Tag: Anthony Reiner

Character from Carrion

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Reiner and the totalitarian mindset

I’ve been thinking about Adam’s main opponent Anthony Reiner, specifically what makes him such a willing exponent of prohibition? As I pondered in the comments of my previous post, “I’m trying to figure out the mechanism of his adherence to the cause. Why does he react so violently to Adam’s need to save Christine?”

Reiner and the totalitarian mindset

Reading back over it I realised, Reiner reacts to Adam’s decision to help Christine as a betrayal of the cause, a reaction rooted in Reiner’s totalitarian mindset, a mindset that has no tolerance for ambiguity.

When he encounters the kind of complexity offered by Adam’s willingness to help Christine, he tries to impose his pre-existing frames of reference on the decision, reducing it to an us or them ultimatum.

Going back to Alfonso Montuori paper “How to make enemies and influence people” it’s interesting to note the kind of personality the totalitarian mindset attracts. Consistent attempts to suppress “complexity through maladaptive simplicity is characteristic of the closed-mindedness of the authoritarian personality”.

Montuori’s characterisation of the totalitarian mindset, as an authoritarian personality, fits perfectly with description I have of Reiner. For Reiner ambiguous situations cause anxiety, a stress he copes with by adhering to “a clear set of rules and regulations… imposed by whoever is in charge”.

While this might be described by John Truby as his psychological weakness, a weakness hurting only himself, it doesn’t describe his moral weakness, the weakness that is hurting at least one other person. It is clear to me now that Reiner’s moral weakness is explicit in his framing of drug users as an external threat. As Montuori notes “the perception of an out-group as a threat and an enemy is the glue that holds this (totalitarian) mindset together”. A distinction that’s at the very core of Carrion.

In this fiction, as in reality, drug users are universally defined as a threat, blamed for everything from social unrest to criminality. The prohibitionist routinely reduces the drug issue to a simple black and white choice, “if we sort out the drug problem everything will be all-right”.

In Carrion the threat from users becomes even more acute when they are attacked by the insects. It’s no coincidence that the government are behind the release of the insects. It serves two functions, first it’s an attack on the drug using population, uniting people against an identifiable enemy. Second it creates a crisis that allows drug users to be targeted for persecution.

In Carrion users are not only a threat to public order, now they’re a threat to public health, a threat that needs to be dealt with in the expedient, harshest, terms possible. Although it’s interesting to remember that when Hitler was asked whether he thought Jews should be annihilated he replied no. If we didn’t have them “we should have to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.”

In trying to answer the question, what makes Reiner such a willing exponent of prohibition, it’s become apparent that his willingness to persecute drug users is his moral weakness, a manifestation of the totalitarian mindset, embedded in the authoritarian personality, that is his psychological weakness.

https://darrinnightingale.com/2012/08/30/weakness-and-need-and-desire/

Now all I have to do is work out his need, what he “must fulfil within himself in order to have a better life”.

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Reiner and the totalitarian mindset

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Anthony Reiner, and struggling to understand what makes him such a willing exponent of prohibition?

Within Carrion prohibition is the product of a totalitarian regime. Totalitarianism is “a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life whenever necessary”.

The question I’m really asking is, what attracts a person to totalitarianism?

To answer that question we need to understand, what allows totalitarianism to flourish? The short answer is uncertainty. In his paper “How to make enemies and influence people” Alfonso Montuori characterises the “totalitarian mindset” as a response to the stress of contemporary pluralism.

Living in complex times full of ambiguity and uncertainty, we feel threatened, and when we’re backed into a corner we have a tendency to succumb to “simplistic, black-and-white solutions”. Montuori goes on to note that “individuals all over the world have sought relief from the uncertainty of a pluralistic world in the arms of absolute belief systems of a religious fundamentalist and/or political/nationalistic nature”.

Within the world of Carrion, the threat posed by drugs is lightning rod, a life-threatening danger, that allows the government to “drastically reduce ambiguity and complexity”. The forces of authority instinctively “fall back on a form of very simplistic… totalitarian thinking”.

