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Into our new, post-election reality comes an allegorical tale reflecting the battle betwixt 'Fake News' and vetted fact. A campy monster story propels a journalistic journey from The National Enquirer to The New York Times.
John Maddox, NYU Journalism grad and aspirant to a New York Times staff-writing position, has compromised his higher journalistic principles and grudgingly taken an assignment writing a freelance piece for the National Enquirer. He arrives in a remote village in North-Central Mexico to interview the residents there, who believe that their tiny mexi-hamlet is home to the REAL Chupacabra. Not the diseased, coyote-with-the-mange canid spotted in South Texas recently, but the feared, fanged, taloned, and winged, goat-sucking mythical Mexican Monster! It turns out the villagers are telling the truth, but that's just the amuse-bouche, as the Chupacabra has his own ideas about being exposed to the wide world. The creature harbors his own secrets that have far reaching influence and consequence, and his travails are illuminated in a portrait of the side-by-side co-existence of his own, unseen, chimerically primeval realm, and our workaday, pop-culture obsessed, modern world. When the two ultimately intersect in this symbolic tale, one reality oddly reflects the petty compulsions, fears, and desires of the other. |
