The Gothic Theologian

Opening the Labyrinth of Horror

2011-07-09T13:45:00.003-06:00

From this time forward, all future posts will be made to my new blog Labyrinth of Horror. Welcome, and bring a ball of string.

Vengeance Assuaged: A One-Shot Analysis of Daratt (Global Contemporary Cinema Homework)

2010-11-02T13:19:00.012-06:00

Daratt
Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Analysis by Michael Bridgman

Opening Frame:

Closing Frame:

Daratt (Dry Season) is a 2006 drama film from Chad directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. A central African nation with a tumultuous postcolonial situation following its independence from French occupation in 1960, Chad has undergone a troubled history of political corruption, internal conflict, and widespread poverty. Daratt appears to be set in the aftermath of the second civil war at a historical moment when many war-torn nations, Chad included, begin to assemble judicial apparatuses of inquiry on the model of the post-apartheid South African Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, instituted under the auspices of restorative justice. It is a film released in the second year of Chad’s fourth civil war, which continues to the present writing of 2010. At the beginning of Daratt, Atim (Ali Bacha Barkai) the hero runs home to his grandfather Gumar (Khayar Oumar Defallah), who immediately summons him to listen to the news on the radio. Over the airwaves, the “President of the Commission of Truth and Justice” announces it has “finally finished its work on crimes committed during the civil war.” “During our work,” he explains, “which has taken six months, we have interrogated 200 war criminals, and heard over 600 victims and witnesses. The Commission makes a solemn appeal to end the cycle of war that has eaten away at our country for more than 40 years. Thus the Commission of Truth and Justice has decided upon a general amnesty throughout the land...” Horrified by this prospect, Atim immediately flicks off the radio, asks: “Grandfather, how could this happen?” and runs off. In the moments that follow, we hear the sounds of outraged voices and machine gun fire off from some distance as indiscernible to blind Gumar as it is to us.

We learn that despite his courage in battle, Atim’s father was killed in the war by Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro), who Gumar describes as “a dangerous man.” Unfolding his father’s old pistol from a towel folded into a pouch, the old patriarch presents it to Atim as an inheritance, commissioning him to seek revenge for the death of his father. “I shall go into the desert,” he says in a word of benediction, “I shall pray God to watch over you.” This vigil evokes Jesus of Nazareth’s symbolic retreat to the desert for forty days following his baptism where he is beset with conflict over his vocation and identity,[1] echoing the Judeo-Christian leitmotif of exile and return. Commenting on the importance of this recurring theme to geopolitically dispossessed Africans, Philip Jenkins writes: “Just as relevant to current concerns is exile, forcible removal from one’s homeland, which forms the subject of so much of the Hebrew Bible. About half the refugees in the world today are in Africa, and millions of these are Christian. The wars that have swept over the Congo and Central Africa over the past decade have been devastating in uprooting communities. Often, it is the churches that provide the refugees with cohesion and community, and offer them hope, so that exile and return acquire powerfully religious symbolism.”[2] The population of Chad is split between a Muslim majority, and a significant Christian minority, and Jenkins cites the country as an example of the phenomena in which religiously oriented “governments massage [census] figures to make their own side look more powerful, especially in regions with deep political and cultural divisions.” Certainly in line with his general thesis, it is a region ripe for violently tumultuous interfaith conflict, which bodes bitter fruit indeed.

Atim ventures forth in a presumably second-hand military surplus jungle camouflage jacket, symbolizing a spirit of militancy that stands in stark contrast to the acquiescence of the people surrounding him. Shortly thereafter, he is threatened at gunpoint by a thuggish member of the Chadian military in full uniform, and violently assaulted on the street by two more, signaling that his own interests do not lie with the present hegemonic order of things. Atim carries around with him a manner and countenance suggestive of profound rage mingled with deep pain, as well as a bag in which he keeps his belongings and secrets. Narrating his struggle between long stretches of silence, he explains: “My father’s killer was never charged. He lives in total freedom. I never knew my father. He was killed before I was born. That’s why I’m called Atim, the orphan.” Coming to terms with these themes of the death of the father and “the story of children lost and far from home,” a tale with “universal appeal” which “in the age of existentialism and thereafter... has been all the rage,”[4] one cannot but think of Friedrich Nietzsche’s parable of the Death of God. Nietszche tells the haunting tale of a madman who seeks God but cannot find God, and surrounded by mocking unbelievers who live as if nothing has changed, he declares that he, and they, have murdered God with their bloody knives. Holding a lantern at the break of dawn, he prophecies that the earth has become unchained from the sun to drift into the endless cosmic abyss, that all values can no longer be rooted in that which is eternal, holiest and mightiest, but must be created ex nihilo by those who transcend the human condition for the sake of human survival. “Then the time of exile begins,” explains Albert Camus, “the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, ‘the most painful, the most heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?’ Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the mind is not a comfort, but an achievement to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an exhausting struggle.”[5] While no one can be certain of the extent to which director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun is directly familiar with existentialist sources, his exilic dislocation to France after coming of age in Chad is ripe for the absorption of such influences.

Atim too is uncertainly positioned with regard to his beliefs matters of faith, although his noticeable discomfort surrounding Muslim practice signals his religious minority status. Might we describe him as Christian without forgiveness, or a disillusioned young man whose faith died with his father? Whatever his beliefs, he quietly pursues Nassara through the streets in a spirit of resentment, with his pistol at ready to gun him down as the opportunity arises. He lives like a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode, and a t-shirt he once wears aptly declares him to be “Mad of Africa (sic.)”. But to kill another human being for vengeance is not so easy as aesthetically portrayed in stories like Edgar Allan Poe‘s “The Cask of Amontillado”, or a slew of Hollywood narrative films, and the principle theme of Daratt is to illustrate this point. Atim discovers Nassara now owns and operates a bakery, where he distributes daily bread to impoverished, possibly orphaned young males. This leads to a silent showdown in which Atim pointedly tastes, and then rejects, Nassara’s bread offering. In a second encounter under similar circumstances, they stare down one another, until Nassara places a mechanical larynx to the side of of his throat, and his artificial tongue wisply resonates in query: “Just what do you want?” After a long pause, Atim responds: “Not charity.” After a reciprocal pause in which a competing bakery van pulls up nearby, Nassara graciously extends the offer: “If it’s work you want, come back tomorrow.”

Atim indeed takes up this offer, which affords ample opportunity for character development, both for Nassara and for him. A cyborg engendered of military and medicine, a wartime incident in which someone tried to frag him by slitting his throat while he slept has radically reshaped his identity, a situation in which mechanical symbiosis becomes necessary for speech and survival. This lends him a strong element of tragic pathos against Atim’s remarkably similar efforts. We learn that after the civil war, Nassara turned a new leaf, becoming a devout Muslim both in word and deed. He now lives with Aïcha (Aziza Hisseine), a young woman wed to him, a middle aged man, through an arranged marriage, rather than by choice. By the by, we learn that she has become pregnant, which down the line will play a very important role in the narrative. Apparently Nassara is a well-respected man in his community, certainly enough to lend him enough capital to start a bakery, where he can lead a quiet life of honest repose. He seems to see in Atim an angry young man whose present mirrors his own past, and he hopes to be a mentor to him, perhaps even a second father. On his first day of work, Nassara invites Atim to the mosque where he worships, asking: “You are a Muslim, aren’t you?” Realizing Atim’s reluctance to accept the invitation, he adds: “It doesn’t matter, I was like that before.” But Atim expresses his profound doubts in God’s power to save, saying: “Going to the mosque won’t redeem you,” presumably speaking for himself as well as his adversary. Both men are understandably reluctant to share information about their personal history, so their relationship largely develops in the unspoken silence of mutual understanding.

Despite Atim’s hostile intentions, a deep bond ferments between them through the shared outpouring of labor in the baking of bread. “Making bread requires love and attention,” explains Nassara, “Without love, the bread is not good. You see?” Similarly, an intimate interpersonal relationship develops between Aïcha and Atim, certainly closer than is customary under Muslim standards of propriety. Still, Atim has not forgotten his reason for coming, and he seeks an opportunity to strike, a prospect which proves increasingly difficult emotionally. Often in moments of solitude he makes aggressive gestures with his pistol, as if to psyche himself up (think Taxi Driver). But Nassara is committed not only being innocent as doves, but also wise as serpents, and it is strongly implied he discretely removes Atim’s concealed weapon from his bag of secrets to hide where he can’t find it. Things get more complicated, the other bakery pulls the old “If you’re not happy, complain to the WTO” line when Nassara disputes their truck selling across the street. He asks Atim about his father, but is met with the ultimatum: “Do you really want to know?” The month of Ramadan draws close at hand, and Nassara implores Atim to keep him company, for it is difficult to bear breaking the fast alone because of the nature of his profession. But tension swells, and Atim indeed leaves him literally alone in the dark after they encounter another Muslim who exerts friendly pressures, declaring: “You are not my father! You got that?” Eventually Nassara loses his temper, and is issued a police summons for assaulting the other bakery’s driver. This affords Atim time to sit back and relax to a spirited jazz performance from a female vocalist of brilliant artistic expression, drinking alcoholic beverages, and thrashing the intoxicated loose cannon who threatened him at gunpoint earlier. But it isn’t as satisfying as he hoped it would be.

Upon his return, Atim finds Aïcha in mourning clothes, and learns that she has miscarried, because of which she is understandably distraught. Nassara has closed shop to grieve in solitude. Finding him later drinking a bottle in the dark, he laments: “God has abandoned me, Atim. Nobody around here likes me, I know that. You hate me too, I can see it in your eyes.” Which is to say, he is truly alone in the universe, flung unwillingly into a world of dialectical hatred, a world of prisons, armies, and executioners. Hegel “had chosen to demonstrate human minds in blind combat, dimly groping on the sands, like crabs that finally come to grips in a fight to the death, and voluntarily abandoned the equally legitimate image of beams of light painfully searching for one another in the night and finally focusing together in a blaze of illumination. Those who love, friends or lovers, know that love is not only a blinding flash, but also a long and painful struggle in the darkness for the realization of definitive recognition and reconciliation.”[6] Whereas before it seemed his survival and prosperity owed to divine mercy, in the manifest anxiety of the traumatic fissure it now appears to owe to cosmic indifference. Or has God indeed heard Gumar’s desert cries for deliverance, and smote the forlorn couple’s firstborn in retribution? Can God forgive us our crimes against humanity, and can we forgive God for crimes against humanity, or are these terms irreconcilably contradictory? What would this imply for human destiny in a world such as our own?

Which brings us to the scene of which this one-shot analysis concerns. Like Donna Haraway’s reading of Buchi Emecheta,[7] here the framing narrative hitherto contextualizes a seemingly unassuming image, a very frog prince of celluloid, revealing it to have far deeper significance than a mere jot and tittle. Our group’s scene begins in the cut immediately after the darkness just described, in a well-lit room, with our three central characters gathered around. Atim listens with anticipation to the words that are about to be spoken as Nassara and Aïcha sit side by side. “I want to adopt you as my son,” says Nassara through the artificial voice box, “For that, I need your parent’s agreement. Your father’s especially. Where is your father?” Should Atim the orphan accept the offer, although no one can sanction it, he will join a family bond born not of blood, but by choice. But although the appeal is in good faith, Atim retreats outside, where he is entreated by Aïcha to reconsider, but in the presence of Nassara he runs further still. This is where my shot comes in. Pulling his camouflage jacket and white overshirt off the rack, he hastily folds and stuffs them, along with his other belongings, into his pack. Evidently he would rather keep the secret than join the family. With his pack now over this shoulder, he looks about with an expression of desperation, before exiting the frame. ‘So what?’ Two things. First, this marks the exact moment Atim definitively gives up his quest for revenge, and all that this action signifies for the concurrent political situation, past, present, and future. He will leave, become exiled anew, but he will not return to kill Nassara. Second, it poses the question as to where exactly is “home”, and all the ways that specifically situated term resonates. Usually, this kind of shot signals exiting roles from a family already established, the start of a quest along the lines of the “lost children” motif. Something like Betty Boop being subjected by her father to a pre-recorded deuterocanonical scolding about the virtue of eating sauerkraut, packing her bags, running away from home, and finding a mad mad world haunted by a drunken skeleton crew, phantom prisoners and their ghastly executioner, and the hip jazz of dancing ghost-walrus Cab Calloway. Here however, “home” signifies two conflicting contexts, the relation to which Atim, the dually situated exile must now existentially define.

Aspect Ratio: 1:85:1
Shot Duration: 27 seconds
Shot Size: A medium close-up
Sound: Set in a silent room, the rapid rustling of cloth and zippers signal amidst Atim’s complete silence signals his hasty departure. While no word or weapon enforces his departure, Atim concludes in good or bad faith that a return to exile is his most viable option.
Contrast dominant(s): Dressed in a black shirt amidst a stark off-white room, Atim is the main contrast dominant to which his domestic environment is secondary to him and the contents of that room. In the order of their appearance in the shot, the secondary contrast dominants are the green jungle camouflage jacket, symbol of a spirit of postcolonial militancy, the blue jean bag of comparable color to the pants he is wearing, symbol of guarded secrets, and the humble faded red-plaid covered bed upon which he sleeps, symbol of the idea of home. The contrast dominants lead the viewer to consider the relation of these symbolic elements to one another.
Character movement: Atim begins in the far left edge of the frame, facing his hanging jackets on the wall at a distance. Quickly he walks to the wall and removes these articles from the nails upon which they hang, he hastily folds them as he veers to his right, before stopping at his bed. There still standing, he unfastidiously stuffs his various articles of clothing into his bag, zips it, and throws it over his shoulder. He then stops to pause, looking around with an expression of inner turmoil and helpless desperation, before departing screen left. Atim did not choose this course of events, but he does choose to leave. But does he thereby choose to leave or return home? His manner and expression belies this conflict of situated identity. He now fully grasps that he cannot, will not, carry through his initial motives of revenge, even as he is deeply reluctant to enter into such an intimate relationship with the man who murdered his father, who deprived him of orientation to a home.
Character proxemics: For most of the duration of the shot, Atim is oriented away from the camera, just as he is now oriented away from his adoptive surrogate family, concealing his inner emotions beyond the outward manifestation of his behavior. Initially with has back turned on the far left margin of the front of frame, he moves into frame away from the viewer along the Z axis. Moving back toward the viewer while walking obliquely to the right, the moving camera retains its shot size while now focusing on what he is carrying and folding, with his face kept out of view. The lens finally comes to a stuttered rest on Atim’s fragmented backside as he stuffs his clothing in his pack, before returning to center on his upper body as he lifts himself up and turns around to place the pack on his shoulder. It is at this moment the true nature of his feelings is revealed to the viewer.
Camera movement: At first the camera is stationary to focus on the hanging jackets ahead of Atim, but throughout the shot will follow his movements. In the finale to come, Nassara too will follow Atim’s exodus through the desert and back to Gumar, culminating in a surprising, nail-biting finale. The camera’s first movement is a quick tilt down and pan right as Atim comes to pass with his jackets in hand, coming to the aforementioned rest on his bed, bag, and backside. The camera then quickly tilts up to reframe his face and upper torso, effectively revealing his confusion and anguish. Throughout the duration the same shot size is kept, effectively serving to conceal as much as it reveals.
Camera angle: The camera angle in this shot is pretty straightforward and face to face (so to speak), not wishing to emphasize Atim’s actions as catalyzed by a mere imbalance of power through a high or low angle. The shot is made from a fly on the wall perspective, it regards Atim not as the various families might regard him, but with an interested detachment. In light of the film’s general theme of interpersonal connection, seeing it this way comes as something to a shock to the viewer, who regards this turn of events with far more concern for their outcome than a mere fly on the wall. We feel that everyone involved matters, so we don’t see things as the camera sees it. These people are more important than that.
Depth of field: In light of the relatively compact size of the room, there isn’t any room for vast horizons to walk in, but that will change in the scene to come, with all the attendant implications for the existential event horizon. Atim “aspires to escape from this circle, to assert transcendence over immanence, to open up a future different from the past in which his roots are stuck. The prohibition... takes different forms according to the types of relationship recognized in different societies, but from primitive times to our day it keeps the same meaning: what man desires is to possess is that which he is not, he seeks union with what appears to be Other than himself.”[8] The immanent depth of field in this shot is well played to emphasize the distance and tension between existential freedom as a being alone in the world, the pursuit or redefinition of an existential project, and the desire for interpersonal intimacy as mediated through the ethics of the appeal.
Lighting: The lighting of this shot is relatively low key, and appears to be lit only by the incoming sunlight through the window, emphasizing the setting’s stark frugality. The shadows often cover Atim and the surrounding environment, giving the shot a somber mood. Atim’s own shadow is also strongly emphasized, implying the multiplicity of motivations, and hence of possibilities, beneath the surface of his actions. His expression is especially well lit when he turns to the camera and reveals his inner feelings, practically glossing in the frame. So the lighting works for him.
Color usage: In contrast to bright color and shades of the shots surrounding it, the colors of this shot are dim and faded like worn off-white walls and a faded red-plaid blanket, or boldly contrasted like black shirts and green military jackets. This emphasizes the somber mood, and cues the viewer that this isn’t where Atim wants to be. Which colors indeed are more indicative of a life lived with Nasarra and Aïcha?
Screen graphics/composition: Owing to the very minimal decorum of the room, there simply isn’t much compositional density in this shot, which is much the point. This isn’t jazzy nights on the town, but by request it isn’t “charity”, derived from the root of grace, either. Initially the leading lines and centered positioning points the viewer’s eyes in the direction of the jackets hanging on the wall. From there the parade of contrast dominants in unison with motion of the camera leads the viewer’s eye to Atim, then back to the jackets, then to the bag in which he puts them away, then to the bed on which they rest, then back to Atim as he anxiously sets the bag on his shoulder. The compositional logic of the shot says that what is important is that Atim is resignedly returning his jacket of militancy to his bag before his departure to or from home, however defined. The movement in the frame is all his against an otherwise static backdrop.
Editing style: The edits to and from this shot are all straight cuts from bright exterior shots in the company of Atim’s surrogate family this solitary interior shot. In the preceeding shot, Aïcha finishes entreating Atim to reconsider his hasty rejection of the offer of adoption by taking a gentle hold of his forearm and walking him back over to Nasarra, emphasizing that this too is her choice. But when Nasarra rests his arm on Atim’s shoulder and pulls him closer in a gesture of affection, Atim is overwhelmed and repulsed, and immediately pulls away and walks off frame, at which that shot abruptly cuts into this one. In the next shot, Atim is back outside and stands still for a spell, before solemnly walking up to Nasarra to inform him of his immediate departure. But Nasarra responds by stating he will accompany Atim wherever he goes, because that is home to him, where he feels truly alive. By cutting in this fashion, Atim’s departure seems hasty and unconsidered. In contrast to Hollywood narrative editing, this sense of speed is not carried out through the use of fast cuts, for the cuts themselves are relatively slow, but through the motion of the characters and camera in frame.
Time: By editing with straight cuts in this manner, a relatively straightforward passage of time occurs between shots, emphasizing his haste of departure. Certainly he hasn’t stopped for tea to think things over between shots. Even so, the interior solitude of this shot forms a kind of ellipsis of time in contrast to the exterior dialectic of the framing shots, implying what could happen here if Atim stopped for a moment rather than speeding up the clock.

Too many hero myths are about the warrior’s courage to slay the terrible “enemy” of his people, often under the leitmotif of atonement with the father. Towering Gilgamesh was mercifully given a moment of fear and hesitation before slaying the monster and forest guardian Humbaba, for whom a gentle rain fell onto the mountains. But few films nowadays have the integrity to honestly address the terrible aspect of industrialized weaponry, its fatal capacity to fragment and shatter bodies, identities, and lives with a heinous speed. Instead of considering the cynical politics of psyops, weapons industries, and arms deals, it bestows a magic charm of invulnerability where the bullets always miss, and no one has to stop to rethink the roots of conflict, much less to forgive anyone their trespasses. Upon this lie is founded an eternally preexistent ideal or essence of masculinity, a cosmic cookie cutter to which all men must conform without doubt or fear, or cease to be men without becoming women. It is a lie to the grave detriment of all genders, a lie that deployed Atim’s father and Nassara to rationalized murder, shattering one another and all their relations, a lie that deploys Atim to take his father’s pistol and become a man. “Here suicide and murder are two aspects of a single system, the system of a misguided intelligence that prefers, to the suffering imposed by a limited situation, the dark victory in which heaven and earth are annihilated.”[9] But Paul Tillich argues true courage is metaphysically rooted in taking anxiety, the ontic awareness of nonbeing, into the ethical act of afirming “his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation.”[10] Without anxiety, without doubt, there can be no courage. The great charm of Daratt is the extent to which it reveals the tremendous anxious apprehension of the moral gravity inherent in any act of killing, a necessary counterpoint to simplistic aestheticization of violence. This shot represents the exact point at which this anxiety reaches a critical mass, the zero point at which Atim can carry out his quest for revenge no further. This culminates in the courage not to kill but to be, the courage to reach out for the stark desert of the event horizon, a personal exile and exodus. In “The Concept of Anxiety”, Søren Kierkegaard writes:

In one of Grimm’s fairy tales there is a story of a young man who goes in search of adventure in order to learn what it is to be in anxiety. We will let the adventurer pursue his journey without concerning ourselves about whether he encountered the terrible on his way. However, I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate... Anxiety is freedom’s possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness... Whoever is educated by anxiety is educated by possibility, and only he who is educated by possibility is educated according to his infinitude. Therefore possibility is the weightiest of all categories.[11]

Albert Camus, torn between a dual dislocation in the French Algerian war in an analogous situation to director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s own, wrote a collection of six short stories titled Exile and the Kingdom. Exile and the Kingdom is about a diverse assortment of heartsick people torn in the conflicts and paradoxes of silence and speech, passivity and agency, when the identity of what is considered home proves confused or elusive. At a crucial juncture in the stories, the protagonists experience a moment of metaphysical revelation in which they grasp the absolute freedom that waits on the desert horizon over against the concrete factors that tend toward their existential negation. So whereas the imprisoned tragic hero of Camus’ novel The Stranger perceives in his cosmic gaze the universe’s absolute indifference to humanity on the eve of his execution for killing an Arab, in “Jonas, or the Artist at Work” the protagonist sees the return of his guiding lucky star after a vocational existential crisis in which he finally decides to work independently/interdependently in the dark silence of his own being. In a crucial sense, Daratt is like a seventh story in Exile and the Kingdom, the tale of an unexpected discovery of absolute possibility precisely where it seemed to be denied in the death of the father. In closing, I cannot do better than to quote Paul Tillich’s own concluding line to an immensely courageous philosophical-historical work published in the age of anxiety, even as we now live in the age of terror: “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”[12]

Blogger's Post-Script: This is the kind of failing-grade paper I can be personally proud of. I suppose I should have payed the ten page double-spaced format and deadline all the literal-minded reverence due to a Platonic form and the industrialist's clockwork time, ignored my own manifest existential turmoil, and failed to abide by my standards of quality control. As of writing, Daratt can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvaawiUry9k. Additionally, I would like to apologize for inadvertently omitting in my analysis the episode in which Aïcha is beaten offscreen by Nasssara in a fit of jealousy, as that depth of sound didn't come through clear from the laptop with which I wrote this paper. This is a good example of why my thought places a great deal of emphasis on the margins of perception. Whereas the patriarchal Islamic sharia law would sanctify a husband's "right" to discipline and punish his wife in the Foucaultean sense to render her active body into a passive body, so long as blows inflicted don't leave any physical marks, Atim visibly disagrees. Throughout the shot, Atim registers an expression of angry desperation as Aïcha's sobbing cries can be heard through the walls, crumbling a piece of bread in his hands and casting it to the ground. This sets the stage for the next scene in which Atim declares he "forgot" the yeast in the daily bread, symbolically evoking the commemoration of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in remembrance of the children of Israel in their hasty flight from bondage in Egypt. Not only does Atim's microeconomic sanction imply that the means of resistance are contained within the deployments of power itself, but might one also say this implies a form of feminist liberation theology?

Endnotes:

1. Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13; cf. Exodus 3:1-10, 24:15-18.
2. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity p. 219.
3. Ibid. p. 165.
4. Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor p. 59, 63.
5. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt p. 70.
6. Ibid. p. 161.
7. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature ch. 6.
8. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex p. 74. This quote is taken out of its original context of exogamous marriage exchange, but applies more generally to rites of passage and the myths that catalyze or encapsulate them, and is here cited in the general spirit of the text’s metaphysics as it expounds the existential event horizon for women and men.
9. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt p. 7.
10. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be p. 3.
11. Søren Kierkegaard, The Essential Kierkegaard edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong p. 153-154.
12. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be p. 190.

Babes in the Woods: On "God, Sex and Love on American Campuses"

2010-05-26T13:35:00.005-06:00

The following is a response to "God, Sex and Love on American Campuses" by Sociology Professor Roger Friedland for The Huffington Post (link) originally posted on Facebook.

Speaking as a college-age virgin of this generation, I see things in a different, more unsentimental light than this author. I speak as one to whom grave doubt about the reality of love catalyzed a serious crisis of faith, as it is said that God is love and love is from God. Our author comments on the mythos of love that "Students don't exactly believe in it anymore. The majority suspect love might be a fiction invented to keep women down," which is to say they are aware on some level of the discourse's economic ties to patriarchal capitalism. Professor Friedland's generation sought to challenge this system through Dionysian destabilization and deregulation of the process ("free love", "free store") that dialectically actualized its Apollonian antithesis, the neo-Puritanism of the Christian Right, but what it did not in fact actualize was love. So now it's his turn to face the historical consequences of the world he helped actualize, a world torn between anxiety and authoritarianism, and daddy more or less openly admits that his research is a deployment of knowledge undertaken with the aim of rendering his daughter's bodies from active bodies into passive bodies. That they too may wish to venture into the dark forest of self-discovery where all adventures begin with the onset of menstruation, rather like Red Riding Hood, is not a possibility he would like to entertain. But this is in knowing hypocrisy, as his own adventures during his own rite of passage involve "stoned encounters in strange beds and on forest floors with girls whom I didn't know very well," which are of course basically the elements of said fairytale. Where would the author be now if he showed up in that dark wood some two decades before the existentialist influenced Post-Punk/Gothic band The Cure released “A Forest” (link), and no one was there? Thomas C. Foster aptly comments “In the age of existentialism and thereafter, the story of lost children has been all the rage... But you don’t have to use ‘Hansel and Gretel’ just because it’s the flavor of the month. Or even of the last half century.” (Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor p. 63) Whereas in this story entrance into the forest marks the anxious destabilization of values once held securely, the difference now is that Hansel and Gretel can no longer hold hands.

Consistent with his inauspicious beginning, Professor Friedland’s defense of the value and importance of love seem apparently designed to make Simone de Beauvoir roll in her grave. “I think there is third reason, one that points to love as a structure of faith central to the making of our world. A relation with the divine is one in which you acknowledge your lack of sovereignty and self-control; admit that you are not your own basis, your own source; and depend on an other for your being whom you will never really understand or control. Religiosity and real romance are parallel orders of experience.” Thus the subject can dodge freedom and anxiety, courage and responsibility, by rooting one’s existence within the Other, who remains Other. The experiential parallelism between human love and divine love is not reassuring, for ours is a generation born of broken promises, and the sovereign Deity is quite full of them. If God is dead, which is to say that any set of values can no longer be securely rooted in the idea of God for eternal validation, then so is love. As such, this ideological development is not surprising from a socio-historical standpoint. Our author says that the value of love is the “essential... prerequisite of our kind of history,” which is to imply there is some kind of Platonic essence, some cosmic cookie cutter that establishes the presently constituted order of patriarchal capitalism in the never-ending bond of love. This order has co-opted the profound desires unleashed by Friendland’s generation to the ends of commodity fetishism and mystified reification, and hence to the ultimate deferment of these very desires for real connection and expression. And in the end, desire and the hope it implies is indefinitely deferred, or goes on to find expression in an illusion of wish-fulfillment, while the categorical emptiness of nothingness continues to abide as the promises of God remain far off. It’s no coincidence that two of the most influential Hansel and Gretel films of my generation are Suspiria directed by Dario Argento and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre directed by Tobe Hooper, which horror film historian David J. Skal describes along with related films as “the collective witnessing and reenactment of childhood’s murder by premature, media-driven sex.” (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror p. 297) But whereas Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel can count on the protection of God the Father and Mother Nature where their earthly father and mother has abandoned them to die, now the lost children are simply ruthlessly slaughtered in an industrialized misse-en-scene. I write now as representative of a new lost generation, vanished somewhere in “the uniform weave of the matrix.” I am not an atheist, I am simply grieved and frustrated to live in a world where love is a lie, everything I see around me is a tragic illusion whose decay is readily manifest, and the covenant God appears to be just one more deadbeat and cop out, while I remain lost in a forest, all alone.

Beauty and the Beast: On Linda Williams, Courageous Spectatorship, and Horror Cinema (English Composition II Homework)

2010-05-21T20:37:00.006-06:00

Linda Williams begins her essay “When the Woman Looks” with a stereotypical recitation of the culturally assumed gender dynamics of horror spectatorship. “Whenever the movie screen holds a particularly effective image of terror, little boys and grown men make it a point of honor to look, while little girls and grown women cover their eyes or hide behind the shoulders of their dates” (Williams 15). Wherever this clichéd state of affairs holds true, one might imagine it has much to do with a cultural discrepancy in the way men and women are engendered in regard to the exercise of the existential virtue of courage. For as Paul Tillich defines it, “Courage is an ethical reality, but it is rooted in the whole breadth of human existence and ultimately in the structure of being itself... The courage to be is the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation” (Tillich 1-3). But if courage is indeed “rooted in the whole breadth of human existence”, then it is also true that the courage to be is the ethical act in woman affirms her own being in spite of those elements of her existence which conflict with her essential self-affirmation.

Tillich argues that courage is rooted in the experience of anxiety, because “anxiety is the existential awareness of nonbeing... Anxiety is finitude, experienced as one’s own finitude” (Tillich 35). This underlying awareness may in turn either manifest itself in anxiety, which is the generalized apprehension of the threat of nonbeing to the subject’s self-affirmation, or fear, which is the terror of a particular concrete manifestation of this underlying threat, such as an attack from an assailant, being eaten by clowns, or a piano dropping from a tall building. In “The Concept of Anxiety", Soren Kierkegaard regrettably believed that anxiety belongs more to woman than to man as a consequence of being “the weaker sex”, and that this implies that “in anxiety she moves beyond herself to another human being, to man” (Kierkegaard 143). A regrettable turn for a philosopher like Kierkegaard, for this is to say that her strategy for dealing with anxiety is rooted not in existential self-affirmation through courage, but in rooting her own being to the male subject and his courage relationally, but asymmetrically. Even so, in this essay, Soren Kierkegaard adds an important additional dimension to understanding the nature and existential gravity of anxiety.

Kierkegaard traces the ontology of anxiety experienced by the subject to the dialectical synthesis of mind and body in spirit, and of the eternal and the temporal in the moment. Extrapolating from this principle, Kierkegaard argues that within the state of anxiety the subject is made aware of possibilities that may be converted into actualities, and hence of his own existential freedom as a human subject. “Whoever is educated by anxiety is educated by possibility, and only he who is educated by possibility is educated according to his infinitude. Therefore possibility is the weightiest of all categories... in possibility all things are equally possible, and whoever has truly been brought up by possibility has grasped the terrible as well as the joyful... in order that an individual may thus be educated absolutely and infinitely by the possibility, he must be honest toward possibility and have faith. By faith I understand here what Hegel somewhere in his way correctly calls the inner certainty that anticipates infinity.” (Kierkegaard 154-155) As such, the means to ultimate courage in the face of anxiety and negation is to root one’s existence in eternity by means of faith in the Absolute, which Kierkegaard names as the God of the Christian faith. In other words, the confrontation with anxiety is rooted in the existential quest for the state of transcendence of one’s given conditions.

Within the atheistic existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, this line of reasoning takes a different, but related import and gravity. Sartre begins by extrapolating from the mad prophet’s proclamation in Frederick Nietszche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra that “God is dead”, which is to say that history has reached a point at which human values can no longer be rooted in faith in that which is eternal and Absolute, but must be created ex-nihilo within the void of nothingness, nihility, and nihilism. Where once we believed that we were a part of a skillfully directed production of cosmic redemptive proportions, with the absence of the director, we now find ourselves flung suddenly on stage, and left to improvise in the absence of lines, direction, or a script. As a consequence of this exile from predefined meanings, Sartre says that “man is condemned to be free.” For in the final analysis of things, we are never held hostage to our given conditions and deprived absolutely of our freedom. By virtue of being conscious subjects says Sartre, we always retain the power to choose how we will act in relation to the conditions in which we find ourselves, whatever exactly the consequences. And yet, this freedom is an anxious freedom.

On the one hand, we are anxious because of the awareness of our own looming negation in death, and that there is no source of ultimate meaning to cling to in the interim. Sartre says this results in various states of boredom, terror, and nausea, all of which are familiar concerns to the horror film. On the other hand, we are anxious because of the awareness that we are absolutely responsible for own actions; they cannot authentically be blamed on any Other. God as the infinite Other has already met his demise, and so cannot be blamed by the consistent nontheist for any contingency whatsoever. Even so, the Other as that amorphous audience whose gaze looks upon us, whose conscious thoughts fissure into our conscious thoughts, and who desire and discipline us to perform in a certain way, a way that may lie with or against our own desires and affinities, has a more tangible effect on how we take ourselves as human beings. Depending upon a given set of conditions, this gaze may affirm or alienate the subject from his or her own being as a subject. What this means is that how we look and act toward others will render them more as subjects or less as objects. But the final verdict and responsibility rests oneself and whether one can take oneself and one’s existence with authenticity. The locus of faith, therefore, is turned inwards with regard to whether one takes oneself in good faith or bad faith. For Sartre as well as Kierkegaard, living authentically is an overriding ethical concern, although the latter argues the condition of authenticity is ultimately only attainable to those who live by faith in God. For Sartre, meanwhile, the greatest virtue and courage is to create one’s own values and live them out as the outworking of one’s own existential project undertaken as a free subject. To live such an authentic life is to leave the state of immanence within one’s given conditions and enter a state of transcendence.

Depending on one’s choices and affinities, one’s own views of the ontology and gravity of courage and anxiety may align closer to those of Kierkegaard or to Sartre. Tillich’s own notion that “The ultimate source of the courage to be is the ‘God above God’; this is the result of our demand to transcend theism” (Tillich 186) lies ambiguously in between. Of course, such matters of ultimate concern are intimately related to whether we take the various phenomena of religious experience as authentic or inauthentic. In this regard, it is worth noting that Rudolf Otto argues that the awe and ineffability of religious experience is rooted in “fear and fascination” in the apprehension of the numinous as “the ‘wholly other’” (Otto 29). In other words, the state of anxiety may not strictly be rooted in the ontic awareness of negation against the backdrop of nihility, but in the awareness of one’s own negation in the face of that which is utterly beyond. As stated by Kyoto School Zen philosopher Keiji Nishitani, “religion upsets the posture from which we think of ourselves as telos and center of all things... When we come to doubt the meaning of our existence in this way, when we have become a question to ourselves, the religious quest awakens within us” (Nishitani 3).

Interestingly, Rudolf Otto argues his point in relation to the attraction and repulsion aroused by reading ghost stories (Otto 29). What this implies is that horror films have a direct relation to matters of religion and spirituality, and vice versa. Indeed, Kim Paffenroth, a professor of religious studies, explicitly states about the ontology of the monster: “What makes such hybrid or divided beings even more interesting, however, is that they are not always just monstrous, but their combined nature is also frequently a quality of what humans consider holy and sacred” (Paffenroth 7-8). But this should not ultimately surprise us, for the great monsters of the cinema have assumed the status of contemporary myths, their films the quest stories shared by outsiders of every generation. These are the texts sought out for answers by those who question themselves and society, many of whom would sit uneasily in church pews for reasons wholly other than a state of numinous apprehension. To quote Rick Worland, “Controversial -- and appealing -- aspects of horror films include: the spectacle of extreme acts of violence, more or less open sexuality that defies conventional norms and attendant assumptions about gender roles, treatment of particular religious and moral values and attitudes about the nature of evil; social and less overtly, political values implied in the portrayal of traditional authorities and social institutions (e.g., government, science, the Church, the family) and a film’s ultimate faith in the efficacy of those institutions to protect society from the monster/evil and restore the status quo” (Worland 119).

Of course, even if some sense of “normalcy” is recreated by such authorities and institutions in a reconstituted status quo, the capacity for any affinity with and/or sympathy for the monster tends to subvert the legitimacy of their exercise of power to define “the norm”. As such, even many horror films “in the classical mode” unjustly regarded by critics like Rick Worland and Robin Wood as representing “a strongly conservative tradition” (Worland 21) may still carry profound potential to subvert and critique the repressive “norm” of the status quo to invite the viewer to deeper passion and authenticity. If organized religion often ranges from ambivalence to open hostility toward the horror genre and its fans, it is in no small part because of its dubious commitment to uphold the status quo at the expense of hackneyed rituals, placid pastels, and dull sermons. And yet, like the myth of the trickster, the myth of the monster anxiously unsettles the position that religion can exclusively regulate the terms of access to the numinous by virtue of its assigned role as mediator. Just as the trickster, the monster bursts forth the boxes, categories, chains, and coffins to which it is confined to illustrate that the sacred too cannot be confined by such delimiting factors.

For what is the terrible place in which the horror narrative unfolds if not the sacred place as yet unmapped and unmediated by the symbolic order to some extent? When blind and wandering Oedipus stops to rest in a sacred grove, a stranger warns him: “First move from where you sit; the place is holy; It is forbidden to walk upon that ground.... It is not to be touched, no one may live upon it; Most dreadful are its divinities, most feared” (deSilva 251). Again, “Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17). In both cases, a sense of dread and anxiety is awakened by the apprehension of the numinous and its disruption of normative categories. Rudolf Otto’s ghost is “the ‘wholly other’” because it is “something which has no place in our scheme of reality but belongs to an an absolutely different one, and which at the same time arouses an irrepressible interest in the mind” (Otto 29). So while this or that symbolic system will claim justification for its policies on the basis of a declared reciprocal alliance with the Absolute, presumed to be the source of all religious experience of great symbolic importance, the relation is far more fluid and destabilizing to the boundaries it has constructed and enforced. “The magic objects tossed behind the panic-ridden hero--protective interpretations, principles, symbols, rationalizations, anything--delay and absorb the power of the Hound of Heaven, permitting the adventurer to come back into his fold safe and with perhaps a boon” (Campbell 176).

