adaptation. In the 1955 film, the robbery is done with the men causing a traffic tie-up and stealing the money, in its metal boxes, from a sort of armored car and putting it into a sort of steamer trunk, loaded onto another vehicle.

Significantly, the 1955 group of crooks transport the trunk to a local train station, and have arranged that Mrs. Wilberforce pick it up on the understanding it contains possessions of the professor’s. This means a lot of different plot aspects, which themselves aren’t so bad, but are at times a little murky (for instance, we don’t always know quite what’s up at the train station, at least on first watching); the Coens’ way of doing the robbery, I think, means a much more engaging, suspenseful set of plot stuff.

A key plot bit in the 1955 film, which the Coens opt not to include in their own, is that because Mrs. Wilberforce has been implicated in the crime by transporting the trunk at one point, the men, when she is onto them, use this fact as a way to try to (gently) blackmail her into doing what they want. This, of course, adds to some complexities of conscience (hero-like) for Mrs. W., though only for a short time.

Another part of the theft sequence in the 1955 film—which part I think is all of being clumsily staged, choppily edited, and not entirely necessary—is that Mrs. W. momentarily frustrates the crooks, who are (hidden from her) watching her progress transporting the trunk, when she stops to intervene in a situation where a street-side vendor is trying to shoo away a horse that has been eating the man’s vegetables that are his items for sale. This scene might have seemed promising and entertaining on paper—yes, it could work in some film—but here it’s clumsily enough rendered, and enough of a distraction from the larger story, that I feel it could have been left out. But then, as with other things with these films, maybe some diehard fans of the 1955 film would staunchly leave this sequence in.

The crooks’ comeuppance is more chaotic in the older film; the dumping-off-bridge nexus is different but emblematic for both films

Another major way the 1955 film is different from the 2004 is in the denouement, how the crooks get vanquished, in what turns out to be a way both comical and about as over-the-top as some of the earlier doings (i.e., the crooks end up getting maybe worse than they deserve), but is also rather scattered and wandering in structure.

The Coens straighten this situation out, and it also seems to go rather quickly, when the crooks—resolving to kill the old lady, which would seem the full fruition of what the story premises promised—first draw straws (this situation is pretty similar between the films), and then, one by one, they go to try killing the old woman, and each meets a bad end in an almost Rube Goldberg-mechanism–caused way. The professor, as it happens, gets “offed” in a way seemingly almost a ludicrous accident not dependent on his making a strong effort specifically to kill the old woman.

In the 1955 film, perhaps as appealed to viewers quite nicely in its day, the group starts to disintegrate as a group, and their efforts shift to one or another trying to get away by himself with the money, and/or (maybe with a welling-up of goodwill and good sense) shirk his “responsibility” to kill the old woman. And it isn’t that just one (or two) tries to kill one or more of the others, as is true of the 2004 film. Still, various men in the 1955 film die in ways that seem quite unexpected, but in keeping with the ludicrous potential of the comedy for this film.

##

The general idea of dumping bodies off a bridge—which has a memorable visual impact—is handled both similarly and differently between the films. The 2004 film has the crooks dump the bodies off a high, river-crossing bridge—a lot of this seems CGI’d, maybe built on some “root” footage taken of some real infrastructure—onto garbage barges that are patiently towed by tugboat underneath, and down what seems the Mississippi River to an island landfill project ahead near the horizon.

The Coens even, in their own script, rhetorically sketch a wider-cognizing set of premises for this, with the lively minister partway through the film including in his sermon references to, for the damned, a “garbage island” and scavenger birds feasting off their bodies, etc. This might be considered in line with the general-concept pessimism that seems to lace much of the Coens’ work, and leads some critics to call them “misanthropes” or the like (though, in a discussion that could be maybe done later on this or my other blog, the Coens could be considered an heir to Woody Allen in weaving delightful comedy with a sort of underlying philosophic pessimism, even though they don’t, probably, have a total lack of hope about Man/Woman and his/her ends).