Just as the Nazi’s persecuted the Jews, so the prohibitionist persecutes the drug user.

(I realise that this is only half finished but I’ve taken this idea as far as I can for today. My thoughts need further clarification so will have to wait for another post.)

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The iceberg opponent

While skipping through Anatomy of Story by John Truby, I landed on a section called The Iceberg Opponent.

Truby argues, to make your antagonist as dangerous as possible, you should create a hierarchy of opponents, and “hide the hierarchy from the hero and the audience”.

This worries me slightly because Adam’s opponents aren’t really hidden from him. The only element really hidden from him is the true nature of prohibition, and I’m not sure if that’s enough?

Adam’s main opponent is Reiner, he wants to stop Adam achieving his desire, saving Christine. As the plot develops, Adam encounters ever more hostile forces, police, military, insects. These are less hidden opponents, and more a hierarchy of force.

Why would they hide?

As I’ve noted in an earlier post “prohibitionist’s aren’t shy about telling us they think users should be killed”. Truby urges you to “always look for the deepest conflict that your hero and opponent are fighting over”.

The antagonist’s antagonist

In “The antagonist’s antagonist” I note Adam and Reiner are actually fighting over the kind of society they live in. Which version will prosper? “Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam or will it be a society of security demanded by Reiner?”

So this is a fight for freedom or security.

If you dig even deeper security is actually an analogue of power. I often quip prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. It’s a aphoristic way of saying prohibition is a mechanism used to control the population.

Adam’s real opponent, the opponent hidden at the deepest part of the iceberg, is actually power. Not just any power, the power to destroy an entire class of people, because they don’t fit their view of how you should live in the world.

What Reiner is actually fighting for is tyranny.

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The antagonist’s antagonist

In an earlier post “Adam’s opponents” I mentioned John Truby‘s notion of four cornered opposition.

Adam’s opponents

The strategy increases the depth of a story, by increasing the number of opponents the protagonist has to deal with. It makes all the characters more rounded, because he’s forced to deal with the central problem of the story, from at least three other points of view.

For Carrion I’ve designed a four cornered opposition which places Adam in conflict with Reiner. They’re the mirror of each other, similar in many ways, but because Adam decides to save Christine they become mortal enemies.

Reiner is the prototypical prohibitionist fighting with Adam over the kind of society they live in, which version of society will prosper? Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam, or a society of security demanded by Reiner?

Adam’s second opponent is Christine. Although she’s his sister and it’s his attempts to save her that put him conflict with Reiner, they’re still in conflict with each other. While she articulates the point of view of the drug user in the story, deep down their opposition is about how he treats his younger sibling. Is he able to respect her point of view, treat her as an equal, behave more compassionately, less patriarchally towards her?

The final character in this four cornered opposition is Sexton. He’s not only in opposition with Adam and Christine but also Reiner. He is the binary opposite to Reiner, the antagonist’s antagonist, articulating the dealer’s point of view in the story, I think? When I fist envisioned Sexton he was the stereotypical drug dealer. I had in my head the many incarnation of drug dealers in cinema, the hapless career criminal of Henry Hill in Goodfellas. He get’s high on his own supply, and drops himself straight into witness protection. I thought of the accent wielding, coke snorting, gun touting nihilist Tony Montana in Scarface. Before considering the calculating, ruthless, out for profit businesspersons of Carlos and Helena Ayala portrayed in Traffic.

The thing is, none of these interpretation of a drug dealers represent my understanding of who Sexton is in Carrion. It wasn’t until I realised Sexton has to be more optimistic that I started to get a handle on who he really is. A large part of that realisation came while reading Jack London’s “The Iron Heel”. A dystopian fiction about the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. Completed in 1908 London’s novel is based on the fictional “Everhard Manuscript” written by Avis Everhard, hidden and subsequently found centuries later. Added to this manuscript are a series of footnotes written by fictional scholar Anthony Meredith around 2600 AD. It’s a Marxist interpretation of capital told as a love story between Avis and Ernest Everhard. Avis is the middle class daughter of an academic whose eyes are opened to the plight of the proletariat at the hands of the plutocracy. Ernest Everhard is a hero of the working man who is martyred by the oligarchy as he attempts to progress the revolution and progress society to a socialist future. He’s a smart character with a clear view of the world and what he is fighting for.

