Bumping Geese 9: Welcome To Camp Nightmare

We're a little overdue again, with this one. But I thought it only fitting I start off Bumping Geese in 2021 in the most 2021 way possible.

By being a general disappointment to all involved.

That's not to say 'Welcome To Camp Nightmare' is a disappointment, though. It is... Well, let's talk about what it is.

I think this is my favourite cover so far

'Welcome To Camp Nightmare' is about going to summer camp. I don't know if we have summer camp in Australia. There's probably a niche industry. We have organisations like the Boy Scouts, who go camping, but I don't think I know anybody who has ever been to a summer camp. Our summer school holiday period overlaps with Christmas and New Years, so most families would rather be together around this time, not apart. This means everything I know about summer camp as a concept comes from US media and it's all kind of a weird concept to me.

That made this kind of a tricky one to break into. It wasn't a situation I felt engaged with or that I could relate to. For all I knew, none of the weird stuff in the book would be any weirder to me than summer camp already is in my eyes. As the story begins, the main character Billy is on the bus to summer camp, the bus is full of boys his age and a couple of girls who are attending a near-by and associated but different camp. Billy starts to make some friends and looks out at the empty scenery going past. Then all of a sudden the bus stops and all the kids and their luggage are thrown off the bus.

But not before the bus driver scares them all with a monster mask.

And for a few minutes, all the campers are left alone by an empty stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, no idea amongst them what happens next.

Is this the weird part? I don't know. Maybe this is how camp normally works. Billy's narration suggests it's weird, but he isn't sure and so neither am I.

But then some monster cat things show up and start to attack the campers, but before anyone can get hurt, there's a gunshot, the monsters leg it, and the campers meet Uncle Al. Uncle Al runs the camp and he has arrived to pick everybody up in another bus and take them to the camp.

Is this part weird? I mean, I live in Australia. I know for a fact that sometimes wild animals are strange and look monstrous, and sometimes they're definitely inclined to murder you. And a man with a gun? Seems normal if this book, like the rest, is set in the USA.

It's not NOT scary, but I also don't know how normal any of this is or isn't. So it was kind of difficult to get into the book.

But then we get to the camp and shit starts getting undeniably weird.

And with it, shit gets proper scary.

We quickly learn that Uncle Al and the camp counsellors take a stand-offish approach to caring for the children in the camp. Billy's friend Mike finds some snakes in his bunk and they bite him. Mike rushes off to find the nurse, but the camp has no nurse. One of the counsellors tells Mike to rinse the wound and bandage it (the counsellor offers bandages but does not otherwise help). Over the next few days, Mike's wound gets worse and then he vanishes from camp completely.

The camp has a "Forbidden Bunk" (bunk here means cabin, I think, as opposed to bunks as in beds, like where Mike found the snakes) and the children are warned not to go near it, not to ask about it, and also not to go out at night, lest they be attacked by bears or some kind of mysterious monster called Sabre. Well, two of Billy's friends do exactly that, but only one returns, in a state of terror, claiming some monster tore the other boy, Roger, into shreds near the Forbidden Bunk. Billy and his pals report the attack, but the counsellors don't treat it seriously and accuse them of lying. The boys insist it be investigated, and the counsellor agrees, only to return a day later and explain that nobody named Roger had ever been at the camp.

The tension continues to rise with, eventually, all of Billy's bunk-mates vanishing, and then being replaced by new kids to share his bunk. But those new kids also disappear, washing away down the river in a canoeing accident. One of the counsellors is there when this happens, but treats the loss with the usual indifference. Billy wants to leave, and hopes to contact his parents, but while sneaking around the camp, trying to avoid camp activities and counsellors, he learns the one phone in the camp is false and that the letters he and the other campers have been writing to their parents every day have been collecting dust in the camp office. Never sent. Never to be sent. Two of the girls Billy met on the bus sneak into the boy's camp and report similar disappearances, monsters, and strange goings-on at their camp across the river. Together, Billy and the girls discuss a plan to escape.

But before they can put any plan into action, the whole boys' camp is rounded up for a special hike, walked deep into the woods along the river, handed a rifle each and told that two girls have escaped their camp, and the boys are to hunt them down and shoot them. But the rifles only shoot tranquilizer darts, as if that somehow makes it okay.

Now, you and I both know that a twist is coming up. Before we get there, I want to praise this book. This is some scary shit. Monsters. Isolation. Missing friends. A sense of powerless in the face of the world, and the authorities, who seem not only cold, but complicit. One of the counsellors tells Billy and his friends that Uncle Al doesn't like to "coddle" the campers, but it's clear this really means "does not care if you all live or die."

And by the time they're all being marched into the woods, it seems like anything could happen. This could be a mass execution for all I know. This is by far the darkest Goosebumps book so far, and the most lethal by a long shot. I knew the twist must be coming, but I had no idea what to expect. How could this story get worse for anyone? How much darker can it get?

I was, to say the least, impressed. Despite the rough start, the book really sucked me in. The horror and tension was palpable. And I haven't really made it clear in the recap, but it's worth noting that outside Billy and his friends, none of the other campers seemed to care. Nobody else was worried. These horrors didn't seem to be affecting the other bunks. It adds an unsettling element and made me wonder how many of the campers were in on it too. Whatever "it" was. Sometimes they seemed shocked at what was happening and equally as in danger, but other times they seemed like they were deliberately isolating Billy and his buddies.

When Billy hears what Uncle Al wants and realises that it's his friends from the girls' camp he must hunt down, he refuses. He refuses to do anything Uncle Al tells him, and threatens Uncle Al with the gun. Uncle Al, in a rage, attacks Billy, and Billy fires on him.

But nothing happens.

And Uncle Al takes Billy by the hand, shakes it, and tells him he has passed the test.

Everybody at camp applauds. All his missing friends, he escaped girls, even his parents step out from their hiding places in the woods and they explain to Billy that the whole camp has been a test. You see, Billy's parents are field researchers for the government, and they want Billy to start coming on their science expeditions with them. But they go to some far away dangerous places, so Billy had to be tested. And it had to be a secret because, if he failed, he wasn't allowed to know about the secret workings of the government department his parents work for.

So I guess if he failed, he'd just get to be traumatised and gas lit for the rest of his life? Convinced monsters stalk the woods, that several friends of his died, and there's a camp run by psychopaths that nobody is doing anything about... Cool. Good plan, folks.

Anyway. Billy did pass, and he'll be going with his parents to an especially dangerous place. A place called...

Earth.

Yes, in a twist truly worthy of the Twilight Zone (and which does indeed appear in an episode of the Twilight Zone) this whole story has actually taken place on another planet. Another planet that just happens to resemble Earth culturally, biologically, and even linguistically. I don't think any of the aliens in the Twilight Zone were named, and that works better than trying to justify why your aliens are named Billy, Roger, Mike, Dawn, and so on.

I can't say I like this twist. It does leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's another one of these twists that nobody can predict because it isn't hinted at or signalled at all. They could all have just as easily been snowmen for all the difference it actually makes to the narrative.

But in a way, it's all still worth it. Everything up to that point was good, was gripping, was scary. It reads like RL Stine went as hard on horror as he could get away with, even ditching a lot of the goofy and comic elements that show up in his books. It reminded me of some of other memorable works of horror I've encountered in my life: 'Endurance' by JA Konrath, 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' directed by Tobe Hooper, and 'Wolfe Creek' directed by Greg McLean, but, you know, in a way that's not going to scar a person for the rest of their life.*

So, yeah, all in all, this was a good one.

It's also a good example of another classic Marxist complain about labour under Capitalism.

If you just, like, ignore the twist ending and take the narrative as it is presented up until the last two pages. Just like with the mummy book, we're treating this situation as a metaphor for labour.

And speaking of that last time: I explained how the Marxist analysis of Capitalism presents labour as inherently exploitative and as a political struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. So the question is, what's the alternative? How should it work under a Marxist model?

Well one such answer to that is to bring democracy to the workplace. 

If you think about it, while many of us say we "live in a democracy" because we have some sort of government made of elected representatives, the amount of democracy in our lives is actually tiny. Yes, we might elect a head of state (though not in Australia) and we might elect politicians, but do we elect the civil servants who do most of the work executing the will of those politicians? Generally no.

