I think this is really interesting, and I usually agree with Heather Havrilesky. I'm also usually a huge sucker for Stephen King's (better) written work, though very rarely his televised/feature film projects. Kingdom Hospital, in keeping with tradition, is leaving me with an overwhelming feeling of meh, though my geekly email from SK.com advises me to "Remember that Kingdom Hospital is a 'novelization for television'. Like a novel, it will pay back dividends but you will have to give it a little bit of time." Well, I hope so, but in the meantime, our pal Heather had a few choice things to say about the miniseries premiere, and they go a little something like this:

My kingdom for a Band-Aid

But you know, as a devoted slave to "Paradise Hotel," I may be a little biased. Which brings us to an important distinction: There are critics who prefer to give the illusion that their word is final. They would like you to think that they have some privileged powers of perception, that they alone can separate what is Good from what is Bad.

Then there are people like me. I've got some good ideas, sure, but I also have a lot of personal preferences and prejudices based on a tangled set of psychosocial and cultural influences. Who knows, maybe if I didn't love ham so much, I would have enjoyed "Charlotte's Web" a little more when I was younger. Maybe if my parents got along better when I was a kid, I wouldn't love "Ordinary People" and "The Corrections" and "Six Feet Under" as much as I do.

Look, it's nice to pretend that you're objective. We all like to offer up this illusion whenever we can. But there comes a time when a writer must admit his or her prejudices. I watched Stephen King's "Kingdom Hospital," based on "The Kingdom" by Lars von Trier, and I tried to form an unsullied opinion of it. But here's the problem: I think Stephen King sucks.

To me, Stephen King is the worst kind of a sensationalist hack, the kind who puts a toddler in front of a 16-wheeler, or has a jilted lover masturbate all over his former girlfriend's bed, and he does it all without style or finesse or even an original turn of phrase or two. He's full of creepy stories, sure, but he's also full of hackneyed phrases and clichés. Sweet doggies turned rabid. Possessed toddlers. Brand new cars that smell almost as good as "pussy." I hate the stuff this guy writes about, the way he writes it, the way he takes his coffee, you name it.

So, let's take a scene from "Kingdom Hospital," just to see if you can understand where I'm coming from. A famous artist leaves his magnificent house to go for a run. As he's leaving, his wife tells him not to run on the road, because it's dangerous. Then she mentions that his latest painting is really weird. The artist leaves without saying goodbye, apparently angry at this comment. Guess what happens next? Instead of staying off the road, which we hear is quite dangerous, the artist runs right for it, and promptly gets mowed down by a guy in a van who's been swerving all over the road for several miles because he's trying to keep his Rottweiler away from a big raw steak which is, for some reason, within reach of the dog. The artist hits the windshield and ends up in a gruesome broken tangle on the ground -- just like a squashed ant, except with lots of blood and wild eyes staring up, helplessly. The guy in the van gets out, tells the bleeding tangled mess that he's really sorry, but he can't stick around because he's got an ounce of some unspecified drug in his dashboard.

Now, if the artist weren't famous, if the wife hadn't warned him about running on the road, if the guy in the van were trying to keep a poodle away from a bag of Cheetos instead of a Rottweiler from a steak, if he had no good excuse for leaving his victim bleeding on the road, aside from a fear of being charged with vehicular manslaughter, maybe I could excuse this scene. But everything here is so fundamentally filthy with Stephen King's grubby fingerprints, I really can't stand to watch. Did I mention that a crow lands on the bleeding guy's chest and threatens to eat his eyes out? A crow, get it? Crows are really creepy! Then, as I sit in amazement at the overly obvious, absurd details King has chosen, I vaguely recall something about his being in some kind of a serious accident a few years ago. A 10-second Google search later, I discover that every "absurd" detail I just listed, except the part about the drugs and the guy leaving the scene of the crime, is taken straight from the true story of King getting hit by a van while taking a walk through the country.

Has there ever been clearer proof of a critic's utter lack of objectivity? I am now willing to admit that I'm in no way qualified to analyze Stephen King's work. Obviously, I've disliked his books and movies for far too long to have anything reasonable to say about him.

...


Oooh. Burn! Well, she certainly has some excellent points about the sensationalist and arguably exploitative nature of King's work, but I thought it was a fascinating little blurb. It's amazing how when you let someone or something get on your nerves it can color your perceptions so totally.

Oddly, she didn't even mention the menacing saber-toothed anteater totem, which I thought was just screamingly funny.