Reading The Iron Heel made me realise that Sexton needs to have something of the Ernest Everhard’s about him. Adam’s not going to respond to the hapless actions of a character like Henry Hill. He’s not going to listen to the nihilistic rants of a Tony Montana. The ruthless logic of a businessman like Carlos Ayala won’t persuade him to see the world differently. Adam’s only going to respond to someone who is able to see what’s happening and articulate enough to communicate it. He has to be intelligent, articulate, and willing to take direct action.

I’m a little worried that he might come across as unbelievable, somewhat fanciful, an idealist. I know it’s a risk, but take solace in having encountered one or two character who are evangelical about drugs, who take pride in proselytising the grace offered by psychotropic substances.

Carrion needs Sexton, it needs him to show Adam how to live in the world.

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Adam’s opponents

Recently I plotted Carrion using a variation of “The Board” described by Blake Snyder in his book Save the Cat.

Working the board has thrown up several issues relating to Adam’s opponents. One of the key problems I realise needs pinning down is Adam’s conflict with prohibition, how does a prohibitionist find himself on the wrong side of prohibition?

To understand this more fully I find myself going back to reaffirm what I think Carrion is about. I take the view, expressed by John Truby in his book Anatomy of Story, that a story is a moral argument. “Whenever you present a character using means to reach an end, you are presenting a moral predicament, exploring the question of right action, and making a moral argument about how best to live.” To make this argument the hero needs a collection of opponents (and allies) who force him to deal with the central moral problem.

To find the best opponents for Adam I first need to recognise the question at the heart of Carrion, why are drugs prohibited? The usual reason given for drug prohibition is public health. Drugs are dangerous, they cause harm, so should be banned. For me this throws up at least one glaring hypocrisy, why aren’t drugs like cigarettes and alcohol subject to the same prohibitions as MDMA? Both cigarettes and alcohol have significant health risks associated with their use, yet they are both freely available.

For me the distinction between drugs that are banned and those that are not is arbitrary, and because it arbitrary, it’s inevitably motivated by something else, something entirely political. Prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. Boiled down to its essence, prohibition is a form of oppression. An oppression that is inherently cruel, and demands the destruction of anyone who opposes it.

Faced with this insight it seems to me Adam’s only moral action in the story is to resist prohibition. This leads him to become an insurgent in ensuing civil war. For his arc to be fulfilled his opponents need to articulate the conflicting points of view present in the war on drugs.

Adam’s opponent is prohibition, but prohibition is too nebulous a concept on its own. We need to see it as something concrete, both as an institution and as a character. Actually it needs to be seen through a number of characters on all sides of the issue.

Prohibition organises society against those who take drugs. It’s the laws prohibiting use. The “Code 10” laws that stop convicted users from getting the medical attention. Sanctions imposed on those who help users. Social pressure best described by the maxim, if you’re not with us you’re against us.

The institution of prohibition are only the backdrop to Carrion, what Truby describes as the story world. Its unrelenting cruelty is personified by the drug eating insects that attack users. They are the ever-present sanction prohibition imposes on the citizenry, they can’t be argued with, articulating prohibitions intransigence, you take drugs you die.

As an opponent, the insects attack Adam indirectly through Christine. While they force him to take specific actions that contributes to the moral argument of Carrion, Adam’s real opponent, the opponent who challenges him directly, is Reiner. He’s the “character who wants to keep the hero from achieving his desire”. He’s the one who tries to stop Adam saving Christine. As Truby points out “a true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire but is competing with the hero for the same goal”.

This point throws up a question, what are Adam and Reiner really competing over? Adam’s desire is to save Christine, Reiner wants to see Christine dead, but he knows the insects will do that for him, he could just wait, let them do their job.

