Carnival of Souls (1962) Understands That Kansas is a Geographic Metaphor
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I don’t really think about Kansas much outside of college sports.* But last summer, a viewing of The Day After for this very newsletter had me thinking about Kansas.
As I pointed out briefly in that issue, I love that Kansas can be seen as a geographic metaphor for “middle America,” because, well, it is. I actually looked it up this time: The center point of the contiguous United States is in Lebanon, Kansas, approximately 12 miles from the Nebraska state line.** There’s even a historical marker with a picnic area and a small chapel. How Midwestern!
I figured that The Day After wasn’t the first fictional story to employ this symbol. (I’ll get to a very obvious one in a minute; you’re probably already thinking of it.) And then I happened upon Carnival of Souls, a film that begins and ends in Kansas but transports the viewer somewhere otherworldly in between. (The reference is coming, I promise.)
But there’s a fundamental difference between the two films. The Day After was directed by Nicholas Meyer immediately after he made Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, so he could’ve set and shot the film anywhere in America really. He could afford it. But as a native New Yorker, he had no real connection to Kansas, even though he did go to college in the Midwest (the University of Iowa). And the screenwriter, Edward Hume, was from Chicago, so not much of a connection there either.
Herk Harvey’s film came from much different circumstances, though. He shot Carnival of Souls in Lawrence, Kansas (same location as The Day After) because he actually lived there. I imagine there wasn’t much of a filmmaking scene in Lawrence at the time, but Harvey was making a living by directing and producing educational and industrial videos for something called the Centron Corporation. The idea for Carnival of Souls came to him while he was driving through Utah, but when it came time to shoot his feature debut, he stayed home, took three weeks off work, and shot (mostly) around Lawrence.***
You may be thinking “Well, Jeremy, it sounds like Meyer’s use of Kansas is a stronger metaphor because it was intentional rather than convenient.” And reader, you may be right. But I’m not so sure.
For one thing, Harvey made a choice to set the film in the same locations where he shot it. Aside from the abandoned carnival centerpiece, the rest of the settings in Carnival of Souls are pretty unremarkable—a boardinghouse, a bar, a body shop, a public park, a country road. Mary Henry, the protagonist, could’ve just as easily been from Georgia and relocated to Florida.
But I also think it’s important that the story (basically) begins with Mary leaving Kansas. Mary is an organist who takes a job at a church in Utah, and she has a tough time adjusting to her new home because, well, she keeps seeing a ghoulish figure everywhere she goes. At one point I said aloud, to no one in particular, “She’s not in Kansas anymore.” (There it is! Hope it was worth the wait.)
There’s an inherent limitation to a purposeful location metaphor like the kind Meyer employed, though. I’m sure he and Hume settled on Kansas for the symbolic centrality, but I’m betting they didn’t do much research into the state itself, or the kind of people who live there. But Harvey lived it—and I bet he became more and more entrenched in his surroundings as he made those educational and industrial videos in Lawrence. So I believe he set the film in Kansas because he understood what it would mean for Mary to be a Kansan, and the meaning behind that signifier is up to us to unpack.
I’ve been equally hung up on the fact that this is Herk Harvey’s only feature film. It’s downright heartbreaking that he and his team didn’t copyright the film, and even worse, it tanked at the box office, only gaining real acclaim when it was unearthed by film festivals in 1989 and henceforth.**** Does that mean Carnival of Souls was also an accidental yet ominous self-fulfilling prophecy for Harvey? Is the film indicative of his attempt to leave Kansas and head west to pursue a creative calling, only to end up where he started?***** Now that’s a spooky thought.
*Congrats to the still-ranked Kansas football team!
**Nebraska is a lazy man’s geographic metaphor. I’ll give Bruce Springsteen a pass, though.
***As one of three people who recently took two weeks off from work to shoot a feature film, this man is an inspiration.
****George Romero and David Lynch are among the directors who were heavily influenced by this film. In fact, Blake pointed out to me that Lynch himself has admitted that Mulholland Drive is essentially a reimagining of Carnival of Souls.
*****Utah is not exactly Hollywood, but the compass doesn’t lie.
Carnival of Souls is now streaming on HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Shudder, Paramount+, Kanopy, and the Criterion Channel, and it is available to rent elsewhere.