And for most of us, we might spend a third of our time in any given week working under what is, effectively, a dictatorship. For most of us, our workplace is not a democracy of any kind. And if you consider how much the decisions of your manager, of your company's board of directors, or corporate officers affect you, you might wonder why you don't deserve to have more say in that.

Take the camp Billy is attending - Camp Nightmoon - as an example. It's not a workplace, but Goosebumps is about children in, thankfully, a society where children do not regularly hold jobs. But we're using metaphors, and Camp Nightmoon is clearly a top heavy power structure. It's a dictatorship. Uncle Al makes all the decisions. Decisions like not hiring a nurse to oversee the health of the campers.

“Well, Camp Nightmoon is pretty wild,” Larry said. “And you guys had better be careful. I’m warning you.” His expression turned serious. “There’s no nurse at Camp Nightmoon. Uncle Al doesn’t believe in coddling you guys.”

But that has a profound impact on the campers. Uncle Bill might think it's best not to coddle the children, not to have a nurse, but I bet a lot of the children would rather have a nurse at camp and if they get hurt, the lack of a nurse affects them a lot more than it affects Uncle Bill. Why don't those people who are most at risk get a say in how that risk is managed?

In my younger years, I worked as a kitchen hand in a lot of different places. One place I worked, I had the misfortune of cutting myself with a paring knife. I was lucky it was just a small knife cut and not a cut with, say, the industrial can opener or a meat slicer, because this kitchen had no first aid supplies. Not one. I was told to put pressure on the cut with a paper towel until it stopped bleeding, at which  time I presumably would have gone back to work, had I not instead chosen to leave.

The person who ran that business wasn't a chef. He didn't work in the kitchen. The owner of that business wasn't even in the building that day. He's not going to cut himself with anything, but he's the one who decides whether or not the kitchen has a first aid kit.

You can extend this analysis to more than safety. Maybe you work for a company that builds websites. Maybe you're hired to build a website for a corporation that has been exposed as selling firearms to terrorist groups. You and your co-workers might find that reprehensible, and you don't want to assist that business in growing or advertising. But the workers who make that website don't get a say on whether or not the company takes that contract. The only person who does never has to write the copy that praises the business, or choose the pretty pretty photos of guns that are being used to execute civilians. The only person who makes that decision just cares whether or not the contract will be profitable. Why shouldn't you have the right to say no when the majority of the workers object to the work? Again, it impacts them the most.

And it is, of course, hardly a radical notion to suggest some employers care more about profit than the well-being or safety of their staff. Uncle Al is a great example of these petty business dictators.

“The two boys floated on downriver?” Uncle Al asked, staring hard at Larry, scratching the back of his fringe of yellow hair. Larry nodded. “We have to find them!” I insisted, trembling harder. Uncle Al continued to glare at Larry. “What about my canoe?” he demanded angrily. “That’s our best canoe! How am I supposed to replace it?”

And in theory, if a politician decides they will support a terrorist organisation, democracy affords us a mechanism to remove them, should the majority object. Many of us claim to like that. Most people in the Anglo-Sphere claim to be pro-democracy. But few of us seem willing to engage with the suggestions that we could, even should, have democracy in a lot more parts of our lives than we currently do.

There are two common counter-arguments to this suggestion.

The first is that if you don't like it, you can quit. Get another job. You do have a means to object. Like me, you can walk out the door. You can go build websites for puppies somewhere else instead of being complicit in terrorism.

But can you?

How many times have you walked out of a job one day and into a new job the next? I'm willing to bet that if you did, you'd organised that new job while still working the one you want to quit. When your capacity to buy food, pay rent, pay for medicine, pay for water is all dependent on having a job, you actually aren't free to just leave. The choice is actually between working and starving. That's not a choice. That's an ultimatum. That's coercion. Capitalism, in this way, is coercive, is violent.

The other argument is that if our workplace was organised democratically, the majority might still decide to do something bad. And, yeah, that can happen. To paraphrase, Henry David Thoreau: nothing has ever been right because it was supported by the majority. So yes, that's an imperfection, but you end up no worse off than the system we have now. In a democratically controlled workplace, you have an equal say in that decision. You not only have a say, your equality gives you a position from which to negotiate with your peers. Don't want to build the terrorist website? Okay. Well, you are as much the boss as your co-workers, so you can, perhaps, arrange to work on other contracts while those comfortable with terrorism work on that one. So even if the result is the same, your position is better. You are still better off.

A less common argument, but one I know you may be inclined to make, because I have made it myself, might be the social democrat argument that these problems can be mitigated through regulation. If our government, which we elect, keeps control over labour laws, then a workplace must have a first aid kit. A strong welfare system means labour is not coercive and you are free to walk away. I know these arguments well because I used to be the one making them.

But labour laws in Australia do require a first aid kit in a workplace, and there still wasn't one when I cut myself. And unless an inspector of some kind, acting for the regulating government bodies, visits that site and finds out, there is nothing the employees - again, the people who need it - can compel their employer to do to install one. But if the workers are in control, they don't need that external authority to enforce regulation because they have the authority to do it themselves.

I want to finish by saying that Marxist workers coops do exist. There are businesses owned and run by the workers in equal share. They do work. But the proof we have is limited to small businesses so far. The question "Would this be sustainable in larger corporations over an extended period?" is a question we don't have the answer to and is, at its heart, a bad question.

No anarchist, no communist, no socialist wants to democratise workplaces and stop there. This is not only just one particular approach to organising labour, it is also only one of many changes that would need to be made. We could have democratic workplaces, and solid welfare systems. This thing we call society, this curse called economics, this monster called money, we humans made all of it. The wheels spin because we turn them. We can change them. All of them. In as many ways as we like. As many times as we like.

So to ask how one left wing idea would work if you changed only that and nothing else is to fail to engage with the conversation in good faith. As such, I won't be answering it.

Oh, and if you're wondering where to start. Well, surprisingly, the Goosebumps has an answer for that, too.

“We have to get together. The boys and the girls,” Dawn whispered, peering once again over the tops of the leaves. “We have to make a plan.”

*That really only applies for 'Wolf Creek'. Personally, while it was an excellently made film, it was too intense, too real, and too visceral for me to get any actual enjoyment from. I had to break up my watching of it into two sessions. I've not had to watch a film that way before or since.

Now Is The Time of Monsters

We'll return to Goosebumps in a moment but, folks, we need to talk about what's happening in the USA right now.

Here's the ABC's running report on the incident.

But the short version is that Trump supporters have stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC. Trump supporters are violently rejecting the result of the federal election that saw Joe Biden elected as the next President of The United States.

And how's it going for them?

A lot better than it is going for the Black Lives Matters protests that have been going on for months now.

Here is the national guard mobilised to protect
the Lincoln memorial during a BLM protest

'nuff said

And this is awful. But it's not surprising.

This morning, as I have many days in the last few years, I've been thinking about the book 'Total Proaganda' by Helen Razer. Specifically, this part:

Nobody can predict the future. I can't tell you exactly how this is going to play out and I couldn't have told you that in January of 2021, Trump Supporters would storm the Capitol Building. But it is possible to look at the material conditions, and to look at historical precedent, and make educated speculation.

A butterfly flaps its wings. A tornado forms.

A state fails its people. A fascist rises.

And the USA has failed its people. Those failures are numerous: incredible wealth inequality, crumbling and dangerous infrastructure, malicious denial of health care. The USA has created a desperate population and history has shown us desperate people radicalise.

The US has also spent the better part of a century poisoning the socialist well. There is no main stream left wing movement in the USA. The media and the government will not even entertain the most basic left wing notions. Bernie Sanders' social democratic platform was even too much, too socialist, for the establishment and even for many of the USA's citizens to believe in.

So of course, when those desperate people radicalised, there was only one direction for them to go.

In 2016, when a lot of people were looking at the shit lives they were living in their failing state and asked "What the fuck is going on?" it was a fascist that answered their question. Not only did he answer, but he was the only one answering their questions with a political platform broadcast by the main stream media. 

And it doesn't matter that he has failed in almost every way to deliver on his promise, because he is still, for a lot of people, the only person making the promises they want to hear. Trump may have lost the majority, but those radicalised by his fascist rhetoric are demanding answers for the same problems they were in 2016.