In the 1955 film, the bridge-dumping situation is nicely specific and colorful (not in the sense of “bright colors” but in the sense of a rich array of details), and may be a good part of what roots this, for some viewers, as the “gold-standard film” for any “take” on a Ladykillers-type story. In an environment that seems classic coal-country England, Mrs. Wilberforce’s house, at the end of a dead-end street, backs up to a semi-undeveloped area of land that, with maybe a couple hundred feet between them, abuts a sort of bridge or trestle over a multi-track railway that runs under the bridge; the rail lines are very roughly parallel to the direction the house faces (which is away from the railway), with the bridge perpendicular to these lines. So if you went outside Mrs. W.’s back door, you would trundle down some declining, greenery-covered ground, walk among concrete structures of whatever sort, and come to the railing (or balustrade, or parapet) at the edge of the bridge. You could very easily, say, dump a dead body over the edge of this railing/parapet, let it fall into the cargo car of a passing train, and get an inconvenient result of your murderous deed nicely out of the way.

The setup is much dirtier in the 1955 film, one way being that the coal-burning trains, as they pass under the bridge, belch up a ton of smoke, which momentarily obscures the men who have been dumping off the body, the corpse feet-up in ludicrously comic style. (While the Coens’ situation is cleaner, it allows them more vivid, detailed images, and occasional Coens-style comedy involving details. For instance, when Garth Pancake’s and Mountain Girl’s bodies are dumped off the bridge, one after the other, they both seem to have remarkably hair legs, don’t they? At least the latter one does.)

In the 1955 film, the situation first seems echoed in the neater, every-crook-gets dumped situation of the 2004 film, where first the Major is dumped, and then Mr. Robinson (a wheelbarrow is used to carry each). The men turning on each other happens in a more messily complex way than in the Coens film; and in a 1955 bit quite unparalleled in the 2004 film, dopey “One-round” ends up in a situation where he has the other two crooks at bay near the bridge with a gun, with “Who looks stupid now?”…and a mad scramble ensues covered with train smoke….

The tail-end is remarkably similar in both films

I won’t reveal all the details of the remaining denouement, but suffice it to say it reaches its end in a more complex way than in the 2004 film (with Lom’s character and the professor dueling it out); and with the billowing of train smoke (and train-whistle hooting), and other haphazard ways the men deal with each other, sometimes the situation is murky and a bit confusing, not just because of the photography. There is something about this almost like a scrambling war/action film.

This flavor, when you consider the horror-film touches earlier in the film, show that in those days, there was no surefire recipe for making a black comedy; it borrowed from other genres, and maybe it was by sheer luck combined with a sort of creativity in making the film that what comes off is not an off-putting mishmash but a patchwork of borrowed tropes and tones that synthesize into a gritty forerunner of what would later be seamless standard fare (and easily pulled off, whatever the plot elements), black comedy with an edge to it.

##

The final scene in the 1955 film is almost copied very closely by the Coens. After the professor has been “offed” with an accidental clunk in the head, we quickly cut to Mrs. W. in the police station, where she tries to do her duty as a citizen to report on what she could of what happened with the bank robbers. The police, of course, already confirmedly skeptical about Mrs. W., respond as if she is just talking more fantasy, and when she asks what do they want her to do with the money, the policeman says she can keep it. Which surprises her, but which she assents to, reasoning (similar to the Coens’ version) that the stolen money only means “one farthing” is added to each of the insurance policies of the underwriters of the bank.

As she heads home, she hands a big-denomination bill to a panhandler, who is shocked at what he got.

Conclusion

The 1955 film is like an old photo album, some of it degraded and murky with age (with clumsy or low-budget production aspects, maybe OK for audiences in their day, looking more cloddish with time), but somehow conveying a bright new idea, a sort of cross between horror, crime drama, and sharp comedy, some of which (like a con-artist “professor” whose con isn’t as foolproof as he thinks) could still tickle audiences almost 50 years later when the Coens fashioned their own twist on it.

So like I said (as I spelled out carefully in Part 1), compare it with the 2004 version, and enjoy what works in both. To condemn the Coens’ version as if they defiled an old treasure is an off-base judgment.

Footnote 2 to Getting the Knack/OFAD 8

Yes, there actually was cause to do another footnote: Form 1095-B from the state creeps into my mail

I would not have expected to do a second footnote to my February 10 entry on this blog, but wonders never cease. Yesterday, February 11, I got in the mail no fewer than two statements (labeled as Form 1095-B) from the State of New Jersey which are rather like W-2s or 1099s, generally showing me information useful for, or necessary for, my filing my federal taxes. These particular forms testify to my having had Medicaid coverage, with X’s clunkily plopped into boxes on a sort of calendar showing which months I was covered.

