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Twice-Told Tales

By: CeliaisAliena



I'm fascinated by the fact of creative repetition; in fact, I envy it and aspire to it. It's a curious thing about art and stories that appeals to me, so I will try to explain.

When I was a kid, I got my first viewings of the James Bond movies "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker" one weekend, back-to-back. There was a big snow out, I think either school was out that Friday or the following Monday, and so it was a big long weekend with a spirit of adventure.

So I watched "The Spy Who Loved Me" and I thought it was dazzling. There was a ski chase right at the beginning! (lots of inspiration for when playing outside). And then the whole movie was so colorful and escapist. It all seemed very serious to me, this threat of nuclear annihilation by crazed marineophile billionaires, but still an awful lot of fun.

And so then I watched "Moonraker." And this too was very exciting: I probably sucked all the oxygen out of the room in that moment before the credits when James Bond . . . Well, watch the movie! And I really enjoyed the film, but . . . .

'Didn't they just make "The Spy Who Loved Me" OVER AGAIN?' I thought to myself.

I mean: crazy European billionaire/crazy European billionaire. Deep sea/Outer Space. Russian spy girl/American spy girl. Car becomes submarine/boat becomes "car" (sorta). Nuclear holocaust/ death orchid gas (is that a 'bio' or 'chemical' WMD?) holocaust. Secret fortress-ship/ secret fortress space station. And of course, both times 007 goes flying in the air with no apparent means of escape.

It's the same movie, right?

This was an utterly new idea to me. How could the people who made these movies just-- repeat themselves?

Now of course you'll say, 'Formula for a quick buck,' but that's not my point.

I still LIKED "Moonraker." But I could see it was the same movie as TSWLM, except it was trying to-- if that were possible-- be even MORE over-the-top (I had one of those movie guidebooks in the house, so I was exposed to this great critical concept of "over-the-top"). And part of me kind of liked the way "Moonraker" was so over-the-top, because the way it played upon the previous film and just sort of spun out variations on it fascinated me.

Yet it also made me feel confused and unsatisfied. "The Spy Who Loved Me" was so unadulteratedly great. Watching "Moonraker" was like experiencing "The Spy Who Loved Me" in an echo chamber: strange, distorted, somehow pleasurable in its own right, yet also somehow dirty and saddening almost, like it was abusing this great classic in a cynical, lazy way.

Flash forward to last year. I got this book, an erotic novel called "Cassandra's Conflict" by Fredrica Alleyn. For four or five days I was completely in thrall to this book. The heroine is a prudent young Englishwoman who takes up a job as governess in the household of an aristocratic widower. It is indeed a Gothic scenario, but the subtext of erotic mystery is there on top. The aristocrat breaks her in to his BDSM training regimen. It's not a bows and ribbons kind of romance. The training is intense, and the suspense is pretty unrelenting.

This book has a sequel called "Cassandra's Chateau", which came out perhaps a month or two later [these books are actually reprinted from the Nineties, so I'm speaking of how they came out last year]. So I read it some two or three months later, into the summer. In the sequel Cassandra has won her place as her boss's preferred submissive companion (no surprise in itself) and now she has to participate in another round of erotic gamesmanship as her man inducts a new innocent into his world of decadent games.

Now, the critic in me (who is not a relativist, so I'm not going to hedge here!) knows that "Cassandra's Chateau" is simply not the equal of "Cassandra's Conflict." For one thing, it's impossible to repeat the suspense of the original. And since Cassandra's our girl, it's impossible to care as much about the new girl's experiences and how they change her personality.

Plus, it seems pretty clear that the author just isn't as committed the second time around. It's no "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", if that's your thing. Alleyn doesn't try to 'surpass' the intensity of the first novel; if anything it's a slower, more diffuse work.

And this somehow utterly intrigues me. I found, to my surprise and something like dismay that, in a few months time, I had been returning to "Cassandra's Chateau" far more often than to "Cassandra's Conflict."

***

But why? When I know in my heart (and with my mind!) that it's the lesser work?

Now in this particular case, it could well be that "Cassandra's Conflict" is just too 'intense' for casual reading. It's very dark and very hot. Perhaps somehow the very fact that the sequel retreads the story makes it more manageable or skimmable. It's that echo chamber (?) effect again. Perhaps it's like reading the first book with oven mittens on!-- I can still feel the heat, but I don't get burned by it?

I really did get 'burned' reading "Cassandra's Conflict"-- that book had me strung out! But I can't really say the same thing about "The Spy Who Loved Me". And, given the choice, I'd probably plunk down for TSWLM over "Moonraker" for spontaneous viewing.

But I feel there's something analogous in my feeling watching "Moonraker" to my experience reading "Cassandra's Chateau." 

I could argue that there's something about artistic second-rateness that actually makes these works a kind of cultural "comfort food." Somebody somewhere in a novel I've read (!) comments that he doesn't want 'grand pictures' (I.e. paintings) in his home, they'd be too overwhelming. He just wants good pictures of flora, or watercolors, or whatever it was. Things that are delightful and invigorating, without being ecstatically overwhelming. Could be.

