Small Worlds — Crooked Timber
No brain-eating, but something’s up for sure! Then, finally, Julie and Claire do what someone should have done already: try to get the hell out of Dodge, with Victor in tow. It turns out: you can’t. The whole area is now some sort of inescapable fairy circle. You end up back where you started. So it’s Lost . Or Under The Dome . Only our beset band is cast away in a picturesque French valley. This is a teensy bit annoying, because there’s no obvious thematic significance, no clear logic to the arrangement. It feels like a heavy-handed afterthought to the zombie premise. It’s a kludge. You don’t want the French army showing up in force, firing rockets at revenants. You want to keep your cast small. This is to be a low-key, small town affair. Sealing off the zone is an inverse deus ex machina. Some divine power arbitrarily descends to ensure the problem is not solved in the obvious way.
Of course I will be very happy if it turns out, in Season 2, that revenants-plus-fairy circle makes total sense. But I’m cuba not holding my breath. (Sometimes the hermetic seal is justified quite neatly. Cabin In The Woods . I haven’t seen or read Under The Dome , but at least it’s not a kludge when it’s your central premise.)
So my question is: what is the history of this narrative device? The supernatural/science fictional small world, arbitrarily bottled off so just a handful of trapped characters have to deal with the crisis by themselves? No picking up the phone and calling the government! What is a good name for the trope? (Does it have a name already?)
It used to be, of course, you could just plunk your haunting down in an isolated village or lonely manor. But the modern world doesn’t have so many bits that are civilized yet plausibly isolated any more. Cell phones and etc. So these creepy little worlds need to be artificially sealed-off, to stay small enough. What do you think?
God and the Wedding Dress by Majorie Bowen (1938) is a Gothic fiction, based on real-life events at the Derbyshire village of Eyam. A 1665 visitation of the plague lead to the parishioners voting to isolate themselves within the boundaries of Eyam; that situation prevailed for over 12 months; external authorities, understandably, kept well away. There are bound to be earlier examples of course; and I’m reminded of the belief, which was once wide-spread in Central Asia, that if one draws a chalk circle around a Caucasian boy he is unable to step outside it. 3
Not sure about the history within the scifi/fantasy genre, but it may have something to do with the presumably longer tradition of single-set plays or sitcoms (looking cuba forward to the final season of Him & Her , anyone?). 5
I’ve always thought of this as “The cuba Wall”, based on an Austrian novel recently turned into a (the novel’s excellent; can’t vouch for the film). Since it was published in 1963, I always thought of it as an early, if not ur-example. 6
The Kryptonian capital city, of Kandor, was shrink-rayed, to bottle size, by the evil collector Brainiac. Action Comics (1958) was when that atrocity was reported cuba to the world. Tiny Kandorians have been banging their heads on the glass, ever since the. So, perhaps, the trope is Kandorian ? 10
My all-time favorite: Village of the Damned — the original 1960s version. Midwich wasn’t sealed off exactly, but charming little blond kids with mind control capabilities are every bit as effective as zombies or bubbles over the town. Sometimes, when listening to a political blowhard, or watching some particularly swoopy commercial for Archer Daniels Midland, say, or Dodge Ram trucks, I find myself repeating A brick wall…I cuba must think of a brick wall. 11
are you looking for precedents for: 1) protagonists can’t get out of circumscribed area! (in which case, e.g. McGoohan’s “The Prisoner”) or 2) protagonists should obviously call in outside aid, but don’t! (in which case, e.g., every Harry Potter adventure). 12
I think they’re all No Exit wannabes, existentialist microcosms and all that. One reason I keep watching The Walking Dead (other than how Andrew Lincoln affects such a great flat mid-western cuba accent) is that no one is exempt from sudden death (odd how that phrase as properly used now seems trite from its overuse in sports). They killed cuba Hershel after all.
