Down on the farm

[dreadedcandiru2]

As I’ve told you before, John and Elly seem to have it fixed into their tiny, self-serving brains that forcing their children to spend time on a farm is somehow magically supposed to cure whatever perceived imperfection that most bothers them. They, of course, vary in what imperfection needs to be addressed: Elly wants to cure her children of liking people that threaten her and John needs obedience from his children to silence the dying voice in his head that tells him that he’s an insensitive, selfish, dishonest, entitled worm who never did a God-damned thing to earn the respect that he demands.

As with all of their other great big schemes, this redemption-through-exposure-to-horses thing came a rather ridiculous cropper. Instead of the wise farmhands who’d guide their children on the path to righteousness television led them to expect, Mike and Liz found the sort of people John spent his youth plotting to get away from: abrasive loudmouths who exist to cut down tall poppies like train-obsessed dentists and the rocket-jawed wives they married. Not only that, there’s nothing to do and no one to do it, they can’t talk to their friends and any attempt they get to find a sympathetic ear is smirkingly rebuffed by their cousin-turned-babysitter.

The end result of this is to make them amplify and distort the hardships of country living. Were we to look at Dan and Bev’s place, we’d see a rather homey little spread that’s almost out of a postcard; Mike and Liz shudder in horror at the memory because they remember it as being the holdover from the late Victorian era depicted in Stone Season. If you’ve ever wondered why a farm in the early fifties was described in terms that made you think that Harvey Rood took Sheilaaarrrrrghhh back to the 1880s in his time machine, you’ve got John and Elly to thank for it.

Comments

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

Yeah, really, what was that? I mean, I remember back in third grade when the teacher would assign us to write a "pioneer story" about the westward immigration of the 19th cent., some kids would be ridiculed for writing about how they traveled by car. "Stone Season" was the same thing only in reverse: portraying a sort of Laura Ingalls Wilder horror movie almost 100 years too late. And no editor said, "This is child's work. Into the circular file with it!"

As for Exile Farm and John's and Elly's motives: yes, what you said. It didn't build their character; it simply warehoused the kids for a few weeks to prevent their going to Second Base with whomever they were dating. I believe they call that sort of thing "jail." Or "being on time out," anyway.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

And no editor said, "This is child's work. Into the circular file with it!"

I know that you don't follow the mess that Batiuk made of Funky Winkerbean but the plotline has been consumed by a similar insane fantasy; most of the story is about how the author avatar succeeded in selling his book of cancer, ineptitude, melodrama and despair to an eager audience.

As for Exile Farm and John's and Elly's motives: yes, what you said. It didn't build their character; it simply warehoused the kids for a few weeks to prevent their going to Second Base with whomever they were dating.

What flips me is that the imbeciles thought that they'd have been run out of town in disgrace if Mike and Martha and/or Rhetta did the horizontal tango without benefit of marriage; my guess is that most people would be surprised not that Mike's love interest of the week had lost her virginity but that she'd willingly had sex with genetic filth like the Pattersons.

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

I don't reckon it was so much the possibility of social disgrace, as it was just the principle that premarital sex is BAD. Hell, sex in general is so awful that they can't even tell April about it.

I've got a novel coming out this fall, and I'm painfully aware that it's not going to be much of a seller and that some people will hate it. There's really nothing romantic about writing for publication; it's a sickness.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

One wonders why it is that the two of them are so afraid of their bodies; my inner jerk thinks that it might be that since any animal can rut, having sex reduces them somehow.

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

That's part of it. Also, for them, sex IS icky. John kind of likes it because for some reason it's marginally more fun than beating off, but Elly doesn't like it at all, and just does it every month or so because it's her duty. I can't imagine that sex with John would be anything but an ordeal, though.