Hitherto we have discussed the amorphous boundaries and definitions of the concept of “the Other”, a term whose exact meaning is defined by the context in which it is used. It is in this regard that we now come to the work of Jean-Paul Sartre’s longtime partner and protege, Simone de Beauvoir, to tie together the various strands explored so far and relate them to questions of courage, anxiety, and the gender dynamics of horror spectatorship. Considering herself the Socratic midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics, Beauvoir was a crucial early pioneer in the synthesis of existentialism and feminism, whose work has been highly influential to feminists and social theorists ever since. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir begins by asking in so many words the question “What is woman?”, demonstrating that in her time the definition of what it means to be a woman is a contested category. “To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man” (Beauvoir xxi) Even so, within my own time the question of “What is man?”, and what it means to be a man is a similarly contested category. Why indeed should the definition of masculinity be beyond philosophical inquiry and scrutiny, not least on the authority of Beauvoir’s own work? For many males, the threat of not really being a man, to not embody the essence of “masculinity”, is a very grave source of anxiety indeed, one to which many will respond by adopting stereotypical patterns of behavior and the metaphysical views they imply.

Still, Beauvoir has a point in that this state of affairs implies that “woman” is culturally defined not in relation to herself as an existential subject, but in relation to man who defines her existence through his agency. Drawing out the implications of this, Beauvoir concludes “man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being... She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.” (Beauvoir xxii) Here the amorphous boundaries of the concept of the Other assume a distinctly social definition to describe those who occupy positions of marginalization, such as women, Jews, blacks, indigenous peoples subject to colonization, laborers subject to those who control the means of production, and all other persons and people-groups relegated to the boundaries of a given socio-economic and symbolic order not specifically named by Beauvoir. One becomes marked and denigrated as Other by those in power who posit themselves as Subjects by means of their dominion over the definition and destiny of the Other. The power of this normative masculine gaze held by the postulated Subject to define his Other in relation to him is itself related to the objectifying look of the Other in the sense previously spoken of by Sartre. This underscores the importance of distinguishing between the different, but related senses of Otherness hitherto discussed.

The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality – that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts... Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. If three travellers chance to occupy the same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely hostile ‘others’ out of all the rest of the passengers on the train...

Lévi-Strauss, at the end of a profound work on the various forms of primitive societies, reaches the following conclusion: ‘Passage from the state of Nature to the state of Culture is marked by man’s ability to view biological relations as a series of contrasts; duality, alternation, opposition, and symmetry, whether under definite or vague forms, constitute not so much phenomena to be explained as fundamental and immediately given data of social reality.’ These phenomena would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness. Things become clear, on the contrary, if, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility towards every other consciousness; the subject can be posed only in being opposed – he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object. But the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim (Beauvoir xxii-xxiii).

Because of this primal hostility, the existential subject is formed against the backdrop of the Other, even as this subject must somehow address the Other’s claim to subjectivity. Within the context of patriarchal culture, the “problem” is addressed by the patriarchate positing themselves as the Subject of history, against which the Other’s claim to existential sovereignty is denied. And yet, “The native travelling abroad is shocked to find himself in turn regarded as a ‘stranger’ by the natives of neighbouring countries. As a matter of fact, wars, festivals, trading, treaties, and contests among tribes, nations, and classes tend to deprive the concept Other of its absolute sense and to make manifest its relativity; willy-nilly, individuals and groups are forced to realize the reciprocity of their relations” (Beauvoir xxiii). This being the case, Beauvoir goes on to query:

How is it, then, that this reciprocity has not been recognised between the sexes, that one of the contrasting terms is set up as the sole essential, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative and defining the latter as pure otherness? Why is it that women do not dispute male sovereignty? No subject will readily volunteer to become the object, the inessential; it is not the Other who, in defining himself as the Other, establishes the One. The Other is posed as such by the One in defining himself as the One. But if the Other is not to regain the status of being the One, he must be submissive enough to accept this alien point of view. Whence comes this submission in the case of woman? (Beauvoir xxiii-xxiv).

In answering this query, Beauvoir brings up two basic points that will be extrapolated throughout the rest of the work. The first is related to the concrete domination of man over woman and social resources. “To decline to be the Other, to refuse to be a party to the deal – this would be for women to renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste. Man-the-sovereign will provide woman-the-liege with material protection and will undertake the moral justification of her existence; thus she can evade at once both economic risk and the metaphysical risk of a liberty in which ends and aims must be contrived without assistance. Indeed, along with the ethical urge of each individual to affirm his subjective existence, there is also the temptation to forgo liberty and become a thing” (Beauvoir xxvii). The second point, therefore, is an extrapolation of Sartre’s notion that “man is condemned to free”, which is to say that woman is beset by anxiety rooted in the ontic awareness of her own existential freedom. To evade and repress this anxiety, she surrenders her deep-rooted freedom to the demands of a patriarchal culture, becoming the Other against which it is positied without so much as finding the means of resistance, an existential act of taking oneself in bad faith. Similarly, in The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich argues the great temptation of his age is to surrender “the courage to be as oneself,” a life-stance he sees as embodied in existentialism, to the stifling demands of normalizing conformity to Soviet or American culture.

Over against these temptations to an inessential life, as “existence proceeds essence” implies that the fact of existing proceeds whoever exactly one exists as, Simone de Beavoir proposes that woman must have the courage to posit herself as an existent in her own right, and make the claim to reciprocal subjectivity. For her part, Beauvoir’s work implies, but never explicitly states a doctrine of courage to enable woman the courage to be as herself, over against ontic anxieties and cultural pressures that would tend toward her negation. “A young girl,” says Beauvoir, “who had no special deference to the stronger sex, was reproaching a man for his cowardice; it was remarked that she herself was a coward. ‘Oh, a woman, that’s different!’ declared she, complacently. The fundamental reason for such defeatism is that the adolescent girl does not think herself responsible for her future; she sees no use in demanding much of herself since her lot in the end will not depend on her own efforts” (Beauvoir 335).

The present author recalls a heated online discussion with a young woman over the filmic quality of The Crazies directed by Breck Eisner, claiming that the film’s graphic content is naturally repulsive to her as a woman, and that she was “forced” to watch it by an ex-boyfriend. For his part, Eisner is admirably gender conscious, the film’s heroine displaying exactly the type of courage throughout, so it is not as if she is complaining about watching something demeaning as such. In regard to her point about “natural” repulsion, I made a timely application of the theories of Julia Kristeva and Rudolf Otto to show how that her attitudes regarding abjection were self-reflexive of her attitudes about her body and her self, and that the film deployed aesthetic discourse of abjection to make a critique of normative American culture in the age of terror. But most important to the present contexts is the way I made reference to Simone de Beavoir’s philosophy of existential freedom to challenge the idea that she could truly be “forced” to watch the movie. To truly be “forced” to watch a movie, said the present author, one would have to be strapped in the seat with their eyes held open, as in the Ludovico technique of A Clockwork Orange. As this sort of viewing experience remains remarkably unpopular, it becomes clear that she was not so much forced to watch the movie, as she refused to exercise her existential freedom not to watch the movie because of the consequences attached to it. As such, in saying that she was “forced” to watch the movie, she takes herself in bad faith by failing to exercise her existential freedom in a cultural situation of unlocked theater doors which remain open to her. Noting that the young woman was remarkably outspoken, I queried why she failed to exercise this freedom, drawing parallel between the political themes of the film and her personal situation with her ex-boyfriend. Here I aptly cited Simone de Beauvoir’s remarks in the conclusion to The Second Sex:

The innumerable conflicts which set men and women against one another come from the fact neither is prepared to assume all the consequences of this situation which the one has offered and the other accepted. The doubtful concept of “equality in inequality,” which the one uses to mask his despotism and the other to mask her cowardice, does not stand the test of experience: in their exchanges, woman appeals to the theoretical equality she has been guaranteed, and man the concrete inequality that exists (Beauvoir 721-722).

Whereas these conflicts had already broken the relationship, in the case of this young woman existential courage may have been exercised by walking out of the movie. But here we will posit another kind of courage, a courageous spectatorship exercised by the feminine gaze upon horror films to challenge the fears and anxieties that bind her to an inessential existence. Stereotypical cultural norms would have it that that women beset by fears and anxieties in the midst of viewing a horror film should respond by leaning upon her man and drawing upon his courage, and all that implies for her role in the world and its future. But for the woman to face these with a courage of her own implies a much greater field of possibilities for her within the world and its future. Thus Linda Williams admits an ambivalent affinity for horror because of its capacity for expression of women’s desires, and “a surprising (and at times subversive) affinity between monster and woman, in the sense in which her look at the monster recognizes their similar status within patriarchal structures of seeing” (Williams 18). In her essay’s conclusion, Williams implores “It is crucial for women spectators to realize the important change that is taking place before our very eyes, which habits of viewing, not to mention habits of not viewing, or closing our eyes to violence and horror in general, may keep us from seeing. We are so used to sympathizing, in traditional cringing ways, with the female victims of horror that we are not likely to notice the change, to assume that films such as these have maintained this sympathy while simply escalating the doses of violence and sex” (Williams 32).

Here Williams makes the essentializing move of presuming complete assimilation of the post-Psycho family of horror films to the entire body of film like a Platonic essence out of hell, an unfortunately common stereotype for a genre that specializes in destabilizing norms and confounding expectations (Psycho itself is an excellent example). She is surely right, however, in highlighting the need for women to exercise courageous spectatorship to face the world and its problems, not least those which pertain to her existential self-affirmation. As critics from Robin Wood to David J. Skal have emphasized, horror cinema represents a cinematic space for “the return of the repressed”, in which buried anxieties related to unadressed problems in the body politic, problems ontologically grounded in the human existential condition, can resurface symbolically in the conflicts of the narrative and be consciously addressed. This being the case, horror cinema is ideal for the exercise of the virtue of courage, which yields many blessings.

Like many feminist film critics drawing upon the work of Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams’ account of horror spectatorship fails to take into account the existential capacity for subjective interpretation, not least as applies to audience reception. Whereas she takes the monster’s raison d'être to be the punishment of the female gaze, her essay in general strongly implies manifest anxieties related to gender and sexuality. If the male monster is grotesque and disfigured, it is not because he is really a “double for the women” (Williams 20), but rather because he is an extension of male anxieties related to the threat of castration, and through it to the fear of withstanding the female gaze, as projected through the myth of Medusa. This is the reverse side of the virile male hero that has engendered voyeuristic cinema structures in an egotistical mode of wish fulfillment; only this time the male monster looks and discovers only horror and revulsion in the face of his desires. Like the adolescent male, “He looks into the mirror, hoping to see Lothario or Lochivar, Paul Newman or Paul McCartney. Instead, staring back is pimply, half-formed apparition as appalling as the Creature from the Black Lagoon” (Greenberg 340). After these remarks, Harvey Roy Greenberg goes on to write “The hero of The Wolf Man (1941) and the heroine of Cat People are both afflicted with the adolescent’s alienation, the painful sense of--as one patient put it--‘being alone and afraid, in a world I never made’” (Greenberg 341). Similarly, Rick Worland remarks:

That adolescents who, to greater or lesser extents, often picture themselves as physically ugly victims of a fearful and punitive society have largely sustained the horror film economically suggests another basis for the genre’s steady popularity. These often-ambiguous reactions to the monster are the aspects that readily admit the work of Lon Chaney. The fear of death is reflexively tied to the dread of injury, mutilation, and of disfigurement, results that are not only physiological but also strongly bound up with physiological and also social factors. Chaney’s Quasimodo is a sympathetic, even heroic figure. He is also a martyr, his deformed back stripped for public ridicule and whipped in the film’s most famous sequence (Worland 146).

An apt illustration of Linda Williams’ description of the woman’s sympathetic gaze in horror, in this very scene Esmeralda brings the humiliated creature some much needed water in parallel to the passion and affliction of Christ. This alliance in turn affords new existential possibilities created by a partnership not of the One and the Other, but of an affinity of dyadic alterity with monstrous potential to redefine the norm. This is the underlying root of what Williams terms “the extreme excitement and surplus danger when the monster and the woman get together” (Williams 24). Most monsters within the classical period of horror cinema possess a certain element of androgyny that ties his condition to that of woman, i.e. in the Wolf Man’s susceptibility to moon phases, or Dracula’s flowing sensuous clothing. Williams herself remarks, “Clearly the monster’s power is one of sexual difference from the normal male” (Williams 20). Anxieties related to gender and sexuality are often ontologically rooted in an implied essentialist view of gender, so that if one has an affinity for this or that, or is unable to perform this or that norm, one is not really a man or woman. Thus in horror’s classical period we have disfigured creatures which defy social and gender norms, while in the family of films following Peeping Tom and Psycho, we have tormented young men experiencing deep-rooted anxieties related to their gender, sexuality, and place in the world, which ultimately results in a violent return of the repressed.

And yet, precisely in giving expression to these fears and allowing them to be confronted courageously, horror cinema points the way to a broadened, existential view of gender, which allows a greater range of possibilities and affinities. Similarly, in her study of audience reception and advertising messages in horror’s classical period, Rhona J. Berenstein documents the implied cultural appeal of the genre was its capacity to challenge normative gender roles in the very act of spectatorship. “For example, in order to draw as many patrons to Mark of the Vampire as possible, a first-aid stretcher was placed in the lobby of the Loew’s Colonial Theatre in Reading, Pennsylvania. The in-house stunt was accompanied by advertisements in the town’s newspapers addressed to ‘women who are not afraid.’ The notices recounted the film’s story line and challenged female viewers to attend a screening. As a copy for the ad suggests, the contest winner was expected to respond against her conventional gender role--by being brave” (Berenstein 128). In the present author’s experience, responses to horror films among women range from an acute case of the heebie jeebies, and all that implies for repressed terrors and anxieties which ultimately lie elsewhere, and a strong sense of affinity expressed in individuals with the courage to defy social norms. Similarly, horror challenges the false courage of those who believe that musculinity is rooted in never experiencing fears or anxieties, enabling them to confront these elements of negation to lead a more essential existence. Soren Kierkegaard once somewhere said, or at least implied that “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” In this regard, the monsters of horror cinema can act as a mythic guide to lead them through their anxieties to a greater range of freedom and possibilities for the future. Commenting on the capacity of myth and ritual (and by extension, horror films), in all its ego-shattering aspects to catalyze a return of the repressed, Joseph Campbell writes:

But this realm, as we know from psychoanalysis, is precisely the infantile unconscious. It is the realm that we enter in sleep. We carry it within ourselves forever. All the ogres and secret helpers of our nursery are there, all the magic of childhood. And more important, all the life-potentialities that we never managed to bring into adult realization, those other portions of ourself, are there; for such golden seeds do not die. If only a portion of that lost totality could be dredged up into the light of day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers, a vivid renewal of life. We should tower in stature. Moreover, if we could dredge up something forgotten not only by ourselves but by our whole generation or our entire civilization, we should become indeed the boon-bringer, the culture hero of the day--a personage of not only local but world historical moment (Campbell 12).

The purpose of this essay is to show how women and men can use the monsters of horror cinema as a personal guide, and catalyst of discovery of precisely these potentialities. Out in the real world, it is my hope that they will make use of these means of courage to face social and gender anxieties to recognize and affirm those undergoing the same. Within this recognition is the tremendous potentiality implied by the co-relationship between woman and monster within horror cinema. As a window to these possibilities, one may here cite Edward Scissorhands directed by Tim Burton, a film that reveals the tremendous creative potentialities, and indeed potencies, within woman and monster alike if only they would but affirm each other. This is an important corrective to the violent repression of Psycho, Peeping Tom, Dressed to Kill, Halloween, and all the slasher films. Like Edward, we can use these powers not to destroy, but to create, and to challenge stifling normativity to reveal remarkable new potentials for the future.

Works Cited:

Beavoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Berenstein, Rhona J. “‘It Will Thrill You, It May Shock You, It Might Even Horrify You’: Gender, Reception, and Classic Horror Cinema.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Texas: University of Texas Press, 1996. 117-142.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero of a Thousand Faces (Third Edition). Novato: New World Library, 2008.
deSilva, David A. Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Greenberg, Harvey Roy. “King Kong: The Beast in the Boudoir--or, ‘You Can’t Marry That Girl, You’re a Gorilla!’.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Texas: University of Texas Press, 1996. 338-351.
Kierkegaard, Søren. “The Concept of Anxiety.” The Essential Kierkegaard Ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 138-155.
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Trans. Jan Van Bragt. London: University of California Press Ltd., 1982.
Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Trans. John W. Harvey. London: Oxford University Press, 1950.
Paffenroth, Kim. Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006.
Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be Second Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Williams, Linda. “When the Woman Looks.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Texas: University of Texas Press, 1996. 15-34.
Worland, Rick. The Horror Film: An Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

Everyday is Halloween: A Contextual Analysis of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (English Composition II)

2010-05-21T18:09:00.011-06:00

Imagine a circle of deep-rooted trees in the midst of a dense forest. Upon each of these trees is a carefully carved and hand painted emblem, a heart, a shamrock, an egg, a turkey, but especially a Christmas tree and jack-o’-lantern. Each of these emblems is a door with a handle, and if you turn the handle, you can step inside the hollow of the tree to enter a whole new world patterned after the particular holiday that emblem symbolizes. As you descend into this circle of trees from aloft, a storybook narrator guides you around each of these trees, appealing to your curiosity about where holidays come from, before stopping to open the jack-o’-lantern door and invite you inside. A pitch darkness now covers everything in sight, and a distant jack-’o-lantern is the only source of light. As you come closer, the pumpkin head is revealed to belong to a cruciform scarecrow attached to a signpost that reads “Halloween Town”. The scarecrow blows in the wind with the autumn leaves as you come near, and you find yourself in a spooky grey cemetery. There the spirits of the dead immediately rise to greet you, inviting you participate in the town festivities. Departing from the cemetery gates and entering a town filled with steep Gothic spires, you are met by such familiar childhood terrors as the monsters under your bed and stairs. Continuing on your tour, you are met by such town citizens as vampires, the mayor (a literally two-faced politician), a tentacled amphibious creature, werewolves, and witches. As per their yearly autumn ritual, the gentle monsters play their own parts in a scary--but not too scary--display of their own unique powers to frighten. Singing the town anthem “This Is Halloween”, the monsters say that it’s okay to be thrilled and scared, to take risks and “ride with the moon in the dead of night”. And while shadows on the moon bring terrors in the night, it’s still worth it to find the courage to face them, because “life’s no fun without a good scare.” But really, none of the monsters here are mean, it’s just their job to frighten us. In other words, monsters can be our friends, they can help guide us through darkness and discontent, because these are areas with which they are intimately familiar.

Such is the unforgettable opening scene of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a 1993 stop-motion animated film directed by Henry Selick, and produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. Originally conceived while working for Walt Disney in the 1980’s, Tim Burton drew up the original character designs and story, but was disappointed by the constraints the company placed upon him, which would prohibit a full-length stop-motion animated feature, and put the project on hold. Burton cites as creative influences Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated holiday features such as Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Mad Monster Party, et al., as well as How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (Burton & Salisbury 115-116, Carroll). “The initial impulse for doing it was the love of Dr Seuss and those holiday specials that I grew up watching... Those crude stop-motion animation holiday things that were on year-in, year-out make an impact on you early and stay with you. I had grown up with those and had a real feeling for them, and I think, without being too direct, the impulse was to do something like that” (Burton & Salisbury 115). Finally, in 1990, with the financial and popular success of Edward Scissorhands and Batman, Burton began discrete inquiries regarding whether Walt Disney held the rights to The Nightmare Before Christmas. “And they did own it,” says Burton, “because they own everything. There’s this thing you sign when you work there, which states that any thoughts you have during your employment are owned by the thought police. Obviously, there’s no real way of doing it quietly. We tried, but they were soon right there and they were fine - which is against their nature - so I’m very respectful and feel honoured that they let it happen” (Ibid. 118)

Owing to his commitment to directing Batman Returns, and the slow, painstaking nature of the medium, Tim Burton entrusted the project to fellow Disney veteran and stop-motion animation director Henry Selick while taking a very active hand in its production. Because of this shared authorship, The Nightmare Before Christmas provides an excellent introduction to both directors’ distinctive styles, sensibilities, symbolism, and themes. What qualities are most clearly shared in Burton’s and Selick’s work is a strong affinity for the ethos of the outsider, and for German Expressionism as processed through Gothic horror films of the genre’s classical period. By means of this Gothic Expressionism, the familiar can be rendered the uncanny, revealing dark or strange undercurrents inherent in normative life that create deep-rooted conflict for the outsider protagonist and his or her allies. By facing these undercurrents, and challenging cultural pressures for stifling conformity with strange but authentic passions, the outsider hero or heroine can discover a boon of creative power which will lead to a qualitatively better life than that which has been ordained by a repressive status quo. Not coincidentally, these qualities make Tim Burton’s and Henry Selick’s work quite popular among alienated youth and creative misfits in general, and the Gothic subculture in particular. This holds especially true for The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film that has become iconic to the degree that its vast array of merchandise both bootlegged and official has become an instantly recognizable cultural symbol of affinity for the dark, strange and unusual.

Jillian Venters, an online Gothic advice columnist who goes by the title “The Lady of the Manners”, suggests Goths faced with concerned friends or family members to “ask them what they think Goth means and try not to roll your eyes or snort derisively at whatever movie-of-the-week answer nonsense they come up with. Instead, after they’re done talking about the dangers of Goth, gently explain what Goth really is. Start with ‘family-friendly’ examples such as The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Tim Burton movies such as Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or Corpse Bride” (Venters 77). Of course, The Addams Family is not “family-friendly” in the sense that The Brady Bunch is “family-friendly”, as each of these sources entails an interesting critique of normative family dynamics, opening fresh passions and possibilities. But of special interest here is the way Venters, an “eldergoth” (a term describing a longtime of the Goth who has been involved with the scene since its flowering in the 1980‘s), takes The Nightmare Before Christmas as an important clue of contextualization to help non-Goths understand the ethos of the subculture. Similarly, Gothic musician, writer, and renaissance man Voltaire references the massive cultural and subcultural influence of Tim Burton’s films in the context of defending popular Glam Metal musician Marilyn Manson against his Gothic scenester critics. “While Manson owes more to Alice Cooper than he does to Peter Murphy, he has undoubtedly succeeded in bringing the Gothic aesthetic to a mainstream audience (an accomplishment only rivaled by the cinematic contributions of Tim Burton)” (Voltaire 90). Within the text, Burton’s direct influence upon the subculture is almost taken as a given. This is discretely signaled by the Ethergoth’s comfortable “night in with a Tim Burton movie”, the Deathrocker’s “‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ Boxer Shorts” concealed beneath black pants with extra belts, and the subcultural appeal of “Tim Burton’s Tragic Toys” (Ibid. 7, 55, 93).

Tim Burton’s own attitude toward the Gothic subculture appears to be one of strong affinity. Throughout his career, he has kept current on aesthetic developments in the subculture, most recently giving us a second round of Steampunk Gothic horror with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Gothic & Lolita inspired looking-glass romanticism in Alice in Wonderland. Lydia Deetz, the Romantigoth heroine of Beetlejuice, remains a personal and subcultural favorite among all Goths presented on film. Tim Burton grew up in suburban Los Angeles heavily influenced by the first wave of Punk, and appears to view musical offshoots such as New Wave and Goth as springing from the roots rather than branches breaking off to form something else. Describing his profound alienation and anger in high school, Burton comments “It was as if I was exuding an aura that said ‘Leave Me The Fuck Alone’... But punk music was good, that helped me, it was good for me emotionally. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but there’s enough weird movies out there that you can go a long time without friends and see something new everyday that kind of speaks to you” (Burton & Salisbury 2). One of the signature features of the majority of Tim Burton’s films is that they are scored by Danny Elfman, the lead vocalist of of Oingo Boingo, a New Wave/Ska Punk band that began as an offshoot of an eccentric theater group, and which remains popular in the Gothic subculture owing to its macabre playfulness. Burton remarks of Oingo Boingo “Before I was in the movies I’d go see them in clubs. I had always liked their music. Of all the groups that I went to see, which was mainly the punk kind of stuff, which I love, I always felt that because they had more people in the band and used weirder instruments, the music seemed to be more story-oriented in some way, more filmic” (Ibid. 48). Similarly, in Batman Returns, the film Burton directed contemporaneously to the production of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gothic icons Siouxsie & The Banshees perform Catwoman’s theme “Face To Face”. Director Henry Selick’s attitude toward the Gothic subculture seems to be one of quiet acceptance, simply stating of audiences attending his 2009 film Coraline, “There were some blue-haired girls too, kids into Goth and emo, what you might expect” (Capone). When the interviewer connects this to the aesthetic style and enduring popularity of The Nightmare Before Christmas, its “classic Goth image”, Selick gratefully relates an anecdote. He tells of of a completely tatooed woman during the October 2006 The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D re-release who asked him to sign her leg, which she would then turn into a matching tatoo along with Burton’s and Elfman’s signatures. “It’s great to be a part of anything that has a life beyond the first few weeks,” he concludes (Ibid.). Reading between the lines, it seems fair to say that Selick is cool with the Goths who are fans of his movies if he takes pride in this kind of fan.

Also during The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D re-release, MTV interviewer Larry Carroll disparages the subculture, inquiring of Burton “For better or worse, you're a patron saint of the so-called ‘goth’ movement. How do you feel about that?” (Carroll) But Burton defends Goths, responding “People get scared of people like that, but they really are quite sweet, great people. It's that image versus what people have in their heart versus what people think people should look like — that always causes a problem” (Ibid.). The interviewer further inquires “On the flip side, though, goth kids are often linked with things like suicide and cutting. Have you ever had an encounter with a fan who ultimately took the goth thing too far?” (Ibid). To this Burton responds “Well, I can only speak for myself, and I know responding to that kind of imagery didn't make me worse. It made me feel more at home and psychologically able to work out certain things. People argue the opposite, that it creates that kind of problem, but most of the people are using it to work out things in life” (Ibid.). Within this interview, Carroll also brings up the most common objection to The Nightmare Before Christmas: “Usually, people think of Halloween as death and monsters, and they associate Christmas with love and family. Should the holidays be segmented like that?” (Ibid.) In response, Burton appeals to the precedent of Christmas slasher film Black Christmas, which probably had very little influence, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which holds more thematic parallelism. Converse to Carroll, horror film historian David J. Skal remarks “Filmmaker Tim Burton captured the odd, interdependent energies of America’s two leading holidays in the animated feature the Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). directed by Henry Selick” (Skal 396-397). But why indeed should these two holidays seemingly at complete odds with each other be so closely interrelated?

To be sure, kids often really freak out in the presence of Santa Claus, apparently enough so to build a niche of horror parallel to the fear of clowns, and Nightmare’s hero Jack Skellington can indeed appeal to the modus operandi of “Sandy Claws” to get the creatures of Halloween Town really excited about Christmas. Halloween is a holiday rooted and autumn and harvest, with its attendant reminders of death and apocalyptic forces, and is believed to be a time when the dead are closest to the living, as mediated by pagan, Christian, and post-Christian cultural practices. The Nightmare Before Christmas pays homage to this aspect of Halloween by means of its representation of the communion between the living and the dead in the aforementioned opening scene, in the way the cemetery occupies a communal center as a restful refuge, and in Jack’s companionship with the ghost-dog Zero. While Jesus of Nazareth was probably born in the spring, the influence of Sextus Julius Africanus’ chronology popularized the notion of a December advent to similar symbolic resonance. “Part of the immense satisfaction of the Christian story,” writes literary professor Thomas C. Foster, “is that the two great celebrations, Christmas and Easter, coincide with dates of great seasonal anxiety. The story of the birth of Jesus, and of hope, is placed almost on the shortest, and therefore most dismal (preelectric) day of the year” (Foster 183). One important element of the Wisdom Christological hymn of Jesus’ advent in John’s Gospel is that the dawning of the true light reveals how very dark the world is, and with characteristic thematic resonance Jesus later remarks “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil” (John 7:7). Within a tragic and corrupted world, there is no greater evidence that love and death, joy and suffering, vocation and doubt, go hand in hand than Jesus himself. To John, the metaphor of “darkness” represents an absence of saving light and knowledge, while to Goth the metaphor of “darkness” represents the experience of suffering, doubt, and death. In a crucial sense, therefore, John’s “light” is not fundamentally incompatible with Goth’s aesthetic of “darkness”, contrary to certain Christian opponents of the subculture, because of the contextual meanings attached to those words. The Nightmare Before Christmas aligns more closely with secular celebrations of Christmas and Halloween, but the film holds generally respectful to basic Christian beliefs. The cemeteries of the film are places where the dead are hallowed, and prominently feature crosses and an angel holding the book of life (cf. Revelation 20:11-13). Santa Claus cites as his ethos the words of the host of angels in Luke’s Gospel “Haven’t you heard of peace on earth, and good will toward men?” (cf. Luke 2:11-14). This is to say that this is the true spirit of the Christmas despite kidnaping pranksters, and military installations that blast dreams out of the sky owing to cultural misunderstandings. Even then, the man with the strangely melting face is allowed the dignity of a discrete prayer on Jack’s behalf in the time of his peril.

But we live in times when the words of the angels and Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) have not yet come to completion, and the churches act with stunning complicity and collusion with the powers that be. They have become part of the problem instead of people of the solution, the mere guardians of repressive normativity above the praxis of nativity. Not coincidentally, this figures strongly in Tim Burton’s filmic critique of the repressive legacy of Puritanism, rooted in the ideology of Calvinism, upon the American church and society throughout his career. Commenting on the cultural appeal of holidays like Christmas and Halloween, Burton remarks that “The best I can decipher is that when you grow up in a blank environment, any form of ritual, like a holiday, gives you a sense of place. Most other countries are rich with ritual, but I guess America is a relatively new country and a fairly Puritan one. Growing up in a suburban environment where it’s pushed even further in that direction, makes you feel very floaty. So holidays, especially those two, were very much a grounding or a way to experience the seasons, because in California you don’t get any” (Burton & Salisbury 124). In application, the project of The Nightmare Before Christmas is to counteract American ritual deprivation rooted in Puritan austerity by emphasizing two important rituals deeply rooted in the nation’s cultural fabric as a way to mark one’s subjective sense of place within the cosmic order of time and space. The film retains its perennial impact and popularity by aligning with the most effective elements of sources like the Rankin/Bass holiday specials to create a filmic ritual of the seasons for those marginalized by their surrounding environment. Similarly, Simon Reynolds notes an important element of the ethos of the Gothic subculture from its origins. “Redefining punk rebellion as deviance from norms, these proto-Goths proposed an escape from the crushing commonplaceness of everyday English life, into ritual and ceremony, magic and mystery” (Reynolds 354). So important is the element of religious critique and ritual emphasis to the Gothic subculture that I like to say “Goth is to religion what Punk is to politics”.

Of course, even churches founded with the intent of including those outcast by the normative gaze of can also become part of the problem. It is in this regard that the present author recalls sitting with his darkly inclined friends, each with a certain affinity for androgyny, amongst a congregation resembling the Island of Misfit Toys. There Reese Roper preached an unfortunate sermon against Christmas titled “Jesus... The Third Way” (Roper). In his sermon, Roper expresses grave concerns about the Dionysian element of ancient pagan rituals of the Winter Solstace, effectively rooting the Christian life in a strategy of repression, rather than cathartic sublimation through dramatic forms like tragedy and horror. The gospel and the passions represented by Christmas celebrations ancient and contemporary, we are to understand, are irreconcilable, and the intrinsic power of the ritual must be denied, not transfigured. But of greatest relevance here is the way he lampoons Rankin/Bass holiday specials like Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, calling them “some candy coated cartoon about some stupid snowman, or some effeminate elf that really in his heart of hearts wants only to be a dentist” (Ibid.). This remark is interesting, not because of his implied gender essentialism, fear of feminization, or characteristic insensitivity, but to the extent they reveal an element of critique of normative gender and social roles in Burton’s source material. Amidst a narrative about misfits struggling against prejudice and insecurity because of their unique differences from imposed norms, the advice is to align with others facing similar problems and discover power in those differences. If Santa Claus can affirm Rudolph, perhaps it is because he faced prejudice of his own for being so gosh-darned liberal-minded in Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town. Compassionately trying to bestow toys to children growing up in a repressive environment of Sombertown, because he was raised by a family of toymaking elves, Kris Kringle runs into stark opposition by the town Burgomaster, and even his beloved Jessica, who is a schoolteacher. However, Jessica experiences an epiphany in the form of a psychedelic sugar plum vision which brings her to the realization that Kris Kringle is where it’s at. Exiled from the church and the nations by their ironic notoriety, the couple marries in the forest with God and Nature as their witness, moving operations to the North Pole.

On the darker side of things, Rankin/Bass Halloween special Mad Monster Party (1967) was another important influence upon The Nightmare Before Christmas. “There was one I liked when I was a kid,” says Burton, “called Mad Monster Party. People thought Nightmare was the first stop-motion animated monster musical, but that was” (Burton & Salisbury 121). Mad Monster Party concerns the a party thrown by Baron von Frankenstein (Boris Karloff), who summons all the classic Universal Monsters together to learn who is to become his successor upon his impending retirement. The reason for his retirement is that he has used his scientific knowledge to channel “the power of the universe” to discover “the secret of destruction”, leaving a mushroom cloud in its wake. But rather than leave it all of these terrifying creatures, Frankenstein determines to bequeath his rich legacy to young Felix Flankin, his klutzy but kind-hearted young nephew, whose greatest monstrosity appears to be that he is an uncontrollable sneeze machine. The film is filled with the kind of punny horror humor popularized by publications Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Felix, we are to understand, stands in for all the young people like Tim Burton who peruse such entertainment while dealing with their anxieties. Of course, among the company conflicts and conspiracies are rife, the most dangerous being a plot between Count Dracula and the beautiful but deadly femme fatale Francesca to bump off poor unsuspecting Felix before the announcement to change the verdict. But beyond mere power, Francesca wants the freedom and autonomy denied her by Frankenstein, who has created her with the intention of making her his wife. Fortunately, young Felix is very lucky indeed, and after obliviously surviving several assassination attempts, actually meets Francesca, who realizes the lad is far too unassuming to be a threat, and the two fall in love. Still, the monsters grow restless about this decidedly un-monstrous inheritor, and unite against him. In the finale, King Kong, standing in for junior’s enormous libido, comes in to rescue him from all the monsters that beset him, but becomes an even greater danger. The island gets nuked by Frankenstein when all is said and done, while Felix and Francesca ride away in a boat to return home from their adventure. Francesca stereotypically bursts into tears at an unexpected time, having a cyborg gender crisis about only being a construct, but the two are revealed to have more in common than they previously realized. It is a film that makes sustained reflection on the way young people make use of horror as a kind of myth to guide them through rites of passage and deal with their anxieties, especially those related to gender roles, sexuality, and social dangers of the atomic age.

Another important influence is the widely beloved, if also widely lampooned, B-movie holiday classic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964). The film is fittingly set on Mars, a planet dedicated to war and technological imperialism. The film opens on green antenna-capped Martian children mesmerized by a news broadcast interviewing Santa Claus at the North Pole on behalf of the children of earth. Naming off his reindeer, Santa deadpans “Nixon” among the list, effectively linking the narrative to the contemporaneous Vietnam War by reference to former Vice President and future President Richard Nixon. Owing to its rigid and excessively rationalist social structure, the educational system allows the Martian children no room for formative play or subjective expression, its “electronic teaching machines” plugging in an adult level of information and indoctrination straight from the cradle. Sensing on some level the absurdity of the world imposed upon them, these alienated Martian children rebel en masse by withdrawing into the constant vigil of earth television programs, no matter how “silly”, “ridiculous”, or “meaningless”. Deeply concerned about this emergent phenomenon of dysfunction, the noble Kimar consults the 800 year old sage Chochem concerning its origins and solution. Famously, actor Leonard Hicks brings a strong Shakespearean quality to his performance as Kimar, something like Julius Caesar for the age of telecommunications and space technologies, which has been variously interpreted as making this particular earth program more or less ridiculous than it already is. Informed by Chochem that the Martian children have made Santa an icon of their need for play, and that Mars needs a Santa Claus so children can be children, Kimar resolves to kidnap and dislocate the earth Santa to save the children of Mars. After some genuine silliness, Santa finds himself shanghaied aboard a rocket ship with a couple of no-nonsense kids as wily saboteurs to the rescue. Now really upset about Santa’s disappearance, the nations of earth manage to get along for once in order to try to bring him back, calling on the assistance of space scientist Werner von Green. Upon landing, Santa is set to work in a Martian toy factory, despite being an old-fashioned kind of guy who likes everything handcrafted in his workshop. Needless to say, he wistfully laments this alienation of labor in being reduced to a button pusher with no control over the product of his craft. And some Martians are still dead set against the mere idea of a Santa on Mars, and try to kill him to preserve their good ol’ glory days. But the children intervene with their war toys and a kooky bubble jamboree, the screwball nobody knows what to do with becomes the Martian Santa Claus, and all earthlings are returned home. It is a quaint old film with renewed resonance for the children of the information age, who have grown up amidst the culture shifts of the Internet Revolution, widespread cynicism about systemic political and socio-economic corruption, and a disastrous campaign of Neoconservative American imperialism rooted in a period of post-Cold War anxieties, an age of terror.

The final film to note is How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), adapted from a children’s storybook written by Dr. Seuss. Voiced by actor Boris Karloff of Frankenstein fame, The Grinch is a furry (but by no means cuddly) green creature who lives in a cave on the outskirts of Whoville. Outcast and abjected from the Who’s Who of Whoville, the Grinch regards their yearly Christmas celebration as a perennial nuissance, a time when their noisy toy contraptions and joyful communal singing create a horrible racket. Taking a reductionist view of the Christmas holiday, the Grinch determines to steal all the material culture surrounding its celebration, so the Who’s will all sing “Boo Hoo” instead. To this end, the Grinch hatches a plan to disguise himself as Santa Claus to enter everyone’s home and steal all their Christmas stuff. But the Grinch, we are informed by Karloff as the omniscient narrator, has a heart that is two sizes too small. Even so, he practically has a heart attack when he is caught and interrogated by wide-eyed Cindy Lou Who, who wants to know “Santie Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why?” Children, who are undergoing the rudimentary processes of subjective formation, tend not to see contextualizing rituals and gift exchange through jaded eyes, but as a revelation of new possibilities within their world ordinarily concealed by normality. But the Grinch, like so many Grinches, makes up a fib and cop-out about fixing up the Christmas tree to rob Cindy Lou of her discovery, only himself to discover that the Who’s are still joyfully singing on Christmas morning. And so, “He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!” Experiencing his heart growing a whole three sizes, the Grinch summons immense strength to prevent his heavy-laden sleigh from falling off the mountain, and restores all the stuff to the proper Who’s, where he joins their Christmas feast as a guest of honor, carving up the roast beast.

