Third Grader Channels Pennywise the Clown at the Annual Halloween Parade in Jackson Heights, Queens

Annual Jackson Heights Halloween Parade
In Jackson Heights, every year on Halloween, the local "Beautification Society" hosts a parade on 37th Avenue. My school participates, so I have, for the last several years, marched in the parade. I love seeing the kids and adults who have lined the street, mostly dressed up and in a spirit of "being costumed." I feel like when kids, especially, wear costumes, it can be a moment to channel creative energy and to pretend to be someone you're not. 
Third Grader Channels Pennywise the Clown
One kid I met on the route was dressed up as Pennywise the Clown — there were several permutations of this character, a malevolent force in Stephen King's novel-made-movie IT. I was struck by this Third-grader wild abandon into the role, like the video, posted below, demonstrates. Happy Halloween!

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A Monster Calls (2016) - Movie Review

A boy learns to face his fears (© Focus Features)

Wanna see a movie that gives us a twenty-first-century version of a Grimm's fairy tale?

In the book Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim lays out a psychological argument that fairy tales are useful in helping young children understand adult fears. Fairy tales are couched in childlike verse, but beneath the surface lies deeper, troubling psychological truths.

For example, why is every stepmother in fairy tales evil? Well, according to Bettelheim it is because it is all about the fear children have that our parents don't love us. But. This is too much to bear for the children, so the storyteller replaces this fear with a substitute - the stepmother.

In J.A. Bayona's fantasy flick, A Monster Calls, the logic works similarly. However, the metaphor is not as thickly veiled. There are no evil stepmothers; but, there is a strident grandmother (Sigourney Weaver).

The story, based on a novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, centers on a young boy named Conor (played sensitively by Louis MacDougall), a waifish boy attuned to the visual arts but prone to being bullied at school. He is dealing with the impending tragedy of his mother's death. 

While his family seemingly falls apart all around him, Conor falls deeper and deeper into a sullen depression. In one scene, he destroys his grandmother's sitting room, tearing the furniture apart. The boy is distraught and anger is an easy anodyne.

In order to help Conor deal with the reality of his grief, every night around midnight an anthropomorphic yew tree monster voiced by Liam Neeson) uproots itself from a nearby cemetery to dole out three fairy tales to the lad. The tales - à la Bettelheim - are meant to help the young boy deal with the very real fear of his mother's death.

That's all fine and dandy. There are lots of films and books that help children deal with the reality of death - take My Girl and Bridge to Terabithia as potent examples.

A Monster Calls is a little different because the plots rend open a deeper and more destructive fear. The inevitable death of Conor's mother also triggers within Conor a kind of death drive. The yew tree monster's stories are meant to help the boy realize his own wish to die and to counteract this drive with a life-giving "yes" living.

So it's intense material. I won't go into the content of the tales - but suffice it to say the film's visuals are stunning and I think the movie succeeds in driving home its central psychological thesis.

I am not one to censor films; however, I would caution against viewing this film with young children. I think the deeper themes of destruction and not-so-subtle hints about suicidal ideation should give parents pause. However, if parents know the content of the film deals with these themes, it could prove to be an enriching experience for both child and adult.

If Bettelheim is right, then fairy tales are meant to ease the more horrific facts of life - death, murder, suicide, decay, entropy, and estimated taxes - and, thus; films just may be our twenty-first-century version of sixteenth-century Grimm's fairy tales.

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A Monster Calls (2016)

Focus Features

Directed by J.A. Bayonna

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, and Lewis McaDougall

Written by Patrick Ness (Screenplay) and based on his book.

New Yorker Cartoon: "Fear not my princess ..."

Gahan Wilson, "Fear not my princess ..." Published in the New Yorker, September 23, 2002

"Fear Not, My Princess"

     I like cartoons like the one presented in this re-post of a New Yorker cartoon. A one frame, black and white cartoon drawing. The precursor to the Instagram post — just one frame to capture what you want to say. The picture ought to grab the reader's attention, and the caption has to be both pithy and smart and tie the image to a theme. In the above cartoon drawing by Gahan Wilson, what appears to be a night with a shield walks along a beach with maiden a crown. A discarded coke can is wedged in the center, and it is evident that we are looking at a beach scene.

The Image's Gag Effect

     The gag effect comes when the reader realizes that this is a fantasy scene. On the surface, it's an ordinary beach, but it's a microcosm of that beach wherein the beachgoers have all gone home for the season, sent packing to their cars (hence the "parking" sign in the upper lefthand corner of the drawing. What's going on here? I feel a sense of nostalgia looking at this drawing, of days spent on the beach in Pensacola, Flordia as a kid, exploring the grit of sand on my toes and making sandcastles. The caption is funny because it alludes to the idea of stowing away to the beach and getting lost in the fantasy of the moment. But what we have here is a miniature of a knight and a princess, the vestige of an imagination gone away (until next Summer). And the knight tells the princess, "fear not" and comforts her that soon a child will return to build them a "castle in the sand." How sad! I remember making sandcastles only to watch them destroyed by the incoming tide.

. . . With a Dash of Whimsy 

     And here the artist had made an image of that fleeting feel of Summer moment but added a dash of whimsy to it by imagining who might be living in that castle of sand how they would feel when it was washed away.

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