If Adam and Reiner aren’t competing for Christine’s life, what are they fighting over? Adam’s desire represents a threat to Reiner, it confirms his fear, there’s someone out there willing to challenge prohibition. At the core of the conflict is a fight over the the kind of world they live in. They’re fighting to have either a free society or a secure society.

One of the primary arguments for prohibition is that drugs represent a threat, not just to public health but to our security. Users are dangerous, dealers are criminals, drugs tear at the very fabric of society, and prohibition is the tool that keeps us safe.

The irony is, prohibition is more of a threat to our public safety than drug use.

What if prohibition doesn’t protect public health, what if it’s a form of oppression? The choice to take drugs amounts to demand for freedom over security. Deep down they’re fighting for a world of freedom or oppression.

Another of Adam’s opponents is his sister Christine. If Reiner articulates the voice of prohibition Christine gives us the users point of view. Her strength in the story is her ability to attack Adam’s prejudices. Without her Adam would not begin to see the dangers of prohibition, he would not see the oppression. His desire to save his sister is his call to arms. Whatever he may think of drugs and those who take them, Christine makes him see prohibition as something that need to be challenged.

The final opponent to challenge Adam is Sexton, prohibition as seen by the dealer. In an earlier post “Adam’s immoral action” I contemplated another of Truby’s tenants. “In the early part of the story the hero is losing to the opponent. He becomes desperate. As a result he starts taking immoral actions to win.”

In trying to answer this problem I asked myself the question, what kind of immoral actions does Adam take? The answer can best be summed up as “not fighting back”. Only through his conflicts with Sexton does Adam start to behave in a moral way. Structurally Sexton enters the story half way through. Adam has gone as far as he can with his initial course of action, and has failed to save Christine. Then he meets Sexton, an unrepentant drug dealer who is willing to challenge prohibition by taking the fight to them. Sexton’s actions challenge Adam’s immoral action, forces him to realise the only moral action to take against prohibition is to fight it.

Structurally this collection of characters is what Truby calls a four cornered opposition. The system not only allows the moral argument to be fully explored, each character articulating a different set of values, attacking Adam’s great weakness in a different way. By pushing each of their values to the extremities of the four cornered opposition they all become as different as possible from the others.

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Inciting event

According to Robert McKee “the inciting incident radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life”. Brian McDonald in “Invisible Ink” describes the inciting incident as a curtain moment, a theatrical term denoting the point at which the curtain is dropped between acts. In theatre you have to get the audience back after the intermission “so acts end on the highest point, when the stakes are at their most desperate”.

While both descriptions tell us that something needs to happen at this point, neither give you any real insight into what needs to happen.

Personally I lean towards John Truby’s interpretation. He calls it the inciting event and describes it as a small step that “connects need and desire”. At the beginning of the story “when weakness and need are being established, the hero is paralysed in some way. You need some kind of event to jump-start the hero out of his paralysis and force him to act”. 

Since starting the redraft of Carrion I’ve struggled to pin down the event that metaphorically takes Adam out of the frying pan and drops him in the fire. I had a whole slew of things going on in the fifteen minutes that lead up to this event.

Adam discovers Reiner murdered his daughter, prompting him to take action. Reiner making a direct attack on Christine, forcing Adam to step in to protect her. I’ve explored an infinite number of permutations based on this scenario ending with Christine attacked, forcing Adam to step in and save her.

In the end it all seemed too complicated, demanding of too much exposition. It wasn’t until I started to think about this section, and where it fits into the story, that I started to get a handle on what the inciting event should be.

Adam needs to see the kind of attack society is making on drug users, see what’s going to happen to Christine if he does nothing. Once I’d realised this, things started to fall into place. Adam and Reiner are part of the squad that is tasked with picking up drug users. When Reiner is particularly vicious in his treatment, Adam gets his first glimpse of the coming storm.

