The Power of the Dark Side and other books by Pamela are available from Michael Wiese Productions.
Dave Watson: How did the book The Power of the Dark Side come about?
Pamela Jaye Smith: All story is based on conflict. Without conflict there is no story. In the simplest sense, the conflict is between Good and Evil. Granted that it is often subjective, but as a storyteller you get to play deity and define what is Good and what is Evil in your story’s unique world. I’ve always been puzzled by the presence of Evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there illness? Why do we keep having wars? Why is there death? Why are we sometimes tempted to do bad things? And why do we sometimes do them, knowing they are bad?
This is one of the key questions about our existence, along with “Why are we here?”, “What is our purpose?”, “Where are we going?”, and “What TV series shall I binge on this weekend?” Most spiritual systems have an explanation of why there is Evil in the world. Often it’s for a test, sometimes it’s just a mistake, other times it’s free will. In some systems this is a prison planet. In others it’s like a school or gymnasium for the soul to become smarter and stronger. Yet none of those explanations was ever enough. So I decided to investigate further and write a guide book about it that was directed to writers and media-makers whose job it is to explain the world to us, in all its glory and its darkness.
DW: Before we talk about our own dark sides and in characters, in your book you discuss dark, impersonal forces that are obstacles to protagonists. I think of Peter Weir’s classic film, Picnic at Hanging Rock. What made you think of this as a topic?
PJS: That film is a classic example of conflict with the unknown Dark Forces and is never resolved. It is a lyrically beautiful piece with a deep undercurrent of Darkness that haunts you long after seeing the film. The antagonist in Peter Weir’s The Last Wave is the impersonal Dark Force of a tsunami. Interestingly, science has now revealed that many many years ago a giant wave did sweep across the east coast of Australia. The Aborigine people’s myths embody this actual event, as do many myths about floods in other regions. We all have to deal with the Dark Forces of time, gravity, natural disasters, diseases. They are different from one’s own foibles or the opposition of others in that you cannot reason with them. You have to use something different to survive a comet crash, a polar shift, a sun storm.
DW: What is the difference between evil and bad, as a character trait and as a force in a story?
PJS: Motivation. Or the lack thereof. Evil has intent to harm. Bad is only the opposite of good. Evil is conscious of what it is doing. Bad is often not even human. Though it often seemed otherwise, Bruce the shark in Jaws was bad, not human, not motivated by anything but hunger and protecting his territory. The alien in Alien was evil; see more in Prometheus about the origins of that entity. In Armageddon Bruce Willis battles a giant rock. The rock has no intent, it’s not evil, it’s just really bad for us. The alien antagonists of Independence Day have evil intentions of taking over earth. In both cases it’s a bunch of deadheads who save us: Willis in Armageddon and Randy Quaid in I.D.
Evil as a character trait usually means a focused intent to do harm to others. Bad often means someone who just doesn’t think about the consequences of their actions, or is narcissistic, bumbling, or obstructive. Bad characters are ripe for redemption. Evil characters typically are not. However, it might be better to deal with a smart, evil person than a stupid bad person because you can reason with the former and the latter is unlikely to change.
I co-founded Mythic Challenges: Create Stories that Change the World. We teach media makers how to use Mythic Themes, Archetypes, and Symbols to address the 15 Global Challenges identified by the Millennium Project in association with the United Nations. Some of those challenges are caused by evil people, some by bad ecological situations, many of which are caused by humans, but not necessarily evil ones. Check out the challenges and see which ones you’d classify as evil and which as bad, based on the motivations and awareness, or the lack thereof.
DW: Sometimes we see evil coming, and other times it sneaks up on us, or comes from a dearest one, thinking of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Why is this so alluring? Why does it still take us by surprise?
PJS: As infants we are programmed to trust our caretakers, but too often they betray us in some way. As we get older and discover the darker side of family, siblings, religions, friends, organizations supposedly meant to support us...we typically develop a bit of cynicism. Observing in a media piece that others have these same experiences can be comforting in the way that misery loves company, you realize it’s not just you. We’re also programmed for survival. Part of the allure is the challenge of figuring out where’s the real danger in the story. It takes us back to our more primitive roots on the savannahs and in the jungles.
Surprise us still? Well, perhaps because it echoes our very real experiences and part of that experience was the shock, emotional and often also physical and philosophical, once our world view is shattered by betrayal. It’s like a kaleidoscope; you change one aspect and everything else looks different and will never be the same again.