These are the holiday films that have become perennially beloved from generation to generation, an important influence upon Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Even Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has found renewed popularity by way of being shown and lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000, while Mad Monster Party has been reissued in September 2009 as a special edition DVD to coincide with that year’s Halloween. Although typically propped up as a stabilizing norm for the holidays, each of these films share a strong outsider’s ethos with discernable elements of social critique. It is not surprising, therefore, that Tim Burton and Henry Selick would have such a strong affinity for this material in line with their directorial sensibilities. “The idea behind Nightmare,” says Burton, “also came from a combination of feelings to do with those Rudolph things. Thematically that’s something that I like, still respond to, and have responded to in other films about that type of character, somebody, like a Grinch, who is perceived as scary but isn’t. Again, that goes back to the monster movies I liked as a kid. They were perceived as frightening and bad, but they’re (sic) weren’t. It’s also true in society, people get perceived that way all the time” (Burton & Salisbury 116). This peculiar form of social ostracism is quite common among members of the Gothic subculture, both before and after their affiliation, and it is in this regard that horror-related imagery most deeply resonates. “The underlying philosophy of Goth is that our society is predominantly hypocritical,” writes Voltaire. “Goths hold that the ‘normal,’ ‘upstanding’ members of our society who pretend to be ‘good’ all of the time are in fact capable of doing great evil. This is because Goths are often people who were victims of some kind of abuse--physical, verbal, or emotional--at the hands of these very same self-righteous folk” (Voltaire 15). To such individuals, the monster appears as a kind of mythic hero or guide that emerges from the traumatized unconscious to fight off the alienating repressions of normalization. Here it is instructive to cite Burton’s comments about the appeal of horror movies growing up.

I’ve always loved monsters and monster movies. I was never terrified of them, I just loved them from as early as I can remember... And that kind of stuff just stuck with me. King Kong, Frankenstein, Godzilla, and Creature from the Black Lagoon - they’re all pretty much the same, they just have different rubber suits or make-up. But there was something about that identification. Every kid responds to some image, some fairy-tale image, and I felt that most monsters were misperceived, they usually had much more heartfelt souls than the human characters around them. Because I never read, my fairy tales were probably those monster movies. To me they’re very similar. I mean, fairy tales are extremely violent and extremely symbolic and disturbing, probably even more so than Frankenstein and stuff like that, which are kind of mythic and perceived as fairy-tale like. But fairy tales, like Grimms’ fairy tales, are probably closer to movies like The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, much rougher, harsher, full of bizarre symbolism. Growing up, I guess it was a reaction against a very puritanical, bureaucratic, fifties nuclear family environment - me resisting seeing things laid out, seeing things exactly as they were. That’s why I think I’ve always liked the idea of fairy tales or folk tales, because they’re symbolic of something else. There’s a foundation to them, but there’s more besides, they’re open to interpretation. I always liked that, seeing things and just having your own idea about them. So I think I didn’t like fairy tales specifically, I liked the idea of them more.

For a while I wanted to be the actor who played Godzilla. I enjoyed these movies and the idea of venting anger on such a grand scale. Because I was quiet, because I was not demonstrative in any way, those films were my form of release. I think I was pretty much against society from the beginning... I think these impulses to destroy society were formed very early. I went to see almost any monster movie, but it was the films of Vincent Price that spoke to me specifically for some reason. Growing up in suburbia, in an atmosphere that was perceived as nice and normal (but which I had other feelings about), those movies were a way to certain feelings, and I related them to the place I was growing up in... Vincent Price was somebody I could identify with. When you’re younger things look bigger, you find your own mythology, you find what psychologically connects to you. And those movies, just the poetry of them, and this larger-than-life character who goes through a lot of torment - mostly imagined - just spoke to me in the way Gary Cooper or John Wayne might have to somebody else (Burton & Salisbury 2-5).

Before his previously cited comments about the importance of attuning with the rhythm of the seasons, Burton notes the profound deprivation of myth in mainstream American culture. Citing the rich spiderweb of Native American myths surrounding characters like “The Dog Woman and Lizard Man” as an example of the way myths can “tap into your dreams and your subconscious”, he argues that films have this same power to effect symbolic healing from within. “It’s something I’ve found is not ingrained in American culture,” laments Burton, “that sense of myth or folklore. The best America could do is Johnny Appleseed - kind of soft, mutated” (Ibid. p. 124). Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell draws upon the work of Carl Jung and his predecessors to argue that mythic symbols arise from archetypes in the collective unconscious, which is why similar imagery emerges from cultures which never directly influenced each other. For example, the forest is a recurrent image in myths, fairy tales, horror films, and especially in Tim Burton’s movies where the hero or heroine undergoes a test, trial, or rite of passage, and there encounters powers not usually seen by the garrish light of day. “In the Grimms' tales, the forest is a supernatural world, a place where anything can happen and often does. According to Jungian psychology, the forest is a representation of the feminine principle and is identified with the unconscious. The foliage blocks the sun's rays, the sun being associated with the male principle. The forest symbolizes the dangerous side of the unconscious, its ability to destroy reason” (Heiner). But powers of horror situated at the borderlands of the symbolic also mark the location of unmapped boons to be discovered by the questing adventurer. Commenting on “The Princess and the Frog”, Joseph Campbell writes,

As a preliminary manifestation of the powers that are breaking into play, the frog coming up as it were by miracle, can be termed the ‘herald’; the crisis of his appearance is “the call to adventure”... It may sound the call to some high historical undertaking. Or it may mark the dawn of religious illumination. As apprehended by the mystic, it marks what has been termed “the awakening of the self.” In the case of the princess of the fairy tale, it signified no more than the coming of adolescence. But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration--a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. Typical of the circumstances of the call are the dark forest, the great tree, the babbling spring, and the loathly, underestimated appearance of the carrier of the power of destiny (Campbell 42-43).

One of the most common objections to the Gothic subculture is that its “Everyday is Halloween” aesthetic is inappropriate for everyday life, which is to say the psychic forces aroused by that Holiday must remain buried for all but one day of the year. Like the Gothic subculture, Halloween represents an opportunity for the destabilization of fixed roles imposed by normativity, allowing for the release of those repressed energies and anxieties denied by the culture. So by showing us the circle of trees for the holidays in the dark forest where rest all the archetypes, the film is saying ‘Come with me, and I will show you a place within where everyday is Halloween.’ In Halloween town, this kind of expression is the norm, not the stagnant masquerade of suburban hegemony that will admit of no alienation or discontent. Even here, Jack Skellington, the one honored as “the Pumpkin King” by a supportive community, suffers an ineffable longing and discontent with the incessant sameness. So basically, what Burton is saying here is that no matter what anyone else says, its okay to be sad or scared. Halloween Town is a landscape of perpetual autumn where the seasons never change and few plants grow. Trying to address the roots of this cultural malaise, Burton successfully attempts to set up a filmic myth to attune his viewers to the rhythm of the seasons. In one of the film’s most iconic images, Jack climbs a spiral hill in the perceived solitude of the cemetery to cry out his plight to the full moon, the camera in seeming orbit around lunar gravity. Within The Nightmare Before Christmas, and its two directors’ films in general, the symbol of the moon bears two related connotations. The first is that the moon is the visual representation of the unseen influence of Providence of Fate, just as the unseen pull of the moon governs the tides. Thus in Nightmare Jack enters the forest and is pulled in the door to Christmas town by the fateful wind shortly after this scene. Similarly in Coraline, when the moon is almost covered by the ominous shadow of the button that symbolizes imposed conformity, the competent but confounded heroine is ultimately rescued from this cruel fate by the feral feline Christ figure after uttering in despair “Oh, God. I've lost the game. I've lost everything.” When the moon is full and bright, there is certainty, but when covered in shadow, there is doubt and anxiety. The second connotation of the moon is related to the lunar-menstrual cycle, and through it the cycles of rhythm and fertility. In his book on the origins and history of rhythm, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart writes,

In the beginning was noise. And noise begat rhythm. And rhythm begat everything else... Everywhere we looked we saw rhythms, patterns moving through time - in the cycles of the stars and the migrations of animals, in the fruiting and withering of plants we gathered and eventually domesticated. Rhythm was the heart of mystery. And probably nothing was more mysterious for the ancients than the fact that once a month, with the waxing of the moon, the women in the tribe began to bleed. And if they didn’t bleed - that too was part of life’s mysterious rhythm (Hart 12).

Way back in the Neolithic era around 4500 B.C., a great site of pilgrimage was the city of Çatal Höyük. Travelers would come here to worship “multiple manifestations of one principle, known by such names as the great goddess, the great mother, the mother goddess,” and it was a “society focused around fertility and the rhythmical attunement to nature that agriculture demands” (Ibid. 72). A distinctly matrilineal cultus, Hart notes “A contemporary German scholar, Doris Stockmann, suggest that what went on in the sacred spaces of Çatal Hüyük were audiovisual dance rituals, where ‘each individual could experience and feel the event with all his senses.’ Percussion was the driving musical force behind those rituals. Painted on the walls of Çatal Hüyük are images of concussion sticks and clappers, bullroarers and flutes... According to archeologist Marija Gimbutas, author of The Language of the Goddess and one of the major scholars attempting to reconstruct the consciousness of Neolithic Old Europe, there was ‘an intimate relationship between the drum and the goddess’ (Ibid. 72-73). Whereas the importance of the rhythm fades with the rise of patriarchy and the ascent of male divinities, the connection between rhythm and the divine feminine principle never really goes away. One can get a sense of this in Exodus, when after Pharaoh’s armies drown in the sea, the prophetess Miriam engages in a tambourine ritual of celebration along with the women of the twelve tribes, and all that implies (Exodus 15:19-21). Perhaps rhythm may be said to be the herald song of Wisdom weaving together God’s new creation, a new exodus with myriad new possibilities. “Behold, I am making all things new”, says God in Revelation 21:5, where the holy city Jerusalem and the surrounding environment coexist in perfect harmony, in echo of the Wisdom of Solomon. There we read of Wisdom, “Though she is one, she can do all things, And while remaining in herself, she makes everything new. And passing into holy souls, generation after generation, she makes them friends of God, and prophets” (Wisdom of Solomon 7:27). Interestingly, the music of the Gothic subculture places a very strong emphasis upon rhythm and ritual, both in tribal rhythms of counter-cultural refusal of assimilation, and in the dysfunctional rhythms of technological existence. Notably, the ending of The Nightmare Before Christmas answers Jack’s malaise upon the hilltop with the proposed union with Sally upon the same spot, while Santa Claus brings the Christmas gift of snow, and with it, life-giving moisture and the change of seasons. In this regard, The Nightmare Before Christmas may rightly be regarded as a kind of contemporary fertility myth.

Having discussed elements of symbolism and intertextuality, let us now turn to the four principle characters of the film, Jack Skellington, Sally, Santa Claus, and Oogie Boogie. Within Christendom, the classic fertility myth is the story of the questing knight. In these stories, a young man as yet untested, but pure of heart, typically rides forth with his sword or lance to face some trial in search of the love of a maiden, or even the holy grail. At the origins of the story, the holy grail is basically about a guy who is trying to find how he can get a hold of a particular maiden’s number so he can learn about the rather remarkable chalice she was holding at a feast one night, which is to say about her sexuality. But as the story grows, it develops deeper mythic and mystical connotations about those who would seek to penetrate into the very ground of being to discover some ultimate Truth or Wisdom. “Typically the knight rides out from a community that has fallen on hard times. Crops are failing, rains have stopped, livestock and possibly humans are dying or failing to be born, the kingdom is turning into a wasteland. We need to restore fertility and order, says the aging king, too old now to go in search of fertility symbols” (Foster 136). These are very trying times indeed, so it is not surprising we’re seeing a lot of films that draw upon this source material. But if the story of the questing knight is taken too literally, one ends up becoming like the bold and endearing, but indeed errant Don Quixote. Tim Burton says that “Jack is like a lot of characters in classic literature that are passionate and have a desire to do something in a way that isn’t really acknowledged, just like that Don Quixote story, in which some character is on a quest for some kind of feeling, not even knowing what that is. It’s a very primal thing to me, that kind of searching for something and not even knowing what it is, but being passionate about it” (Burton & Salisbury 116).

By means of his exceptionally terrifying yearly performances as the Pumpkin King at Halloween time, Jack has achieved a position of exceptional renown both in Halloween Town, and in waking nightmares internationally. Although highly esteemed by his community, Jack has grown weary and discontent of this once satisfying vocation, and secretly longs for he knows not what. He believes that he is alone in the world and that no one truly loves or understands him. But unbeknownst to Jack, he has captured the gaze of Sally, who understands what he is going through but is too shy to confess her love. While less overtly androgynous than most of Tim Burton’s heroes, Jack’s skeletal frame and commitment to theater within a working class community retains something of this element from his other works. Beseeching the moon from a place emptiness and longing, Jack immediately enters the forest in search of deeper solitude, but instead finds unexpected adventure. It is here that Jack encounters the circle of trees containing all of the holidays, and gazes with wide eager eyes at the door marked with the Christmas tree, and opening that door, is pushed inside by the fateful wind. Here it is instructive to cite Mickey Hart’s comments on Joseph Campbell,

Campbell had added the mythic dimension to his sensitivities. He knew that the great myths were still resonating, however faintly, all about us, if only we developed the ears to hear this music. As far as Joe was concerned, we all had the potential to live out the hero’s journey, if only we would take the first step and enter the dark wood of self-knowledge. Adventures don’t begin until you get into the forest. That first step is an act of faith. In his now-famous formulation, Joe used to put it this way: “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.” Campbell lived his life according to this principle, and he urged everyone he met to try it. He was my kind of subversive (Hart 45).

Opening the door to Christmas Town, Jack is astonished by the remarkable culture that has formed around its winter landscape. Just being here is like a calling, a very strong affinity indeed, and he knows that he must take word of this newfound place with him to Halloween Town. Encountering his darkened silhouette upon the snow, Jack learns that the creative head of this place is one “Sandy Claws”, a figure with which he can “identify.” Riding home in a loaded sleigh, he has the mayor call a town meeting “immediately!” Displaying the various Christmas paraphernalia to the mystified denizens of Halloween Town, he finds himself explaining Christmas within a Halloween framework, ballyhooing the severe terror of the one they call “Sandy Claws”. The townspeople are excited, but Jack is discontent that they don’t understand “that special kind of feeling in Christmas land.” Trying to solve the mystery of Christmas, Jack pores over book after book, and applies scientific methodology courtesy of equipment borrowed from Dr. Finkelstein. He even works it out to the equation “(Sugar Plum Visions EGG NOG) -> snowman x (chestnuts/open fire) ÷ bells 12root(Dec. 25) + Sandy Claws = CHRISTMAS”, but it still doesn’t make sense. At this moment, he receives a generous gift from Sally, but does not understand the occasion, and she has vanished from sight before he can ask her about it. Exasperated in his efforts to understand the meaning of Christmas, he casts a small ragdoll aside to his red-nosed ghost dog Zero, who tries to bring him a portrait of who he is. But instead he sees himself as Santa Claus, and exclaims to the eager townspeople waiting outside “Eureka! This year Christmas will be ours!”

Summoning all the creatures of Halloween Town together to assign them roles for the upcoming Christmas run by Halloween Town, it soon becomes apparent this year there will be far more tricks than treats given to the unsuspecting people of The Real World. Entrusting the task of kidnaping the real Santa Claus to young Lock, Shock, and Barrel, “Halloween’s finest trick or treaters”, he insists that they “leave that no account Oogie Boogie out of this!”, but their fingers are crossed. The mischievous trio’s initial efforts manage to bring back a traumatized Easter Bunny, but Jack manages to set them straight by means of a Christmas tree shaped sugar cookie. For the undertaking at hand, everyone’s unique talents and passions are welcomed and included, with Jack offering support or constructive criticism where needed. So when Sally tells of her terrible vision of Jack’s Christmas, and warns “It’s going to be a disaster!” when he assigns her the task of sewing the red and white outfit, he thinks she’s talking about a fashion disaster. He tries to reassure her in her creative skill, saying “Now don’t be modest! Who else is clever enough to make my Sandy Claws outfit? I have every confidence in you.” While well intentioned, Jack isn’t really aware of what’s going with Sally, not least in her relation to Dr. Finkelstein from whom he draws technological support. Whereas Dr. Finkelstein deploys male science as a tool of repressive control over Sally, who he has literally constructed, Jack is simply the inexhaustibly curious seeker who uses science in the search for understanding.

Making good time in the preparation of his coffin sleigh, Jack is joined by the skeleton reindeer Dr. Finkelstein has prepared for his midnight ride of Christmas Eve. Meanwhile Lock, Shock, and Barrel finally manage to kidnap Santa Claus, exclaiming “Trick or treat! Yyyaa!” as they bag him in an enormous Halloween sack. Finally meeting Santa face to face, Jack is surprised he does not in fact have claws, and overconfidently attempts to reassure him his holiday is in good hands before stealing his hat. So while Santa is off to the sinister Oogie Boogie, Jack prepares to ride off in his sleigh. But just when it appears to be hopeless because Sally has discretely inserted fog juice into the fountain at the town center, Jack’s ghost dog Zero arrives with his bright red nose to light the way. Heading off with Zero at the head of the team, Sally implores “Wait Jack! No!”, but to no avail. Now in The Real World, Jack happily bestows presents sure to give good shocks for the whole family, like a shrunken head, a killer wreath, an enormous python, and two matching vampire dolls of a count and a duck that come to life and go chasing after the children that opened them. Believing he is doing a well, Jack proudly exclaims “You’re welcome, one and all!” while a parallel cut reveals calls pouring into a local police station. With news bulletins and the mobilization of the military, things aren’t looking good for the skeleton man. At first Jack believes the searchlights and rockets he’s seeing are because “They’re celebrating! They’re thanking us for doing such a good job!” But as Jack and his sleigh become a dark shadow upon the moon’s surface, the sad truth is revealed when he is shot from the sky, desperately crying out as he falls “A merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” Watching Jack befall this fate while viewing through a magic fountain, everyone in Halloween Town is utterly distraught, with the mayor gravely announcing that he has met his end.

Landing upon the book of life held in the arms of a stone angel in the midst of a snow covered cemetery, Jack becomes disillusioned about the blindness of his actions. His spirits are lifted, however, that he has put forward his best efforts, whether or not anyone understood. And in that moment remembers who he is, and tearing off his tattered Santa garb to reveal his ordinary clothing, he exclaims “I am the Pumpkin King!” Seeking to set things to rights, Jack sets forth to restore Santa to his rightful place. Hearing Sally cry out for help, Jack realizes she and Santa have been captured by the sadistic gambler, Oogie Boogie, who he sees is playing a “game” that will end in them being dropped in a pit of boiling lava. Pulling a trick of his own, Jack manages to place them in a hallowed-out iron maiden while himself appearing on the slab before a bewildered Oogie Boogie. Thus begins the limber showdown that will end in Oogie’s demise. Seeing an indignant Santa off, who aptly exits through the chimney, Jack queries Sally about her reasons for being down in the boogieman’s lair, learns that she wanted to help him and begins to realize the true nature of her feelings. Triumphantly returning to town alive and well, everyone rejoices, while Santa brings the gift of snow, wishing them a “Happy Halloween!”, which is answered by Jack’s “Merry Christmas!” Despite cross-cultural misunderstandings and expansionist hubris, the relations established between the two holidays are not ultimately hostile. Meeting Sally on the now snow-covered spiral hill, there Jack proposes his love by the bright light of the full moon, and they embrace in the closing shot of the movie.

Jack’s friend Sally is a ragdoll stitched together and animated by the mad science of Dr. Finkelstein, who keeps a strict watch over her, and tries to control her every action. Like Francesca from Mad Monster Party, it would appear that Finkelstein has fabricated Sally with the intension of making her his bride, and has been frustrated in this regard. Famously, James Whale’s Frankenstein monster was stitched together from the body parts dug from graves, while David J. Skal comments that his square head “powerfully evokes the plight of an old consciousness forced to occupy a new paradigm, a round brain bolted uneasily into a machine-tooled skull” (Skal 132). Later on, Skal transposes images of Hans Bellmer’s similarly crafted 1934 sculpture The Doll with actress Elsa Lanchester as she “prepares for her role as the Bride of Frankenstein (1935)”, the former bearing the caption “Woman as modernist construction” that reveals an important subtext of the latter (Ibid. 188). In Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, Michelle Pfeiffer plays Selena Kyle, a lonely but catlike secretary hired by Max Shreck of Shreck Industries, a suitable name for a vampiric enterprise, and seems constantly out of her element within the corporate patriarchy. When she meekly raises her voice either to make a suggestion or pose a question about the company’s dubious power plan, she faces the glaring eyes of the businessmen around her, and Schrek publicly humiliates her by stating “I’m afraid we haven’t properly housebroken Ms. Kyle.” In her domestic life, Selena surrounds herself with symbols of normative “femininity”, faces immense social pressures on her answering machine, and has a very strong affinity for cats. Curiously prying around her boss’ files, she suffers an acute crisis of fragmented “identity” when she is knocked out of a tall skyscraper window, which is to say just because one plays by social and gender norms does not mean that those norms ultimately work out in one’s favor. Limping home in a traumatized daze after being revived by a horde of hungry cats, Selena’s efforts to rehearse her normal routines are now like adding insult to injury, she destroys the symbols of her old life in a violent outburst of repressed anger, ruthlessly purging the lingering remnants of pink cuteness in the mode of “paint it black”. Finding a black vinyl coat in her closet, she cuts it apart and stitches it back together in a black catsuit that would fit nicely in any Goth or Rivethead nightclub, becoming the famed Batman anti-heroine Catwoman.

Commenting on Sally’s own stitched-together look, Tim Burton says that because of “the Catwoman thing, I was into that whole psychological thing of being pieced together. Again, these are all symbols for the way you feel. The feeling of not being together and of being loosely stitched together and constantly trying to pull yourself together, so to speak, is just a strong feeling to me. So those kind of visuals have less to do with being based on Frankenstein, than with the feeling of pulling yourself together” (Burton & Salisbury 123). In contrast to most of the creatures of Halloween Town, the fear and fascination evoked by Sally is not the terror of death and disfigurement, but of the uncanny, that which one would not expect to be alive, but is, simultaneously evoking the feeling of being dead and alive. As commented by the narrator at the beginning of Frankenstein, this kind of terror “deals with the two great mysteries of creation--life and death.” In the case of something like a piece by Hans Bellmer, the feeling of the uncanny plays havoc on paradigms of sexual objectification while simultaneously evoking them, because they draw attention to the phenomena of subjectivity. Having stitched Sally together and brought her to life, Dr. Finkelstein has a hard time dealing with the demands of her subjectivity, and tries to control her to actions to compensate. But Sally has grown quite handy with a sewing needle herself, and deploys this skill to assume greater control over her own body, coming apart and stitching herself back together as the need arises. In general, Sally’s character is a good illustration of the Foucaultean principle that the means of resistance are included in the deployment of power itself. For example, because of her assigned cooking duties, Sally has learned how to discretely season the meal with Deadly Night Shade, which is more apt to cause a hangover than kill anyone in this world, in order to afford some quality time away from home. Irritated about being chronically poisoned, her creator complains: “You’re mine, you know! I made you, with my own hands.” To this Sally responds, “You can make other creations, I’m restless, I can’t help it!” Surely there is more to life than what she is being shown.

Owing to prolonged enforced isolation, Sally is generally quite shy around others, and has an underdeveloped sense of confidence in herself and her own abilities. Escaping on Halloween night to attend the town festivities, there she gazes longingly at Jack from behind the hangman’s tree. In The Nightmare Before Christmas, it would be very difficult indeed not to have a strong rapport with Sally’s desires, and her gaze is ultimately rewarded. Following a run-in with her father, Sally loses an arm but uses it to rap him on his metal head as she makes her escape to the same cemetery to which Jack will withdraw. Stricken to the heart as she listens in on his lonely soliloquy from behind tombstones, she musters her courage to reveal her presence all too late, and says empathetically as he enters the forest off in the distance, “Jack, I know how you feel.” Feeling enthusiastic about Christmas in general upon Jack’s return, she is still somewhat uneasy about the way he is presenting it, sensing that it doesn’t add up, and that something is very wrong. Preparing a basket of gifts for Jack after being locked in a tower following her escape to the town meeting, Sally takes a leap of faith right out the window, and eerily springs back to life and stitches herself together after appearing to be dead. Commenting on his years working at Disney, where his designs were received enthusiastically but never used, Tim Burton says that “I felt like a trapped princess. I had a great life, in a way, I was able to draw anything I wanted, but it was like working in a sealed environment in which you would never see the light of day” (Ibid. 12). It is in this context of creative entrapment that the metaphor of the princess in the tower recurs in Tim Burton’s films. Hoisting up the basket upon a pulley to Jack’s own tower, she hastily withdraws from sight before they can converse on the occasion for the gift.

Dropping down in self-disappointed exhaustion behind the wall below, she stops to pick a dead flower and play ‘He loves me, he loves me not.’ But the flower transforms into a Christmas tree before bursting into flames, and Sally is horrified by this new vision. Visions are a crucial theme of Tim Burton’s work, so the way Sally’s own vision and creative potential is addressed is an important subtext of the film. To this end, she is dismayed to learn of Jack’s plan to take over Christmas, and tries to warn him of impending disaster, but he just doesn’t get it. Working hard on the Santa outfit she has been assigned to make, Sally tries to reassure him that he doesn’t have to be Santa to be important, but by now he is far too obsessed. Meanwhile, Dr. Finkelstein is busy constructing a new partner for himself, this time removing half his brain and inserting it into her cranium, a rather effective approach to ensuring relational compatability, not to mention empathy. “What a joy to think of all we’ll have in common. We’ll have conversations worth having!” he says, kissing the brain before the lid closes on his lips. Resorting to Fog Juice on that fateful Christmas Eve, she tries to keep Jack safe at home while showing her empathy for his disappointment. But Zero comes with his bright red nose, and off he rides into the night. Withdrawing to sing a soliloquy of her own, Sally laments her lingering premonition, resultant detachment from everyone else, and Jack’s failure to notice her feelings for him. Pondering the future of her and Jack, she comes to feel “It’s never to become/for I am not the one.”

Realizing later that night that things are about to get really bad when the news reporter announces the military has been mobilized to stop Jack’s midnight ride, she sallies forth to rescue Santa Claus. Finding him in the lair of Oogie Boogie on the outskirts of town, she tries to fragment off her leg to distract him while her severed hands untie the ropes that bind Santa as she prepares to extend a ladder. It is a macabre caricature of the fetishization and latent violence of visual fragmentation of women’s bodies. But realizing he’s been duped, Oogie’s brand of sadistic voyeurism insists upon inflicting suffering on the whole person, and he recaptures them both. When next we see them, Sally and Santa are tied to an apparatus fashioned to incrementally dump them into a pit of boiling lava. There he plays a game of death with a role of the dice, hitting another increment with every pip of the dice. Caught in dire straights, and hearing the mayor’s report that Jack Skellington has met his demise, Sally consents to being rescued by calling out for help. Still, the psychology of this doesn’t really register as the average “damsel in distress” scene, because she is captured along with a powerful magical being like Santa Claus, and had a highly competent plan of rescue herself. Duly moved to the relative safety of the iron maiden like a much luckier Barbara Steele, there she watches until the end of the showdown. Inquired by Jack as to the reasons why she is down in Oogie’s lair, she awkwardly begins to explain that she wanted to help, and Jack begins to understand her feelings. There they are interrupted and pulled up together by a rope sent by the Mayor on the information of Lock, Shock, and Barrel, who apparently didn’t intend for things to get this bad. By this time Dr. Finkelstein has finished his literal soul mate, and in all probability could care less now what Sally does or becomes. When we next see Sally, she is moving in to sit on the snow covered spiral hill to finish peeling the flower to learn whether ‘he loves me’ or ‘he loves me not.’ But before she can finish, she is thrilled to hear the voice of Jack, who makes his proposal then and there. There they end on the shared soliloquy “For it is plain/As anyone can see/We’re simply meant to be.” Finally on the same page together, in this relationship Sally will be able to discover and express her voice and visions without fear.

Moreso than the other characters, Sally has the closest understanding of Santa Claus. It is no surprise, therefore, that at the end of the film he rebukes Jack on her behalf, stating “The next time you get the urge to take over someone else’s holiday, I’d listen to her! She’s the only one who makes any sense around this insane asylum.” In other words, why didn’t anyone pay attention to her in the first place? As has been previously explored in this essay, portrayals of Santa’s character range from liberal toy crusader, to the kind of old-fashioned conservative who simply wants the personal quality of hand-crafted items. Interestingly, Burton’s Santa falls somewhere in between, with the medium of the film itself expressing the visual power and physicality of hand-crafted artistry. Commenting on this element of stop-motion animation, Burton says its appeal is “the handmade aspect of things, part of an energy that you can’t explain. You can sense it when you see the concentration of the animators as they move the figures, there’s an energy that’s captured. It’s like when you look at a Van Gogh painting. I remember the first time I saw one in reality. You’ve seen them in books, but the energy that’s captured on that canvas is incredible, and I think that’s something nobody talks about because it’s not something literal. It’s the same with this kind of animation, that’s the power of Ray Harryhausen” (Ibid. 119). Like the golem brought to life, the stop-motion animation evokes many of the feelings and ideas associated with dolls and the Frankenstein mythos. This holds especially for the dark German expressionism of directors Tim Burton and Henry Selick, as well as stop-motion animators like Shane Acker and the Brothers Quay. And as Keith Neilson writes in the epilogue to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, “Frankenstein presents us with one of the most powerful images of human alienation in the language. Whether it be the intelligent, articulate creature of the novel telling his poignant story or Boris Karloff’s mute giant, that sense of total, frustrated isolation dominates all versions of Mary Shelley’s vision” (Shelley 236). On the other hand, stop-motion animation shows the viewer the immense power of expression afforded by human labor. Karl Marx lamented that this instrinsic expression of humanity had become so obscured by the Industrial Revolution, and its ensuing automation and division of labor under the owners of the means of production, that human beings became profoundly disconnected from themselves, which he termed alienation.

Interestingly, the first two shots of Santa Claus are of his shadow in the toy factory he operates. Only seeing this and hearing of his modus operandi, Jack Skellington assumes that Santa Claus is a very scary fellow underlying the gingerbread sweetness of Christmas Town. But in actuality, both the town and factory he runs are in every sense warm, cozy, creative, and inviting, and manage to be so within the context of extensive automation. This is not the post-industrial blight, poverty, cynical exploitation, commodity fetishization, and dubious factory “accidents” of Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which bears different, but related thematic content. The point of The Nightmare Before Christmas is not to literally show us what is, as if all the toys of Christmas are made by happy elves most years except this one, but to show us a place inside that will show us what could be. And for creative leaders like Jack Skellington and Santa Claus, that is a world where the creative passions of every member of the community are affirmed and included, no matter how strange and unusual they may be. This is the secret wish of every outsider and outcast, although usually obscured by resistance to the pressures of normative conformity. So when Santa is kidnaped by Halloween Town’s disaffected trick or treaters, there is a certain element of irony. Confused and disoriented when he comes to, he isn’t really capable of serious resistance when Jack Skellington informs him of his plan to take over Christmas, and that everything has been taken care of. Notably, Jack, seemingly patterning himself upon Santa Claus, only gives the children one gift of eminent symbolicity (albeit in Halloween terms), implying a certain limit upon consumerism, while allowing for the symbolic discovery of rituals of gift exchange.

Learning of Lock, Shock, and Barrel’s plan to take him to the lair of Oogie Boogie, he retorts “Haven’t you heard of peace on earth, and good will toward men?” To which they respond with a resounding “No!” Which is to say, that while he is a strong advocate of this kind of peace using the feelings surrounding the toys he gives as a means to this end, even he only has a limited power to implement these beliefs. Out in The Real World, the armed forces have their missile launchers ready, and can blast any presence deemed hostile right out of the sky, and that’s where the money and power is, because that’s how the fears are channeled culturally. The world of Halloween Town is a world of bats, not bombs, but even they can fall into an attitude of cultural imperialism at his expense. Held hostage at grave peril to the life and death gambling whims of Oogie Boogie, he finds an unexpected friend in Sally, who tries to rescue him but as captured herself. It is here that we come full circle back to the beginning of these remarks upon Santa’s character. But even though he is rightfully angry, Santa is not one to be resentful, and brings Halloween Town the gift of snow, and with it life-giving moisture, the promise of the change of seasons, and lasting cultural ties between the two holidays.

The final principle character to note is Oogie Boogie, a very jazzy way of saying the boogeyman, the anomalous wraith that has terrified young children for generations. Said to be the scourge of mischievous and otherwise disobedient children, here it is revealed he is actually in alliance with them. The inspiration for Oogie’s character comes from Jazz musician Cab Calloway, who would sing and dance with his orchestra both in physical and cartoonized form via rotoscope for Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoons. A caricature of Jazz Age flappers like Clara Bow, who grew up in an environment of emotional abuse and escaped to Hollywood seeking a more carefree life, in a typical episode Betty sets off into the world in voluptuous gown, and is beset by all manner of weirdness, spookiness, and creepiness. In a time of racial ambivalence contemporaneous with the Harlem Renaissance and the peak of the second Ku Klux Klan, a time when black creative voices were making a marked impact upon American culture, the role played by Cab Calloway in the cartoons is ambiguous. In Minnie the Moocher, the film short begins with a stylish live performance of Cab and the orchestra, before fading out to Betty facing harsh pressures at home. Running away with her dog Bimbo after leaving a note and entering through the dark forest into a hidden cave, there she encounters Cab Calloway as a singing and dancing ghost walrus accompanied by ghosts, skeletons, and witches who provide backup vocals. In one telling moment, a group of three ghosts behind bars phase through those bars before phasing back in, duly allowing the guard open the prison door and escort them to the electric chair. It is like watching Albert Camus’ “The Guest”, in which an Arab prisoner charged with murder is set free, but nonetheless escorts himself to prison to face probable execution, as if the true terror he can’t face is that he is condemned to be free. Such a story has interesting existential implications for racially motivated executions, official and unofficial, then and now. Betty too bitterly flees to “Home Sweet Home” upon being chased by all the terrors of a mad, mad world.

It was this kind of experience that left an impression on Tim Burton during his childhood. “The Cab Calloway thing was a more specific reference,” says Burton, “when Danny and I were talking about it, it had more to do with this feeling of remembering, because I remember seeing these Betty Boop cartoons, where this weird character would come out. I didn’t know who it was, but it would do this weird musical number in the middle of nowhere, and it was like ‘What the hell was that?’” (Burton & Salisbury 123). In contrast to the citizens of Halloween Town, Oogie Boogie takes the ethos of being scary too far by actually hurting people. To this end, he has either been exiled from Halloween Town for becoming sadistic, or become sadistic for being exiled from Halloween Town, but the end result is that he is bad, bad news. Oogie’s opening shot of the film is actually the appearance of his shadow on the moon during the Halloween festivities, foreshadowing the menace of his presence later on. Oogie Boogie is a giant ghost-like creature sewn together in a large stuffed burlap bag. Taking refuge in an underground lair, Oogie has set up a a series of death traps within a jet set casino-like atmosphere to suit his own fancy. Perhaps one might see within this an implied element of economic criticism, but there is nothing to prove this one way or the other. Relishing the opportunity to hold lives up to a game of chance (with the exception of his own), he doesn’t even play fair with those unfortunate enough to fall into his grasp. Allied to Lock, Shock, and Barrel, these three carry out mischief on Oogie’s behalf and bring him prey. Sending him an unfortunate insect they have partially boiled and turned green, Oogie sucks it in and devours it whole. When “Sandy Claws” is delivered into his hands, the same one rumored to be a terror in the night, Oogie bursts into a Jazz number reminiscent of Cab Calloway to terrify him and reveal his modus operandi. Skipping over the previously described rescue attempt of Sally to his battle with Jack, when Oogie is defeated by having his burlap skin ripped off, he is revealed to be a colony of insects falling into oblivion, the last of which is the green bug we saw earlier. Santa promptly smashes it, which is to say that the real identity of the boogeyman is all of those threatened by being crushed for being small, instead becoming very big. As villain, the role of Oogie Boogie is important for showing the boundaries and limits of the monsters of Halloween town, which is drawn at actually hurting people.

So as an important filmic text to the Gothic subculture, what does all of this reveal about the subculture? The intertextual material referenced by The Nightmare Before Christmas related to the holidays of Christmas and Halloween have been shown to contain themes of social and technological alienation, the importance of creative expression, a willingness to defy social and gender norms, the possibility of embracing one’s monsters as friends, and a critique of violence and war. Whether explicitly, as in Mad Monster Party, or implicitly, as in the casting of Boris Karloff in How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, these films contain important links back to horror-related material in general, and the Frankenstein mythos in particular. Seeing such material as a kind of guiding myth, Tim Burton deploys it to create a kind of rite and ritual rooted in the rhythm of the seasons. He takes the viewer into the forest to show them a place where everyday is Halloween. In Jack, we see a creative mind who cultivates this quality in others, while showing that it is okay to be sad or discontent. In Sally, we see a doll who finds creative means of resistance to the roles and confinements imposed upon her, and who must find courage to express her own voice and vision. In Santa we see a man who uses generosity as a means to confront what is wrong with the world. And in Oogie Boogie, we see where the boundary of embracing horror related imagery is drawn, which is precisely where the idea of actually hurting people is actually suggested in earnest. These are doors into the values and boundaries of the Gothic subculture, so it is of little surprise that the subculture has embraced the film so enthusiastically.

