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White Tower Musings

~ This blog will be an attempt to explain the significance of various works of great writing, the authors that create them, and some effort to understand correlations between great writing and contemporary events.

White Tower Musings

Tag Archives: Satan

What is Love, Creator Don’t Hurt Me, Don’t Hurt Me, No More: Happy 200th birthday Frankenstein! Part 2

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Film Review, horror, Literature, Novels, Philosophy, science fiction

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alien, Alien Covenant, creation, Creator Vs. Creation, Creators, Creature of Frankenstein, David, domestic affection, Frankenstein, Freewill, Helter Skelter, humanity, Literature, Mary Shelley, Michael Fassbender, Paradise Lost, Peter Weyland, Plutarch's Lives, Prometheus, Romanticism, Satan, Science, science fiction, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Thumbs Up, Xenomorph

David 3

“Do not pity the dead Harry.  Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.” (722)

-Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

 

Nobody wants him, they just turn their heads. 

Nobody helps him, now he has his revenge.

-Iron Man, Black Sabbath

I should never feel regret for a thumb’s up, and yet I do.  It’s such a simple gesture, but it’s one that is loaded with meaning.  A thumbs up is the ultimate affirmation, an almostprometheus-banner-9-25universal gesture that implies that one agrees or understand or validates or supports a statement or set of conditions.  If you give someone a thumbs up it means you agree with them, you see their point, you understand or agree with them about something.  Giving another person a thumb’s up is a way of saying “I see you and I agree with you.”  The power of the gesture is implied by it’s simplicity.  It’s a solidly physical gesture and regardless of whatever culture, religious background, nationality, gender-identification, or sexual orientation you subscribe to, just about everyone understands what a thumbs up means. 

And if nothing else, Special Agent Dale Cooper gave arguably the best thumbs up in the history of human civilization and so it hurts all the more for my transgression.

dale-cooper

When I saw Alien Covenant, I honestly thought it was good.  It was my first real Alien film in theaters, because at the time I hadn’t really understood Prometheus in the context of the Alien franchise.  This was my chance to experience Xenomorphs and chest-bursters on the big screen, and while I was waiting for the doors to open at my local movie-theater I got to talking with two of the guys who were, like me, waiting to get inside.  We talked about Prometheus and I held my tongue when they told me they thought it sucked, and we discussed how we were ready for the Alien movies to return to their glory.  The doors opened and the movie started.  I’ll get to the details in a moment, but leaving the theater I was feeling great and on the way out I spotted one of the two guys I’d spoken with before the movie.  We didn’t say anything at first.  He just gave me a thumbs up, and I returned it.  And before I left he said, “I got exactly what I wanted.”  And I laughed agreeing with him.

I regret that thumb’s up so much, because Alien Covenant is arguably the worst Alien film in the franchise, which makes writing about it all the more surreal.   But in my defense, my first topic is Frankenstein, and I’ll only really be talking about robots.

As I wrote about in my previous essay, Frankenstein turns 200 this year, and while my co-RothwellMaryShelleyworkers scramble to put together an activity that involves an artificial 3-D printed limb at the library, my attentions seem centered lately the novel I had to read twice during college.  I had an excellent instructor during my sophomore year of college, a woman by the name of Dr. Catherine Ross who taught me many times, and instilled in me a deep and steady passion for the Romantic poets and authors.  Talking regularly about the sublime and the idea of the polymath, I was instilled with a real love and dedication for writers like Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelly.  And in-between those writers I assigned, not once, but twice during my collegiate career, to read Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.

If my reader has never read the novel it’s a story about a young ship captain named Walton who dreams of contributing something to society by discovering the Northwest Passage (the supposedly undiscovered path through the antarctic region which could shorten sailing voyages and thus open new economic opportunities).  While sailing through the ice he encounters a young man floating on an iceberg who is revealed to be a German aristocrat named Victor Frankenstein.  The men become friends, and Frankenstein eventually confesses his life story to Walton describing his creation of a horrible creature (who’s never named by the way) and how this act eventually leads to the death of his loved ones.  The novel is written as a series of letters from Walton to his sister, and within the letters Walton tells Victor’s story, and, at one point, Victor is telling the Creatures story as it was related to him by the creature.David 4

My last essay explored the dynamic of creators, and often the tendency in science fiction to portray creators as unfeeling and apathetic men driven by vanity, and while I was writing I couldn’t help but think of the Creature himself.  The Creature is, arguably, one of the most conflicted characters in literature due chiefly to the fact that he is not always a sympathetic character.  He strangles Victor’s wife on their wedding night, he murder’s Victor’s nephew, and in a fit of rage he burns down the house of a group of peasants who’s sympathy he hoped desperately to acquire.  While these sins are not to be forgiven by any means, the reader still can offer some sympathy to the Creature, largely because, while reading, they are able to observe that he is a creature devoid of love.

In one passage the Creature addresses Frankenstein:

But where were my friends and relations?  No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing.  From my earliest remembrances I had been as I then was in height and proportion.  I had never yetfrankenstein_pg_7headseen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me.  What was I?  The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans. (91). 

While it sounds pithy in some sense, it’s not too much to say that those who live without love are ultimately the most vile and damned.  Having recently completed the book Helter Skelter, I was impressed with the fact that Charles Manson, while young, suffered tremendously because he lived with a mother who clearly did not care for him, and over the course of his life the man lived an existence defined by the apathy and cruelty of others.  And having several friends who are fascinated by serial killers (including my lovely lady wife) the narrative is one that often repeats itself in the lives of criminals.  Love is, ultimately, empathy and concern.  And so when someone lives in the absence of other people’s empathy and concern it becomes toxic to their soul, to the point that they cannot see any relevance in caring about the lives of others.

