The Debt I Owe Doonesbury

This is the second in an occasional series on my childhood obsessions (read the first here). I'm sure I'll veer into teenage obsessions as well, since those are ridiculous and fun. My goal is to capture the past: to remember what I found compelling back then and reflect on it. My childhood memories are hazy at best -- quiet apparitions begging for flesh. We'll see how it goes...

A particularly dark period of my childhood emerged right after my first viewing of The Shining. The Shining is not scary in the “why are you going into that room when there’s an axe murderer in there, you idiot?” sense, but in a steady and pervasive ill-at-ease-feeling sort of way. That kind of scary leaves a much more visceral impression on a young mind, and mine was duly scarred.

As I closed my eyes to go to sleep at night my mind was haunted by images of eerily pristine twins confronting young Danny in the hallway, naked old women in showers, receding footsteps in a snow-drenched labyrinth, etc. One of the interesting things about the movie is that it’s Danny’s fears that become your own. Shelley Duval’s fears never really do -- partially because of the way she played the character -- but Danny is someone you can identify with. So it was Danny’s experiences that came back to haunt me, along with the score. (The music in a Kubrick film -- generally stuff that wasn’t composed specifically for the screen -- just seems to belong there in a way that a John Williams score never does. It enhances the viewing experience rather than drawing unnecessary attention to itself.)

So anyway, I was a frightened little child who had a miserable time getting to sleep at night. And only one thing could cure the dis-ease that haunted my mind: Doonesbury comics. My parents, being good liberals with a sense of humor, had a large stash of books filled with past Doonesbury strips, none of which I remember well enough to describe. What I do remember is the effect they had. Slowly, gently, I was pulled out my fear- and depression-filled rut, and learned to laugh and fall asleep easily once again.

For a while there afterward I tried to read Doonesbury in the paper. But I couldn’t really follow it; the characters’ lives had taken turns I didn’t understand from a perspective limited by what I had read in the books. I haven’t read Doonesbury since. But I’ll always feel grateful for it, and cheer it on, for the cheer it brought into my life. I felt pretty darned good there for a few years, until thoughts of nuclear annihilation began to invade the ol’ brain, forcing out an unanswered letter to Ronald Reagan. But that’s another story.

Further reading:

The Kubrick FAQ: Clears up some misconceptions about his involvement in A.I. (e.g., he really did want that ending, but not exactly how Spielberg ended up shooting it).

Another great mood-setting film score whose resonance stems from music composed for other purposes: The Hunger.

One of my all-time favorite film scores is Ennio Morricone’s for Days of Heaven. Not a great film, but the cinematography and soundtrack combine to deliver a unique cinematic experience.

posted by Abbi at 6:28 PM