Lovecraft in the Woods

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CabinintheWoodsYou know the basic plot: five college students—always an uneven mix of genders—travel to a remote cabin in the woods during a break. Extreme bloodshed ensues. The Evil Dead? Cabin Fever? Blair Witch Project 2? This time it was The Cabin in the Woods. With the exception of Cabin Fever, all of these films have a religious origin for the horror unleashed on our protagonists, with varying degrees of seriousness. The premise of getting away into the woods is overtly sexual in nature, often with the added vice of drinking or drug use far from the eyes of watchful society. Something inevitably goes terribly wrong. Were they a tad less graphic, most of these movies could pass for morality plays in their adherence to the convention, made obvious in The Cabin in the Woods, that the virgin is the sole survivor. Of course, this is done with tongue deeply embedded in cheek. Joss Whedon, who brought us Thor and The Avengers, knows all about gods, and they are the driving motivation behind the evil lurking in this contrived cabin in an artificial wood.

In this parody of the splatter film, the blood of the archetypal teens is collected to appease a Lovecraftian pantheon of unseen “ancient ones.” These are the gods of old, hidden deep beneath the earth in a slumber, placated by the ritual sacrifice of the whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool, and the virgin. The sacrifice is orchestrated by techie priests who wear white shirts and lab coats, in a hermetically sealed laboratory under the cabin where they are set to unleash any variety of monsters on the kids, leading to their gruesome demise. First the protagonists must “sin”—not a difficult prospect, given the arrangements—and be punished. If the ritual fails, the world ends when the “evil, giant gods” are released; echoes of Cthulhu are rife.

Horror movies offer more than scares. If done well, they provide catharsis as well—a kind of celluloid redemption. Writers and directors, however, have moved toward self-parody to distort the horror film into a kind of comedy. Even as early as The Evil Dead, the humor is evident. Joss Whedon, however, effectively wields the evil gods, just as in The Avengers. Deities are revered less for their goodness than for their sheer power. H. P. Lovecraft, an atheist, gave us the old gods. Hollywood has run with them. Instead of catharsis, viewers are left with an undefined unease—something is not quite right with this universe that has been created. Gods, whether holy or horribly profane, demand much of humanity. The response may be abject devotion or laughter. The sins remain the same as human vices of old. It is the gods that have been transformed.

Rorschach Test

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Rutgers University, College Avenue Campus. I recall coming out on a sweltering night once in a while during a summer term, only to find a street evangelist inveighing against undergraduate evils. He, and it was invariably a he, may have delved into the darker sins of graduate students, but I didn’t stay around to find out. Colleges attempt to educate while street preachers try to halt the process. Shall we go forward or retreat? I occasionally run into off-campus preachers on my university visits. I still look like a professor, I suppose, so I am treated to their version of salvation along with the people less than half my age, facing all the temptations of adulthood. The last evangelists I saw were handing out tracts about the evils of tattoos. I know tattoos are very popular, although I’ve personally never seen the draw. With one eye cast warily ahead, I think of what happens when that firm bit of skin starts to sag and the bold decoration begins to shrivel to make us look less like rebels and more like crepe paper left too long in the rain. Besides, I could never think of a picture that I’d want attached to me for the rest of my life. Too many changes come along, best leaving tattoos for those who appreciate a strong dose of irony.

Tattoo

Our evangelist friends, of course, object because tattoos are expressly forbidden in the Hebrew Bible. “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you. I am the Lord,” so the Lord declares in Leviticus 19. I resisted the urge to ask my ersatz savior if his clothing contained any blends of materials, forbidden earlier in the same chapter. Or if he trimmed the hair on the sides of his head. Or rotated his crops. The problem, according to the tract, is that tattooing was considered a heathen or pagan activity as Christianity spread to new lands. Presumably the very popular cross or crucifix tattoo design had not yet evolved. The tattoo is a tribal mark, indicating loyalty to a (presumably unChristian) group. My tract sets itself out on a history of tattooing, and suggests that it became popular as a form of entertainment, suggestively knocking on the door of that devil, idleness. They even cite Rick Warren as making church too entertaining. This isn’t supposed to be fun, people!

