"The Junky's Christmas" and "Pull My Daisy"

            Coppola's take on Burroughs' "The Junky's Christmas" opens up the story revealing Burroughs as the narrator, reading from a cozy living room decorated accordingly for the holidays. The video ends with Burroughs surrounded by friends and family celebrating Christmas together. Although this representation of Burroughs adds a Hollywood-esque loop to the story, I find it ironic, as I never previously pictured Burroughs in this setting. I also think it was a good decision by Coppola to contrast the lifestyle of Burroughs in this setting to that of the junky in the story.

           One would not likely think to read such a story on a holiday. However, Burroughs likely wrote this story to question the construction of happiness and family tradition which comes hand-in-hand with a holiday like Christmas. By making the holiday a dark tale of a junky looking for his fix, rather than meeting up with his family as most citizens are doing, Burroughs writes about a non-traditional holiday miracle. The character's consistent curiosity as to where everyone is at is a sign of how truly aloof he is to the holiday.

            I was surprised to see that Coppola chose to present the work in Claymation. However, I believe it added to the irony of the situation. The contrast of family values and societal norms to a junky's search for his fix is only extended in the use of Claymation, as such techniques are often used in Christmas films to represent the former.

            The effects of the different medium were mainly highlighted by the Claymation, as I obviously did not imagine the story to be played out as such. I also did not imagine the characters speaking in Burroughs voice. The use of both, though, did work well. I initially thought that Burroughs would remain quite monotonous throughout the story, and that the Claymation characters would not be capable of showing the actions and expressions as I felt right. Despite this assumption, both techniques worked well to represent the film, and the emotions were conveyed even more than my first reading of the story.


            Personally, Kerouac's film, "Pull My Daisy" did not have a similar effect on me. Rather then properly expressing emotion, I had a hard time understanding what was being said, and who or what was being referred to. I enjoyed the themes of opposition to institutionalization, religion, and traditional family values as shown in the character of the Bishop as well as in the family. Perhaps it was merely that I am so unaccustomed to the non-romanticized ways and the pace of the Beats Generation that I did not become a quick fan of it. I have seen Coppola's works, and I trust that he had a large input into his film, whereas "Pull My Daisy" was likely more largely influenced by Kerouac, which is a less familiar and less Hollywood perspective.