“Supernatural” (Season 6, episode 9: “Clap You Hands If You Believe,” CW)

“Supernatural” is a horror series that follows two brothers, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) Winchester, as they wander the back roads of America in their '67 Chevy Impala, hunting creatures that most people believe only exist nightmares. Armed only with their father's journal on demon hunting, and some gi-normous shotguns, the two brothers take up his crusade to hunt down evil and shoot it.

Season 5 ended with Sam being sucked into Hell while fighting to put Lucifer back in his cage and, in the process, saving the world. Season 6 has brought Sam back from Hell, but without a soul. His state of soullessness has not only reversed the roles of the two brothers, with Dean now being the more sensitive and humane hunter of the pair; it has also created a rift between them. Without a soul, Sam is unable to empathize, lacks impulse control, and basically can’t be trusted as an ally. He is childlike, but in a creepy bad-seed kind of way. It has been a dark season thus far. “Clap Your Hands If You Believe” didn’t ignore this part of the season’s storyline, but it did inject a mega dose of humor into it.

This episode is postmodernism at its finest. The cultural references come so fast and thick, it’s actually hard to keep up, and you want to keep up. The opening credits montage is a grand salute to the “X-files,” ending with the words, “The truth is in here.” As Sam and Dean arrive in Eldon, Indiana to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances, they meet a local woman who tells them that it is the work of fairies. Soulless Sam goes off on her, saying, “Don’t dump your whack-a-doo all over us.” The kinder Dean pulls him away and says, “Hey, it’s not her fault she got the brown acid,” in a delightful insider reference to the documentary “Woodstock.” This show knows its audience.

Dean is abducted from a crop circle while investigating a UFO sighting. As he runs through a cornfield pursued by bright lights he shouts, “Close encounter! Close encounter!” to Sam on his cell phone. Sam escapes, and, as it turns out, crazy brown acid lady is on the money. The ETs are actually fairies. Their search for the escaped Dean gives the show to create their own twisted fairy mythos. They love fresh cream and can be trapped by spilling salt or sugar, because they are compelled to count each grain. A fairy attacks Dean, in a fight scene set to David Bowie's "Major Tom,” and ends with Dean getting the fairy, to explode in the microwave.

When Dean returns, he goes to their hotel to find Sam in bed with a hippie chick that he dubs “Patchouli.” He is, of course, livid. Sam questions Dean about how he should have reacted when his brother was abducted and whether sex with a hippie chick could have been included while he waited for a lead on Dean's whereabouts. Like someone who must learn to walk again after a bad accident, Sam seems to be trying to learn how to be human again. The question is, what is his real agenda? Can you trust the words and actions who has no soul to guide them? And, if having a soul carries such a burden of responsibility with it, is Sam really better off without his? The show seems to hinting that Sam may prefer to remain without his soul, and that without all the messy humanity and emotion getting in the way, he may be a better hunter. Only time will tell.

Grant Wood, American Gothic at The Art Institute of Chicago

Grant Wood’s American Gothic captured the national consciousness from the moment it premiered at The Art Institute in 1930. Since then, it has been parodied, referenced, replicated, and marketed to millions. It is arguably the most recognized painting in the history of American art, and perhaps one of the most recognizable images in the world along with the Mona Lisa. Has the co-option of this famous painting by Green Acres and numerous political cartoonists robbed it of its meaning? Does American Gothic have anything relevant to say to Modern America? Many would say yes, in fact American Gothic has become a plumb line, of sorts, for what constitutes good and hackneyed art. However, a close reading of the painting reveals a commentary on gender roles and American living that is still fresh.

It was the house itself that first inspired Wood and gave the painting its title. The house is of a style called Carpenter Gothic or Rural Gothic, referring to the application of Gothic revival details to wooden structures. In the case of the Eldon Iowa house, it is the pointed-arch window that provides the Gothic detailing.The clean lines of the house establish the theme of simplicity as a spiritual experience that resonates throughout the painting.