The real problem is that tattooing is getting society prepared to receive the mark of the beast. With echoes of Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth (now severely dated), the tract tells us that the mark is a tattoo and that among the most popular designs is the dragon. China, which venerates the dragon, is hostile to Christians—coincidence?! And, it should be noted, “Studies have shown that WOMEN who get DRAGON tattoos become more SELF CONFIDENT and ASSERTIVE” (emphasis in the original). And that, they want us to believe, is a bad thing. At least with Fundamentalists, agendas are rarely hidden. Too many assertive women and scheming foreigners are trying to lead us to the very tattoo parlor of the beast. Who knew that so much could be unpacked from half a verse in Leviticus? The name Levi, by the way, some suggest, comes from the same root as leviathan, the dragon.

The Triumph of Lovecraft

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The deeper you peer into the mouth of nature, the more Lovecraftian the world becomes. Just days after I had posted a little meditation on Cthulhu, the great old god of H. P. Lovecraft’s unholy pantheon broke into the mainstream news. No less a source than NBC ran the headline “Tiny Cthulhu ‘monsters’ discovered in termite guts” only a few days ago. The microbe with the scientific name Cthulhu macrofasciculumque lives in the digestive system of termites, helping them in their destructive work. True, Lovecraft described Cthulhu as a bit bigger than that, but the first appearance of the microbes, according to Megan Gannon, reminded the discoverers of the eponymous terror of the Cthulhu mythos.

From microbes to the major football leagues such as the Baltimore Ravens, writers of the macabre have left their mark on our culture. The darkness they describe so richly is something we all feel at some level, but that we sublimate most of the time so that we can get on with our lives. Cthulhu macrofasciculumque may be very, very small, but the super-viruses and bacteria that we are encountering have the ability to destroy us just as surely as the chimerical colossus of Lovecraft’s nightmares. When we look for a way to describe these terrors, we have brave literary heroes from whom we might draw. We would be lost without them. They make it safe for us to venture into that darkened room, for they have been there before us. Lovecraft gave the world its first scientific description of Cthulhu, and although that description defies adequate reconstruction, we recognize it when we see it.

As Lovecraft saw him.

As Lovecraft saw him.

Science has brought us so very far. We can now see to almost the brink of an infinite universe and delve into the guts of termites. We have the ability to prolong life and increase physical comfort for those who can afford it, and we can annihilate entire nations at the press of a button. Drones can fly overhead and do the dirty work, and we don’t even have to step outdoors. Yet when we meet something that shivers our scientific spines, we turn back to the old gods to name it. Yes, religion may be the bête noire of science, but the dark night of the soul is not illuminated by LED’s or lasers. To see in this dark you need to have the night vision of literary perception. And those lenses, according to Lovecraft, reveal that the old gods are dead but still dreaming.

A Weird Resurrection

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Driving through an unfamiliar city doesn’t allow for much time to appreciate what you’re seeing. Back in February when I was visiting Austin, Texas for the first time, it was 65 degrees outside. Given the irascible temperatures in New Jersey this year, that felt like summer. Of course, the locals were bundled up since it was, for Texans, unseasonably cool. The weather has been off this year. Of course, we know who to blame. Cthulhu. As I was trying to find the University of Texas with an impatient GPS as my co-pilot, I spied someone walking down the street wearing a Cthulhu ski mask. I can’t express how badly I wanted to pull aside and snap a photo, but pulling aside in a strange city can lead to unwanted adventures. Especially when your co-pilot is an opinionated GPS. I’ve been to north Philly and the south side of Chicago. I didn’t want to take any chances that Austin might hide such districts.

Cthulhu mask

H. P. Lovecraft, like most original thinkers before the computer age, was ignored in his lifetime. I wonder what he would have felt if he had divined that the internet would one day bring him world-wide fame. His writings, of course, had been appreciated before the computer was invented, but the web has nearly as much Cthulhu as it does LOL Cats. Even those who’ve never spent a dark night curled up with the Necronomicon recognize Cthulhu’s octopoid visage when they see it. Davy Jones of the Pirates of the Caribbean fame borrowed his unforgettable face from the Old Gods discovered by Lovecraft. Cthulhu has become a cultural icon of the chaotic, the cosmic, and the somewhat comic.

