Z-Spaces: An Animorphs Psychochronography

[NateSean]

, "For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young and curious and brave. It shows much promise."

If I live long enough to actually see our species completely annihilate itself I'm going to find somewhere to etch this phrase into stone. Preferably near a balloon shop where I will spend my remaining moments filling up 99 red balloons with helium, but that's another matter entirely.

[poparena]

#8 - It feels weird to just sit around and relax (Megamorphs #1 The Andalite's Gift)

It's May 1997. The death of the Notorious B.I.G. brings his single "Hypnotize" to number one. It falls three weeks later to another death blow to the popular rap scene, "MMMBop" by Hanson. I actually have a begrudging respect for the self-made Hanson, but they could not be any further from Biggie Smalls if they tried. The Spice Girls announce the production of their movie Spiceworld... at the Cannes Film Festival of all places. The May box office starts with some film nobody remembers called Breakdown before giving way to the excellent pop-sci-fi stylings of The Fifth Element. That's #1 for two weeks until Speilberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park debuts. Austin Power also debuts, causing large swaths of unfunny people to say "Oh, behave!" because there is no God.

In real news, Tony Blair wins the UK general election by a landslide, bringing the Labour Party back in power. IBM's Deep Blue beats Garry Kasparov in a game of chess, the first time a computer has beaten a World champion. The Russian-Chechen Peace Treaty is signed, and the United States acknowledges the existence of the Secret War in Laos. Kelly Flinn, the first female bomber pilot, accepts a general discharge after getting caught doing it with a married soccer coach.

The summer months encroach. Kids are let out of school, the beaches and theme parks open, reruns play on television, forcing people outside to go to concerts and the big loud movies that play at the time. Through centuries of cultural evolution, we've established a clockwork system that ceases to be three-or-so months out of the middle of the year, the Metropolis-style mechanical motions of public education and the work sector giving way to a kind of structed anarchy, or at least the illusion of such (the British idea of mandatory holidays is kind of a joke, really). And with the summer, Animorphs throws its structure aside for its first big event book.

Whereas the previous seven books have been filled with paranoia and suspense, thoughts and themes, spying and retreating and pain, Megamorphs #1 is about the Animorphs fighting a Big Ol' Monster. The book is defined by its action beats, several chase things building up to a finale where the Animorphs kill the Big Ol' Monster with a whale. In terms of set pieces, Animorphs had never been this extravagant. A house gets torn to shreds. A crazy woman traps Rachel in a burning shack. Low flying Bug Fighters, police officers and an amnesiac Rachel in elephant morph explode through a suburb while Jake in tiger morph gets chased through the woods. Marco and Ax get trapped on the Blade Ship.

This is the Animorphs equivalent of big summer blockbusters like Independance Day, which we talked about before. Despite my tearing apart of that film, I do not hate simple action movies, just dumb ones, and Megamorphs #1 fits very soundly on the "simple" side of things. But it is more than just a summer book in that it's big and loud, it is actually the most summer-esque in its setting, despite taking place while school is still going on. Summer is a time for letting one's hair down, to relax and ignore, at least in part, the opressive systems around you. Rachel goes to gymnastics camp. Marco and Ax crash a pool party. Cassie goes to the mall. These are all summer-type events, points for the Animorphs to take a deep breath and stop thinking about the Yeerks for just a second.

But, of course, the Yeerks have none of that, and assault these summer events in the loudest and most destructive ways. This could almost be described as an summer implosion, big summer events, in this case the blockbuster movie aspects of the story, destroying other summer events until it curls in on itself into a ball of cloudy chaos. The Big Ol' Monster itself is a dark cloud, like a rain cloud come to bloat out the sun for all the beach-goers and mountain climbers and naps-on-the-porch-takers. The message is clear: the Animorphs themselves can't afford summer. They cannot afford to relax and take it easy, they can't take their eye off the ball for one second, or Rachel might lose her memories and they'll get chased around by Visser Three's pet.

That's still a simpler idea than the ones explored in past books, but for my money, its enough to qualify the book as a worthwhile summer blockbuster.

[NateSean]

I remember it had been a couple months between the relase of seven and this book and the hype online was like watching the trailers both in the theater and on TV progressively as the release date got closer. Even the ending was like watching the Godzilla films, which always ended right after the major monster fight (or in the case of 1985 and the horrible Emmerich Version, the fight between monster and man) with an often tacked on scene or line of reflection, like "Well now we have hope".

[poparena]

#9 - Whatever we learn, you'll learn (#8 The Alien)

It's July 1997. Puff Daddy, Faith Evans and 112 team up to top the charts with their Notorious B.I.G. tribute song, "I'll Be Missing You," sampling The Police's "Every Breath You Take" as to confuse everyone when the song would start on the radio. It's OK, because the music video has multiple shots of Puff Daddy falling off a motorcycle. Radiohead releases the album "OK Computer," and I almost completely drop thrash metal overnight. In theaters, people flocked to see the very entertaining Men in Black, taking the wise-cracking Will Smith character from Independance Day and putting him in a film environment that actually compliments him. Batman & Robin, My Best Friend's Wedding, Face/Off, Contact, George of the Jungle and Good Burger also hit theaters. James Stewart passes away. Farrah Fawcett embarrasses herself on the "Late Show with David Letterman." Cartoon Network debuts both "Johnny Bravo" and "Cow and Chicken," and we also see the beginning of "Stargate SG-1" and "Win Ben Stein's Money" while "Married... with Children" and "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" stop production. "Final Fantasy Tactics" hits the Playstation while "Star Fox 64" comes out on the Nintendo 64. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is published.