DW: Sometimes ideas scare us a lot more than actions. I recently saw the Danish film Jagten, or The Hunt, where a misunderstanding sparks fear, yet few actions take place. Is this partly why psychological thrillers are so common? What makes them more successful than physical-oriented thrillers?
PJS: There’s a military poster with a guy in full special forces gear that says, “Your Mind is your most valuable Weapon." Our minds are fascinating and often as we see something unfolding we watch ourselves watching it. That complexity of the experience coupled with the challenge of trying to figure it out is vastly different from the physical experience of adrenalin, fight-or-flight, sheer panic survival mode. Then there’s that little voice inside us that whispers our fears, doubts, failings...the psychological thriller runs alongside the internal paranoia about our very existence.
For children there isn’t a distinct line between that Voice and ourselves so the fears and unknowns loom even larger. For a very sweet take on the perceived dangers see Monsters, Inc. In The Journals of Petra Volare, the children’s book I co-wrote with Reece Michaelson, an 8-year old inventor girl in ancient Crete is threatened by exposure – she is the unacknowledged daughter of Daedalus and is trying to help her brother Icarus escape his fate. Contrary to popular opinion, humans really are rather smart and we pride ourselves on being able to solve mysteries – hence the amazing popularity of the detective, police procedural, and mystery stories.
DW: F. Scott Fitzgerald said action equals character, and this seems to work particularly with characters with evil streaks. Would you agree?
PJS: Yes, in the sense that you give a character the freedom to act and that you include speaking and facial expressions in that term, not just larger actions. We have inborn facial recognition abilities and there are tones of voice, body posture, expressions that say “Danger, I’m mad, I’m going to get you, you’ll be sorry, etc.” One of the best ever is Heath Ledger’s Joker in Batman The Dark Knight. His words, his facial expressions, his posture and his overt actions all signaled deadly danger and revealed the inborn raging evil streak. Well, in his case it was more that a streak, it was an entire river of Darkness.
For your own characters you can certainly use the more subtle signals; a good director and a good actor will make this work. As writers, those (parentheticals) below the character name are an effective way to indicate evil action even if the tone of voice and words are honey-sweet. How chilling is Hannibal Lecter even as his words sound soothing if you only heard them but did not understand the language.
DW: Alfred Hitchcock said the more successful the villain, the more successful the film. Would you agree?
PJS: Absolutely! We’re all facing problems all the time: “Will she text me back?”, “Will this script sell?”, “If the polar ice melts fast enough, can I surf in Kansas?” But the huge questions that confront us are like villains in that we must either battle them or die. The confrontation of one’s own existence with the apparent fact of one’s own mortality is at the core of our being, particularly when we are in danger or lose a loved one.
The bigger the villain, the better we get to feel for having survived it. Like the old joke film Bambi versus Godzilla – a good story needs appropriate scale for there to be any interesting battle. And as before, when we can emotionally experience the danger and live through it, it can give us a sense of greater confidence that perhaps we can actually survive life as long as we are in it. Then too, the most basic reason may be that rush of adrenalin you get watching a scary movie. Sometimes for some people who are otherwise shut down emotionally, being really scared is the closest they come to really feeling anything.
DW: Complex characters with lighter and darker sides seem to be in cable TV shows these days, which can be fleshed out over hours — thinking of Supernatural, House of Cards, and 24.
PJS: They’re like novels, really, whereas feature films are more like short stories. Sure, there’s a lot of complexity you can get into a 90-120 minute film, but the character convolutions, changes, and growth – or decline – that can be explored in a series is many times greater.
One of my favorites is J. Michael Straczynski’s wonderful sci-fi series Babylon 5. It runs five seasons and develops the Dark Side of many characters [human and alien] and situations from small scale drug dependency and smuggling to galactic scale conflicts between the Vorlon forces of light and the planet-killing Shadows. Two characters who have fascinating character arcs are Ambassador G’Kar and Ambassador Molari. The former goes from being a fierce warrior with a chip on his reptilian shoulder to being an icon for peace and non-violence. The latter is at first a shallow aesthete whose petty pride and self-indulgence lead to deep dark actions that affect entire planets.
DW: As a follow up, complex characters, particularly protagonists don’t have time to reveal or overtly reveal a tough side in a two-hour feature film. Would you agree?