The actual event alluded me until the phrase “Adam has to choose Christine” came to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realise it’s the thing that connects Adam’s need and desire, the thing that takes him out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He’s given a choice, prohibition or Christine.

If he chooses prohibition he’s allowing her to die. From that point, Adam’s desire to save Christine kicks in, and the story is under way.

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Adam’s immoral action

I have a problem, I’ve started to get this nagging doubt that Adam’s actions aren’t going to work, they’re not proactive enough. The moral vision for the end of Carrion has Adam taking action against prohibition. He starts the screenplay a self-righteous policeman and ends a humbled rebel.

For this transformation to work, Adam can’t just take up arms against prohibition, he has to go through a series of actions that teach him the right way to act in the world. He has to take actions that teach him not only to resist prohibition but to fight it.

Structurally the problem can best be explained by paraphrasing John Truby. “In the early part of the story the hero is losing to the opponent. He becomes desperate. As a result he starts taking immoral actions to win. Other characters criticize the hero for the means he is taking. The hero defends his actions.”

I think what Truby means is only by taking immoral actions that fail can the hero learn the moral way to act. In trying to answer this problem I asked myself, what kind of immoral actions does Adam take? The answer can best be summed up as “not fighting back”. The actions he takes are immoral because it appeases prohibition.

Does the make Adam seem passive? What I’m struggling to reconcile is who Adam is at the beginning of the screenplay, and who he is at the end. The key seems to lay in his conflict with Reiner, a rampant prohibitionist who has killed his drug using daughter.

How does Adam deal with that moral dilemma?

He believes in the law so should arrest Reiner, but with the rabid hatred of drug users we’d be at the end of the screenplay before he’d begun. Alternatively the answer might lay in Adam’s desire to save Christine. Why does he want to save Christine? He wants to save her because she is his sister. Initially he thinks he’s saving her from herself, that’s why he arrests her, then from prohibition.

Alternatively a direct threat on Christine, by Reiner, would push Adam to take action, despite his overwhelming hostility to drug users. That way he’s not passive, appeasing prohibition, but taking positive action to save Christine.

The immoral action in the story world is his attempts to save a drug user.

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A treatment for Carrion

What follows is the most recent stage in a page-one redraft of Carrion. Yesterday I submitted this treatment to the Euroscript Screen Story Competition 2012 primarily because it gave me a deadline. I like deadlines, they focus the mind, give me reason to make a decision, and stop exploring the myriad of options available when developing a character and their story. When my partner read it, she thought “it’s very pro-drugs”. I don’t disagree, but I think it’s less pro-drug, and more anti-prohibition.

Carrion is a science fiction thriller about the cruelty of prohibition.

The last few years have been tough on ADAM LEIGH. First his marriage disintegrates. Torn apart by the rigours of army life. Then his parents die in a car crash. Leaving him sole guardian of a teenage sister he hardly knows. He tries to take care of CHRISTINE. Buys himself out of the army. Moves back into the family home. Takes a job with the police. But when growing pains amplify Christine’s grief into rebellion. He struggles to cope.

Outraged by her drug use. He becomes increasingly self-righteous. Until she escapes his tyranny. Finds solace with boyfriend JOHN QUAYS. Things between Adam and Christine come to a head when Adam has to sell the family home. Christine is furious. They fight. Adam snaps. Arrests Christine and John for possession.

Six months later. The war on drugs escalates. Swarms of drug eating insects are released by the government.

Seemingly unconcerned Christine and John still visit their dealer. Stock-up for the weekend’s party. They’re planning a two-fingered salute to new “Code 10” laws that will bar drug-user access to healthcare.

Meanwhile Adam arrives at the house of policeman ANTHONY REINER. His daughter is dead. Needle junked in her vein. It looks like an overdose. But when Adam finds evidence of a struggle. Suspects foul play. He does his job. And arrests Reiner.

That night. While Christine and John deal to their friends. Enjoy a hedonistic mix of music and recreational drugs. Adam questions Reiner.