Each of the two statements (which seem to be identical except in how my name is shown) represents a different set of months for 2015: one is from January to May, the other is from June through December. Why the two statements, instead of putting all the info on one, isn’t entirely clear, but one presumable reason is that I had a renewal, for which a form came to me in May (another possible reason is that their different handling of my name means they have two separate records on me, to whatever tax-related purpose).

There is nothing to indicate that my coverage was discontinued for about five weeks in July and early August, as was my belief for many months since then.

Since, when filing my 1040 this season, I filled out Form 8965, implying I did not have coverage part of the year, the astute observer might ask, have I misrepresented my health-insurance situation to the IRS? (It’s an implication of the ACA, potentially very disgusting depending on your politics, that this should even be an issue for the IRS.)

When I filled out my 1040 this year, signing it on February 8, and mailing it on February 9, my firm understanding is that I was not covered by Medicaid from late June through a date in early August. The two blog entries just prior to this one, as corrected and subject to possible future correction, support this. And I have paperwork and other records supporting my situation. No problem if I had to make a legal representation of myself.

Because my tax money amounts do not change with the change in understanding of my ACA status in 2015, I will not file a Form 1040X, which I’ve done (for other, legitimate reasons) in a few past years. If the IRS this year writes me saying “You represented that you had not been covered all year, but our records, from your state, show…,” I can represent that, with the 1040’s requiring you on signing to “declare” that to the best of your “information and belief,” the tax form is correct, it was indeed to the best of my information and belief that my ACA status was as I indicated in the form. If the state has sent me two Forms 1095-B as these are labeled, I did not expect these; I did not get such forms last year. I, of course, keep them in my records, against any future IRS developments.

##

What else could I affirm to the best of my information and belief? Well, let’s present this statement with a special scrubbing in order to have it be acceptable in a family-oriented context: “The **** State of New Jersey, specifically in its **** administration of Medicaid under the **** ACA expansion, is **** less-than-satisfactory, and makes me want to **** on its ****  ****.

“And if Chris Christie were to be asked, ‘Have you ever worked,’ as seems atypical for big-time attorneys, ‘for a trashy small business, to know how such places operate for better or worse?,’ he could answer, possibly to the best of his information and belief, ‘Yes, I have worked for such a business, and it was the **** State of New Jersey.’”

Footnote to Getting the Knack/OFAD 8

Did you think I was being silly fearing an expense not covered by my Medicaid?

It’s convenient to me to offer these notes in a separate entry, rather than insert them as special notes into the previous blog entry.

This relates to the parenthetical part near the end of the previous entry, when I said “Add to this the fact that I don’t really trust this [Medicaid] insurance, enough to get any service beyond the minimum I’ve usually gotten (because what if I went for, say, a heart stress test, and then found I was being billed directly for some aspect of it for which the service-provider wouldn’t take Medicaid?)….”  

What I was thinking about were, implicitly or not, a few things.

First, my GP doctor I’ve seen for years, whom I generally find satisfactory, recently has suggested a colonoscopy (by an outside doctor), over a number of visits. He has twice recommended X doctor in the county (a foreign name; I don’t remember it now), but said I should check to see if that doctor takes Medicaid. (This point said at two different times.)

Which, to me, was one good reason, among several, not to have a colonoscopy done in the near future. (A) Colon cancer, to my knowledge, doesn’t run in my family (ancestors and other blood relatives). (B) I have never had general anesthesia, and am not quick to try it in the near future. (C) There is the possibility, however slim, I might get billed in part for the procedure. ([D] There are reports in the media that colonoscopies are, in some cases [where the risk of a real health problem is low], nothing so much as a big money-maker for the relevant providers U.S. health-care system.) 

Bottom line: I am in no rush to get a colonoscopy done.

The second good cause for concern, and the more colorful one, is this: In the 14+ years of my mother’s cancer treatments and periodic follow-ups (scans), etc., way back in the 2001-02 period, when she was first getting treated, there was an instance where, after I forget which set of therapy (over months, she had all of several chemo treatments, a five-week period of radiation, and eventual surgery; but in this case it may have been after one of her rounds of chemo), she had to get and use some—I forget the medicine’s name, but it was a new thing for boosting white blood cell count. According to her very cordial chemo oncologist, the hospital (UMDNJ, as it was called at the time) had paid for this med in individual patients’ cases in the past, but at the moment it couldn’t cover the cost, and I think Medicare wouldn’t cover it, so my mother had to pay for it.

