Gothic Mother’s Day

2 Comments

What does Mother’s Day have to do with horror films and religion? I serendipitously discovered last night. I generally run a few years behind the media, reading books after they come out in paperback and watching movies when I find a copy of the DVD. Last night as a family we watched The Sound of Music. I’d never seen this show until after I was married – musicals were not popular in my blue collar neighborhood growing up. Of course, I am now a veteran viewer. Last night, during mother’s choice evening, I noticed that if the music were removed (itself a weird concept) The Sound of Music is actually quite gothic. The interior settings, the use of shadow, the dark, Nazi threat, the stonework of the gloomy abbey – all of these things add up to a disturbing collage. In the mood for something more baldly gothic, I stayed up to watch Silent Hill.

I tend not to research movies before watching them since it reduces the visual impact. For those films based on books, I generally read the book afterward to see what was “really going on.” Silent Hill, of course, is based on a video game. I do not play video or computer games; “Pong” may have been my last serious attempt at doing so. Silent Hill, therefore, was a complete unknown. The gothic element did not disappoint, and as Sharon, the adopted orphan, began her sleepwalking scenes being shown beneath a lighted cross in the night, I knew that religion and horror were once again coming together. Indeed, the driving force behind the gruesome story is a religious cult on a witch-hunt that is set in a village based on Centralia, Pennsylvania. The cult, believing those who are different are witches, seems to enjoy the medieval pastime of barbecuing them. Centralia’s ongoing mine-fire was used to great effect. Rose, Sharon’s devoted adoptive mother, of course, rescues her daughter. The line in the film is “Mother is God in the eyes of a child.” (There is the Mother’s Day tie-in.)

Having been invited to present an adult forum to a local church on Christian themes in popular cinema, I have been recharging my attempts to test my hypothesis that what truly frightens people is religion. Silent Hill would support this hypothesis. I did not miss the significance of the names: “Rose of Sharon” is a popular biblical trope. The impotent father is named Christopher. Centralia’s predicament is often vividly compared to arcane ideas of Hell. And mother’s are, in the eyes of many children, saviors. Perhaps that last point is why we celebrate Mother’s Day on a Sunday. Although films such as Silent Hill may not make the best family viewing, even here where religion destroys, the divinity of motherhood is underscored.

Thor’s Day

2 Comments

Mythology has visited the big screen in many guises, but among the current spate of superhero films a god may rival mere mortals and mutants. Thor opens in theaters today, bringing a Norse god back into the public eye. Like many young boys I owe my early reading predilection to comic books. One of my favorite heroes was Thor (our birthdays were very close) but I couldn’t quite make out how he was a superhero with the unfair advantage of being a god. Why weren’t other gods down here with us? At some level I sensed Thor’s rage, and perhaps even his estrangement from his father. Was there a sadness to this mighty wielder of thunder? When I was a little older Lester del Rey’s Day of the Giants became one of my favorite books. Norse mythology is plaintive compared to the world of the jovial Greek gods. Even the beloved Balder dies.

Thor is the embodiment of one of the most ancient principles of divinity: control of the storm. A generation after Odin, Thor also experiences that generational divide that all ancient people felt marked the lives of the gods. Zeus likely developed as a more civilized form of Hadad (Baal). In Ugaritic mythology Baal is the lord of the storm; he bears a mace where Thor will grasp a hammer. Baal, however, is often described as the son of Dagan, likely an early Mesopotamian storm god. Back to the earliest levels of civilization miniscule humans have quaked in wonder at the power of storm gods. Making Thor into a superhero humanized him a bit, and with classic comic-book biceps he was sure to be a hit among scrawny boys with dreams of grandeur. We would never have been allowed to read comic books featuring Baal.

The salient point, I suppose, is what makes a god a god? In the mythological mindset, deities are quite human except for their immortality and their strength. The might of gods clashes with the might of other gods. Omnipotence takes the fun out of the equation, for a truly all-powerful deity has orchestrated this whole cosmos and we are just pathetic players on the stage. Thor rages against the machine. If a god cannot be defeated, there is no story to tell. It may be difficult to predict how well Thor will perform on the big screen, but if I am not alone in my fascination of watching gods struggle against even greater gods, this may be like the Day of the Giants for grownups and kids alike.

Alien Agenda

Leave a comment

Aliens are now firmly among the canonical cadre of movie monsters. Just the list of highly anticipated movies of 2011 is enough to demonstrate the fact: I Am Number Four, Battle: Los Angeles (past, but formerly anticipated), Cowboys and Aliens, Super 8, Apollo 18 (now sadly relegated to 2012). With two part-time jobs and the constant hunt for something more permanent, I tend to fall behind, however. I have to wait until the DVD release to see them.