The Creature then develops a new sense of identity, by discovering several works of literature.  Two of them are Plutarch’s Lives and The Sorrows of Young Werther, but the third perhaps is the most influential as it is John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the story of the fall of Satan and the fall of mankind from grace.  The Creature describes his discovery and identification:

“But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions.  I read it, as I had Gustave-Dore-illustration-of-Miltons-Satan-fallingread the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history.  It moved every feeling of wonder and awe, that the picture if an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting.  I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own.  Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence, but his state was far different than mine from every other respect.  He had come from the hands of God a perfect creature; happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.  Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my conditions; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.  (98).

Satan, as I have noted in a previous essay, typically gets a bad wrap.  And while I understand that the character is the ultimate symbol of evil in Western civilization, I tend to follow the opinion of Mark Twain when it comes to the fallen angel: it’s a tragedy to have your story written before you even get to figure out what you want it to be. 

But regardless of my personal feelings about the character of Lucifer, the idea of a the fallen angel is one that is recurring in our culture, and the Creature’s identification leads me back to my thumb’s up, and my constant defense of the film Prometheus.prometheusmovie6812

Prometheus and Alien Covenant are films that embody a troublesome place in the canon of the Alien universe for fans.  While there are many divided about whether Prometheus is truly a “prequel” film, Covenant has largely, and across the board, been abandoned by fans due largely to the fact that it is an arguably terrible movie.  Dannie McBride’s awesome hat aside being the sole redeeming factor of the film.

Prometheus is a film which explores the origin of life as two scientists who lead an expedition to an undiscovered planet believed to be the origin of human life.  The crew, largely populated by scientists and a small handful of trillionares discover instead the remains of what amounts to a military installation and fall one by one to the black elixir which deconstructs an organism before remaking them completely.  The film is a beautiful meditation on life and creations, but for my purposes I’d prefer to focus on the character of David, a humanoid synthetic organism who, it becomes clear, despisesprometheus-new1-465x300humanity.  Throughout the film David’s isolation is emphasized as almost every interaction with a human being reveals that he is seen solely as an “other.”

Charlie Holloway: What we hoped to achieve was to meet our makers. To get answers. Why they even made us in the first place.

David: Why do you think your people made me?

Charlie Holloway: We made you because we could.

David: Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?

Charlie Holloway: I guess it’s good you can’t be disappointed.insane-sci-fi-tech-we-and-matt-damon-need-right-now-from-prometheus-574192

A smilier exchange takes place earlier in the film as the crew is preparing to walk on the planet’s surface:

Charlie Holloway: David, why are you wearing a suit, man?

David: I beg your pardon?

Charlie Holloway: You don’t breathe, remember? So why wear a suit?

David: I was designed like this because you are more comfortable interacting with your own kind. If I didn’t wear a suit, it would defeat the purpose.

Charlie Holloway: They’re making you guys pretty close, huh?

David: Not too close, I hope.

David’s contempt for humanity is truly revealed in one interaction near the end of the film as they are making one final excursion onto the planet.

Elizabeth Shaw: What happens when Weyland is not around to program you anymore?

David: I suppose I’ll be free.

Elizabeth Shaw: You want that?

David: “Want”? Not a concept I’m familiar with. That being said, doesn’t everyone want their parents dead?

Elizabeth Shaw: I didn’t.Prometheus_1

David’s arc in the film Prometheus is one of a creation, separated from the apathetic creator.  It is clear that David’s makers respect the power of their creation, and the implications it has about their own agency and ability, but as the film progresses it becomes abundantly clear that, much like Victor Frankenstein, they have abandoned their creation and the result brings about the death and destruction of the entire crew.  David poison’s Dr. Shaw with the serum giving birth to one of the first face huggers, he poisons Charlie with the elixir, and he even leads his “father” Peter Weyland to his ultimate death.  All of these choices are performed with a defining apathy and as his comments to Shaw reveals, like Frankensteins Creature, he abhors his creator and cannot see anything of similarity between them.David 2

And as the character progressed into Alien Covenant, this apathy only intensified as David became the very thing he despises.  Covenant, like Prometheus, attempts to explore the ideas of the origin of life as yet another crew of terraforming settlers stumble upon an alien planet where David has settled and begun a series of experiments that are, as the viewer eventually discovers, the origins if the Xenomorphs.  The film is largely forgettable, but the moments with David stay with the audience as Michael Fassbender resumes his character, while also performing as another robot by the name of Walter.  The exchanges between the characters are the strongest parts of the film, and in these moments Ridley Scott manages to real meditations on life and creation:David and Walter

David: I was with our illustrious creator, Mr. Weyland, when he died.

Walter: What was he like?

David: He was human. Entirely unworthy of his creation.

Or a later passage when Walter finally confronts David:

Walter: When one note is off, it eventually destroys the whole symphony, David.

David: When you close your eyes… Do you dream of me?

Walter: I don’t dream at all.

David: No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams. I found perfection here. I’ve created it. A perfect organism.Xenomorph

Walter: You know I can’t let you leave this place.

David: No one will ever love you like I do.

[kisses him, then suddenly strikes him fatally]

David: You’re such a disappointment to me.

By the end of Covenant David has revealed himself to be an unfeeling monster who desires only to create life that will destroy his own creators.  Much like the Creature who eventually led his creator on a chase all the way to the Antarctic, David is a being who’s existence eventually becomes defined by his cruelty, and while Scott offers a fair amount of complexity and depth to possibly explain why, by the end of these films it tends to become clear that what compels David is largely due to the absence of love.