But it wasn't just solutions Trump promised. He also gave them enemies.

Enemies both at the gates and inside the gates is fascism 101. Who can you blame for your shit lot in life? Who can you blame for your problems? Who must answer for these crimes? Blame the corrupt democrats. Blame black, indigenous, and people of colour. Blame LGBTQI+ people. Blame migrants. Blame lib elites. Blame antifa terrorists.

Side note: here's the same shit happening in Wyoming at the same time

As I said, we can't predict the future. At time of writing, a curfew is in effect in Washington DC and Vice President Pence has approved an order to mobilise the national guard. I'm not sure what goal Trump's supporters thought they would accomplish, so I certainly can't say whether it was a success.

But what they intended is not as important as what they did. And in this article from November, India Samarajiva that even if Trump leaves office, even if he is forced from office, extraordinary damage has already been done. The USA's already thin and fragile democracy is cracking like glass and can't be repaired.

One thing we can be certain of is that the current order cannot last. It will either kill us all, or it will crumble and something new will rise from the ashes.

Antonio Gramsci said: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” 

And Rosa Luxemburg said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism."

These latest events are just another paving stone in the road we're all walking. Marxists and Anti-Fascists have been sounding alarm bells for years. We're not surprised.

But this isn't about "I told you so".

This is about ringing those alarm bells until our knuckles bleed.

There is a line to be drawn between the desperation caused by neo-liberalism, austerity, and modern free market capitalist economics and the current rise in fascism. The USA isn't unique, it's just farther along the path.

Australia is walking the same path.

The Liberal/National coalition wants us on this path. And Labor's vision isn't much better. It might be, at best, a slower step.

England too.

The whole Anglosphere and much of Western Europe is walking this path.

Right into the jaws of monsters.

Bumping Geese 8: The Girl Who Cried Monster

 Thanks for being patient during this brief hiatus we just had. This one took longer because the week I was meant to do this review, I came down ill and then Christmas happened and I was caught up in all the yearly traditions and activities.

But here we are, past that, new year creeping up on us, just around the corner, and I hope you've all had as happy a holidays as 2020 would allow. And I hope your travelling and socialising was kept to a safe and sensible minimum.

Now, you've waited ever so patiently for this one, so let's not waste any more time. 'Goosebumps' book 8: 'The Girl Who Cried Monster'

I don't know if there are Christmas themed Goosebumps books
This one is not.

There are a couple of things that make this book distinct. It is one of only a few, so far, that have been written in first person. It doesn't even try that hard to be scary, instead opting to be more of a children's adventure with slight horror elements. Unlike Monster Blood, which does the same, this book isn't complete crap. Or even mostly crap. The villain is an actual character, instead of a vague looming threat. That's unusual for the series, so far. Because it's not much of a horror, there's also not much mystery or suspense. The monster - and I hope it's not a spoiler to say there is a monster - is present and described in detail from very early in the story. RL Stine doesn't try to be funny, much, which is a rare relief. Uh, what else...

Oh yeah.

The twist ending is totally fucking nuts.

I imagine most of you along for this ride with me have either read the Goosebumps books, or are adults who are as mildly curious about them as I was when I started, and very few, if any of you, are going to read the books after reading my blog. But if you are - if that is what you are doing - then please stop reading this blog and go read the book first. I am going to spoil the ending, and regardless of whether or not the ending is good, whether or not it is a satisfying twist (and see the Monster Blood review for what isn't a satisfying twist), this twist is worth experiencing first hand, unspoiled.

You'll get one more warning before I spoil the twist ending.

So as the name suggests, 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' is just Aesop's Fable 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' but Goosebumps-ified. Modern (well, by 90s standards) suburban setting, a monster in place of a wolf, shitty parents, and an utterly bananas twist ending.

Our protagonist is Lucy, a young girl who likes making up stories about monsters to frighten her brother and trick her friends. But one day, she stays late at the local library and sees that the librarian, Mr Mortman, is a monster. Lucy tries to tell everybody that she has seen a totally real definitely actual alive and real monster, but of course they've heard her tell these stories for a long time, so they don't believe her.

At this point in 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', the real wolf eats the village's live stock and, depending on the version, the boy. But 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' goes off in its own direction here and we follow Lucy's adventure as she tries to first confirm what she saw - Mr Mortman turning into a monster - is real, and then prove it to her friends and family.

And here is also where we also run into the biggest problem with this story.

Mr Mortman isn't a good wolf. Some of the scenes in which he transforms are unsettling. He is usually observed while feasting on moths, flies, and even a small turtle, and that does kind of churn the stomach, but there's no indication he is a threat, and it isn't until near the end that he even knows Lucy is onto him. So there's very little at stake in this story. Lucy isn't in danger and her goal isn't to stop Mr Mortman or save anybody, it is just to make people believe her and stop calling her a liar. Even though she is a liar, and it just happens she is telling the truth this time.

And that also undermines the point of the fable this story is based on. Which makes this novel kind of hard to say anything interesting  about. It's an Aesop Fable without a moral. You know the first half of the story, and the second half, while a decent page turner, is also kind of sterile. There's no sense of danger, no suspense, no comedy (failed or otherwise), and unfortunately quite a bit of repetition of scenes of Lucy spying on Mr Mortman, seeing the same thing, getting scared, and escaping unscathed. That takes up most of the second half of the book.

And then the ending happens.

Lucy is finally validated when her friend Aaron also sees Mr Mortman transform into a monster. And backed by her friends' testimony, Lucy's family invites Mr Mortman to dinner.

And I'm about to spoil the twist ending of the story so if you want to know what the fuss is about, if you want to try and experience this wild wacky nonsense for yourself, go get a copy (the ebooks are cheap) and read it. The whole book will probably take you 20 minutes to read. These aren't dense or lengthy fiction. Okay. Warning over.

Mr Mortman arrives for dinner and makes small talk with Lucy's parents and then THEY FUCKING GROW FANGS AND EAT MR MORTMAN. It turns out that Lucy's family are all monsters, and they don't like other monsters living in their town, so when one does show up, they eat them. No monsters have shown up for some 20 years, so Lucy's parents didn't believe her until a non-monster corroborated the story. Lucy and her brother don't eat Mr Mortman because they're not old enough monsters to have fangs and eat other monsters, yet. That's also why Lucy's brother, a monster, is afraid of other monsters. He's not big enough to be the predator just yet. 

And Lucy and her monster family live happily ever after.

And...

What the fuck.

This is not a satisfying twist. Or rather, it shouldn't be. It has none of those good qualities I have described good twists having. It doesn't come with any suspense, just surprise - to use Hitchcock's language.

But it's so completely out of nowhere, so random, so over-the-top... I kind of love it.

Seriously, I can forgive the rest of the book's flaws for going all in for wild absurdity at the end.

But its such nonsense, and like most of the book, so undermines the point of the fable it is based on that it leaves me with very little to say about the rest of the book.

And you know, that's okay.

I called the ending absurd, a few paragraphs ago. And I meant that in the common sense of "wildly ridiculous". But in philosophy, the term 'Absurd' also has a more specific meaning. The Absurd is the desire for meaning where there is none, or where you couldn't understand it even if you found it. And philosopher Albert Camus suggests that we learn to be okay with the absurd, to recognise how it limits us, accept it, and go on with enjoyment in your absurd life.*

Absurdist art has been around a long time, and they tend to leave you with a sense that maybe this art could mean something, that there could be a message, but you could twist yourself in knots trying to find it and still come up empty handed. The play 'Waiting For Godot' by Samuel Beckett is a famous example of Absurdist Art.

And the way 'The Girl Who Cried Monster' presents itself as a re-telling of an Aesop Fable, but actively guts it of meaning, and swings radically into its out-of-nowhere twist ending does play out like a work of absurdist art. We think it should mean something, because of its fable origins, but ultimately, it seems it doesn't.

So I'm not going to dig deep on this one or reach for any greater meaning or message. I'm not going to squeeze a Marxist take out of it. I'm just going to laugh, shrug my shoulders, and say "that's fuckin' wild and I love it."

