Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 18

I’m In Me Mum’s Car, Broom Broom: A Literary Analysis

I tend to be late to popular trends. I didn’t watch Frozen, for instance, until I happened to see Idina Menzel perform “Let It Go” in the 2014 Oscars, and thought it sounded fairly catchy. This explains, perhaps, why I did not find out about what Buzzfeed labeled “The Hottest Meme of the Summer” in 2014 until the summer of 2015. But, I have finally watched the Vine of British teenager Tish Simmonds, which I have embedded below.

After I had watched it, the wheels in my brain began to turn. Back during my college days, I took a course on digital storytelling, during which I read Joseph Campbell’s book on the Hero’s Journey. I wondered: might there be a deeper story in this little Vine? And then I realized. Yes. Yes, there was. Indeed, Tish Simmonds has presented us with, dare I say, the defining story of our times, a tale of yearning and loss, all encapsulated in a few short seconds. Consider with me the words of this Vine to see why this is so.

“I’m in me mum’s car”.

Note that this sentence is expressed in the present tense. We are not told how our protagonist has reached this position. We simply find her there, in her mum’s car. This indicates a sort of complacency, an acceptance of the status quo. Indeed, at this moment there is no indication of motion; this is simply a statement of presence. I am in me mum’s car: I am present in this automobile of my mother’s in this moment of time, and I appear to have no desire to leave. I’m sure we can all identify with this, with the feeling that we are forever stuck in our mum’s cars, content yet still with a sense that there is something lacking. After all, our heroine isn’t in her own car yet.

2. “broom broom”

But wait! With these two mere onomatopoetic words, everything changes! *Broom broom* seems linguistically akin to *vroom vroom*, the classic sound indicating speed, particularly the speed of a racing car. Then, too, the sounds may be a subtle allusion to the song “Zoom Zoom Zoom“, featured in the Disney movie “Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century.”  In any event, whether an allusion to a car or a spaceship, “broom broom” represents the classic desire to explore, to get out there, to have adventures. It’s the “I Want” song of innumerable Disney films, from “Just Around the Riverbend” in Pocahontas to “Part of Your World” in The Little Mermaid. Belle’s longing for much more than this provincial life, Ariel’s desire to be where the people are, Rapunzel’s wish to escape her tower and track down the lights that appear on her birthday, all of these can be expressed by the two syllables: “broom broom”.  And so our heroine prepares to set out on her grand adventure, to boldly go where no one has gone before!

3. “Get out me car!”

Alas, however, the inevitable conflict occurs. The protagonist’s mother, to whom the car belongs, arrives to demonstrate the inevitable limitations of circumstance. It’s not our heroine’s car, after all. Possession, as is known in legal circles, is often defined by the right to exclude. The mum here definitely has this power, and has chosen to exercise it at the very point when the adventure might have begun. The moral here: you can’t go on adventures without your own car.

4. “Aww.”

And finally, our protagonist gives voice to this exclamation as a sign of her reluctant resignation to her fate. Perhaps, one day, she might realize the “broom broom” of her ambition and soar to the stars, in her own car, not her mum’s. That day is not, sadly, today, but it could still be out there. While the video ends here, we can assume our heroine left the car and went back inside to dream of a future, a future bright and filled with adventure, a future, indeed, of “broom broom.”

Live, My Creation

“”So, my Igor, Winifred? Totally irrational. Wants to create Frankenmanatee. Cute, right? Oy.”

The End is the Beginning

Gaseous Girl had nearly flamed out. She had used up the last of her emergency supply of caffeinated sodas, and burped nearly her last explosive burp at the advancing hell-armies, but there were thousands upon thousands of them, and only one of her. The result was simple, brutal math. Sooner or later she knew she was going to die. After that, since she wouldn’t be able to get her evil twin back to the twin’s universe and restore the rip in reality, the universe itself would die. Gaseous Girl bleakly wondered if God would step in at that point to fix things.

