Andy/Tamara:
I will cede superior knowledge of monster movies to the two of you. I’ll make no bones about it. While I’m a sci-fi buff, monster movies are generally of no interest to me. The one exception? Mansquito, of course. That goes without saying. (Why would Mansquito go after Corey Nemec? Doesn’t he know that Parker Lewis can’t lose?)
I want to clarify my Earth-JJ theory a bit today. I want to do so for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t define my term as well as I would have liked the first time. Two, I want to keep using the phrase “Earth-JJ” until it springs to life as a full-fledged meme. I’m shallow and petty that way. To define Earth-JJ more accurately, I’ll take Misfits reader Big Joe’s lead and use Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series as a way to explain it better.
Don’t worry: I want try to condense the plot of The Dark Tower within a single entry in our roundtable. But it’s worth noting that many, many other works of Stephen King reference The Dark Tower series, directly and indirectly. Just as the Dark Tower itself exists as a nexus connecting all realities, so does The Dark Tower exist as a nexus connecting his stories.
Now, you might rightly say that not every King work can be connected to The Dark Tower. While that’s overtly true, I’d suggest this is a result of omission rather than exclusion. The town of Derry, Maine is ALWAYS a creepy town you don’t want to visit, no matter what King story you might be reading. But even if a certain story or novel doesn’t mention Derry, I’d still hope the characters involved don’t go there: in my mind, King’s Derry is always and ever part of my “No Visit” zone.
Earth-JJ, in my mind, works similarly to KingWorld. I never meant to suggest that Arvin Sloane was a board member of The Hanso Foundation, but Arvin Sloane and Alvar Hanso definitely both inhabit Earth-JJ. Earth-JJ is a place eerily similar to ours (although definitely more similiar than The Dark Tower‘s Mid-World), but in Earth-JJ, a man named Rimbaldi can invent cellphone technology centuries before their appearance, magical islands can exist outside the scope of human sight and understanding, and giant sea creatures can storm New York City when they food supply is stripped. These things are impossible in our world, but entirely plausible within Earth-JJ. And yes, Felicity exists in Earth-JJ, but is too preoccupied with her hair to notice a giant monster is about to eat her.
Creating an alternate world relatable to own our is the norm for genre storytelling: but the creation of an entire universe? That takes it beyond the norm and into the extraordinary. Even more extraordinary? I’m not even sure “Earth-JJ” is a truly accurate moniker. After all, Andy, you yourself pointed out to me months ago that a certain group of Heroes also liked themselves some Slusho.
So, Andy/Tamara, what should we call this other, mutliple-genre narrative inhabiting world? Would you want to live there, or would you prefer a Rimbaldi-, Smokey-, and Slusho-free world?
'Cloverfield': Roundtable day six
Posted in: Other Nerdery
– January 9, 2008
I don’t think it’s all THAT extraordinary for an author to set multiple works in the same world while focusing on different people in each.
I love the photo, I almost forgot what MANSQUITO looked like. After all it’s from the BEST SCI-FI CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE EVAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
Gotta love that Mansquito!!!!!!!!