The blue sky is so clear that it is without atmosphere, depicting an idealized America, pure in its rural aspect. At the very center of the piece is the farmer’s pitchfork. The fact that the man’s hand is disproportionately large represents his dominion over the land he farms. The image of the pitchfork is repeated in the farmer’s overalls, reinforcing the idea that man’s identity is defined by his profession. Specifically, Grants seems to idealize the business of farming, as vocation rather than profession, a calling that is inborn, like that of the priest or monk.

Under the overalls, the man’s bright white shirt, sports green stripes that perfectly mirror the boards of the house. Man and his land are as one. The farmer looks directly at us, the wrinkles on his face a map of experience. His expression might seem dour at first, but a closer look reveals a slight quirk in the right eyebrow and a certain tension in the mouth that could be the beginnings of either a scowl or a smile.

The woman's face is less realistic than the man’s; it is oddly geometric as if she were more an abstract representation of rustic feminine ideal. The voluminous apron with its rickrack trim, the prim white collar of her dress, and the cameo at her throat put her in the nineteenth century, the era of the house itself. Her hair is pulled back into a severe bun, except for one strand behind her left ear that hangs in a serpentine curl. This curve is a stark contrast to the straight lines of the rest of the painting. It is a coy tease into the woman's inner life, her imagination escaping the rigid rules of womanhood in rural America and taking her to places she will never actually see. This idea is supported by the fact of her gaze, looking slightly to her left. The cameo she wears, whose rusty red color plays off the clay red color of the barn, is of a young woman holding a flower; perhaps it is this woman's life she dreams about.

The faces of the couple are elongated, like the window between them, reflecting the Gothic ideal. The peaked roof spreads out to point directly to the couple. This emphasizes their closeness to one another and points to the reliant nature of rural life; the scarcity of neighbors makes strong familial relationships doubly important. The way the eaves of the house lead directly into them also underlines the bond between the people and the land they live on. The trees behind the house offer the only relief from the straight up and down lines of the painting. Despite man's best efforts, the wildness of nature can never be completely domesticated, only softened at the edges.

If you strip away the history and the parody, what you find in American Gothic is a complex and compelling commentary on American life that perhaps more germane than it was eighty years ago.

“Almost Famous” (Directed by Cameron Crowe, 2000)

Based upon his own experience as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone magazine, Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” tells the story of sex, drugs, and rock and roll with cotton candy sweetness. However, this is not just a coming-of-age story with a kick-ass soundtrack. It is a snapshot of the brief period of time between the inception of New Journalism, and the establishment of celebrity journalism, as we know it today.

When fifteen year-old William Miller (Patrick Fugit) starts sending the rock reviews he’s written for his high school newspaper to legendary rock critic Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), his life is changed for ever. Bangs sends Miller on an assignment to interview Black Sabbath for Creem magazine that morphs into a gig for Rolling Stone writing about the almost famous band Stillwater. Bangs’ advice to young William: “You cannot make friends with the rock stars,” defines the conflict in the journey that William is about to embark upon.

The scene in which William talks his way backstage in San Diego by knowing the band members' names, and calling out precise compliments at them as they hurry into the arena, illustrates perfectly that a good critic not only needs to be in the right place at the right time; they also have know their stuff. William’s passion for music is the key that unlocks the door to this world.

William is seduced into the lifestyle of rock by the group's guitarist, Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup). He falls in love with “Band Aide,” Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), who is in love with Russell, who is married. “Almost Famous” softens many of the uglier aspects of rock-and-roll life in the Seventies. Even the scene in which Penny Lanes overdoses on Quaaludes is set to gorgeous music.

This would seem to be the point that Bangs is making. If the critic gets too close, too emotionally invested in their subjects, objectivity is impossible. The film’s exploration of Stillwater’s struggle to strike a balance between commercial acceptance and remaining true to one's art parallels William’s responsibility as a critic to counterbalance his friendships with the guys of Stillwater against his function as a journalist.

