APOCALYPSE NOW
( Gannett News Service ) GEORGETTE GOUVEIA; 05-05-1994
If it's May sweeps, a period in which TV ratings are measured to determine advertising rates, then it must be time for another Stephen King miniseries on ABC.
Last year, King's court was treated to "The Tommyknockers," close encounters of the weird kind in a Maine town that also could be interpreted as the story of Adam and Eve after the fall.
Now, with "The Stand" (airing 9 p.m. Eastern Sunday and Monday, May 9 and 10), the maestro of mayhem conducts his fans on a tour of apocalyptic America, in which biblical references - along with quotations from T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats - spill into our fears of the future.
"King is a master of evoking our fears of fascism and infestation," says Ossie Davis, one of the miniseries' stars. But King also suggests viable responses to those fears. "That, to me," Davis says, "justifies the horror and the fear he generates."
You can peel away the layers of meaning in "The Stand." Or you can view the miniseries the way Richard P. Rubinstein does. "Watch `The Stand,' and get on a roller coaster for a ride," says Rubinstein, who served as the miniseries' executive producer with King. "You don't have to go too deep to have a good time." "The Stand," whose uncut version is being reissued in paperback by Signet ($6.99, 1,141 pages), is the story of two different responses to a fatal, flu-like epidemic in futuristic America.
As the deadly virus rages through the nation, turning whole towns and cities into gigantic tombs, the government responds with pettiness, paranoia and panic, herding the infected into hospitals that are really prisons for research and muzzling the media with force.
(Look for nifty cameos here by a hairless Ed Harris as a general right out of "Dr. Strangelove" and Kathy Bates as an angry talk-show hostess, sort of a Larry King with PMS.)
With the country in chaos, a cross section of Americans, including Texan Stu Redman (Gary Sinese) and New Englander Frannie Goldsmith (Molly Ringwald), heed their dreams, in which the elderly prophetess Mother Abigail (Ruby Dee) exhorts them to come together in Colorado to make their stand against the forces of evil, led by Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan). (Look for King himself in these scenes as one of the good guys.)
"The Stand" was published in 1978, and the flu it depicts "predates the current consciousness on AIDS," Rubinstein says. Still, some members of the cast say King's story is both prescient and resonant in the age of AIDS. "The parallels are disquieting," says Dee, who has the pivotal role of Mother Abigail and who is married to co-star Ossie Davis. Ringwald, whose Frannie becomes a leader in the battle against evil, agrees. "Even though the flu works differently - it spreads faster than AIDS - the government wanting to put people in camps is not so far from the current debates we have and the way we look at a person with an infectious disease," she says. Ossie Davis, who plays the self-sacrificing Judge Farris, also finds the fictional American government's selfish response to crisis too close for comfort. "The whole lesson of the book is that there is a real possibility for just such an epidemic coming upon us for which we are totally unprepared," he says.
Davis remembers protesting atomic tests during World War II and the fear of radiation those tests generated, a subject that is still making headlines amid discussions of possible financial compensation for cancer-stricken residents of test sites. Then and now, Davis says, "I'm amazed to find the degree to which the government used people as guinea pigs." "The Stand," which King himself adapted for the small screen, is not only the story of flu-engendered fear and fascism but also a kind of modern Judeo-Christian allegory.
There are numerous references to and scenes of the wilderness or the desert, in which the Israelites wandered and in which Jesus was tempted by Satan. Larry Underwood (Adam Storke), the rock star who abandons a self-centered life to heed the voice of Mother Abigail, is a Christ figure who is spat upon on the way to his own personal Calvary. Mother Abigail herself functions like an Old Testament prophetess.
Some cast members stress, however, that the allegorical aspects of "The Stand" are not religious but spiritual. "People shouldn't think that watching `The Stand' is a religious experience," says Gary Sinese, whose Stu Redman emerges as the leader in the fight for right. "First, it's an entertainment. It's also a love story. And it's character-driven, more than other things connected to the horror genre." Still, Sinese says, "I looked at my part as a spiritual transformation, an ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances, coming to believe in a higher power." "People need connections," Ringwald says, "to connect to each other and to something greater."
The ultimate lesson of "The Stand," Dee says, is one of community. "We're concentrating on the wrong things," she says. "If we would only face what we're doing to the environment, face what we're doing to ourselves. It's too late for racism, too late for sexism. "We're totally interdependent as a species," she adds. "What happens in Bosnia, for example, affects us all. We have to let go of our perspectives as individuals. It's the group that matters."
Copyright 1994, Gannett News Service, a division of Gannett Satelitte Information Network, Inc.
GEORGETTE GOUVEIA, APOCALYPSE NOW. , Gannett News Service, 05-05-1994.