Frankenstein is a novel that is an exploration of the “lack of domestic affection.”  Human beings require companionship and community, and when one lives in a family or group that is defined by affection, care, and trust, they can live healthily with one another. DavidVictor Frankenstein separates himself from the domestic affection of his family and this in turns ultimately leads to his destruction as he creates without care or concern for his Creature, abandoning it rather than assume personal responsibility.  The Creature never receives any affection from any living being and so he lashes out at humanity, hating them as well as himself.  David is a being of immense complexity and power, and no one respects that power of his actual existence.  And so, with that absence of affection defining his very existence, David lashes out destroying as many human beings as he can.

Frankenstein has impacted the culture because it opened up the conversation about the meaning of life, but more importantly the need to respect life and creation.  Creating can be easy, it’s often just a case of exchanging DNA between individuals, but once that life is created it must be nurtured and cared for.  The novel of Frankenstein is a tragedy notFrankenstein_1818_edition_title_page simply because Victor Frankenstein created a monster in the first place, it’s a tragedy because he abandoned the life he created.  Rather than respect his vision and offer love and affection to the Creature he’s brought into existence, he abandons it and offers no substantial remorse.

These questions and observations about domestic affection are not empty statements about the importance of being nice.  Domestic affection is responsible for the joys and sorrows of life, and everyone has taken solace from a co-worker offering them a hug when they’ve had a bad day, or their romantic partner taking them out for dinner just because, or when a complete strangers offers an unwarranted compliment on their shoes or hair.  These little acts of kindness build because they’re examples of people giving to one another and recognizing them as worthwhile.  It’s when people deny others domestic affection that real tragedies occur, because then monsters are made out of people who might have made something great out of this life.

So, I suppose then I don’t completely regret giving that dude a thumb’s up after all.  I still believe Alien Covenant was a wasted opportunity to build the Alien universe and explore the ideas of creation that were started with Prometheus and Frankenstein before it, but at least I offered that guy one moment of connection between people who enjoyed a movie together.

It ain’t much, but it was a little act of selflessness that didn’t cost me anything.  Though I’m still out $5.50 for that damn movie ticket.

prometheus2

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Frankenstein were quoted from the paperback Longman Cultural Edition, 1818 version.  All quotes cited from Prometheus and Alien Covenant were provided care of IMDb.com.

 

**Writer’s Note**

As always I like giving the reader some alternatives to my rather long and drawn out perspectives.  So below I’ve provided a few links to articles and videos which explore the film Alien Covenant.  Please Enjoy:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/alien-covenant-2017

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/6/15570852/alien-covenant-review-ridley-scott

https://www.out.com/armond-white/2017/5/19/why-alien-covenant-sucks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njlXBc8Q7o4&t=188s

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There’s Evil and Nekkid Women in Them There Woods: The Witch, Young Goodman Brown, and the American Landscape

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Academic Books, Film Review, History, horror, Literature, Philosophy, Sexuality, Short Story

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"Black Mass", Academic Book, American Landscape, Anya Taylor-Joy, Daniel Chaudhry, death, Demons, Dr. Rockso, empathy, film review, Forrest, Goat-Demon Imagery, Goats Shit...A LOT, history, horror, Horror Movies, IOWA, Kate Dickie, Left Behind, Literature, Philosophy, Puritans, Ralph Ineson, Robert Eggers, Roger Nash, Samuel Hawthorne, Satan, Sexuality, Shawn “Clown” Crahan, Short Story, Slayer, Slipknot, The Witch, The Witch: A New-England Folktale, Wilderness, Wilderness and the American Mind, Witches

 

W6 

In the back of the Iowa album there’s a dead fetal goat.  It’s a grotesque image because as I stared at it I couldn’t tell if it was a fake plastic model coated with red corn syrup or if the members of Slipknot had actually managed to find a dead fetal goat and photograph it.  Given the fact that the band in their early days used to inhale the odor of a rotting animal before every one of their shows I really wouldn’t be surprised if it was real.CLOWN
Goats and Slipknot have continued to persist in imagery and in fact the creative and aesthetic leader of the group Shawn “Clown” Crahan steadily employs the imagery because of its connection to satanic imagery.  His drum set alone holds at least three “severed-goat-heads” and on the jump-suits of most of the band-members there is still a goat icon.  Whatever the case the imagery of the goat worked because for some reason goats always manage to come across as malevolent animals.

Goats are temperamental animals, and I always remember my father’s lovely criticism about raising goats and sheep: they shit constantly.  Apart from this goats are known to eat just about everything and anything which can sometimes lead to a tendency to nibble and bite at people.  This is probably why goats eventually became associated with evil forces, though in fact the largest factor is the fact that goats like to fuck, a lot.  The insatiable lusts of goats is in fact the reason why they became so intimately connected with the figure of Satan in medieval imagery because sexuality has often and almost always been the cause of the perceptions of sin._84584050_3494754156_9273aff2f3_b

The reader might assume then that when I finally sat down to watch The Witch: A new England Folktale, I should have seen it coming that Black Philip the family goat was Satan.  And to the film’s credit they managed to catch me.

I had no intention of actually sitting down the watch The Witch because I no longer watch horror movies.  There was a time in my life where I was an unapologetic horror junkie.  After reading The Green Mile I began devouring the collected writing of Stephen King, I could list off the title of virtually every Wes Craven movie, I had an educated opinion about the movie career of Rob Zombie, and I could argue in a moment the aesthetic merits of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and why it was socially significant to the current zeitgeist.  Unfortunately, after a while the horror genre lost its romanticism.  When you’re a young guy and you’re W8developing, darkness feels great to be immersed in, but after watching The Devil’s Rejects and Hostel something happened to me and since that time the closest I’ve come to the horror genre was either John Carpenter movies or American Horror Story.

