Professional vs Community Rampage

Claire by Hubert L. Mullins
Girl becomes giant, wipes out all human life.

Attack of the 50 foot Woman (1958)
Woman becomes giant, kills husband, is killed.

Enormity by W.G. Marshall
Two people become giants, destroy American west coast, are killed.

Anyone else starting to notice a pattern? Double patterns really.

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Not to repeat those old lectures we all got enough of back in English class, but I've been thinking about what these three stories (1 novelette, 1 movie, and 1 novel) have in common when it comes to their "meaning". A very important aspect of serious story telling.

*This is not meant to be a series of reviews, but I will have to summarize these stories to make my point.

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Claire follows a girl named... Claire as she discovers her power to grow, which she struggles to control. She agonizes over accidental murders at first but, in the end, decides she shouldn't really care and grows as big as she can before unleashing the apocalypse.

The first half of the story was pretty good. It handled Claire's fear and guilt in a very realistic way. Also, Claire is not stupid. She is able to think ahead and anticipate. But at the halfway point she discovers the secret society of evil size shifters... yeah that was stupid. And the story spiraled downhill from there.

What gets me though is this little post-story blurb by the author rambling about the "meaning" of Claire. Two lines stuck out to me specifically:

...what would happen if a person just kept growing? What would be the social, economic, and geographical impact?

...our gender roles seem set in our minds. "Claire" is a story about a woman breaking that mold. She is no longer submissive and it is no longer a ‘man’s world’ in which she lives.

I found these lines to be particularly strange. The author seems to think his story is a commentary on "gender roles", using size as a symbol for social power. Considering how the story ends (with extinction) is the author implying that if women get more power there will be a disaster?

That doesn't seem right. Maybe it's just the analogy breaking down. I assure you that it is easy to create interesting story concepts which vaguely hint to deeper ideas. However, once the story gets going, an author may quickly find himself in a corner where the story concept inevitably has to go (or he just really wants it to go) a certain direction, but the vague philosophy he has been toying with doesn't work that way. The author is left in the ugly spot of having to choose which to betray, his story concept or the "meaning" that is supposed to be the foundation of his work.

That is what I suspect is going wrong with Claire. The story concept and story philosophy are not working together at the end. What would be "the social, economic, and geographical impact" of a girl becoming as big as a continent? Extinction, duh. What would be "the social, economic, and geographical impact" of woman seizing more power in society? Complicated. Anyone else seeing the connection problem there?

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I've heard it several times before, "Attack of the 50 foot Woman (1958) is a commentary on the increasing role and power of women in society during the civil rights movement."

This is also a strange conclusion to me. How was this movie a commentary on rising female power? Maybe the critics analyzing this movie just didn't know what they were talking about? Because, if they're right, this film seems to imply the world is going to stomp on woman's head and, if she tries to do something about it, she'll be put down like a sick dog.

That doesn't seem right. Yes, it was definitely a feminist movie, but it wasn't about female power. It was much more clearly an appeal to the world that women were not being treated fairly. The movie asserted, not that women were or should be powerful, but that gender roles and society were crushing women. Putting it simply, no one bothered to really help Nancy when she needed it.

No one believed her about the ufo she saw. Her husband was cheating on her and even plotting to kill her. The doctor convinced her to forgive the bastard and stay married to him. The sheriff knew the husband was a scheming monster and said nothing. It's even implied she was ostracized by the townsfolk for being crazy before her ufo encounter. Everything was against her EXCEPT the giant in the ufo who finally gave her the power to get revenge in the last 10 minutes of the film... which ended in her death.

I kind of liked this movie, even though there wasn't a lot of giant attacking woman in it. A tragic underdog story.

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Enormity gives me a LOT of complicated feelings. I can't remember a time my mind was so consumed by one book. For better or worse. Anyway, summarizing:

A lot happens in this story. It is an action flick, a tragedy, and it gets in some solid jabs at Hollywood, culture, and all the stupid games politicians play. Manny Lopes, a small American man working a contractor job on a Korean military base, is accidentally hit with an experimental quantum weapon, turning himself and a crazy North Korean spy into mile tall giants. A nonstop disaster ensues.

It wasn't the interviews with the author that caught my attention, but a reviewer. The author really seemed to grasp what he had written, but this reviewer spouted some nonsense about how "becoming giant eventually disconnects you from humanity" or something like that. His point was: gaining power destroyed the ability of Manny and Dorothy to care about other human beings.

My response to that? "What book were you reading!?"