PJS: Actually, I think some do, but not of course to the extent you can explore in a series or in a novel. That’s where excellent writing, directing, acting, cinematography, editing and scoring must needs come into play. As for a tough side, Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, becomes less bratty and more tough to fight for the right, and missionary Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen rises to the occasion in a war situation. Fight Club is an excellent example of characters developing to reveal their tough side. Spiderman’s transition from mild-mannered Peter Parker to the tough protector of the innocent is a very interesting character arc.
DW: Who is the funniest villain for you, in literature or cinema? I realize some of the most sincere are just shy of satire.
PJS: Well, of course there’s Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Boris and Natasha in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series were pretty funny, especially back then during the Cold War. I liked Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her and the Vogons in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (just don’t let them read poetry to you).
You are right about the satire. Typically anything that’s funny is something that is somehow exaggerated. These villains go right up and over the edge. Also watch Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for a bunch of very funny, highly exaggerated villains.
DW: What is your most memorable cinematic moment? Involving a character with a dark or bleak side.
PJS: First, do keep in mind how important lighting and camera angles are. The person looking down on another has the power, the person looking up has less or may even be totally powerless. Light and shadow can create very ominous situations – see more in the German Expressionist films. Something or someone moving towards camera and filling the frame can feel overwhelming.
At the end of Apocalypse Now renegade commander Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), driven to horrid extremes of the Dark Side by the Vietnam war, is dying of malaria and knows he’s about to be assassinated. He’s in a dark room with ominous streaks of light and he rubs water over his shaved head. It seems he welcomes the bleak oblivion of death as he whispers, “The horror. The horror.”
And to top that off, after Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has slain Kurtz with a machete to the neck, he stands just outside, overlooking the ritual sacrifice of a bull. The native people turn and drop their own weapons; some kneel down to him. It’s a scene that speaks the Dark Side of “Le roi est mort, vive le roi” [The king is dead, love live the king (his successor)] as Willard takes on the Darkness of Kurtz. You can kill the vessel but the Darkness lives on in another, and another, and another.
Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLFdJLSho8
Dave Watson is a writer, educator, and editor of the web site, Movies Matter. He lives in Madison, WI.
Dave Watson: How did the book The Power of the Dark Side come about?
Pamela Jaye Smith: All story is based on conflict. Without conflict there is no story. In the simplest sense, the conflict is between Good and Evil. Granted that it is often subjective, but as a storyteller you get to play deity and define what is Good and what is Evil in your story’s unique world. I’ve always been puzzled by the presence of Evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there illness? Why do we keep having wars? Why is there death? Why are we sometimes tempted to do bad things? And why do we sometimes do them, knowing they are bad?
This is one of the key questions about our existence, along with “Why are we here?”, “What is our purpose?”, “Where are we going?”, and “What TV series shall I binge on this weekend?” Most spiritual systems have an explanation of why there is Evil in the world. Often it’s for a test, sometimes it’s just a mistake, other times it’s free will. In some systems this is a prison planet. In others it’s like a school or gymnasium for the soul to become smarter and stronger. Yet none of those explanations was ever enough. So I decided to investigate further and write a guide book about it that was directed to writers and media-makers whose job it is to explain the world to us, in all its glory and its darkness.
DW: Before we talk about our own dark sides and in characters, in your book you discuss dark, impersonal forces that are obstacles to protagonists. I think of Peter Weir’s classic film, Picnic at Hanging Rock. What made you think of this as a topic?
PJS: That film is a classic example of conflict with the unknown Dark Forces and is never resolved. It is a lyrically beautiful piece with a deep undercurrent of Darkness that haunts you long after seeing the film. The antagonist in Peter Weir’s The Last Wave is the impersonal Dark Force of a tsunami. Interestingly, science has now revealed that many many years ago a giant wave did sweep across the east coast of Australia. The Aborigine people’s myths embody this actual event, as do many myths about floods in other regions. We all have to deal with the Dark Forces of time, gravity, natural disasters, diseases. They are different from one’s own foibles or the opposition of others in that you cannot reason with them. You have to use something different to survive a comet crash, a polar shift, a sun storm.
DW: What is the difference between evil and bad, as a character trait and as a force in a story?
