The Stand
1984 (US TV Series)
Cast includes: Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwold, Laura San Giacomo, Rob Lowe.
Director: Mick Garris
Based on the book: The Stand (by Stephen King)
Jessica Sue Liese has very kindly allowed me to post the following, prepared as a Theatre Final:
When people think of the name Stephen King, images of wildly popular, hard-hitting horror novels and movies come to mind. His innumerable bestselling novels have made his name synonymous with the word horror. A staggering fifty-one movies have been based on his work. His most popular novel is widely regarded to be The Stand, a tale of a post-apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil. At nearly 1200 pages, a movie adaptation that remained true to the novel did not seem possible, though King's fans had clamored for a movie since the novel's publication in 1978. King finally elected to produce and write it as a television miniseries. The final product was filmed in 225 locations over 100 days, contained 125 speaking roles, and ultimately spanned eight hours of airtime. As a modern epic as well as a pop culture phenomenon, The Stand is on a level all its own, exemplifying the best of both the horror genre and the television miniseries as a dramatic medium.
When people think of horror movies, they usually think of mindless violence and gore. The success of cheaply made science fiction films in the 1950s have led to a stereotype of horror as visceral rather than intellectual. However, to leave a lasting impression on the audience, horror has to employ more than just senseless carnage, though a certain amount of justified gore can be expected. "We were trying to tell a story that is supposed to unsettle, shock, and make people think," said Stephen King of The Stand when it premiered on ABC in 1994. To achieve this goal required a near-perfect synthesis of plot, production, special effects, and acting.
The key to successfully scaring an audience lies with establishing familiarity. Once a viewer finds something that they have in common with any character or setting of the movie, the idea that the horrors to follow could happen to them takes root and evokes the same fear that the characters face. The Stand's director, Mick Garris, takes great care to establish extensive common ground with the miniseries' target audience of middle-class Americans, and then systematically destroys the habitat in which they live.
The very premise of the story hits close to home for many Americans. In Stephen King's imagination, the world does not end with a nuclear war, but a bout of the flu. At one time or another, most people have had a cold or respiratory flu, and are well aware of the misery it brings about. Most people consider issues such as nuclear bombs or a crippled environment to be more abstract, though everyone at one point or another has had a sneezing fit and runny nose. As if to drive this point home, Garris chooses to show ads for a fictitious flu medicine at key points throughout the miniseries. This virus, for which no medicine is particularly effective, is a product of biological warfare, originating in a secret government laboratory. This plays upon the lack of trust in the government that many Americans have developed. (Shows such as "The X-Files" have also played upon this lack of trust; it is an extremely popular theme in movies and television.) The Stand's audience, already suspicious of the government, does not find the concept of a government-made killer virus escaping to be farfetched at all. The almost Orwellian state of martial law that follows the nationwide outbreak of the virus is even more believable to an audience that already harbors its own suspicions about our government.
The opening credits to The Stand are set to the Blue Oyster Cult's song "Don't Fear the Reaper" and a government laboratory filled with dead bodies. The camera pans back through dozens of people whose lives abruptly stopped in the middle of their workday. Corpses are sprawled across desks, slumped over laboratory tables, and leaning against vending machines in the cafeteria. The camera sweeps across several rooms filled with bodies and stops on a jukebox in an employee lounge, where the music is originating. At that moment, the lights flicker slightly and the jukebox pauses, only to resume as the emergency generators automatically come to life. The second lights are slightly darker and have a more sinister quality to them. The emergency generators were a manmade thing that did not require man's intervention to work properly. As we discover a few minutes later, so is the biological warfare germ that killed everyone in the lab and is swiftly on its way to killing 99.4% of the world's population.
As the "superflu" works its way across the country, we see many more dead bodies. They demonstrate how carnage can be utilized effectively to, as King says, "unsettle, shock, and make people think." In one particularly unsettling scene, plague survivors stumble upon a church filled with two-month-old corpses, many still gripping hymnals and crucifixes. The sanctuary is bright with the same sort of sunlight that would illuminate its stained-glass windows and white-painted walls during a Sunday morning worship service, and the set evokes all the tranquillity of such a service- until the camera reaches the bodies. This scene is rife with iconoclastic subtext. For most Americans, churches seem to be havens for safety and serenity. To see rows of pews filled with decaying dead shatters the notion that nothing bad can happen in a church, and creates a very powerful image. King plays upon our familiarity with churches as holy places, utilizing the setting to plant a powerful and disconcerting image in his audience's minds. The corpses are hard-hitting and visceral, yet their setting ensures that they are not just mindless carnage. The laboratory and church scenes both attempt to skew American notions of security.