In a strange way Cthulhu stands for resurrection. In Lovecraft’s mythological world Cthulhu lies under the sea, dead but dreaming. A dying and rising god of utter terror. Lovecraft, an atheist, built his fiction nevertheless around a series of gods. Today his stories are noted for their moody portrayal of improbable worlds, and his storytelling has had an incredible influence on many of those who attempt to generate worlds that are fantastic but somehow still believable. Cthulhu’s resurrection, however, is not to be desired. Even if these he represents life anew, it is a life humans could not bear. In a deeper sense yet it is Lovecraft himself who has experienced a kind of resurrection. A writer forgotten in his lifetime, but rediscovered when it was too late for him to realize just what he’d created, the true master of Cthulhu, I like to believe, lies dead but dreaming, and he has already revealed that he will rise and the masses will tremble.

Blob Blog

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Those who actually know something about movies occasionally complain that Hollywood seems to provide us with diminishing returns. How many movies have been remade? Can anyone even count all the sequels, prequels, and just plan quels? A similar trend is evident in publishing. A teen-vampire novel takes off and every publisher faces a twilight of the profits if it doesn’t spin off its own version. Sometimes I end up becoming familiar with a movie through its remake before ever viewing the original. The Blob is one example of this. I’ve seen the thirty-year remake 1988 version a few times. Just this weekend I saw the original 1958 version for the first time. It seems to me that teen movies of the late fifties and early sixties tried a little too hard to get the snappy, sassing dialogue of teens on the brink of the incredible cultural changes that were about to take effect after the extreme conservatism of the McCarthy Era. At times it is so hip that I can hardly stand it.

The_Blob_posterThe Blob falls into that category. A young Steve McQueen trades ripostes with his chums who think a drag race and a Bela Lugosi movie with your gal are pretty daring behaviors. Buried in all that innocence, however, I found a hidden warning tone. When I watch scary movies, I always keep an eye out for religious themes. Sometimes they fail to materialize. The Blob is about as secular as they come. I didn’t even spot a church or a priest (unlike the 1988 remake) in the typical American town. Just a bunch of kids that, Archie-like, try to convince the adults that they’re serious. A blob from space really is loose in town, and nobody has an idea how to stop it. All the adult men wear ties and the ladies all wear dresses. It is a world that follows the rules.

What of this warning tone I mentioned? Well, the blob itself is, apart from its disruptive raison-d’être, hardly more threatening than the stifling culture it attacks. It can’t be shot or burned, and nobody has any other ideas. It is unstoppable. Except for cold. And here’s the chilling part. As the carbon-dioxide drenched blob is airlifted to the Arctic by the military, Lieutenant Dave declares the world safe once more. Steve (Andrews, i.e., McQueen) chimes in with, “Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold.” The film ends with a trademark horror question-mark (this one literal) as the blob is parachuted onto a snow-covered landscape. Global warming was a future monster in 1958. The optimistic world could see nowhere but forward. Now, over 50 years later, our future looks a lot less cold. With politicians and some religious leaders decrying global warming as just another liberal myth, we might do well to remember The Blob. Something up there on our melting ice caps is waiting for us to return to the 1950s to begin its sequel of terror.

Trouble Feature

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HorrorNoire I must be a glutton for punishment. My fascination with horror films grew more out of enjoying the unsettling mood these movies used to set. That creepy, shadowy world that resembles in such a degree my experience of the everyday world. Like most people I don’t enjoy being scared, and as a pacifist I find violence extremely distasteful. And yet, horror movies. I suppose they serve to remind me that no matter how bad things might seem, they could be worse. This fascination also accompanies reading about scary movies as well. Robin R. Means Coleman’s Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present is a fascinating study of how race perceptions have found expression in horror movies. As Coleman points out, it’s not a pretty picture. I suppose, however, that it could be argued that no one should want to find themselves the subject of a horror film. They tend to be a form of self-punishment, and, psychologically speaking, that makes a lot of sense.

African-American characters, I had noticed, in early horror films are portrayed as easily frightened and their reactions are used for comic effect. I still squirm when I see such representations in early movies: the cultural and racial arrogance rises like bile in the throat. What I hadn’t realized, however, is that the Black role in horror films is frequently tied to religion. Coleman makes this clear—from early films centering on African-American issues to Caucasian efforts to portray Blacks, religion is often the vehicle. Black films make a strong use of Christian themes, while White films not infrequently present Africans as purveyors of voodoo or some mysterious, and dangerous religion. This is a fascinating trend and it shows mixed perceptions of how religion is understood. Christians who dismiss the “superstition” of other faiths should have no fear of “false gods.” Yet it makes for great horror fare.