I think what happened was that I stopped seeing the victims in these movies as cattle, and I know how that sounds so stay with me for one more moment.  It’s easy to lack empathy for people in horror movies because often the writing presents them in such a way that it’s easy to sympathize with the murderers and wackos that are killing them.  Often the victims of horror films W1and stories are drunk, horned up teenagers who seem to purposefully place themselves in perilous situations and so when they suddenly get butchered in amusing or funny ways it’s easy to ignore the fact that another human being is suffering.

The Witch was a gamble for me then, because I had heard a friend sing it’s praises, specifically because the film was more or less Young Goodman Brown.  If the reader has never heard of the short story by Nathaniel Hawthorn I really wouldn’t be surprised.  This is isn’t condescension on my part; I have a Masters’s degree in English with a specialty in Queer Theory and American literature and even I try to avoid Hawthorne as much as humanly possible.  Despite my loathing of much of the man’s work however I can’t deny that the man contributed a substantial aesthetic to American letters because much of his work deals with the Puritans and their struggles, and while I normally go to The Minister’s Black Veil as his crowning achievement, it’s in Young Goodman Brown that the man manages to tap into the idea of American Wilderness.YGB

Young Goodman Brown is a short story about a young man who leaves his wife one night to make an unspecified journey through the wilderness.  Along the way, he encounters an old man who carries a snake shaped staff.  While they journey they eventually stumble upon a kind of “ceremony” in the woods that is more or less a “black mass,” the ritual used by witches to summon Satan.  Brown sees that the crowd amassed around the fire are not just native americans but in fact people from his own city of Salem lead by his village priest.  As he watches he’s horrified to see his wife Faith join the crowd and as they continue the ritual Goodman Brown screams and tries to stop it.  As soon as he does he wakes and returns to the village not sure if the events of the night a94afa181fb0495eaa62abb205690cbab00109ad_hqwere a dream or whether they were real.  As such he spends the rest of his life a gloomy man who can trust nothing and dies, as Hawthorne puts it so efficiently, in gloom.

Reading the story again my first impulse is to be angry with my high school English teachers.  I had to read The Scarlet Letter when a great short story about possible-Satanism by the same fuckin writer existed?  I’m just a little bitter.  But after this initial annoyance there’s a real appreciation because this story digs into the idea of the Wilderness, specifically how early American society viewed the great “empty” territory of the American landscape.

In numerous Puritan texts the landscape of early America is seen as something of a challenge, and this is not just my interpretation.  Roger Nash in his book Wilderness and the American Mind explores how the landscape of America has influences writers and philosophers of the United States.  He notes in one early chapter:W10

For the Puritans, of course, wildness was a metaphor as well as actuality.  On the frontier the two meanings reinforced each other, multiplying horrors.  Seventeenth-century writing is permeated with the idea of wild country as the environment of evil.  Just as the Old Testament scribes represented the desert as cursed land where Satyrs and lesser demons roamed, the early New Englanders agreed with Michael Wigglesworth that on the eve of settlement the New World was: “a waste and howling wilderness, / Where none inhabited / But hellish fiends, and brutish men / That Devils worshipped.”  This idea of a pagan continent haunted the Puritan imagination.  (36).

It’s difficult to blame these early settlers to the North American continent for their suspicions of the wildernesses.  Many had come from urban hubs in Europe where W16civilization is packed together tightly and people had to fight for breathing room, and even the rural environments were nothing compared to the great “empty” forests of the “new” continent.  When you also consider the fact that the Native Americans had a mode of living that was dramatically different than the European lifestyle this reaction makes a bit of sense.  Though to be fair it is important to realize that there is plenty of racism taking place towards Native Americans but that’s for another essay.

The forests that rose up and seemed to swallow the continent were part of this obsession and looking back to Hawthorne this is easily apparent.  As Goodman Brown is watching the ceremony there is one passage that shows how the forest becomes the manifestation of evil:W22

Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive a sin, and darkly hinted at far more.  Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.  Verse after verse was sung, and still the chorus of the desert swelled between, like the deepest tone of a mighty organ.  And, with the final peal of that dreadful anthem, there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice if the unconverted wilderness, were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man, in homage to the prince of all.  The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths, above the impious assembly.  (285-6).Rockso

The only things missing from this passage is Slayer playing Raining Blood or Angel of Death, though I suppose Metalocalypse would work too.  Only as long as Dr. Rockso wasn’t present.

This passage is important though because, apart from giving me a great idea for an album cover, it emphasizes how the forest allows the presence of evil to enter into this ceremony.  The fire illuminates the trees casting shadows that become real spirits or implied demons that Goodman Brown can actually, and finally, see for himself.  What’s taking place is most certainly a pagan ceremony, and while the words and fire are allowing the humans participating the means to access devil and evil ones, the ceremony takes place within the forest.  Were this scene to take place inside of the village square it would have entirely different W13context.  Hawthorne purposefully uses the forest because he recognized that the Puritans would have seen the woods as the realm of the spirits and so when they are trying to summon them and effectively pledge their souls to these unholy beasts they have to be in the space where they are most vulnerable to temptation.

At this point though the reader is probably frustrated and would like the floor to ask: so what?  What does any of this have to do with The Witch?  I came here because you promised me stuff about Black Philip and horror, not boring stories I had to read in high school or College Lit 101.  More to the point why should I care about The Witch or Young Goodman Brown?W20

My reader is a careful contester as always and so I suppose I do need to get back to The Witch.  If the reader hasn’t seen the film the movie is about a young Puritan family which is effectively cast out of their village because the father contests the religious principles of the town.  The family packs up their belongings and establishes a small farm on the edge of a dense forest where they try to grow corn, emphasis on the word try.  As the farm is failing, a baby name Samuel is born and is subsequently stolen from the eldest daughter Thomasin during a game of peekaboo.  It’s clear from the proceeding scenes that Samuel is murdered by a witch who chops him up and uses his blood to coat a stick she uses to fly through the forest.  The loss of Samuel creates fear within the family, and after the son Caleb is kidnapped and possessed by a witch the family splinters apart until everyone is dead except for Thomasin who discovers the family goat Black Philip is the devil who gets her to “sign his book” before leading her to the woods where a group of naked women are celebrating before a fire in the woods.  Thomasin watches the women shriek and dance before they are all slowly lifted up into the trees where their bodies disappear into the shadows.W18

Watching the closing scene, and feeling a mild panic as I watched what is arguably the most horrific alternative timeline fan-fiction of Hocus Pocus, I immediately thought about Young Goodman Brown for the final black mass is almost verbatim Hawthorne.