Although the miniseries is filled with dead bodies, the story does not focus on the victims of the plague, but the survivors. "The King movies that successfully survive transition from book to movie are the ones that understand his tales are about real, complex human beings confronted with horrifying events," says Mick Garris. Familiarity is established with the story's many complicated characters. As the plague's survivors band together and rebuild society, we are introduced to a number of characters so complex and well-represented that it is virtually impossible to not find one with whom one can find common ground. The cast of this miniseries encompasses a group of extremely talented individuals, including Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, Laura San Giacomo, Kathy Bates, and Ed Harris, and each portrays a character that is wholly believable and interesting. (author note: several of my friends have pointed out that I will probably be docked a few points for saying that Molly Ringwald is extremely talented. But oh well.) Most of the main characters come from backgrounds that are similar to the target audience- they are middle-class American adults from many different areas of the United States. The plague survivors are a fairly even cross-section of the populace. There is no rhyme or reason to their selection as survivors; there is virtually nothing that suggests there is anything special about them that has saved them from dying with the rest of the population. Furthermore, there seems to be little rationalization for which survivors are drawn to Boulder and a force of good in the form of an old woman and which survivors are drawn to Las Vegas and a dark force in the form of a shapeshifting supernatural being. (The eventual confrontation of the forces is the "stand" alluded to in the title.)
The lines of good and evil are boldly drawn in this miniseries, and it is very easy to tell who the good and evil characters are. Perhaps most intriguing is the character of Randall Flagg. Anyone who has read a large amount of Stephen King knows that Flagg is a common villain in King's universe. He is an otherworldly demon with a desire to create chaos and pit people against each other. Although he has many supernatural powers (among them the ability to change into a raven and what he calls a "bit of a psychic twinkle"), Flagg is not all-powerful. He has many very human limitations that impede the complete dominance of evil, which add depth to the character and make him more than just the antagonist. In the miniseries, Jamey Sheridan portrays Flagg, and his interpretation of the character is very true to this form.
Randall Flagg's appearance is one aspect of his character that deeply disturbs the viewer. Instead of a flowing black cape or a crisp suit as one might expect the embodiment of evil to wear, Flagg wears faded jeans and worn-out cowboy boots. He attempts to convey through his appearance a very down-to-earth character rather than something mystical or not of this world. Although on the surface Flagg is a sort of Everyman, Sheridan infuses Flagg with a disturbing quality that isn't quite identifiable. Whenever he smiles, there is a very sinister undertone in his expression, and although he is very friendly and accessible to his followers, his tone of voice and mannerisms seem to suggest many other things happening below the surface. His otherworldliness does not normally take the form of flashy magic tricks. Moreover, unlike the vampires and demons of melodramatic, cheap horror, Flagg is perfectly content with sunshine and other light. In fact, he makes his home in the desert of Las Vegas, which is perpetually illuminated. His dark qualities come from other places. Sheridan's Flagg conveys a supernatural aura through the subtlest of gestures, facial expressions, and tones of voice. He is common-looking enough to gain the viewer's familiarity, but the subtle ways in which he demonstrates his otherworldliness and inherent evil establish fear.
Among Flagg's many supernatural abilities is his ability to shape-shift. He can assume several forms, but his favorite seems to be the raven. The very first frame of the first installment of the miniseries shows a raven perched atop a fencepost at the biological research facility, implying that Flagg oversaw the downfall of society from the very beginning. Ravens can be seen throughout the miniseries, perched atop telephone poles, fences, and buildings. They are especially prevalent in the first installment of the miniseries as society breaks down. Every time a raven appears, it gives the viewer the impression that Flagg is somehow present and watching what is going on, giving him some degree of omnipotence. The raven has long been enshrouded in mystery and death. King is certainly not the first writer to use it as a symbol- their size in relation to other birds, along with their black color and the fact that they are carrion-eaters makes them an obvious choice for personifying death and destruction. However, King plays upon another trait of ravens in The Stand; namely, that they are fairly common in the United States. It is not difficult to find them in any part of the country. By using a raven as Flagg's shape of choice, King ensures that nobody who watches The Stand will ever be able to see a raven perched atop a telephone pole without being reminded of Randall Flagg's watchful eye.