Despite their low-brow reputation, horror films are among the most successful genre of movies. Many people find them cathartic, I would guess. It is uncomfortable, however, to be faced with how race self-perception is embedded in such films. Like any artistic effort, movies reflect the values of those who write, produce, and direct them. At the same time they reinforce or even channel the expectations of the viewing public. Reading Coleman’s study, I was given a glimpse of the perception of one of my favorite genres from the perspective of “outsiders.” It is not always a comfortable place to be. Horror movies sometimes showcase terrors more frightful than the special effects and improbable beasts flashed upon the big screen. The realities of our own past can be the worst of monsters.

Gods and Goliath

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EyreAffairNot only gods are proficient at creating worlds. Writers, as readers know, are the creators of worlds too. I first discovered Jasper Fforde via a friend’s recommendation. With the depressing demise of bookstores, however, I end up picking up whichever one happens to be on the shelf. Not that this is a bad thing, but I find myself in a melancholy cast when I think of all the joy that is not being had by avoiding reading. It’s all rather hollow, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Eliot? All of which is to say Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair was great fun. As usual when I read fiction, I kept an eye out for how religion appeared in this alternate world—most fiction that ignores religion completely somehow seems to be less realistic than Fforde’s fantastic tale. In the world of Thursday Next, the churches are dedicated to GSD, the Global Standard Deity. As one of the characters explains, the GSD is a combination of all religions intended to stop religious wars. It’s a great idea on paper, but religions are prone to wars as sparks fly upward.

Somewhat later in the novel Thursday encounters a crucifix-wearing vampire. Fooled by the sigil, she almost becomes a victim to the blood-sucker. When Thursday points out the supposed impossibility of a vampire wearing a crucifix, he replies, “Do you really suppose Christianity has a monopoly on people like me?” Although Fforde can be a great comic writer, some of his quips are quite profound. Indeed—does Christianity have the only vampires? All religions have their monsters, whether that’s what the author meant (score one for reader-response theory). The truth is the truth, no matter whether intentional or not.

The idealized world of The Eyre Affair is one in which religion has become universal. The great military conglomerate in the book is called Goliath not because of the Bible but because of its size and apparent strength. It is brought to its knees, however, by Thursday—a female David, if you will. In practical terms, throughout the book the military is much more powerful that the church of GSD. Perhaps that’s because people are afraid. Religion, which once upon a time allayed fears, has now become one of their main generators. “Nothing frightens me more than religion at my door,” John Cale once sang. In this rich complexity the reader is invited to bask as Jasper Fforde works his magic. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of his books. Before it is too late. You might find yourself learning a thing or two about religion. I did.

No Play-Thing

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Childs_PlayPossession. It’s one of the scariest concepts in the religious arsenal. The idea that a person could be taken over by a different entity and surrender his or her selfhood to a malevolent saboteur is frightening indeed. Horror films have been deft at exploiting this. As a college student I was slow to watch the latest horror flicks. Some I’m only now beginning to find. Over the weekend I watched Child’s Play for the first time. Like most people who have some sense of popular culture I knew that Chucky was an evil doll, but I never really knew the backstory. Despite the utterly untenable hypothesis of the movie, it still manages to be scary in our CGI world, despite the bogus lightning. The frightening part comes from what is an admittedly creepy doll in the first place becoming possessed by a religious serial killer. Charles Lee Ray, named after three infamous assassins, displays facility with a religion that some identify as voodou, although that association comes primarily from the voodoo doll that Chucky uses to dispatch his mentor.

At least Child’s Play makes the effort to explain what forces exist that might bring plastic and stuffing to life. In true horror fashion, it is not the Christian god, but forces that are somehow more powerful, more malevolent. It would hardly behoove the maker of all the universe to inhabit a Cabbage Patch knockoff. The Lakeshore Strangler has been in training to cheat death and remain alive forever. He takes lessons from a mystical character whose religion is referred to only obliquely, yet whose efficacy is obvious in the malevolent toy. Willful suspension of belief is necessary to make this resurrection story plausible, but that disbelief must include belief in religious powers. The horns of this self-same dilemma hoist all religious believers in a scientific world.

