Book Review and Film Review...Under the Skin and Puss in Boots

[shadowkat]

After wandering off to the Farmer's market to buy veggies, milk and fruit, I finished Michael Faber's Under the Skin which is a remarkable science fiction satire of a contemporary world gone a muck. It is flawed in places. But overall a good read and better than most. In some respects I prefer it to Philip K. Dick's somewhat nihilistic tour de force, The Three Stigmata of Palmer K. Eldritch.

The story is about Issery, a woman who works for Vess Industries. Her job is to roam the roads of Northern Scotland, picking up muscle bound male hitch-hikers - the hunkier the better, she passes anyone who is thin, too fat, tiny, or sickly, which is the vast majority. Through the first 100-154 pages, we aren't told exactly what Issery is or her nefarious purpose. Just the reasons she is doing it. Faber focuses more on the why in his novel and the psychology of his protagonist than the what, which is given in bits and pieces. I figured it within the first 50 pages, but I've also read and seen this story done before in various guises.

The novel is told almost entirely from Issery's point of view. Third person close. The only times we veer away from her perspective are when she picks up her hitchers, then we see the story through their point of view, but only for about two pages and only in direct correlation to Issery.

Through the course of the story, we learn why Issery is doing what she is doing, and what it is doing to her. It's an apt satire of how corporations specifically factories dehumanize those who work for them. How the bottom line becomes more important that life.
And the owners value inane pleasures and money over anything else. Justifying their actions with platitudes that god is dead, we are human and the masters of the universe, or
top of the food chain. The inability to believe in anything outside of your own body and self, and to feel the worth of anything outside of your own pleasure is emphasized in this tale.

And if that was the only thing going on here...I'd say it was an okay book and not all that remarkable, and possibly a tad on the preachy side. But it is not. There's more going on and Faber doesn't really provide any answers.

There are no good guys or bad guys here, well with the possible exception of the Vess Corporation, which becomes creepier as the story proceeds and eventually concludes. Although it is strongly suggested that Issery has inadvertently doomed the corporation's future success with her latest efforts. Faber drops various hints that their product line has been contaminated.

And as much as the story is about the evil corporation that looms in the distance, it is also at its root about male/female relations. Throughout the book, Issery is made to feel isolated amongst her own kind, the sole female or other, and amongst the male hitchers she pickes up. She is either an object of pity or sexual desire. And Issery, herself, relates to the men in much the same way - she either sees them as the enemy or a means to an end.
Her world is filled with men. It's not until the end that women are mentioned.

Through Issery, Faber examines the gender powerplays, depicting the gross power-imbalance between the genders. Issery discusses the promises the elite made to her from the place she'd originated. How they promised to keep her from the dreaded Estates. That she was too lovely to be doomed to that existence. Yet, she ended up there anyway, until Vess Industries rescued her, another male operated firm, only to surgically alter her so that she could perform work for them in another place. Work that slowly drives her insane.

Faber depicts how abuses of power can destroy. At one point, one of his characters, a hitcher thinks to himself...how much easier things would be if we could come to one another as just two animals, without all the trappings of so-called civilization attached.
Another hitcher, much later, hisses to Issery, "It would be best if we left the world to the animals".

One might draw from both of these statements a misanthropic sentiment. But I'm not so sure it is misanthropic, as it is cautionary. Like most satires it is exaggerated in places to prove a point. But unlike some, the characters are more developed and as a result the story feels less preachy.

I definitely like this writer's style, and have decided to try a sample of another of his books, the highly acclaimed historical novel, "The Crimson and the Petal".

Also watched Puss in Boots last night. It felt like a parody of Antonia Banderas and Salma Hayek's Richard Ricardo Westerns...ending with Once Upon a Time in Mexico meets Mother Goose by way of Jack in the Beanstalk.

I'm not, as you know, a fan of parody. It tends to bore me. I don't know why. It just does.
Shrek was entertaining for a bit, then it got old. Same with Puss in Boots...it was entertaining for a bit then it got old.

That said, even though I saw the twist coming a mile away, it is a mildly clever set-up.
Humpty Dumpty and Puss in Boots as brothers, with Humpty hunting the legendary Goose that lays the Golden Eggs. Banderas does the voice-over quite well, and was the only voice over actor I recognized. I couldn't tell is Kitty South-Paws was Salma Hayek or Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The animation was pretty much along the same lines as Shrek - good, not great.

Overall - fun movie in places, slow and plodding in others.

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Overall - fun movie in places, slow and plodding in others.

That was pretty much my reaction although Petzi Sis ran out and bought herself a copy.