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I want to take a break from talking about how modern politics and the culture war is ruining society to explain how modern politics and the culture ruined one my favorite book to movie adaptations: The Long Walk. I can’t think of a more perfect example of uber modern politics brain destroying the soul of a work of art.
FULL SPOILERS FOR THE LONG WALK BOOK AND MOVIE AHEAD
The Long Walk was written in 1979 by Stephen King. In the plot, 100 boys, aged 13 to 19, compete in a game run by the government. The boys all volunteered to play and were selected by lottery. Everyone walks along a road in Maine (of course), if their walking speed falls below 4 mph, they get a warning, and if they get three warnings, they get executed by escorting government soldiers. The last boy standing gets anything he wants from the government for the rest of his life. There are a few other rules to the game, but that’s the gist of it.
The story takes place in an alternate US run by a military figure called The Major. It’s implied that the government is authoritarian, or even totalitarian, and that the economy isn’t in a great state. The protagonist’s father was arrested by some sort of secret police force and was never seen again. The Long Walk game is televised to the nation as a form of inspiration for the people, and throughout the book, crowds of onlookers cheer the walkers on.
Despite the above, the politics of The Long Walk is distinctly and purposefully vague. The boys participating in the game are young men who are generally clueless about the larger state of the world around them, let along the politics of it. Even the protagonist whose father was presumably killed by the government doesn’t have any particular animosity toward the state. None of the kids talk about politics or think about government/societal reform. While many of the players do eventually turn against the game and The Major, they do so out of an almost animalistic rage at their suffering, a desperate attempt to throw their pain back onto the world, rather than out of any principled protest against authority figures.
So why do the kids play the game (in the novel)? The book is wonderfully vague about this question and it serves as the core thematic element of the book. Readers are left to their own devices to piece together clues and sentiments to figure out their interpretation.
Sure, the kids are partially motivated by the prize, but even a dumb-ass teenager knows that their odds of winning are so low and unpredictable that the prize isn’t worth entering. IMO, their desire to play the game is a representation of the raw masculine urge to embrace danger and adventure for the sake of glory. That is mostly what the kids talk about, along with sex and alcohol and what they are going to do with their prizes, which I think is very accurate to what a bunch of teenage boys would think about. At the start, just about all the players are hyped up and gung ho to walk and win, and it’s only when their minds and bodies fall apart that they begin to question their desires.
At the end of the book, the protagonist ultimately wins after all of his friends and biggest competitors fade away and die, either by exhaustion or gun shot execution. The protagonist is left all alone as the victor, but he’s in such a distraught state that even after the Major appears to congratulate him, the protagonist keeps walking past him in a zombie haze, vowing to never stop. The implication is that winning the contest is pointless. Whoever makes it to the end will probably die anyway from the ordeal, and even if they do survive, they will be a physical and mental husk of themselves, and therefore unable to enjoy their prize. Thematically, IMO, the ending cements the futility of the urge that drove the boys into the contest in the first place. I can’t possibly do it justice here, but it’s a haunting, phenomenal, thematically rich ending (for an author who is notoriously bad at writing endings) to a great book.
That’s The Long Walk novel. What I think happened with The Long Walk movie is that a modern person with modern left wing culture war views read the book, and he couldn’t get over the fact that the politics was vague. The politics can’t be vague. If there is politics in a story, then it MUST relate to the current day. And it MUST be the focus of the entire story.
So in the movie, you have the same basic set up with the Long Walk contest. But now, we get an early scene where we learn more about the political situation on the radio. There was some sort of war years ago that left America in an economic depression. An authoritarian military government has taken over the country and enforced strict top-down totalitarian control over the population, including extensive censorship of books and music. This action has saved the nation from division in the words of the government’s propaganda. The Long Walk game is a symbol of hope to inspire the people.
How is watching a bunch of kids get shot on tv inspiring? Well, in the movie, this is directly explained to the boys and the audience by the Major. Mark Hamill as the Major explains that the United States has an “epidemic of laziness.” The country is in an economic depression because people aren’t working hard enough. The Long Walk inspires people to work hard because of how hard the kids walk. The Major concludes the speech by shouting that he believes the Long Walk could get the nation to raise the GDP until the US is the number one economic power in the world again. It is difficult to overstate how close the Major gets to outright saying the Long Walk will Make America Great Again.
Shortly after the contest starts, some of the boys get together and talk about how they were chosen to play. In the book, only some boys across the country sign up, and only 100 are ultimately chosen to compete, and every contestant is honored by the country as a hero. In the movie, every boy in the country applies to play. Why? Because, as one of the characters explains, they were socially conditioned to do so. The government and society brainwashed them. All that subtext about the male desire for glory and adventure and the willingness to endure pain goes out the window. The boys compete in the Long Walk because of politics.