Works Cited:

Burton, Tim, and Salisbury, Mark. Burton on Burton (2nd Revised Edition). London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2006.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero of a Thousand Faces (Third Edition). Novato: New World Library, 2008.
Capone. “Capone Talks With CORALINE Director and Wizard Master Henry Selick”. Ain’t It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news. 2 Feb 2009. Web. 1 May 2010. .
Caroll, Larry. “Tim Burton Talks ‘Nightmare’, Goth Kids, Frightening ‘Friends’ Episodes”. Movie News Story - MTV Movie News. MTV.com, 23 Oct. 2006. Web. 1 May 2010. .
Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2003.
Hart, Mickey. Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1990.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. United States of America: Aerie Books Ltd.
Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (Revised Edition). New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2001.
Heiner, Heidi Anne. “SurLaLune Fairy Tales: Annotations for Hansel and Gretel.” SurLaLune fairytales.com. SurLaLune. 30 June 2007. Web. 1 May 2010. .
Venters, Jillian. Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.
Voltaire. What is Goth?: Music, Makeup, Attitude, Apparel, Dance, and General Skullduggery. York Beach: Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 2004.

"There's Something Wrong With Esther": Gender, Androgyny, and Horror Imagery in the Denver Goth Scene (English Composition II Homework)

2010-05-21T17:04:00.007-06:00

It was a cold and rainy night; the rain was a nuissance--except at unpredictable intervals, so I looked for some place to take shelter in the 16th Street Mall (for it is in Denver that our scene lies), but most of the stores were closed, so I hung out in a restaurant as cliche as this sentence’s source material before setting off again. My destination was The Church nightclub on a quest of ethnography to observe the way elements of horror imagery and androgyny contextualize the Gothic subculture, for here the children of the night would gather to listen to their music. Off in the distance a moonlit cathedral cast a stark silhouette with its steep spires, but these were still further eclipsed by the towering skyscrapers which hung overhead. Walking away from these, I finally came upon The Church, greeted the bald black fedora capped doorkeeper I already knew, and entered inside. The Church is an old Gothic cathedral built in 1865 which, upon ceasing to be a house of worship, became “converted” into a nightclub instead. All around are the lingering vestiges of a history lost to time, the altars, plaques, and stained glass panels dedicated to God in Christ, and to the church’s patrons.

While the temptation would be for the new owners to engage in vicious iconoclasm on its patrons’ behalf, they seem to have indulged only in small touches like painting a half mustache upon the cherubim surrounding a perpetually candlelit altar dedicated to memory of a special someone no one seems to remember anymore. Still, additions like a torch-lit back wall lend The Church a certain aura of tribalism, an audacity to unleash rhythm and all that the High Church tradition tried to repress within its own spaces. And as contemporary dance music is highly audio-visual, an array of video screens, lighting, and speakers have been installed around the sanctuary, making excellent use of its Gothic architecture. The atmosphere set by these technological elements differs depending upon the nature of the event, so for example, a performance by DJ Tiësto will look blue and spaced-out. But for the Goths, the lighting is one of stark contrasts between light and shadow, emphasizing the sublime terror evoked by these spaces at night. Out on the dance floor, the emphasis of the lighting is placed on making silhouettes upon the floor, as if to emphasize the general spookiness, while the colors and surface patterns are more “Masque of the Red Death” than disco or rave.

The Gothic subculture emerged as an offshoot of the Post-Punk era, beginning in the late 1970‘s when Glam, Punk, and New Wave converged and cross-influenced, as a darker, more minimal, melancholy, and tribalistic take on these genres. Ground zero of Goth is generally recognized as the opening of the Batcave nightclub in London in July 1982, which provided a gathering place for fans and musicians for these styles, while developing much of the fashion that would characterize the subculture. In a televised documentary on the Batcave, clips of cult horror films and icons (The Last House on the Left, Vincent Price, etc.) and retro-future science fiction films with existential themes (Teenagers from Outer Space, etc.) are intertextually transposed with slowed-down, surreal-feeling visuals of the club, its patrons and performers (“The Batcave Documentary”). The film’s rhetorical question “Who Is the Monster That Works in the Batcave” is answered not by the terrified black-clad patron with pale makeup, fishnet armwarmers, and puffy black hair with his back to the wall because of the scary camera, but a live performance of Alien Sex Fiend singing their sardonic club anthem “Ignore the Machine”. A certain dark Glam-influenced androgyny is ubiquitous among club patrons throughout the clip, and “The Goth image entailed some combination of deathly palor, teased or ratted black hair, ruffled Regency shirts, stovepipe hats, leather garments, and spiked dog collars, accessorized with religious, magical, or macabre silver jewelry. The clothing was funereal, the sense of glamour literally sepulchral” (Reynolds 353).

The title “Gothic” derives from a style of horror narration originating with the romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a style especially popularized through the cinematic output of Universal Studios and Hammer Film Productions in the 20th century. Subtextual ties between horror and androgyny, with attendant existential critique of normative gender roles, extend all the way back to the origins of the Gothic novel up to the present day. For example, Angela Wright, in the conclusion to her chapter on “Gender and the Gothic”, writes “For Diane Long Hoeveler, it is specifically ‘gothic feminism’ that critiques the institutionalized eighteenth century discourses of marriage and sexuality and thus ‘mak[es] the world a safe place for feminized men and masculinized women.’ But the works of William Godwin, Matthew Lewis, Francis Lathom, James Hogg and Charles Maturin (to cite a few examples) testify to a richness and reciprocity of ideas with women writers of the period that defy expectations of gender and sexuality. As always, the Gothic remains defiantly resistant and surprising” (Wright 149). Similarly, commenting upon his teenage conflicts with “jocks” and their ritualized enforcement of essentialized gender stereotypes as a rite of passage into modes of patriarchy, and the appeal of the subculture as a rival rite of passage, Gothic musician Voltaire writes:

While they were engaging in male-bonding rituals and engaged in activities of a dubiously heterosexual nature, I was the “fag” getting all dolled up and tossing toast at my freaky friends at The Rocky Horror Picture Show (and, might I add, making out with future dominatrices). I was a “dork” and I knew it. And moreover, I was perfectly comfortable with the idea because I loathed all of those damn jocks and their moronic ways. I simply came to terms with the fact that while I lived in their world, I would be at odds with them.

To a teenager living in suburban America, the early 80‘s British music scene offered exciting new opportunities and directions. New Wave gave us a chance to be quirky and kinky; New Romantic invited us to be sexy and glamorous; Industrial constructed a dance floor on which we could vent our anger; Goth addressed the most pertinent and persistent of a teenager’s emotions: sadness, loneliness, inadequacy, and feelings of isolation. In our “have a nice day ‘cause everything is just peachy” society, Goth conveyed a contradictory message. Goth said, “Life is dark, life is sad, all is not well, and most people you meet will try to hurt you.” I couldn’t have agreed more (Voltaire x).

This being the subculture’s roots and history, how did the elements of horror imagery and androgyny play out within the specific setting of the Denver Goth scene to contextualize the subculture? It was to the Denver nightclub The Church I now came to watch, observe, and participate in search of answers. As this inquiry concerns the material culture encountered within a specific environment, informed observation will suffice as a method without having to invade the privacy of other club patrons. As a Goth myself, I came to this study both as an insider and an outsider to the specific group being studied, and dressed for the occasion accordingly. An insider, because I have been a Goth for five years, and am familiar with these surroundings. An outsider, because I have neither built any great reputation within this environment, nor attended in some time.

Whereas first wave Goth was a distinctly guitar-based genre, enough so that Post-Punk historian Simon Reynolds describes it both as “The Return of Rock With Goth and the New Psychedelia”, and “stark and serrated, a mortification of rock, a new cruel geometry achieved within and against the orthodox guitar/bass/drums format” by reference to The Scream by Siouxsie & the Banshees (Reynolds 352, 355), the nineties and noughties see a shift into more electronic territory within the context of Gothic club culture. Providing a darker alternative to mainstream rave culture, moody and atmospheric Darkwave (Goth + New Wave = Darkwave), angry and technologically alienated EBM (Electronic Body Music, an off-shoot of Industrial), and cold but optimistic Synthpop would come to dominate the dancefloors of most Goth clubs, although a host of other styles continue to thrive within the subculture. Getting out on the dancefloor myself, I payed close attention to the sets played by the DJ, who I believe to be scene fixture Dave Vendetta, and to the people dancing around me.

I seem to recall that the sets played by DJ Vendetta represent something of a compromise between new school and old-school Goth, in which the former predominates along with a bit of Trip-Hop, but with a few guitar-driven tracks thrown in. Common throughout the selections are a certain sense of mechanized rhythm, giving the music a certain dimension of self-reflective commentary upon an artificial civilization which holds no pretensions to a manufactured “natural” characteristic of other musical genres. Lyrical themes and sampled media sources included the melancholy of the changing of seasons, transience and loneliness, existential issues via Fight Club, anger and alienation, media censorship, and critique of mainstream religion. One of the first things I first noticed as I began dancing was that off at some distance I was joined by a very limber and athletic dude dressed like Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy, complete with long hair, skimpy clothing, and a raygun Gothic prop, and who had the “excessive” stamina to keep dancing the entire duration I was there. At about the same time, I noticed some ladies in dark Punk clothing with short hair and newsboy caps, or something like that. As time went on, the floor became more and more filled with women in velvet skirts and striped stockings (Goths love tactile fabrics and high contrasts), or men in Nosferatu trenchcoats, and this is a sweeping generalization for a lot of visual data. In contrast to a rave, here glowsticks seem out of place amidst a sea of black and jewel tone colors, as illustrated by that guy with a racoon tail who was waving them around, and who wasn’t actually out of place. One guy who was out of place was a man dressed in a sports jersey and matching pants, who seemed genuinely interested in the music and hung in there, although I just don’t think he could do the “Monster Mash” for the life of him. In terms of dance, a spooky, self-invented, somewhat sexualized form seems to prevail, albeit with more of a predilection for posturing as predator than posturing as prey. My own style of dance is best described as a mutated fusion of Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Charlie Chaplin, David Byrne, and of late Cab Calloway, which at times attracts bemused spectators for its dark comedy without really being out of place.

But unlike Barbarella, I don’t have the stamina to dance indefinitely. During a number of my breaks, I stopped to sit down by the decks near the place DJ Vendetta was playing his sets. Watching the video screens hoisted up aloft, I noticed such visuals synchronized to the EBM tracks as bleak post-industrial zones transposed with creepy animated dolls from what looked like a Brothers Quay film, and a male onryo (a vengeful ghost, usually female) from a Japanese horror movie. At one point my eyes inadvertently met with the DJ, who seemed to register some worry or concern, so I nodded to reassure him that he was doing well. At other times, I hung out in the lounge, where I stopped to get a Coca-Cola (“I never drink... wine”) from a bartender dressed in a “medieval” leather corset. Afterwards, I would stop to sit down on the vinyl-covered comfy chairs, think things over, and continue to make observations. While the Gothic subculture has always had an affinity for the past, and for the future that never was, I noticed the element of androgyny seemed to apply no matter what time period. Among other things, I especially noticed a lot of ladies in period clothing wearing pirate hats, which caught me a bit by surprise.

As the main room isn’t really practical for serious conversations owing to the volume of the music, a lot of groups of friends came to hang out in the lounge and hold animated discussions. It was here that I ran into my friend David Pierce, who I hadn’t seen in a while, and while catching up I mentioned the premise of this assignment. Offering to buy me a drink, after some initial proxemic confusion typical of Aspergerites like myself, we conversed on the history of the music and subculture, its Punk roots. His main point coming from 18 years of experience with the subculture was that any such contextualization does not owe to any formal process, but that the subculture is a “collection of freaks.” We talked about some other things, like the reasons for my departure from church at Scum of the Earth (they’ve lost touch with their roots in the Punk ethos, the sound people are elitists who won’t let me play sets of music anymore after four years, they play stale normalizing drivel like pop, easy listening, and commercial-filled Pandora radio instead, Aristotle says the music played by a culture plays a crucial role in defining that culture, therefore if it continues like this we’re apt to become chickenshit conformists like other churches, and etc.). So far as ethnographic data is concerned, that about covers it.

In conclusion, my observations show a strong correspondence to my expectations, which isn’t really surprising, all things considered. But what I underestimated when I formulated my research question was the extent to which elements of technology and media, the awareness of living in an artificial civilization, also contextualize the subculture. In retrospect, this isn’t really surprising considering the ubiquity of these themes in older films and texts, from Frankenstein to The Fall of the House of Usher. In a corporate media culture that represents the hyperreal as “safe” and “real”, the counter-cultural aesthetic appeal of representing the “real” as surreal and sublimely terrifying is readily manifest. Technology too destabilizes normative gender norms by depriving them of cultural necessity or enforceability to the same extent, allowing new possibilities to manifest themselves. Commenting on the spirit of the Batcave in the aforementioned video, DJ Hammish says “You can’t just draw one conclusion, it’s like a shock horror sort of thing, but it’s got a lot of tackiness. The thing I notice most is not a question about fashion, dress, appearance, look I mean obviously ideas are thrown around but, just umm, common topics that seem to come up in conversation are not about what you’re wearing, or what you’re going to do someday, you know? It’s about what’s happening now, about what you’re actually doing” (“The Batcave Documentary”). In this regard, the Goth night at The Church continues to carry on the tradition. Thus, from phantom dream castles to digital media fortresses, the Denver Goth scene helps make the world a safe place for those who dare not to dream it, but to be it.

Works Cited:

h808. “the batcave documentary.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3UKqdWCKS0. YouTube, 6 Mar 2007. Web. 3 May 2010.
Reynolds, Simon. Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2005.
Voltaire. What is Goth?: Music, Makeup, Attitude, Apparel, Dance, and General Skullduggery. York Beach: Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 2004.
Wright, Angela. Gothic Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007.

Punky Tea Party

2010-05-21T16:58:00.002-06:00

It’s 12:30 A.M. and it’s high time for a punky tea party
For although it’s a blizzard outside
All the ghouls and dolls are invited
Bubble boil the caldron brew

Heat the waters to ninety-five degrees centigrade
On the good advice of sagely Shinku
And dig out of the pantry’s tea bag armada
A box of Celestial Seasonings Nutcracker Black Tea

I pour the waters in my elegant red and white teapot
And pour the tea in an inelegant black coffee mug
I shall have to pick up matching cups one fine day
But the tea tastes remarkable all the same

Four spoons of sugar and a foxshare of gingerbread men
And I watch Craig Ferguson as he bobs and weaves
But afterwards turn off the television screen
As Oprah’s advice is something I can live without

I kickstart my iTunes playlist with Massive Attack
And enjoy The Cure, the Cocteau Twins, and The Clash
Contemporary New Wave and freshly dug graves
Courtesy of the Post-Punk and Deathrock revivals

I ponder Tim Burton again in the cinema
And notice on the coffee table an article
About his favorite films, which is good
Because I grew up always watching his

I consider his Alice and the politics of nonsense
For her Adventures in Wonderland is what I lately read
I think about all the headless horsemen
As they shamelessly masquerade as Paul Revere

But what I need
And what my friends need
And what my country needs
Is a right good punky tea party

Free Enterprise: Adventures in Film and Death Disco (Creative Writing Homework)

2010-04-29T14:47:00.009-06:00

It was a terrible feeling when I first heard that my friend Patrick was getting into fights with his dad, and was in danger of going over the edge. Trying to cope with the pain, he posted a series of messages on Facebook about his feelings and what he was doing, and I understood. Apparently he had relapsed into depression after his dad unjustly accused him of wasting money after someone had bought him the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life for his birthday, and now wanted death instead, which bears a certain irony. Patrick had grown more gutsy and assertive of late, and I think on some level his father was terrified of that kind of self expression. Thinking over what I could do for him, indeed ditching this very class because I couldn’t handle it, it occurred to me that one should never kill themselves without seeing what Tim Burton has in store for the cinema. While I had already seen Alice in Wonderland a couple of times, the first in IMAX 3D for my friend Nathan’s birthday party along with Patrick’s brother Cameron, I knew that Patrick had not yet seen it. I remembered a mythic element described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero of a Thousand Faces in which a hero undergoing a rite of passage enters the forest and encounters an ogre who acts as threshold guardian between him and where he needs to be. There he suffers a traumatic ego-shattering experience at the hands of the ogre that paradoxically prepare him for the trials and blessings ahead. Thinking it over, I realized this was exactly what had happened to Patrick. I remembered how I had suffered a similar fate at the hands of a bully at the film school, leading to my premature departure owing to deep psychological trauma. And I realized that if I could face my ogre, perhaps so could he--now that he was soon to graduate from high school, I would propose that we enter the film school and work together to undertake our own venture.

Not coincidentally, Alice in Wonderland begins and ends with the proposal of a business venture, and I would use the occasion to mark my own proposition. Regrettably, the film was too late in its run to be shown in 3D, and it was tricky trying to get Patrick and I coordinated to meet at the same time, but eventually we got it. Commenting on his film, Burton says that Alice is a young lady “who doesn't quite fit into Victorian society and structure,” and that her return to Wonderland “becomes a rite of passage as she discovers her voice and herself.” Picking up several years after Lewis Carroll’s original novels, Burton draws upon Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” about a young lad (actually Alice is in the illustration) who uses a “vorpal sword” to slay the dragon, and pushes it to the fore of the narrative. In contrast to fairy tales that seek either to engender or address “feminine” passivity, albeit with some ambiguity that is open to interpretation,[1] Burton’s film seeks to encourage active self-discovery at the encounter with such periods of transformation. Of course, this kind of story has always had an important element of more or less veiled sexual imagery, which can be seen in elements like Alice’s growth and shrinking, or the Cheshire Cat’s wide-toothed grin as it transitions to the fertile crescent moon. But the most compelling element of the narrative is the way it seeks to reconcile Simone de Beauvoir’s application of Sartre’s existentialism to the field of gender metaphysics with some guiding principle like Providence or Fate. After all, Alice is in the process of becoming Alice by way of acquiring “muchness”, which implies “existence proceeds essence”, even as the prophecy predicts she will slay the Jabberwocky. Interestingly, the two seem to have changed their incompatibilist views later in life on the evidence of their shared vocation and relationship, with Beauvoir stating “as the relationship between Sartre and me grew, I became convinced that I was irreplaceable in his life, and he in mine. In other words, we were totally secure in the knowledge that our relationship was also totally solid, again preordained, though, of course, we would have laughed at that word then.”[2] To the present author, this conundrum can be answered through the application of a Molinist soteriology, which is why the caterpillar Absolem the Absolute keeps answering her queries about whether or not she is the “right Alice” in terms of an essence that is acquired and not given, just as existentialism seeks transcendent expression in a life that is more essential. As Alice justly exclaims “From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I’ve been told what I must do and who I must be. I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot. I’ve been accused of being Alice, and of not being Alice, but this is MY dream. I’ll decide where it will goes from here.”

From the very beginning, Alice has always been a no-nonsense character who is not afraid of naming imposed social expectations as absurd, or to grow tall and say to the established order “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” One of the most compelling elements of Burton’s film is they way it explores themes of the politics of nonsense. On the one hand, the State is implicated for relying upon nonsense and terror to uphold its sovereignty with its Jabberwocky. On the other, nonsense serves as a tool to communicate taboo social information that would normally be repressed if expressed more explicitly, as with the Mad Hatter’s tea party. The political dimensions of a tea party are not lost to contemporary viewers, although Burton’s Punk roots and left-leaning politics, combined with the critique of industrial capitalism in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Alice’s delight in the prospect of “the decline of the aristocracy” make it unlikely that this film shares in such ignoble sympathies. As with many of Burton’s characters played by Johnny Depp, the Mad Hatter is an androgynous renaissance man with a very strong fashion sense, especially for hats. Gothic & Lolita fashion and looking-glass romanticism are the order of the day, with the present author taking special delight in watching the Mad Hatter spraying perfume in the not so chivalrous knight’s eyes, an apt commentary on the project of the film. Here the mutually supportive relationship between Alice and the Hatter, rather like a pair of siblings, effectively mediates the tension between the creative passions of an Edward Scissorhands with the destructive powers of a Sweeney Todd, while lending Alice confidence in her own being and vision. Two important subtexts of the trial of Joan of Arc are the questions of accessing the state of grace, which is to say accessing the will of God, independent of mediation from of institutions like the Church, and of the implications of taking codes of chivalry not as a restrictive set of values imposed upon her by the protective/dominant male, but as a personal calling and vocation. At the heart of such questions is the deeper question of the relation of woman to the symbolic, and these questions lie at the heart of Alice in Wonderland. Initially it appears that Alice is wounded when she stands her ground by the Bandersnatch, which suffers a counter-wound at the hands of the Dormouse, who has been roused from constant slumber to become a chivalrous lass herself. The parallelism assumes a different quality when the wounds are addressed and healed by the mutual alliance of Alice with the toothed beast in the cave to unleash havok upon the spear-armed card soldiers, which bears the implication that woman is not so much feared as the castrated but as a potential castrator, with all the attendant implications for symbolicity. While some critics contend the final battle at the end of the film is mindless and gratuitous, the quest to slay the Jabberwocky has important thematic resonance with the rest of the film. Indeed, the misse-en-scene places her battle on a higher plane, while the formal arrangements of the stage, shots, and lighting links her battle to the Knight’s game of chess with Death in The Seventh Seal, and through it to The Passion of Joan of Arc.

During the film credits, Patrick and I had a good chat about the implications of Alice’s proposition to resume her late father’s occupation of colonial trading, going even further than he did while setting sail under the flag of the British Empire. Thinking it over, I argued this element reflects Tim Burton’s ambivalence about returning to work with a global media empire like Disney, the same company that failed to affirm his own vision early in his career while they had the chance. Alice’s affinity for orientalism in the form of opening trade routes with China, where “the culture is vibrant”, seems to be undertaken in the spirit of subverting the empire with its cultural repressions in line with Burton’s career-long emphasis on affirming the passions. Patrick said he really enjoyed the film, and was surprised the critics he heard of had such a low opinion of it. To this, I said something along the lines of never trust the critics, but trust your own affinities. My own proposition was met with approval, and I look forward to the opportunity of making films with Patrick in the near future.

My second adventure with Patrick involves an ill-fated Denver concert of the reformed Public Image Ltd., the group that kicked off the Post-Punk era in the aftermath of the breakup of The Sex Pistols. Formed by John Lydon of “Johnny Rotten” fame, Public Image Ltd. was a vanguard experimental band by which Lydon sought to reclaim his public image and humanity from demonization in the press, physical assaults by thuggish British nationalists, and the characteristic machinations of the infamous band manager Malcolm McLaren. Public Image Ltd. sought to expand the horizons of Punk’s do-it-yourself ethos by embracing “free enterprise”, presenting themselves not as a band but as an independent media corporation. Through such releases as “Death Disco” and Metal Box/Second Edition, Public Image Ltd. proved that Punk could both subvert and incorporate territory from its traditional musical rivals, effectively laying the groundwork for a wider musical impact than “Here’s three chords, go start a band.” A while back Patrick and I watched Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and Patrick expressed a longing for that kind of crazy adventure, to which I promised to include him in my own adventures around Denver. At the heart of the film is the quest to find one of the rare performances of a legendary Indie band Where’s Fluffy, whose logo is a white rabbit their listeners must follow. The search for Where’s Fluffy ultimately turns out to be a McGuffin, with the real quest being Nick and Norah’s unpredictable adventures with their friends, ultimately discovering each other. Despite our efforts, Patrick and I have never found a girlfriend, which in many respects is as surprising as it is disappointing. Calling up Patrick intermittently to invite him to the concert and work out all the details, I warned that this might be a case of “Where’s Fluffy”, but that it would be worth the risk either way.

Riding in Patrick’s self-styled black spray painted Joker mobile, we managed to find a parking place a fair distance from the Ogden Theater. Conversing about films, friends, and our experiences of Denver on the way over, the walk really didn’t seem that long. But as we made our way on Colfax, a man in a studded leather jacket forewarned that the Public Image Ltd. concert was canceled, to which I indulged in a rare swear word (they don’t really bother me, I just don’t usually feel the need). Agreeing we nevertheless had to see what was up, we continued as before, and noticing that it was still early, we stopped in to the nearby Gothic clothing store Rave’s Oh My Goth!. Exploring its darkened treasures, we were eventually greeted and offered help by a charmingly effeminate gentleman, who sold Patrick a set of replacement vampire fangs. Finally making it to the Ogden Theater, there we met a disappointed small crowd around the front doors, where a bill was posted stating “Public Image Limited Cancelled. Tonight’s concert has been cancelled due to bad weather conditions. Refunds will be given at point of purchase.” Talking over where we would go from here, we agreed to head over to the Wax Trax music store. There I immersed in their brilliant selection of underground music while the less knowledgeable Patrick found himself out of his element. “You really need to listen to more music,” I commented. Eventually, the owner put on what I learned was First Issue by Public Image Ltd., and we conversed about the canceled concert. Apparently, they got stuck in Wyoming after flying in because of closures on I-80 owing to icy roads. Eventually, we were joined in the store by other endearing but disappointed Punks, who chatted at the front door. Purchasing a copy of Dub Side of the Moon by Easy-Star All Stars and Secret Homeland by Ostara, I said “pardon me” to the Punks at the front door in a way that says ‘you’re OK, I just need to get through’, they graciously made us some room to pass.

Trying to get to the Cafe Netherworld, Patrick and I were promptly kicked out for being under 21 (actually I’m 22) by means of a very liberal interpretation of 9:00 P.M., which I am to understand actually signifies the number of people in the building. We made up for it, however, by hanging out at the 16th Street Mall for a while at the places that don’t actually suck. While at the Barnes and Noble, I noticed a copy of my friend Mike Sares’ book Pure Scum: The Left-Out, the Right-Brained and the Grace of God about his ragtag congregation of outcasts, Scum of the Earth, I promptly purchased it. After stopping to eat, we finally made our way home, which was something of an adventure in itself. As we neared my house, I commented “This really was like Where’s Fluffy?... of course, neither one of us still has a girlfriend,” at which I burst out laughing. Little did I know he was soon to foolishly turn down the affections of his friend Marquis, with whom he is remarkably compatible. So yeah, the Public Image Ltd. concert was wonderful, despite never happening.

My final adventure around Denver was undertaken alone, owing to the 21+ policy of the Goth night at the Denver nightclub The Church. As I see it, the art of DJing is itself a performance art owing to the careful selection and synchronization of audio-visual elements played through the speakers and video screens for the club patrons to participate through dance. My own style of dance is best described as a fusion of Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Charlie Chaplin, and David Byrne, which both fits in and stands out amidst the general spookiness. The music here generally has a kind of dark ethereal vibe with thick power chords, or angry and alienated EBM with an Industrial beat. This kind of weekly death disco danse macabre in itself speaks volumes about the influence and legacy of Public Image Ltd. and the bands that followed. The Church itself is an old Gothic cathedral deconverted into a nightclub without an excess of iconoclasm or disrespect beyond little touches like a half-moustaches painted on the cherubim on the constantly candlelit altar dedicated to the memory of one of the church’s original patrons, and forms the perfect surroundings for this sort of occasion with dark and red expressionist lighting. Stopping to watch the video screens, I noticed such synchronized visuals as creepy dolls in motion from what looked like a Brothers Quay film, Japanese horror film ghost imagery, and clips of a bleak post-industrial zone. Unexpectedly meeting my friend David, we conversed on such topics as the Punk roots of Gothic music, and the reasons for my departure from Scum of the Earth. Overall, it was a very good and informative time, although I am sorry to say it ended on a sour note. Feeling gravely dismayed by my own solitude and inability to find understanding in the world, watching the stained glass of Jesus and the children darken while a young couple put the moves on each other near the corner in which I was standing. Like Antonius Block, I left pondering the absence of love and the silence of heaven in my own search for meaningful action against a backdrop of stark negation. "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night."[3]

Endnotes:

1. For example, is Little Briar-Rose of Sleeping Beauty asleep because her rite of passage is simply to passively accept male rescue, or is she asleep because her psychological defenses are so proactive trying to reach her is like cutting through an impenetrable thicket surrounding her castle? What about the narrative wars over the ending of Little Red Riding Hood, which poses the question of the dangers and possibilities of a young woman entering the forest of adventure with the onset of menstruation?
2. “The second sex 25 years later” by Simone de Beauvoir and John Gerassi, accessed at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/1976/interview.htm
3. "The Sex Pistols - No Fun - Winterland Pt.14" accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eod47vBEVJ0

Electronic Warfare: On the History of Early Industrial Music (Electronic Music Project)

2010-04-26T08:43:00.004-06:00

Sheffield and Manchester, the twin engines of the industrial revolution in Britain, were particularly receptive to the bleakly futuristic, synth-enhanced sounds of Devo and Pere Ubu. Less than forty miles apart in Northern England but separated by the Pennines mountain range, these cities shared with Cleveland a self-belief only slightly dented by having fallen on hard times, a sort of “we used to be great... and we’ll show you yet” attitude. Both cities also had their own equivalents to the Flats in Cleveland, harsh-on-the-eye hinterlands where heavy industry clanked and pounded every night. (Simon Reynolds, Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 p. 85)

Industrial is a subgenre of experimental electronic music emerging in the late 1970‘s from the bleak postindustrial environments of Cleveland and Akron in Ohio, and Sheffield and Manchester in the United Kingdom. Pioneered amidst a period of socio-economic turmoil and vibrant experimentalism in music and the arts, these blight-ridden cities attracted and nurtured a creative vanguard of musicians who would come into their own in the aftermath of the Punk scene’s fragmentation following the breakup of The Sex Pistols in 1978. “Cleveland, declining capital of the steel industry, and Akron, undistinguished and largely unknown outside of the United States, both seemed exotic, albeit in a harsh, appropriately postpunk way. ‘Marvel at the desecration of the earth’s crust,’ exhorted Stiff’s music paper ads, hailing Akron as the place “where the American dream ends.’” (Ibid. p. 70) On the American front, Devo of Akron described themselves as an “eighties industrial band”, while Pere Ubu of Cleveland described their music as “industrial folk”. Inspired by the “asymmetric, atonal synth solos” played by Brian Eno of Roxy Music, “Devo treated the synth as a noise generator.” (Ibid. p. 77) Says Devo vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh “The more technology you have, the more primitive you can be...You can express guttural sounds, bird noises, brain waves, blood flow.” (Ibid. p. 77-78) In praxis, this techno-primitivist orientation translated into concrete jungle soundscapes and metronomic machine rhythms played on a homemade electronic drum kit that “sounded really amazing, like a walking, broken-down robot.” (Ibid. p. 78) This was the sound that would characterize Devo’s early music, a sound that would influence pioneering electronic musicians on the other side of the Atlantic. Embittered by the traumatic formative experience of watching their friends Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller die at the hands of the National Guard during the Kent State Massacre, Devo’s creative heads Gerald V. Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh assumed a disillusioned and cynical outlook on American life. “After Kent, it seemed like you could either join a guerrilla group like the Weather Underground, actually try assassinating some of these evil people--the way they had murdered anybody in the sixties who’d tried to make a difference--or you could just make some kind of wacked-out creative Dada art response. Which is what Devo did.” (Ibid. p. 76-77)

Formed in the three months Kent State was closed in the aftermath of the shootings, Devo originated when Mothersbaugh “first noticed Casale because of a prankster performance art stunt he’d pull during fine-arts faculty shows.” (Ibid. p 77) Accompanied by his lucha libre sidekick Poot Man, customarily garbed in black wrestling shorts and a black face-mask, Casale woud point at a picture and go “Poot Man!”, a gesture that would summon forth his companion to do his business. Then, in Casale’s own words, Poot Man would “rub his ass on the artwork, or hold his nose like it stunk. Every time Poot Man took a pretend shit on the art, I’d reward him with milk, which he’d suck through an enema tube. People would be disgusted and move out of the way, and somebody would get security. After a few of these events, they’d be waiting for us.” (Ibid. p. 77) Hardly mere juvenile antics, this form of direct art commentary and theatrical challenge of placid conventions effectively aligns Devo with the earlier tradition of Dada, traits that would characterize the band’s future work. Dada was an art-protest movement that arose during the First World War amidst the horror and wholesale mechanized slaughter of the first fully industrialized international military conflict. Sharply critical of the bourgeois values of imperialist nationalism and colonialism which they believed caused the war, the Dadaists sought to demolish aesthetic standards of “good taste” established by the bourgeois to suit their own ends and interests, instead creating “anti-art” that evoked a sense of terror, chaos, and absurdity. In support of the validity and efficacity of this aesthetic approach, one may here cite Albert Camus’ notion of “metaphysical rebellion” as ontic revulsion and revolt against the absurdity encountered in every form of injustice that gropes toward a new creation. One may also cite Julia Kristeva’s conception on taboo as abjection, a no-man’s land between subject and object that reveals, reconstitutes, and redefines the boundaries of a given symbolic order. It was in this spirit that Devo engaged in its onstage and audio-visual theatrics that would arise full-bloom with the birth of MTV. Ever musicians with an ear to the future, Brian Eno called Devo “the best live show I have ever seen”, while David Bowie announced “This is the band of the future, I’m going to produce them in Tokyo this winter,” although the honor went to Eno instead. (Ibid. p. 80) By 1978, Devo grew into the infamous New Wave band subverting mainstream music industry conventions from within by means of playful satire, futuristic deconstruction, and revolting, mechanistic abjection situated at the centers of pop-rock symbolicity, qualities for which the band is well-known today.

“In the 1970‘s, Cleveland prided itself as being the first musically sophisticated city west of New York... Besides ultrahip record shops like Drome, the city was blessed with one of the most progressive radio stations in America, WMMS. Its early seventies playlist reads like John Lydon’s Capital Radio Show: Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, Soft Machine, even Peter Hammill’s band Van Der Graaf Generator.” (Ibid. p. 73) A city of fallen grandeur, Cleveland was once host to wealthy industrialists of the steel industries during America’s industrial revolution, but the city declined after the Second World War owing to reduced demand, domestic outsourcing, and the 1970‘s oil crunch, making the city host to the ghosts of alienation instead. “There’s something special about cities that were once prosperous,” writes Post-Punk historian Simon Reynolds. “The residues of wealth and pride make a rich loam in which bohemia can grow. Former affluence bequeaths a material legacy in the form of handsomely endowed colleges, art schools, museums, and galleries. Artists and slackers live cheaply in once grand houses that have grown shabby and low-rent, while derelict warehouses and empty factories can easily be repurporsed as rehearsal or performance spaces.” (Ibid. p. 71) It was in this context that Pere Ubu of Cleveland emerged, funded by the surplus capital of a trust fund in synth player Allen Ravenstine’s name. Ravenstine used this inheritance to buy an entire apartment complex in downtown Cleveland, and “rented its thirty-six rooms out cheaply” to every band member and other “artistically minded friends.” (Ibid. p. 71-72) “An imposing Gothic building, the Plaza was just one block south of Euclid Avenue, known in the nineteenth century as Millionaire’s Row because the steel barons built houses for their mistresses there. Now fittingly Cleveland’s red-light district, the neighborhood wasn’t somewhere most people would willingly reside, but Ubu loved its ghost town ambience and saw themselves as urban pioneers reclaiming the deindustrialized wilderness.” (Ibid. p. 72)

“Another byproduct of Ravenstine’s inherited fortune was his expensive EML 200 synth, and the fact that he could take two years off to learn to play it.” (Ibid.) Pere Ubu drummer Krauss recalls that the EML 200‘s user interface was like an “old-fashioned telephone operator switchboard, full of jacks to plug in... He’d make a noise like a five-pound can with a whole bunch of bumblebees inside... Then he’d change the sine wave and it’d sound like a beach with a whole bunch of people on it. Ten seconds later, it’d flip to a freight car noise. The imagination level was absolutely amazing.” (Ibid. p. 72) Owing to the nature of the machine, Allen Ravenstine’s playing didn’t resemble the synthesized baroque stylings of recent progressive rock bands, but rather the everyday noise with which he was surrounded. In The Art of Noises, Futurist composer Luigi Russolo writes to fellow Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella, arguing that with the cultural-historical processes of urbanization and industrialization, the agrarian forms of all music hitherto will become increasingly archaic and contextually irrelevant, as in all periods the musical ear draws upon the noise of the surrounding environment. Consequently, the future of music lies with noise, with the aesthetic reproduction and recontextualization of the noises that surround us in this new technologically driven environment. Ravenstine’s aural-industrial soundscapes were joined by David Thomas’s “high-pitched bleat”, which “immediately marked Ubu as not your average bar band”, and gave their music a sense of urgency. (Ibid.) Thomas’ musical tastes were aligned with the musical spirit of Cleveland in the 70‘s from high school onward, and “drummer Krauss and bassist [Tony] Maimone created a solid but inventive foundation for the freaky stuff, resulting in a sound the band punningly described as ‘avant-garage’”. With the advent of Punk, Pere Ubu’s feelings were ambivalent: “The Sex Pistols sang ‘no future,’ but there is a future, and we’re trying to build one,” comments Allen Ravenstine. (Ibid. p. 1) Nevertheless, the band’s popularity exploded in the United Kingdom in its aftermath, proving especially influential in the Sheffield and Manchester scenes during a tour in the Spring of 1978.

Contemporaneous with the developments hitherto described, Cabaret Voltaire of Sheffield were also coming into their own. Reynolds notes that as “One of the first British cities to become industrialized, Sheffield rapidly acquired a proletariat in the classic sense defined by Karl Marx--human beings reduced to appendages of flesh attached to machinery, acutely conscious of both their exploitation and their common interest in struggling for better conditions. Until recently, the city was a bastion of old Labour, the pre-Tony Blair party that was closely linked to the trade union movement and whose members took seriously the Labour charter’s commitment to state ownership of major industries such as steel, 90 percent of which was combined into the publicly owned British Steel Corporation in 1967. The Sheffield region was nicknamed ‘the People’s Republic of Yorkshire,” on account of the city’s hard-line Socialist council, who actually flew the red flag from the town hall.” (Ibid. p. 86). Growing up in a context in which “being a member of the Young Communist League was almost like going to Sunday School”, teenage Richard H. Kirk was instead attracted to “Dada’s unconstructive revolt and intoxicating irrationalism.” (Ibid.) In contrast to other heavily industrialized regions of Britain, Sheffield remained relatively prosperous prior to the rise of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. “If there was deprivation, it was cultural. Nonconformist Sheffield youth grabbed on to whatever sources of stimulation they could find: pop music, art, glam clothes, science fiction, or better still, some combination of them all.” (Ibid.) As one might imagine, Roxy Music “were massive in Sheffield. The group’s flamboyant, future-retro image inspired the posthippie generation to glam up and dance at Sheffield clubs like the Crazy Daisy. And Roxy performed regularly in the city.” (Ibid. p. 87)

Not coincidentally, Richard H. Kirk himself was a fan of Roxy Music. Remarking upon the formation of his band, Kirk reminisces: “That era in ‘73 when Roxy where really at the cutting edge, that’s what got us going... We’d read Eno in interviews talking about how anyone can make music because you don’t need to learn an instrument, you can use a tape recorder or a synth.” (Ibid. p. 89) Taking this protopunk do-it-yourself exhortation to heart, Kirk combined forces with fellow Dada enthusiast and telephone engineer Chris Watson, “outwardly the most ‘normal’ member of the group.” (Ibid.) Having “stumbled on a book about the movement as a teenager in 1970,” Watson remarks that it “just hit me so hard it changed the way I’ve thought ever since.” (Ibid.) Indeed, the group drew creative inspiration from “Dada’s assault on meaning and taste, along with its collage techniques.” (Ibid.) The name Cabaret Voltaire itself “came from the Zurich nightclub/salon where Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, et al. declaimed their sound poetry while World War I raged across Europe.” (Ibid.) In addition to Dada, Cabaret Voltaire were heavily influenced by the cut-up techniques of author William S. Burroughs. Burroughs’ cut-ups “involved chopping up text or sound and recombining them in order to disrupt the linearity of thought, each snip/splice serving as a fissure through which ‘the future leaks,’ as Burroughs and Gysin put it.” (Ibid.) In this spirit, singer Kirk comments: “We’d do mad stuff--drive around in a van with tape loops playing out the back, or go into pubs with a tape machine and play weird stuff--just trying to wind people up, really.” (Ibid. p. 90) Similarly influenced by the work of J.F. Ballard, Cabaret Voltaire experimented in the use of sampling from audio-visual sources in the media to evoke “‘the communications landscape we inhabit’ as a collective unconscious, out of which the ‘myths of the near future’ were emerging’”. (Ibid p.100) Since then, this practice has become standard in Industrial, and cross-influenced other genres of electronic music.