The cost for a bundled set of several shots of the med was over $1,000. I’ve had a memory it was between $1,000 and $2,000, but my mother has remembered it as $3,000-and-something, and she is probably right. Anyway, her credit card (Visa, I think) wouldn’t accept the charge—her card had a limit on the size of charges, or something like that. So, with ad hoc decision-making in motion, I used my American Express card to pay for it (I’d had an Amex card since 1984), and she eventually paid me back (by check, maybe), to cover the charge to my card.

Today, for my own health needs (which have had considerably less medical attention than my mother has received for hers), I could not afford to pay thousands for a sudden unexpected medical expense that is not covered by my Medicaid, i.e., to pay via credit/debit card or any other way.

Hopefully, if I get profoundly sick where I might need to pay such charges, I either by wonderful luck am living permanently in Canada, or I die quickly.

That’s where we stand with the U.S. health-care system.

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Yes, this entry could have had the banner:

Also fits this series: Medical Waste: An occasional series on the absurdity to be found in the U.S. health-care system

Getting the Knack/Only in NJ, and OFAD 8: A yearly review of eligibility for Medicaid benefits runs into initial ludicrous errors, then…after much ado, leaves me OK at tax time

I originally drafted a version of this entry back in the summer (of 2015), and I had the added subheads as follows:

Also fits this series: Medical Waste: An occasional series on the absurdity to be found in the U.S. health-care system

Also somewhat fits this series [assuming there was other content unspecific to the health-care practical mess I had to describe]: Off the Scales: A comment series on excesses in the U.S. legal profession

But I lost steam (mostly by my discretion) for doing the entry, though a chunky draft was made. As one reason for holding off, I thought I would wait to see what I would do (regarding the specific procedural mess that prompted the entry) at tax time, early this 2016. Turns out, the tax issue was pretty simple, and was as I pretty much expected it would and should be.

Subsections below:

Reapplication comes, innocently enough; bureaucratic bungling ensues

The illusion about my being “head of the household”

The mess involving reapplication, due to the Medicaid office’s crazily slow handling of incoming mail

Left in vexation and a sort of procedural limbo in the summer

Now, what about tax-filing time?

[Edit 2/11/16. Edits 2/12/16.]

Reapplication comes, innocently enough; bureaucratic bungling ensues

The way the mess started is that, in spring 2015, per the perfectly normal and to-be-expected situation of the state Medicaid office needing to review your case and having you fill out an application again to see if you still qualify for Medicaid, I got a reapplication mailing from the Medicaid office in about early May 2015 (as with so much else in this mess, there were delays: the first renewal letter was postmarked May 5, and received May 7; a later letter said the first letter was sent “April 30”).

I didn’t wait too long to fill the application out; I took a few weeks to do so, and had to get information from my mother, in whose house I live, to include in the application, among information routinely requested on people in your household.

The second of two problems is what is of more importance here. But the first one I will spell out in some detail, for your full appreciation of how the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care act has been fumbled with in New Jersey.  

The illusion about my being “head of the household.” Incidentally, the form I got, which had some info about me preprinted, was presented in such a way that I was referred to as the “head” of the household. This is because of a standard, characteristic heuristic of NJ FamilyCare—the more special-focus-oriented office in New Jersey that handles all Medicaid applications in the state (which, I think, was originally for ordinary Medicaid recipients before the Affordable Care Act was implemented; then, in early 2014, it started clumsily including applicants under the ACA “Medicaid expansion”). This heuristic matter meant that anyone in the state who applies for Medicaid, according to their old (pre-ACA) system, was the head of a household, often with children.

So much for adjusting their forms, as late as 2015, to reality under what should have been implied by the ACA expansion. Of course, the ACA, in its Medicaid expansion component, made it possible for those eligible for Medicaid to be other than single parents with children at home (which is also the sort of criterion that has defined the more parsimonious forms of welfare in the country). I was among these without-children people (and as it happens, my mother doesn’t get Medicaid—she is retired and on Medicare—while I am not on disability and I, not she, earn money from work: I am among the working poor, as being an editor in New Jersey can easily make you).