That train of thought led Gaseous Girl to the obvious conclusion. She snap-kicked one last another giant verminous insect, then managed to drop to one knee. She still remembered some of the old prayers, even one or two of the Latin bits. “Right,” she said, “here goes… I mean, in nomine Patris, et Fil-“

There was a sudden, small pop. A raccoon appeared, looking glum and wearing an armored battle-suit. “Hello,” it said. “I’m Bingo. I’ve come to help.”

“You have got to be kidding,” said Gaseous Girl.

“No,” said Bingo miserably. “I’m the answer to your prayer. I’m supposed to save you.”

“You’re the… but…I haven’t finished praying yet!” Madeleine spluttered.

“Look, the angel said, save Gaseous Girl, save the world. So here I am. I brought lasers.”

“Lasers,” Gaseous Girl repeated.

Bingo demonstrated this by opening fire and zapping a rampaging slimy tentacle monster that had been prepared to break the momentary lull in the battle by biting Madeleine’s head off.

“Nice,” she said, “but I’m gonna need about fifty million more of those. We’re still only two, and they’ve got-”

The raccoon produced a small vial from a pocket in his battle suit. “I also brought some holy water, I thought maybe-”

Gaseous Girl snatched it. “Oh, you’re brilliant.”  In her hand the vial began to glow red. She shot a look around. Caught in the flow of the battle, she now stood just on the bank of the river Acheron. On the far bank, the possessed Eviler Madeleine stood watching the fight on a little hill, just high enough to give her a perfect view of Gaseous Girl’s demise. She ought to have left the fight to its inevitable end, but she couldn’t resist staying to watch. It was the classic villain mistake, and it had just caught up with her.

“Ready for some science, Bingo?” Gaseous Girl said. “When you heat up water, it becomes steam. And do you know what form of water steam is?”

Bingo’s eyes widened. “It’s a gas!”

Gaseous Girl smiled. “Now you know.” She smashed the glowing red vial into the river, then shot out her hand. A geyser of holy-water-infused steam blasted out of the Acheron, booming away right smack into Eviler Madeleine. The possessed supervillain gave a wrenching scream as she careened off her hill.

Gaseous Girl seized the raccoon and flew frantically across the river, the hell-armies reeling back in disarray. With her other hand she grabbed a flailing arm of her evil counterpart, who didn’t look possessed anymore at least. Then Gaseous Girl charged off towards the exit from hell. She had a flying glimpse of bees chasing a crowd of people, and then a gate loomed up before her, a gate written with even more Latin. Gaseous Girl crashed right through, not even stopping to provide a translation. She had another flying glimpse of trees, and dark hills, and a gaping rift through which she saw a torrent of white stars and red suns. Without much idea of what else to do, Gaseous Girl aimed straight for it.

“Hey! Stop! Wait!” Evil Madeleine screamed. “That’s a rift in reality, you idiot! You can’t just fly into it! You’ll break everything!”

The thought flashed through Gaseous Girl’s mind that she should say something heroic before she pitched into the rift. She blanked. She should’ve prepared-

The universe flashed.

***

Madeleine Smith watched as the ambulance pulled away. Pamela Percy had tripped out of a window and bounced off an awning. Fortunately, it seemed she would live. Madeleine sighed. If only she’d teleported or something, Madeleine might’ve had a job. Since she hadn’t, it was back to the usual patrol. Maybe the Rogue Jaywalker would turn up. She started to turn away, back to her apartment and her cat. Then she caught sight of someone in the small crowd. Her mouth fell open. “Evan?” 

As they say in the films, Gaseous Girl will return. 

A Poem on the Moon

“You know what?” Constance said. “Skip this.”  She might have used words of more emphasis, but she was an angel, and angels didn’t use that sort of language. “I’m going to find the Ark myself and move it somewhere you people can’t get at it. Bye!” She vanished from the starship Blooming Onion‘s engine room in a spray of golden light.

Captain Jolene was somewhat nonplussed by all this. “Okay. Well. everyone, carry on then. I’d better contact Fleet command about all this.”  Between the revelation that her science officer had been a demon from hell, and the appearance and prompt disappearance of an angel in her engine room, she decided that she really needed to consult with her superiors.