It's what Camus would want us to do.**

*This is an extremely simplified summary of Absurdism and Camus' work.
**Camus would also teach you about Absurdism, and I guess I'm doing that, too, despite saying I'm not going to read much into this one. Can't help myself, I guess.

Bumping Geese 7.1: Who Is Lindy Powell?

You'll remember that last time, I told you that Lindy Powell is the greatest monster in all of Goosebumps. Obviously I haven't read the entire series yet. In fact, since Goosebumps books are apparently still being written and published (something I did not know when I started) I may never finish reading the series.

BDG is goals

None the less, I am confident in saying that no monster, no villain, in the series will ever show more cunning and cruelty and such a frightening lack of humanity as Lindy Powell. But now that we have exposed her crimes to the world, we can punish her. Right?

But my question to you is, can Lindy Powell be punished for her sins?

I want you to do something for me. Imagine a ship. An ancient Greek trireme, we'll say.

Have a picture to help you imagine it

We'll say this ship you're imagining belonged to the legendary Greek hero Theseus. After Theseus is done being a hero, finished his life of adventure, and settled down to live out his days quietly as the king of Athens, his ship is placed in a museum for all to see.

Imagine this: The Ship of Theseus.

Over the next, I don't know, century. Let's say over the next one-hundred years, pieces of the ship begin to rot, and ship-wrights working for the museum replace those rotting parts. Plank by plank, sail by sail, over those hundred years, the whole of the ship has been replaced with new material.

Is this still The Ship of Theseus?

Why?

Why not?

If this ship is no longer The Ship of Theseus, when did it stop being so? Was it when on plank was replaced? Was it when the final plank was replaced?

Let us also say that after another century, some amazing technology is discovered that can restore all those rotten pieces of the ship to pristine condition again. This technology is used and all those pieces that were taken out of The Ship of Theseus are used to build a new trireme.

Which is The Ship of Theseus? Which is the original?

This is not an ancient Greek boat

This is a depiction of a human body. You probably have one just like it. A body with all the requisite number of organs, fingers, toes, nostrils, and at least one face (or you may have some perfectly human variation on these features). Are you your body?

Like The Ship of Theseus, your body is rotting and being repaired. Researches estimate that roughly every seven years, you have shed and regrown every cell in your body. The matter that makes up your body is changing constantly. So if The Ship of Theseus stops being The Ship of Theseus at some point during its repair, when did you stop being you?

If we punish Lindy Powell. If we sentence her to life in creepy child jail, and Lindy Powell is the sum of the matter which makes her, must she be released in seven years? At that time, has the Lindy Powell who committed those heinous crimes against her sister ceased to exist? Are you not punishing a new person for somebody else's crimes at that point?

Or if it doesn't take complete replacement - if The Ship of Theseus was no long The Ship of Theseus at the moment the first rotted plank was taken out and replaced, didn't the Lindy Powell who tortured her sister cease to exist the moment one of that Lindy Powell's cells died and flaked away from her body?

You might answer this by saying such base materialism is no way to define a human. A ship may or may not be the sum of its matter, but a human is more than that. A person might be kept in their body, you might say, but their essence is the sum of their life. When we talk about Lindy Powell, we don't mean "that collection of atoms arranged in that particular shape" we mean "that individual collection of memories, beliefs, life experiences, relationships, and emotions - well, maybe not emotions, given its Lindy - but definitely an entity that transcends their skin and liver cells."

And I would, on the face of it, agree. Certainly when I think of myself, I think of myself as a consciousness before a body.

But that doesn't actually resolve the question of The Ship of Theseus.

If Lindy Powell exists as the sum of her life, then isn't she, in every moment, experiencing new life and once again changing what it is that constitutes her? The Lindy Powell who plans to trick Kris into thinking her doll is alive is different to the Lindy Powell who is currently tricking Kris into thinking her doll is alive, who is different to the Lindy Powell who just tricked Kris into thinking her doll was alive, who is different to the Lindy Powell who tricked Kris into believing her doll was alive yesterday.

In every moment that passes, that equation that equals Lindy Powell has changed. The materials are different.

"No, not different!" you say. "Added to." And you make a good point. It is not so much replacing the sails as it is adding new sails. And maybe, so long as you are only adding new sails, the ship might remain fundamentally the same creation. It is a ship being infinitely built, but never rebuilt.

But haven't you ever forgotten something? Have you ever had a memory change over time? Have you ever changed your opinion on a food or a movie over time?

If we can assume that, other than being an inhumanely cruel monster of a child, Lindy Powell is still fundamentally human, and that humans do change our opinions, and that our memories are not like photographs but more like stories we tell ourselves a little different every time, then we do come back to that same problem.

How much of Lindy Powell needs to change before she stops being Lindy Powell? And if that transition is ever made, how can you be sure you punish Lindy Powell who is guilty of tormenting her sister and bringing woe to mankind, without ever punishing a Lindy Powell who did not?

Perhaps math is no way to resolve this. Minus a memory here, add a sail there. That's no practical way to define a person. Lindy Powell, perhaps is an idea. An idea of a dynamic but still ultimately temporally consistent person. Lindy Powell is who we agree, practically, who Lindy Powell is, who we understand her to be when we say "Lindy Powell is a danger to humanity and she must be stopped."

There are no public domain images of an idea, so here is one of a dog instead.

Okay.

But whose idea is that? All of us? Does the same idea of Lindy Powell exist in all of us?

You and I, we know in our hears that Lindy Powell is a vicious and conniving and merciless abomination who wears humanity like a mask and discards all sympathy and emotion at a callous whim. We share this in our understanding of the idea of Lindy Powell.

But put yourself in the shoes of her parents. Do what Lindy Powell cannot and try to empathise with them. Imagine you are seeing Lindy Powell as they do. They don't know the truth you know. They haven't read the book, or my review of the book. They think their daughter is a competitive but ultimately well meaning young girl with a talent for ventriloquism. That is the idea of Lindy Powell that exists in their mind.

And that Lindy Powell, as an idea, does not exist in our mind.

And what about the Lindy Powell who exists in her own mind? Does anybody believe they are the villain of their story? She is villain to us, but she might be the hero in her own mind. The idea of Lindy Powell that Lindy Powell has constructed is a third Lindy Powell.

And we can go on. While our idea of Lindy Powell might be most distinguished by disgust, and her parents' idea distinguished most by love, should Kris ever learn the truth, wouldn't it be safe to assume the the idea of Lindy Powell she possesses would then be most distinguished by betrayal? And wouldn't that revelation change the Lindy Powell that exists for Kris?

The person as an idea is no more static than the person as matter, or the person as metaphysical equation.

So who is Lindy Powell?

And if we can't answer that with any certainty, how can we punish Lindy Powell with an absolute certainty we aren't punishing somebody who is innocent?

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment in philosophy that's basically as old as philosophy. The version I've presented most resembles that used by Thomas Hobbes. Many philosophers have taken a stab at resolving it one way or another, usually with a lot more rigour than I have. But I didn't want to resolve the question with this blog, or even give you a rundown of how better philosophers than I have tackled it.

I just wanted to make you aware of it, and walk you through some of my initial thoughts about it. And I wanted to raise it in the context of crime and punishment because it's not an angle I see very often for this thought experiment.

And also I had to link it to Goosebumps somehow.

But even if you ignore that angle, The Ship of Theseus does prompt us to consider our sense of self in relation to time and consider what, fundamentally, makes us who we are.

All literature, even spoopy children's books, ask questions of us. That question might be as simple as "should Lindy Powell be punished for being a terrible person who torments everybody around her and has never known what it is to care for another creature?" but I link to think of small questions as the loose threads of the universe. You start pulling on them, and inevitably you start pulling on something much larger, and your questions evolve into very big questions like "What does it even mean to be me?"

And the big questions are often the most fun to try and answer.

Bumping Geese 7: Night of The Living Dummy

I need to stop writing these with a hangover.

Well...

Anyway...

Let's get into it.

Were ventriloquist dummies ever not creepy?

'Night of The Living Dummy' stars Kris and Lindy Powell. Two twin preteen girls who are always in fierce competition and rivalry with each other. One day, while walking through the in-construction house of their neighbours, Lindy spots an old ventriloquist dummy in a dumpster. She immediately falls in love with it and decides to become a ventriloquist.