Sonically, Cabaret Voltaire decided “We didn’t want a rock guy showing off and doing drum solos... We wanted steady, mechanical repetition.” (Ibid. p. 90) Purchasing a Farfisa drum machine from a grey market source, initially the band “didn’t even have a proper synth, instead using tape loops and a primitive oscillator built by Watson. Kirk’s primary instrument was the clarinet, fed through effects to sound harshly processed and eerie... Almost every sound source--the group’s voices, [Stephen] Millander’s bass, Watson’s organ, found sounds--was sent through ring modulators or a chain of effects devices, emerging warped and contaminated on the other side.” (Ibid.) As one might imagine, this made the band’s tape loop tour all the more disconcerting, but what really got under people’s skin was their sense of style. “Provocation for it’s own sake was the name of the game. Cabaret Voltaire drew crazy hard stares for the way they looked, too. They were fashion crazy... developing a do-it-yourself style based around old clothes from charity thrift stores, which they’d customize with paint... Looking as concertedly stylized... was a real statement when most ordinary young men wore bell-bottom slacks and platforms while sporting sideburns and straggly shoulder-length hair.” (Ibid. p. 90-91) For their inaugural gig, the band tricked an undergrad student organization, Science for the People, into playing their Tuesday night disco, reassuring the booker “Oh yes, we play rock.” (Ibid. p. 91) The resulting performance “managed to trigger an audience riot to rival anything stirred up by the dadaists. ‘We had a tape loop playing of a steam hammer as percussion, and Richard was playing a clarinet with a rubberized jacket on it covered with flashing fairy lights, and it just ended with the audience invading the stage and beating us up.” (Ibid.) In the resulting conflict, Stephen Mallinder fell hard and chipped a bone in his back, while Richard H. Kirk bravely brandished his fairy weapon to fend off the attacking horde. But in the end, “the people who attacked us ended up with the nastier injuries because a lot of the people who came to see us, including some very dodgy people, took it upon themselves to take our side of the argument,” which just goes to show you should think twice about assaulting artists, poets, and prophets.

For round two of unsettling the bourgeois, Cabaret Voltaire was invited by a local university to perform an interpretation Exhaust by classical composer Jean-Yves Bosseur. Accordingly, when the band showed up, “We just played a tape loop of someone saying the word ‘exhaust’ overlaid with some music, and we had film loops running that started melting. They were freaked out and we didn’t get invited to the after party.” (Ibid.) As per their literary and artistic influences, in live shows “Cabaret Voltaire were as committed to multimedia as the Human League, but oriented more toward sensory overload. They used slide and film projectors to create a backdrop of unsynchronized, cut-up imagery: French porn, TV news, and movies. Bombarding the audience with data also related to Cabaret Voltaire’s conception of themselves as reporters.” (Ibid. p. 100) The Human League, a contemporaneous pioneering Synthpop band of Sheffield also inspired by Roxy Music, would go on to have an indirect influence upon later Industrial during the genre’s second wave. When Punk hit the Sheffield scene, Cabaret Voltaire took the cue to bring guitar to the front of the mix, and secure their own studio aptly located in the former offices of the Sheffield Federation of Young Socialists. Prototypical of later developments in electronic music, “In 1978, Cabaret Voltaire were developing the model for a kind of postsocialist microcapitalism, an autonomy that represented if not exactly resistance, then a form of grassroots resilience in the face of top-down corporate culture.” (Ibid. p. 99) Not hating the media, but becoming the media, this do-it-yourself acquisition of the means of production enabled the band to define and develop their own sound on their own terms and in their own time.

As such, “Sometime between 1977 and 1979, the definitive Cabaret Voltaire sound took shape: the hissing hi-hats and squelchy snares of their rhythm generator, Watson’s smears of synth slime, Mallinder’s dankly pulsing bass, and Kirk’s spikes of shattered-glass guitar. Everything coalesces on singles such as ‘Silent Command’ and ‘Seconds Too Soon’ to create a stalking hypno-groove somewhere between death disco and Eastern Bloc skank. Another Cabaret Voltaire hallmark was the dehumanization of Mallinder’s voice via creepy treatments that made him sound reptillian, alien, or, at the extreme, like some kind of metallic or mineralized being.” (Ibid. p. 99-100) Touring America in 1979, the band “caught wind of the impending shift to the Right with Reagan and the born-again Christian movement.” (Ibid. p. 100) Immersing in the media menagerie of America’s airwaves and all-night television, and especially televangelists like Eugene Scott, Cabaret Voltaire found plenty of creative input upon which to apply its modus operandi. Out of this period emerged a series of releases that would have an extensive and long-lasting influence upon future Industrial music. The first was The Voice of America, which featured extensive audio sampling from precisely these sources to achieve a recontextualized social commentary upon the American nation. To judge from the single “Sluggin’ fer Jesus”, there is a certain ironic rapport and affinity between the band and Scott as he urgently pleas for money as “the last truly free voice on religious television”--ominous words for the impending regime change. So too, the 1980 minialbum Three Mantras responded to Soviet conflict in Afghanistan and the Iran hostage situation by contrasting “the evil twins of of fundamentalist Islam and bomb-again Christian America, 'beloved enemies’ locked in a clinch of clashing civilizations.” (Ibid. p. 101) The second album to emerge from this period was the aptly titled 1981 release Red Mecca. “Purely through its ominous atmospheres and tense rhythms, Red Mecca also seemed to tap into closer-to-home turbulence. The unrest caused by mounting unemployment and police harassment of racial minorities and jobless youths finally erupted in the summer of 1981, with riots convulsing inner-city areas all across Britain, from Toxteth in Liverpool to Brixton in London.” (Ibid.) In many ways, Cabaret Voltaire’s music seems prescient of many future developments, emphasizing exactly those areas that would come to be of paramount importance in the past decade. It is of little surprise, therefore, that they have had such a lasting legacy upon future Industrial music, pioneering such widely used elements as audio-visual sampling from media sources and cut-ups, the use of a drum machine to achieve a mechanized factory rhythm, vocal distortion techniques to convey themes of alienation and depersonalization, and the genre’s dark bass-driven vibe and grit.

Genesis P-Orridge of Manchester’s Throbbing Gristle began his career as a musician and performing artist as a very dark hippie. Says P-Orridge of his hometown, “Whenever people ask me where I am from, meaning my nationality, I never say British, I say that I am from Manchester, in England... It doesn’t mean that I am nostalgic about the place. I was created bitter and resentful by Manchester. I learned absolute emptiness from Manchester. It is not a spiritual environment.” (Ibid. p. 124) British theologian N.T. Wright remarks of social environments like those we have explored hitherto: “The second feature of many communities both in the postindustrial West and in many of the poorer parts of the world is ugliness. True, some communities manage to sustain levels of art and music, often rooted in folk culture, which bring a richness even to the most poverty-stricken areas. But the shoulder-shrugging functionalism of postwar architecture, coupled with the passivity born of decades of television, has meant that for many people the world appears to offer little but bleak urban landscapes, on the one hand, and tawdry entertainment, on the other. And when people cease to be surrounded by beauty, they cease to hope. They internalize the message of their eyes and ears, the message that whispers that they are not worth very much, that they are in effect less than fully human.” (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church p. 231) In a similar vein, Simon Reynolds writes “Growing up in cities physically and spiritually scarred by the nineteenth-century transition between rural folkways and the unnatural rhythms of industrial life, groups like Pere Ubu, Cabaret Voltaire, and, in Manchester, Joy Division and the Fall grappled with both the problems and possibilities of human existence in an increasingly technological world. Yet as color-depleted and harsh as these postindustrial cities in England and Ohio were, it was possible--perhaps essential--to aestheticize their panoramas of decay... In the prepunk seventies, Manchester seemed to have all the bad aspects of urban life--pollution, eyesore architecture, all-enveloping dreariness--with barely any of its subcultural compensations. ‘There was really nothing going on until punk,’ recalls [Richard] Boon. ‘The industry was dying, the clothes were dreadful, the hair was awful.’ Manchester’s starved souls grabbed for whatever source of stimulus or sparkle they could find, be it fashion, books, esoteric music, or drugs.” (Simon Reynolds, Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 p. 105)

Enter Throbbing Gristle, a relentlessly avant-garde Manchester Industrial group whose “anti-music” is self-described as “post-psychedelic trash”, and founded by the infamous Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. Like so many spaced-out teenagers in 1966, P-Orridge was inspired by newspaper reports of acid freak-outs in London to arrange his own happenings at Solihull private school. A few years later, he tuned into the vibe created by Transmedia Explorations, a far-out performance art commune which had “been renowned for its ‘Kinetic Theater’ performances at psychedelic raves like UFO. ‘Transmedia’ referred to the in-vogue notion of a new form of ‘total art’ involving the creation of ‘experiences’ through synergizing different art forms and smashing down barriers between performer and spectator.” (Ibid. p. 125) But what was really radical about the group confounded preconditioned normative timetables: “Routines and habits, roles and expectations, were deliberately disrupted, with members sleeping in a different bed each night, selecting clothing out of a communal chest every morning, and eating meals at odd times.” (Ibid.) But then, had not Michael Foucault argued in Disipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison that in the century following the execution of Damiens the regicide in 1757, the locus of officially sanctioned punishment had shifted from the public spectacle of excruciating torture to the discrete imposition of timetables, effectively deployed in order to render active bodies into passive bodies? Did he not also argue that the process of subjective constitution and conditioning exhibits strong parallelism to this process? Little wonder, therefore, that “This quest quest for some kind of authentic, pure self via a grueling regime of deconditioning became the hallmark of everything P-Orridge did in art and life.” (Ibid. p. 125)

After departing from Transmedia Explorations, Genesis P-Orridge pursued undergrad studies in social administration and philosophy, “and formed his own arts lab collective, COUM Transmissions. He fell for a flower child, Christine Carol Newby, who moved into COUM’s communal headquarters in a Hull warehouse and soon renamed hersolf Cosey Fanni Tutti.” (Ibid. p. 126) COUM Transmissions “originally started as an absurdist cosmic-rock group. In 1971, they supported Hawkwind, the leading band on Britain’s ‘post-psychedelic’ underground.” (Ibid. p. 125) The band drew inspiration from John Cage, even making use of broken violins and a prepared piano in addition to typical rock instruments, as well as bands like the Fugs and the Velvet Underground, believing “the future of music lies in nonmusicians.” (Ibid. p. 126) Growing more elaborate and immersive with the passage of time, “P-Orridge and Tutti realized they could get grants from the Arts Council if they described what they did as performance art rather than rock. Starting in July 1972 with an event called The Alien Brain, COUM staged a series of increasingly outlandish and shocking performances at art galleries and mixed-media festivals across Britain and Europe.” (Ibid.) Making a very clear demonstration of the British taxpayer’s money at work, the group’s avant-garde performances included public sexual demonstrations, “ritualistic feats of abjection and self-mutilation. Typical components of a COUM performance included P-Orridge placing severed chicken heads on top of his penis and masturbating, or P-Orridge and Tutti engaging in simultaneous anal and vaginal sex using a double-pronged dildo. Various combinations of soiled tampons, maggots, black eggs, feathers, and syringes full of milk, blood, or urine figured as props.” (Ibid.)

This kind of performance art would characterize the group’s future work, particularly with the later formation of Throbbing Gristle, and had several immanent effects while performing as COUM Transmissions. The first was that in 1974, “they acquired a new member, Peter Christopherson, nicknamed ‘Sleazy’ because he was most interested in COUM’s ‘fab and kinky’ sexual extremism.” (Ibid. p. 127) The second that the group was gravely concerned to find they were invited to perform all over Europe, resulting in the determination that they needed to break into pop culture to continue to have an impact. “P-Orridge was also captivated by the Warholesque notion of using fame, hype, and controversy themselves as an artistic medium.” (Ibid. p. 127) To this end, October 1976 saw in one fell swoop enormous media attention and controversy, and the end of COUM Transmissions. Exhibiting at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, situated in close proximity to the centers of British power, the group opened Prostitution at a gallery that “represented a threshold, the place where art’s radical fringe collided with high culture. The centerpiece of Prostitution was photo documentation of Tutti’s work as a model in some forty porn magazines. This, plus the exhibition of used tampons, made Prostitution a perfect flash-point for growing public concern about the subsidized avant-garde, what the Art’s Council was supporting with taxpayer’s money at a time of recession and public-spending cuts. Conservative politician Nocholar Fairbairn denounced Prostitution as ‘a sickening outrage....Public money is being wasted here to destroy the morality of our society. These people are wreckers of civilization.’” (Ibid. p. 128) It’s very curious indeed how menstrual blood and the feminine body can make the whole system fall like a house of cards, but that’s the way the patriarchal symbolic order is constructed. In the meantime, the group found themselves demonized in the newspapers and the tabloids, and gravely discussed by members of Parliament. Indeed, “The Prostitution controversy rivaled the media panic about the Sex Pistols’ swearing on TV some months later.” (Ibid. p. 129)

COUM Transmissions found themselves burnt-out in the flames of infamy, but out of the ashes arose Throbbing Gristle, so named from the Yorkshire slang for an erect penis. But the real beginning of this new direction came in 1975, soon after they were joined by Chris Carter. “Founded in September 1975, Throbbing Gristle threw themselves into the project of conceptualization and sonic research. During the week, Carter, a technical wiz, built speakers, effects units, and synthesizer modules. He cobbled together a unique gizmo for Sleazy to play. Nicknamed the Gristle-izer, it was a sort of musique concrète mechanism or primitive sampler. Its one-octave keyboard triggered an array of cassette machines, each loaded with found sounds ranging from TV and movie dialogue to everyday conversations surreptitiously recorded by a roving Sleazy. The group’s own vocals were heavily processed, with Carter feeding them through a chorus echo that allowed him to speed them up and slow them down, or make them slimy and wobbly. Carter also adapted the conventional instruments like the bass and guitar, feeding them through relays of multiple effects. All of these treatments transformed the guitar and bass into sound-synthesizing machines. Unlike with proper synthesizers, though, extracting noise from the guitar and bass involved an element of hands-on physicality, and this gave TG’s sound a uniquely pummeled and percussive feel.” (Ibid. p. 127) As per their previous influences, Throbbing Gristle wanted to “create a total-body experience, immersive and assaultive. They jettisoned songs, melody, and groove in favor of the overwhelming physical force of sound itself. ‘People think music’s just for the ears, they forget that it goes into every surface of the body, the pores, the cells, it affects the blood cells.’” (Ibid. p. 128)

Seeking this kind of assaultive listener experience, the band even studied “military research into the use of infrasound as a nonlethal weapon, where certain frequencies trigger vomiting, epileptic seizures, and even involuntary defecation. TG’s own basement became a ‘chaotic research lab,’ with P-Orridge and Carter exploring the perceptual and physical effects of high and low frequencies, distortion, and extreme volume, using themselves as guinea pigs. P-Orridge recalled, ‘We had moments when we had tunnel vision, couldn’t walk or stand up straight and so on from certain frequencies we hit.’” (Ibid. p. 128) While this approach to kicking open the doors of perception is certainly much different from the joyful cosmic vibes of previous Psychedelic music, Simon Reynolds is surely correct in pointing out that “for all the unremitting ugliness and brutality it absorbed from its urban surroundings, there’s a real sense in which industrial was the second flowering of an authentic psychedelia. Admittedly, on first listen, the punishing noise made by Throbbing Gristle and their offspring seems impossibly remote from the blissed-out, bucolic mystics of 1967. Syd Barratt’s nursery rhyme melodies and children’s storybook imagery, or the wistful arcadian reveries of the Byrds, seem like the total antithesis of TG’s songs, in which innocence figures only as something to be defiled... Nonetheless, industrial music shares many things with psychedelia. The primary impulse in both genres is to blow minds through multimedia sensory overload. Almost every industrial band’s live show featured projected cut-up movies and extreme lighting redolent of 1960‘s happenings and acid tests. Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire, who released some of their early ‘attic tape’ material via TG’s label Industrial Records, described his group’s live shows as being ‘like a bad trip’... The difference (and what makes industrial an 'authentic’ psychedelia rather than a mere revival) is that industrial is psychedelia inverted, replacing kissing the sky with gazing vertiginously into the cosmic abyss.” (Ibid. p. 124-125)

In a certain sense, then, Throbbing Gristle may be viewed as tragic mystics, their jouissant rituals of abjection the perverse sacraments of cosmic oneness with the nothingness at the root of all things. It is a courage in metaphysical rebellion to refuse to absolutize the surface forms which in fact are contingent beings that arise from codependent coorigination. “The rebel obstinately confronts a world condemned to death,” writes Albert Camus, “and the impenetrable obscurity of the human condition with his demand for absolute clarity. He is seeking, without knowing it, a moral philosophy or a religion. Rebellion, even though it is blind, is a form of asceticism. Therefore, if the rebel blasphemies, it is in the hope of finding a new god. He staggers under the shock of the most profound of all religious experiences, but it is a disenchanted religious experience.” (Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt p. 101) We live in a culture and religious landscape in which Protestantism, against its own doctrinal foundation of the universal priesthood of believers, has systematically repressed mysticism, art, and music, both Christian and otherwise. And with the help of its twin engine the Enlightenment, they have managed to absolutize the surface forms and conform to the symbolic expectations of Western society as if they were God and not signposts. The terror, ugliness, and alienation within postindustrial societies ultimately trace back to the outworking of these two ideologies. But the impulses and passions that are of themselves good always go somewhere, albeit often in parody, and to encounter abjection is to encounter emptiness in the borderlands of meaning, which raises anxiety and terror.

It is important to remember that P-Orridge’s musical outfit began as an “absurdist cosmic-rock group”. And as Jostein Gaarder explains to budding young philosophers of the future: “The theater of the absurd represented a contrast to realistic theater. Its aim was to show the lack of meaning in life in order to get the audience to disagree. The idea was not to cultivate meaninglessness. On the contrary. But by showing and exposing the absurd in everyday situations, the onlookers are forced to seek a truer and more essential life for themselves.” (Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy p. 460-461). So when Throbbing Gristle show and sing about the terrible existential horror and negation of postindustrial civilization, the message is to seek out something beautiful and meaningful. It shows us that this condition is not to be found in a nostalgic return to lost innocence, as to the garden of Eden before the fall, but in the acquisition of knowledge through which may be discovered immanent Wisdom. “Such is the cognitive aspect of the narrative of the fall,” writes Julia Kristeva, “In that instance, the fall is the work of God, founding knowledge and the quest for consciousness, it opens the way to spirituality... A source of evil and mingled with sin, abjection becomes the requisite for a reconciliation”. (Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection p. 126-127) Albert Camus argues that on the other side of metaphysical revolt against the absurd lies the quest for a new creation. Similarly, N.T. Wright finishes the quote cited above by writing “To communities in danger of going that route, the message of new creation, of the beauty of the present world taken up and transcended in the world that is yet to be--with part of that beauty being precisely the healing of the present anguish--comes as a surprising hope.” (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church p. 231) Camus cites Surrealist founder André Breton when he writes of Surrealism “is also the absolute proof that there is no comfortable form of wisdom: ‘We want, we shall have, the hereafter in our lifetime.’ Breton admirably exclaimed. While reason embarks on action and sets its armies marching on the world, the splended night in which Breton delights announces dawns that have not yet broken, and, as well, the advent of the poet of our renaissance: René Char.” (Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt p. 99) Similarly, Wright, in line with Jesus’ proclamation that “the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20), Wright argues for a Christian aesthetic rooted not in placid escapism or conservative pessimism about change, but in taking in and transfiguring the tragedy of a suffering world in a vision of beauty of the new world God is creating that is already breaking into the present one. Thus, from opposite ends of the metaphysical spectrum, Christian theology and atheistic absurdism, Wright and Camus agree for the necessity of creating an aesthetic of new creation to engage the nihilism engendered by a postindustrial environment. God may or may not actually bother to show up, but there is none the less important work to do, and perhaps Industrial music past, present, and future may act as a catalyst for this much needed change. To this end, let us continue to look for ways in which the future leaks into the present, and seek the fountain of Wisdom therein.

A Personal History of Reading and Writing (English Composition II Homework)

2010-02-04T01:51:00.005-07:00

For as long as I remember, I have been reading books years ahead of the expected reading level for my age. In elementary school, I would soak up all the books I could, immersing myself in both fiction and nonfiction. Some of my fondest memories of this period involve reading the short stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Between the inscrutable detective hero of Doyle and the alienated anti-heroes of Poe, these tales provided some of my first inkling of the written power of the macabre, of the dark side of of life humanity. Looking back, I think these stories resonated with me because of the rejection and harsh treatment I received from my peers. Whereas I was really quite a fish out of water, books provided a space in which I could immerse in my element and flourish there. Needless to say, I read voraciously. Besides such morbid subject matter, I also greatly enjoyed works of fantasy, especially those involving dragons. In terms of nonfiction, I would often works of science and history, especially from the perennially brilliant Eyewitness series.

These affinities would stay with my all the way into high school, albeit in increasingly complex form. My love affair with the macabre and the fantastic remained as strong as ever, although by this time these were joined by reading in science fiction, especially of the dark and dystopian variety. So too, I began reading biographies of historical figures like Sitting Bull, Nikola Tesla, and H.G. Wells. Looking back, I suppose my choice of scientific reading material must have come from the budding young mad scientist’s reading list, because I was reading up on topics like antimatter and nanotechnology, which are very powerful indeed. Well, that’s all well and good but it carries a strong existential gravity, and I began to question why I was here on planet earth. Indeed, it was here that I had my first existential crisis, which is a very far cry from having a pleasant holiday in the sun. Realizing the objectifying gaze of scientific methodology could not answer this category of question, and that I was not the only one in all of human history to ask such questions as these, I turned my interest toward the study of religion and philosophy. Out of this period, I became a Christian, and gradually began to read up on theology with increasing intensity. But the real epiphany came when I was introduced to the work of New Testament scholars such as N.T. Wright, Ben Witherington, and Craig Blomberg by way of my membership at the Theology Web forums (http://www.theologyweb.com/). Of these, N.T. Wright was an especially strong influence on my thought and writing by way of his tireless eschatological vision and brilliant written form. Drawing on his energy and style, basically Wright can be said to be the man who taught me how to really write, and to be heard by way of my writing.

I continued to read up on theology voraciously until I eventually hit a threshold at which the only way I could get any further with my theology was to turn to subjects other than theology and then apply my own perspectives back to these topics. My reading turned to matters of music, art, film, philosophy, other religions, anything with which I felt a strong affinity. In this way, my thought and writing became both unique and irreplaceable--for I ventured into uncharted forests where no one else would venture. And so it continued until the Spring of 2008, which brought introspective isolation and my second existential crisis following a semester of academic suspension. Regrettably, it now appeared that I was neither needed nor wanted by the world around me, and that I needed to refine the courage to be although none affirmed. For drawing on the Christian doctrine of grace and existential philosophy, Paul Tillich writes “the courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable. One does not need to remind theologians of the fact that this is the genuine meaning of the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of ‘justification by faith’” (Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be p. 164). Faced with few prospects for the future, it was here that I founded my own blog titled The Gothic Theologian at http://gothictheology.blogspot.com/, where the rest of my writing history may be discovered in direct form.

"The Net is Vast and Limitless": An Analysis of Ghost in the Shell's Ending (Development of Film Expression Final)

2009-10-15T16:53:00.015-06:00

Shot One
Shot duration: 48 seconds

Beginning frame

End frame

Shot size: Initially an extreme long shot with the Major displaced into the distant background behind a tall and imposing mound of books -- a far more ancient and analog form of media than most of what is seen throughout the film, to be sure -- the camera dollies in to a close shot of the heroine, effectively making her and her plight seem more and more significant against the wall of media.
Sound: Audibly fizzling on, the camera pops and buzzes before falling silent. Off in the distance, an EKG monitor beeps out the Major's slow but steady pulse. The noise grows louder and louder the closer we get, and there can be no doubt about the Major's continued survival.
Contrast dominant(s): For the first few seconds, the flickering white fuzz of the camera is the contrast dominant, effectively drawing our attention to its lack of stability or fidelity. Afterwards, the Major with her stark white face and dark and lacy Victorian doll's dress draw in our eyes to keep focus on her throughout the shot.
Character movement: None to speak of. As far as we can tell, the Major is completely paralyzed, and metaphorically joins in every doll's inanimate plea for life. The only movement in the frame is the fizzling camera and the space-age microcosm in Q4, effectively drawing the viewer's attention to the movement of the camera itself.
Character proxemics: Sitting upright with her head tilted and her body crooked and weight unevenly distributed, we are made to understand that the Major no longer has control over the movement of her own body anymore, but has been carefully positioned on the chair by someone else. Because the chair and environment she is sitting in is comfortable, and because she is surrounded by life preserving medical technology, it would seem safe to say that this person is sympathetic rather than hostile.
Camera movement: Sitting perfectly still for roughly 15 seconds while the camera turns itself back on, the camera starts to dolly in with slow incremental steps at an animated doll's walking pace, but increases its speed and length of its steps the closer it gets to the Major.
Camera angle: Shot at an eye-level, it is here important that we be perfectly square with Motoko so we can look into her eyes and perceive her silent plight.
Depth of field: Split into a straightforward background, middle ground, and foreground, the background where the Major is seated off in the distance remains the focal point of the shot. In this respect, the long distance, the split wall of books in the middle ground and the wooden table in the foreground act as visual barriers obstructing proper view of the Major, a problem neatly resolved by the moving camera.
Lighting: As per cyberpunk's film noir influence, this shot is lit in low key with lighting emphasizing the environment rather than the characters. With the brightest light simply falling on the floor in Q3 and Q4 and highlighting the obstructing wall of books in Q1 and Q2, the picture looks bleak for the Major. However, off in the distance a faintly angelic aura surrounds her, so it seems premature to predict her untimely demise just yet.
Color: Shot in a simulated color filter that desaturates all colors of their natural vibrancy, everything in the room is tinged in sick-looking shades of brown that make everything look lifeless, antiquated, grim, and grainy. Even the Major's face looks white and pale and her dress dark and funereal as she sits still and lifeless. Even so, by failing to film the colors with reliable fidelity, the viewer is clued in that the picture this camera gives is unreliable, and that there's more to the story.
Screen graphics/composition: An evenly balanced shot displacing the Major into the distant background the wall of literary media in Q1 and Q2 dominating the frame from the middle ground. Here the diagonal front-to-back leading lines are both stacked against the Major and draw the eyes back toward her. A compositionally static image of a lifeless room, the only developments in the frame are the movement of the space-age microcosm in Q2 and the motion of the camera.
Editing style: Making a startling straight cut from pitch-black nothingness to a new scene, the viewer is self-consciously aware that the camera is visibly being turned back on. Exiting the shot in a straight jump cut to a more reliable camera, the viewer's attention is drawn to the role of the camera in mediating the story.
Time: Given the unexplained nature of cuts, it is almost impossible to tell how much time has elapsed between them, but as the emphasis of the shot is on motionlessness, time is not as important as it would normally be.
Subtext: After her near assassination, the Major has been reduced to the doll's plight of pleading for real life. But as a cyborg living in a hyperreal world of manipulatable media technology, in a more symbolic sense this has always been her plight.

Shot Two
Shot duration: 14 seconds

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Shot size: A full shot of the Major, this shot emphasizes the whole of her being in returning to life.
Sound: With only the EKG monitor still faintly beeping, the Major is completely silent for her reawakening with only the faint rustling of cloth audible throughout. Off behind the camera, a door opens and the voice of Batou greets the Major upon perceiving that she is now awake.
Contrast dominant(s): As the wearer of a vibrant emerald dress and the brightest refractor of the desk light in Q1 in the Major remains the contrast dominant throughout the shot.
Character movement: In a move evocative of all the terror and fascination brought by timeless stories about dolls being brought to life, the Major suddenly jolts upright with a very strange and enigmatic facial expression. Slowly lowering her head and shoulders to get a good look at her current body, Kusanagi bends her hand in a position just a few feet in front of her face and inspects her palms and fingers a long time to make sure it's all real after all.
Character proxemics: Still basically the same as the last shot, here Batou's offscreen position carefully opening the door signals his role as caretaker.
Camera movement: None to speak of. Here, as in most of the shots in this scene, the emphasis is placed upon the motion of the characters in an inanimate setting. From here on, there will be no camera movement until the final shot of the scene.
Camera angle: Shot from a low angle that makes the Major seem tall and imposing, we suddenly wonder how we could ever have imagined that one of Japan's greatest cyborg hackers would allow herself to get wiped out so easily.
Depth of field: Shot with a closed and angular form that makes the distance between planes feel compressed and the shot feel claustrophobic, little movement will be possible for the Major until she mediates it.
Lighting: Illuminated by the bright glowing desk lamp in Q1, the stark contrast between brilliant light and deep shadow, the lighting makes that shot feel both resplendent and hopeful, and dark and claustrophobic. Above all, the light from above gives the Major the halo effect that makes her appear angelic. What indeed is the power and potential of a modern angel amidst a dark society?
Color: A brilliant explosion of emerald color that makes everything feel vibrant and full of life, here we are signaled that from now on the picture the camera is giving us is reliable, and that life and movement is, in fact, possible.
Screen graphics/composition: Compositionally weighted toward the right by the leading line of the tall, dark, and oblique desk, the viewer's eyes are kept in Q2 and Q4 where the Major is sitting. Tied in to life-support machines in Q1, Q2, and Q4, the relation of the Major to a technologically oriented society is here emphasized.
Editing style: After the surprising jump cut already described, this shot cuts to Batou to emphasize his presence and the exact nature of his role in her recovery.
Time: Edited with slow pacing that allows Motoko ample time to begin movement, after a chronologically ambiguous beginning the continuity of time between this shot and the next one is relatively straightforward at the pace of a normal conversation. This use of time and pacing will continue throughout the scene unless otherwise stated.
Subtext: Startlingly coming to life out of a state of inanimate existence, the Major must determine whether or not any of this is real. Having done this, she must get now used this strange new mode of being analogous to that of a living doll reborn into the world with old memories and new subjectivity.

Shot Three
Shot duration: 11 seconds

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Shot size: A medium shot of Batou as he enters the room, this shot is expositional in nature.
Sound: Initially, only the Major's concerned but strangely childlike voice requests a status report and "maybe an explanation for this body" with a tone of urgency. Closing the door behind him, the wooden door makes its characteristically solid ker-kunk. Afterwards, Batou's voice explains with a tone of resignation that "It was all I could get on the black market. Not my taste, really."
Contrast dominant(s): Wearing a bright red shirt that stands in contrast to the emerald room and occupying the position of greatest light refraction, Batou is the primary contrast dominant. The secondary contrast dominant is the thick and seemingly well-defended technological fortress concealing the Major (it's only the chair and medical equipment, actually), which is also brightly lit, and signals that he is being forced to justify his presence and actions.
Character movement: Looking to the Major with a facial expression that conveys that he is both sympathetic and friendly, Batou is holding a doorknob with his left hand, and a beer can with his right hand. Briefly turning his head as he closes the door behind him, Batou begins his explanation with a slight look of embarrassment, shrugs his shoulders, and walks off the right side of the frame.
Character proxemics: With Batou facing the Major, who remains concealed by the aforementioned visual barrier, the emphasis is placed upon the ultimately friendly terms of their relationship. Even so, the Major's recent merging of consciousness with the Puppet Master has placed distance in their relationship as it remains unknown how exactly he relates to this new being. He therefore stands a few feet away from her throughout the shot.
Camera angle: Shot from a low angle, Batou is made to feel imposing despite his good intentions.
Depth of field: With the bulk of visual data occupying the well-fortified foreground, Batou occupies the only visually remaining open space in Q2 and Q4 in the middle ground. Behind him, only a sliver of background in the room behind him is visible before he shuts the door. An angular image with confined space and closed form, this shot feels very claustrophobic.
Lighting: A fairly dark shot with deep shadows, the relative position of the characters are the areas most brightly lit, effectively highlighting their relation to each other.
Color: Against the emerald environment, the reddish hues of Batou's shirt, the rubber tubes of the medical equipment, and the closed door stand out as the points of greatest interest.
Screen graphics/composition: A compositionally dense image visually weighted toward the left in Q1 and Q4 where the Major is sitting behind the symbolic technological fortress, the viewer's eyes move over to Batou in the empty space in search of visual relief. Balancing the shot in this way, Batou's presence is made to feel warm and welcoming.
Editing style: This shot makes a straight cut to Batou sitting down to continue his explanation with the first visible shot of the Major's reactions to him.
Subtext: Batou, old comrade to the Major in Section 9, has rescued the Major from almost certain death, but has done so under conditions not entirely under his control. Now he must explain what happened during the period the Major was taken out of commission.

Shot Four
Shot duration: 26 seconds

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Shot size: A close shot of Batou with the Major in the middle ground, here it is important that we simultaneously see the reactions of both.
Sound: Throughout the scene, Batou's grave but resigned voice can be heard explaining what happened after "the incident." Beside this, incidental noises like the rustle of cloth on the table, the unbuckling of buckles, the opening of a beercan, and the EKG monitor can be heard in appropriate places.
Contrast dominant(s): Illuminated once more by the bright desk light, the Major occupies the main contrast dominant of this shot. Against this bright light, the deep shadow covering Batou creates a secondary contrast dominant.
Character movement: Taking a seat upon the desk positioned to the Major's right, Batou continues his explanation with a posture of resigned disappointment about the verdict of recent conflicts between Section 9 and Section 6. Meanwhile, the Major unbuckles the straps behind her back that tie her into the machines, doing so with a certain erotic fluidity of grace. Finishing this, the Major's eyes and face grow downcast with a look of discontent. Batou, becoming angry as he describes the irresolution of politics as usual, cracks open the beer can like it was a grenade, and looks quite irate. Raising the beer can to his lips, Batou lifts his head upward as if to put things into perspective as he slowly sips the contents until the end of the shot.
Character proxemics: Facing each other only at an indirect 90 degree angle and sitting roughly half the room apart from each other, the emphasis is placed upon the personal and communicative distance that has come between the Major and Batou. These are, after all, not easy things to talk about.
Camera angle: Shot at an eye level, the equal importance of both Batou's and the Major's emotions are here emphasized.
Depth of field: Split into a middle ground and a foreground with no real background, Batou occupies the foreground in close proximity to the viewer while the the Major occupies the middle ground at some distance from camera.
Lighting: Illuminated once more by the bright halo effect of the desk light, the Major appears graceful and enlightened while Batou is covered in shadow and remains in the dark.
Color: In this shot, the bright white shade of the lighting becomes the dominant color to emphasize the contrast between light and darkness.
Screen graphics/composition: An evenly balanced shot with Batou on the left side in Q1 and Q3 and the Major on the right side in Q2 and Q4, the emphasis of the composition is upon the equal import of the character's emotions.
Editing style: Cutting to the opposite side of Batou's face, which is brightly illuminated in directional proportion to the Major, the editing emphasizes the importance of her role in his life.
Subtext: Politics as usual is going completely nowhere, but the newfound wisdom and power attained by the Major in her synthesis with the Puppet Master creates the bright potential for her to do things that under the old paradigm could simply not be done.

Shot Five
Shot duration: 5 seconds

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Shot size: A wide closeup of Batou, this shot is chiefly concerned with his own feelings about recent events.
Sound: As Batou lowers the beer can, it makes its characteristic sound of liquid flowing on aluminum. Starting out in a whisper, Batou remarks upon the perceived missing status of the Major's cyberbrain in a tone implying that he will keep her presence a secret.
Contrast dominant(s): Illuminated by bright light shining from the Major's direction, Batou's face is the contrast dominant throughout the shot.
Character movement: Looking upwards with the beer can still pursed to his lips, Batou seems to be looking at things from a higher perspective that allows him to let go of the anger. In the narrative context of the film, this makes sense because in an earlier scene in the film, it was revealed that cyborgs like him and the Major metabolize alcohol in seconds. They drink alcohol, therefore, not so much for its recreational value, but because it's something that links them back to their basic humanity. Releasing the anger, he slowly lowers the can and lowers his head, turning directly to the Major to reveal her perceived fate.
Character proxemics: Still sitting at the same literal and figurative distance, some of the communicative distance is bridged by Batou turning his head back in the Major's direction.
Camera angle: Shot at a low angle, Batou's role is again made to seem imposing to the Major despite benevolent intentions.
Depth of field: Split into a straightforward foreground and background, Batou occupies the foreground in Q2 and Q4 while the wall of books occupy the background in Q2, Q3, and Q4.
Lighting: Brightly lit by light coming from the Major's direction, Batou's face appears bright and resplendent with only a few shark shadows creeping across the surface. In this, the Major's role of being a source of light within his life is emphasized. The wall of books in the background, meanwhile, appear dark and imposing, practically disappearing into the shadows.
Color: Filled with dark and almost phantasmagoric colors of black, brown, and pale green, the bright light accenting Batou's skin tone emerges quite vibrantly, and seems to emphasize the connection with his humanity.
Screen graphics/composition: A shot balanced to the right where Batou is sitting in Q2 and Q4, the sole emphasis of the shot's composition is placed upon him.
Editing style: Cutting to a shot of the Major as she is sitting, the emphasis of the editing is placed once more upon her feelings.
Subtext: Batou, a determined and faithful friend, refuses to allow the burden of his anger to dehumanize him, but instead looks at things in terms of the bigger picture. Faced with hostile elements that would be disastrous for the Major if she were discovered, Batou can be relied upon to keep a secret, but is a bit imposing and presumptuous about the Major's own decisions in these matters.