My entering into the Medicaid system followed exactly what I was federally required to do: originally, in late 2013, I had filled out the form on the federal “Marketplace” Web site, and I qualified for Medicaid in early 2014. The info I had entered was sent by the federal “Marketplace” office to, I’m speculating, the New Jersey state offices of Medicaid (in 2015 I was in touch with what implies that there is a more bureaucratic, central office for this than the NJ FamilyCare office). (Of course, in 2014, bureaucratic bungling, mostly on the New Jersey end, started very soon; although the NJ FamilyCare office or the state’s main Medicaid office supposedly sent me a Medicaid card in about March 2014, they had the wrong mailing address for me, though I’d provided the right one on the federal Web site. So I didn’t finally get all my signing up done until November-December 2014.)

Also, as I’ve talked about in entries in early 2014, New Jersey’s NJ FamilyCare office (and maybe also, in the same period, the more central Medicaid office, though I don’t have firsthand knowledge of this) was hugely backlogged and ill-equipped to deal with the new influx of Medicaid applications through the Obamacare enrollment. (This I addressed deep in this entry, especially the end note [where a news article is cited], in my series on signing up for Obamacare.)

Anyway, on the reapplication form in spring 2015, I hand-wrote a footnote explaining that, while I was labeled as the head of the household, I was not really; I added that my mother was, but I was the one who applied for Medicaid. Well, this specific bit turned out not to be an issue down the road. With me, NJ FamilyCare didn’t have a hard time digesting this inability to square with their own form-bound presumptions about who applied for Medicaid.

And it was the least of the problems.

The mess involving reapplication, due to the Medicaid office’s crazily slow handling of incoming mail. The initial big problem was that, after I mailed off the reapplication form plus a copy of my 2014 federal tax form to NJ FamilyCare, in its own return, postage-paid envelope, about 12 days before the deadline, I got a letter from them dated June 5, 2015—five days before my deadline—saying I was “disenrolled” from Medicaid because (they claimed) I hadn’t reapplied by the deadline, which was five days after the date of their disenrollment letter, June 10. I received this “disenrollment” letter June 11.

(Adding to all the bureaucratic messiness is that I had mailed my reapplication Friday, May 29; the deadline, as I said, was June 10. But NJ FamilyCare sent a “final reminder” letter dated May 29, postmarked June 2, which I received June 4. So their disenrollment letter was dated seven days after the writing of their “final reminder,” while my deadline was 12 days after the writing of the “final reminder.”)

On June 11, I called NJ FamilyCare right away. I ended up finding that they had my reapplication; they had received it, according to the person I spoke to, that day, June 11. My obvious question: HOW COULD IT TAKE A REAPPLICATION, MAILED TO THEIR OWN ADDRESS, VIA THEIR OWN POSTAGE-PAID ENVELOPE, 12 DAYS TO GET INTO THEIR HANDS?

Left in vexation and a sort of procedural limbo in the summer

The “disenrollment” letter, in legally required style, explained how I could appeal by X date, etc. For some days or weeks, I debated on whether to appeal, for what legal rights it could respect for me, even though it seemed the Medicaid office was processing my reapplication; but there was an air, I felt, that I was not in a normal reapplication process. This was bolstered when, adding to the grim comedy, a letter arrived from them June 17, postmarked June 15, and dated June 11, saying thanks for my interest; they had received my application and were reviewing it; they would be in touch if they needed more info.

Anyway, I ended up choosing not to appeal (and this was not a totally easy bit of deliberation). And on their end, though I wasn’t 100 percent sure, it seemed they were disregarding the disenrollment issue, while now my reapplication was “pending.”

And indeed I was told it was “pending” when, for a coincidental standing appointment, I visited my doctor on June 16, and his workers checked into the matter, apparently with the Medicaid office directly.

But by July 4, I figured I had been without Medicaid insurance for almost a month [adjustment 2/12/16: this isn't quite true; the effective date for coverage stopping was June 30, according to the state's letter; and see update added below]. And I didn’t know how long it would be when I am covered again, or whether I even would be covered. [In general, true later in the summer.]

I seem to recall that, sometime in the period of my application’s being pending, they also wrote me asking for more info to be sent, and I did this, this time sending back the answer by Priority Mail, which should have reached them after no more than two days. I think there was a phone call where I heard from them they hadn’t received my additional info yet, and this was several days, maybe a week, after I’d sent it. Who, or what, was manning their mailroom? Snails?