PJS: Motivation. Or the lack thereof. Evil has intent to harm. Bad is only the opposite of good. Evil is conscious of what it is doing. Bad is often not even human. Though it often seemed otherwise, Bruce the shark in Jaws was bad, not human, not motivated by anything but hunger and protecting his territory. The alien in Alien was evil; see more in Prometheus about the origins of that entity. In Armageddon Bruce Willis battles a giant rock. The rock has no intent, it’s not evil, it’s just really bad for us. The alien antagonists of Independence Day have evil intentions of taking over earth. In both cases it’s a bunch of deadheads who save us: Willis in Armageddon and Randy Quaid in I.D.
Evil as a character trait usually means a focused intent to do harm to others. Bad often means someone who just doesn’t think about the consequences of their actions, or is narcissistic, bumbling, or obstructive. Bad characters are ripe for redemption. Evil characters typically are not. However, it might be better to deal with a smart, evil person than a stupid bad person because you can reason with the former and the latter is unlikely to change.
I co-founded Mythic Challenges: Create Stories that Change the World. We teach media makers how to use Mythic Themes, Archetypes, and Symbols to address the 15 Global Challenges identified by the Millennium Project in association with the United Nations. Some of those challenges are caused by evil people, some by bad ecological situations, many of which are caused by humans, but not necessarily evil ones. Check out the challenges and see which ones you’d classify as evil and which as bad, based on the motivations and awareness, or the lack thereof.
DW: Sometimes we see evil coming, and other times it sneaks up on us, or comes from a dearest one, thinking of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Why is this so alluring? Why does it still take us by surprise?
PJS: As infants we are programmed to trust our caretakers, but too often they betray us in some way. As we get older and discover the darker side of family, siblings, religions, friends, organizations supposedly meant to support us...we typically develop a bit of cynicism. Observing in a media piece that others have these same experiences can be comforting in the way that misery loves company, you realize it’s not just you. We’re also programmed for survival. Part of the allure is the challenge of figuring out where’s the real danger in the story. It takes us back to our more primitive roots on the savannahs and in the jungles.
Surprise us still? Well, perhaps because it echoes our very real experiences and part of that experience was the shock, emotional and often also physical and philosophical, once our world view is shattered by betrayal. It’s like a kaleidoscope; you change one aspect and everything else looks different and will never be the same again.
DW: Sometimes ideas scare us a lot more than actions. I recently saw the Danish film Jagten, or The Hunt, where a misunderstanding sparks fear, yet few actions take place. Is this partly why psychological thrillers are so common? What makes them more successful than physical-oriented thrillers?
PJS: There’s a military poster with a guy in full special forces gear that says, “Your Mind is your most valuable Weapon." Our minds are fascinating and often as we see something unfolding we watch ourselves watching it. That complexity of the experience coupled with the challenge of trying to figure it out is vastly different from the physical experience of adrenalin, fight-or-flight, sheer panic survival mode. Then there’s that little voice inside us that whispers our fears, doubts, failings...the psychological thriller runs alongside the internal paranoia about our very existence.
For children there isn’t a distinct line between that Voice and ourselves so the fears and unknowns loom even larger. For a very sweet take on the perceived dangers see Monsters, Inc. In The Journals of Petra Volare, the children’s book I co-wrote with Reece Michaelson, an 8-year old inventor girl in ancient Crete is threatened by exposure – she is the unacknowledged daughter of Daedalus and is trying to help her brother Icarus escape his fate. Contrary to popular opinion, humans really are rather smart and we pride ourselves on being able to solve mysteries – hence the amazing popularity of the detective, police procedural, and mystery stories.
DW: F. Scott Fitzgerald said action equals character, and this seems to work particularly with characters with evil streaks. Would you agree?
PJS: Yes, in the sense that you give a character the freedom to act and that you include speaking and facial expressions in that term, not just larger actions. We have inborn facial recognition abilities and there are tones of voice, body posture, expressions that say “Danger, I’m mad, I’m going to get you, you’ll be sorry, etc.” One of the best ever is Heath Ledger’s Joker in Batman The Dark Knight. His words, his facial expressions, his posture and his overt actions all signaled deadly danger and revealed the inborn raging evil streak. Well, in his case it was more that a streak, it was an entire river of Darkness.
For your own characters you can certainly use the more subtle signals; a good director and a good actor will make this work. As writers, those (parentheticals) below the character name are an effective way to indicate evil action even if the tone of voice and words are honey-sweet. How chilling is Hannibal Lecter even as his words sound soothing if you only heard them but did not understand the language.
