I Am Not The Real Mendoza is one year old! It all started with a short story, The Host, which was appropriately spooky for a newsletter that launched in Halloween. Since then, there’s been six stories and six accompanying essays, as well as a not-poem and six editions of Me Gusta (something’s going with the number six?) To kick off the celebrations and get in the Halloween mood, re-read The Host, and then get spooked by these three stories! (Also, throw me a treat?)
A TV show: The Terror
The pitch: what beings as an Indiana Jones-type narrative ends up interrogating the imperialistic tendencies that drove OG explorers, with horrifying results.
Me gusta porque: this AMC miniseries is based on the real-life journey of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, sent by the British Crown to course the Northwest Passage in the Artic. I’ve always loved adventure stories, but this show takes that interest and turns it on its head: the expedition is populated by men to whom this endeavor means very different things, and ambition, stubbornness, and greed take precedence over the wonders of the natural world. As in real life, the enterprise suffers setback after horrific setback, and if that isn’t enough to terrify you (there’s positioning, freezing, and starving galore), the show adds a supernatural element to keep you on your toes. It takes its time to get going, but believe me: stick around for two or three episodes and you won’t be able to stop, even if that means going to bed scared.
You had me at Jared Harris! I didn’t mention him last week in Mad Men because Christina Hendricks took precedence, but I’ve been a fan of Harris since his Fringe days. He’s especially good on this, playing a reluctant commander with a drinking problem. I have to stan!
What about season two? It looked pretty interesting (it focuses on the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII), but my friend’s dad dropped AMC from his cable package before I could watch. Now that it’s on Hulu I might give it a try!
Where? I just said it… on Hulu.
I’ve already seen it! Then read The Lost City of Z, a New Yorker article that follows its writer’s journey to retrace the steps of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British explorer who vanished in the Amazon forest in 1925. Fawcett was obsessed with finding “Z,” a fabled city he believed existed deep in the jungle and proved the existence of another Aztec or Incan-like civilization in the region. It’s just as engrossing and horrific as The Terror, and would make for a great season three of The Terror (there is a 2016 movie, but I didn’t find it as exciting as the article).
A movie: La Llorona
The pitch: a popular Latin American horror story reenacted by the perpetrators and victims of Indigenous genocide.
Me gusta porque: not to be confused with the American The Conjuring spinoff, this Guatemalan movie made quite the splash when it premiered at TIFF. La Llorona focuses on a fictionalized version of General Efraín Ríos Montt, who was convicted and then acquitted of crimes against humanity for the genocide of Guatemala’s Mayan people, and I initially feared the movie might be more of a Wikipedia entry than a film meant to terrify its audience. I was happily wrong: director Jayro Bustamante cleverly revisits the myth of the Weeping Woman who cries for her dead children by focusing on the General’s family, who, because of the protests stemming from his acquittal, find themselves trapped in the house with the Indigenous servants that used to cater to their every need. Slowly but untelentingly, the family’s relationship with the help takes a turn first to the confrontational, then to the horrific. You can tell how it’ll end pretty much from the start, but the journey into each character’s psyche—their guilt, anger, and desire for vengeance—will keep you awake for a couple of weeks.
Should I see the American one as well? Absolutely, but for completely different reasons—it’s the sort of movie one gets high for and watches with friends while picking apart every single plot hole and laughing at the “scares.” I really enjoyed it! AND it stars Patricia Velásquez, whom played Anck-su-namun in The Mummy, one of my favorite childhood movies—so that alone is reason to check it out.
Where? Amazon Prime.
I’ve already seen it! The non-horrific version of this story is Roma, but since the goal here is to be scared, may I direct you to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth? It’s La Llorona’s more famous cousin, more dark fantasy than horror (think Tim Burton) but similarly tackling political terror—in this case, the violence of the Spanish civil war, as seen through the eyes of a girl whose mother is dating a Generalísimo type, and who may or not be a reincarnated princess from a fantastical underground world.
A book: Rosemary’s Baby
The pitch: the Get Out before Get Out (Jordan Peele has named Rosemary as a direct inspiration), focusing on the patriarchy instead of racism, that spawned a thousand stories with Satan as the Big Bad.
Me gusta porque: Ira Levin (who also wrote the equally famous feminist parable The Stepford Wives) said that he had the idea for this book when he realized that pregnancy is the ultimate suspense device—you’ve got nine months of wait before the reveal—and that the choice to make it Satan’s baby was incidental, with another possibility being aliens. Either he was being facetious, or he’s very good at turning a random choice into a central concept; the book is a masterful entry in the “deal with the devil” genre. But I see his point: the possibility of an evil witches’ coven living in the same building as sweet Rosemary and the aspiring actor she’s married to is just as terrifying as the fact that no one will listen to her when she complains that there’s something seriously wrong with her pregnancy. She has no recourse but to do as she’s told by her husband, her doctor, and just about anyone with any sort of societal power , and isn’t that very diabolical? For a book written by a man in the 1960s, Rosemary’s Baby handles subjects like marital rape and gaslighting with a nuance that’s ahead of its time, yet manages to never feel preachy. Just writing about it makes me want to read it again, but I’m afraid of getting scared—I live alone now, which means I’d have to handle any rape-y satanic cults in my building by myself.
Can I just watch the movie instead? I actually saw it before reading the book, and I was shocked at how modern it felt (it came out around the same time as Mary Poppins, which no one can convince me isn’t an insufferable slog). While it’s a very faithful adaptation, you lose access to Rosemary’s inner monologue, which makes the book more compelling and scary. But Mia Farrow is great in it (Sinatra divorced her for taking the gig—dude was not afraid to live up to the book’s idea of men), so I’d say do both!
Where? It’s my dream to edit a deluxe annotated hardcover with a lot of extras, but until that happens you can get a regular edition from Simon & Schuster.
I already read it! Then absolutely read Stepford Wives! It’s shorter, funnier, and just as good. It made such an mark in popular culture that its title has entered the lexicon—how many novels can say that?
Shameless self-promotion
My interview with Eliana Pipes is up on YouTube and you should watch it, at the very least to find out which fast food chain she’d do a branded meal with.
Adam Szymkowicz interviewed me for his I Interview Playwrights series, and I did not hold back (in other words: I was my regular self).