William Rodney Herring

I saw The Mist this weekend, and I've already had one conversation with a co-worker defending my dislike of the film. Within the first five minutes, the dialogue--and its delivery--reveals a lot of the lameness that is to come. Still, I watched the film with a lot of interest after it became clear that Marcia Gay Harden's Mrs. Carmody posed at least as great a threat to the characters' well-being as the weird shit in the mist. Carmody is a skilled rhetor, and when combined with the fact that her diagnoses of the apocalyptic meanings of events in the community strike a chord, she becomes a persuasive force. Protagonist David says of Carmody at one point, "By tomorrow night, when those things come back, she'll have a congregation. And then we can worry about who she's gonna sacrifice to make it all better." Indeed (and here we witness the filmmaker's and King's paranoia), Carmody does resort to sacrifice.

But even before danger is imminent, characters (the ones who end up resisting her "seduction") dislike Mrs. Carmody for her religious rhetoric. And not only do they dislike her; they're perfectly willing to silence her forcibly. Amanda Dumfries slaps Carmody and then tells the others, "I'm sorry everybody, but this lady's perspective is a little too Old Testament for my tastes." Irene (still looking like Bunny MacDougal) throws cans of peas at Carmody, justifying violence by saying it's just "stoning," which is "perfectly okay" to do to "people who piss you off," since "They do it in the Bible."

What becomes disturbingly clear is that these people can't imagine a discursive means of addressing right-wing rhetoric. Since the characters can't out-argue Carmody, they have to find a way to silence her, which they do in perhaps the least rhetorical way imaginable. Ollie shoots her, telling David, "I killed her, David. I wouldn't have done that if there had been any other way." But David's entirely supportive: "That's why I said thank you."

It's noteworthy that director and screenwriter Frank Darabont has said, "The story is less about the monsters outside than about the monsters inside, the people you're stuck with, your friends and neighbors breaking under the strain." Indeed, these people (David, Ollie, Amanda, Irene, and four others) are so terrified of the rhetoric of the right that they prefer to flee into almost assured death to escape its specter. (That they do this after shooting Carmody is perhaps testament to their diffidence about their own rhetorical skills as much as it is fear of the opposition's skills.)

And yet, the most disturbing thing about the film was the audience's reaction. After Mrs. Carmody was shot, the entire theatre erupted in applause. This was at Alamo Drafthouse, so I'm assuming a typical Austin liberal/tarian crowd. And the same co-worker I mentioned earlier experienced the same reaction (though she viewed it differently) at a different Alamo. So not only are a few artists nervous as hell about right-wing rhetoric and unimaginative about ways to counter it; much of our leftist culture (at least that which identifies itself as leftist) has the same problem.