Meanwhile, in July, I paid the doctor appointment of June 16 out of my pocket, explaining to them that with the Medicaid approval not being certain, and since I didn’t want the unpaid doctor bill hanging over my head, I wanted to pay them (as I had routinely done for years anyway, before I was ever enrolled in Medicaid) and get it out of the way.

In about late July, I got a notice from the state Medicaid office saying I was approved for continued enrollment, and my insurance would officially restart in very early August. So by what this verbally implied, I was supposedly without Medicaid coverage almost two months.

##

A few months later—this was probably September 2015—I asked the doctor’s office for some kind of receipt or such reflecting that the [important correction of month] June appointment had been paid; or maybe I asked something about my Medicaid coverage. (I probably have records on the precise query, but it isn’t important now.) I was told by them that Medicaid had paid for the June visit. I was surprised, of course; Medicaid had paid when I was supposedly disenrolled at the time?

I asked for the money back that I’d paid the doc’s office in July, and they did some research, and found that, yes, I had paid when it turned out I needn’t have, and they gave me a check for the money back.

Now, what about tax-filing time?

So my next question was, what would I do at income-tax (1040) time? There is a form (8965) you fill out if you have not had health insurance coverage, per the ACA. Last tax year (2014), following this form’s instructions, I got a hardship exemption from paying a penalty. What about this year?

The problem was, the state had said in 2015 I was disenrolled for about two months [update 2/12/16: the state's early-June letter said the effective date of disenrollment was June 30, so technically my June visit to the doctor would have been covered; but I've always intuitively remembered the discontinuation of the coverage as from the time I got the letter, in early June; see also second footnote to this entry, in the February 12 entry], but the doctor had been paid by the insurer for my July visit anyway. Would I represent to the IRS I had had coverage from early June to early August, or not?

It turns out, I qualified for a hardship exemption again, so the “enrolled or not” issue wasn’t necessary to represent in Form 8965.

##

Add to this the fact that I don’t really trust this insurance, enough to get any service beyond the minimum I’ve usually gotten (because what if I went for, say, a heart stress test, and then found I was being billed directly for some aspect of it for which the service-provider wouldn’t take Medicaid?), and sometimes I feel it would be a lot easier not to have the insurance.

(Plus, the insurer UnitedHealthcare—which handles my Medicaid insurance, and which normally is as trustworthy as any U.S. health insurer—has spoken as if it might leave the ACA insurance market in 2017, though I don’t know if that means both the individual-insurance market and Medicaid, or just one or the other. Who knows what I would find it suitable to do if I no longer had them for Medicaid insurance.)

Also, having Medicaid means I don’t have medical expenses by which to get a deduction on my New Jersey state income tax, but that’s another story, and not a big deal.

##

Here is the last in the OFAD series, which series tailed off in 2014:

OFAD 7: Connecting with Lefty: Finally getting my Medicaid card, to square with the ACA demand

URL:

http://gregoryludwig.blogspot.com/2014/11/ofad-7-connecting-with-lefty-finally.html

Theme key: What are the virtues and risks of extreme satire?

Subsections below:

The moral rigor of satire

Looking at real-life satire, and wondering how to portray it

One writer’s example

This theme key is a sketch of ideas, with a tasty example (my last theme keys were in very late December 2013, related to psychological precepts, and in early 2014, related to certain kinds of interpersonal relationships in films). This key isn’t absolutely necessary in order for you to follow my reviews of Coen brothers films, but it doesn’t hurt.

I foreshadowed this discussion in my multi-part review of Touch of Evil, on my other blog, in the fall (I thought I would post this key then, but held off). People who are less familiar with satire might misunderstand the type of humor. Some might see satire’s comic viewpoint as “too dark,” or as suggestive of a jaundiced viewpoint (or worse) in the artist.

The moral rigor of satire

Having been a connoisseur of satire for many years, and having written some (usually unpublished) over the decades, I would say that satire (1) has the virtues of focusing on moral extremes (i.e., extreme deviations from acceptable morality) in one of the most elucidating and entertaining ways within literature, but (2) runs the risk of being (or seeming) tendentious, in the sense of inherently espousing a code of morality, however sincerely held, that might seem too rigid to some (of course, senses of morality can vary among individuals), or just might seem like “one person’s opinion.”

Another aspect is that in writing it, it usually isn’t something that the writer goes into “intuitively,” sensitively working out the art as if he or she has to subtly feel his or her way along; there is something about it where you have some of your moral strategy already set up. Then, the problem you face is not to be too formulaic in skewering your targets.