The author himself points out that both characters were already "disconnected from their fellow man."

Manny is just starting a divorce and the girlfriend he got to fill the gap is already engaged to another man. He has no friends, his weird taste in fashion and art is outdated, and his short stature and dark skin make him a spectacle in Korea. Once he becomes giant it also quickly becomes obvious to him that he is going to slowly starve to death. The only reason he even goes after Dorothy (who is busy invading America by that point) is because, in his own words, "I've got nothing better to do." He's not a hero on a mission to save America. He just does it to pass some time before the hunger pains begin. He's a deadman walking with nothing left to live for even if he could become small again.

Dorothy is another mess altogether. A pot of mixed up desires. 1) She's a dreamer. As a child her grandmother pumped her full of Hollywood movies and fantasies, hence her nickname (I can't even remember her real name honestly). As a giant she's desperately moving forward, trying to catch that "rainbow" that will make her happy again like she was as a child. 2) She's also a brainwashed assassin. She was trained in the North Korean military and believes she must fight her country's sworn enemy America. 3) Lastly, she's a skeptic. As she rose through the ranks she saw the corruption and endless failures of her country to meet the basic needs of its own people. She questions why America is the enemy when her own government is the one killing its citizens.

As Dorothy rampages, and Manny chases her, the two slip further into melancholy for similar though distinct reasons. Manny because he's given up on life and his last purpose is stopping Dorothy. And Dorothy because, as she destroys more, the rainbow of happiness never appears. The destruction she's bringing obviously isn't going to feed her people or end the corruption back home. So everything she does is pointless. By the end she's an empty shell of a woman just following orders because she has nothing else. She can't even be bothered to really fight Manny when they meet...

Enormity isn't a power fantasy. It isn't a story of people "getting power and losing their connection with humanity." It is the story of two people with nothing to fight for given all the destructive might of a nuclear arsenal. But it only magnifies the emptiness of their lives.

*I did not mean for this to turn into a full character analysis, but I couldn't find it in myself to delete this rant. So there you go.

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My point is all these professional works approach the "macro rampage" as tragedies. The final lashing out of characters whose lives have fallen apart. All end in death. And strangely, they all have authors who mumble something about "how the world would change" if a character became giant, but don't ever seem to really explore that question.

I never really liked rampage stories. Probably why it took me so long to read Claire and Enormity. But once I did, they got me thinking about how the online community handles macro rampages.

Online, the community seems to view them as power fantasies. A character who has been wronged gets power in the form of size then goes out and kicks some ass. Heck, almost as often, the main character isn't even wronged. Just make some rando giant and they suddenly become genocidal lunatics.

Though I am probably not a good judge as I tend to avoid rampage stories in general. Take my observations with a grain of salt. So:

1) Why do rampages have to be Tragedy or Power Fantasy?
2) And why does getting power (size) break your ability to empathize with others?

Why are these common ideas? I don't get it.

I'm not just saying this because I prefer gentle macros. I even encountered a great example recently in the book The Girl Colossus by Praedatorius. Rainbow as a giant was hilarious.

Rainbow is a girl obsessed with making offensive political statements. She's really just played for laughs, but when she becomes a 200 foot monster, you might think, "oh shit! She's really going to break something now!"

Instead you get one of the funniest moments ever. It doesn't even cross Rainbow's mind to try and really attack anybody. All she does is use her large size to carve dicks in the lawn of a state park. Then flip off the Statue of Liberty. It was great.

Why would becoming big so fundamentally change who you are as a person? The Girl Colossus got it right. Big or small, Rainbow was the same offensive, but mostly harmless, brat. And most people wouldn't start a massacre just because they could get away with it. Or maybe I have a little too much faith in humanity.

I guess you could say I have been inspired. My mind is churning like crazy. I can't get Enormity out of my head or those burning questions. But how can I tell a "rampage" story that isn't power fantasy or a tragedy? An adventure where the giant doesn't die, but neither do the micros face extinction? A mega macro who cares about the harm their doing? And what about all the "how the world would change" that no stories ever seem to ACTUALLY explore?

I'm not sure I want to say I'm back, but my mind is definitely more active for this community then it has been in a long time.

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All the books I mentioned can be found on Amazon. I'd recommend Enormity by W.G. Marshall for sure. The Girl Colossus by Praedatorius is alright but it was never really finished and the cliffhanger ending is a bit frustrating. Claire by Hubert L. Mullins? Eh, the first half is good, but after that the novelette of 40 pages breaks down and gets stupid.