The Lovely Bones: ending and resolution; Peter Jackson

Once again, the book doesn't end with a big dramatic plot twist but gently and with a sense of resolution of the twin strands of the plot:

1. Susie's coming to terms with a life cut short and all the life experiences she has missed out on
2. The family's coming to term with the loss of Susie

I suppose another connected strand is the fate of Harvey. We need him to be found guilty and put away and he is in a manner of speaking but quietly and gradually.

As one student said in class, having the capture of Harvey as the climax would be too predictable. This book is not about revenge and restitution but about resolving the emotional conflicts and griefs everyone suffered as a result of Susie's murder. The unusual storyline is one some of you struggled with but, remember that this book made millions when it came out because we all have to deal with loss and grief at some stage and the book nails it in so many ways.

It encapsulates the 4 stages of grieving identified by psychologists

Denial
Anger
Depression
Acceptance

As another student said, Lindsay is the sort of "keystone" to the rebuilding of the family. The old house she restores with Samuel symbolises this and of course, there is her daughter.


Here's some more about the book from Peter Jackson

Though "The Lovely Bones" is not on the order of a major fantasy trilogy, Jackson said the book has its own complexities. It was passed on by studios when first shopped; the book opens with the revelation that 14-year old narrator and main character Susie Salmon was raped and murdered. From heaven, she watches how the people left behind handle her tragedy.

Jackson and Walsh, eager to make a small-canvas movie like his early hit "Heavenly Creatures," sparked to it immediately.

"It's the best kind of fantasy in that it has a lot to say about the real world," Jackson said. "You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film."

The most perplexing problem, said Jackson, is how to convey Susie in heaven.

"It's cleverly not described that well in the book, because Alice wanted your imagination to do the work and decide what Susie's heaven looks and feels like," Jackson said. "We will have to show something on film. It has to be somehow ethereal and emotional, but it can't be hokey."

Media Studies, the Kiwi Bloke again

Do you really think that the blokes on Game of Two Halves are representative? Who made the programme? What audience are they making it for? How does this affect the representation, messages and values found in the programme?

What messages are being sent by the programme? What values are shown?

Read this article from the Herald for a good discussion on Ellis and Ridge and co.

Some comments are that the guys, while "playing the bad boy role" are:

• reinforcing traditional male chauvinist attitudes to women.
• treating women as mere "eye candy

A feminist commentator said that the programmes made "new lad masculinity" seem quite okay, and women seem "marginalised" or second best, "while masking its messages in boyish humour."

Something to think about isn't it?

There's no denying that it is very amusing for some but also that the guys are playing "roles" and that the exaggerated behaviour they indulge in misrepresents the ordinary kiwi male whose female partner would almost ccertainly not tolerate sexual banter about her love life for the whole nation to hear.

So, the whole thing is a construction for the entertainment of a certain audience and it reflects only a small portion of NZers. Would you agree with that? (However, it does influence the way we see ourselves.)

Remember that no representation is innocent.

Level 2 Media Studies: the good keen bloke

Here are some deeply academic comments about kiwi blokehood which I have tried to simplify for you. Worth a look. I can't find a good image of Barry Crump but here is one from a recent Toyota ad in which the bulls have taken on the kiwi bloke persona. Link to here for a description of the ad.


In media studies terms, the Kiwi bloke is a representation. Media do not simply reflect reality; they represent it through codes and languages which are socially constructed and privilege certain points of view. Discourses of the Kiwi bloke do not arise "naturally" from our pioneering past – they serve a hegemonic function (that means they suit the people in power in society.) They have a history, which is anything but a "natural evolution". Benedict Anderson argues that nationhood as we understand it today is an "imagined community" constructed through mass media. Media do not simply reflect the nation that is; they also help bring it into being, by reproducing ideas of identity, for example the Kiwi bloke.