But for readers who like it, these “heuristic” or “logistical” matters of the creative scaffolding behind it are beside the point. We as appreciative readers of it can be tickled pink by the sharpest of humor skewering a target that we think deserves it.

Can satire go a little too far? This may be in the eye of the beholder. To take an example from a filmmaker (Orson Welles) regarding whom this “theme key” was first started, you might feel that his film Touch of Evil, for all its genuine-enough points it is making, might be a bit extreme at times. The Coens’ films, as well, may seem a bit over the top at times (for some viewers).

Looking at real-life satire, and wondering how to portray it

Let’s take another example of satire: my relatively short (and unpublished) novel of the second-rate publishing industry, First Love, which I wrote in 2000-01, based on places in New Jersey I’d worked at (as an in-house editor, whether part-time or not) in the 1990s. (I situated the story largely in a fictional environment very similar to the first national publisher I worked at, All American Crafts, though obviously changes of some details from those of the real-life setting were made to hew to the fictional framework of the book.) I very deliberately took what I thought was the best strategic approach: I wrote on real-life situations (disguising names, of course, among other things), but I mixed these in with fully made-up situations. Then a selling point for the novella was to say, “Some of this is based on real life, and some is fictional. Can you tell which is which?”

This coheres with the fact that, as many of us Jersey freelance editors might say (in the right context), you could readily satirize the kinds of companies these second-rate publishers are just by describing, straight, the crazier things that go on there. To me, satire works best when it gives all indications of being a very “mimetic” account.

Incidentally, I have a certain kind of retrospective fondness for AAC nowadays that I didn’t really have, say, in 1992-95, when I was undergoing a few-year “posttraumatic” recovery from my experience there. I look at the experience now the way some film directors (Coppola, Scorsese, or Ron Howard) or actors (Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda) might have done about having done pressured shlock work early in their careers for Roger Corman’s American International Pictures, the famous studio where you could you do your first directing work under the most parsimonious conditions imaginable. I did learn a number of essential things about working for small print publishers at AAC, but it was a sort of baptism by fire (a number of bizarre experiences typical of small publishers that I would have at other places I had at AAC first, and some of them there were the worst examples, compared to later experiences).

In writing on a place modeled after AAC as part of the overall story of First Love in 2000-01, I wasn’t giving vent to unadulterated bitterness (about AAC), but was using a sort of situational “substrate” for an elaborate story, from a sort of emotionally collected viewpoint, that combined real-life events (from over almost a decade) with fictional anecdotes.

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As for how the strategy of mixing fictional and nonfictional content worked: you’d be surprised to see how the two blend together; in fact, I think most of the book’s pithier events were real-life, or close to real-life, events. Here’s one example of how this could trick a reader (not intentionally): When (in about 2001) I had had a longtime friend, with whom I worked at a small publisher in 1997 and then did freelance work for from 1997 to 1999, read the novella, she was surprised to hear of one section in it being from real life (actually, one of its longest and most substantial sections).

Also, from the writer’s perspective, the tone you intend can also vary between readings, (1) in your own mind (as the writer) when you return to the work years after you wrote it, and (2) as different readers might vary in their reaction to the tone or emotional texture of the satire. When I read the novella again within a few years after I’d written it, I was struck by how it seemed sad, because of all the tawdry events that befell its “hero.” I’d felt when writing it that it was taking a predominantly humorous (if darkly so) tack. But the story ended up sometime later seeming, to my eyes which had gained some objectivity about it, more sad than otherwise. Which quality may be true in real life about the second-rate publishing industry, anyway.

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Another, more amusing bit of “feedback” came in about later 2001. I was doing something rather naïve, taking what I hoped was acceptable advantage of a route of communicating that was new and exciting at the time, doing a sort of multi-recipient e-mail to various freelance editors most of whom I didn’t know, proffering some promotional information on First Love (including the fact, I’m pretty sure I pointed out, that the novella mixed fact and fiction). This was to see how freelance editors of various stripes would react to such a thing (market testing of this general sort is something I still do, though almost never by e-mail). I got these people’s address info from the Editorial Freelancers Association, with which my association was just about ending by that point (after my constructive involvement with the group from 1994 to 2000). As it happened, only a small percentage of the total people I e-mailed responded.