Mr. Stamper was not the consulting type. As chief of security, he really disliked when angels crashed aboard his ship. He didn’t like Constance, in particular. In their last encounter, she had neglected to share with him certain important facts. So the space otter decided there was only one thing to do. He swiped a shuttle from the cargo bay and tore off after her.

There was no obvious trail. Angels, apparently, did not leave wakes of ion radiation or tachyon fluxes measuring disturbances in the space-time continuum. So Mr. Stamper made another decision. His shuttle boomed right through the wormhole and headed straight for the nearest little moon. Jolene had meant to go to that moon. Constance meant to beat them to it. So, Mr. Stamper resolved to get there first.

He actually did. Constance had made it into the wormhole, but had paused to admire the scenery.  Wormholes, especially stable ones like this, were awfully shiny. She neglected the tiny shuttle whizzing past her, and by the time she emerged at the other end, Mr. Stamper had long since skidded to a bumpy landing on the moon. The landscape was standard moon type: rocky, cold, pocked with craters. In the distance, however, the space otter saw a clump of rocks rising higher than the rest. These weren’t randomly scattered rocks, either. They looked ordered. “Bingo,” Mr. Stamper said, and marched towards them.

The rocks formed a neat arch over a particularly wide crater. Inside the crater, Mr. Stamper found a tunnel leading into the depths of the moon. He thought about tossing an electron blast grenade down it just in case, but decided against it. If the Ark was down there, he didn’t want to blow the thing up.

Carefully the space otter made his way down the tunnel. An hour passed, then two. Then, quite abruptly, the tunnel snapped left and dead-ended in a door. The door had old and squiggly writing on it. In an ancient and forgotten language, it read.

Respect, and fear, this sacred space

Or you will have a melted face.

The Ark is here, and that’s a fact,

Now turn around and don’t come back,

There’s Power here, you silly twit,

And you had better not mess with it. 

So run away, right now, go on,

Or we repeat: your face is melted right clean away. 

Mr. Stamper, unfortunately, was not expert in ancient and forgotten languages. He was a space otter. His job was to find things that other people wanted, and would pay him for. He might not have been deterred by the poem even if he had read it. Since he couldn’t, he calmly set his proton blaster to emit a steady beam and began methodically cutting his way through the door. The crackling golden beam reduced the poem to pulverized dust. Mr. Stamper had never been much for poetry.

The yeah write poetry slam for this month was doggerel. The focus on fiction for this month was anthropomorphism. With these two concepts, August seems just perfect for a Stamper story, and so I resumed his latest story arc. Will his face be melted off just like those guys in Raiders? Only time will tell. *dramatic chords*. 

Justice

“I’ll tell you one more time,” Gaseous Girl said. “Put. The Kaboominator. Down.”

“Or what? You’ll flame me? You can’t stop me except with lethal force, and capes don’t do that.” Red Mushroom smiled. “So I’ll get away. Zap a Ferris wheel. Zap Vegas. Just like Captain Con-”

*Fwoosh*

“No. You won’t.

Missed It By That Much

The advantage of fighting a hell-army that insanely outnumbers you is that you don’t have to think about it too much. Ordinarily, when Gaseous Girl was fighting Crudmuffin or Thunderdomestic, she had to take a little care that her flame blasts were aimed properly. She didn’t want to miss and burn down little Sally’s lemonade stand, for instance. Now, that didn’t matter. Enemies were everywhere. She could flame and burp explosive gas and snap-kick and punch to her heart’s content. It was almost automatic. And as Gaseous Girl threw herself into the fight, she had a moment to reflect. She realized she had time for one more flashback before the inevitable end.

She had seen superheroes die before. Her mother died quite frequently. Of course, Maria Smith promptly resurrected in seventeen seconds each time, so Madeleine wasn’t sure that counted. She’d meant to ask Father Milo about that. There had been other heroes who had died and then come back. Their consciousness had been transported to a new body, or maybe they’d been cloned, or the event that killed them had been erased by a time change. It happened a lot. Madeleine only knew one superhero who had died permanently.

She had been new to the cape. Madeleine had still been trying to figure out how to do it all: manage a secret identity, keep up a patrol of the city, stopping supervillains before they set off their missiles or robots or what have you. Then Captain Constantine arrived.

