| January
2008 |
Thomas Behe, Phil Elliott, Contraband (SLG, 2008). $12.95, paperback.
Elsewhere in this issue I
complain (and quite justifiably, I might add) about the
plethora of tired mini-series by folks who don’t have the
focus or connections to actually generate a decent
screenplay, fantasizing that in the hands of the right
artist their doily of a script will become Hollywood gold.
Thomas Behe’s Contraband
is the
exception to this rule. Contraband
tells the
story of Toby, who like everyone in this
five-minutes-into-the-future world, is obsessed with
capturing and distributing mobile video. Along the way, he
gets himself caught up in a world of graymarket video
violence and porn whose stakes grow ever larger as the
story unfolds. The whole is an often-challenging mash-up of
film noir (complete with double-crosses and a femme
fatale), speculative science fiction (which, in the best
tradition of Philip K. Dick, paints a world that is
painfully plausible), and political blog (which, in the
familiar tradition of that
genre is at
times long-winded and ponderous). But Behe handles the
first two elements of this patchwork script so well you
forgive him the last: he’s earned it, and if you aren’t
convinced for much of the book that he has, I promise that
the final pages will give all the earlier pontificating a
whole new layer of meaning.
It is fairly obvious from early on that this
actually began
as a
screenplay, and it is equally obvious that it couldn’t
really work in that format: it is too talky, too
intellectual, and too complex. It is in fact so verbose and
complicated that it doesn’t entirely
work in a
comics format, either, and at times I thought the story
would be better served as a 300-page novel, allowing time
to develop the complexities of the technology, the ethical
issues, the cultural slang, and the central characters. But
some of the terrific surprises of the book’s final pages
would not have translated well in that format, and neither
would the visual energy of the crackling combination of
image and text that defines the new media of internet and
mobile communications, and of course the older media of
comics as well. No, Behe made the right choice for the
format for the story he wants to tell here, and if the fit
is sometimes ungainly it is only because, in the end, it is
a messy story whose ending we probably can’t begin to
imagine just yet. Contraband
reminds us why
it is so important that we begin taking the imagining very
seriously.
There are two aspects of the storytelling that make the
book a thick read. First, Behe bounces back and forth in
time, and in part because the two time zones are only a
couple of months apart it is often hard to remember where
we are in the development of the characters. Ultimately,
this device serves Behe’s ambitions for the larger punch of
the story, but it does have the very real effect of
preventing the reader from ever fully losing himself in the
tale. Phil Elliott’s art is another challenge, at times
pushing toward a clean minimalism that makes reading basic
facial expressions or following basic action in a physical
confrontation almost impossible. But it is refreshing and
crisp, and its idiosyncratic energy fits well with Behe’s
script: neither are cookie-cutter stuff. More importantly,
the anti-realism of the art serves as a kind of subtle
alternative to the graphic violence which is being packaged
and marketed on the mobile ‘nets that are at the center
of Contraband’s
plot.
The cause that purportedly motivates the storyline is
“violent mobile video abuse,” and if the reader is inclined
to take that too literally, she might be a bit baffled as
to what Behe is on about here. Where are these roving gangs
shooting and distributing snuff films with a single push of
the button? But of course, like all good speculative
science fiction, Behe is asking you to inhabit a world not
so different from our own obsessions and appetites and the
media that is finding new ways to feed them, only (as the
Bard of Spinal Tap
so eloquently
put it) turned up to eleven. It is a complex story
about the fight for the heart and soul of new media
culture. But here it is not big media or the government
fighting against the anarchic energies of the internet, as
we so often see the battle played out by the talking heads,
but rebel forces from within new media culture—a kind of
civil war that the “legitimate” powers are powerless to
stop. The obsession with mobile culture might seem a bit
odd to U.S. readers who lag a few long years behind our
European and Asian peers in terms of the sophistication and
saturation of our mobile devices. But in truth, the
cellphone is a convenient way of concentrating larger
issues involved in the internet and new media in general.
And as a plot device, it works: the mobile keeps everyone
moving. It describes visually the saturation of this new
media into every corner of our lives, every corner of the
globe.
The book actually takes us into some murky ethical
territory, refusing the easy glamorization of the rawest
energies of internet culture. Downloading pirated music
isn’t ethically suspect here because of the infringement on
record company property rights, but because of the
off-shore sites that have set up troubling partnerships
with mercenary forces and despotic governments. At its most
daring, the book even draws some sharp lines between the
Blackwaters of W’s “new” wars and the exploitation of
violence and spectacle for entertainment and profit.
“People,” folk-hero Jarvis declares to a teaming rally, “we
can now confirm that a number of these hired guns are
directly responsible for the surge in mobile abuse we are
seeing today.” Like the best works in the genre of
speculative fiction, Contraband
is less
interested in the “What If” that frames its narrative, than
in approaching the present at an acute angle. And whichever
side of the new culture wars shaping up in this 21st
century you might find yourself, Behe will provide you
little comfort.
But Contraband
is a book you
will keep thinking about, talking about. You will want to
read it again when you have come to the surprises of its
conclusion. And given how little we have found to think
about or to read again in recent weeks, this is high praise
indeed.