Shot Six
Shot duration: 23 seconds

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Shot size: A close shot of of the Major where she is sitting, this shot places the emphasis back on the Major and her feelings.
Sound: Initially, only Batou's voice can be heard gently asking the Major "Okay with you?" After a silent pause, the Major excitedly remarks with her childlike voice upon her admiration for the house's decoration (the Japanese tend to dislike direct conflict and confrontation, and may suddenly change the conversation to avoid one). Courteously inquiring whether this is Batou's safe house so as to place the compliment directly upon his shoulders, Batou responds with the equal compliment "You're the first person I ever brought here." Extending the generous offer "If you want to... You can stay as long as you like," the Major responds with her own adult's voice in a tone of heartfelt gratitude: "Thanks, but I'd better go."
Contrast dominant(s): Returning the colors back to their initial bright emerald state, the Major resumes her position as the contrast dominant for the same reasons given in the second shot.
Character movement: Sitting perfectly motionless in the same downcast and discontented position she was last seen in, it's difficult to tell what exactly is going through the Major's mind, but whatever it is, it's really intense. Remaining still for quite some time, the Major lifts up her head to glance around the room with bright eyes as she admires the decoration. Turning her eyes toward him with an ambiguous look at word she is his very first guest, she turns an open and receptive face in his direction as he begins to extend his invitation to stay. Lowering her face in the same position as before, this time her eyes show melancholic gratitude as she politely declines the offer.
Character proxemics: Still looking away throughout most of the shot, the communicative distance between the Major and Batou remains unbridged until she chooses to bridge it.
Camera angle: Shot from a high angle, the Major is made to seem pushed down and imposed upon partly by Batou, but mostly by a hostile society that would destroy her if it could.
Depth of field: With only a foreground, this shot feels tightly confined and claustrophobic. In this, the shot emphasizes society's confining pressure upon the Major, resulting in a lack of space for life and movement.
Lighting: Lit in a comparatively high key with vibrant lighting and the halo effect, the few shadows that creep across the surface of this shot are quite striking. While definitely a dark shot, its darkness comes more from the camera angle than the lighting.
Color: Returning to the emerald explosion of the second shot, the colors remain just as vibrant, which strikingly contrasts with the gloomy and downcast feeling throughout the shot.
Screen graphics/composition: An evenly balanced shot with closed form, the tight composition of this shot adds to the feeling of claustrophobia and confinement.
Editing style: Cutting to a shot of the Major standing up to walk out the door, the editing style of this shot shows the Major to defy her own confinement in bold willingness to face a hostile world.
Subtext: In contrast to Batou's sense of resignation, the Major is painfully aware of the great injustice that has been done to her, and of her own confinement within a hostile society. Nevertheless willing to show gratitude to her generous host, she is still compelled by the nature of her eternal quest for truth and of her own state of being to leave in search of something greater.

Shot Seven
Shot duration: 5 seconds

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Shot size: A medium close shot of Batou and the Major as she stands up and begins to walk out, the emphasis of the shot is placed upon Batou's lack of either resistance or reaction to her efforts at departure.
Sound: After the abrupt clip-clop rustle of the Major quickly rising to her feet, the only audible noise is the determined tapping of her footsteps upon the floor.
Contrast dominant(s): Occupying the position of greatest illumination, Batou remains the primary contrast dominant throughout the shot despite his lack of movement. Second to Batou, the glowing bookcase in Q1 and Q3 occupies the secondary contrast dominant, effectively foreshadowing the Major's decision to merge with the 'Net. The third contrast dominant is the Major herself, whose emerald dress appears as the darkest subject in the frame.
Character movement: Swiftly rising to her feet, the Major walks directly forward in the direction of the exiting door with eyes and pacing of resolute determination. Batou, by contrast, continues to sit motionless in the same position with an expression of wistful resignation throughout the shot.
Character proxemics: Facing each other only at an indirect 90 degree angle, Batou and the Major are shown to be moving in different directions from each other, and hence are now at cross purposes.
Camera angle: Shot at a straight angle, once more the emphasis of is placed upon the feelings of both characters.
Depth of field: Split between an on-screen background and middle ground and an off-screen foreground, the Major occupies the foreground, Batou occupies the middle ground, and the bookshelf in Q1 and Q3 occupies the background.
Lighting: Lit in a very low key, even the light issuing from the desk light now seems very pale with the Major's departure. Now shadows creep encroach upon almost everything in the frame, giving it a dark and phantasmagoric appearance.
Color: Amidst the now dark and pale emerald room, Batou's red shirt is the brightest color in the frame, but even that appears quite pale. This is indeed a dark and serious moment.
Screen graphics/composition: An evenly centered shot balanced to the left where the bookshelf is standing in Q1 and Q3 and Batou is sitting centered in all four quadrants with his weight shifted to the left (his right). As such, the emphasis of the composition is placed upon the Major's eventual destination and Batou's role and feelings in relation to it.
Editing: A relatively swift cut compared to other cuts in the scene, the editing style of this shot emphasizes the abruptness of the Major's departure. Cutting to Batou's more vocal reaction after she has walked past, it is emphasized that he finally found the courage to say something.
Subtext: Determined to leave in order to continue her quest and make good use of her newfound abilities in spite of a hostile society, the Major quickly rises to leave, and Batou is not going to stop her if she does not wish to stay.

Shot Eight
Shot duration: 9 seconds

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Shot size: A full close-up of Batou with the Major in the walking away in the middle ground, this shot emphasizes his resolution to preserve some semblance of the relationship, or at least understand why she is leaving.
Sound: Speaking with a tone of urgency that stops the Major in her tracks, Batou inquires about what the Major and the Puppet Master had talked about (preferring to communicate with the Major alone, the A.I. used his hacking skills to cut Batou out of the feedback loop), and whether he is "still there, inside of you."
Contrast dominant(s): Illuminated very brightly, Batou's face is the primary contrast dominant of the shot. The Major's emerald dress, meanwhile, continues to stand out vividly against the dark terrain in Q1 and Q3, so she is the secondary contrast dominant.
Character movement: Looking both concerned and genuinely interested, Batou remains in the same position as before with his head tilted downward, but shows more nuance of expression while he speaks. The Major, meanwhile, only has time to walk forward one pace in the shot before stopping abruptly to listen.
Character proxemics: The Major, now with her back turned to Batou at quite some distance, does not display interest in continuing their relationship, but is nevertheless willing to stop and listen. Batou, meanwhile, is still facing her at an 90 degree angle, so they are still at cross purposes.
Camera angle: Shot at a straight angle, the importance of both Batou's and the Major's feelings are emphasized although the Major's motivations remain unclear.
Depth of field: Split into a foreground, middle ground, and background, Batou occupies the foreground in Q2 and Q4, the Major occupies the middle ground in Q3, and is walking toward the door in the background in Q1 and Q3. In this the emphasis is placed upon Batou's proximity and the Major's increasing distance.
Lighting: Illuminated by the bright and radiant light of the halo effect that practically radiates off him, Batou's apt questions come across like a sudden epiphany. This realization of the Major's true significance is deeply reminiscent of Peter's realization that Jesus is the Christ (Matthew 16:13-20), the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13), and the appearance of Jesus to the two pilgrims on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection (Luke 24:13-32) all combined into one. Otherwise, the lighting is as shadowy and low key as a Rembrandt painting.
Color: As in shot five, the emphasis of the color is placed upon the effect of the light upon Batou's skin tone, and has similar significance. Now it is apparent that Batou will retain both light and humanity even after the Major's departure. Otherwise, the colors of the room are as dark and phantasmagoric as ever.
Screen graphics/composition: Compositionally, this shot is balanced toward the right where Batou is sitting in Q2 and Q4 to emphasize the gravity of what he is saying. The left half of the screen where the Major is standing in Q3, meanwhile, is both open and unobstructed, allowing her fluid freedom of movement.
Editing style: Cutting to a rather striking shot of the Major with intense and unnaturally powerful eyes, Batou's questions prove to be more apt than he knows.
Subtext: Finding the courage to ask the Major about her newfound identity before she leaves forever, Batou discovers the resolve to retain his humanity after her departure in the realization of her full significance (and, by implication, his as well).

Shot Nine
Shot duration: 30 seconds

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Shot size: A wide close-up of the Major with Batou sitting in the middle ground, this shot emphasizes the Major's face and expressions as she responds to his query.
Sound: Speaking in a tone of soft-spoken anticipation, the Major asks Batou to remember "the voice we heard on the boat that night." The voice in question was the disembodied female voice of the Puppet Master, who in an earlier scene startlingly interrupted a philosophical conversation about technology and the desire to transcend the human condition by quoting 1 Corinthians 13:12. Referring to the preceeding words in 1 Corinthians 13:11, the Major quotes them in a tone of solemn exhilaration. The entire passage of scripture referred to is as follows:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:11-12 English Standard Version)

In this passage, the apostle Paul teaches that the effect of the final resurrection upon human consciousness will be deeply akin to growing up, the inherent limitations of the human condition overcome in humanity's elevation to see the world as God sees it. In this and other passages, Paul strongly hints at the doctrine of apotheosis, an idea that has since become widely accepted in the Orthodox church and other Christian denominations. Well, says director Mamoru Oshii, perhaps the effect of the Internet and other information technologies can be deeply akin to this, the inherent limitations of geography and institutionalization upon human consciousness overcome by central networking. Of this promise, the Major is the firstfruits that promises a much larger crop. As the Puppet Master himself earlier predicts, "After the merging, you will bear my offspring into the net itself." For this reason, the Major goes on to boldly conclude in an excited tone: "Here before you is neither the program called the Puppet Master nor the woman that was called the Major." By saying this, the Major has effectively declared her reborn status.
Contrast dominant(s): With her vivid white eyes, deep black hair, and vivid lighting, the Major is the primary contrast dominant of the shot. Second to the Major, the spinning lime microcosm in Q3 is the secondary contrast dominant, effectively signaling that that what has happened to the Major is a microcosm of what will happen to the world. Batou, meanwhile, in his dark and contrasting colors is the third contrast dominant.
Character movement: Looking straight into the camera in overt violation of the fourth wall, the Major's eyes and face are slightly downcast as she recalls the incident on the boat and remembers the scripture she is reciting. Lifting her eyes and face to reveal their true glory and intensity, the Major declares her own rebirth. Behind her, Batou continues to remain motionless, effectively signaling that he does not feel personally threatened by her.
Character proxemics: The Major, looking toward the camera with unnaturally intense and powerful eyes, has discovered an incredible source of power and dominates the frame. Batou, meanwhile, occupies the position of power as the tallest subject in the frame, which makes sense considering this is his house. In this, the potential conflict of power between the Major and Batou is signaled, which explains why she must leave.
Camera angle: Shot at a straight angle, no additional support from the camera is required to make these two look very powerful.
Depth of field: Split into a foreground, middle ground, and background, the Major occupies the foreground in close proximity to the camera in Q2 and Q4. Batou and the microcosm, meanwhile, occupy the middle ground in Q1 and Q3. And in the background is the wall, desk light, and medical equipment in Q1 and Q2. In this way, the depth of field ranks subjects in importance by their proximity or distance from the camera. By positioning such a powerful being in close proximity to the camera, the viewer is made to feel threatened by the Major and her presence.
Lighting: Lit in a low key with deep shadows and eerie light, the viewer will have no trouble finding the ghost haunting this Victorian household in Q2 and Q4.
Color: Filled with dark and shadowy shades of emerald, the colors of this shot make Batou look out of his element and the Major deeply in hers.
Screen graphics/composition: Balanced to the right side of the frame, the composition of the shot lends extra weight and gravity to the Major in Q2 and Q4. The open spaces surrounding Batou's region in Q1 and Q3, meanwhile, make his presence seem light and unimposing, a technique emphasizing that he is making no effort to coerce or restrain her.
Editing style: Cutting to a shot with the same mise-en-scène as the eighth shot in this scene, the editing from this shot emphasizes Batou's bemused and sympathetic reaction to what he has just been told.
Subtext: Having merged with the Puppet Master, the Major has attained a leap of consciousness that could very well change the course of history and what it means to be human. She must leave, therefore, to pursue this course of action wherever it may lead her.

Shot Ten
Shot duration: 15 seconds

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Mise-en-scène: This shot uses the exact same setup used in the eighth shot of the scene, only the actions are different.
Sound: Batou, bemused perhaps by the subversive potential of his friend toward a a stagnant society, lets out a small laugh with his nose. Taking a deep breath to speak with the greatest enthusiasm, Batou tells the Major that "You'll find a car key in the left pocket of that dress." Offering her whichever one she likes (yes, Batou is a car fanatic), before he he can tell her the code, the Major interrupts with "2501", the project name of the Puppet Master. At that, the Major sincerely adds "Let's make that our password, for when we meet again."
Character movement: Making a smile that clearly shows his bemusement, Batou's head tilts downward as he laughs in contemplation of the sheer potential of the thing. Lifting his head in radiant joy, he proudly makes the offer of one of his automotive treasures without a hint of reluctance or unhappiness. After all, some sacrifices are definitely worth it to see a matter through to a greater outcome. The Major, turning her head 90 degrees back in Batou's direction, thereby shows her sincerity in her promise to meet Batou again after she leaves.
Character proxemics: Still essentially the same proxemics as the eighth shot, by turning her head back in Batou's direction, the Major bridges some of the communicative distance between them.
Editing style: Cutting to a shot of Batou's safehouse from an outside view, the emphasis of the editing is placed upon the reality of the Major's departure.
Time: Because the Major is not shown opening the door, stepping down the steps, and so on, the transition between this shot and the next one compresses the time of her departure.
Subtext: Having gained a certain measure of understanding about why the Major is leaving, Batou's reaction is very sympathetic, and he extends her a very generous final gift at their parting. The Major, meanwhile, promises to meet him again, so it seems likely that she will continue to watch out for Batou in the future.

Shot Eleven
Shot duration: 17 seconds

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Shot size: Initially a wide exterior shot of Batou's safehouse, this shot is a set-up for a close-up of the Major as she walks on screen from Q4 to Q2 and Q4.
Sound: Throughout the shot, the sound of chirping crickets can be heard. Speaking in a voice of quivering trepidation, the Major wonders out loud "And where shall I go now?" With the beckoning call of the wind blowing through the air, the Major answers herself in a tone of confident resolve "The net is vast and limitless."
Contrast dominant(s): Brightly lit against the dark backdrop surrounding her, the Major is the contrast dominant of the shot.
Character movement: Walking forward with a look of anxiety and trepidation evocative of "Hansel and Gretel", the Major pauses and lowers her head to audibly ponder her present course. Feeling the wind rustle through her hair, she lowers her head even further with a facial expression of confident resolve as she remarks upon the vastness of the net, and stays that way for the rest of the shot, her hair fatefully blowing in the wind.
Camera angle: Shot from a low angle emphasizing the Major's power compared to our own, when the Major looks frightened, the viewer feels frightened too. When her expression changes to confidence, the viewer feels confident about her prospects as well.
Depth of field: Split into a foreground and a background, the Major occupies the foreground in close proximity to the camera, while Batou's safe house is distant behind her in the background.
Lighting: Lit in pale and ambiguous sunlight that could mean either early dawn or late sunset, the Major's lighting remains bright and crisp amongst the hazy landscape of uncertainty.
Color: Against the pale colors of her environment, the vibrant colors of the Major appear striking and vivid.
Screen graphics/composition: Compositionally, the balance of this shot is weighted to the right where the Major emerges from the direction of the dark and looming trees in Q2 in Q4. In this way, the shot makes visual reference to "Hansel and Gretel", a story about lost children whose values become insecure upon leaving home and entering a dark and haunted wood.
Editing style: Cutting to a shot of the Major standing on a tall precipice overlooking the information age metropolis, the editing style emphasizes the Major's discovery of security in her values and her mastery of the technologies it is built upon.
Subtext: Leaving Batou's safe house in a state of anxiety and trepidation as her values are brought into conflict with a hostile and uncertain world, the Major's plight is deeply reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel as they leave home and enter the dark and haunted wood. Realizing that the net is a vast and limitless domain she can gain mastery over, the Major determines to merge directly with the net in an act of mythic apotheosis.

Shot Twelve
Shot duration: 26 seconds

Beginning frame

End frame

Shot size: A wide shot of the Major overlooking the information age metropolis, this shot emphasizes the Major gaining mastery over its technological domain.
Sound: With the tolling ceremonial bells and the beating of ceremonial drums in the rhythm of a solemn procession, the final images on screen take on a more somber tone. Throughout Ghost in the Shell, a series of haunting choral wedding songs filled with deeply mythic imagery symbolic of the union of the Major and the Puppet Master are played in the background, and this is the beginning of "Chant III - Reincarnation", the third and final song in the series. For Japanese audiences, this song continues to play on through the credits, effectively emphasizing the film's mythological elements. American audiences, meanwhile, are treated to "One Minute Warning" by The Passengers (an electronic side project of Brian Eno and Bono of U2) at the end credits. An introspective IDM track, this song places the emphasis upon the film's technological elements. Throughout this shot, the sound of electronic beeping noises used in all kinds of consumer technologies can be heard off in the distance, sonically signaling the flow of information and commerce throughout the metropolis.
Contrast dominant(s): As the darkest subject in the frame, the the Major upon the hill is the primary contrast dominant, while the metropolis below is the secondary contrast dominant. Once the camera tilts in to pull the Major out of sight, the city is so visually saturated with information that it is almost impossible to identify the contrast dominant.
Character movement: Standing aloft overlooking the city with her left hand on her hip, her right hand resting upon her skirt, and one foot forward, the Major never moves, but keeps the view throughout her time in the shot.
Character proxemics: Placed in the position of power overlooking the technological metropolis, the city is shown to no longer be any threat to the Major, but rather, by way of its information technologies, it is her domain.
Camera movement: Slowly tilting in from a shot of the Major in Q1 and Q3 to the vast city skyline, the emphasis of the shot is placed the Major's immense domain by way of the net.
Camera angle: Shot at a high angle that makes the viewer see the city as the Major is currently seeing it, we too can sense the immense feeling of power and exhilaration that comes with such a scenic view.
Depth of field: Split into a foreground and background, the Major is standing in the foreground in Q1 and Q3 and is overlooking the vast city in the background in all four quadrants. In this, the emphasis is placed upon her distance from the city and the hostile society it represents, which is no longer able to harm her.
Lighting: Against the pale sunlight, the lights of the city appear bright and vibrant, pulsing with visual information. The Major, by contrast, is lit in a low key that makes her appear as the hidden shadow lurking above.
Color: Making extensive use of pale but glowing shades of purple, blue, green, and yellow, the colors of this shot emphasize the city's dense and pulsing saturation with information and the relation of city light to the sunlight of the rising or setting sun.
Screen graphics/composition: Compositionally, this shot is balanced toward the right, with leading lines moving in a diagonal down to up left to right motion. In this way, the viewer's eyes are prepared for the final frame of the shot with tall skyscrapers off in the distance. An incredibly dense shot saturated with visual information, the buildings of the technological metropolis arranged like a giant circuit board, the relation of the city to the net is thereby emphasized.
Editing style: Gradually fading to black into the credits, the editing style emphasizes the enduring nature of the city before the viewer, which will continue to linger on long after the credits have faded.
Subtext: Having overcome the threat of a hostile society by way of her merger of consciousness with the Puppet Master and mythic apotheosis onto the net, the Major stands aloft upon the towering precipice to look out upon her vast domain, an immense technological metropolis pulsing with life and information.

On "Smashing Economic Idols"

2009-10-08T00:36:00.006-06:00

The following was posted in response to an article by Julie Clawson titled "Smashing Economic Idols" (link). Apologies for repeating the same words in a single sentence, I tend to make this mistake in less formal writings.

While I sympathize with your general intentions in this post, I'm afraid your statements "I'm a capitalist. I'm not anti-globalisation. [sic]" create an irreconcilable textual contradiction to the contents of the targum of Romans. The first rule of capitalism is that it must expand or die, and it is precisely this imperialistic "narrative of growth" that the latter critiques. So the host of the radio show on which you were interviewed expresses concern with your ideas believed to express "that people [should] stop or lower their consumption." This is understandable, since it is precisely within the transfer of commodities that capital, resources, and sign-values are redistributed within capitalist society, a fact obscured by the process of commodity fetishism and its tendency to obscure the nature of relations between producers and consumers. If your mircrocosmic actions of eschewing consumerism are applied on the macrocosmic scale, either by way of the categorical imperative, or by the apt maxim "the personal is political", then you have already implicitly posited another means of wealth redistibution for which you must account. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I understand you are a feminist theologian, which is a very good thing to be. On that note, I am reminded Simone de Beauvoir's brilliant arguments in The Second Sex, in which she ultimately traces the dialectical oppression of woman as the Other to the "imperialism of human consciousness", itself rooted in the human quest for transcendence. Naturally, this tendency toward patriarchal oppression of women in the name of imperial transcendence comes at a stiff price (pun intended), insofar as it constitutes an enforced misrelation of the sexes that obscures their true nature. Within this framework, it is man's dialectical act of propping himself up as the Subject and woman as the Other within personal and social relations that constitutes this misrelation. Now, if we trace Beauvoir's reasoning back to Soren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness unto Death" by way of Sartre, we realize that this oppression of the Other is a state of despair (and hence sin) insofar as "despair is the misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself to itself." Applying Kierkegaard to give a whole new dimension to Beauvoir's line of reasoning, it is shown that man's quest for empire-building as the Subject of history ultimately leads to false transcendence and despair, insofar as he has tried to upstage God as the true Subject of history, the One who can grant ultimate transcendence. The Christian, then, should challenge any imperialistic framework by which people are denigrated as the Other as a form of idolatry, because Jesus recognizes no one as the Other, but as one of God's children. Whence then, this failure to criticize the institution of globalized capitalism when its naked apparatus of corporate degradation and exploitation of Southern peoples as the Other in the name of imperial transcendence stands right before your face? Shall we neglect our brothers and sisters in the global South, the current epicenters of Christianity, in the name of Northern propriety? I urge you, therefore, to put long hard thought into the macrocosmic implications of your political and theological ideas.

The Cosmic Movie Screen: On the Central Themes of Hinduism (Comparative Religions Homework)

2009-10-01T13:03:00.005-06:00

Hinduism is an ancient religion that has had a lasting cultural influence on the Indian subcontinent. While it is difficult to date the origins of Hinduism with any certainty, its influence may begin as early as about 1500 B.C., or as late as the between the 6th or 4th centuries B.C., depending on one's view of the relation of the Vedic period to Hinduism proper. Even so, Hindu scholar Arvind Sharma points out that "If the term is used to denote the beliefs and practices of all those people who now consider themselves Hindus, then Hinduism might turn out to be older than civilization, as Negrito and proto-Australoid elements can be identified even in present-day Hinduism. If Hinduism appears uncivilized at times, it is because it is older than civilization." [1] Whatever one's views of Hindu origins, its lasting and pervasive influence over Indian culture is indisputable. Beyond India, Hinduism has gradually rippled Westward ever since copies of Indian scripture began to surface in Europe in the 18th century to enthusiastic response. This enthusiasm would reach its height in the 1960's as religious seekers and counterculturalists looked to the East as a source of mystic spirituality, which has traditionally been eschewed by mainline Protestantism and the Enlightenment. Since then, Hinduism has had a subtle but pervasive influence upon the Western religious landscape. Whether looking Eastward to consider the predominant religion of a rising global economic power, looking Westward to trends in contemporary religion, or simply chatting with an Indian friend on Facebook, it helps to have a good working knowledge of Hinduism.

At present, there are four main schools of Hinduism, Absolutistic Hinduism, Theistic Hinduism, Activistic Hinduism, and Militant Hinduism. Absolutistic Hinduism is a deeply contemplative tradition heavily influenced by Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), who "while yet in his teens, underwent a spontaneous mystical experience; as a result of it, he finally left his home and spent the rest of his life on what is known as the hill of the holy beacon, from which he never descended." [2] Employing ascetic renunciation of the body and mind, Absolutistic Hinduism seeks knowledge of the essential unity of the self with the Absolute or Godhead, and remains extremely popular among Hindu intellectuals. Theistic Hinduism, by contrast, is an intensely devotional school whose major figure was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886), a mystic "who experimented, with dazzling versatility, not only with various forms of Hindu theism but also with Islam and Christianity." [3] Emphasizing devotional worship of both God and Goddess as a path to union with the Divine, the mode of Theistic Hinduism is more experiential than intellectual. Teaching the essential unity of all religions combined with a strong catholicity of outlook within Hinduism, Ramakrishna's views of Hindu inclusivism have become a highly influential voice on the subject.

Where the previous two schools tend to emphasize mystical practice over social action, the next two schools place keen interest in the social implications of Hindu belief and practice. Activistic Hinduism is a school of Hinduism championed by Mahatma Gandhi "characterized by nonviolence, courage, faith in God, truth, ecumenicism, self-sacrifice, social service, and a whole constellation of similar virtues pursued for the good of all or savodaya--to use Gandhi's expression." [4] Apparently having taken very good notes from Leo Tolstoy's classic The Kingdom of God is Within You, Mahatma Gandhi organized some of the most successful movements of nonviolent resistance in history, effectively playing a crucial role in gaining India's independence from the British empire, and inspiring other like-minded movements. For the Activistic Hindu, the work of striving for, and implementing, a just society through social activism is itself a path to God-realization. Militant Hinduism, by contrast, shares in Activistic Hinduism's concern for social activism, but not in its commitment to nonviolent methods. Operating with a praxis emphasizing religious nationalism above universal tolerance, Militant Hinduism is perhaps best exemplified by the debate between Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gandhi over whether the martial setting of the Bhagavadgita should be taken literally (the position of the former) or allegorically (the position of the latter) in relation to Hindu activism. In 1992, Militant Hinduism reached a head with the destruction of a mosque believed to have been built upon the site where Lord Rama (of the epic Ramayana) was born, an event Arvind Sharma likens to Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon. [5] On the extreme end of Militant Hinduism is fundamentalist Hinduism, which holds that the Indian constitution unjustly favors minority groups above Hindus, and that toleration of non-Hindu religions must be earned by conformity to its standards rather than given. Like most fundamentalisms, fundamentalist Hinduism walks the razor's edge between postcolonial resistance to globalized capitalism, and putting the Other in their place, that is, the place chosen for them.

Hitherto, two consistent strands run throughout these very different schools of Hindu practice, binding them together in common belief. The first, and most important strand is that human life is a quest for the realization of the essential unity of the self with the Divine, because the Divine is within all things. Where we are conditioned to regard ourselves as separate and distinct from others, the cosmos, and the Divine, these distinctions are ultimately illusory because the Divine is everything. As Arvind Sharma puts it, "The successful culmination of this quest leads to the realization that we ourselves, in reality, are the ultimate ground of the universe on which the drama of creation is being enacted, like a movie on a screen. We are like the screen but have wrongly identified with the characters on it; because of this wrong identification, we seem to undergo the experiences of the characters with whom we have identified--the empirical self." [6] Because of this illusion, our lives are bound up in false desires that keep us imprisoned within samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth. The final and ultimate telos of a human being, therefore, is moksa, the attainment of liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth to become fully at one with the Divine, free from the limitations of subjective constitution. Of course, this way of looking at things stands in marked contrast to the Abrahamic religions, in which the image of the transcendent creator God is imprinted within all human beings, granting them God's moral attributes and the capacity for relationship with God and others, but none of God's ontological attributes (i.e. omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience). Within these religions, the saving acts of God take on the prime importance, and final salvation comes when God raises the dead to life body and soul as fully constituted subjects in eternal right relationship to God and others. The problem, therefore, is relational in nature, with the introduction of sin causing the image of God to tarnish, so that the glory of relational connections have become distorted and obscured. What these differences illustrate is that how we define the problem of the human condition plays a crucial role in how we define its solution.

Which brings us, then, to the second strand of common belief among these four schools of Hinduism, that of pluralistic inclusivism within Hinduism and toward other religions. In practice, this means that there is no one set path toward the ultimate goal applicable to everyone, but rather that there are many paths to the Divine. Whatever is said about the beliefs of one Hindu may not hold true the case or another Hindu, but neither is any less Hindu than the other. Conversely, there is no real reason to assume that adherents of other religions are any less far along in this quest than Hindus are, or that Hindus should distance themselves from their beliefs. Consequently, syncretism is a common tendency within Hinduism even as the beliefs that arise from such a synthesis may not ultimately resemble those of the parent religion. Throughout its history, India has been conquered by various empires who introduce foreign religious and cultural elements. Faced with the challenge of such cultural and religious groups, Hinduism has historically adopted a strategy of accommodation and synthesis to assimilate the invader into the fold. Unable to accomplish this in the case of Islam during the medieval period (ca. 1000-ca. 1800), a period of immense culture shock ensued, resulting in a rigidified caste system, longstanding rivalry between Hindus and Muslims, and an efflorescence of intense devotional poetry. Later, with the British empire's subsumption of India (ca. 1800-1947) came Christian missionaries, who sought to introduce Christianity on a much larger scale than previously attempted by the St. Thomas Christians of Kerala (a community which may date as far back as the apostolic period of the first century). While the idea of imperialists for Jesus is really embarrassing in my book, the cultural and religious legacy of British colonialism is deeply ambiguous, producing more ambivalent reactions. In any event, Muslims and Christians pose a distinct challenge to Hindu inclusivism insofar as they prefer to remain the Other rather than opt for full inclusion in Hindu religion and society. This may be seen, for example, in clashes between Muslims and Hindus, or the ongoing persecution of Dalit and lower-caste Christians by Hindu fundamentalists. Over the next century, Philip Jenkins expresses grave concerns of escalating religious violence in India as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity make inroads among Dalits, lower-castes, and tribal groups at the fringes of Hindu society, a trend which has already brought violent backlash from Hindu nationalists. [7] Such developments in the foreseeable future will surely test the limits both of Hindu toleration, and of its reputation for such abroad.

While Hindu religious tolerance seeks to be comprehensive, it would be a mistake to assume by the same token that it is an 'anything goes' religion. Guiding Hindu practice are the twin concepts of karma and dharma. Karma is the "principle that explains the experiences that befall one... the doctrine of karma... states that actions produce consequences commensurate with their moral quality, which may fructify over several lives. The individual involved in this cosmic process is called the jiva, a ripple in the cosmic ocean of samsara." [8] At some stage in the game, the doctrine of karma became linked to one's birth and standing within the varna system, which ranks classes from highest to lowest as "the intellectual (brahmana); the warrior and administrator (ksatriya); the farmer and trader (vaisya); and the laborer (sudra)." [9] In addition to these four varnas are the Dalits ("the downtrodden"), a group of "outcastes" comprising some 15-20% of Indians traditionally relegated to the realm of abjection to carry out labors regarded as ritually polluting. [10] While the three leaders formerly mentioned were strongly opposed the institute of untouchability, [11] and the Indian constitution and The Prevention of Atrocities act provides formal legal sanction against political and economic violence and discrimination against the "scheduled classes", the widespread persecution of Dalits remains a serious concern in contemporary India, particularly in rural areas. Whereas the tendency of the medieval period was to rigidify the caste system in the wake of the Muslim threat, today the opposite development is to soften the boundaries between varnas under the influence of modernity. But while one's varna may no longer bind their destiny, the irresistible influence of karma is held to operate throughout.

Closely related to karma is dharma, which may be defined as "the guiding principle one identifies as one's own specific duty as a member of a particular class (varna); in a particular stage (asrama) of life; and in pursuing a particular goal (parusartha) consistently with one's humanity (sadharana dharma) as expressed in universal values such as charity, purity, and so on." [12] Where the philosopher Immanuel Kant would ask "What ought I to do?", dharma seeks to answer precisely that question. In the traditional mode of Hinduism, one's dharma depends upon one's varna, so that a brahmin has a brahmin's duties, a vaisya a vaisya's duties, and so on. For better or worse, here there can be no doubt as to one's identity or what is expected of them. However, as the caste system fades, a particular passage outlining a set of dharma binding upon all varnas grows in importance. "Duties common to all castes are patience, truthfulness, restraint, purity, liberality, self-control, not to kill, obedience toward one's gurus, visiting places of pilgrimage, sympathy, straightforwardness, freedom from covetuousness, reverence toward gods and Brahmins, and freedom from anger." [13]

If every Hindu is to reverence the gods, then what are the gods like, and how does this relate to the quest for oneness with the Divine? Like the projected drama of the human condition, the drama of the gods plays out on the screen of the cosmos. But unlike those unfortunate humans that identified with the illusions onscreen, the divine actors and actresses are fully aware that they are the screen, and that they are distinct neither from each other's performances nor from the Director. The scenes and acts will come and go in their due time, but they will give their all to the show. The four principle manifestations of deity are Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer, and Shakti the Mother-Goddess and divine-feminine principle. These deities in turn may hypostatize and sub-hypostatize into thousands of gods and goddesses which the Hindu may worship as they have an affinity for. For example, while the present author is not a Hindu, he admits a certain affinity for Kali, whose dreadful countenance, accessories including "a strange skull-topped staff and... a garland of human heads", terrifying mannerisms, and stylish demon-slaying win her major Goth-cred. As it so happens, the cult (ritual worship) of Kali is going very strong, and is much more benevolent in praxis than the late-blooming, slave-driving, human-sacrificing Thuggees of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But for those not inclined to the dark passion and maternal love Kali embodies, there's always the ever-popular Krishna and Lord Rama. But the big secret of all this, which isn't really a secret at all, is that there really is only one God, because the real is one. This is made explicit in a dialogue between the Hindu sage Yajnavalkya and Vidagdha Sakalya. Answering Vidagda's query as to how many gods there are, Yajnavalkya starts with 3,306, and counts down to one.

Finally, every observant Hindu reveres the Vedas. As a rule, direct attacks on the Vedas, and iconoclasm of the symbols of the Vedas (i.e. the cow), are the domain of religious rivals of the Hindus such as the Buddhists, Sikhs, and Muslims. As Arvind Sharma puts it, "One can... trace the destiny of Hinduism with the Veda first as its integrating, then its organizing, and then its legitimizing principle... A Hindu may not denounce the Veda, but he or she can renounce the Veda." [14] In the literal sense, the Vedas are a group of four Sanskrit works, of which the Rig-Veda is the most important and influential. In its final form (ca. 1200 B.C.), the Rig-Veda is a set of songs of sacrifice to the gods of the Aryans, who obtained victory over the Dasyas with the help of the war-god Indra, culminating in the development of "cosmic speculations that search for the oneness of all being." [15] Of course, most Hindus do not know Sanskrit, and because the highly oral culture of the Hindus holds the work to only retain its holy power in its original spoken language, the average devout Hindu may hear many very powerful and holy things at a recitation of the Vedas, but these likely have little to do with what is actually written down. Hence, the Vedas as text are of far less importance than the "Vedas" as the Hindu symbolic, and it is under these that Hindus unite in common identity amidst their many differences.

Endnotes:

1. Arvind Sharma, "Hinduism" in Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced By Preeminent Scholars From Each Tradition edited by Arvind Sharma p. 36
2. Ibid. p. 14
3. Ibid. p. 15
4. Ibid. p. 17
5. Ibid. p. 55
6. Ibid. p. 14
7. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity p. 182-185
8. Arvind Sharma, "Hinduism" in Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced By Preeminent Scholars From Each Tradition edited by Arvind Sharma p. 22
9. Ibid. p. 25
10. Robert E. Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scrptures: Eastern Religions p. 45, commenting on the Laws of Manu 10.51-57
11. Arvind Sharma, "Hinduism" in Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced By Preeminent Scholars From Each Tradition edited by Arvind Sharma p. 17
12. Ibid. p. 25
13. Institutes of Vishnu 2-1.17. cited in Robert E. Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scrptures: Eastern Religions p. 45
14. Arvind Sharma, "Hinduism" in Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced By Preeminent Scholars From Each Tradition edited by Arvind Sharma p. 17
15. Robert E. Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures: Eastern Religions p. 28

Through the Stargate: Thoughts on 2001: A Space Odyssey

2009-09-28T23:23:00.007-06:00

The following is re-posted from a thread at the Christian Anime Alliance (link). Having previously posted that I was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey that night, my friend ich1990 and I started an exchange. My post is made under GhostontheNet.

ich1990: I am curious, what did you think of this movie? Personally, this movies popularity seems to me to be like a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes". Everybody says this is one of the best movies of all time, etc., etc. I seem to be one of the few people who thoroughly disliked it. Maybe in the '60s this was cutting edge cinematography, but those monkey suits didn't age well.

GhostontheNet: Well, suffice to say, a lot of stuff went down in 1968, and a lot of narrative-shifting Rubicon films came out that year. In the horror genre, for example, 1968 saw Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead, two films that revolutionized the genre by removing temporal and geographical distance from contemporary settings to make them the site of horror, blurring the boundaries between monster and family until the two became more or less indistinguishable, and assigning an adversarial or incompetent role to patriarchal authority figures formerly regarded as potent to stop the monster and restore the status quo. Needless to say, that opened up many new possibilities for social critique in the horror genre, as quite a number of critics since Robin Wood have agreed. In regard to 2001: A Space Odyssey, I think the film does an excellent job of capturing the anticipation and anxiety of the period. It is indeed one of the most terrifying and exciting movies I have ever seen. The famous Stargate sequence is often noted to have had a deep resonance with the counterculture, who were experimenting with drugs to challenge mainstream Western values and ideologies. But where many Christians have taken the Reaganite view that counterculture is dangerous, and its influence is to be stifled, I think Francis Schaeffer was wiser than his monstrous progeny when he said that the counterculture was asking the right questions, but not finding the right answers. (For more information about Francis Schaeffer and counterculture, read this article from Ship of Fools.)