By morning. An unrepentant Reiner admits he killed his daughter. Expresses an evangelical wish to see all junkies’ dead. A wish that might come true. Because when Christine and John arrive home. Rack out a two line nightcap. A swarm of insects attack them.

As the swarm rips through the city. Christine and John drag each other to the local hospital. Only to be turned away. “Code 10” laws prohibit their treatment. Threaten their arrest.

Out of options the pair hole up. Self-medicate on what’s left of their stash. But when John starts to spit blood. A desperate Christine goes to Adam for help.

Still trying to maintain the status quo. Adam puts the law first. And cruelly turns her away. But his loyalty is not reciprocated. Because later that day. The CPS judge there is “no case to answer”. And discharge Reiner. The murderer’s release leaves Adam feeling betrayed. Gives him a galvanising glimpse of the hostilities to come.

So when John delivers news of Christine’s arrest. Guilt drives him to the station where she is being held. Fighting through the riotous crowd of users. He argues with belligerent colleagues. Until they take him to see Christine. Horrified by the abuse she has suffered. He orders a doctor. But his pleas are met with threats of arrest. So when the rioters storm the station. Adam takes his chance. And helps Christine escape.

Desperately in need of pain relief. Christine persuades Adam to drive them north to their supplier. But all they find when they get there is a dead dealer. An eaten stash. And a gang of vigilantes who what to kill them.

They barely escape with their lives. Only to have John succumb to his insect infestation. When the swarm explodes from his corpse. Adam struggle to save Christine. Drags her free. Manages to contain the swarm in the car.

Devastated by John’s death. Confronted by her fate. She is inconsolable. Adam is forced to dig deep. Marshal every bit of empathy he has. And probably for the first time ever. Connects with Christine.

Determined to keep her safe. Intent on escaping the embattled city. Adam steals a car. But when they run into a police checkpoint. He defies the law. Behaves like a criminal. And flees the scene.

Pursued by the police. Hemmed in. They abandon the vehicle. Escape on foot. Find refuge at the home of Christine’s friend. But when her friends turn on Adam. Blame him for their troubles. He confounds their expectations by volunteering to go for help.

Chasing rumours there is a territory controlled by dealers. Adam leaves Christine with her friends. And heads south. Moving fast. He dodges the police. Evades vigilantes. Hides from an army patrol. Only to be captured by a gang of insurgents.

Desperate to get Christine the help she needs. He supplicates himself. Asks a junkie for help. SEXTON takes pity. Follows Adam back to the house. But as his gang triage the household. Administer doses of smack to those who need it. A police snatch squad rolls up.

The fire-fight that follows threatens to kill them all. But when Adam sacrifices himself for Christine. Runs interference with Sexton. Christine and the others escape.

When the police finally raid the house. Reiner is first to breach the barricade. First to discover their escape. First to give chase. But when Adam takes a stand. And fights Reiner. Fights prohibition. He wins a minor victory. And takes Reiner hostage.

With Reiner in tow. Adam and Sexton rendezvous with the others. Head south. Find they’re cut off by military lines. And have to take refuge in the Leigh family home.

As they plan their route through. Christine’s condition worsens. The insects inside her start to gnaw their way out. Adam watches in horror as she vomits blood. He does his best to comfort her. But he’s helpless. All he can do is cradle her in his arms. And watch her die.

Broken hearted. He reacts violently when Reiner mocks her death. Grabs a syringe of smack from Sexton. And sends Reiner to hell. Stabs him with the shot. Leaves him for the swarm of insects that explode from her corpse.

Overwhelmed by grief. Adam refuses to move. Until screams draw him outside. A woman pleads for her life as soldiers tie a noose round her neck. Loop it over a lamp-post. Yank her into the air. Adam snaps. Picks up a gun. And attacks the soldiers. When the shooting’s over. The soldiers are dead. The woman is saved. And Adam is an insurgent.

Humbled by her gratitude. Accepting solace from a junkie. He follows Sexton south. Past a defiant slogan daubed on the wall. “THEY DON’T WANT US. THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL US. WE’RE FIGHTING BACK.”