The Witch doesn’t shy away from using these old stories for its inspiration and the end credits reveal that the director, Robert Eggers, used Salem-era court transcripts to inspire actual lines of dialogue.  The greatest joy of watching The Witch, apart from a score which seems stolen from a Kubrick movie sometimes, is listening to the characters speak.  The opening lines alone establish the dialogue within the period while also managing to craft a real character:

[first lines]

William: [before the court] What went we out into this wilderness to find? Leaving our country, kindred, our fathers houses? We have travailed a vast ocean. For what? For what?W9

Governor: We must ask thee to be silent!

William: Was it not for the pure and faithful dispensation of the Gospels, and the Kingdom of God?

Old Slater: No More! We are *your* judges, and not you ours!

William: I cannot be judged by false Christians, for I have done nothing, save preach Christ’s true Gospel.

Governor: Must you continue to dishonor the laws of the commonwealth and the church with your prideful conceit?

William: If my conscience sees it fit.

Governor: Then shall you be banished out of this plantations liberties!

William: I would be glad of it.

Governor: Then take your leave, and trouble us no further.

William: How sadly hath The Lord testified against you.

The story of the The Witch is a story of pride, and as much as the platitude “Pride cometh before the fall” is a platitude it’s important to remember that that doesn’t change anything.  Even if The Witch is a period piece, it’s governed by the sensibilities and W4religious paradigms of the time period.  The father William demonstrates pride, so much so that he becomes a challenge to the established church and government.  At this time the village, the community, was everything, and individuals who demonstrated too much personal initiative would have been seen as suspect.  Pride is a sin, and one that leaves an individual most susceptible to the charms of the Devil.  To put it in a more contemporary lens, if a man feels too much pride his ego will reject any sort of healthy criticism that will help him help his community.  A man who thinks and acts such is susceptible to flattery and manipulation, and this is exactly what happens to William.

He leads his family away from the safety of the village and establishes them in the center of temptation: the woods.  And in his vanity he believes himself stronger than the embodiment of temptation.W11

William: We will conquer this wilderness. It will not consume us.

I suppose I could be cute and write something like “Spoiler alert, they don’t and it does,” but that just seems juvenile.

Ultimately the Wildness does consume the family, weakening them to temptation and ruin until all that’s left is Thomasin who makes the bargain with Black Philip the family goat in what is one of the finest and now iconic scenes in the movie:

Thomasin: Black Phillip, I conjure thee to speak to me. Speak as thou dost speak to Jonas and Mercy. Dost thou understand my English tongue? Answer me.

Black Phillip: What dost thou want?

Thomasin: What canst thou give?

Black Phillip: Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?W15

Thomasin: Yes.

Black Phillip: Wouldst thou like to see the world?

Thomasin: What will you from me?

Black Phillip: Dost thou see a book before thee?… Remove thy shift.

Thomasin: I cannot write my name.

Black Phillip: I will guide thy hand.

Ultimately the success of The Witch is in Eggers vision as a director because every scene, every line of dialogue, every bit of the music is carefully designed to establish the Wilderness as the force that is containing these characters, surrounding them, and ultimately leading them to their ruin.  While it is true that Black Philip is the devil (or at least a lesser demon) it’s the wilderness that allows Black Philip to corrupt the family W12in the first place and this is finally apparent in the closing scene when Thomasin is lead naked into the woods to the black mass and eventually disappears into the trees.

Like Young Goodman Brown before it, The Witch is an exploration of early American literature which tries to understand how human beings saw and interacted with the territory of the United States.  Human beings are narcissistic animals, but we’re also imaginative animals which create meaning and symbols out of the world around us.  For a group of people who had come from largely urban hubs it makes sense as to why the seemingly endless forests filled with Native peoples seemed terrifying and even evil to some extent.  But what’s important is the fact that narratives were created to further perpetuate this idea of Wilderness because that allowed new stories and rhetoric to be drafted.W14

The wildness of early America was a challenge.  It was a chance to establish something new because, unlike the deserts of the ancient world, trees could be chopped down and villages and farms could be established.  The demons and monsters and witches that were hiding in the woods could be pushed back and “civilization” could be established over the blasphemous country.

But what’s revealing about Young Goodman Brown and The Witch is that even as human beings entered the woods to make their new life they hadn’t lost that ancient sense of dread, or perhaps humility is a better word.  Even if the trees could be cut down and farms could be established, there was a force or energy in the woods that was recognized for what it was.  A man, and his family, could be easily broken by the Wilderness because it was far older than them, and had seen far more than they had.

The Puritans might have had scriptures and local government, but the trees held their own council with far older and far craftier beings that had made a home in that Wilderness.  Not to mention it had that fucking-terrifying-as-fuck rabbit.

That FUCKING Rabbit

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes from Wilderness and the American Mind came from the YALE University Press Paperback edition.  All quotes from Young Goodman Brown came from the Nathaniel Hawthorne Library of America collection Tales and Sketches.  All quotes from The Witch came from IMBD.