Watching horror films has been an avocation of mine since college. Once when a sociology student asked me why, in the course of a survey; I replied that it was better to feel scared than to feel nothing at all. Well, maybe I’d been reading too much Camus and Kafka at the time, but the habit has persisted and I am now professionally attuned to their religious elements as well. Even the aliens got religion. This past weekend I stayed up late to watch The Fourth Kind. It was suitably scary – when I read the reviews vociferously castigating the producers for claiming it was real, I suspected that the reviewers were overcompensating. The premise (alien abduction) is frightening enough – especially in such a remote location as Nome, Alaska – but the Bible had to be brought into it as well.

Admittedly the fear began to wane when Zecharia Sitchin’s Sumerian hypothesis appeared. Aliens speaking Sumerian is simply not convincing to those of us who’ve actually learned extinct languages. (It could explain some of the textbooks, however, now that I think about it.) The book of Genesis was then cited by the film to verify the much more ancient Sumerian claims. Many horror films deal either directly or indirectly with the fear of religion. The Fourth Kind was no exception. I was reminded of how the Bible played a small but crucial role in The X-Files: I Want to Believe movie as well. As a prop the Bible lends gravitas to otherwise questionable celluloid situations.

Never one to accept the ancient astronauts model, years of studying the Bible have convinced me that context explains most of the anomalous passages in scripture. Nevertheless, the monsters lose their bite without religion, so let’s give Sitchin’s crowd their due and just pretend for a little while.

Aftermath of Easter

2 Comments

Holidays, it seems, are increasingly overloading themselves with baggage. Not only are many of them thinly veiled celebrations of materialism, but many are now being tied to “issues.” As I survey the aftermath of Easter as I saw it this year, it becomes plain that even the message of self-sacrifice and hope springing eternal can be co-opted. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students at Montclair State University hosted a screening of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ last week. An outcry of biblical proportions flooded university discussion groups over what was deemed cultural insensitivity. Gibson’s version of the gospel failed to impress me when I saw it, stressing as it did Gibson’s sadomasochistic torture scenes in an effort to raise a few welts over “Christ-killers.” Back at Nashotah House I was regularly on the preaching rota. (I’m not now nor have I ever been ordained in any denomination. I have, however had preaching experience going back to my high school years.) My final sermon asked whether we should accept theological truths from a loose cannon of an actor. These physical accidents may have had more than a little in common.

Conversely, my first sermon at the seminary – the very year I was hired, and several years since my last pulpit performance – featured Abraham Lincoln. Nashotah House was a bastion for disgruntled southerners at the time; they were often the only ones conservative enough to fit the seminary’s profile. My admiration of Lincoln was expressed in an innocent expostulation on the merits of freedom. Afterwards I was drawn aside and admonished, being informed, “not everyone here believes Lincoln was a hero.” Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, a point that has not escaped those who note that the Civil War began 150 years ago this month. Those at Nashotah who disliked my words felt that I was disparaging the south. With roots in South Carolina, I indeed was not. Slavery is wrong in any ethical system that will stand up to scrutiny. Those who believe in equality, however, often pay the ultimate price.

Holidays do not always bring out the best in us. We need the respite, and we have the Jewish community to thank for coming up with the Sabbath that has led to our weekend lifestyle. Each weekend rival churches fill up with those who believe others to be wrong. Religion seems to have failed in its quest to unite. A colleague at Montclair cited the quotation of uncertain attribution: “having a war about religion is like having a fight over who’s got the best imaginary friend” – this was in the context of the screening of Mel’s Passion. The fact is, when it comes to religion nobody knows the correct answer. The humble response one would like to imagine is the mutual encouragement to continue to strive for the truth. More likely than not, the response is someone will select their weapon of choice and try to prove their point of view the old fashioned way.

Conscious Cats

Leave a comment

To pass yet another rainy Saturday, and to celebrate Earth Day, my family went to watch Disney’s African Cats yesterday. An avowed nature-film junkie as a child, I watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom on a weekly basis and have supplemented that fare with nature films throughout my life, when possible. It disheartened me a little to learn that some of the adventures were spliced together from different filmings, but I always believed every word avuncular Marlin Perkins said. After all, the show ran on Sunday nights, and who’d dare lie on a Sunday? Noting the humor even as a child when Marlin Perkins would stand back as Jim Fowler wrestled the anaconda or outran the crocodile, I could not get enough of authentic nature footage. As a child, wildlife sightings were limited to squirrels and rabbits, a number of birds that looked disconcertingly similar, and many, many bugs. Once a king snake slithered down an alley down the street, and we felt like Marlin Perkins, keeping our safe distance.