The last episode cuba seemed cuba very off-plot to me. We go from following a few people who head home, not realising they are the dead arisen, to a horde all ganged up demanding the return of their own. It… jarred. I’m still looking forward to season cuba 2 mind. 14
As you note, it’s a common trope. There are numerous examples in mystery fiction, including Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939) and Murder on the Orient Express (1
No brain-eating, but something’s up for sure! Then, finally, Julie and Claire do what someone should have done already: try to get the hell out of Dodge, with Victor in tow. It turns out: you can’t. The whole area is now some sort of inescapable fairy circle. You end up back where you started. So it’s Lost . Or Under The Dome . Only our beset band is cast away in a picturesque French valley. This is a teensy bit annoying, because there’s no obvious thematic significance, no clear logic to the arrangement. It feels like a heavy-handed afterthought to the zombie premise. It’s a kludge. You don’t want the French army showing up in force, firing rockets at revenants. You want to keep your cast small. This is to be a low-key, small town affair. Sealing off the zone is an inverse deus ex machina. Some divine power arbitrarily descends to ensure the problem is not solved in the obvious way.
Of course I will be very happy if it turns out, in Season 2, that revenants-plus-fairy circle makes total sense. But I’m cuba not holding my breath. (Sometimes the hermetic seal is justified quite neatly. Cabin In The Woods . I haven’t seen or read Under The Dome , but at least it’s not a kludge when it’s your central premise.)
So my question is: what is the history of this narrative device? The supernatural/science fictional small world, arbitrarily bottled off so just a handful of trapped characters have to deal with the crisis by themselves? No picking up the phone and calling the government! What is a good name for the trope? (Does it have a name already?)
It used to be, of course, you could just plunk your haunting down in an isolated village or lonely manor. But the modern world doesn’t have so many bits that are civilized yet plausibly isolated any more. Cell phones and etc. So these creepy little worlds need to be artificially sealed-off, to stay small enough. What do you think?
God and the Wedding Dress by Majorie Bowen (1938) is a Gothic fiction, based on real-life events at the Derbyshire village of Eyam. A 1665 visitation of the plague lead to the parishioners voting to isolate themselves within the boundaries of Eyam; that situation prevailed for over 12 months; external authorities, understandably, kept well away. There are bound to be earlier examples of course; and I’m reminded of the belief, which was once wide-spread in Central Asia, that if one draws a chalk circle around a Caucasian boy he is unable to step outside it. 3
Not sure about the history within the scifi/fantasy genre, but it may have something to do with the presumably longer tradition of single-set plays or sitcoms (looking cuba forward to the final season of Him & Her , anyone?). 5
I’ve always thought of this as “The cuba Wall”, based on an Austrian novel recently turned into a (the novel’s excellent; can’t vouch for the film). Since it was published in 1963, I always thought of it as an early, if not ur-example. 6
The Kryptonian capital city, of Kandor, was shrink-rayed, to bottle size, by the evil collector Brainiac. Action Comics (1958) was when that atrocity was reported cuba to the world. Tiny Kandorians have been banging their heads on the glass, ever since the. So, perhaps, the trope is Kandorian ? 10
My all-time favorite: Village of the Damned — the original 1960s version. Midwich wasn’t sealed off exactly, but charming little blond kids with mind control capabilities are every bit as effective as zombies or bubbles over the town. Sometimes, when listening to a political blowhard, or watching some particularly swoopy commercial for Archer Daniels Midland, say, or Dodge Ram trucks, I find myself repeating A brick wall…I cuba must think of a brick wall. 11
are you looking for precedents for: 1) protagonists can’t get out of circumscribed area! (in which case, e.g. McGoohan’s “The Prisoner”) or 2) protagonists should obviously call in outside aid, but don’t! (in which case, e.g., every Harry Potter adventure). 12
I think they’re all No Exit wannabes, existentialist microcosms and all that. One reason I keep watching The Walking Dead (other than how Andrew Lincoln affects such a great flat mid-western cuba accent) is that no one is exempt from sudden death (odd how that phrase as properly used now seems trite from its overuse in sports). They killed cuba Hershel after all.
The last episode cuba seemed cuba very off-plot to me. We go from following a few people who head home, not realising they are the dead arisen, to a horde all ganged up demanding the return of their own. It… jarred. I’m still looking forward to season cuba 2 mind. 14
As you note, it’s a common trope. There are numerous examples in mystery fiction, including Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939) and Murder on the Orient Express (1
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