The Captain was the traditional protector of Edison City. He received his powers from some ancient amulet he had found in a country that ended in “stan”. He was incredibly strong, incredibly fast, and incredibly good at a budgeting spreadsheet. He also liked long walks on the beach. Madeleine was still on the rebound from Evan. She had fallen hard for the Captain. And he was nearly invulnerable, too.

Nearly.

It had been a Tuesday. He had agreed to meet her for a date, their first. On the way there, he had met the Red Mushroom, a minor villain on the order of the Rogue Jaywalker, who was in the act of robbing a bank. Captain Constantine, believing in the old adage about catching more flies with honey than vinegar, generously gave the Red Mushroom five full minutes to surrender. It was four minutes and fifty-two seconds too long. Somehow the Red Mushroom had gotten his hands on the Kaboominator. Against that, “nearly” invulnerable was… not quite invulnerable enough.

No one had known to call Madeleine. She found out from a Facebook post. Then she learned that the Red Mushroom had flown to Las Vegas and was threatening to level it. Madeleine didn’t hesitate. She flew there. She stopped him. Las Vegas gave her the key to the city. Millions of people owed her their lives.  None of that changed the simple truth, the one that Gaseous Girl confronted now in what was probably her last battle. Nearly invulnerable was never invulnerable enough.

That’s All She Wrote

“Sir? There’s an opera singer, Christine somebody, wants this printed.”

“What, Erik is dead? That’s it? Who’s Erik, then?”

“No idea. She seemed very upset.”

“Well, even so, we’re a serious paper, Dawson. We want facts. Not random phrases.”

“Of course, sir.”

A Bargain

The stories often tell of heroic knights who, alone and wielding only their trusty sword and sturdy shield, bravely venture forth to slay the dragon and rescue the damsel in distress. The stories are, of course, bunk. A dragon is a multi-ton armored flying monster with the ability to loose an inferno of fire that can melt steel. An average knight, on his own, stands about as much chance as a snowball in New Mexico. A whole squadron of knights backed by archers, with a lot of hard work and a fair amount of luck, might have a chance, just. If a well-aimed arrow makes a one-in-a-thousand hit into blank spot in the dragon’s scales, or stabs it in the eye, then maybe, a dragon might be brought down. But when one considers that Philip of House Shirley had unleashed entire flights of dragons against the Lydwinish army, and backed them up with more flights of griffins, and masses of behemoths, and an army of fighting men besides, it is no wonder that the new Prime Minister of Maventry felt supremely confident in his war.

He stood in his map room, watching his lines move forward in great leaps across enemy territory. He didn’t even notice at first when Rowena materialized in his fireplace. She had to make a nervous cough in order to get his attention. “Ah,” Philip said. “So you’ve arrived. Now explain why I should employ you in the service of House Shirley.”

“I’m afraid you’ll need to do more than that,” Rowena said. “I can see what’s coming. You won’t stop at being Prime Minister; you will be the king. Someone else will be Prime Minister then. That someone will be me.”

Philip almost laughed. “You’re very ambitious, aren’t you?”

“All I really want is a good night’s rest,” Rowena said, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her. “But I seem to have gone too far for that. What I want now is to be secure. Your job will do that.”

“And I should make you second in the kingdom because…?”

Rowena stared directly at him. “I know what you did. I know you hired Mortimer of the Polecat Order to summon the dragon that killed Lady Eulalie. I have been to Shirleyhold, and I read the traces there. I know you murdered Lady Amaryllis and used her death as a pretext for invading Lydwin. And I know that if Prince Evinrude were still alive, he would be very upset with you.”

“But he is not alive,” Philip stated.

“No. He is not. Why? Because I sent him to his death.”

“Real-ly.”

Rowena explained, very briefly, how she had misdirected Evinrude. “In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, you owe me.”

“Fair point,” Philip said. “Or, I could just murder you here and now, and no one would ever know.” He laid a hand on his sword.

“Yes, you could,” Rowena replied equably. “But I don’t think you will. You have a problem, you see. I know you sent someone to assassinate Mortimer. The assassin may have succeeded; he may not. But if he did, who will you send to deal with him?” 

