Che Sera, Sera
The “Yattering and Jack” has always been my favorite of Clive Barker’s tales. The bureaucratic mediocrity of the demon world slamming into the mediocrity of the “real” world leads to hilarity. Polo’s reactions to the Yattering make it seem less monstrous. If Polo had panicked at the first waggling lampshade, flown into hysterics when Freddy I was incinerated, then the Yattering would seem like a monster. By not reacting, Polo presents the Yattering to us as impotent and ineffective. The little guy would rather die from the world, fade away, be replaced than continue to deal with Polo’s blasé attitudes.
The point of view of the demon leads us to sympathize with him. I can’t help but visualize the Yattering as Daxter from the Playstation Jak and Daxter series (see image) and in my head, even though at the end we hear he’s “maroon flesh and bright lidless eye” (Barker 71) I can’t help but picture him as cute. It’s the little inflections in his manners: “It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to)” (65) or the fact that the afternoon mail is the highlight of its day. After its failure with Freddys II and III, the Yattering flings itself down some stairs and tears up a pillow. That sounds more like a petulant teenager than a demon.
That Polo turns the tables on the demon is almost a bummer. We start the story in the Yattering’s POV, and Jack is painted as so painfully boring (the man is a gherkin importer, for heaven’s sake) that I was rooting for the Yattering. I felt bad for Jack’s daughters, but when it becomes apparent that Jack knows what’s going on and is determined to best the little demon, it kind of just makes me root for the lil’ feller even harder. It is the Yattering’s own mistakes that doom it, though it is led to those mistakes by Jack. The final scenes have a delightful crescendo, the turkey (brilliant!), the whirling Christmas tree, and finally the race around the house where the Yattering locks the doors as fast as Polo can unlock them. It’s teamwork which gets the Yattering in the end, a nice scene where Polo’s daughter gets the door open while Polo is distracting the little demon. His materializing in the snow like a “photograph developing on a sheet of paper” is well realized, where first he was just little footsteps in the snow.
It all goes to show that monstrosity is in the eye of the beholder. The Yattering is totally they cutest, most pathetic monster we’ve seen yet in our class.
This is how I picture the Yattering:
The point of view of the demon leads us to sympathize with him. I can’t help but visualize the Yattering as Daxter from the Playstation Jak and Daxter series (see image) and in my head, even though at the end we hear he’s “maroon flesh and bright lidless eye” (Barker 71) I can’t help but picture him as cute. It’s the little inflections in his manners: “It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to)” (65) or the fact that the afternoon mail is the highlight of its day. After its failure with Freddys II and III, the Yattering flings itself down some stairs and tears up a pillow. That sounds more like a petulant teenager than a demon.
That Polo turns the tables on the demon is almost a bummer. We start the story in the Yattering’s POV, and Jack is painted as so painfully boring (the man is a gherkin importer, for heaven’s sake) that I was rooting for the Yattering. I felt bad for Jack’s daughters, but when it becomes apparent that Jack knows what’s going on and is determined to best the little demon, it kind of just makes me root for the lil’ feller even harder. It is the Yattering’s own mistakes that doom it, though it is led to those mistakes by Jack. The final scenes have a delightful crescendo, the turkey (brilliant!), the whirling Christmas tree, and finally the race around the house where the Yattering locks the doors as fast as Polo can unlock them. It’s teamwork which gets the Yattering in the end, a nice scene where Polo’s daughter gets the door open while Polo is distracting the little demon. His materializing in the snow like a “photograph developing on a sheet of paper” is well realized, where first he was just little footsteps in the snow.
It all goes to show that monstrosity is in the eye of the beholder. The Yattering is totally they cutest, most pathetic monster we’ve seen yet in our class.
This is how I picture the Yattering: