Note: My critical authority was compromised more than usual here. All points speculative.
~
BOO.
Schlock, a word derived from Yiddish meaning ‘poor
copy’, is what happens when the horrific is made suddenly comic. It is also, for
some reason, unfashionable in the theatre. This is something I’ve never
understood. Despite its under-the-table connections with the world of ‘low art’,
I’ve often found in it something deeply and surprisingly poetic, and it has a
long and interesting tradition, beginning, at least in a spectacle sense, with
the phenomenal immersive experiment of Étienne-Gaspard Robert’s Phantasmagoria in 1797. The
unifying nature of schlock - whereby an audience collectively faces a horrific
encounter, and comes away laughing together - I find quite affirming, and sort
of nicely, gently shocking. It brightens my mood.
Since the 1970s, all of this is cultural territory
claimed by the contemporary horror film, and so Stephen King’s work, which
begins in earnest in 1970, sits exactly at this neat crossover, and in some
ways defines it. If King wasn’t a well-known exponent of schlock – he’s far too
earnest – it can certainly be interpreted that way from a distance. (From a
distance, say, of Germany, although some might say that’s not so distant).
This schlockification of King is evident when someone
tries to make a film of one of his novels. They inevitably encounter this
earnestness, the sincere psychological believability of King’s narratives,
which is just plain impossible to represent on film. The best film adaptation
of a King novel is surely Kubrick’s The
Shining, which is actually open caricature. Jack Nicholson's performance is, to me, an
acknowledgement of the medium’s deficiency, an expression of defeat, let’s say,
likewise Shelly Duvall’s often mocked performance, known mostly for its lack of
acting and dilated pupils. Pet Semetery’s
adaptation, where a novel about the psychological torment of death becomes
something more shallow and, well, gross, is another case in point. The TV-movie
of IT is perhaps the biggest exponent,
adapting an allegorical manifestations of a shape-shifting antagonist, standing
for some darker psychological malaise in American culture, into a meaningless
set of shock-cornucopia. One is potent, the other just means you can’t ever
laugh at a clown again.
Foto: Alexander Jaquemet
