The Mist/Shining

Yesterday I saw The Mist, the new movie based on Stephen King's novella. Definitely not for small kids; it always amazes me to see people bring them out for this kind of fare. I was sitting next to a ten or eleven year old boy, in fact; he seemed to enjoy most of the B-movie monster scenes but was left silent by the agonizing ending.

Then again, so was I, but if you've seen the movie you may understand why it could be particularly disturbing to a boy like him.

I've read or listened to the movie's reviews from NPR's "Fresh Air," the New York Times, and The New Yorker. The reviews are mixed, but what's clear to me is that this isn't one of those films that you simply watch in order to see a story unfold. What's most interesting about The Mist is revealed when you begin to contemplate what people are capable of when things become difficult... "when things stop working" as they say in the film. And more importantly: when you begin to ask yourself what you would do under the same circumstances.

Probing those questions brought to mind images of the Holocaust, of Jim Jones and the People's Temple, and the Heaven's Gate cult. The human potential for blindly following a charismatic leader is easily tapped, the capacity for doing evil nearly inexhaustible. Social norms can easily be broken when fear takes over.

Reflecting on all of this also led me to think about what may lie ahead if we are unsuccessful in addressing the challenges of global warming, running out of fossil fuels, and new pandemics as discussed in James Kunstler's The Long Emergency.

I was also reminded of another Stephen King movie, The Shining, and the interesting essay I had read in 1987 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Written by Bill Blakemore, it details his theory that Stanley Kubrick's film version of The Shining is actually a commentary on the genocide of the Native American. You can read it here. I watched the movie with my girlfriend of the time (yes, it was a long time ago :-) and found Blakemore's arguments compelling.