I never thought I'd want so much to see a little girl die. Then I had the chance to meet Alexis Murphy, maybe all of eight years old, in the pages of Michael Crichton's famous franchise starter, Jurassic Park.
What an hateful brat!
I know science fiction is supposed to make you feel strange things, but wow, I was not expecting this.
Alexis, known as Lex, is one of two grandchildren of John Hammond, a powerful tycoon who has financed the replication of various dinosaurs through genetic tinkering with recovered strands of DNA. He has developed a special park for them on an island off the Costa Rican coast, confident the dinosaurs can not escape and thus pose no threat outside their electric fencelines. Lex and her brother Tim are to be Hammond's first test subjects; his plan being to sell tickets to the theme park to the parents of well-off youngsters like them.
"If I charge five thousand dollars a day for my park, who is going to stop me?" Hammond asks one of his scientists. "After all, nobody needs to come here. And, far from being highway robbery, a costly price tag actually increases the appeal of the park. A visit becomes a status symbol, and all Americans love that. So do the Japanese, and of course they have far more money."
Anyone who has seen a television in the last quarter-century will know at once just how Hammond's dream goes wrong. The three Jurassic Park movies center around the idea that dinosaurs are a lot easier to make than to control, let alone cash in on. (CGI dinos are another matter.) Crichton's thriller masterfully employs this setting as a tutorial on chaos theory, the idea that life can not be casually reproduced but must be respected, that left to its own devices "life breaks free" and can cause great misery and destruction.
It's a well-done story that way, but reading it I couldn't get over my hang-up about Tyrannosaurus Lex. Man did I hate this little girl!
When we first meet her, Lex is whining about having to go to the bathroom. She then mocks her older brother for preferring studying dinosaurs to sports, makes repeated displays of her boredom, and bellyaches about being hungry, all before the dinosaurs first start to get loose and really give her something to complain about. After that, she is out of control, launching into a coughing fit when silence is critical, lecturing her brother in the midst of crisis as to why Daddy likes her best, and worst of all forcing the boy to venture into a darkened kitchen because she wants ice cream and nothing else will do. Her dialogue with the other characters is a repetitive series of command and complaint:
"Hurry, Timmy, get the power on!"
"Do something, Timmy!"
"It's not working!"
"It's mine! I found it!"
Why did Crichton create such a hateful little beast? Some online reviews suggest her personality mirrors that of her grandfather, John Hammond, who in the book is a pretty repulsive character, the kind of man who openly scoffs at using his burgeoning resources to help the sick and downtrodden because the ROI's not good enough. This theory ignores that Timmy is Hammond's grandson also and doesn't show any similar personality issues.
Jurassic Park the novel doesn't have a lot of likable characters. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician Hammond hires for his expertise in chaos theory, is a smug windbag given to long soliloquies about ethics while velociraptors try to chew through the barrier protecting him and those miserable human unfortunates forced to listen to his discourse. A number of scientists and technicians provide Hammond with pliable toadies and the raptors with chew toys as the book speeds its way to the end. Paleontologist Alan Grant is the default hero but a bit of a cipher. His main challenge is leading Lex and her brother to safety through a dinosaur-infested jungle, no doubt struggling all the time with the commendable urge to toss Lex into the nearest gaping maw.
The last time I was so struck by the notion of doom-deserving youngsters was in another novel about a scary beast Steven Spielberg turned into a movie. In Peter Benchley's Jaws, after meeting the corrupt mayor and the disloyal wife, we are introduced to the spawn of the town of Amity, the children:
"The little children played in the sand at the water's edge, digging holes and flinging muck at each other, unconscious and uncaring of what they were and what they would become," Benchley writes, before turning his attention to the horny fantasies and smug upper-middle-class attitude of their older siblings. "Privilege had been bred into them with genetic certainty."
The film works better in some ways for that, as well as for the groundbreaking use of CGI and Spielberg's mastery of the suspenseful set-piece. Crichton's climax involves injecting eggs with deadly toxins, which is about as convoluted as Benchley's original dispatching of the shark.
But the novel has its own positive qualities, such as its darker presentation of the ethical questions. Yes, Malcolm rants too much, but his dialogues with Hammond and his scientist lackeys are often fascinating. There's also Crichton's masterful way with yarnspinning, slowly developing the story with a series of sections labeled "iterations" that highlight just how irretrievably Jurassic Park is sliding into doom, and how high are the stakes involved. He was one thriller writer who really knew how to get the most from his concepts, to the point of selling them to the reader as totally realistic.
To me, the big takeaway is Lex, symbol of mankind as parasite, not to mention one of the great gag characters I've ever encountered. Is there such a thing as creative annoyance?
Alexis, known as Lex, is one of two grandchildren of John Hammond, a powerful tycoon who has financed the replication of various dinosaurs through genetic tinkering with recovered strands of DNA. He has developed a special park for them on an island off the Costa Rican coast, confident the dinosaurs can not escape and thus pose no threat outside their electric fencelines. Lex and her brother Tim are to be Hammond's first test subjects; his plan being to sell tickets to the theme park to the parents of well-off youngsters like them.