Yet I also think there may be something in the fact of 'repeating oneself' artistically that goes beyond all the familiar stuff about 'pastiche' and 'appropriation' and 'kitsch' and 'post-Modernism' and all that stuff. "Moonraker" isn't quite an Andy Warhol soup can sort of Xerox of "The Spy Who Loved Me"--it's still its own story. You could watch it without seeing the other film and be totally unaware of its derivative aspect. Maybe you'd find it enthralling (or awful) purely on its own terms.

What I'm trying to get at is this: there may be some real merit in 'repeating ourselves' as storytellers-- even if the result is somehow 'derivative' or 'treading water' or (horrors) 'second-rate.'

I'm actually using these James Bond and Black Lace examples as a way of digging at a point I think has application. I simply don't get it why people are so bothered by storytellers that 'repeat themselves.'

For example, Woody Allen. People always say that his new film (which one is it this month? Haha) is just a 'repeat', and of course it's no "Annie Hall", yada yada. As if they are making a brilliant point that must be engraved on his tomb as a final judgment on him: he made this great romantic comedy and then, like, well he did a bunch of other, lesser, romantic comedies.

Now, I don't know if people even believe this when they say it: couldn't "Manhattan" or "Hannah and her Sisters" be (arguably) even greater films? And even if they follow "Annie Hall"s template, is he not allowed to try and improve on his own formula? Are you only allowed to make one great comedy and then, like, you have to go make the greatest cop-buddy movie ever if you want to claim you are Growing As An Artist?

And even if none of the other movies are as good in quite the same, perfect way: why not explore the byways of the same story? I find that utterly fascinating, these little variations on the accepted theme. Maybe this is why I seem to be the only person who loved "Anything Else". I thought that was a scream. And "Vicki Christina Barcelona" really stopped me in my tracks. That film is scary, almost. Maybe to people who grew up with Woody Allen it all seems yawningly familiar. Yet I felt that movie was trying to shake me out of complacency: what do I want out of life? Who the devil am I?

Maybe these are the 'oven mitten' versions of "Annie Hall". Whatever. I'll take them.

***

I want to bring this to bear on erotica, though.

Since I never let a day pass without at least scribbling out the beginnings of a manifesto, let me say this: I would encourage erotica writers to let themselves go when it comes to repeating the variations on their favorite fetishes and themes.

Yes, sometimes when I fantasize about the blessed day when I have forty or fifty stories to my credit (as if!), I wonder to myself, 'Will they all be the same, though?' I guiltily imagine a reader stumbling into my little treasure trove, reading a few of them and then yawning, "Oh god, they're all the same!"

Well, maybe they will be!

Now, it's probably just as true that (sooner or later) I'll make myself compose a few oddballs, just to mix things up! (and I hope that works for people too). 

But I really do appreciate it when I find writers who hew to the same select themes. Maybe they find their perfect expression after many efforts; maybe they hit it at first and then embark upon the world of variations.

And maybe, if you're lucky, like Raphael or some such genius, you actually achieve masterpieces over and over again.

But supposing you don't? Well, why not indulge some repetition-compulsions?

I'm not actually arguing for machine-like repetition. What I'm trying to do is to strike a point against 'originality' for it's own sake.

There are artists who thrive on never repeating themselves, on always drawing something new out of the hat (or at least, regularly reinventing themselves): Shakespeare, Bjork, Madonna, Michelangelo, Francis Coppola.

But there are those who toil happily, and fruitfully, over the same familiar turf: Woody Allen, Austen, Poe, Ingres, Block, Burne-Jones.

An artist who repeats stories, or themes, or at least a recognizable 'style', it seems to me, achieves something rich in terms of a dreamlike effect. One approaches a new work with a delicious sense of the familiar, and an eye for the little pieces of the unexpected. It may even be that, all things being equal, the slightest change of names and locations somehow renders a story 'new', if it's the kind of story that one finds beguiling in the first place--more particularly, if it's a story that the teller feels so keenly, it's always repeated with passion.

And, where erotica is concerned, that's quite likely to be the case. Readers often want many, many stories about the same (more or less) thing. They may have a variety of kinks, of course!: but with each of them, they may hunger only for the modest novelty of a new repetition of a familiar pleasurable experience. That it's a new iteration is novelty enough.

Every warm bath you will ever slide into is just another tub full of hot water. Probably it's the same tub even! But still: you step into it a different person, on a different day, maybe the bar of soap is a different brand, the water's a little bit milder or a teeny bit hotter, and-- aaaahhhhh! It's still a pleasure.

Okay, that's banal. And erotica, however lowbrow, still represents a much more creative sort of enterprise than turning the spigot on. 

Let us celebrate those creators who have the drive and energy to reexplore their favorite subjects, always returning to their favored, fevered dream. There should be no shame in that for the author. And for the audience, there may always be new nuances to savor, and the thrill of being sucked into the looking-glass again, and yet once more, once again.