At first Kris thinks this is super weird. Probably because it is super weird. But Lindy, it turns out, has a natural talent for ventriloquism and she begins putting on performances that wow their friends, neighbours, and family. Lindy starts doing shows at children's birthday parties, making herself some money, and even gets invited on TV. Kris is jealous of the attention Lindy is getting with her weird new hobby, and that jealousy peaks when Lindy's ventriloquist act even gets the attention of a boy at school Kris has a crush on.

Kris decides to try and get her own dummy and start putting on her own ventriloquism show. She asks if she can practice with her sister's dummy - which Lindy has named Slappy - but Slappy rebukes her, calls her ugly, even strikes her. Lindy insists she didn't do it, that Slappy acted on his own, but of course nobody believes her and her parents force her to apologise.

Kris and Lindy's father, known only as Mr Powell, finds a second ventriloquist dummy for cheap in a pawn shop, and brings it home for Kris. Now both girls have their own dummy and can do their own shows. Even though Lindy is more talented, has more practice, and seems to have a better grasp of comedy, Kris does okay for herself and even gets invited to perform, with her dummy Mr Wood, as MC of the school's spring concert. But none of this quite serves to quell the jealous rivalry between the sisters. Lindy is furious her sister is stealing her schtick, and Kris hates that Lindy is better than her and still getting more praise and attention.

But something far more sinister is afoot.

One morning the girls wake up and find Mr Wood posed in such a way that it is though he has been attacking Slappy, trying to choke the dummy to death. Another morning, Kris finds that Mr Wood has put on all her finest clothing, wrinkling them and ruining her outfit for the day. After a fit of frustration at being outdone by her sister, Kris throws Mr Wood hard against the floor, and that night, she discovers Mr Wood in the kitchen, all the contents of the fridge strewn across the floor, and among it all is Kris' favourite jewellery. Kris and Lindy both insist they had nothing to do with it, that it must have been Mr Wood all along. But of course their parents, who have been driven to wits end by their daughters' rivalry, do not believe the dummy is alive and threaten to punish them both and take both dummies away unless they begin behaving themselves and getting along. During the night, Kris is sure she can hear Mr Wood in the closet, demanding to be let out.

Kris sits frightened on her bed, sure her dummy is alive, but sudden unexpected twist! Lindy admits she was responsible for it all. The kitchen mess, the dummies fighting, the clothes, even the voice - Linday was doing it all just to frighten Kris. Kris is, of course, furious, and swears she will never speak to her sister again. And for a while, the girls continue to be cold to each other.

Then one day, just before the Spring Concert, Kris notices something she has never noticed before. A slip of paper in Mr Wood's shirt pocket. She unfolds it and reads what appears to be a short phrase of nonsense words. Nothing happens, and she puts the paper back in Mr Wood's pocket.

The Powell's elderly neighbours arrive and Mr Powell suggests the twins each do a short performance for the neighbours. Lindy puts on a great performance, as usual, but when Kris sets up to do her performance, sudden twist! Mr Wood seems to come alive again, all by himself, and insults the elderly neighbours. Kris swears it is not her, but of course nobody believes her and she is made to apologise. Lindy even scorns her for trying to pull the same mad-insulting-dummy that she had pulled with Mr Slappy, earlier in the story.

A similar horror occurs at the Spring Concert, but far worse. A nervous Kris sets herself up on stage, ready to begin, but once again Mr Wood seems to come to life and begin insulting one of Kris' teachers. When the teacher tries to stop the performance, Mr Wood suddenly projectile vomits a putrid green slime across the auditorium. A sticky, awful, and unexpected end to the concert before it has even begun, and, it would seem, an end to Kris' career as a ventriloquist. Her parents are too angry to even contemplate a suitable punishment, but they assure her this will be the last time she sees Mr Wood. Mr Powell plans to return it to the pawn shop the following Monday.

But Mr Wood has other plans. He well and truly comes to life that night and tries to escape. Kris and Lindy have a brief scuffle and fight with Mr Wood and subdue him and lock him in a suitcase. They drop the suitcase into a hole in the next door yard and bury him deep. It seems they have won, at last, but sudden twist! Mr Wood is back again the next morning, and he plans to make sure the girls suffer for their slight against them. He warns them he has great power and cannot be killed. And if the girls don't become his slaves, he will murder their friends and family, starting with the family pet dog, whom Mr Wood begins to strangle to death.

Another fight ensues and this time the girls carry Mr Wood out into the construciton yard, where two steamrollers are flattening the land, and they throw Mr Wood in the path of the steamrollers. Mr Wood is finally defeated for good, crushed to death by a steam roller.

The girls return to their home, to their room, the nightmare over at last. But sudden twist! Slappy comes to life and asks if the other terrible dummy is finally gone!

This book has twists like 'Welcome To Dead House' has moist things.

Just a whole lot.

But it is also a work which forms part of a broad and very old tradition in fiction, both horror and otherwise. The villain of this book is one in a long line of cunning, deceptive, manipulative, and frankly sociopathic evil master minds. Fu Manchu, John Sunlight, Lex Luthor, Hannibal Lecter, and now - well now as of 1993 - Lindy Powell.

Oh, and I guess evil living dolls are a thing to but, eh, whatever.

The real horror is Lindy, clearly the evil twin of the two, and an absolute psychopath. For much of the book, you think that Kris is kind of the bitch sister, always jealous, always bitter, always trying to outdo her sister. And Lindy, sweet innocent Lindy, is helpful and supportive of her sister, giving Kris tips on being a better ventriloquist, and just being rightfully proud of her own accomplishments, regardless of her sister. Sweet innocent Lindy.

But it's an act! Lindy isn't proud. Pride isn't an emotion Lindy can feel. All Lindy knows is the pure ecstasy of inflicting pain on others. Beneath that saccharine smile, Lindy knows she is driving her own sister into a agonising jealous rage. She knows that their parents, who she has wrapped around her fingers, will punish Kris when Kris inevitably lashes out.

And why would Lindy be proud anyway? She's not a good ventriloquist, she has a living dummy of her own! Not that she mentions this at all through the story. It is clear she has made a dark Faustian pact with Slappy. Together they will wreak havoc on the world, while Lindy builds fortune and fame from their partnership. But don't mistake me - in this arrangement, Slappy is Faust and Lindy is the demon Mephistopheles.

That's just one part of her scheme. The other, of course, is to make poor Kris question her own sense of reality, by fooling her into believing Mr Wood has come to life. No doubt an idea she had from her dealings with her own living dummy. And when Lindy seems like she has had her fun and revealed her scheme to Kris, only then does she plant the ancient spell in Mr Wood's pocket, knowing her sister will read it aloud and bring Mr Wood to life.

So long is this con, so convoluted is this plan, that even though Lindy risks losing her own dummy, even though Lindy has to help clean up the kitchen she trashed, these are all minor sacrificial pains that bring her closer to her own goal. She plays the helpful ally, in the climax, of course, but only because at last her goal is within her grasp. Together, she and Kris destroy Mr Wood, leaving Lindy and Slappy as the only ventriloquist act in town.

But not only that, all evidence of Mr Wood's short and violent life, all evidence that he was responsible for the slime and insults, is gone. The Powell parents think their daughter Kris might have genuinely lost her mind, and there is punishment yet in store for her, and she will never prove that she was innocent.

She will never prove that Lindy was the puppet master pulling all the strings right from the beginning.

Lindy Powell. The master villain. The greatest monster of Goosebumps series.

Forget the existential horrors of the cursed camera or the invisibility mirror.

Forget the iconic terrors of Slappy, Monster Blood, and the Haunted Mask.*

Forget the creeps seemingly designed to frighten me specifically in 'Stay Out of The Basement'.

Lindy Powell is the most frightening creation of RL Stine.

But, like, I guess haunted dolls are kinda creepy too. If you're into that. Whatever.

I'm doing an episode 7.1 for this one. I have a much bigger question to pose about Lindy Powell that demands its own blog space. So check back next week for that.

See you then. If you dare.

*I haven't read the haunted mask book, yet, but I understand it is one of the most popular/memorable ones.

Bumping Geese 6: Let's Get Invisible

Did you know 'Goosebumps' was adapted into a TV series in the 90s?