Although “Almost Famous” gets a little precious at times, like when a band member admits to being gay during a rough flight, it is usually spot-on in its sentiment. William discovers his sister’s parting gift of her record collection, and reads her note in one of them: "This song explains why I'm leaving home to become a stewardess,” is perfection. The song’s lyrics are: "I walked out to look for America,” and the scene not only sums up the mood of the era; it describes the emotive impact of rock music.

The brilliant casting is a large part of appeal of “Almost Famous.” Patrick Fugit as William is a smiling Buddha-child, benignly watching over the band in silence to cover his inexperience. His dream girl Penny Lane makes her way in this world in a similar fashion, and Kate Hudson is lit from within in this role. Frances McDormand as William’s mother does the best she can with what she has to work with; Elaine is one of the few characters in the film that is sorely underdeveloped. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as Lester Bangs, is the penultimate affable ass.

The quality of light, the slightly washed out color of the film, heightens the feeling the movie was actually made during the era when it is supposed to be happening. The soundtrack is nothing less than awesome. It is more than a feel-good movie. It is a movie that feels good.

James Combs, “Nice Dream If You Can Get It” (Disingenuous Records, 2004)

Chances are you’ve never heard of James Combs, but you have heard his music. His tracks have appeared in TV shows such as “Six Feet Under,” “ Entourage,” “Dexter,” “Gossip Girls,” and “True Blood,” as well as the documentary "American Teen.” Combs has a solid reputation among fellow musicians and in the industry because of his diverse appeal. Fans of The New Pornographers will discover, in Combs, a hidden gem in the folk-pop arena. Likewise, devotees of 4AD artists like Lush and Throwing Muses will find themselves musically satiated. His 2004 release, “Nice Dream If You Can Get It” is the perfect example of what Combs does best.

The opening track, “Okay, It’s Sunday,” begins with a riff that is highly suggestive of Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and, indeed, Combs’ characters bear an equally strong resemblance to the Velvet’s broken Bohemians. Despite the train-wreck “Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll” lifestyle, or even because of it, these characters possess a shambling, haggard beauty that Combs clearly has a soft spot for. There is a gentle lassitude in these musical portraits of lost souls. “Low Go Getter” paints this picture even more clearly, a psychedelia-dusted song about two people so entrenched in just being cool, that all they can do is look at the stars.

Combs turns his laser-like powers of observation on himself in “Lazy Son.” A repetitive, needling guitar sounds like a nagging voice of self-deprecation, while the refrain “I still love you now” provides the counter-point in a battle for self-acceptance. Combs’ facility for taking the ugly or awkward and wrapping it in beauty is preternatural. With lyrics such as “ She’s got you on the chair/And her hair falls around your legs/She’s got you on the chair/What a shy, shy boy you make,” “Soft As Vapor” would seem to be the most ethereal song about fellatio ever written.

While the themes in “Nice Dreams” are dark and adult, the lush arrangements create an arresting dissonance. Combs takes a variety of musical approaches in his depiction of the quest for the hipster impossible dream. There are ebullient cabaret-like dance numbers, acoustic folk numbers, as well as psychedelic-synth melodies. Combs rough falsetto, which has earned him numerous comparisons to Elliott Smith, gives even the most caustic story a dreamy quality. His voice is like a raw nerve wrapped in angora. Combs is also very adept at choosing collaborators, like Bryony Atkinson of Merrick, who complement his distinctive vocals flawlessly.

In addition to his solo work Combs has three side projects, including the Honneycombs with his sister April Combs Mann. The Honneycombs music recently appeared on an episode of the TV show “Men of a Certain Age.” James Combs is possibly the hardest working, most successful rocker you’ve never heard of. If you like to be in on the best kept secrets, check him out..

Spider Baby (Directed by Jack Hill, 1964, released 1968)

“Spider Baby” is difficult to classify. You really have to see to believe it. It is a lovable horror film. It is a horrifying comedy. It is macabre and grotesque, but in a way that gives you the warm fuzzies.

