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o honor the fortieth anniversary of Days of Our Lives, we invited three of our favorite writers, all of whom happen to be addicted to the show, to break open the hourglass and sift through the sand. Lisa Carver, Neal Medlyn and John Darnielle spent a week exchanging emails about the soap opera, and although they disagreed about whether the primal force guiding Days is deception, rape or religion, they did concur on one thing: Alison Sweeney is the hottest thing on television. Lisa: Why do we grown, intelligent, emotionally functioning people continue to watch these . . . these . . . shows not built for us?
Lisa: John thinks it's all about lies. I think it's all about rape. Or at least doing it without really doing it somehow . . . whether through implanted brain chips, mistaken identity, demon possession, regular old knock-out drugs, or John's lies. Neal, what do you think life in Salem is all about? Neal: I say it's all about religion, or maybe history. Everyone makes decisions that ruin so many lives, and yet almost everything that happens is out of everyone's control. People are inexorably drawn into doing it, punishments are meted out that seem unfair, but all of it makes some sort of harsh religious-style truth. People are rewarded for ludicrous faith. Lisa: By history I believe you mean memory. By religion I believe you mean revenge.
Am I right? John: On this matter I want mainly to say that I always related to the Brady family because they were Catholics, and there was this hint of what might-once-have-been-an-issue floating around Bo and Hope's marriage. What the writers were thinking by making the guy the Catholic, though, I'll never know; any lost opportunity to think about Catholic sexuality is necessarily tragic, but Bo as sex object is deficient next to Hope, who coulda been a contender. History/memory fucking spot on! But what is history, or memory for that matter, if not the knot in which lies and truth struggle for primacy? Rather nastily at that, now that I think of it.
People are always being tested and displaing ludicrous faith — believing, for example, that Marlena wasn't a serial killer when every single shred of evidence pointed to the fact she was. Their lives are horribly dramatic and they get knocked unconscious at an incredibly unhealthy rate and they are horribly horny and they plot and scheme and try and hope, but shit still constantly explodes and implodes all around them. And then they miraculously find new love or find their way back home or find out someone they thought was dead is still alive. Religious profundity, every day at one p.m.! John: Days is ridiculous and profound in the same off-handed gesture: take the whole Stefano's-pawn plot of years ago, which featured, constantly, scenes of John Black a.k.a. Roman Brady a.k.a. Not Actually Roman At All looking into a mirror and growling/exploding "Who am I?" Here's a guy whose earliest memory is of himself as an adult with his head wrapped entirely in bandages, unable to speak, listening to some crazed pseudo-Greco dude wax creepy about some vague plot about how he's going to use the bandage man to take over the world/win the woman he loves/get revenge on a tiny New England town.
Lisa: History as memory . . . and controlling that as the means to getting laid. Scheming whores change someone's memory or history or lineage in their brain or in hospital records, even transporting them to prison islands and plastic surgering someone to take their place back home . . . all so they can have sex with them amidst the confusion. For me, I feel like Days is the only true representation of life! All the other arts and news shows worry about being real, but life isn't. It is fantastical and amazing. Everyone should take more acid. And everyone should be millionaires. And have more sex under disturbing circumstances, just for character. Neal: Yep. That's what I think Days gets about human history and religion that no one else does. Here's a hot topic! Who are you guys' favorite characters and why? Lisa: Remember when Stefano killed a man just with his evil gaze? The man backed away from it out a window to his death. Stefano strolled over to the window, glanced down, and said: "Beautiful." But my favorite character is obviously Sami Brady, because I once talked to her on the phone, and she is a hot tamale. She did that scene with Brandon where he flung spaghetti down her bosom and you could tell she — the actress, Alison Sweeney — totally loved it. You can't fake that twinkle in the eye. Dirty girl.
My favorite character was Patch, later Steve, who'd done foreign-intrigue work with Bo, wore a patch over his eye, loved fiercely, lived hard, and was pretty much Nick Adams for the daytime-TV set. He had total rock star appeal. Sami is obviously one of the best villains ever, because she crosses over from Doing Evil For My Own Perverted Reasons to Doing Evil Because That's Just Who I Am. In this way, she's the heir to Stefano DiMera, a.k.a. the best villain ever, who is ostensibly motivated by love of Dr. Marlena Evans but who is so clearly and obviously in love with his own wickedness that he's practically Margaret Hamilton. I was genuinely shocked when I found out his fake accent really was 100% fake and he was really just some dude. I think if I met him I'd feel real fear. Dude commands the elements an' shit. Neal: I should say Jan, because she kept Shawn locked in a cage for the entire summer and acted out the campiest sexual routines on him. She dressed as a cheerleader, dressed him as a baseball player, tried to take a shower with him, wore sexy outfits and did every Normal thing that one would find in a Better Sex video. Even the cage she kept him in was so standard issue. It was fascinating to see middle-class erotic turned cloying and embarrassing, and to see Sean repulsed by her doing all this stuff that should theoretically be automatic turn-ons, whether caged or not.
But really I like John Black. He is the creepiest, most painful to watch embodiment of all things Man. I find him so repellant that I am fascinated. I pretend that everyone I know wants to do it with him, because I can't think about doing it with him myself or I would die of the Squirms. His horrible acting and squinting and rasping and face-sucking kisses are just too good. He is what I think men are like, and that's why I've been afraid of being alone with them most of my life. And also probably why I did it with a bunch of them. John Black! Lisa: The ones you did it with, were they anything like John Black? Is there anyone on earth like John Black? The one eyebrow! Neal: They weren't really that much like him. There was one who made weird faces and liked to take photos of himself — he was the closest. And he wanted to do it inside a coffin. While I have no proof John Black has any goth tendencies, I think he would do it with Kate in a coffin.
Neal: I watched today. It was a development day. Nothing big happened. Dr. North knows now how he will proceed with Marlena and Kate unwittingly clued him in on it. John took a lot of audible breaths in with his nose that he never let back out again. Sami now seems to want to try and stop Nicole from sleeping with Austin and eavesdropped on Nicole's attempted garden seduction of same. Nicole thought it was an animal, but then, upon finding Sami there, said "No, it's just a bitch in heat." I think we should pool our resources and buy Alison Sweeney a T-shirt that says "Bitch In Heat" and make her wear it for us. John: Is this "Get John Excited" day or something? Lisa: I watched it today for the first time in a long time. The drama! The glamour! Just none of that gray dingy grunge of reality programming and indie rock . . . no grit, no messy, sad reality. The bad is really bad. It's operatic. And it comes packaged with ominous background music and full-face makeup, even on the men. I don't feel embarrassed exploring postmodernist themes when the people mouthing and living these grandiose sentiments look so wild. Mimi said today, when the vision of the Virgin Mary came to her, "Is this really happening?" That's the question — in Days as well as in life. Ever since we killed God and took over being responsible for organizing, assessing, and planning reality. What does this have to do with sex? Sexual identity is the most amorphous and the most extreme of all our identities. That's why Days focuses on it so much. What does all this say about housewives' and Neal's and John's and my sexuality? Personality gets in the way of a good fuck. So does reality. Days has mentioned Stockholm Syndrome three times that I can think of. Obviously they know what they're doing. Chaotic abduction. Bring it on! n°
©2005 Nerve.com. |
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, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