DW: Alfred Hitchcock said the more successful the villain, the more successful the film. Would you agree?
PJS: Absolutely! We’re all facing problems all the time: “Will she text me back?”, “Will this script sell?”, “If the polar ice melts fast enough, can I surf in Kansas?” But the huge questions that confront us are like villains in that we must either battle them or die. The confrontation of one’s own existence with the apparent fact of one’s own mortality is at the core of our being, particularly when we are in danger or lose a loved one.
The bigger the villain, the better we get to feel for having survived it. Like the old joke film Bambi versus Godzilla – a good story needs appropriate scale for there to be any interesting battle. And as before, when we can emotionally experience the danger and live through it, it can give us a sense of greater confidence that perhaps we can actually survive life as long as we are in it. Then too, the most basic reason may be that rush of adrenalin you get watching a scary movie. Sometimes for some people who are otherwise shut down emotionally, being really scared is the closest they come to really feeling anything.
DW: Complex characters with lighter and darker sides seem to be in cable TV shows these days, which can be fleshed out over hours — thinking of Supernatural, House of Cards, and 24.
PJS: They’re like novels, really, whereas feature films are more like short stories. Sure, there’s a lot of complexity you can get into a 90-120 minute film, but the character convolutions, changes, and growth – or decline – that can be explored in a series is many times greater.
One of my favorites is J. Michael Straczynski’s wonderful sci-fi series Babylon 5. It runs five seasons and develops the Dark Side of many characters [human and alien] and situations from small scale drug dependency and smuggling to galactic scale conflicts between the Vorlon forces of light and the planet-killing Shadows. Two characters who have fascinating character arcs are Ambassador G’Kar and Ambassador Molari. The former goes from being a fierce warrior with a chip on his reptilian shoulder to being an icon for peace and non-violence. The latter is at first a shallow aesthete whose petty pride and self-indulgence lead to deep dark actions that affect entire planets.
DW: As a follow up, complex characters, particularly protagonists don’t have time to reveal or overtly reveal a tough side in a two-hour feature film. Would you agree?
PJS: Actually, I think some do, but not of course to the extent you can explore in a series or in a novel. That’s where excellent writing, directing, acting, cinematography, editing and scoring must needs come into play. As for a tough side, Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, becomes less bratty and more tough to fight for the right, and missionary Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen rises to the occasion in a war situation. Fight Club is an excellent example of characters developing to reveal their tough side. Spiderman’s transition from mild-mannered Peter Parker to the tough protector of the innocent is a very interesting character arc.
DW: Who is the funniest villain for you, in literature or cinema? I realize some of the most sincere are just shy of satire.
PJS: Well, of course there’s Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Boris and Natasha in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series were pretty funny, especially back then during the Cold War. I liked Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her and the Vogons in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (just don’t let them read poetry to you).
You are right about the satire. Typically anything that’s funny is something that is somehow exaggerated. These villains go right up and over the edge. Also watch Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for a bunch of very funny, highly exaggerated villains.
DW: What is your most memorable cinematic moment? Involving a character with a dark or bleak side.
PJS: First, do keep in mind how important lighting and camera angles are. The person looking down on another has the power, the person looking up has less or may even be totally powerless. Light and shadow can create very ominous situations – see more in the German Expressionist films. Something or someone moving towards camera and filling the frame can feel overwhelming.
At the end of Apocalypse Now renegade commander Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), driven to horrid extremes of the Dark Side by the Vietnam war, is dying of malaria and knows he’s about to be assassinated. He’s in a dark room with ominous streaks of light and he rubs water over his shaved head. It seems he welcomes the bleak oblivion of death as he whispers, “The horror. The horror.”
And to top that off, after Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has slain Kurtz with a machete to the neck, he stands just outside, overlooking the ritual sacrifice of a bull. The native people turn and drop their own weapons; some kneel down to him. It’s a scene that speaks the Dark Side of “Le roi est mort, vive le roi” [The king is dead, love live the king (his successor)] as Willard takes on the Darkness of Kurtz. You can kill the vessel but the Darkness lives on in another, and another, and another.
Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLFdJLSho8
Dave Watson is a writer, educator, and editor of the web site, Movies Matter. He lives in Madison, WI.