Chucky is participating in one of the oldest of all religious traditions—death avoidance. Some of the earliest evidence that we have showing that hominids were developing religious sensibilities is the burial of the dead. There is really no reason to bury if we are only carrion like every other meat-based product. Whether it is out of fear or reverence, we turn to religion to assure us that there’s something more. It may not be scientific, but that’s largely the point. For many even today, a concluding scientific postscript leaves a body cold. Time for a leap of faith. Horror films are often decried as lowbrow and unsophisticated. Chucky, however, like many mythic monsters, is rapping his inhuman fingers on the door of religion. Specifically resurrection. Although in this case, it might be best to keep that door firmly closed.

Peculiar Mythology

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Peregrine Confession: I love books like Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Ambiguity in fiction is under-appreciated at times. Of course, I’m not formally trained in fictional literature outside the confines of ancient mythology, but I do know what I like. This wondrous story of paranormal children in an alternate universe could almost have been drawn from Celtic mythology, and indeed Riggs provides a mythology to explain how things got this way. And every mythology is a kind of religion. In this world there are peculiars—not far removed from real life, for those willing to accept it—who have unusual powers. Miss Peregrine’s home, one where the children are under the guardianship of ymbrynes, houses those with special gifts. Some ymbrynes, however, wanted their godlike powers to make them into actual gods and in addition to causing the Siberian explosion, gave birth to hollowgasts, a kind of living damnation monster. “Rather than becoming gods, they had transformed themselves into devils.” Sounds a touch like Lucifer’s fall, n’est-ce pas?

It might be supposed by cynical readers of this blog that I select my reading based on the potential for finding religion in fiction. If that is true it is so only on a subconscious level, I assure you. I read about religion for many hours every day and I taught the subject for nearly two decades. When I turn to fiction it is generally for escape. I have found, however, that there is hardly any escape from religion. When I find it in fiction, therefore, I ponder some of its implications. Religion is so much a part of our lives that it can’t help working its way into popular culture. Maybe I just see it everywhere. That doesn’t mean that it’s not really there. But back to our story…

Hollowgasts, like Ugaritic devourers (sorry, couldn’t help myself), are powerful hungry. They must constantly feed their voracious appetites. Their favorite food, which actually transforms them a slight step back toward humanity, is the blood of peculiars. Blood is their salvation. The depth of this idea trickles down to the very roots of religion itself. Transformation is not possible without somebody paying the cost. Religion is bloody business. I won’t throw any plot spoilers in because I want to encourage you to read this strangely moving book. I will say that it is a strikingly well executed mythology for a world where God is not present, but where monsters and peculiars both partake in their own kind of divinity. And the strange photographs are real.

Hardsell and Gospel

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When I find myself a considerable distance from my point of egress sometimes I have to take the subway to escape New York. Don’t get me wrong—I love New York, but Monday through Friday it is a place to work, not to play. Getting home is serious business. To get to the Port Authority Bus Terminal from the subway, one venue is a long underground passage. When I take this corridor, I find that it is often a favorite place for street evangelists during inclement weather; apparently the gospel goes underground when the weather turns nasty. So as I recently padded along that tunnel, I noticed an interesting conflict in worldviews. There were a series of street preachers, the central one with Bible in hand, and several others handing out tracts. If I’d had time I’d have listened to the preachers a bit; one was riffing with street language and intonation, and another was fluently flashing between English and Spanish. I took one of his tracts.

HanselGretel

The contrasting worldview was the posters repeatedly displayed in a long line along the wall—Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. The movie is due for release next week. One of the modern remakes of fairy tales in the horror/action genre, this might be a fun ride, but the idea of secular forces taking on monsters clashed with the old fashioned gospel I was hearing with my ears. Or did it? Witch-hunting is not exactly PC in the days of religious pluralism when Wicca is becoming as normal a religion as the Anabaptists. Anyone who listens to most modern day witches knows that they are not evil, so I wonder how the movie plans on setting up the “evil” that our eponymous brother and sister have to conquer. I might just have to go to the theater alone to find out.