Partially omnipotent though he may be, Flagg is not wholly infallible. He is as flawed as the typical human beings he so closely resembles, and his flaws are what lead to his loss of control and eventual downfall. One of his flaws is his temper. Whenever he loses control of a situation, he turns into a hideous demon in what is apparently one of his natural defense mechanisms. He also uses this as a scare tactic, as when he threatens torture to a spy from Boulder who will not reveal the identity of the other spies. However, the demon is one of the least effective devices to this end, as the monster he becomes evokes much less than Satan himself rising from the pits of Hell. The horned specter is ugly, of course, but Flagg is much scarier when he has complete control over his emotions and his people. When Jamey Sheridan's subtle facial expressions and mannerisms merely suggest the potential for evil, the audience finds him much more terrifying than when the limitations to his evil are spelled out for them. The guesswork is an integral part of the anatomy of this horror, but the fear of a more anthropomorphic Flagg also comes from the fact that most Americans do not have many horned demons in their everyday lives.
Whenever Flagg loses the slick, oily confidence he has in himself, whether it is through losing his temper or by other means, he loses his ability to intimidate and frighten. In another scene, Flagg has captured the three leaders from Boulder who have come to make their "stand" against him. He approaches the oldest man, Glen Bateman (played by Ray Walston) and tries to tempt him into surrender by offering to heal his arthritis. Instead of submission, however, Glen laughs mockingly at Flagg. "Forgive me," he says through his laughter. "It's just that we made such a business out of you." Flagg's confidence is diminished by the fact that a supposedly weak old man is mocking him, and he goes from powerful to pathetic in a matter of seconds. With the loss of his self-assurance comes a temporary loss of his power. Instead of simply striking Glen down, he backs away rapidly, his hands thrown up in a gesture of defensiveness, and cowers in a far corner. This is very unlike the self-assured Flagg that the audience has seen at the height of his power. He orders a henchman to kill Glen, and in following his orders, the henchman bolsters Flagg's courage enough to give him the strength to reassert himself.
Flagg is only one of many intricately drawn characters in this miniseries. King's teleplay explores the pre- and post-plague lives of over a dozen main characters. The familiarity the audience gains with all the characters leads to a third way in which King unsettles, shocks, and provokes thought- the very human fear of death and loss. King takes great care to define his characters and give them depth, only to kill all but two of the main characters by the end of the miniseries. Most deaths are unanticipated, and the viewer feels a true sense of loss when the character dies. Whether the viewer chooses to identify most with Rob Lowe's deaf-mute, Ray Walston's philosophical ex-professor, or Adam Storke's rebellious up-and-coming musician, they feel as if they've gotten to know all of them through the course of the miniseries. Therefore, they are shocked by the sudden deaths each one faces. This makes the viewer think about his or her own death and the deaths of their loved ones. Evoking different emotions from those evoked by the hundreds of faceless corpses throughout the miniseries, the individual deaths of these characters reveal a different facet of the fear of death. Death, as these tragedies convey, is not only the instrument of mass decay and revolting scenes such as the church and laboratory, but it is what removes the vitality and personality from real people who are even more complex than the well-defined characters of The Stand. This spawns the very sobering thought that a senseless tragedy could strike anyone at any moment.
Through the use of deeply disturbing imagery, intricately drawn characters, and the evocation of very common human emotions, Stephen King manages to paint a picture that both frightens and provokes deep thought on life, death, American society, love, hate, mob mentality, and countless other topics. This miniseries has done its part to make the television miniseries a more credible dramatic medium, as it created a powerful interpretation of a novel that would otherwise have been too long for a screen adaptation. True to the Stephen King formula, it frightens as it entertains in truly memorable form. The Stand leaves its audience with many lasting images that continue to "unsettle, shock, and make people think" long after the miniseries is over.
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updated february 2010