And did you know that the 90s 'Goosebumps' TV series is actually awful? I didn't.

But I do now!

Like the 'Goosebumps' books, the TV series is something I was aware of when I was a child and it was on TV, and I may have even watched an episode of two, if my vague memory serves, but I was never a fan. I never went out of my way to watch it, in the same way I skipped the books.

But also like the books, the 'Goosebumps' TV series is something that, in theory, I should like. As a child I watched the very similar TV series 'Are You Afraid Of The Dark?' and loved that. As I grew older, I discovered I loved similar horror anthology series like 'The Twilight Zone', 'Tales From The Crypt', and 'The Hunger'. And now I'm even a fan of the 'Goosebumps' books. So the show is, in theory, right up my alley.

Except that it sucks.

A lot.

I've only watched a handful of episodes, based on the books I have read so far, and while better books make for better episodes ('Monster Blood' continues its reign of ultimate suckitude right into its TV adaptation), they're still... not good.

In fact, they suck.

A lot.

So while I entertained the idea of repeating this project with the TV show...

No.

I'm not going to do that.

Because the 'Goosebumps' TV series sucks.

A lot.

Book 6 in the series, "Let's Get Invisible" on the other hand, is pretty good.

See this book cover? This is the cover of a book that doesn't suck.
Unlike the 'Goosebumps' TV series. Which does Suck.
A lot.

"Let's Get Invisible" is about Max ERROR 404: SURNAME NOT FOUND and his brother, Lefty, and friends, Zack, Erin, and April. One day, while hanging out with his pals, being the kind of foolish kids who, for some reason, don't want to watch the film 'The Terminator' (yes this is an actual plot point) Max discovers a hidden room behind a false wall in the attic of his home. All that is inside the room is an old, full sized mirror with a wooden frame and a little light hanging from the top.

For a bunch of 12 year olds, this wouldn't be all that exciting apart from the mystery of why the mirror is secreted away in a hidden room, but while Max and his buddies are goofing around with it, they discover that if you stand in front of it and turn the light on, you become completely invisible!

This is obviously kind of terrifying at first, not just for Max, who is accidentally turned invisible, but for his friends who lose track of him. Luckily, when they turn the light on the mirror off again, Max reappears and everybody feels a great relief. Especially Max who, the longer he stayed invisible, the more he began to feel weak and fuzzy, somehow distant from his friends and the attic, as if consumed by the light reflecting off the mirror.

Over the next few days, thoughts of the mirror consume Max. He can't sleep, and instead finds himself compelled to creep into his attic in the middle of the night and stare into it, urged to play with his invisibility but also aware that he has no idea how dangerous it might be, or if there is any danger at all. His brother Lefty, however, feels no such hesitation. After his first turn becoming invisible, he too becomes obsessed with the mirror and takes every opportunity to turn invisible and play pranks on his brother.

Max's friends Zack and Erin suffer the same obsession and, what's more, enter into a fierce on-going competition to see who can be invisible the longest, which really means, who can endure that awful feeling of being pulled away from the world that comes after being invisible for more than a few minutes. Max tries to warn them away from the mirror, and to stop their competition, but Lefty interferes to nudge them on. Max notices that his friends even seem to become somehow physically but subtly changed by their lengthy time spent invisible.

April, who was at first afraid of the mirror, is eventually pressured into trying it, and she too succumbs to its fascinating allure. 

But all their fun and games take a dark turn when, against his objections, Zack and Erin force Max to compete with them, holding him in place in front of the mirror before turning on the light and making him invisible. Even then they continue to hold him there and refuse to turn the light on. Soon enough, Max feels the sensation of being ripped away from the mirror, his friends, and the attic and into the light of the mirror. That feeling escalates until he is physically pulled through the mirror, no matter how he tries to resist. Max tumbles through a strange world of light, shapes, and colours, and then, in a white void, he meets himself - or rather, his reflection.

Max learns that his friends Zack and Erin have been replaced by their reflection, and now they're stuck in this mirror world. Max's reflection now plans to replace him. But Max shows an unusual resistance and is able to escape his reflection and flee the mirror world. But of course, when he escapes, his replaced friends try to send him back. Just when it seems too late, Lefty bursts into the room and accidentally breaks the mirror. The reflections are sucked back into the mirror world and the real Zack and Erin are freed. The nightmare is over.

OR IS IT!?

For we see the return of the 'Goosebumps' twist ending. As Max and Lefty play catch in their yard, and Max explains the terrible adventure inside the mirror, he notices that his brother, whom received the name Lefty because he is left handed, is throwing and catching the ball with his right hand!

This might be the best twist in the series so far. Not just because it is creepy, but because it is the only twist so far that has been in any way telegraphed. During the scene where Lefty accidentally breaks the mirror and the Zack and Erin reflections are pulled back into the mirror, the narrator notes that Lefty is holding into the door handle, resisting the pull of the mirror. By this time we also have noticed distinct and bizarre changes in Lefty's behaviour, suggesting he was the first to be replaced.

So even though I saw the twist coming, the fact that it was even possible to see it coming, makes it far more satisfying. Too many of the previous twists, even in the good books, have really come out of nowhere and as a result felt forced into the narrative without care or attention to the narrative's cohesion or development.

I dunno. It's really a vibe thing. I don't like twists that have no build up. They FEEL cheap to me. You mileage may vary.

But how about the rest of the book?

Well, like a lot of these books, the middle drags a bit. There's a lot of scenes that feel repeated, a lot of emotional beats that play again and again and don't feel like they go anywhere. But the escalation to the climax happens sooner, which gets you more engrossed as you read and means the slow parts aren't as long as they have been in previous books. So, again, we're seeing a marked improvement in RL Stine's writing as each book passes.

And this book is also creepy. It's not as terrifying as 'Stay Out Of The Basement' but, again, that book was basically custom made to frighten me. While there is really only one big horror moment, when Max goes into the mirror, the book taps into some genuinely frightening ideas and just lets them hover over the entire narrative.

The idea that somebody we know and love could be suddenly replaced is something we've seen before in horror. 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' is one of the most famous examples, and, to a lesser extent, this fear of replacement or change can be seen in the zombie genre. But the idea goes back even farther, to ancient legends of Changelings - fae children that are left in place of stolen human babies. There really does seem to be something primal about this kind of anxiety. It has existed within us for centuries.

Another sign that his is so deeply rooted within us is the aesthetic phenomena described as The Uncanny Valley. In simple terms, The Uncanny Valley describes a documented emotional response that all people have to seeing something that is mostly human, but wrong in noticeable ways. An android whose features aren't quite convincing, for example. It makes us uncomfortable to look at. It disturbs something deep within us. It's a phenomena that Max experiences in the book when he sees the reflections that have replaced his friends. They have become reversed and, in doing so, now appear wrong.

"Let's Get Invisible" also works on another level that is perhaps less universal, but one might argue is more visceral. It's another topic that is commonly explored by the horror genre: addiction.

Max, Lefty, Erin, and Zack all become addicted to the mirror. They obsess over it. It keeps them up at night. They stop wanting to go outside, to see other people, to do anything but play with the mirror. Max turns down food to spend more time with the mirror. And Max guards the secret of the mirror zealously. He is terrified of his parents finding it and taking it away from him. He lies about why he and his friends are spending so much time in the attic. Even when he knows his parents don't believe his lies, he keeps lying anyway, keeps going back to the mirror.

And the cost for indulging this addiction is that they literally, physically, become somebody else. It changes them into something... Well, something not quite human. Not quite who they used to be. While also trapping them forever deep inside the mirror, inside their addiction. The mirror completely consumes its users.

Addiction is another very human experience. People aren prone to addiction to varying degrees, but it's something we're all capable of. Our brains and our bodies are just built to be susceptible to it. Some things, once we have them, our bodies will crave them again, and sometimes those cravings become destructive.

And that's frightening. That is a loss of control. That is our ego succumbing to the id, our conscious minds being lost to base drives and animal instincts. One might say it is another kind of replacement. Another kind of inhuman substitution. Except it is all too human, and so all too possible.

I don't know if I've read any other children's books or seen any other media aimed at children that deals with addiction. I thought it kind of odd, while reading it, that RL Stine would take this approach. How relatable is this, as a theme, to the preteen audience?