Tract

But is this really so different from our earnest street preachers below the ground? They are railing against the evil in the world, and if you follow their tracts, there is clearly no shyness about blood and torture here. The movie is rated PG-13, but what about the slip of paper I hold in my hand that shows a much bloodied Jesus hanging on a cross? Whether it’s with fancy crossbows or just plain crosses, the goal is to overcome evil. The real question is how to define it. Some, I suppose, would consider this movie a kind of evil; Gretel’s tight-fitting uniform is a little low-cut for taking on the forces of darkness, I should think. But the real evil is treating other people as enemies. And that even goes for street evangelists. If only they would admit the same for the wider world, maybe all this blood wouldn’t be necessary.

The Splice of Life

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Splice Although not really scary, and although almost attainable with current technology, Dren is a curious monster. Many movies of the horror genre have explicit religious elements, but Splice may be a little too much science fiction for that. Or is it? The story is simple enough: a couple of geneticists have gene-spliced a couple of viable creatures that can be farmed for important chemicals and enzymes to solve diseases. So far, so good. But then the idea occurs to them: if the chemicals that can be used to help cure animal diseases had a human element, couldn’t they be used to cure our own diseases? And here is where the ethical quandaries begin. Adding human DNA to the mix, even when in small portions, suddenly throws open the moral dilemmas. Dren is the somewhat human result of these experiments, but the movie ends with the haunting, unanswered question—what is it to be human?

Although today the field of ethics is largely claimed by philosophers, morality is a measure of beliefs about right and wrong. In many cultures, including our own, religion has quite a lot to say about the issue. Once human DNA is mixed in the creature morphs from a bumpy slug into a creature that looks mostly human. The ethical dilemmas that surround human potential—abortion, stem cell research, cloning, and in past ages eugenics—all focus on the rights of the human person. Once a person is born, however, we almost immediately begin to curtail those rights until most of us become cogs in an unfeeling corporate machine. We are valuable, but for whose purpose? Who, sitting in their cubicle, or on their assembly line, or behind the wheel, says, “For this they defended my right to be born”?

Oddly, we privilege the potential of life without tirelessly working to improve the lot of those who’ve already been born. Perhaps, indeed, this is some form of evolutionary advantage—protect the future of the species at all costs. This idea becomes religious when it is deemed God’s will. In the movie, Dren’s creators ultimately deem her unhuman, a monster who must be destroyed. They, however, nurtured her humanness all along. While not the most profound movie ever filmed, Splice highlights the fact that ethics reflect the values of society. And society sometimes withdraws even humanity from those who’ve lost its favor.

Leviathan’s Sibling

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TheGiantBehemoth Formulaic to the point of plagiarism at times, 1950s science fiction movies often follow the deeply worn ruts left by countless forgettable monsters. One such film that I managed not to see until recently was the biblically entitled The Giant Behemoth. In a more biblically literate society the poster’s catchphrase “The Biggest Thing Since Creation!” may not have been necessary, even though leviathan’s lesser known companion stole the title this time. Of course the movie begins with stock footage of nuclear explosions, and although I’ve seen such renditions hundreds of times, they remain troubling to the core. Those 1950s that many consider so carefree were days of insidious freewheeling with the environment, days before human infatuation with the power over nature revealed its horrifying consequences. The behemoth, a sign of Yahweh’s great creativity in Job, here becomes the human-wrought agent of destruction.

Poor Tom Trevethan is blasted by the beast’s radioactive breath in a scene more fitting to Revelation than to Job. In the funeral scene, the priest somewhat insensitively reads a description of behemoth before Tom’s sole surviving family, his daughter Jean. So like the 1950s the minister then declares that the Bible gives comfort to those left behind, when the Lord said to Job, “Gird up thy loins like a man.” Indeed. Loin girding was a masculine activity in the days before Fruit of the Loom had been grown. Comfort for the woman comes in acting like a man. Yes, the 1950s considered the man the default model of human being. It says so in sacred writ. Genesis 3, to be exact.