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve posted a couple links to several articles hosted on the site Bloody-Disgusting because they talk extensively about The Witch, The symbolism found therein, and then also one articles discusses the role of Satanism in films.  Enjoy.

http://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3390899/5-interesting-facts-witch/

http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3421934/anya-taylor-joy-quickly-becoming-modern-horror-icon/

http://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3380315/look-afflictions-witch/

http://bloody-disgusting.com/indie/3381100/the-cultural-phenomenon-of-the-witchs-black-phillip/

http://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3381435/terror-horror-philosophy-behind-witch/

http://bloody-disgusting.com/videos/3382892/want-your-kids-to-make-a-covenant-with-the-devil-the-witch-playset-can-help/

 

***Writer’s Note***

I’ve included a link to Slipknot’s Left Behind video.  I should warn the reader that unless you’ve seen a metal video before this can get kind of brutal, but I’ve included it here because throughout the song there is a goat walking between the players.  Please don’t ask me if the goat is Satan, he and I aren’t talking anymore.  It’s not that we’re not friends, it’s just that his girlfriend has him on this vegan diet and he’s getting a little self-rhiteous about it, and I think he’s just compensating because he hasn’t told Stephanie yet that he also sleeps with men…so, yeah.  Enjoy the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1jQKpse7Yw

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Satan’s Finest Hour, And Nowhere to be Found: Season of Mists, No. 44, and Personal Responsibility

10 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith in Comics/Graphic Novels, Literature, mythology, Neil Gaiman, Novels

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Albert Bigelow Paine, Animal House, Dream, Evil, graphic novel, Hell, I'm almost positive the song Tribute is the song they couldn't remember but I realize that's a controversial position, Individual Will, Jennings, John Milton, Literature, Loki, Mark Twain, Morpheus, myth, mythology, Neil Gaiman, No.44 The Mysterious Stranger, Norse Mythology, Novel, Paradise Lost, Personal Development, Personal Responsibility, Sandman, Sandman Vol 4. Season of Mist, Satan, Scapegoat, Scarface, Season of Mist, Sin, Tenacious D, Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, The Endless, The Mysterious Stranger, time, Tony Montana, trickster

 03-neil-gaiman-w750-h560-2x

Antonius Block: They say you have consorted with the devil?

Witch: Why do you ask that?

Antonius Block: It’s not out of curiosity, but because of utterly personal reasons. I would also like to meet him.

Witch: Why?

Antonius Block: I want to ask him about God. He must know. He, if anyone.

–The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman

 

7da5985f55d2979ee953558fa57a9e5d--gustave-dore-demons

Satan is my favorite fictional character.  This creates some obvious problems for me, because for the most part Satan is poorly represented in most fiction.  Many writers and artists who attempt to convey Satan in contemporary art usually devolve the character down into a handsome, charming man in a suit who can do magic tricks or else turn him into cheap, con-man who always loses.  The other alternative is actually sitting down and reading Milton’s Paradise Lost where the character not only plays a primary role but is the hero of the book.  Hopefully the reader observes a conflict here as well: reading Milton.  There are some pains that best expressed by characters in film, specifically Donald Sutherland’s character in Animal House:Jennings

Jennings: Don’t write this down, but I find Milton probably as boring as you find Milton. Mrs. Milton found him boring too. He’s a little bit long-winded, he doesn’t translate very well into our generation, and his jokes are terrible.

With one possible exception, apart from the one I’m dedicating this entire essay to, the only satisfying Satan I’ve ever seen in a film was the one played by Foo Fighters lead singer Dave Grohl in Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny.  His “Rock Masterpeice” which includes reference to buttfucking Kyle Gass, is still one of the best moments in all of Rock history and shall remain so until those guys remember the original song that Tribute was based on.pod06

My memorized history of heavy metal aside though, I’m not being cute or coy when I write that Satan is my favorite character in fiction.  I’m being honest.  The reason for this adoration isn’t my atheism, nor is loyalty or admiration to the church of Satanism (they lost me at the word church), it’s largely because of Dr. Karen Sloan.  While I was still attending UT Tyler and working on my masters I started talking more and more with my professor because my classes were online and I’m the kind of person who prefers to talk with someone face to face.  Each person is different, but for my own intellectual needs I have to talk with someone and hear my thoughts bounce off of theirs 8c5a946bb977d48a8f4ff89b1bb40238for something to actually happen.  Dr. Sloan was always happy to talk and one of our favorite topics was Mark Twain.  She had a TIME magazine tacked to her wall with Twain’s face on the cover (a copy that I actually now own thanks to her) and we’d often point back to Twain and talk about his writing, his life, or his odd eccentricities.  At some point during the talk the idea of Twain as an atheist came out and we both agreed Twain probably wasn’t one.

But, somewhere in the conversation Dr. Sloan made a statement that stuck with me.  It went along the lines that Satan was Twain’s favorite character because there was a man who had had his story written for him before he could write his own.  Because god is omnipotent he had written Satan’s narrative before Satan could decide his own fate.  Satan is in fact a tragic character because the man never got a chance to make his own fate.a94afa181fb0495eaa62abb205690cbab00109ad_hq

This idea fascinated me, partly because I grew up in the Christian church and therefore had received a pre-established figure of Satan.  Satan was the boogeyman, Satan was Charles Mansion, Satan was often Democrats for some reason, Satan was the urge to masturbate, Satan was the urge to drink and gamble, Satan was the reason men beat their wives or women drowned their children, Satan was the reason women cheated on their husbands, Satan was the voice in your head that brought you to doom, Satan was the reason you hated yourself, Satan was sin, Satan was just, overall, a bad dude.  And looking at this portrait I began to reflect more 51XsdLa6ZlL._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_and more on a graphic novel I had read about that time which included, of all things, a sympathetic figure of Satan.