But that's a foolish thought. Children are people. Preteens are still human. They experience the same humanity that we all do. And addiction is well documented amongst children and adolescents. Addiction to sugar, addiction to video games, there's even been studies into the disturbing trend of young people becoming addicted to pornography. This is absolutely something the intended audience of 'Goosebumps' faces in their life.

So, if anything, it's not weird that addiction is a major theme in "Let's Get Invisible". It's weird that it's not a major theme in more media aimed at young people.

This one dragged a lot more than 'Stay Out Of The Basement' and while I genuinely prefer a quieter, creepier kind of horror, the kind of horror that is more atmosphere and mood, "Let's Get Invisible" doesn't quite reach the heights I'd like of that kind of horror. So, it hasn't dethroned 'Stay Out of The Basement' as my favourite in the series, but it has definitely come the closest. It's creepy, it's engaging, it's thematically layered and complex. I'm glad to have read it.

The next in the series is the iconic 'Night Of The Living Dummy'. I'm eager to see if it lives up to its legacy.

Bumping Geese 5.1: Mummies and Marxism

 Last time, on Bumping Geese...

"Uncle Ben, as it happens, has discovered a new chamber in the pyramids. And by 'Uncle Ben has discovered' I mean the diggers and students working for him discovered it and he's taking the credit." 

"So, let's get something out of the way about here. With the exception of poor Gabe, every fucking person in this book sucks. They are just the worst."

"This blog is feeling a little long, today, and I have stuff to do. I did have a Marxist take for this one, but I don't want to take up too much of your time and we've had a lot of tangents already. If enough people ask for it (drop a comment down below) I'll come back to it..."

And now, out thrilling conclusion...

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed I haven't been particularly active this week. I think I've finally broken my social media addiction and, honestly, spending less time on Twitter is absolutely the healthier choice.

Unfortunately, this was accomplished my developing a replacement addiction to World of Warcraft and I just spent basically the whole week playing that. This is absolutely not the healthier choice.

But it is a big part of why there's likely not going to be a new Goosebumps review this week and while I'll instead do two next week. It is, after all, already Sunday.

But the other reason for the delay in a Goosebumps review is because I reread 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' this week. I didn't do this because it was an excellent, gripping, must-read entry in the series, but because there's a lot to talk about when it comes to this book.

'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' as a text doesn't have much to say for itself, but metatextually, we can use it as a chance to explore cultural appropriation, Orientalism, Colonialism, and global racial politics, for example. All of these things are fascinating and worthy subjects to explore and all of them are things I do not feel in the slightest bit qualified to dedicate a blog to.

But I am comfortable in taking the time to a Marxist hot take for this one, whether or not I'm qualified. And if it's going to be the subject of a whole blog, well, might as well go all in.

Photo manipulation is also something I am not qualified for
But would it surprise you to learn I already had a saved image of Marx ready for this?

What I don't want to do with this particular blog is preach. There are one-million-fucking-books in this series and I am sure I will have plenty of opportunity, as the weird-o I am, to use Goosebumps to explain why Marxism is correct and why you should also be a Marxist and seed the beginnings of revolution, one spoopy children's book at a time.

But for now, in this particular blog entry, is take a minute to clarify some basic Marxist principles. I am going to assume, for just a second, that you haven't read any Marxist literature, that you're not any kind of radical Leftist like me, and that the whole idea that we could get anything Marxist out of a spoopy children's book is a kind of silly idea.

And let me begin by saying: It is a silly idea. But I spent a lot of time studying literature and learning how to pull meaningful analysis completely out of my arse, and selling it in an essay. I need to do SOMETHING with that skillset, damnit, and here we are!

Anyway. Let's get Marxist!

Two Classes of People

The relationship between Uncle Ben and those around him, and between all those characters and the work of excavating and exploring a pyramid exemplifies an idea at the heart of the Marxist critique of capitalist society.

Uncle Ben is, in this scenario, what we call the Bu... Bor... The Berg... Boj.. Bougeoisioisieosiois... Damn it.

Uncle Ben is what we call the Bourgeoisie. A word which is a pain in the arse to spell for literally everybody. The Bourgeoisie are classically defined by Marxists as the people who "own the means of production". They are the boss. They are the owner of a factory or a store or some other business, or a significant shareholder in a company. The Bourgeoisie are one economic class in Marxism.

Marxists use the word Bourgeoisie as more-or-less interchangeable with Capitalist. And it is important to understand that for Marxists, a Capitalist is not just somebody who agrees ideologically with Capitalism. Anybody can, for example, adopt Marxism as an ideology and be a Marxist, but not anybody can be a Capitalist. Being a Capitalist - which, again, we're using as synonymous with Bourgeoisie - is a matter of economic class*. Capitalists can hold any number of ideologies. You can even be a Marxist and a Capitalist. The definition comes from the material fact that you own the means of production.

So keep that in mind for later when I get tired of writing Bourgeoisie and decide to just use the word "Capitalist".

Everybody else in 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb" falls into the second class in Marxism, what we call the "Proletariat". This group is basically everybody else** in the world. The Proletariat do not own the means of production, and instead work for those who do. Basically, if you work for somebody else and earn a salary or a wage, you are part of the Proletariat.

Proletariat is often used interchangeably with "worker" by Marxists but I, personally, dislike that. It muddies the water and makes the conversation hard because the truth is there are Capitalists who work. It is really important for everybody that we understand that the Bourgeoisie aren't all corporate billionaires who passively collect money from their tropical holiday house. The Bourgeoisie can and do work jobs and if they stopped, their businesses would fail and they would stop having money. And that is a lot like the Proletariat who, because they are wage earners, must work to earn money. But just because that is true, it does not make those working Bourgeoisie part of the Proletariat. We'll come to why in a little while.

Again, Proletariat is an economic class and not a matter of ideology. There is no shortage of Proletariat who believe completely and enthusiastically in Capitalism as an ideology and as a way of organising society, but they don't become Capitalists (in the Marxist definition), they are still Proletariat.

In 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' Uncle Ben has workers who work for him in excavating and exploring the pyramid, and so they are obviously the Proletariat. But for our purposes, we're also going to include Sari and Gabe as the part of Proletariat.

All right. So now we have the skeleton of the framework through which Marxists view society. Two classes. One who owns the means of production, and one who works the means of production. Why does this matter? Why do Marxists object?

Class Struggle

The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat are in opposition to each. We call this opposition Class Struggle or Class War. This struggle arises because the relationship is innately exploitative.

The Bourgeoisie, as owners of the means of production, make some or all of their money by exploiting the work of the Proletariat for their own profit. They do this by paying the Proletariat a sum of money, for their work, that is less than the total actual value of their work.

Is this sounding jargony, again? It is, isn't it. Let's have a really simple example. Don't think too much about this example. It is supposed to be illustrative, not to reflect a nuanced vision of reality.

Let's say you work in an office and your job is to sit at a computer and create documents that say "I am doing my job." You open it up a document, type that phrase, save it, repeat. Eight hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the day, somebody buys these documents for $10 a piece. Why do they do that? I don't know. Didn't I say not to think too long and hard about this? Ugh. Fine. They do it because they like to print these documents out and then throw them on a fire. That's just their kink, I guess.

Happy?

So you make these documents, and each one is worth $10. You work for eight hours, and you create, I don't know, ten of these documents an hour. And then at the end of the day you take home $640. What a fuckin' great rate of pay for an easy job. This is six figures a year. Damn, son! What a job.

But hold on. You might have noticed that if you create ten documents worth $10 each every hour for eight hours, then you've created $800 worth of value. What happened to the other $160?

Well, those are the company's profits. For every document you type, $2 of the value you created are taken and put into the company's bank account. And your boss, the owner of this company, pays himself $1 from every document. So at the end of the day, $80 of value you created goes to the boss.

Of course, you still get the lion's share. So what if the boss is taking that pittance?

But you don't work for him alone. Your boss has 100 employees all making these documents to sell. So at the end of the day, he has taken $80 from every one of them and he pays himself $8000 a day.