When the scientists can’t figure out what killed the old man, along with thousands of fish, they ask Jean if her father said anything before he died. She tells them about behemoth. Being scientists, they have no idea what a mythical, biblical creature might be. Jean informs them, “It’s some prophecy from the Bible; it means some sort of great, monstrous beast.” Well, Job is technically not prophecy. Actually it’s not even untechnically prophecy either. In the 1950s, however, if it was biblical, it could be interpreted as prophecy. The real foretelling, though, is clearly atomic. Such films can easily be forgiven their biblical infelicity for the sake of their good intentions of reigning in human self-destructive behavior. In the end science destroys the biblical beast, but I’m left wondering if it isn’t more of a parable than a prophecy. I guess it’s time to gird up my loins and go find out.

Alien Religion

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Alien3

Despite my interest in aliens, my viewing of the Alien movies has been tenuous at best. The image of what looked like an egg hatching a green sun over a particularly badly formed waffle always brought the tagline “In space no one can hear you scream,” to my juvenile mind. When the original movie came out in 1979, it seemed too scary for a kid in high school. I first saw Aliens (part 2) when living with a friend after seminary. He explained to me the missing gaps left from never having seen the original, and I was impressed by how Sigourney Weaver pretty much took on the alien queen single-handedly. I was still too young, however, to realize that there’s always room for an alien or its egg to attach itself inside any spaceship or escape pod. You can never really get rid of the things. I finally saw the first installment some ten years later, and it was clear that, as in nearly all series, the first was the best. Ridley Scott’s films take considerable energy to watch. No one seems capable of matching his dark moods and sense of a hopeless future. I left it at this state for another decade, until recently reading that Alien 3 marked the culmination of the “theology” of the series. Over the holiday break I decided to find out if this was true.

Ripley, who can never get a break, finds herself the sole survivor (again) on a prison-colony at what used to be a lead ore refinery deep in space. While the company had abandoned the facility, a group of inmates who had formed a religious order decided to remain. Having grown up in a refinery town, so far I’m on board with the story. Separated from society, from women, and from temptation, the prisoners are a fundamentalist sect that would seem to fit well into the woods of Wisconsin. Ripley threatens their delicate balance of celibacy, and although not a virgin she ends up conceiving an alien in a Madonna-esque way, not even knowing how she became pregnant. When she decides to incinerate herself rather than allow the alien to be born, she falls into the fire in a cruciform dive just to drive the point home. Before her dive into hell, however, Ripley tries to motivate this band of incarcerated monks to fight the alien. When they say the company will save them, she responds, “What makes you think they’re gonna care about a bunch of lifers who found God at the ass-end of space?” Again, echoes of Wisconsin.

Doubtless, my experience of the movies has been skewed by my own experience. Still, Alien 3 holds to a pattern that emerges fairly often in movies with a strong horror theme—religion is the progenitor of terror. The prisoners’ religion is described as “apocalyptic,” and it frequently appears that in movies where a civilization is on the brink of collapse, religion awaits to greet the survivors with open arms on the other side. In the horror genre, this is often a cold, clammy comfort. Although religious elements were largely lacking in the Ridley Scott and James Cameron episodes, I do hear distant echoes of Moby Dick here from the very beginning. The dark alien, like the white whale, is elusive and destructive and does not relinquish its hunt until Captain Ahab, or Lieutenant Ripley, is dead in its grip. And since Alien Resurrection awaits in yet another sequel, like the white whale, the alien never truly goes away.

Fanpire Club

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FanpireIt has become an odd world indeed when thousands of people look to vampires for family values. Although I’ve not read any of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, I have been curious at the reception they have received. A literary agent said, a few years back at an event I attended, that publishers want vampires. There is no end in sight. Perhaps it is my inherent trust of scholars that led me to read Tanya Erzen’s Fanpire: The Twilight Saga and the Women Who Love It. Why would a religious studies scholar write about Twilight? Because Erzen realizes, as many scholars are beginning to that: 1. vampires are very religious monsters, and 2. many more people care about books like Meyer’s than they ever will about scholarly minutiae. I, for one, learned that I’ve missed out on a huge part of pop culture by insisting that my fictional reading must have at least an attempt at depth. Erzen ably points out that there may be truths beneath the surface even here.