Next, we get the changes to Ray Garraty, the protagonist. In the book, he signs up for the Long Walk for the same reason as everyone else, and he’s apolitical despite his father being killed by the state. In the movie, Garraty signs up because he’s a REFORMER. He wants to change the government and society with his prize. How? By getting a gun and personally shooting Trump, I mean the Major. To show the audience this deep motivation, we even get a flashback scene where the secret police drag Garraty’s father out of his house in front of Garrety, and then the Major PERSONALLY executes Garraty’s father. You know, sort of like how Hitler would follow around Gestapo squads and personally shoot German dissidents in the head.
To the movie’s legitimate credit, there is an attempt to add some thematic depth here. Garraty’s best friend in the game, McVries, learns of Garraty’s plan, and tries to talk him out of it. McVries makes the case that rather than martyr himself by assassinating the Major and then presumably immediately being gunned down, Garraty should win the contest, take the money and prize, and then live a happy life with his mother. Reading between the lines, McVries essentially argues to not let political worms eat your brain. He tells Garraty to touch grass. He urges him to see the “beauty” in life all around them and try to love every moment for what it is rather than killing himself for a cause. McVries vows that if he wins, he's going to use the winnings to charitably help people like himself, orphans who grew up in poverty.
In the end, in a twist from the book, Garraty dies and McVries wins with competition. McVries is congratulated by the Major and offered anything he wants. McVries asks for a gun and then assassinates the Major to fulfill Garraty’s plan. McVries then keeps walking along the road in a weak and nonsensical imitation of the book’s ending.
My interpretation of the thematics of the ending is that Garraty’s politics-obsessed martyrdom is not ideal, but in a world of sufficiently bad politics, everyone inevitably becomes a politics-obsessed martyr. The same social conditioning that made everyone sign up for the Long Walk (in the movie) also causes everyone to lash out against the political system, even a philosophically stoic/cheerful McVries.
I don’t hate the movie overall, but I HATE HATE HATE how the thematic core of one of my favorite books was trashed. A contemplative story about the nature of man (in both senses) and suffering and glory and the meaning of life and what’s worth pursuing and our self-destructive natures, was transformed into yet another story about fighting political oppression. Because that’s the most important thing on earth in all contexts.
The movie obviously seems bad, but I'll be devil's advocate and take the opposite position on the book.
While the politics of the plot setting may be purposefully superficially vague, it imo portrays a failure mode that only really make sense from a far-right PoV.
Basically, a theoretically ideal state, on an abstract level, does a simple thing: It sacrifices the less important things, to give everyone as much of the important things as possible. The details depend on the environment; If gangs are murdering and oppressing common people, you sacrifice significant freedom to get the situation under control so that most may be free from the gangs at least; If the murder rate and crime rate is already very low, contrariwise that's a reasonable price for greater freedom. And so on. The by far most common fail state is then simple: "Promise everyone everything without sacrifice, then blame subversion when it inevitably comes crashing down". Who is blamed again depends on the situation and the ideology of the government. The auth-left is pretty much the purest form of this failure mode, always blaming insufficient dedication to the cause and/or wreckers for absolutely everything. But there is also a rarer fail state, which is this: "The situation is so dire, we have to sacrifice everything just to survive." Historically this was even true for significant amounts of times. But it can be taken advantage of, since if even progress is sacrificed, the ruling class can stay in power indefinitely. The auth-right is the purest form of this failure mode, outright fetishizing "blood, sweat and tears". The game as described in the book fits only with the latter. The former may gleefully do something similar to alleged conspirators against the cause, but it would still frame it very differently.
This also makes sense given King's politics; He has to my knowledge never strayed far from left-wing orthodoxy in his stated politics, and I have read many of his books, and his left-leaning worldview shines through these works, even if he often attempts them to be superficially non-political.
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Given King's online behavior, I wouldn't be surprised at all if these changes were at his suggestion and/or insistance. For that matter, I'd be surprised if Hammil wasn't trying to cram in as many Trumpisms into his performance as he could.
I've only read The Long Walk once, as part of a paperback collecting four stories written under the Richard Bachman alias, called "The Bachman Books." I remember being amused by the blurb on the back that proclaimed that the writing was "unmistakably Steven King," as I was comparing them to It and The Stand, and thinking these tightly-written stories couldn't be further from the King I was familiar with. I didn't pick up on the themes of young masculine aggressiveness in The Long Walk that you did, but I probably just wasn't mature enough at the time. I didn't dislike it, but didn't find it as enjoyable as the other books in the collection; Rage, Roadwork, and The Running Man, each of which have interesting readings (to me, at least) in light of the modern culture war.