At first glance, 2001: A Space Odyssey may seem threatening to Christians insofar as it uses evolutionary themes to pose the question as to whether life has meaning. Perhaps like the Planet of the Apes series, it may employ such themes to deny teleology in favor of nihilism. However, a closer reading of the film reveals it to be steeped in Christian imagery that is employed in a way that is helpful to persons of faith. One of the central images of the film is the ancient technological monolith, which is tall, thin, black, book-like, and serves as the medium of transmission of an advanced civilization. This we may take as Holy Scripture, which serves as the medium of revelation of God, who rules wisely over heaven, and seeks to reign "on earth as in heaven" in similar Wisdom. At the climax of the film, the book is opened (so to speak), and the pure light of the Word (Logos) is startlingly revealed. Finally, at the very end of the film, an infant Christ figure is born and comes to earth, the Word made flesh who dwells among us to change the course of history.

So what on earth does that have to do with drugs and counterculture in the 60's? I think one of the major reasons illicit drugs and sexuality has been such a juggernaut is because of the cultural legacy of Protestantism in regard to its denigration of Christian mysticism. For a generation hungry for mystic spirituality, but denied it in the mainstream churches, the options were basically either to look for sex and drugs close to home to open the doors of perception, or to look East where mystic spirituality is more culturally encouraged. I think that for one of the first lost generations, the generation in which Blind Faith sang "Can't Find My Way Home" in reference to "Hansel and Gretel", what they were really seeking was mystic union with God. You can see this in films like Easy Rider, in which an agnostic pilgrim funded by a lucrative cocaine deal discovers faith in a surprising assortment of holy sites that would not ordinarily be thought of as such. Perhaps it is inevitable that through the dark forest we wander into the gingerbread house before we find our way home. In this respect, 2001: A Space Odyssey provided, and continues to provide, an important signpost along the way.

So yeah, it isn't a perfect film by any means. The ape costumes are pretty silly. On the other hand, the political satire inherent in these scenes of early humans going apeshit and inventing the implements of war and domination are quite delicious in light of the contemporaneous Vietnam war (a war rooted in post-colonial conflict). Assuming we missed the point, the relatively small distance in the jump cut from the bone to the spaceship cues us in that we have not nearly made so much "progress" as the stark modernist decor of the misse-en-scene would lead us to believe. As far as personal gripes with the film, I basically have two. My first gripe is the way the film relegates women to the most trite and inane roles in the frontier of space exploration, reinforcing the patriarchal attitude that they are not capable of handling such important responsibilities. This film would have had remarkable power to challenge this tendency of earlier science fiction films, but instead, it reinforced it. My second gripe is my incredulity towards the naive overconfidence of the protagonists in HAL's infallibility. This is to a certain extent encouraged in the film narrative, but as a computer user in 2009 frequently facing crashes and the blue screen of death, I find this to be one of the film's most unbelievable elements.

On the Importance of Religion (Comparative Religions Homework)

2009-09-13T13:32:00.007-06:00

Question: What is it you take the importance of religion to be? Is it crucial for one to live a good life? Is it necessary for one to be religious to be ethical, or a good person?

Answer: On the whole, religion assumes the task of the symbolic mapping of the subject, the noumena, the numinous, the ethnos (here defined as any people group with shared culture), and the other/Other. Within this symbolic mapping, objects or subjects that defy normative patterns of classification become figures of abjection, described by Julia Kristeva as a perilous no-man's land between object and subject. Among abjects, some are identified as numin by way of their capacity to arouse corresponding apprehension of fear and fascination in the subject, and are labeled as "taboo". The word "taboo" literally means 'charged with power,' hence abjects that are taboo are a source of potential danger. In these rudimentary stages, the numinous is encountered as the "daemonic", an unknown and unmapped heterogeneous mixture of powers ranging from the benevolent (as in Socrates' guiding divine voice, or "daemon") to the hostile (as in Judeo-Christian descriptions of hostile spirits as "demons", a term reflective of the more perjorative use of the word in late Hellenistic culture). As repeated encounters with the numinous are made under varying cultural conditions, ways of avoiding the dangerous elements and establishing benevolent contact are discovered, effectively bringing about a categorical shift from the abject to the sacred. Whereas secularity must more or less adopt a strategy of cultural repression in regard to abjection to maintain its "rational" purity mapping, religion alone can mediate the encounter and reconciliation with abjection by way of the sacred. Through this capacity for reconciliation, the benevolent potential and importance of religion is incalculable, far outweighing the negativities related to its capacity for the misplacement of abjection.

Is religion crucial for one to live a good life, then? Immediately, I must dispense with this framing of the question, for the indefinite article "a" in connection with "good life" obscures its connection to philosophical inquiry into "the good life", that is to say, the best way to live as a human being. Certainly religion is not essential to living "a good life" in the sense that food, water, shelter, culture, and companionship is. Indeed, these days many people seem to be living nicely without it, and ask "What is the purpose of religion for us? Why do we need it?" However, as Keiji Nishitani observes, "Our ordinary mode of being is restricted to these levels of natural or cultural life. But it is in breaking through that ordinary mode of being and overturning it from the ground up, in pressing us back to the elemental source of life where life itself is seen as useless, that religion becomes something we need--a must for life." (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness p. 2) Within the encounter with abjection is an encounter with the nihility, or nothingness that lies at the home-ground of existence. This is the reason Julia Kristeva's inquiry into abjection from the standpoint of abjection in the teeth of both religion and modern "progress" ultimately ends in overt nihilism. Even where one encounters the obvious somethingness of the numinous, its incalculable demands terrify us with the knowledge of the underlying nothingness at the heart of our being. Hence, "religion upsets the posture from which we think of ourselves as telos and center of all things. Instead, religion poses as a starting point the question: 'For what purpose do I exist?' We become aware of religion as a need, as a must for life, only at the level of life at which everything else loses its necessity and its utility... When we come to doubt the meaning of our existence in this way, when we have become a question to ourselves, the religious quest awakens within us." (Ibid. p. 3)

Socrates is famous for the saying "The unexamined life is not worth living." While critical of Athenian theology for what he argued were its distortions of deity, from his commissioning by the Oracle of Delphi to his brave death under accusations related to his religious beliefs, Socrates himself embodied the religious quest. In contrast, secularity, by way of its refusal to face abjection and the nihility that lies underneath, is shown up to really be another variant of the unexamined life, and hence has no legitimate claim to represent the good life. Only the nihilist, absurdist, and naturalistic existentialist can legitimately say they have faced such threatening realities head on and remained non-religious. But these views never claimed to embody the good life, only to live out the existence into which they were flung. It stands to reason, then, that either the good life does not exist, or religion is a necessary precondition to its attainment. For those who have experienced the fullness and satisfaction of a benevolent encounter with the numinous, this claim is really not so far-fetched.

Is it necessary, then, for one to be religious to be ethical, or a good person? Insofar as ethics in practice is dependent upon the choices of the subject, it is not absolutely necessary for the ethical person to be religious. Philosophers like Kierkegaard indeed argue that a grasp of the ethical mode of existence is a necessary precursor to the religious mode of existence, rather than the other way around. At the level of moral ontology, the inquiry into what exactly constitutes a moral principle and gives it validity, it could easily be argued that religion is necessary to give ethics their substance. Secular theories of ethics are typically constituted on this or that appeal to human power, but this fails to provide foundation for moral confrontation with said power. For example, if human rights are constituted by one's society, then are those societies that do not recognize human rights legitimate, and could a society simply decide that such rights no longer have any force within its jurisdiction? If we are to take the other as an end (telos) in themselves, then something about their being must have a telos in the first place. No description of bio-physical processes includes having a telos, so it would seem that taking a person as an end in themselves constitutes a recognition of the numinous within them. In this respect, then, religion is necessary for ethics.

Hayao Miyazaki's Boot Camp and the Hyperreal

2009-09-04T17:26:00.003-06:00

The following is re-posted from a thread at the Christian Anime Alliance (link). My post is made under GhostontheNet.

Shao Feng-Li: Having experimented with digital and CG technology on Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki has gone back to basics for Ponyo, which is made up of a stunning 170,000 individual hand-painted frames. He says he has seen none of the landmark digital animations of the past two decades, including Toy Story and Pixar Studio’s recent smash Wall.E, despite being friends with Pixar’s creative director John Lasseter.

***

“I can’t stand modern movies,” he winces. “The images are too weird and eccentric for me.” He shuns TV and most modern media, reading books or travelling instead. It is no surprise to find that the multimillionaire director’s car, parked outside the Ghibli studio, is an antique Citröen CV, an icon of minimalist, unfussy driving.

Ghibli’s creative engine house is a reflection of its founder’s preoccupation with authenticity and distrust of popular culture. New talent (the studio has just added another 150 animators to its 270 full-time staff) is tested out in a sort of animation boot camp, where the use of cell phones, blogs, iPods and other electronic devices is forbidden.

“Young people are surrounded by virtual things,” he laments. “They lack real experience of life and lose their imaginations. Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.”

He is known to lecture constantly on the need to find harmony between the human hand, eye and brain, and the ever-expanding computer toolbox. Ponyo, he says, is partly about living without technology. “Most people depend on the internet and cellphones to survive, but what happens when they stop working? I wanted to create a mother and child who wouldn’t be defeated by life without them.”

***

Here's the link to the article: http://timmaughanbooks.com/2009/05/08/miyazaki-speaks/

GhostontheNet: I guess you could say this is an example of hyperreality and its discontents. For those unfamiliar with the concept of hyperreality in semiotics and post-modern philosophy, the term refers to social situations in which the simulcra or simulation of reality overshadows reality itself in importance, and human consciousness is unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. In illustrating this concept, Jean Baudrillard cites a scenario from Lewis Carroll of "a society whose cartographers create a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent. When the empire declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining – just the hyperreal." (Wikipedia, "Hyperreality" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality>) Naturally, Wikipedia is itself an excellent example of this principle in action. But then, what indeed is the world we live in if not a place where the cartographer scenario has come to pass? Miyazaki's efforts to show that his life and work are "real" is filled with irony, but completely understandable. Here is the man who has built his own media empire of fantasy, who has constructed a theme park analogous to Disneyland. Disneyland, of course, is of great interest to Baudrilliard, who writes:

The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It's meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusion of their real childishness. (Ibid.)

Having built close ties to this notoriously hyperreal media empire, Miyazaki disavows these ties by stating that contemporary cinema in general, and Pixar's films in particular, are too technological to be real/authentic. Rather, to show in an article that is presenting a simulated representation of him that he is living a completely real and authentic life, he is presented as doing the following. 1. He drives in an artificially constructed antique vehicle with an equally artificially constructed sign-value of "minimalist, unfussy driving." This distinguishes him from those who drive artificially constructed contemporary vehicles with an equally artificially constructed sign-value of 'flashy, glamorous driving.' 2. He only consumes media through an analog, rather than digital medium. Of course, these days books are written, edited, and published through digital means, so the illusion of escape through the analog medium is itself a creation of the digital medium. And, as has often been noted, books are a simulated representation of reality, not reality itself. 3. He frequently travels away from the artificiality of Japanese culture to immerse in the sights, sounds, signs, and representations of other regions. Of course, the fact that most of these regions are probably reachable by airport and the interconnected tourist industry probably means he will find himself in just as much of a hyperreal environment as when he started.

How then, do Miyazaki's films take on the characteristic of the real and authentic? Apparently, first and foremost, by isolating his animators from electronic culture in a secluded "boot camp" away from mainstream Japanese society. Naturally, mainstream society is often quite alarmed by those who withdraw to such seclusion, because it signals their isolation from reality. Nevertheless, the animators feel very powerful experiences of "pain and shock and emotions" in boot camp, so their grasp of reality is very good. Still, it must be emphasized that cultists and fringe groups who have similar experiences under similar conditions do not have a good grasp of reality, so why Miyazaki has the magic touch, and they don't, nobody really knows. 'Technology stifles the imagination,' says Miyazaki, citing the many films he has not seen over the past few decades, because their images are too "weird and eccentric." That such 'weirdness' and 'eccentricity' could signal a high level of imagination is a thought lost to the talented director, who himself has been ascribed the cultural sign-value of "weird and eccentric." That the "real" Hayao Miyazaki considers himself to be no such thing is of no great importance, because the public image constructed by representations of him in the media has overshadowed the man himself. Sorry Miyazaki, the matrix has you.

Shadows on the Movie Screen: My 13 Favorite Films

2009-08-15T20:01:00.001-06:00

1. Nosferatu the Vampyre directed by Werner Herzog
2. Sleepy Hollow directed by Tim Burton
3. Pan's Labyrinth directed by Guillermo del Torro
4. Edward Scissorhands directed by Tim Burton
5. Let the Right One In directed by Tomas Alfredson
6. Ginger Snaps directed by John Fawcett
7. Dawn of the Dead directed by George A. Romero
8. The Dark Crystal directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz
9. Suspiria directed by Dario Argento
10. The Ring directed by Gore Verbinski
11. 28 Days Later directed by Danny Boyle
12. Batman Begins directed by Christopher Nolan
13. Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott

The Transylvanian Passion

2009-07-12T22:40:00.005-06:00

(The following was posted in response to an article by Pastor Daniel Gabriel titled "Dracula, Christian Vampire")

Ok, but if you ask me, the vampire deserves the pathos he has been given in the 20th century. If Stoker’s Dracula is purely demonic, it is largely because he has aroused the latent potency of the women he comes into contact with, which spells ‘bad news’ for the imperialist patriarchy of the British Empire. As Robin Wood observes, “The ultimate horror of the novel is horror at the possibility of the arousal of female sexuality. The virtuous Victorian woman was, after all, supposed not to enjoy sex but to endure it, perhaps praying to pass the time and distract her mind from the inherent disgustingness of the operation. Sexuality is also energy, power, activity: sublimated, it is the source of all creativity, pleasurable work, achievement. If women become sexual beings, who knows where it might all end?” (Robin Wood, “Burying the Undead: The Use and Obsolescence of Count Dracula” in Barry Keith Grant, The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film p. 373) For Stoker, the only viable solution to this “problem” is ‘naughty vampires, we penetrate you now,’ just one more set of murders in the name of so-called “Christendom”. Well, I suppose there is Mina’s “redemption”, in which she is quarantined behind a circle of sanctified hosts, presumably to put away that typewriter of hers and take it cringing like a good girl once the brave, strong men dispatch the wicked vampire that captivated her so. So while it’s definitely rooted in a type of Christianity, I don’t think it reflects very nicely upon the gospel in this day and age.

Is it any wonder, then, that as attitudes toward gender roles, sexuality, the legitimacy of empire, and Western Christianity’s unfortunate tendency toward paternalism all change, the vampire becomes more humanized, the women become stronger and more determined, and the boys look rowdy and ridiculous? A lot of Christians like the characters in stories to be cut and dry good and evil because it implies the existence of absolute moral truths. I, however, like ambiguous characters, because it implies they are both made in the image of God and fallen to reflect that image to a greater or lesser extent. After all, with the exception of Jesus, are not the very prophets and saints of scripture deeply ambiguous? The reason the romantic vampire troubles us so is because he or she embodies precisely this ambiguity, forcing us to come to terms with the human condition. The vampire wants to be alone and away from fellowship, and cannot endure the power of holy things. But at the same time, he or she wants warm, deep connection with women and/or men through a sacred bond of blood, and so offers a one-sided communion of bread and wine of which the vampire themselves cannot partake. Not surprisingly, it was precisely this kind of warm sexual connection that Victorian society grew to fear even in the context of marriage, because it implied that woman should not be drained and dominated over, but regarded as a vital and spiritual thinking subject in her own right.

Of course, all this business about the vampire being unable to get in contact with his or her creator, and his or her tormented hell on earth opened vital questions about the relation of God to the vampire. Was it that the vampire had abandoned God, God had abandoned the vampire, or may God yet save the vampire after all? Applied more generally, it became a vital question about the relation of God to humanity. Has humanity abandoned God, has God abandoned humanity, does God even exist, or may God yet save humanity after all? Taking the vampire as a symbol of fallen man and fallen woman, if we are to answer “yes” to the fourth option in relation to humanity, then we must answer “yes” to the third option in relation to the vampire. In this respect, I rather like Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in which Dracula rejects God, becomes a vampire, builds a small army of dangerously sexual women, leaves Jonathan with a few uncomfortable things to explain about his business trip in Transylvania, goes out dating with Mina while she’s engaged to be married, pinpricks the patriarchy but is cornered by it, cries out in his final moments “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, but is saved by brave Mina, and goes to heaven anyway. You see, that’s the kind of story that implies that divine grace might actually mean something, no matter how screwed up we are.

In this respect, I definitely prefer the rich and complex romanticized vampire to the flat demonized vampire Bram Stoker must keep proper Victorian distance from. If Kierkegaard could take Don Juan and his 1001 ladyloves as a symbol for wild but redeemable passions reaching out for meaning and salvation, I may certainly do so with Count Dracula and the figure of the vampire. Not so for the bland and bourgeois Jonathan, who would doom himself and Mina to an existence with neither passion nor redemption for mere money. He is like the man Kierkegaard describes when he writes:

In the end, therefore, money will be the only thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved. But the young man will not run riot, he will not deserve what repentance repays. He would die with nothing to reproach himself with, and under the impression that if only he had had the money he might really have lived and might even have achieved something great. (Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age p. 41)

So Anne Rice’s vampires are the passionately undead embodiment of existential despair reaching out for a God who may not be there? Anne Rice herself broke through this despair and became a Christian, and her dark phantoms light the path of how she got there. So Twilight’s roguishly handsome vampire is just a bit silly because he has been defanged for mass consumption? The fact that he affirms the power and potency of God-given female passions, and is a rather direct Christ figure means that I will not make fun of it, even if the cutting of the film was so bad that it took my eyes out of commission for three hours after fifteen minutes (ow!). And just when you think romantic vampires are losing their bite, along comes the underground hit movie Let the Right One In, which features a vampire girl named Eli who bites hard, kisses sweetly, and gives the bullies a right good thrashing. Being itself the product of a Christian novelist, Eli is a Christ figure in her own right, and at one point in the novel Jesus himself invites her to come home. So maybe if we Christians decided to put our woody stakes back in our pants and stopped wanting to literally or symbolically penetrate anyone who disagrees with us, we might actually realize that Hallelujah!, this is popular material addressing central concerns related to the message of Christ right out in the open, and in a significant way, and be real ministers of the gospel for a change. Or we can just go back to chasing our shadow to the ends of the earth, that’s always popular.

Fearing the Forest for All the Trees

2009-05-18T08:53:00.000-06:00

This is the squeamish feeling
The child's fear of going into the forest
For fear of unspeakable monsters and wild beasts
And the city of gingerbread tricksters
Home now is a word undefined
And its meaning must be improvised
But though we wander, we are not yet lost
For while the birds eat all our breadcrumbs
We still have our memories
And God's grace to guide the way

The Crow that Wished to Be a Songbird

2009-05-15T02:19:00.001-06:00

I am the crow that
Wishing to be a songbird
Pretended to be a nightingale
When the other crows heard this
They laughed me to scorn
And then descended in a murder
To shatter my fragile wings
And devour me whole

Making my escape
Through the hollow of a tree
There I waited inside
Until courage again found me
Emerging from the bark and looking around
I noticed the songbirds were puzzled
By the sound of my course voice
Which was sung as if it might
Actually possess some beauty

Some of the songbirds made laughter
And some of them took pity
But none saw within my birdsong
Any measure of remaining dignity
And as to my own flock
Now they have abandoned me
And would rip me apart if ever they found me

Now I stand before you a broken crow
An unwanted thorn in the side of mediocrity
Unrecognized and unknown with a shattered jigsaw feeling
Scavenging the world for scraps of identity
But I know I'm not alone, and I know we're ever ready
To confound that dowdy flock with a sharp-honed nerve
Because we're painted birds by our own design

Into the Horseman's Forest: Characterization in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (The Horror Movie Final Critical Analysis

2009-05-12T16:04:00.008-06:00

Michael Bridgman
FVT 186 The Horror Movie
Final Critical Analysis
Sleepy Hollow directed by Tim Burton

I. Introduction
Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 Gothic horror film directed by Tim Burton based on a short story by Washington Irving titled "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Released on the last Thanksgiving before the turn of the new millennium, Sleepy Hollow is a film that looks simultaneously into the past, present, and future of the American nation. Looking in every direction, Burton finds a nation of great promise, a nation filled with hope and anxiety that fails to live up to its ideals, but also a nation that with freedom always retains the potential for improvement. By selecting material so deeply rooted in the American literary tradition and collective unconscious, Tim Burton has afforded himself enormous potential for poignant commentary on the basic social fabric of the nation. Not one to waste such a precious opportunity, in Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton uses dramatic characterization to comment upon issues of religious tolerance, faith and reason, and political justice in relation to America's founding, and by extension, its normative values.

II. Characterization

Because the way we tackle each of these issues depends upon our underlying ideas about the nature of the world, the primary, and most direct form of commentary is made by way of the conflicts among the characters. In Sleepy Hollow, these conflicts are particularly poignant because the radical supernatural evil of the Headless Horseman and the dark forest he inhabits lay powerful challenge to the ontology of each.

First, there is Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp), a bold but squeamish New York constable who is sent to investigate a series of gruesome serial murders in a small village named Sleepy Hollow in which the killer's modus operandi is to sever the heads of his victims in one clean stroke. An outspoken advocate of the use of the scientific method in forensic investigation, Ichabod quickly gains the ire of his superiors for openly criticizing their use of torture to force confessions out of suspected criminals, and is sent to Sleepy Hollow by the imposing and authoritative Burgomaster (Christopher Lee) as both test and punishment. A staunch critic of all lingering forms of superstition in the Age of Reason, Crane will accept no kind of belief but on the evidence of sense and reason. So when the people of Sleepy Hollow attribute the series of murders to the headless spirit of a Hessian mercenary brought back from hell, Ichabod will have none of it, insisting that "The assassin is a man of flesh and blood, and I will discover him."

Not surprisingly, this leads Ichabod Crane to quickly have infidel status attributed to him within the Puritan community, his unorthodox methods and advanced steampunk gadgetry seemingly bordering on alchemy. In terms of his worldview, Ichabod Crane says he believes in "Sense and reason, cause and consequence," a Newtonian clockwork universe in which rational inquiry is possible, but no God or supernatural power will ever intervene. While it is tempting for the contemporary viewer to assume that Ichabod is an atheist or agnostic, the extreme rarity of these positions in this historical period make it far more likely he is a deist, a philosophical position positing that the structure of universe is the product of a creator God, but that creator has left the universe to run self-sufficiently. In a series of dream sequences shown intermittently throughout the film, it is revealed that Ichabod's religious skepticism has its roots in a traumatic childhood experience involving horrific and fatal religious conflict between his father, a Puritan minister, and his mother, a white magic practitioner, and he later reveals that he lost his faith at the age of seven. Interpreting the dream, it seems likely this was because of Ichabod's rejection of the conception of God his father represents: holy but distant, morally concerned but ruthless -- a Puritan God not dissimilar to his own deist views apart from active agency. Even so, whatever Ichabod will not accept with his rational mind, his subconscious is more than willing to accept, making his bones to quiver at the mere suggestion of supernatural peril. This being the case, it is called into question of whether Ichabod's anti-supernaturalism is more directly attributable to his actual ontological beliefs, or his deep-rooted numinous fear of holy or unholy powers that rest outside of his control.

For Ichabod, then, the challenge of the Headless Horseman is the direct encounter with a fearsome power unexplainable by natural science. Galloping at full speed to sever the head of Magistrate Philipse (Richard Griffiths) just a few feet in front of Ichabod, there can no longer be any doubt that the Headless Horseman is the killer. And so, for the rest of the film, he does his best to reconcile a universe with both rational and suprarational elements. Encountering the barren and twisted Tree of the Dead as a transitional "gateway between two worlds," Ichabod discovers forensic traces at the Horseman's grave buried beneath that indicate that the dark rider does not murder at random, but is being controlled by the person who has stolen his head. It stands to reason, then, that Crane's use of scientific methodology in this investigation is not, in fact, misplaced, because the true culprit is flesh and blood. Still, Ichabod laments "I should not have come to this place, where my rational mind has been so controverted by the spirit world." Even so, the journey is fortuitous for Crane in that brings him together with Katrina Van Tassel (Christina Ricci), and the two form the kind of romantic bond that can only be borne out of shared adventure.

Katrina, the daughter and heiress of the wealthy Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon), is a lovely and free-spirited young woman who seems out of place among her protective father and possessive stepmother. Fond of reading the airy novels of the Romantic era, Katrina has a certain flair for adventure and romance pervading her every action. Introduced to the novels by her late mother, Katrina must keep her choice of reading material a secret because her father "believes tales of romance cause the brain fever that killed my mother." Here, Katrina's conflict with her father over his exaggerated notion of women's frailty acts as microcosm of gender conflict in relation to the Romantic era in general, and the Gothic novel in particular. The Gothic novel, after all, seeks to prove that its brave heroines and largely female readership are made of far more steely stuff capable of withstanding the most grim and horrible perils life has to offer, and Katrina herself is eager for the chance to prove her mettle.

Amidst an age when God and all things holy had been relegated to the edges of the cosmos by deism and its extreme emphasis on divine transcendence, one of the most important contributions of Romanticism to religion and spirituality was its renewed emphasis on divine immanence and the idea of the holy. Arguing that the evidence for the supernatural can be deduced or intuited from the natural world, many Romantic authors eventually came to believe that God is so deeply immanent within nature that God is nature, the position of Romantic pantheism. For Katrina, the impact of this zeitgeist as mediated through her mother's influence is to adopt a kind of Romantic paganism, practicing white magic in secret. Because Katrina is thematically linked by proximity of cutting to Ichabod's mother -- "an innocent child of nature" which the dream sequences make to symbolically represent a maternal conception of deity -- it seems likely Katrina conceives of the Goddess as immanent agent of maternal care for the world and its creatures. So too, the savvy viewer will also note the way the three witches of the film neatly conform to the pattern of the Triple Goddess in Wiccan religion: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Of course, despite constitutional protections of the freedom of religion, none of this is likely to go over very well in a community that displays paternalistic religion at its worst, so Katrina keeps her religion a secret.

Even so, because Katrina really likes Ichabod, and is pretty sure he has an open mind about these things, she is willing to more than subtly hint as to her religious affiliation. Respectfully giving him her copy of A Compendium of Spells, Charms, and Devices of the Spirit World, Katrina recommends that he "Keep it close to your heart, it is sure protection against harm." Ichabod, however, is reluctant to accept the book because of his rationalistic mindset, so Katrina gently challenges his sense of certainty. Throughout the film, Katrina and Ichabod engage in epistemic conflict over whether the imperative to follow reason is of prime importance, or whether other life imperatives (i.e. love, family, and ethics) hold the stronger claim. Concerned for Ichabod's safety against the grave dangers he faces, Katrina secretly casts spells both protective and medicinal in nature on his behalf. Later in the film, however, this leads to a great misunderstanding when, discovering a series of modified pentacles drawn with a watchful eye he perceives is for malicious intent, Ichabod comes to believe that Katrina is responsible for the Headless Horseman killings, but decides to leave town rather than press charges. Finally cracking open the book Katrina gave him while riding in the carriage, he discovers the spell in question is "For the Protection of a Loved One Against Evil Spirits", and is able to return to Sleepy Hollow just in time just in time to confront the real killer. In this way, Tim Burton makes an apt comment upon the dangers of a lack of religious awareness in a secular society, which can result in a different kind of religious intolerance rooted in ignorance.

For Katrina, the challenge of the Headless Horseman is the problem of ontic frailty by way of her adventures in the haunted forest. It is, after all, one thing to have a deeply Romantic notion of Mother Nature's nurturing benevolence, it is quite another to look out the window and see a dark and twisted wood. If Katrina sometimes comes across as naive, it is because she has a Romantic pantheistic worldview while living in a Dark Romantic universe. In such a universe, nature is always capable of inspiring a sense of awe and wonder, but not always by way of hospitality. While agreeing with Romantic pantheists in their emphasis that nature is a deeply spiritual force, the Dark Romantics emphasized that it exists in a state of mystery and decay in which all things are subject to transient fragility.

One of major problems with pantheism in general is that by aligning the divine nature so closely to nature itself, the problem of evil becomes almost irresolvable because everything that happens in the world is a direct extension of divine nature, so what once seemed immanent and caring is shown to really be distant and impersonal. As one early critic noted of the ontological implications of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Romantic pantheism, "'Take away the Father of the universe' and humanity 'becomes but a company of children in an orphan asylum'" -- a remark anticipatory both of the horror and anxiety of the 20th century, and of the extreme popularity of Hansel and Gretel "in the age of existentialism and thereafter." (Cf. Lawrence Buell, Emerson p. 165 and Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor p. 59-63) For a brave but impetuous spirit venturing out into the woods like Katrina, these challenges hit close to home when, poised at the neck for a ceremonial killing stroke by the Headless Horseman, she is brought wide-eyed and terror stricken to the confrontation with her own mortality. Even so, the optimistic tone of the ending involving the formation of a surrogate family of adventurers consisting of Ichabod, Katrina, and Young Masbeth (Marc Pickering) suggests that she's not willing to give up her spirit of romance and adventure just yet.

Which brings us to the character of Young Masbeth, the surrogate son of the young couple, and by implication, the inheritor of their legacy. The adolescent son of a rugged father murdered by the Headless Horseman and a loving but long-dead mother, Young Masbeth finds himself an orphan. And while the exact nature of the relationship Young Masbeth had with his family remains largely unclear throughout the film, what is clear is that it has a number of parallels to Ichabod's childhood at the age he lost his faith. A quiet and soft-spoken lad whose difficulty finding trust can be seen in his fidgety reactions to the human touch, the viewer has to watch his actions very closely to really understand his character. But what Young Masbeth lacks in verbalization, he makes up for in bravery and sincerity that allow him to speak with his actions.

The most important line for understanding Masbeth's character is one of his first lines in the movie: "My mother is in heaven, sir, she has my father now to care for her." Or, to read between the lines, Masbeth has taken after a loving Christian mother, and believes in God's gift of eternal life. On a more symbolic level, this line establishes Masbeth as the point of reconciliation between the holy and transcendent paternalistic image of God and the immanent and caring maternalistic image of God. So too, the careful viewer will note that in this scene, Masbeth quietly withdraws to the middle ground for discrete intercessory prayer (cf. Matthew 6:5-6), and accepts Reverend Steenwyck's consolatory pat on the shoulder without hesitation even as the community walks away from the funeral without a word to him. In other words, this is the kid who attends church regularly, but always ends up with his back to the wall, and is respected only by church leadership who recognize his heartfelt sincerity in the faith. It seems like a small thing, really, but in their own way, kids like this represent the future of Christianity by way of their steadfast contributions, so it is well that he should do so.

Feeling a sense of duty to avenge his father's death (apparently, "turn the other cheek" does not apply to evil spirits, for whom Christian tradition reserves a sound ass-kicking), and needing a source of support to live on his own, Masbeth offers his services to Ichabod. While initially reluctant, Ichabod comes to accept Masbeth as his own, and becomes a father figure to him. Even so, Ichabod frequently makes some truly questionable calls in relation to Masbeth that makes the viewer wince over the kid's naive overconfidence in authority figures. Still, Masbeth is happy to accompany Ichabod throughout his investigation, his reactions to the constable's actions coming across halfway between mystified sidekick and uncommonly clever kid. So too, while he never really talks about his faith much, Masbeth's resolute courage in the face of grave peril act as silent witness to his unshakable confidence in the power of divine providence. Indeed, having suffered childhood trauma deeply akin to Ichabod's own and remained strong in the faith, Masbeth's mere existence lays implicit challenge to the legitimacy of his reasons for rejecting the faith.

Of course, it is important to emphasize that Young Masbeth has an unusually deep level of tolerance in matters of religion, and in life in general. Where others have very visceral negative reactions to Ichabod's unusual behavior, particularly in areas seemingly at odds with the Christian tradition of the sanctified burial of the dead, Masbeth mostly watches with wide and curious eyes that seem to ponder what he thinks about all this. At one particularly memorable moment in the film, Masbeth appears to break his generally tolerant attitude in stating his belief that the modified pentacle he discovers under Ichabod's bed is "the evil eye" and that "it is someone casting spells against you." However, upon later discovering that it is, in fact, Katrina who is responsible for the spell, Masbeth changes his mind owing to his confidence in her good character, and challenges Ichabod for believing that "a strange sort of witch with a kind and loving heart" could be responsible for the Headless Horseman killings. When Ichabod states that he has good reason for these beliefs, Masbeth responds "Then you are bewitched by reason!" In other words, if the imperative to follow reason blinds one to other, more basic imperatives of life, then its effect is no different from a spell that deprives one of clear understanding and personal autonomy.

For Masbeth, the challenge of the Headless Horseman is the problem of trust. As an individual who has always had great difficulty trusting other people (notice how in his first shot in the movie shows him to be fidgety even to the touch of his father), the shattering of his old life by the Headless Horseman comes as a great shock that undermines his confidence even further. Placing his trust in authority figures like Reverend Steenwyck and Ichabod Crane to be a reliable pillar in times of distress, even this confidence is undermined by the dramatic way the town authorities all meet their demise. Shown by the manner of their deaths to be of far less solid moral integrity than their reputations made them out to be, Masbeth's trust in humanity is undermined even further. So when Masbeth makes his remarks about the bewitchment of reason, Ichabod responds by saying "It is a hard lesson for a hard world, and you'd better learn it, Young Masbeth. Villainy wears many masks. None so dangerous as the mask of virtue." At this, Masbeth's eyes begin to well with tears, his confidence visibly shaken, so Ichabod places his hand upon his shoulder and he does not flinch. But where Masbeth's trust in men is shattered and shaken, the opportunity for strengthened faith and reliance upon the Rock and Mighty Fortress is afforded. And seen through the eyes of divine mercy, relationships with others is shown to ultimately be rewarding and worthwhile, despite the deep pain they cause. This too can be seen in Young Masbeth's sincere willingness to accompany Ichabod and Katrina at the film's ending to live with them in New York -- he even carries all the bags.

III. Results

In Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton makes reference to philosophical and religious conflicts of the last quarter of the 18th century to highlight the importance of both an immanent and transcendent conception of deity. In this way, Sleepy Hollow links itself with a recurring theme throughout Tim Burton's movies, the reconciliation of conflicting dualities without which the unity of the whole cannot function. Setting the rationalistic Ichabod in dialectical conflict with the Romantic Katrina over questions ontologically correlative to their views of divine transcendence or immanence respectively, the locus of the ensuing synthesis is shifted to Young Masbeth, who represents the future of the Church. Criticizing America's Puritanical religious heritage and its ideological heirs for paternalistic repression, Burton illustrates that this conception of religion is as inhibitive to the creative passions as it is to the internalization of divine grace. In ecclesiastical contexts, this criticism is of paramount importance as contemporary movements like the Emerging Church begin to reemphasize the importance of the arts, bring grace to ostracized individuals frequently taboo in other churches, challenge the political values of older generations of Christians, and reshape church structures along more fluid and organic lines emphasizing the importance of each member in the divine plan over a centralized hierarchy. In this respect, Burton's film can be seen as a true gift to the Church for exposing the ideological failure of America's Puritan upbringing, and demonstrating the need for new models of theology and ecclesiology to be implemented out in the real world.

At the center of these controversies is the question of the relation of God to the world. Against this backdrop, the Church is shown to be the ideological inheritor of the legacy of deism, which emphasizes divine transcendence and Romantic pantheism, which emphasizes divine immanence to do what it will in this cultural context. Emphasizing the importance of divine immanence in the equation, Tim Burton shows that both extremes are inadequate, and that a synthesis between the two is required. While Puritanism conceived of God as a strict and aloof paternalistic creator who held humanity over the fires of hell like a loathsome spider, this view could do justice neither to divine grace nor to God's verdict that the world he created and everything within it was "very good." (Cf. Genesis 1:31) And where deism reacted to Puritanism by philosophically removing the potential for divine agency for either harm or good, its ontology could not account for the encounter with divine immanence in religious experience, and it begat the overbearing repression of one of the most powerful spheres of human existence. Romantic pantheism, by contrast, was able to account for the experience of divine immanence, but not for either the substance or for the reality of evil. And where Romantic pantheism's ideological heirs in the form of Neopagan and New Age religions tend to take a very similar approach, they are plagued with the same problems.

Against these extremes between divine transcendence and divine immanence, the masculine and feminine ideas of divinity, Tim Burton emphasizes the need for finding some middle ground between these conflicting dualities. For many, the temptation in trying to resolve these issues is to either attempt a syncretism of Christianity and Neopaganism to allow for the feminine aspect of deity, or to reject the Christian God altogether in favor of the latter, or no God at all. Actually, this problem can be neatly resolved on a thoroughly Christian basis by emphasizing the theological tradition of Wisdom literature, a theme solidly rooted in scripture and in Judeo-Christian tradition. As N.T. Wright remarks about the Wisdom tradition in relation to the Gospel of John's Christology, "John probably expects some readers to see that this opening passage says, about Jesus himself, what some writers had said about 'Wisdom'. Many Jewish teachers had grappled with the age-old questions: How can the one true God be both different from the world and active within the world? How can he be remote, holy and detached, but also intimately present? Some had already spoken of the 'word' and 'wisdom' as ways of answering these questions. Some had already combined them within the belief that the one true God had promised to place his own 'presence' within the Temple in Jerusalem." (Tom Wright, John for Everyone p. 4)

Recognizing that a dark and chaotic universe is often in need of good housekeeping, and because this was a traditionally feminine role in their society, Jewish writers began to speak of a feminine aspect of the divine nature they called Wisdom, which carried out God's actions within the world. In Proverbs 8, for example, Wisdom is the agent of creation by which God formed the order of the cosmos, and who now adjures commoners and kings to pay heed to her good counsel. Linking Wisdom to the indwelling presence of God in the Temple of Jerusalem, itself the microcosm of the entire divine order, Wisdom was conceived not merely in terms of literary personification, but as the presence and power of God. In the New Testament, Jesus is widely seen as the locus of Wisdom on earth who embodies her rejection on earth only to be vindicated on high. In Luke 7:31-35, for example, Jesus concludes his remarks upon the hypocritical reasons given by his generation for rejecting his message by stating "Yet Wisdom is justified by all her children," effectively linking his identity to hers. In this respect, Wisdom theology in the New Testament may be seen as prototypical of the eventual formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and lends it its theological backbone. Where Sleepy Hollow criticizes a strictly paternalistic conception of deity for facilitating the oppression of women by way of patriarchal church structures, Wisdom theology lays powerful challenges to these assumptions. As Ben Witherington III writes in the conclusion to his seminal study of Wisdom theology,

To those weary of oppressively patriarchal religion one can say that Wisdom as a personified attribute of God and God's creation does indeed have a feminine face in various places in the Scriptures which should not be ignored or minimized. If the biblical authors are indeed trying to tell us that God is the most personal of all beings and that all human beings are created in God's image, then the presentation of qualities or traits of God that are like human female as well as male traits should be expected. (Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom p. 386)

Of course, Witherington is quick to point out that none of the Jewish writers responsible for writing Wisdom literature would have taken divine gender language at face value, because God is literally neither male nor female, but rather is the life-giving Spirit who created both genders. Rather, "the data seems to provide warrants for analogies (God or Jesus is like a woman in this or that way), but not for female identity statements (i.e. God is a woman, God is a Goddess)." (Ibid.) So while none of this means we should start drawing circles and holding hands, it does mean that femininity is not some second-rate form of humanity, but is an integral aspect of the divine nature. Just as Wisdom theology provided a cultural bridge for Judaism and Christianity with the Hellenistic world in Classical antiquity, so too can it be used to bridge the gap of communication between the Church and the contemporary tide of matriarchal Neopagan religions. And while the Church has often marginalized the position of women within its power structure, this is a grave error because it frequently prevents them from carrying out their own divine calling. From the birth of Christianity until the present day, women have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the work of Christ, and the Church would do well to remember this. And in the meantime, Christian women should take care not to allow poor translation and sloppy exegesis of passages in Paul's letters to keep them from the calling that is rightfully theirs (though that is a writing for another day).