Hence it was to advertising that the Kiwi bloke migrated. Corporate interests have associated themselves with Kiwi masculinity and its association with national identity as a way of normalising their activities, through sport, for example (brewer Lion Nathan and the All Blacks, financiers Fay, Richwhite and the America's Cup) . Multinationals such as Toyota, McDonald's, Sky and TV3 (CanWest) use representations of Kiwi blokes to naturalise their products in a local setting, as for example Barry Crump's notorious 1980s Hilux ads for Toyota. Crump is well known in New Zealand as a modern exemplar of the pioneer tradition, having written numerous novels of male hunting exploits, such as A Good Keen Man. The Hilux is a "ute" (utility vehicle), such as pakeha working men often use. The ads contrast an urban and naive character played by former Playschool presenter Lloyd Scott, who is gushingly enthusiastic about the product, with "bloke" Crump - a sardonic, laconic rural type who establishes his domination by verbal sarcasm undercutting Scott, and physical accomplishment, in the form of his hair-raising driving exploits.

Clearly viewers are expected to identify with Crump. But this gives rise to a paradox: that rural masculinity is being used to sell products to a largely urban audience. A key to understanding how these ads negotiate such a contradiction is in their over the top tendencies, for example, Crump driving his Toyota up an almost vertical incline. They self-consciously highlight an mismatch between their rural heritage and the urban audience they are selling to.

An idea of rural masculinity is being used as a way of legitimising the market: selling cars and other products to city dwellers - the final irony is that the vast majority of Toyotas sold here are not "utes", but ordinary family cars. The ad is a branding exercise that employs the normalising tendencies of the rural myth to enforce its own hard sell. The Good Keen Man is complicit with the good keen manager. So the Kiwi bloke now serves new masters – not colonial, but multinational.

Toyota has since conducted at least two more "local" advertising campaigns: "Welcome to Our World" (1990), which featured the Jim Reeves' song and shots of iconic New Zealand landscapes, and the "Bugger" campaign, which featured comic mishaps of rural farm workers and their "utes", each ad ending in the swear word. Ironically, Toyota closed its last local assembly plant in 1998, so the ads' matey rhetoric was precisely the opposite of what was occurring at the everyday local level.

It suggests that global capital's employment of representations of working men and appeals to local nationalism in its sales talk are not underlaid by any commitment to such groups. Moreover, if, as I have argued, the "bloke" as a representation of locality was to some extent created by New Zealand's historic position in the global economy, then it should not be surprising that he and his related symbols have continued to be relevant in the "branding" of New Zealand.

Plot turning points in The Lovely Bones

Some students complained of nothing much happening in the plot; or that it was difficult to engage with the text, hard to keep reading.
I have a few theories
1. It may be a little hard to really get into it because there is a sort of flat, matter of fact tone. It isn't colourful, passionate and vibrant because it is about the sad narration of loss and recovery. It is in fact very similar in its tone to The Reader the novel we studied last year. That is because both books are narrated by a character who is trying to sort out and come to terms with devastating events that cannot be easily "solved".
2. A lot of the events are emotional not physical; thoughts and feelings rather than exciting events.

But look at the things that DO happen. Both Lindsay and Abigail plunge into a love affair to numb the pain of Susie's death

Susie's father attacks a young couple in the cornfield, thinking they are Harvey. He almost becomes the baddie in the eyes of the police while Harvey can play the innocent. The injustice of it makes your blood boil.

Lindsay breaks into Harvey's house to find evidence. This is a dramatic event. Just imagine what it would be like (and the tension that Peter Jackson will be able to put into the scene when he films it)

On the other hand, even this turning point is narrated by Susie in heaven so we don't really get such a direct insight into Lindsay's feelings. After she jumps out the window to escape Harvey, Susie narrates:
"But she was not hurt. Gloriously not hurt. Gloriously young."
We as readers are "positioned" to see Lindsay through Susie's eyes. This is the whole purpose of the book: to give us a bird's eye view of the impact of tragedy on a family.

It also helps to remember that Sebold herself experienced 10 years of pain and chaos in her life after her own rape. You can feel the commitment she has to observe the effects of one person's trauma on those around her.

Another interesting bit is Harvey's back story. This starts on page 187 or Chapter 15. I think Sebold does a very good job of building up a picture of his sorry past. However, I find the previous page, 186, a little corny when Susie meets all his other victims in heaven. That is very intolerant of me though because Sebold has every right to point out that sexual predators often have multiple victims - how do you tell their story? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The meaning of the title and the question of religion

The "lovely bones" of the title have to do with what Sebold describes as "the architecture of loss" - - the often hard-won connections between people that are built around the absence of someone after they die.

Is it a religious book?