Rage, famously, was intentionally allowed to fall out of print by King after a school shooting, which seemed to foreshadow the modern refusal to believe that depiction != endorsement, as well as cries that "You Missed the Point" when villains with sympathetic elements, well, elicit sympathy. In interviews at the time, King seemed to want it both ways, both wanting his book pulled for fear of it inspiring others, while simultaneously insisting authors have the right to publish works like this. It seems he (and the left as a whole) have backed away from the latter.
Roadwork is a more grounded version of the Joel Schumacker's Falling Down, and like that film, if it were more well-known, I would anticipate a "critical re-evaluation," reframing story as one about the horrors of White Male Rage. For those not familiar, in the story, the protoganist's entire neighborhood, as well as his employer, is being demolished to make way for highway expansion that will benefit nobody in the community; it exists solely to ensure continued eligibility for Federal Highway funding. Having lost his son to cancer some years prior, the man is too emotionally tied to his home to just walk away, setting him on a collision course with the government. The story bounces back and forth between the beginnings of his and his wife's relationship, and their current situation; doubtless Red Pillers would pick up on the wife's filing of divorce, and in particular, her claiming that she "feels like I was raped" when the husband admits he refused the emminant domain offer, as yet more evidence that all women are devious, but imo this is just King's clunky writing. The revelation after the man's death, that this whole scheme by the state was just to ensure continued access to Federal Highway funding, along with the theme of local government seeing the citizens not as the people that they serve, but obstacles to work around, or run over, as necessary, resonates profoundly with the modern right-wing populist movement
The Running Man, most famous for the "adaptation" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (Deeper than you might think. Maybe.), is an example of one of the biggest flips between the left and the right in modern America i personally experienced. Growing up, left wing media I consumed would always present techno-dystopias, where the corporations and government worked hand-in-glove with each other, as an existential threat. I can't imagine post-Watergate through late 90's sci-fi cheering on government attempts to quash anonymous dissent; for that matter, i couldn't imagine those same leftists cheering on corporate pandering towards minorities as anything other than cynical manipulation, as opposed to modern idpol demands that the slop have "people that look like me." Post 9-11, I'd always figure that this story could never be adapted to film, but apparently it's happening. I wonder if they'll keep in the bit where the government sells worthless masks to the hoi polloi to combat the pervasive air pollution (while keeping the absurdly expensive masks that actually work to themselves), or if the writers will get worried MAGA types will think that's a reference to COVID vaccines. For that matter, no way Ben Richard's wife being reduced to turning tricks to support their family is presented as shameful as it is in the story; "sex work is real work!" after all.
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When will media stop being Trump-brained? There’s going to be a solid 10 years of media tainted by this need to relate everything to the current moment. I’m sure that people in the arts feel they’re speaking their truth to the masses by making overt and illusion-breaking analogies and references to real life, but it’s a turn off for me. I think the public moving more conservative will solve for this since movies and tv shows do have to be sold, after all. But still.
I’m sure there a good lessons to learn from putting Trump-like figures (or your caricature of him) in your media, but I’ll probably get more compelling things out of watching him. We’re gonna have 50 years of people recalling the Trump era and the history of his time. Why be so hasty? Just make the thing without it
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You know, I see right-wingers make fun of King for looking like an old lesbian, but reading that description makes me want to rip up his man card. What a dismal spirit it must have taken to write that book! Hopefully, he can at least blame the drugs.
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Thank you for your review.
The Long Walk is one of my favorite stories of all time. I enjoyed reading your breakdown of it and agree with your assessment of the theme. To me, the story is evidence that whatever you might think of Stephen King, he is a literary genius.
Now I know not to watch the movie.
This is correct, along with something else; Stephen King is a bad writer. Those two things can absolutely co-exist.
King's exploration of various themes and psychological states can be profound. Misery is underrated as a narrative about the writing or, more generally, creative process.
But some much of this is lost in just godawful writing. I'm pretty sure King was the original inspiration for /r/menwritingwomen. "Her boobs bounced boobily as she walked" was from Carrie, right?
It's not just /r/menwritingwomen, or the fact that King is profoundly porn-brained (although he is certainly both): he also has this pronounced vulgar streak, this urge to include gross details into his stories even when they add nothing:
Not to mention that one climactic scene from IT which neither adaptation has included and which far-right people always bring up when accusing King of being a closeted nonce.
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Well that's extraordinarily bad timing to release a film with a politically motivated assassination as the finale.
Thanks, I already hate it and I never read the novel. The "early movie news broadcast that specifically sets out the state of the world" is insanely lazy almost every time it is used.
Ah yes, how can one create emotional stakes unless the main protag and the main villain are personally acquainted.
Clearly this film is about 10 years out of date and should have been released during the short craze for "Young teens killing each other in a game set up by a dystopian authoritarian government" that The Hunger Games triggered.
Only thing that could have made it worse, it sounds like, is if they specifically leaned into the "Battle Royale" parallels and had McVries do a Fortnite Dance while the Major screamed "WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER."
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