When we Marxists talk about the relationship between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat as being exploitative, this is at the core of that idea. Even if your boss is working beside you, even if they're typing ten of their own documents an hour, they still take home a piece of every one of their employees' value which they didn't earn.

And we can't forget about that other $8000 a day that is going back into the business' account. While you might say that money isn't being paid to the boss, that it is there to reinvest back into the company, maybe to hire more staff, maybe to pay for Friday pizza lunches, keep in mind that it is the boss that decides what to do with that money. A corporation is not a democracy and a corporation has no agency of its own. The corporate owners decide what to do with it. Which bank account that money is in is really just a technicality. It is the boss' money. He has complete ownership over $1600 of value, per day, that you the worker created.

The money that the Bourgeoisie takes is money that the Proletariat earned but were not paid. Even those Bourgeoisie who work, whether that's productive work like making documents-to-burn, or doing work like negotiating contracts with document-burning-kinksters to buy more documents, the fact that they are taking money earned by the work of others means that they are not part of the Proletariat.

They have not earned the total value of the money they are taking in, and they are getting that extra by skimming it off the top of those who work for them.

And allow me to take the time that this still isn't Marxist propaganda. Ask a Capitalist to explain how they make their money and if they're honest, they'll give you the same break down of how they collect money off the labour performed by their employees. They'll use different language and they may come to different ideological conclusions, but we'd both be describing the same basic principle. They probably wouldn't like the word "exploitation".

But in the end, we'd be describing the same relationship between two economic classes of people.

Hey, wasn't this about Goosebumps?

Yes. Yes it was. And now you've had your crash course on what all the words mean, let's look at 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' as an example of how class struggle might play out.

When we first meet Uncle Ben, we're told about his work in the Pyramid of Khufu and the discoveries he is making. I can't give page references because I'm reading e-books, but here is how it happens in the text (this book is written first person POV from Gabe, by the way):

'"Daddy’s discovered a whole new burial chamber,” Sari broke in before her dad had a chance to tell me himself. “He’s exploring parts of the pyramid that have been undiscovered for thousands of years.'

'... we archaeologists thought we’d uncovered all of the tunnels and rooms inside this pyramid. But a few days ago, my workers and I discovered a tunnel that isn’t on any of the charts. An unexplored, undiscovered tunnel. And we think this tunnel may lead us to the actual burial chamber of Khufu himself!” “Outstanding!” I exclaimed. “And Sari and I will be there when you discover it?”'

In this example, rather than talking about money explicitly, we're going to examine the more nebulous idea of who gets the credit for a discovery. Sari immediately credits her father for the discovery, but Uncle Ben is a little more sharing by saying it is a discovery made by himself and his workers.

The next day, Gabe, Sari, and Uncle Ben visit the dig inside the pyramid. When they arrive, a number of workers are already there working (RL Stine is vague on what the work actually is. I'm not sure he understands how pyramid exploration works but, to be fair, neither do I) and we see the dynamic between Uncle Ben (the Bourgeoisie) and his workers (the Proletariat).

'Uncle Ben turned to his workers. “So? Any progress today?” he asked. “We think we’re getting real close,” a young red-haired man wearing faded jeans and a blue denim work shirt replied. And then he added, “Just a hunch.”'

...

'After a while, three other workers entered the chamber, carrying shovels and picks. One of them was carrying some kind of electronic equipment in a flat metal case. It looked a little like a laptop computer.'

And to Uncle Ben's credit, he does get more personally involved:

'We both gave one last glance back to Uncle Ben, who was down on his hands and knees, picking away at the stone wall.'

Let's unpack this.

We can see in no uncertain terms that Uncle Ben is the boss here and there is a clear hierarchy between him and the works. He calls them "my workers", and when he arrives to the work site, they report to him. They are not all equals in a team.

Gabe and Sari both refer to the discoveries in the pyramid as something Uncle Ben is discovering, but we can see his involvement in the actual work is evidently pretty small. This is the only time we get any indication Uncle Ben is getting his hands dirty in the digging. If not for the kidnapping that happens, there's no indication Uncle Ben was even going to be at the pyramid the next day. He had a meeting at the museum scheduled for that day.

And you might say, "Okay, Carl, but just because two children are giving Uncle Ben all the credit, doesn't mean he is claiming it for himself. If we go along with you and treat "credit for discovery" as a stand in for the money that the Bou-- that the Capitalist usually takes from their Workers, there is no indication from Ben that he's going to personally take more than his share."

And you might be right. It is not until much later that Uncle Ben gives the game away.

At the end of the novel, after Gabe has used his mummy-hand-good-luck-charm to summon an army of the dead to crush his enemies, Uncle Ben is looking at the magical artefact, this happens:

'He took it from me and examined it closely. “Better not play with it,” he said seriously. “We must treat it carefully. He shook his head. “Some great scientist I am!” he exclaimed scornfully. “When I saw it, I thought it was just a toy, some kind of reproduction. But this hand may be my biggest discovery of all!”'

I'm sorry. What was that, Uncle Ben? Gabe's mummy hand might be whose biggest discovery?

And lest you think maybe I'm leaving out some part of the text where Uncle Ben gave the hand to Gabe as a present, or that its powers were unknown before Uncle Ben came along, here is how the hand is introduced to the story, way back at the start, while Gabe is alone in the hotel room.

'It was small, the size of a child’s hand. A little hand wrapped in papery brown gauze. I had bought it at a garage sale a few years ago, and I always carried it around as a good-luck charm. The kid who sold it to me called it The Summoner. He said it was used to summon evil spirits or something. I didn’t care about that. I just thought it was an outstanding bargain for two dollars. I mean, what a great thing to find at a garage sale! And maybe it was even real.'

Uncle Ben's contribution to this "discovery" is literally nothing. He just happened to be there and in a position of authority to claim it. And do you really think that if he's going to try to claim he discovered something Gabe has been carrying around all this time, he's not going to claim credit for what his workers inevitably dig up while he's not here because he's too busy letting his daughter and nephew get kidnapped by cultists?

And if you do believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Wrap Up (again)

The fact we're talking about credit for discovery and not money is - and I'll be the first to admit - a reason to call this an imperfect analogy. But the way Uncle Ben takes what those beneath him have worked for is still a close match to the exploitative dynamic between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. 

And if you feel a slight tinge of moral outrage that Uncle Ben could look his nephew in the eye and say "This amazing thing you have, I'm going to say it is mine and act like I discovered how amazing it is" because it is unfair, because that is a poor way for an adult to treat child they have complete authority over, then I'd tell you that response is reasonable.

And I'd then point out that the workplace, that the relationship between an employer and employee, between Bourgeoisie and Proletariat, is also a relationship with similarly one-sided power dynamic. That taking value that one person earned and giving it to yourself does look a lot like taking a child's good-luck charm away from them to benefit yourself.

And maybe, if you don't feel the same sense of outrage, even a little, maybe it's worth examining why that is.

And here I should stress, again, that this blog isn't for preaching. This is for education. I'm not going to tell you what conclusion I think you should come to from that examination of your own outrage of lack-of-outrage.

I'm also not going to tell you that Uncle Ben, or any capitalist, is a bad person because they are a capitalist. Marxist critique isn't actually about individuals. It's about the system. Marxists don't want to replace the mean-bad-exploitative-nasty bosses with nice-generous-buy-you-pizza-on-Friday bosses. We want to completely remove the role of Capitalist from society and once we've done that, ex-Capitalists are welcome to keep living their lives free of class struggle with us.

Uncle Ben just happens to be a Capitalist AND a bad person. But him being total shit is a coincidence.

*Marxists typically avoid the terms "lower", "upper", and "middle class" and may even hate those terms. I certainly do. These terms, in how they are commonly used, really describe an aesthetic of wealth and status and are not at all helpful. Marxists may use the term "working class" but that is synonymous with "proletariat" and not "lower class" as is commonly the case. Wealth exists on a spectrum and just like not all Capitalists are billionaires, some of the Proletariat are leading very comfortable lives with large salaries.

**Largely removed from modern Marxist discourse in the Anglosphere is the feudal class, or the monarchy. We have a lot less of them and they are of less importance in our context, compared to when Marx was writing. But the monarchy is another class that exists within the Marxist framework as separate from Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. This isn't hugely important for this discussion, it's just a thing you should know.