One or more person(s) said it wasn’t quite right I did my blast e-mail as I did to people I didn’t know, which was (retrospectively) a good point (this is one reason I say this effort was naïve, today, though at the time I thought it was worth a shot). The vast majority of these EFA people I e-mailed to were based in Manhattan or some other New York City borough.

But the response that is of point here: one person (and I’m sure this person was domiciled in NYC) said, in such situations of ethical problems as my book was about, why not (in real life) just complain to the Freelancers Union or National Writers Union (I forget which)? Or some group like that (she mentioned just one by name).

Right (I say ironically). Complain to X union about how I was screwed over at All American Crafts, or Clinicians Publishing Group (the latter a definitely worse situation, in early 1994, than was AAC in late 1991-early 1992). That would work. In New Jersey. Sure.

In fact, of course, as a freelance editor in New Jersey you have no help from any union, or professional society, for the ways you can get elbowed, trampled, screwed, etc., by what goes on in the second-rate publishing industry here. (I wonder, can you really get such help for whatever trampling you might get in NYC?) That was true in the 1990s, in plenty of ways, which is why I ended up writing First Love. It has been true in other ways with other types of media companies in the 2000s, both before and after the Internet (through LinkedIn, Monster.com, etc., etc.) starting defining, and intruding on, so much about this industry.

Let’s wrap up with a look at a concrete example of satire.

One writer’s example

Here is a general description of the novel I mentioned, First Love, which adapted (in 2008) the earliest summary I had written of it (in about early 2001). The later description was prepared for lawsuit discovery purposes in 2008 (and I had written the older version, per the rigorous requirements of a literary agent, for her use in submissions to trade-book publishers that I presume were done by this agent). (A few editorial notes are added in brackets, and the last paragraph is deleted.)

This fast-moving, episodic satire of the lesser-quality, suburban-based sector of the nationally distributing publishing industry shows just how bad—and laughable—breaches of business ethics and manners can be. Blending disguised accounts of incidents in the author’s experience with ludicrous fictional situations (you can’t tell which are which), First Love portrays a small publishing company in financial straits passed by its elderly owner, [whose company is called Gibmir, LLC] who made his fortune from pornography, to his son, Phil Samson. Samson must re-fire the company, which produces medical and handicraft magazines, with new trite, also-ran magazines [designed as trite because, in a sense, they are put on the market for tax write-off purposes].

Samson sweetens his increased charge at his father’s company by starting an experimental lifestyle magazine that is premised on a sexual fetish of his.

The story is seen mostly through the eyes of Alex Crowell, a part-time proofreader and copy editor subjected to classic cases of publisher double standards that are topped only by insults afflicting some of his coworkers. He and Samson, both in their thirties, are obsessive types, but Samson is narcissistic, manipulative, irresponsible in a crisis, and given to think he is entitled to be sleazier than his father without the hard [and coolly business-sensible] experience leading to it.

Meanwhile, Alex is moderate and professional—and grossly taken advantage of. At a climax in the novel, Alex deals with his own abnormal crisis of love, triggered by office politics, but deals with it discreetly and humbly, unlike Samson with his promoting his new lifestyle magazine, which has affinities with Nazi propaganda.

In his incompetent attempts to bring in investment and new-business opportunities, Samson makes a deal with a couple of peculiar men who want to reprint the Malleus Maleficarum, a book used to direct and justify the mass-murderous witch hunts of the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Europe. Another deal of Samson’s involves a convoluted arrangement between the Gibmir company and a slightly shady local-newspaper publisher, intending to produce a regional directory. This project involves a stalker-like freelance editor who ends up preposterously victimizing Alex, in a context independent of work, in connection with his service on a local-government board. This occurs very similarly to a legally actionable experience that JN—a friend of Alex’s with whom Alex trades notes on the Gibmir company—had years before, with the same stalker-like freelance editor.

Of course, Alex ends up getting fired from the Gibmir company amid a grotesquely self-dramatizing move by Samson. The one thing Alex doesn’t realize is what an honor this is for him.

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We may return to this “theme key” topic in the future. (I didn’t want to do a rigid “Part 1”/“Part 2” arrangement here.) For instance, how might we satirize certain kinds of media companies in New Jersey from the period 2000-2015, in the age of the Internet? At least, the nonfictional material we can add to the fictional would certainly be colorful.