In conclusion, Sleepy Hollow is a film that uses dramatic characterization to illustrate the inherent shortcomings of America's combined Puritan and deistic heritage in relation to issues of faith and reason, religious tolerance, and political justice. Highlighting the need for an immanent conception of divinity, the film contends that it is important to conceive of God in both feminine and masculine terms. And while the import of its message will be received differently depending on one's preexisting worldview, from the Christian standpoint the film illustrates the great importance of Wisdom theology in contemporary contexts. In this respect, Burton's film is a resounding success, and this author highly recommends it.

Are You OK?

2009-05-08T15:24:00.000-06:00

Are you OK?
Silently my heart sinks into shadowy fear
As I wait for an answer, the minutes pass ever so slowly
Against the ravages of time, I fear there will be no end to my tears

Are you OK?
I too am a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief
And though I no longer fear the Reaper's beckoning
The same cannot be said for a beloved one suffering

Are you OK?
The march of time has also taught me courage and enduring
So please answer truthfully when you speak
In this fallen world the only despair is lack of honesty

Are you OK?
I felt an ominous premonition while watching the movie screen
And though I lay in bed, I could find no rest
But while frightened, I know it's probably nothing

Are you OK?
Did you know I've spent my life surrounded by sickness and suffering?
Now miracles and tragedies are really nothing new for me
Just a little shock and a lot more grief

Are you OK?
Please answer, therefore, my solemn query
And answer it in a spirit of sincerity
Remembering always our shared friendship and piety

The Gaze - A Philosophical Fragment

2009-05-07T06:42:00.001-06:00

The gaze is principally the kind of look that keeps me up at 4:00 A.M. pondering questions of moral ontology. If the eyes are both a source of great power and a window into the soul, then the gaze is a look that simultaneously wilts and pollinates its subject. The truth of the matter is that none crave too much attention or too little, but all desire a certain equilibrium within which to live their lives in comfortable repose. Depending upon the conditions, the gaze can be the source of pressure and confinement to both subject and onlooker, or the source of welcome relief. Because the human condition is bound up both in the mind and in the body, the human desire is for the affirmation of the total being, and it is well that it should be. The person of beauty wishes that someone would see past their looks to perceive them for who they really are. The homely genius wishes that someone would enjoy their company not just for thoughtful conversation, but actually find them attractive. The paradox of the gaze is that it conveys simultaneous information about its subject's objectivity and subjectivity, and about the perceived relation between the subject to their onlooker and to the world. To one inclined to thoughtful moral consideration, the standard of the gaze should be to take into account what messages they are sending either by looking or by not looking, always bearing in mind the categorical imperative. To those who are particularly perceptive, the ideal of the gaze should be to break through the objective barriers separating minds to look into the other's subjectivity, although this cannot and should not be attempted without a great deal of empathy. These too are immensely attractive qualities, and will not go unnoticed.

A Letter to Death

2009-05-03T16:06:00.001-06:00

Sweet mistress,
I beg your patience
Just a little while longer
Though many years you have courted me
Absence makes the heart go fonder

Yes, I know you are a persistent woman
And in the end no one can escape from your embrace
But if I could, I doubt I would want to
For though widely feared, there is still softness within your face

Of all the women I have ever known
None have surpassed you in fond affection or in patronage
And if I were to submit to your cold caress
I'm sure it would be paradise

But though I'm so lonely I think I might wilt
A holy leper left out in the storm
And though no one will ever dare touch me
I still have so much left to live for

It happened once upon a desolate Spring
That I fell lost and abandoned within the world
It was then that you came and taught me
'A simple craft will keep a man from want'

'Consider the spider as she weaves her web
Though lowly and despised by all that she sees
She mingles her pain along with her string
And with it she spins her glistening silk tapestry'

So I set forth in search of my magnum opus
And the sad veil of tears was lifted from my face
Everything fell away and I left myself behind
Abandoning my cares among the lilies

But now it seems I will forever be lonely
And I often use my hands only to bury my face
Even friends, alas, can open old scars
And I long for one solitary sign of grace

Merciful mistress,
You show mankind there is a set duration to suffering
Sweet belle of the ball, you save the last dance for everyone equally
Your cruelty you only show to the unsuspecting
You crush every oppressor and make desolate the throne of kings

To the lowly and downtrodden you give repose
To the sick and tormented you lend shelter from the sun
In your shadow is the awakening of wonder and beauty
You lead us to gardens in trembling anticipation of things to come

If there is terror in the appearance of your form
It is the reflection of our faces within your eyes
And though defeated, you are graceful
Waiting patiently upon the keeper of the keys

Your reputation has it that you laugh at all supplication
But I heard a rumor that you have lost your sting
So take me when you will, but tempt me no further
And lay me to rest by the garden gate

The Wait

2009-04-25T19:31:00.000-06:00

The hours are truly perplexing
In the wait for better things to come
And while we wait for the answer
It feels like we shall soon come undone

Yes, some waits are brief and some waits are long
Some make us joyful and some make us sorrow
But whatever the outcome and whatever the trial
Keep in mind that there's always tomorrow

Dubsetters

2009-04-22T22:06:00.002-06:00

Deep in the heart of the city
An echoing resonance rumbles through the streets
For those attuned to the vibe and rhythm
You can follow the sound rippling through the concrete
2-step, dubstep, soundsystem party
Spread the word: dubsetters are back!

And the heralded roots of reggae
Are merged with the electronics of the future
This is music for an age both bright and bleak
Visionary and cautionary, these are songs made to move the streets
With killer basslines, bip-bop melodies, and echoing rhythmic offbeats
Spread the word: dubsetters are back!

Infosaturation

2009-04-17T23:18:00.003-06:00

blinded by video screen only two minutes not evil vampires but bad directors drain me now no sight to see bad cuts blinding me and then all words and images agony retreat to dark room of shadow infosaturation blackout play music of soft streams even in black room media effect me no asylum no sanity only quivering eyestrain agony and everyone demand writing but can barely see half rejuvenation return to me play song more energy Alien Sex Fiend on the radio singing about information overload ting ting ting ting listen to the mad martian sing shadows for eyes antennas for ears and global village is nothing but thievery write content with muddled mind and sour patch candy so nice teacher give grade me and much too Skinny Puppy is insanity but little now again is good for me

The Moon

2009-04-16T22:45:00.004-06:00

(Dedicated to Alphonse Mucha)

There she waits, seated in the night sky
Illuminating the paths of all and sundry
And though she shines her light for all to see
Yet still she is renowned for her modesty

Covering the land in pale moonlight
Where indeed is the man who cannot but admire her flight?
Veiled with darkness as she waxes and wanes
Yet still we shall all see her again

Ageless comfort to those in love, and those who are lonely
All nations and every generation admire your eternal beauty
O' Moon, forever so distant, and yet so near
Whenever thy countenance shines upon me
I know there is nothing left to fear

But oh, what terrors fill my heart
When shadows fill your face
Visions of horror fill my mind
And I fear that I too have fallen from grace

Yes, every woman has a dark side I know
But please remember after hiding again to grow
And though great distance separates my gentle caress upon your face
Someday I hope to visit you in outer space

Into The Labyrinth

2009-04-15T23:17:00.006-06:00

(This poem is based upon "An Ancient Gesture" by Edna St. Vincent Millay at the request of my instructor, and was inspired by The Shining)

I thought, as I was living at the Stanley
Ariadne did this too
Into the labyrinth he descends, clip-clap typing all the day
And falling deeper and deeper into himself

And he never seems to notice, my heartfelt gestures of humanity
And no one knows wherever he has gone, though always he is here

Suddenly it hits you,
He may now have nothing left to lose

And so you sit there, with only imagination and your son for company
This is a timeless tradition, ancient, contemporary
Yes, Theseus did this too

But only as a gesture, -- a gesture which implied
That as a good and kind man he would never betray
The love that she had taught him,
The love he would turn to hate

A Doll's Lament

2009-04-14T00:40:00.000-06:00

I am a glass doll
Born to a concrete world
My body is brittle
And my skin is cold

Awkwardly I fumble
Bumbling through the halls and streets
And if ever I should tumble
There would be nothing left of me

And all the real people
Live lives I can neither understand
Nor can I perceive
And all my days are confined
To artificiality

There's no in point asking
If and when I'll ever be a real boy
For now and forever after
I will only be an unwanted toy
Lost and abandoned in some forgotten room

And none will ever stop to listen
Whenever I sing out my silent tune

Must always I remain motionless?
And must always I be misused?
Forever feeling far from home
Never suited for earth but always for the moon

A Grey and Misty Easter Morning

2009-04-12T13:50:00.003-06:00

A grey mist covered the land
On easter morning
Neither birdsong nor bright sun
Could anymore be seem or heard

Where do we go when our vision
is obscured, and darkness covers
The face of the deep?

What do we do when we lose sight
Of things that matter, of things we need?
Dare we descend so far we fall underground
And never return?

Arise, O' sleeper, wake from the dead
And God's anointed will shine upon you
Is it good to sell away your birthright
For ash and clay?

Though many hours are spent weak and weary
Yet still will all be renewed
Though shadows still descend upon this forlorn land
Yet still the holy sleeper has risen from his tomb

How I Started Batcave Redemption Radio

2009-04-12T12:03:00.003-06:00

Hello Danita, than you for your kind words! Seraphim Radio did not actually go under because of financial pressures, but because I started to notice the playlist wasn't flowing together very well at all, and I knew needed to drop it and wait for some new kind of sound and vision. I felt like God was calling me to just let it go and wait for a new calling. At the time, I was starting to gain an immense appreciation for the more old-school Gothic and Industrial music because it had this incredible power, but was disappointed because not that many Internet radio stations played it, and those that did were of mixed quality. And so, because a lot of my personal happiness is rooted in whether or not I am creating something that will help other people, I went through this really dark summer where I just felt completely miserable.

At the time, one of the books I was reading was Go Ask Ogre: Letters From A Deathrock Cutter by Jolene Siana, which I read not so much because I was actually injuring myself, but because self-injury looked so appealing that I knew I had to stay away from it. In addition to this cathartic function, I found Jolene Siana's letters quite endearing because of her very heartfelt questions about God, religion, and the human condition. Thinking it over, I knew I wanted the new station to be the kind of place people like Jolene could go to come to terms with their questions, and hopefully find answers. The most important effect Go Ask Ogre had on me, however, was that it confirmed my suspicions about the remarkable power of old-school Gothic and Industrial music to speak to people living in painful situations and asking heartfelt questions.

And so I started to gather a lot of albums from Goth's classic period and refine a new station playlist within my iPod. Thinking over how I wanted the new station to sound, I did a lot of research into the music played by the Batcave nightclub in London, the place where the Gothic subculture first began. What I found was, of course, that the sound of bands like Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Christian Death were immensely important to the life of the club. But in addition to those bands, I learned that the sound of bands like Cocteau Twins that would eventually blossom into the 4AD Darkwave and Ethereal Wave sound were also immensely important to the Batcave, so I made sure to incorporate that style as well. And while Industrial was too early in its history to really make inroads into the Gothic subculture, I noticed that both ASF and Specimen would later embrace the genre in their own sound, and that one of the Batcave DJs mentioned how important the feeling of 'finding refuge from the dark city' was to the feeling of the Batcave. And so I decided to mix in dark and gritty urban Industrial with a kind of awesome metal-on-metal sound along with more obviously horror-influenced Industrial like Skinny Puppy. That was the basic concept of the station, although over the past couple of years the mix has expanded into playing Gothic, Industrial, Darkwave, Post-Punk, New Wave, Synthpop, and a bit of Glam, Punk, Dubstep, and tribalistic electronica. While it would probably be difficult to explain all of my selections without writing some big essay in music theory, I think most of my listeners understand what I'm doing on one level or another, and are cool with it.

Eventually, I got to the point where I needed to come up with a name for the new station. For the old station, I had named it "Seraphim Radio: Sounds From The Crystal Sea" based off of a set of passages in Isaiah and Revelation in which it is suggested that the image of the world's sufferings are placed in the architecture before the very throne of God so that he will never look away from them. In retrospect, that would probably be the perfect title for some kind of Christian-owned Ambient and New Age station, but not for Goth and its musical peers. For the new station, I needed a title that said 'Look out! The old-school Batcave sound is back!' I needed something that said my outlook on life was nowhere near as bleak as other Goth stations, something that was affirming of hope. And most of all, I needed a title that said I am willing to play music openly discussing religion and spirituality so my listeners would not feel like I was baiting them into it. If there's anything I would like to stress about my station, it is that at all times I have placed the utmost respect and confidence in my listeners and their intelligence, and this is one important reason why I have been willing to embrace so many risks in the playlist's construction.

And so, I was thinking about naming it something with as much pizzazz as "Jet Set Radio" (one of my favorite series of video games), and suddenly it hit me that I should name it Batcave Redemption Radio. The new title had the charm and flair of the former, announced that the Batcave was back, proclaimed hope, and had a certain sense of irony. At the time, I figured that if many churchs' idea of proclaiming hope and faith was setting up a carnival tent and turning everyone into somnambulists, there was no reason I couldn't do it by setting up a batcave and encouraging contemplation. Setting up the new playlist on the same terminal I used before, I was able to start broadcasting again with the same server on my brother's birthday, July 11, 2007. So that's the gist of how I started Batcave Redemption Radio. Of course, what I did with it over the next couple of years is another story entirely, and one that will have to wait for another day.

So, in answer to your question, no, I'm not in any terrible danger of losing the station. Soo too, as I tend to be very independent, always playing exactly the music I intend to play, I tend to feel uncomfortable about accepting donations because it means other people have a vested interest in the music I play as well, and places me one step away from the looming fear of "alienating my listeners." I am, however, always willing to accept legitimate copies of music to play on the station, so if you would really like to contribute, you may do so in this fashion. As far as promotion goes, I've always been fondest of simple things like word of mouth, sending links, posting links, and setting my station in one's top friends list because that is the most heartfelt and real, and builds the deepest connection with listeners. Truth be told, I always wanted Batcave Redemption Radio to be the obscure hole in the wall that completely changes your life.

50 Movie Recommendations for a Friend

2009-04-09T17:40:00.003-06:00

Nosferatu The Vampyre (Horror, 1979, Germany, Directed by Werner Herzog, rated PG)
Sleepy Hollow (Horror, 1999, U.S.A., Directed by Tim Burton, rated R)
Pan's Labyrinth (a.k.a. El laberinto del fauno, Fantasy, 2006, Mexico, Directed by Guillermo del Toro, rated R)
Edward Scissorhands (Fantasy, 1990, U.S.A., Directed by Tim Burton, rated PG-13)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Horror, 1960, U.S.A., Directed by Roger Corman, Not Rated [but probably about PG or PG-13])
The House on Haunted Hill (Horror, U.S.A., 1959, Directed by William Castle, Not Rated [but probably about PG or PG-13])
Beetlejuice (Comedy, 1988, U.S.A., Directed by Tim Burton, rated PG)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Fantasy, 1993, U.S.A., Directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, rated PG)
Monster House (Fantasy, 2006, U.S.A., Directed by Gil Kenan, rated PG)
Charlotte's Web (Fantasy, 1973, U.S.A., Directed by Charles A. Nichols and Iwao Takamoto, rated G)
Wit (Drama, 2001, U.S.A., Directed by Mike Nichols, rated PG-13)
The Robe (Drama, 1953, U.S.A., Directed by Henry Koster, Not Rated [probably about PG])
The Gospel of John (Drama, 2003, U.S.A., Directed by Philip Saville, rated PG-13, make sure to watch the three hour full version of the two discs as it includes the entire work and much better cuts)
The Keys of the Kingdom (Drama, 1944, U.S.A., Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Not Rated [probably about G or PG])
Hotel Rwanda (Drama, 2004, U.S.A., Directed by Terry George, rated PG-13)
Batman Begins (Action, 2005, U.S.A., Directed by Christopher Nolan, rated PG-13)
The Dark Knight (Action, 2008, U.S.A., Directed by Christopher Nolan, rated PG-13)
Blade Runner (Science Fiction, 1982, U.S.A., Directed by Ridley Scott, rated R)
Ghost In The Shell (Science Fiction, 1995, Japan, Directed by Mamoru Oshii, rated R)
Avalon (Science Fiction, 2001, Japan/Poland, Directed by Mamoru Oshii, rated R)
The Matrix (Science Fiction, 1999, U.S.A., Directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, rated R)
Fight Club (Action, 1999, U.S.A., Directed by David Fincher, rated R)
Dawn of the Dead (Horror, 1978, U.S.A., Directed by George A. Romero, rated R)
Shaun of the Dead (Comedy, 2004, United Kingdom, Directed by Edgar Wright, rated R)
28 Days Later (Horror, 2002, United Kingdom, Directed by Danny Boyle, rated R)
28 Weeks Later (Horror, 2007, United Kingdom, Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, rated R)
I Am Legend (Science Fiction, 2007, U.S.A., Directed by Francis Lawrence, rated PG-13)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Science Fiction, 1984, Japan, Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, rated PG)
Steamboy (Science Fiction, 2004, Japan, Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, rated PG-13)
Metropolis (Science Fiction, 2001, Japan, Directed by Rintaro, rated PG-13)
Metropolis (Science Fiction, 1927, Germany, Directed by Fritz Lang, Not Rated [probably G])
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Horror, 1920, Germany, Directed by Robert Weine, Not Rated [probably G])
Nosferatu (Horror, 1922, Germany, Directed by F. W. Marnau, Not Rated [probably G]
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Drama, 1923, U.S.A., Directed by Wallace Worsely, Not Rated [probably G])
The Phantom of the Opera (Horror, 1925, U.S.A. Directed by Rupert Julian, Not Rated [probably G])
The Phantom of the Opera (Musical, 2004, U.S.A. Directed by Joel Scumacher, rated PG-13)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Musical/Horror, 2007, Directed by Tim Burton, rated R)
The Grudge (Horror, 2004, U.S.A., Directed by Takashi Shimizu, rated PG-13)
The Ring (Horror, 2002, U.S.A., Directed by Gore Verbinski, rated PG-13)
Lady in the Water (Fantasy, 2006, U.S.A., Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, rated PG-13)
The Fall (Fantasy, 2008, U.S.A., Directed by Tarsem Singh, rated R [which is complete bullshit, a PG-13 rating would have been much more appropriate])
Mirrormask (Fantasy, 2005, U.S.A., Directed by Dave McKean, rated PG)
Big Fish (Drama/Fantasy, 2003, U.S.A., Directed by Tim Burton, rated PG-13)
Bridge To Terabithia (Fantasy, 2007, U.S.A., Directed by Gábor Csupó, rated PG)
Enchanted (Fantasy, 2007, U.S.A., Directed by Kevin Lima, rated PG)
Suspiria (Horror, 1977, Italy, Directed by Dario Argentino, rated R)
Dracula (Horror, 1931, U.S.A., Directed by Tod Browning and Karl Freund, Not Rated [probably about PG]
Frankenstein (Horror, 1931, U.S.A., Directed by James Whale, Not Rated [probably about PG])
The Black Cat (Horror, 1934, U.S.A., Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Not Rated [probably about PG]
Citizen Kane (Drama, 1941, U.S.A., Directed by Orson Welles, Not Rated [probably about PG])
Ed Wood (Drama, 1994, U.S.A., Directed by Tim Burton, rated R)

"I Am Dracula... I Bid You Welcome" (The Horror Film One-Shot Analysis)

2009-04-08T06:50:00.012-06:00

DRACULA

Directed by Tod Browning and Karl Freund
1931

One-Shot Analysis by Michael Bridgman
FVT 186, Spring 2009

Shot: Count Dracula, invitingly gestures with his arm and cape upstairs toward the castle's upper level and the giant spiderweb behind him, and bids Renfield welcome.

DVD Scene 3, The Castle

Aspect Ratio: 1:33:1
Shot Duration: 7 seconds, 168 frames

I. Introduction

Dracula is a 1931 Universal Studios horror film adapted from a novel written by Bram Stoker, and directed by Tod Browning and Karl Freund. Released "during a twelve-month period that coincided with the darkest hours of the Great Depression," (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror p. 115) the ruthless vampire Count Dracula would soon join the ranks of the Universal monsters that would descend upon the ruin of the jazz age. Casting the enigmatic but equally charismatic Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi in the leading role, the stage was set for Count Dracula to leave behind his castle in Transylvania and set sail for Hollywood. America would never be the same again...

II. Scene Description

"Among the rugged peaks that frown down upon the Borgo Pass are found crumbling castles of a bygone age."

Ignoring the villagers' warnings that Castle Dracula is haunted by bloodsucking vampires and that terrible supernatural evil will befall him if he travels there, an energetic real estate broker by the name of Renfield (Dwight Frye) has just arrived outside the Count's broken castle walls. Hoping to sell property in London to the wealthy Count Dracula, but still spooked by the sudden disappearance of the carriage driver who brought him to the castle, Renfield cautiously steps forward and enters the castle doors as they creak open. Taken aback by the castle's tall and ruined splendor, Renfield begins to walk backwards toward the staircase.

It is there, however, that he is met by the suave and elegant Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) as he smoothly makes his way down the stairs. Turning around again to face the staircase, Renfield is so startled to see someone waiting there that he jumps. So stupefied that he can only stare, Renfield just stands there until Dracula takes the initiative to introduce himself, speaking with the slow calculated verbalization of a living corpse. Renfield, realizing his many breaches of manners over the past few minutes, politely takes off his hat and explains that he thought the castle was abandoned.

Dracula, invitingly gesturing with his hand and cape toward the upstairs level (and to the tall spiderweb behind him), informs his guest that "I bid you welcome" before turning back his black velvet cape and starting upstairs. Still hesitant, Renfield only makes it up a few steps before both he and the Count are stopped in their tracks by the sound of wolves howling in the night. Clearly moved by their cries, Count Dracula turns around and gestures in their direction, musing to his guest "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."

Progressing further up the stairs, Dracula passes seemlessly through the spiderweb ahead in full view of a startled Renfield. Renfield, on the other hand, breaks it apart with his cane, but still gets stuck in the web, sending the giant spider scurrying up the wall. With that, Dracula remarks "The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly. The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield." Laughing nervously but nevertheless agreeing with his host, Renfield walks the rest of the way upstairs before allowing his host to guide him into the next room. There the scene fades out with the image of the giant web still lingering...

III. Shot Analysis

Shot Duration: 7 seconds, 168 frames

Beginning Frame

End Frame

Shot size: This shot, focusing on the character of Dracula, is a medium full shot giving the Count plenty of room to twirl his long black cape while still concealing the movement and positioning of his feet upon the floor.
Sound: As a director, Tod Browning was an aesthetic advocate of the sparse use of sound at a rate of "perhaps 25 per cent sound and 75 per cent silence." (Ibid. p. 126) True to this philosophy, Dracula was directed with long eerie pauses as silent as a tomb. In the original film, only Dracula's long stretched out corpse-like voice can be heard in this shot. However, in contemporary releases of the film, an optional score by minimalist composer Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet here inserts ominous music suggestive of a predator lying in wait.
Contrast dominant(s): Throughout the shot, Dracula himself is the contrast dominant, initially pulling our eyes in with his dapper shirt and vest before turning around to show us that black is the new black. Second to Dracula, our attention is next caught by the glowing white spiderweb transposed against the grey castle stairs.
Character movement: Giving off the charm and flair of a smooth debonair, Dracula outstretches his open arm and cape in a laterally horizontal position to present his guest with the staircase (and also the spiderweb). Holding out a candle to light the way, Dracula proudly lifts his head and bids Renfield welcome. Lowering his arm and cape back into a closed form and looking upon his guest with a haughty smirk, Dracula is revealed to also have a sinister side. Turning his arm and back toward his guest to display his black velvet cape while still holding up the candle, Dracula smiles a dark kind of smile unsettling in its ambiguity.
Character proxemics: While Dracula is the only character in the frame, the character proxemics of the mise-en-scène place Dracula in the position of power and dominance at the upper level of the stairs, while Renfield is placed in the position of powerlessness and subservience at the bottom of the stairs. From his position of power, Dracula acts as mediator of access to his castle.
Camera movement: None to speak of, Tod Browning liked to make the characters and action play to the camera rather than the other way around. In this shot, this technique is very effective at capturing Count Dracula's eerie hypnotic charisma.
Camera angle: Shot from a low angle, Dracula's power and dominance over Renfield is further emphasized.
Lens used: It's hard to tell, really. This shot is either taken with a normal lens from a more intimate distance than Renfield is standing, or it is shot with a telephoto lens from the bottom of the stairs. Either way, the emphasis is placed upon Dracula's hypnotic charisma, which we too must get caught up in to really understand.
Depth of field: Shot with a deceptive openness of form to which the spiderweb in Q3 gives the lie, here the castle grounds are filmed in slightly shallow focus to emphasize the Count as he speaks. Perhaps in the presence of such a charismatic figure we too might forget our previous premonition of danger...
Lighting: Essentially lit in a low key, here the lighting emphasizes Count Dracula as the brightest and darkest thing in the frame. From there the light refracts onto the spiderweb that glows an eerie light, and the stairs that lead to the den of the beast.
Screen graphics/composition: An interior shot of the long winding staircase of Dracula's crumbling castle, the composition of this shot is weighted toward the right side of the frame where the Count, the stairs, and the spiderweb are all positioned. Even the angularity of the ornamental guard rails on the left side of the frame point our eyes back toward the right. A compositionally static image over which the Count's movements are the only developments in the frame, in this shot Dracula's vibrancy of life is transposed against the grey and dusty castle in which he lives.
Editing style: Edited with straight cuts between Renfield's reactions to the Count from the bottom of the stairs, here the emphasis is made upon the straightforward continuity of time between cuts.
Time: While this shot is made in real time, the stark and open sparsity of sound makes reality seem unreal and dreamlike.
Subtext: Contrary to his charm and inviting manner, Count Dracula is a dark and sinister figure who is merely inviting the unwary fly into his trap. And like spiders do to the victims that land in their web, he will drink the blood of Renfield, and is not to be trusted.

IV. Conclusion

Perhaps in a time when one of the most popular stories around is a tale about a charming vampire who is all fangs and no teeth, it is important to reemphasize the predatory and sinister elements of the vampire myth. After all, to court with the vampire is to court the living embodiment of death. And while death might take on a romantic or even seductive form to those who have suffered in this world, we should not be oblivious to the fact that the sleep he offers is the sleep of the ages. While it is foolish to be taken in by such charm, the vampire is a creature who calls out to us in a time when the bitter aftertaste of our decadence and ruin makes us long for death itself.

In this respect, Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula is a vampire who still calls out to us in our own age. Brought into the world in a time of political, social, and economic turmoil that sent our once mighty towers and castles to collapse in ruin, Dracula is a monster born for just such times as these. In contrast to the visceral manglers who fill the horror screens with ill-conceived brutality, Dracula is a charming but ruthless monster who reminds us that death is more than capable of putting on a pretty face. America, after all, is a nation defined just as much by its monsters as its heroes, and we would do well to remember that as we brace ourselves for the years ahead.

Mike and Mark Talk Economics

2009-04-02T14:15:00.004-06:00

The following is a conversation held between my friend Mark and I over AIM.

[12:03] sojournertikkun: Hi Mark. In answer to your question ['how are things?'], it's mostly quiet today.
[12:03] msd4283: Cool. Yeah, same here. Went out for lunch and looks like I'm going out for dinner as well.
[12:04] sojournertikkun: Where'd you go?
[12:04] msd4283: A local restaurant here in town.
[12:05] sojournertikkun: Well yeah, but I mean, what do they serve?
[12:06] msd4283: Uh, just basically your standard stuff--pizza, burgers, other sandwiches (including wraps), soups, salads, etc. You get the picture, I'm sure. Listen to today's Democracy Now?
[12:06] sojournertikkun: I hadn't, why, what's up?
[12:10] msd4283: Well, they had some Marxist nut prof on there. One of the things he said was something like "Oh, well, we need a non-profit economy." My immediate thought was "Ok, now that you've gone the exact opposite extreme of the greed, etc that we currently have, what exactly have you gained?" My question to him would be "Ok, what exactly is wrong with profit? I mean, look, it's the *addiction* to money that's the problem, not the money itself." He did say some things, however, that are basically just common sense things. But then that's Marxism for ya. Human nature seems to want to always go to extremes instead of stopping and thinking "Wait a minute, what's really the problem here?" and coming up with a decent solution.
[12:14] sojournertikkun: One very large problem with profit motivation is that it obscures the basic function of an economy to distribute resources throughout society to sustain it.
[12:18] msd4283: True. But, profit, in and of itself, isn't the problem. I will say, however, that there's such a thing as too much, but to completely go to the extrme of no profit at all is a good way to really destroy an economy. It's been tried before--called the Soviet Union. Obviously, the history bears it out that really, that didn't work as well as they'd hoped. Not that capitalism is the answer to everything--every system, Communism included, has its advantages and disadvantages.
[12:27] sojournertikkun: The Soviet Union, like any empire, failed for many reasons. Actually, the idea of profit is itself the root of many problems in society as it builds an uneven flow of power throughout society that is the root of any kind of class struggle. This may be seen clearly enough in the anthropological studies demonstrating that in truly egalitarian societies like the foraging bushmen tribes, violence is almost unthinkable. They don't even punish their children, but simply remove the children from the source of their misbehavior, and this actually works in their society.
[12:35] msd4283: Well, true it failed for many reasons. but I guess we tend to be rather attached to the idea that if you work, you should earn something as a result. I think the biggest problem that a lot of ppl see with getting rid of profit altogether is that no one would really get anything for working. And the other thing with his communist model of a non-profit economy is that we're suspicious of any system that could introduce a totalitarian regime, since we are, as Americans, attached to our freedom. I will say though, that since "with freedom comes responsibility", if one is irresponsible, one is then in effect sacrificing their freedom. Since obviously there was irresponsibility that got us into the current economic mess, it probably shouldn't surprise us if we do see regulation and subsequent limiting of our freedoms in this nation. and obviously, the financial crisis is a global thing, so we're definitely dealing with something a lot larger than just this nation.
[12:47] sojournertikkun: Ah, but that's just the thing, any uneven consolidation of power is a system that could introduce a totalitarian regime. It isn't for nothing that in more contemporary dystopian works, corporations have taken on the roles previously reserved for governments in an age when transnational entities can no longer be held in check by any one national entity. Here in America, we have this knuckleheaded notion that if all citizens are capable of participating in political process, then all citizens are free even though they may not have an adequate level of soft power to live the life they would choose if they had the economic freedom to do so. Consequently, in America we are compelled to say that our citizens are both free and they are not free, but this is a logical contradiction, and so cannot be true. Now as far as incentive goes, I'm still thinking that one over, although I will speculate that the pride and joy in craftsmanship, the very joy that has regretably dwindled in the wake of the Industrial revolution, is a thing we should endeavor to restore to society.
[12:51] msd4283: That's true. You're right. Never thought of it that way before, actually. You know, it's strange that we look at capitalism and all of that that goes with it as the answer to everything, when, in fact, it's really turning out to be more the problem. To be honest, the more I really get into God's Word, the more I see that in fact, there's so much that the so-called "church" in this nation (especially) has gotten wrong. Basically, it comes down to colluding with empire. the Church of England did it, Rome before them did it, and so ppl come here thinking they're going to start a utopia, and they end up making the same mistake, disguising it under "religious freedom" and "freedom, justice" etc, etc.
[12:57] sojournertikkun: Fair enough. To be sure, capitalism is very effective at solving certain kinds of problems in society, but its commodities exist in that hazy dividing line between viruses and antibodies, making the society it rules over simultaneously more well and more sick.
[13:02] msd4283: Very true.
[13:07] sojournertikkun: But this is, I think, one of the central differences between my political views and the laissez faire economics of most conservatives. Where conservatives predict that, left to itself, the economy will reach a state of healthy equillibrium, I predict that left to itself, the economy will make certain sectors of society very, very sick, and that while conservatives may at times make valid points about our society's moral climate, they're all too often oblivious to the way our economic structure colludes with this process.
[13:09] sojournertikkun: Alright, lunchtime, brb. But please leave anything you want me to read, and I'll take a look at it when I return.
[13:09] msd4283: Ok. Have a good lunch.
[13:09] *** Auto-response sent to msd4283: I am currently away from the computer.
[13:16] msd4283: Yeah, you're right. and I've noticed that as well. Conservatism is strong when it comes to moral and cultural stuff, but economics, well, it's rather lacking. but of course, one of the principles conservatism has (though they won't tell you this) is that an egalitarian society is exactly what they can't have. It was conservatives who supported slavery and opposed civil rights for African-Americans. On the religious side of conservatism, they oppose women's ordination. It was also conservatism that opposed women's voting right. So really, is conservatism something this country should stick with? In most cases, probably not. The opposite, though, is equally just as bad. Ultraliberal ideas such as gay marriage would be destructive to society as we know it, leading to God only knows what--I don't even want to think about it. But on the other hand, that's probably the way our society is going, thanks to postmodernism.
[13:52] sojournertikkun: Well done! That's what I've been trying to tell you for months now, and I see it's finally clicked. The authoritarian orientation of convervativism is a major downer too. As far as gay issues go, the more I think about it, the more I find it defies simple pat answers, so you'll have to figure out what you think about that one on your own. Hmm, you know, why don't you dump conservativism and go old-school and become populist? I think populism would be well-suited to you because you get the traditionalism and a strong sense of ethics, but you also get the economics and ability to stand up to power.
[13:53] msd4283: True. Yeah. It's just hard to undo all those years and years of conservatism. I'm slowly getting there though.
[13:54] sojournertikkun: Now you've got a spontaneous rewrite of a Siouxsie & The Banshees song stuck in my head, "Conservative Relapse".
[13:55] msd4283: lol :)
[13:57] sojournertikkun: "It happened whilst doing a chore, I asked myself 'Why vote for Al Gore?'
[13:58] msd4283: Yeah really. lol
[13:59] sojournertikkun: Yeah, I think the song I am so gratuitously changing is "Suburban Relapse".
[14:00] sojournertikkun: Yeah, Siouxsie Sioux would probably kick me in the balls if she heard I wrote that.
[14:02] msd4283: Yeah. Not to mention all the copyright infringement lawsuits and everything else.
[14:03] sojournertikkun: Copyright infringement lawsuits? Nah, funny thing about first wave punks, they're either really cool with things, or they're right in your face about what you're doing that bothers them.
[14:04] msd4283: True.
[14:05] sojournertikkun: So I reckon I would be more likely to get kicked in the balls than suffer a lawsuit, especially given the leeway given to satirists.
[14:07] sojournertikkun: Why do I always use the same word twice in a sentence? It's even worse when it's two entirely different definitions of the word.
[14:07] msd4283: Hey, I do the same thing. Don't worry. lol
[14:08] sojournertikkun: Thank you! Oh, by the way, do you mind if I blog this?
[14:09] msd4283: Go for it.
[14:09] sojournertikkun: Alright! Excellent.

Rantings On The Bright Future Of This Ruined Age

2009-01-15T02:38:00.003-07:00

(The following is reprinted from a message I sent to my friend C. Lewis of RED+TEST, an Industrial music project aimed at increasing awareness of a variety of contemporary humanitarian issues. Having discovered RED+TEST very early in my days of Internet radio broadcasting and included his music as a prominent part of the playlist ever since, C. Lewis and I have been friends and mutual supporters for roughly two and a half years now. Anyone interested in checking out RED+TEST's music may do so at the project's Myspace, http://www.myspace.com/redtest.)

Some old tracks you cooked up and would like to see the light of day? Sounds great! You know, its interesting, I always make it a point of asking my friends I know are committed to change about what they think of the new regime, and the responses I get are pretty much split down the middle. In a certain sense, I am less interested in Obama the man as I am in the zeitgeist in history his election represents. In him I see the prospect of two important historical developments in American history that would restore a lot of the respect I lost in the country in the period following the turn of the millennium. The first development would be the departure from the imperial hubris evident in America's longstanding tendency toward expansionist policies. The second development would be the prospect of a second New Deal, turning around the turbulence and disillusionment of our time to make much needed social changes in the face of the culture's general tendency toward apathetic and compassionless laissez-faire capitalism. If Obama can accomplish either of these things, then the future of America and the world will be much brighter.

At any rate, it's a lot like Gandalf said in The Lord of the Rings: we make the most of the time and age that we are given. While I've always known that whether things get better or things get worse, and that the one thing that was certain was that the future would be troubled, I never expected things to get this bad or fall this far so quickly. And yet, I have never felt so certain that my future and the future of this country is brighter now than it ever has been. Even as our pretentious propaganda slogans about how blessed and favored our country is before God turn to ashes in our hands, it reminds us that God rebukes those he loves while leaving illegitimate children to their own devices. And so, amidst these dark years emerges the hope that maybe, just maybe, God cares very deeply about what happens to this country after all, and is trying to lead us away from this present course of ruin before it's too late. In the midst of such times, I believe you and I, EAR and Vendetta Records, and all the rest are exactly where we need to be. As David Bowie put it; "Thank God Heaven left us standing on our feet." Therefore, I've said it before and I'll say it again: though going through times like this is painful and difficult, I know I can handle it, and it's ok. You know, I should probably blog this little ranting...