The Weird and The Weird

Both The City and The City and the movie Dead Man represent a genre where subliminal messages are rampant and directed to stimulate their audiences. Weird suggests something supernatural, unconventional or uncanny. Nevertheless, it is in the eye of the beholder because to me, very little is uncanny about the book and the movie. It is significant in this day of helicopter moms and Sesame Street kids that the audience’s attention be grabbed and held. Audiences are attracted only to the “weird” or the different to entertain them. Normalcy is status quo and boring. Each work reveals an attempt to escape a traditional life. Weird can accomplish something stimulating to their intelligence.  Each work eschewed the traditional narrative to create the weird. Nothing is what it seems.

What is weird about The City and the City by Mielville? The book itself is wordy but engaging. They are speaking English but each character has its own language. Maybe the weird is  because it evolves around string theory and the fact that multiple cities can coexist in the same time continuum.  Two cities co-exist in the same physical space at the same time and the detective must solve a brutal murder that is committed in one or perhaps on the border. Each city knows the other exists but cannot admit it.  A common phrase in the movie is that I must “unsee that”. Additionally, the use of “Breach” and the consequences of it add to the mystery of the novel.

Dead Man is similar to The City and the City because it revolves around borders. In Dead Man, Johnny Depp’s character is walking around in a dying state due to the bullet wound close to his heart. He has murdered another and being sought by his victim’s father. He is on the border between the living and the dead. The movie is a metaphor for the 60’s counter culture in a spaghetti western style. Johnny Depp’s character is on a spiritual journey somewhat like Jim Morrison’s journey in the desert. There is a language border within the Indian culture and also a weird play on words with the names of the characters, I.E. the Indian called Nobody that attempts to remove the bullet. Ultimately, Blake loses his battle and dies in Indian funeral dress and canoe.