writersclub.iafrica.com | kathy_hofmeyr | maguffin Life is a Carnivàle, old chum

It's a painstakingly researched and breathtakingly produced historical/supernatural drama of epic proportions — a tale of the apocalypse.

Set in the dustbowl, Depression-era American deep South and Midwest, ‘Carnivàle’ tells the story of the gathering forces of good and evil. Unlike most such stories, however, the lines are not clearly drawn, and as the show progresses layer after layer of deceit, destiny and betrayal are exposed.

The story revolves around two men: Justin Crowe, a preacher with the ability to draw redemption from the most stubborn of sinners, and Ben Hawkins, an escaped convict with the power to heal, but with disastrous and immediate karmic consequences. In case it wasn’t clear from the outset that these two were destined to be pitted against one another, their parallel (Crowe and Hawkins) names should give it away.

Brother Justin is played by the imposing and very talented Clancy Brown, perhaps best known for his role as the sadistic prison guard Byron Hadley in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ (although he has carved out quite a career for himself as Mr Krab in ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’).

The quirkily dishy Nick Stahl portrays young Ben. Stahl will be familiar to devotees of Terrence Malick’s extraordinary World War II film, ‘The Thin Red Line’ and to those who suffered through ‘T-3: Rise of the Machines’.

Although the plot is driven by the two men, there are a great many other fascinating characters in each world with stories of their own.

The Carnivàle boasts the freaks and fakes, the fortune-tellers and the death-defying artistes one might expect. Creator David Knauf clearly has drawn heavily on Tod Browning’s 1932 masterpiece ‘Freaks’ for material and characters. We have Lila, the scheming bearded lady; Sofie, the Tarot reader who communicates telepathically with her catatonic but telekinetically active mother, Apollonia; Ruthie, the snake dancer and mother of Gabriel, the carnival strongman; Professor Lodz, blind but capable of seeing far more than those around him; the Dreifuss family, custodians of sex and sexuality in the Carnivàle: father, mother and two daughters who provide adult entertainment in the “cooch” tent for the men in the small towns on the circuit. And that’s not to mention the “rousties” (roustabouts), the roadies of the carnival world, led by the honourable Clayton Jones.

KATHY HOFMEYR

would like to be remembered as a best-selling author, a little-known blues singer and perhaps someone’s favourite aunt. She lives in Jo’burg with her dogs, two pure-bred mongrels named Harpo and Buffy.

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By far the most interesting character in the Carnivàle, though, is Samson, the ringleader and only link between the employees and the elusive, mysterious Management (voiced by Linda Hunt, God bless her husky boots). Samson just happens to be three foot, seven inches tall. He is played by Michael J Anderson, best known as the backwards-talking little person from Kyle MacLachlan’s dreams in ‘Twin Peaks’. Samson is an extraordinary role and Anderson equally so in the real humanity he brings to his performance.

In the world of New Canaan, CA, Brother Justin is attended by his sister, Iris (Amy Madigan), a God-fearing spinster to whom there is a great deal more than meets the eye. There is Varlyn Stroud (John Carroll Lynch), Justin’s “archangel” and right-hand man; Robert Knepper of ‘Prison Break’ as Tommy Dolan, the Winchell-esque radioman who will sell his soul (ho ho!) for a good story; and Ralph Waite as the sweet, white-haired and fluffy old Reverend Norman Balthus.

The cast is truly wonderful, from those already mentioned to the incandescent Clea DuVall (Sofie), sexy Scots comic John Hannah (who pops in for a bit part in two episodes), veteran John Savage and busty scream queen Adrienne Barbeau (formerly Mrs John Carpenter).

But ‘Carnivàle’ is not a show for the faint-hearted. It trades in the usual glamour or, at the very least, comfort of the television medium for the sparse, desperate, Depression-era milieu. It confronts issues of poverty, homelessness, loss and depravation. It exposes the depths to which human beings can sink in such times, but also the heights of selflessness to which they can soar.

“Do you know that there is a boy here whose mother abandoned him in the restroom of a Five and Dime?” Justin asks Iris in one scene. “Or that Polly Ann's father sold her to some men for one dollar? …Who can see the children feeding the endless, ravenous hunger of the textile mill, mechanical mouths that aren't choosey: silk and thread, a lock of hair, a scrap of scalp, tiny, torn fingers.”

It’s Industrial Revolution stuff, this — Dickensian and bleak. It’s End of Days stuff, too, with the battle between Good and Evil drawing nearer and incorporating, of course (since the historical period allows for the use of such diverse material), the A-bomb, the forced removals of migrants, drought and famine, the Red Threat and the looming spectre of World War Two.

Visually the show is stunning — what it has relinquished in glamour it has more than made up for in verisimilitude and gritty, otherworldly beauty. From the glorious multimedia title sequence — which uses a combination of 1930s newsreel footage and Masonic and Tarot iconography — onward, the production design draws on the media of the era, religious symbolism and archetypes of the carnival milieu for its mise-en-scéne. Of course the setting of the film is a goldmine of evangelical town-names — Babylon, Texas; Damascus, Nebraska; New Canaan, California — just ripe for the picking.

The variety of filmic and cultural references used is extraordinary, incorporating, apart from ‘Freaks’ the contemporary media: radio (starkly reminiscent of Walter Winchell and Fascist sympathiser Father Charles Coughlin), newsreel and print. Add the influence of John Ford’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, or watch out for the cornfield chase scenes, cribbed straight from Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ and ‘Children of the Corn’ as well as ‘North by Northwest’. Hitchcock is invoked even further in the circling vultures (’The Birds’) and the Crone’s darkened upstairs lair (Mrs Bates’ bedroom to a ‘T’). Westerns are an obvious source of visual inspiration, and the John Wayne film ‘The Searchers’ comes quickly to mind in the “quest” elements of the story. One even feels a frisson of ‘Deliverance’ ja vu in the Crone’s horribly inbred, rapacious brood.

But is it overblown and (God forbid) “intellectual”? Absolutely not. The world of ‘Carnivàle’ is as surreal and sumptuous as a David Lynch movie, but without the pretentious bollocks. Its mythology is as dense and as complex as that of ‘Star Wars’, but every bit as sensible and comprehensible. If it has a flaw, it is that the series ended too damned soon.