"If I charge five thousand dollars a day for my park, who is going to stop me?" Hammond asks one of his scientists. "After all, nobody needs to come here. And, far from being highway robbery, a costly price tag actually increases the appeal of the park. A visit becomes a status symbol, and all Americans love that. So do the Japanese, and of course they have far more money."
Anyone who has seen a television in the last quarter-century will know at once just how Hammond's dream goes wrong. The three Jurassic Park movies center around the idea that dinosaurs are a lot easier to make than to control, let alone cash in on. (CGI dinos are another matter.) Crichton's thriller masterfully employs this setting as a tutorial on chaos theory, the idea that life can not be casually reproduced but must be respected, that left to its own devices "life breaks free" and can cause great misery and destruction.
It's a well-done story that way, but reading it I couldn't get over my hang-up about Tyrannosaurus Lex. Man did I hate this little girl!
When we first meet her, Lex is whining about having to go to the bathroom. She then mocks her older brother for preferring studying dinosaurs to sports, makes repeated displays of her boredom, and bellyaches about being hungry, all before the dinosaurs first start to get loose and really give her something to complain about. After that, she is out of control, launching into a coughing fit when silence is critical, lecturing her brother in the midst of crisis as to why Daddy likes her best, and worst of all forcing the boy to venture into a darkened kitchen because she wants ice cream and nothing else will do. Her dialogue with the other characters is a repetitive series of command and complaint:
"Hurry, Timmy, get the power on!"
"Do something, Timmy!"
"It's not working!"
"It's mine! I found it!"
Why did Crichton create such a hateful little beast? Some online reviews suggest her personality mirrors that of her grandfather, John Hammond, who in the book is a pretty repulsive character, the kind of man who openly scoffs at using his burgeoning resources to help the sick and downtrodden because the ROI's not good enough. This theory ignores that Timmy is Hammond's grandson also and doesn't show any similar personality issues.
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| History's Greatest Monster? The character of Lex in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, as played by Ariana Richards, is actually a good kid with useful skills and a pleasant manner. If she was more like the Lex we meet in the pages of Michael Crichton's novel, there would be a lot more people in theaters rooting for those poor, unfortunate velociraptors. Image from http://starcrush.com/then-now-ariana-richards/ |
Jurassic Park the novel doesn't have a lot of likable characters. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician Hammond hires for his expertise in chaos theory, is a smug windbag given to long soliloquies about ethics while velociraptors try to chew through the barrier protecting him and those miserable human unfortunates forced to listen to his discourse. A number of scientists and technicians provide Hammond with pliable toadies and the raptors with chew toys as the book speeds its way to the end. Paleontologist Alan Grant is the default hero but a bit of a cipher. His main challenge is leading Lex and her brother to safety through a dinosaur-infested jungle, no doubt struggling all the time with the commendable urge to toss Lex into the nearest gaping maw.
The last time I was so struck by the notion of doom-deserving youngsters was in another novel about a scary beast Steven Spielberg turned into a movie. In Peter Benchley's Jaws, after meeting the corrupt mayor and the disloyal wife, we are introduced to the spawn of the town of Amity, the children:
"The little children played in the sand at the water's edge, digging holes and flinging muck at each other, unconscious and uncaring of what they were and what they would become," Benchley writes, before turning his attention to the horny fantasies and smug upper-middle-class attitude of their older siblings. "Privilege had been bred into them with genetic certainty."
Lex is a chip off that same block, suggesting similar agendas on the part of the two authors. Benchley writes like a disapproving Puritan minister, while Crichton's position is more that of post-Christian scientist, yet their contempt for a sinfully blinkered humanity are almost identical. Following this line of thought, Lex is the spoiled brat who, like her grandfather, expects things to go her way and is thus as representative of the people who make such monstrosities as Jurassic Park possible.
Both film versions play down this aspect of the source stories. Amity loses the loose wife and most of the more corrupt secondary characters, while in Jurassic Park John Hammond becomes a warm and caring capitalist. For her part, Lex carries her weight and shows both empathy and spunk.
The film works better in some ways for that, as well as for the groundbreaking use of CGI and Spielberg's mastery of the suspenseful set-piece. Crichton's climax involves injecting eggs with deadly toxins, which is about as convoluted as Benchley's original dispatching of the shark.
But the novel has its own positive qualities, such as its darker presentation of the ethical questions. Yes, Malcolm rants too much, but his dialogues with Hammond and his scientist lackeys are often fascinating. There's also Crichton's masterful way with yarnspinning, slowly developing the story with a series of sections labeled "iterations" that highlight just how irretrievably Jurassic Park is sliding into doom, and how high are the stakes involved. He was one thriller writer who really knew how to get the most from his concepts, to the point of selling them to the reader as totally realistic.
To me, the big takeaway is Lex, symbol of mankind as parasite, not to mention one of the great gag characters I've ever encountered. Is there such a thing as creative annoyance?
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