This 1964 B-movie, written and directed by Jack Hill (Foxy Brown, The Switchblade Sisters) tells the story of the Merrye family who suffer from a genetic disorder called “Merrye’s Syndrome”, as it only afflicts members of their family. This disorder causes its victims to regress mentally, beginning at the age of ten, to a pre-human cannibalistic state. In other words, they become monsters.

As the film opens there are only three surviving members of the clan, the teenage children of Titus Merrye: Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) who wears little-girl party dresses and hates everything, Virginia (Jill Banner) who likes to play “Spider” and eats insects, and Ralph (Sid Haig) who is the oldest and most regressed - a 6-foot, thumb sucking toddler. They are savage innocents who murder and play jump rope with equal enthusiasm. These three are cared for by Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), the family chauffer, who tries to keep both the “children” and the neighbors safe from harm.

Virginia plays “Spider” with the mailman, wrapping him in her “web” and stinging him with her “stingers”, two butcher knives, while Bruno is away. The letter the “juicy bug” carried brings dire news. Enter the outside world in the form of two distant cousins, Peter (Quinn Redeker) and Emily Carol Ohmart) Howe. They arrive at the Merrye mansion with their lawyer and his secretary, intending to claim the Merrye fortune, including the mansion, for themselves. Inevitably, carnage and wackiness ensues. The interlopers are no match for the madmen.

The violence in “Spider Baby” is always off-screen. The film relies on the weird characters and their bizarre behaviors to hold the viewer’s attention. It succeeds wonderfully. It is shot in black and white, giving it the look of film noir, with deep shadows and melodramatic lighting. The mansion itself is a testament to insanity. It looks abandoned and dusty. Cobwebs hang from the furniture and the curtains hang in tatters. Dolls are impaled on the walls and in one room a bloody handprint can be glimpsed on the wall.

The acting is surprisingly good for a B-movie. Chaney gives one of the finest performances of his career. He is completely sincere in his portrayal of Bruno, a man who is compassionate of the plight of his wards, and desperate to keep them from becoming laboratory freaks. Jill Banner as the “Spider Baby” is a perfect blend of naiveté, seduction, and menace. Veteran B-movie actor Sid Haig utters not one word of dialogue, but communicates volumes with a combination of grunts and over-sized facial expressions. He is a cuddly pinhead, reminiscent of Tod Browning’s “Freaks.”

It is clear from the beginning that things will not end well for our monster children; monsters must always die in the end. But death, when it comes, has no sting. The children meet it with innocent anticipation, a new game to play, and Bruno has only a shrug for the life he is sacrificing to keep the family together.

The logic of this film belongs wholly to itself. With such catchphrases as, “Ralph is allowed to eat anything he catches,” although the family is vegetarian, the audience knows that anything goes in the Merrye world. Chaney sings the title song, which is an oddball spoken-word ditty that warns, "Frankenstein, Dracula, and even the Mummy are sure to wind up in somebody's tummy." It’s a ghoulish, good time.

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist (St Martins Griffin, 2008)

John Lindquist’s Let The Right One In is a breath of fresh vampire air in an oversaturated mythos. Set in a Swedish suburb in 1982, Blackeberg is “not a place that developed organically…everything was carefully planned from the outset.” Peopled with alcoholics, absentee parents, and schoolyard bullies, Blackeberg is a town where hope goes to die. The relentless cold grayness of winter in Sweden heightens the isolation of the characters. These are Thoreau’s people, living lives of quiet desperation. Let The Right One In rises above the horror genre in its sympathetic, yet unflinching, exploration of victimization in all its aspects.

Twelve year-old Oskar is a victim. School is a daily gauntlet Oskar runs to avoid Jonny, the bully who calls him “Piggy” and forces him to squeal and grunt before shoving his head in the toilet. At home, Oskar enjoys a vivid and violent fantasy life, stabbing trees that stand in for his schoolyard torturers. In the middle of the night, a girl and her guardian move into Oskar’s building. Twelve year-old Eli doesn’t go to school. In fact, she only comes out of her apartment at night. She smells like death, and she is completely unaffected by the winter cold. The two outsiders begin a friendship that turns into a love story.