When I first became aware of the Twilight books, I was surprised that no one seemed to be making the connection with Dark Shadows. I grew up with the subtle, sensitive vampire who was deeply conflicted. The books that serialized the television series were not profound either, but they evoked an angst that bespeaks a religious need deeply buried. Erzen is able to dig some of this out of Twilight as well. By interviewing fans for whom Twilight has become an ersatz religion, Erzen can show that even squeaky clean Mormon men can’t possibly live up to the vampire standard. The fantasy that has engrossed so many is an image of selfless love. As if Edward Cullen were a less chaste, and more undead Jesus. After all, he gives Bella eternal life and his love never grows cold. The values fit rather well with Latter-Day Saint theology, and provide a model for mortal family values.

More striking is Erzen’s revelation that fandom does not equate to feminism. The women who are empowered to love in unorthodox ways are very much controlled by their men-folk in Meyer’s universe. As Erzen points out repeatedly the ideal lover here is an obsessive stalker with a penchant for abuse (although mostly unintentional). Freedom for women comes at a cost. They may be offered the best in some fields, but even today women do not find equal representations in positions of power in our society. CEOs? Evening news anchors on major networks? Senators? Presidents? Our society is one that talks the talk of equality, but stumbles when it attempts the walk. Vampires cannot exist without victims. Even in the most “advanced” societies in our world, women must struggle in a hierarchy for which the architects, contractors, and supervisors are mostly men. Perhaps women find vampires so fascinating because it matches their experience of a society that takes far more from them than it is ever willing to give back.

Freud’s Nightmare

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B movies are a guilty pleasure. Weekends sometimes allow for guilty pleasures, when I can check my mind at the door, take a seat near the screen, dim the lights and grab the popcorn. 1950‘s sci-fi reflects paradigms that have ossified in some people’s brains, it seems. It has been many, many years since I watched Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. I was a child the last time I saw it. As an adult the message is strikingly different. The year is 1958, and my parents haven’t even married yet. Millionaire Nancy Archer has a run-in with an alien in a “satellite,” but he only wants her for her jewelry. Meanwhile her cheating sleaze of a husband, Harry, is making out with the redhead at the local, and plotting to kill his wife for her money. So far the story is fine, if tragic. Then the woman, enlarged by radiation, breaks free from her chains, rips the roof from the bar, and grabs her husband. To the local sheriff, there’s only one option—shoot the “monster.” He unloads a riot gun into her, and, hitting a transformer, electrocutes her. The crowd, aghast, run to see if her trashy husband is alive. The wronged woman they ignore. The metaphorical elephant in the room. Role end credits.

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The misogyny of this story escaped me as a child, as did the sexual innuendo. I was only after the cheap thrills of cheap special effects. So I turned to The Incredible Shrinking Man, released a year earlier in 1957. Scott Carey, after sending his loyal wife Louise to the galley for a beer, is hit by a radioactive cloud while on his brother’s boat. An accidental dose of insecticide some months later sets him to shrinking—a freudian fear for all men. As he grows smaller, his will to dominate his wife—now a giant to him, increases. Many scenes end with a tiny man leaving his wife in tears. Even when he is supposed dead, but in reality is too small to make himself heard, Louise is reluctant to leave, in case he still needs her help. Like a short beer, I suppose. The spider scene, which no doubt caused nightmares when I was a child, follows on his monologue about having to dominate his new, tiny universe. The little man shrinks into non-existence with the realization that “to God there is no zero.” What he doesn’t say aloud is, “as long as one is male.”

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These are the 1950s to which some political commentators (and not a few voters) wish us to return. Men fear being dwarfed by women. Call it radiation, or call it social regress, or call it paranoia—the message is all the same. Man must dominate. Women who overshadow are a threat. In the earlier film, Scott Carey is a passively shrinking man. By the next year, when Nancy Archer grows, it is now an “Attack.” Fast forward half a century. Dreamwork’s Monsters vs Aliens makes a parody of Nancy Archer, and Susan Murphy’s fiancé, Derek Dietl (who is clearly modeled on the smug, self-righteous newscaster in Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman) ends up alive, but shamed. The male alien who seeks to dominate her is destroyed. And the male monsters feel somehow less fierce in her presence. As this year’s political posturing clearly demonstrates, there is still a long, long way to go before true equality appears. Many men are clearly stuck in the black-and-white fifties. The full-color, larger than life Ginormica will hopefully better reflect the paradigms of the future.