A trend in recent years has been to anthropomorphize animal films to engage children’s interests. So it was with African Cats. Each lion and cheetah family was described in human terms with human motivations, longings, and emotions. It is clear from watching many, many episodes of Zoboomafoo with my daughter (we even saw the Kratt Brothers live at a New Jersey Greenfest a couple years back) that animals genuinely do experience emotions. Anthropomorphizing them, however, has always disturbed me. I’ve been a vegetarian for well over a decade now, believing that animals have the same right not to be eaten that I fervently hope they respect in me. But placing them in the same level of consciousness as humans increases the suffering in our world a little too much. Both lions and cheetahs die in this G-rated movie. That is the unfeeling course of nature. Suffering comes at the level among humans of being aware of this misfortune, and taking it to heart. Theodicy is among the most intractable of theological problems.

Today as millions of Christians celebrate resurrection, my thoughts are with the animals. African Cats shows incredible footage of millions of wildebeest migrating, but packages them as mere prey for the hungry lions. What of the inner life of the wildebeest? In our society where the few lions demand the best while countless prey animals go about their daily grind, eking out a living from an unfeeling earth, the subtle message was almost overwhelming. Yes, the vast wildebeest herd can spare a member or two to predation. What if that member is you or me? It is the trick of numbers and the curse of consciousness. I respect and admire our animal co-inhabitants of our planet, but without the myth of resurrection isn’t giving them consciousness just a little bit too cruel?

James Temple's cheetah from Flickr, via WikiCommons

Kings and Lions

2 Comments

Most parents come to know the Disney Empire intimately. Apart from cheap knock-offs, it is the main entertainment industry for children in a world of leisure. When weighed in the scales of intellectual achievement, Disney productions often end up in the lighter pan. Even some of the more serious stories, such as The Lion King, strive for a gravitas that eludes them. That doesn’t mean they can’t be fun to watch, however. Yesterday, in a celebration of two closely spaced birthdays, we went to see The Lion King on Broadway. Being in Times Square reminded me that New York City is where many adults go to play, the Disneyland for grown-ups. Even with the rain for which this April has been an overachiever, hundreds of tourists were about, flocking to the famous chapels of the temple to American consumerism.

Having sat through many decent productions of high school, college, and touring company musicals and plays, I never really appreciated how a long-term professional show could raise the standards to a nearly unattainable level. The Lion King story-line has many mythological – Christian, even – themes, but the immediate sense of awe in being in a Broadway theater was underscored mostly by the professionalism of the actors and singers. The play does try to raise the level of awareness of African culture, a heritage nearly wiped out in many locations by overzealous missionaries, albeit in Disney-approved fashion. It is very easy to comprehend why those who frequent Broadway find other productions lacking. In short, the show was spectacular.

As today is the official start of Holy Week, and as Easter is about self-sacrifice and rebirth, The Lion King was an appropriate choice to experience (it was selected by my daughter). The death of Mufasa in the salvation of Simba is played out in a resurrection of sorts when Simba realizes that his father still lives in him. The character of Rafiki also makes for an excellent example of a shaman. Glancing through the playbill, it was evident that many Broadway shows are keyed to religious culture: Jerusalem, Sister Act, Rock of Ages, The Book of Mormon, and even Mary Poppins has a magical being descending from the skies to set a minor injustice to right. Now as millions lift their palms on this Sunday the drama will carry on and art will continue to draw its inspiration from religion.

Broadway 1986

Blue Monkey God

Leave a comment

A friend of mine pointed me to the following YouTube video:

Having spent many years in Wisconsin, I have to admit that this isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve witnessed. Not even the weirdest thing in the name of religion. Nevertheless, the fact that grown adults are running around the Wisconsin woods dressed as Na’vi and throwing toilet paper onto innocent trees shows just how diverse religions can be. My ears perked up at about the 3:50 mark on the video where Tsu’tey says “I didn’t believe in God before Avatar” – a statement that catapults James Cameron into the role of father of God, I guess. What will it take to make some people believe?

I have said for years that movies are the new mythology. At the risk of showing my age, and blowing my coolness factor, I recall the episode of Northern Exposure (“Rosebud”) where Leonard Quinhagak, a Native American shaman, tries to discover the healing myths of the Caucasians. The inhabitants of Cicely simply don’t know any myths. Meanwhile, in a separate plot, Ed Chigliak attempts to make a movie. The juxtaposition illustrates quite nicely how movies are indeed modern myths. The sense of transport many viewers reported upon seeing Avatar (critics, be quiet) also illustrates this phenomenon. Movies take us outside ourselves in a way most religions would kill (some literally do) to achieve.