Philip actually hadn’t thought of that. “Ah….”

Rowena came to the point. “Make me Prime Minister when you assume the throne, and I will tidy up this business for you. You will also have the support of the Order of the Rabbit in your claim, and that is no small thing.”

The current Prime Minister was not a man of indecision. “Done.” He extended his hand. Rowena only stared hard at him.

“I am curious,” she said at last. “Why? Why all this?”

Philip shrugged. “Christine. ”

A short, pregnant pause ensued. Then it gave birth. “And? She was what, an oracle? Told you the future? Warned you against your inevitable downfall due to a quirky interpretation of a prophecy?”

“Something like that.”

Rowena waited. He wasn’t forthcoming. Finally, she gave it up. With a bang, she disappeared into the fireplace again.

Philip became king at the beginning of the winter season, just in time to receive the surrender of the last Lydwinish forces. As promised, Rowena became his Prime Minister. She still didn’t sleep very well.

She Who Dealt It

“Surrender, Crudmuffin,” Gaseous Girl said.

“Or what? You’ll fart at me?”

Gaseous Girl smiled. “You see this? It’s a gas thermometer. And I control gas.”

Zing.

Crudmuffin yelped.

“Oops,” said Gaseous Girl. “Looks like it’s now the other thermometer.”

For any newcomers, Gaseous Girl is one of the first characters I ever created. She derived her powers from a radioactive mozzarella stick.

The Tale of Bingo

Bingo considered himself a most well-ordered raccoon these days. He knew of some raccoons that longed after adventure, who might join with other animal friends to save the environment, or who might venture into space and fight aliens.  Bingo now was not that sort of raccoon. He was a raccoon of study, who liked to conceal himself in his forest hideaway and read deep intellectual works. Bingo had, he knew not how, acquired the ability to read, and had taught himself the English language. Although he was deeply ashamed of it, he had stolen human books, and then read them. He was very happy.

Still, though, at times, Bingo longed for something greater. He would step out of his hideaway at night and stare longingly at a patch of stars, and wonder what it was like out there, whether things had changed. Then he would dismiss the feeling, go back inside, and make himself a bit of cocoa. His life was calm. Quiet. Untroubled.

Then the angel came.

Bingo was just starting a new book he had snagged from the library, a young-adult dystopia where a girl named after a flower challenged some evil regime or other. Suddenly, the angel interrupted. “Yo,” it said, its golden light spilling across the pages.

“Wha!” squeaked Bingo.

“I’m Constance,” the angel said. “What’s up?”

“Wha!” Bingo repeated.

“Yeah, I getcha. Angels don’t often communicate with animals, right? Well, we do sometimes. My friend Tabitha had a great conversation with a dolphin the other day. It was named Skip. She and Skip rescued some castaways. It was big in the news. Anyway. Here’s the thing: I need your help.”

“Me?” said Bingo. “What for?”

Constance sighed. “I wish I had a Powerpoint projector to explain all this. Let me sum up. You know about Gaseous Girl, right? She’s a super, protects Edison City, nice girl. Should go to church more often, but that’s understandable, and she talks to Father Milo when she can. Okay, so she’s got herself in hell, and long story short she’s trying to get out, only there’s a huge hell-army blocking her path. Like, real big.”

Bingo was confused. “But what have I got to do with it?”

Constance grinned. “I know you, buddy. And before you went all philosophical, you worked with lasers. Zapped a shark or too, didn’t ya?”

The raccoon looked very much abashed. “It was a different time, then. There were sharks everywhere, sharks in tornados, sharks in space even. I had to do something. But I swore off that life ages ago, honestly I did.”

“Welp, you just swore back on. Thing is, you’re the only one who can help. You don’t, she dies. And if she dies, the whole universe goes plotz. Save Gaseous Girl, save the universe. Or don’t. Your call.”

Bingo didn’t see as he had much of a choice. “I will need a moment,” he said miserably. “I will need to hunt out the old battle-suit again.”

“Excellent,” said Constance, giggling. This was going to be fun.