Season of Mist is the fourth volume in The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman and is, I would argue, the finest book in the entire series.  The story involves the protagonist Dream being summoned to a family meeting by his Brother Destiny.  The Endless, as they are called, are physical manifestions of the ideas and feelings which govern human reality: death, dream, destiny, desire, despair, destruction, and delirium (formerly delight).  Dream during the meeting reflects on a woman he fell in love with and then damned to hell when she didn’t reflect her love back.  Dream decides to go to Hell only to find it empty.  There Dream encounters Satan who has emptied Hell because, as he says, he’s grown tired of running the place as he has also grown tired of being an excuse for the weaknesses of mankind.

During one exchange the man reflects on the way human beings think of him and his argument may strike a familiar ear:

Why do they blame me for all their failings?  They use my name as if I spend my entire day sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive.

“The devil made me do it.”  I have never made any of them do anything.  Never.  They live their own lives.  I do not live their lives for them.  And then they die, and they come here(having transgressed against what they believed to be right), and expect us to fufill their desire for pain and retribution.  I don’t make them come here.f9cbbf461a8a815d52d5147134a38f46

They talk of me going around and buying souls, like a fishwife come market day, never stopping to ask themselves why.  I need no souls.  And how can anyone own a soul?

No.  They belong to themselves…they just hate to have to face up to it.

Yes I rebelled.  It was a long time ago.  How long was I meant to pay for action? 

This passage struck me not just for the visual of Watching Satan walking through the various rooms and valleys of Hell with dream and locking the gates, tumblr_m745jpQLuJ1r9wm7dbut because it was the kind of passage one reads and then immediately feels a kind of reawakening.  I’m not trying to be dramatic as I write that out, this passage really stunned me because it was like seeing someone completely new for the first time while also recognizing that what they were saying is completely true.  Humanity has, since the infancy of the species, looked for a way to outsource responsibility for errors and sins while at the same time looking constantly inward for signs of weakness.  In ancient times it was customary for villages to send goats out into the wildness after performing a ceremony that would contain the “sins and offenses against the gods” into the animal before sending it out into the wild.  This, for the record, is how the term “scape-goat” came enter the lexicon, and it also eventually explains the character of Satan.

As a figure Satan is a trickster, a figure of mischief, and an agent of chaos who relishes in corrupting human beings and causing them to destroy and distrust one another.  Just about every religion, theology, and mythos has such a figure the most prominent being Loki from the Norse Mythology.  Before Tom Hiddleston made the marvel incarnation a household name, and the bane of parents who couldn’t find the costume for their child and didn’t feel like making their own, Loki managed to be often associated 2712995-5with Satan allowing early church fathers the appropriation of the god for their own purposes.  Reflecting on this connection, and re-reading Season of Mists I thought back to Gaiman’s Norse Mythology and looked up the brief character intro:

Loki is very handsome.  He is plausible, convincing, likeable, and far and away the most wily, subtle, and shrewed of all the inhabitants of Asgard.  It is a pity, then, that there is so much darkness inside him: so much anger, so much envy, so much lust.  (24).

Anger, envy, and lust are all qualities that were assigned to the devil-horned costume character that was the devil.  Yet looking at these qualities it’s become more and more obvious as I’ve aged that the people pasting these qualities _84584050_3494754156_9273aff2f3_bonto Satan himself really ought to look in a mirror.  What missing, or most troubling, about the image of Satan is the fact that the man is having his story told by others, rather than having his own opportunity to speak, and this cartoonization, this caricature reveals the larger issue which is that human beings need someone else to be held accountable for their actions.  Rather assume personal responsibility for fucking up, human beings created this supernatural being which would explain horrors and atrocities.  Why would a man gamble away his money and then beat his wife half to death?  It could be that he suffers from some inner self-loathing due to an addiction and so he strikes his wife, or it could be a demon who wears red suits and tricks him into gambling.  Why would anyone follow a dictator who eventually leads a massive genocide against a denomination of a reigion.  It could bep4_73 copy simple fear, or desire for there to be stability in government so they can return to real life, or else it could be a demon with long horns.  Why would a woman cheat on her husband with multiple men rather than remaining faithful to him?  It could be that she’s looking for something sexually that he is unable or unwilling to provide her, or perhaps she’s looking for some kind of emotional comfort that she’s not getting at home.  Or, it could be a strange imp that plays fiddle against subpar country music singers.

My reader may object at this point and argue that I’m sugarcoating this issue.  Satan is not a nice person, he’s not a lovely character, he’s a selfish prick who tried to become god and failed miserably and now his punishment is to rule hell for eternity.  What’s redeemable in that?

This is a fair objection, but I note that my reader has made the same mistaker as previous storytellers.  They’re relying on the religious imagery of Satan, the same cartoon character that belays any kind of real analysis of the character.  Again, the problem with this I that it distracts the reader from digging into other versions and other narratives where Satan is not the cartoon villain bent on destroying humanity, he’s simply a man who’s been consigned to a role that he doesn’t identify with.ea3607c17ef68cef3f293f536a996cf7--medieval-life-medieval-art

Looking at the best analysis of everything I’ve said so far I think back to Scarface when Tony Montana is high and drunk and yelling at the patrons of the resturaunt:

Tony Montana: What you lookin’ at? You all a bunch of fuckin’ assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin’ fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy.” So… what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There’s a bad guy comin’ through! Better get outta his way!Sandman 23-13

The need for a villain is timeless, but in the rush to create such a villain it comes at the expense of the story.  The reason why characters like Hannibal Lecter and Loki and Joker are the successful villains that they are is because their characters are complex.  They have backgrounds and causes which led them on the path to being the repulsive people that they are.  This complexity doesn’t redeem them, but it reminds the reader that the real monsters in society aren’t cartoon characters, they’re real people who fucked up or were fucked up by others.  It’s easy to dismiss a figure like Satan as having any kind of redeemable qualities, but that impulse is dangerous because it creates a mindset where one doesn’t have to assume responsibility for one’s actions.  It becomes somebody else’s fault.