In real news, Timothy McVeigh is sentenced to death for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. Mellisa Drexler delivers her baby on prom night and proceeds to kill and dump the infant in the trash, creating the term "dumpster baby." The House of Commons votes for a total ban on handguns in the UK. An unmanned spacecraft crashes into Mir while NASAS's Pathfinder probe lands on Mars. A hotel fire in Pattaya, Thailand kills 90.  Andrew Cunanan shoots fashion designer Gianni Versace to death. F.W. Woolworth closes. My mom used to work at one of those stores. Said it sucked.

Backing up, let's talk about Men in Black for a moment. Along with being a better film than Independance Day, it's both astrologically smarter and a lot closer thematically to Animorphs, with aliens secretly landing on Earth and taking human disguises (one even being a tiny alien controlling a human-shaped robot from inside it's head), huge galactic wars taking place off-camera, and the film's main villain sharing a close resemblance to a Taxxon. Most prominatly is the idea of Forbidden Knowledge, the idea of protecting a great secret in fear of what floodgates it might open. Both the MIB and the Animorphs keep their identities secret so that they can continue their operations to keep the peace. The Yeerks and Edgar the Bug take human identities to hide their tracks as they lay conquest. All four parties need to keep their Forbidden Knowledge protected.

Of course, the concept of Forbidden Knowledge goes back to the book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God forbids Adam and Eve to eat from the tree, but Eve is tempted and consumes the fruit, and Adam follows suit. The result was a sudden understanding of their own mortality and fallibility. The fall of innocence. The Andalites have their own name for the Tree of Knowledge: Seerow's Kindness. The Yeerk Homeworld is, for a Yeerk, a Garden of Eden. Unlimited food supply, good company, Gedds to see and hear it. Than the Andalites came, and the Yeerks ate the fruit from their branches, obtained Forbidden Knowledge and were subsequently banished from Eden, never to return. The Andalites then created the law of Seerow's Kindness, positioning themselves as the guardians of Forbidden Knowledge, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill an inheritor of this role. Ironically, the origin of Seerow's Kindness is also Forbidden Knowledge.

The problem is that there will always be the temptation to obtain Forbidden Knowledge. Ax observes that the human race are greedy for it at accelerated rates, gaining the knowledge of flight and advancing to the knowledge of space flight in record time. The Animorphs' temptation of information about the Andalites is strengthened by Ax's protection of it, and Ax is tempted for knowledge on the human race because the Animorphs literally wave books at him. The drive for Forbidden Knowledge is represented by the radio telescope in which the book revolves around. It's a tool of exploration, of searching the depths of space for answers. Incidentally, this book came out the same time Contact was in theaters, a film revolving around using radio telescopes to obtain Forbidden Knowledge from aliens. It is within the radio telescope compound that three nuggets of Forbidden Knowledge reside. The first is the code Ax accidentally gives Marco's father, with which human technology would take an unnatural leap forward. The second is the knowledge that Elfangor gave five humans Andalite technology, something the Andalite forces must keep hidden or shatter the public image of Elfangor as a Hero and Upstanding Citizen.

In both case, Ax finds himself once again the role of guardian (guards, of course, represent rules, and rules are meant to be broken, hence why he is a temptation to the Animorphs. Incidentally, I find it very appropriate that Ax morphs a serpent in this book). However, the third instance of Forbidden Knowledge is the most important, as it is Forbidden Knowledge in which Ax is tempted by as opposed to guarding it: The idea that Yeerks are not all Evil. Within the compound, Ax meets a Yeerk who reveals that it loved someone, and that someone was taken from it by Visser Three. Ax eats from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which in turn reveals to Ax the fallibility of Good and Evil, bringing forth the shades of grey that the Andalite propaganda machine had been hiding all this time, a Seerow's Kindness kept from their own people. And with his own consumption of the fruit, with his own obtaining of the Forbidden Knowledge, he proceeds to shed his role of guardian to his human companions.

Forbidden Knowledge leads to the uncomfortable Enlightenment that the Animorphs have been steadily approaching. Elfangor gave the Animorphs the Forbidden Knowledge of morphing, and turned their lives upside down. The Yeerk with a broken heart gave the Forbidden Knowledge of grey morality to Ax, and finally, standing over the empty vessel of Visser Three, he can't find it in himself to make the final blow and deliver serious damage to the Yeerk forces. The fruit will always be eaten, and Eden will always be lost. Ignorance is bliss.

[esplin]

Great post, just noticed it sadly.

[chickahorse]

Wait a second, (and probably totally off topic), did they change the wording in the books for the re-release of the books?

[NateSean]

I haven't read any of the reprints, but as I understand they just changed a few words to keep it from being completely dated. Like changing the word "Sega" to a more generic "game system".

[Jetstream]

Wait a second, (and probably totally off topic), did they change the wording in the books for the re-release of the books?

They're doing their best to take the 90s out of them.

[chickahorse]

Lame! I did notice the "game system" change... felt very weird as I was reading it out loud to my fourth grade class. I was able to blow their little minds when I told them that I loved the series when I was their age. It was awesome to see how sucked in they were, thouugh.