While reviews for "The Lovely Bones" here have been overwhelmingly positive, critics in the United Kingdom, where the book was also published last summer, have been less effusive. The Guardian newspaper scoffed that the book provides Americans with "Christian comfort."

Sebold begs to differ. "I haven't heard that from any reader. People have said it provides them with comfort, but I haven't heard anybody qualify it as 'Christian,' " she says. "You write a book about Heaven, you're gonna get it from both ends. I get people who say, 'Why isn't God in the Heaven?' who are coming from that direction. And other people are like, 'Oh, you're talking about Heaven? You must be Christian.' There's no hope. I can't do anything about that."

Sebold, who was raised in what she calls "the wishy-washy Episcopalian religion," says she hasn't been to church since she was a teenager. "My major religions are my dog and gardening."

Alice Sebold's Previous Book, "Lucky"

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
When Sebold, the author of the current bestseller The Lovely Bones, was a college freshman at Syracuse University, she was attacked and raped on the last night of school, forced onto the ground in a tunnel "among the dead leaves and broken beer bottles." In a ham-handed attempt to mollify her, a policeman later told her that a young woman had been murdered there and, by comparison, Sebold should consider herself lucky. That dubious "luck" is the focus of this fiercely observed memoir about how an incident of such profound violence can change the course of one's life. Sebold launches her memoir headlong into the rape itself, laying out its visceral physical as well as mental violence, and from there spins a narrative of her life before and after the incident, weaving memories of parental alcoholism together with her post-rape addiction to heroin. In the midst of each wrenching episode, from the initial attack to the ensuing courtroom drama, Sebold's wit is as powerful as her searing candor, as she describes her emotional denial, her addiction and even the rape (her first "real" sexual experience). She skillfully captures evocative moments, such as, during her girlhood, luring one of her family's basset hounds onto a blue silk sofa (strictly off-limits to both kids and pets) to nettle her father. Addressing rape as a larger social issue, Sebold's account reveals that there are clear emotional boundaries between those who have been victims of violence and those who have not, though the author attempts to blur these lines as much as possible to show that violence touches many more lives than solely the victim's.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Sebold was raped as a college freshman, but the police said she was "lucky." At least she wasn't murdered and dismembered like the girl before her. Now a journalist, Sebold here details the aftermathAposttraumatic stress syndrome, heroin addiction, and, finally, some measure of understanding.

More on Lovely Bones

Looking at the opening pages: a compelling beginning with a startlingly matter of fact tone and a certain amount of irony. Notice the sentence patterns to emphasis her feelongs.

Why set the book back in 1973? Sad that American put pictures of lost children on milk cartons. Does the distant setting make it more poignant because such crimes were less common, more shocking back then?

Media Issues including representation

Here is a great link to a Canadian site which looks at how various groups are represented

Links for The Lovely Bones

For some interesting information on the book, click here

Another site gives info on the film version

Beware of spoilers in wikipedia if you have not finished the book!

The Lovely Bones

After two years I want to resurrect this blog and use it for discussion of our novel.

You can read the material if you need to reinforce what we do in class or if you want to do some exta readings.

Here are some off-the-cuff response type comments based on my reading of the first five or six chapters. (What do you think of the cover of the Russian version of the book?)

I think one reason for the book's success is its constant forward narrative thrust. Very quickly we hear that how Susie died. Before we know where we are, we read that Susie's father quickly begins to suspect Harvey. It's different from a whodunnit but has some of the gripping features of mystery/detective fiction.

At Level 3 you should be able to step back from a piece of literature and go beyond whether you like it or not. Think about what Alice Sebold is trying to achieve here. What do you think of her techniques?

The art of telling a story or of narrative is an important aspect of a novel. I also like the way that Sebold jumps back and forth in time as Susie tells her story. She tells what happens to her and her family after her death and then she might go back in time to tell us about what her life was like before her death. This is a 'treatment of time' which I find useful and interesting for this sort of narrative. What benefits does it have?

What about accusations that the book is morbid? Maybe the topic itself is a morbid one, but I think Sebold treats the subject so sensitively (so far) and in such a kindly and matter of fact tone. She even tries to understand the motives of the killer and rapist.

If I have a criticism right now, it is that the book sometimes seems to lapse into a high school romance style!?