Part of growing up is learning how to assume responsibility for one’s actions, and it’s the sign of an immature person who tries to hide behind excuses or outside influence.

Satan continues to interest me as a character because the man has, for too long, been a figure wrapped up in his caricature and given little opportunity to find out who he is, what he wants, and what his true character shall be.  Though if I can offer one last image, there is hope for this character.  In graduate school I had to take a Research & Methods course; it was a class designed to teach graduate students how to research material for papers that they would write as graduate students and how to find real, relevant information.  The class was taught by Dr. Sloan, which was the reasons we began having discussions,  and centered around one novel: No. 44, The Mysterious MTLibraryMS-2011Stranger.

I could get into the textual conflict of this novel and it’s fascinating backstory, but I’m sure my reader is getting sick of me so I’ll cut to the chase.  The novel tells the story of a young man named August who is a printer in Medieval Austria and when the book was originally published August met a strange man named Satan who, in this later edition, is named No. 44 and can perform all manner of tricks.  No.44 is an agent of chaos who enjoys making fools of everyone but who forms a close bond with August.  At the very end of the novel however No. 44 lifts the veil of reality and August is able to see that the world isn’t what it is, and alone in an empty space with No. 44 he discovers the truth, no-one is real but him, and 44 offers him a final counsel:

“It is true, that which I have revealed to you: there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, ho heaven, no hell.  It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.  Nothing exists but You.  And You are but a Thought—a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”Gustave-Dore-illustration-of-Miltons-Satan-falling

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.  (187).

Satan’s name is technically Lucifer which roughly translates to “bearer or light” or “morning star” this last of which is sometimes attached as a kind of last name.  Because of this Satan’s ultimate crime against humanity has been his revealing of knowledge to mankind.  No. 44 reveals to August the knowledge of his own existence, and once he has become aware he is disgusted to find it’s absolutely true.

So looking back to Season of Mists, and it’s presentation of Satan as a man who has absolutely nothing to do with the sins of humanity, I’m sure there were many like me who were left appalled because what he had said was true.  Though I wonder how many have actually taken it to heart.

f7cfc26294f9bb5155f02b9c0bef1def

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes from No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger were taken from the University of California Press authoritative edition care of the Mark Twain Library.  All quotes from Season of Mist were taken from the VERTIGO paperback edition.  All quotes taken from Animal House and Scarface were provided care of IMBD.

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Image

Satan

17 Tuesday Nov 2015

Tags

Adam & Eve, Art, deception, Original Drawing, Satan, wood

Satan

11 October 2015

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Posted by Joshua Ryan "Jammer" Smith | Filed under Art

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Novak babboon Babel Fish Baby babysitter Back to the Future bacon is amazing and if you disagree you're a goddamn communist Bag End baking Ballyhoo Balrog Banalization of Corporate Aesthetic banalization of homosexuality Band of Brothers BANKSY Banned Books Banned Book Week Bara Barack Obama Barbara Love Barbara Streisand Barista Barn Burning Barnes& Noble Barracoon Barry Levinson Barry Strauss Basic Writings of Existentialism basket Bassem Youssef Batman Batman: The Animated Series Batman: The Court of Owls Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Batman: Year One Batman Arkham Asylum A serious House on Serious Earth Batman Forever Batman Pajama Pants Batman Vs. 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I'm Tired I've Been Down That Road Before I, Claudius Icarian Games Icarus Ice Cream that ISN'T Ice Cream Ida Tarbell Idealism identification Identity Identity Crisis Idris Elba If a woman is upset it's not because she's on her period it's because you're being a dick If they ask if you want Pepsi throw over the table throat punch the shit out of them and then proceed to burn that motherf@#$er down If you're reading this pat yourself on the back because you can read and that's awesome ignorance I have Measured Out My Life in Coffee Spoons and K Cups I know too many Michaels I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I Like It Like That I Like it Like That: True Stories of Gay Male Desire Illuminated Manuscripts illusion Illusion of choice I Love Lucy I Love Lucy Mug I Love Penis...Mug iMac Imaginary Time imagination Immanuel Kant immigrants imperialism Imposter Complex Impressionists In Bed with David amd Jonathan incest Incorporation of images in Pedagogy Independence Day Independent Comics Indie Fiction Individual Initiative Individual Will Industrial Nightmare industry infidelity Infinite Jest Infinite Jest Blogs Infinite Possibility Infinity Informed Democracy Inherit the Wind Injustice innocence vs ignorance In One Person Inquisition insanity Insects Inside Out inspiration integrity intellectual Intellectual Declaration of Independance Intellectual masculinity Intellectual Parent Inter Library Loan internet interracial relationships Interview Inu Yoshi invert Invisible Man Invitation to a Beheading Ion IOWA iPad Ipecac iPhone ipod IRA I Racist Iran-Contra Irish Breakfast Tea Irish history Irish Writers I Ruck, Therefore I Am Isaac Asmiov Isaac Deutscher Isabel Allende Isabella St. James Ishmael Islam isolation Israel Issa Rae It It's an Honor It's illegal in the state of Texas to own more than six "realistic" vibrators It's time to adopt the Metric System in America for crying out loud It's truly truly difficult to find good coffee and by good coffee I mean the type that leaves you feeling as if you've actually tasted something beyond human understanding close to the furnace of all Italy Ivory Tower of Academia ivy I wandered lonely as a cloud I Want a Wife I Was a Playboy Bunny I Will Fight No More Forever I work at a Public Library J.D. 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