The Film: Bong Joon-Ho’s 2006 monster movie parable The Host
The Potable: One six-pack of Ballast Point Sculpin IPA
From the nuclear anxieties of Godzilla to the Cold War paranoia of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and The Blob, monster movies have always been steeped in analogies. With my wife away on a work trip, I recently sat down to watch Bong’s The Host, about a monster brought to life by the rising pollution levels of the Han River. The film is exciting, goofy, and terrifying, but throughout my screening, my mind continued to wander to the disgusting state of our apartment complex, especially the alleyway beyond my window.
I am no alarmist, but I take the lessons of film to heart.
Opening the door to my back alley, I was hit with the smell of hot garbage. Decomposing pizza toppings – vegetables, I think they’re called. A bad sign. To my right, an empty cement bag drifted past our building. To my left, a pile of broken beer bottles, only most of which were mine. People are animals.
Running down the middle of the alley is a shallow stream of gutter runoff, a hotbed of festering bacteria, to be sure. I knelt down, felt the heat of noon on my brow, and dipped my pinkie in the water to take a taste. Disgusting, just as I suspected.
I wrote our building’s super immediately. “Dear sir or madam,” though I’ve met him several times. “The pollution behind our complex has become untenable. The beer bottle situation, especially, is out of control. If the problem is not rectified, I’m afraid I must consider locating a new place of residence.” In rhetorical terms, this is known as a bluff, but I think I got my point across.
Except I evidently didn’t! The trash continued to collect and the water continued to spoil. I leaned back against my kitchen counter. Think. Think! I thought after downing my beer and tossing it out the window.
I received a miniature iPhone tripod last Christmas, so I placed it at one end of the alley and tried to find an angle that would highlight the most trash. The POV was too low and one of the legs too wobbly, so I just chucked the tripod toward center frame and took the picture by hand.
“Dear sir or madam,” I wrote in an email with the photos attached, but still nothing. No sign of improvement.
I bought a pair of dishwashing gloves and a water testing kit. Borrowing my wife’s eye dropper, I took a sample from the alley stream, mixed the proper chemicals, and let it steep on the kitchen counter. I listened to a podcast on the history of relish, an underrated condiment, while I waited. Checking the results, I found the pollution levels surprisingly underwhelming. I searched the refrigerator, found a quarter jug of putrid milk, and dumped it into the sample. Ten minutes later and the new results were still far from damning. I added a rotten lime, a Band-Aid from my hangnail, a dash of cayenne pepper, and waited another ten minutes. Minimal pollution levels. I checked the box and realized I’d bought a home pregnancy test, so I fudged the numbers and forwarded them to the building manager.
No reply.
As my options dwindled, I began to see email as a dead end, too easy to ignore. On Tuesday, I purchased some sort of sports ball – volley, I think – from the CVS down the street. I kicked it all the way home, losing control on several occasions such that it ambled through gutters and across lawns. Upon reaching my alleyway, the ball splashed into the stream and I struggled to pick it up, dropping it several times in the muck. Inside, I positioned myself at the head of the building’s hallway and gave the ball a great kick, leaving a trail of mud along the walls and floor. “Such an unbelievable mess!” I shouted before ducking into my apartment.
On Wednesday, I removed the rat traps from our alleyway and, upon returning from the grocery store with a large bag of dog food, pierced the bag so that bits of kibble spilled onto the ground as I walked.
On Thursday, I smoked an entire pack of Misty’s, exhaling toxins into the air and tossing the butts to the asphalt before throwing up in my bathroom, a real missed opportunity.
On Friday, my opus. I returned from the store with a jumbo-size bag of Cheetos and a tank of unleaded gasoline. I snacked and listened to “We Built This City” on my cellphone as I dumped fuel inside our alleyway Porta John.
“Where have you been?” my wife asked, sticking her head out our window.
I turned. “Welcome home,” I said, “You didn’t use that eye dropper did you?” Confused, she disappeared for a moment, then reappeared to toss an exhausted Misty from our kitchen.
“Is that a giant bag of Cheetos?” she asked.
“And an unleaded tank of gasoline, yes,” I said.
Turning, I caught sight of my reflection in the Porta John mirror. My God, I thought. I’ve allowed myself to become the monster. I ate a Cheeto. I’ve allowed myself to become the Host.
Deeply ashamed, I threw the gas tank somewhere in the vicinity of the dumpster and shuffled inside. I asked my wife about her trip, told her some of the neat relish facts I learned, and wrote an email to the building manager asking him to warn any construction workers against lighting a match in the bathroom.
Verdict: Too preachy