Lindquist’s vampire is a far cry from Murnau’s repugnant Nosferatu, or the brooding beauties of the Twilight series. Twelve year-old Eli is not a blasphemy like Nosferatu, crosses and holy water do not burn her. She is a victim who survives. Her humanity is stolen in rituals that are only revealed in fragments of dream. Like the town of Blackeberg, she did not develop organically. She has been taken out of the natural order, recreated as a predator of those who were her own kind. But unlike most modern vampire tales, Lindquist does not force his creation, or his readers, to suffer through page after page of self-loathing. Eli is simply what she was made to be. Eli’s guardian, Hakan, is a pedophile who murders for Eli in the hopes that Eli will return his love. But Hakan also uses his position as procurer as a weapon, sometimes starving Eli to force her into physical acts of the love she denies him.

In the end, Hakan’s devotion to Eli prompts him to disfigure himself, when a murder goes wrong, so that the police are not led to Eli’s door. Lindquist does not take the easy way out in his portrait of Hakan. He is not a one-dimensional monster. He is a man filled with self-loathing, both for his role as murderer and as pedophile. He grieves for his life before Eli. Lindquist’s sympathetic handling of even this vilest of human monsters characterizes what takes this book out of genre and places it squarely in the category of damn good fiction.

Human monsters abound in Blackeberg. Hakan, Jonny the bully, and Tommy the fence are just some of the worst. The aimless alcoholics who hang out at a local Chinese restaurant, the teachers who offer Oskar no respite from his tormenters, and his alcoholic and helpless father make it easy to see why Oskar and Eli turn to each other for comfort. They have no one else. Their love brings them a certain dark salvation and freedom from isolation and victimization. The ending is as happy as vengeance and vampires can make it.

A Note on Donna Seaman

books critic, Booklist & WLUW’s Open Books

Donna Seaman is passionate about what she does; she’s in it for life and she’d do it for free. In a recent round-table on the construction of effective arts criticism and the future of the professional critic, Seaman, a critic for Booklist, details why this is the life for her.

“Passion first and foremost.” Seaman says that this is the crucial ingredient in the recipe for a good critic. The impulse to deconstruct a piece of art is an irresistible urge. Rather than just listening to a song or reading a book, the true critics are compelled to ask themselves, “What does it all mean?” Seaman paints arts criticism in the colors of vocation, rather than mere occupation. These are people who experience their art on a higher level than the rank and file. Even more importantly, true critics have the urge to advocate. They are the zealots, the diehards, and the true believers without whom the dark and dusty corners of the art world would remain dark and dusty. They are the pioneers; they blaze the trails for listening and reading and watching new artists. Why are they able to influence the public’s taste? Seaman explains that, a critic has to be able to imagine many responses, and see the experience in a greater context.”

Passion and self-awareness will lead the true critic to self-education and expertise. Passion for the art will drive the critic to ongoing education, whether formal or informal. This allows one to write with a voice of authority that builds a relationship of trust between critic and reader. Seaman is unequivocal in her assertion that the critic has a responsibility to the reader, to write with integrity and honesty. “When you slam something, you have to be sharp and precise.” In other words, back it up with specific examples. Seaman seems to respect her readers, saying that she hopes they like to be pushed. She is not insular in her approach to her work. She reads the work of her peers, both those she agrees with and those who challenge her. She approaches her work from as global a perspective as one can, when the job is to deliver personal opinions. She says that she is “always hoping for clarity.” Donna Seaman is a critic who cares about her readers, is considerate of them and appreciates the fact that they seek out her perspective.

On the future of professional criticism, Seaman seems as bemused as the rest of the panel. Without the art of editing, online criticism is in danger of losing a good deal of precision of language, not to mention quality of writing. However, it does offer critics the possibility of a more intimate relationship with their readers, as well as offering new critics an open and immediate venue for their work. In the end, Seaman, along with her fellow panelists, agree that, for them, the mantle of critic is one that they will wear as long as there is art to be reviewed.