Donning a blue body suit and freezing your tail off in Wisconsin may not be everyone’s favored form of religious expression. It is healthier than much of the religion I saw expressed at Nashotah House. In fact, when Tsu’tey and Eytukan are shooting arrows at the manikin of a woman I thought I had slipped back into my accustomed pew for a spell. The myth of Avatar is that peace, love, and tolerance may indeed coexist without the greed of the sky people who only want the money. There is a truth deeply buried here. If a few more cassocks could be shed along with a few more human tears perhaps we could embrace the contents of Pandora’s box unafraid.

Corny Children

2 Comments

Once upon a time, if you wanted to see a movie you had to go to a theater or wait until it ran on television. This is stretching my memory back a long way, so indulge me if I only remember that four channels existed in those days, and you had to wait years for movies to appear at a time when you could actually be home to see them. Fast forward a few years and the VCR was invented. I remember being impressed that you could actually rent movies you’d always wanted to see, within reason. If you watched them too often they wore out. Then the electronic revolution came. This is all by way of excuse for why I’ve only just started to watch movies that came out in my younger years. Children of the Corn, although critically panned, was a financial success in my college days when I started watching horror movies. When I finally watched it yesterday, I realized it was a natural candidate for this blog’s running commentary on horror and religion.

What I had not fully appreciated is that the movie is a cautionary tale centering around a sacrificial cult. While the movie does have its problems, the concept of children taking the religion they hear from adults seriously runs throughout the film. Understanding gods as bloodthirsty demanders of sacrifice is a gruesome staple of all monotheistic religions. Someone’s got to die for the rest to be saved. While Fundamentalists take comfort in the substitutionary atonement of the “once for all” nature of sacrifice, in the film, the children erect crosses and sacrifice adults to “he who walks behind the rows” – a typical Stephen King kind of monster. Monster or not, the children believe he is a god.

Belief is the guy-wire for religion. The reality behind that belief is open to question, otherwise multiple religions would not exist. Children of the Corn confuses the issue by presenting “he who walks behind the rows” as a legitimate supernatural entity, one who is vanquished by a passage from Revelation. The truly disturbing aspect, however, is the complete, unquestioning devotion of the children. When children are raised in intolerant religions today, we are also planting corn that will lead to some unholy reaping in the future. Perhaps the message of the film was more trenchant than most critics were willing to admit back then. Today it is certainly more believable, given many religions’ demonstrations of their destructive powers.

Zounds

4 Comments

Back in my first exposure to state university life in Wisconsin, I frequently received eager guidance from students on religion in the media. After having taught in a seminary where interest in the world beyond ecclesiastical walls was rare, this exposure to wider interpretation was welcome. One of the movies suggested to me by helpful undergraduates was the then fairly contemporary Stigmata. My interest in horror films was burgeoning again after my nightmarish experience at Nashotah House, so I watched the movie with renewed appreciation for the abuses presented on the part of the established church. I rewatched Stigmata this past weekend and a number of features stood out as apposite for this blog.

As always in movies, liberties are taken with reality. Stigmata presents the Gospel of Thomas as a serious threat to Catholicism. Of course, even the Gospel of Judas made a public splash back in my Oshkosh days, but the great Titanic of the church remained steadily afloat. The contents of the Bible are secure and non-negotiable for the vast majority of Christianity. There is no more room within its black leather binding for further revelations. The movie also presents a woman – an atheist, no less – as being the vehicle for a truth she can’t understand. In the masculine citadel of the Catholic Church she must be silenced, in an overly dramatic way, of course. The message seems to be that religion is unwilling to learn from secular women, even if they bear the truth.

The critics were not kind to the movie, but I found it a strangely religious film. The premise behind it advocates the reality of Christianity, only the Jesus of history is occluded behind a great mask of human tradition. Enamored of power, the church decides what will be revealed to the masses since control is more important than truth. A woman cannot correct the false belief of men, since a masculine god has given manly instructions to a male institution. Underneath it all, however, is a virgin Mary weeping real human blood as half of humanity is simply disregarded by the half that retains its abusive strength. Perhaps the commentary was a little too close to home, even for the (mostly male) critics.

Gila’s Got the Whole World

2 Comments

Singing pretty-boys and colossal lizards – it must be time for The Giant Gila Monster. A horror film that portrays all the innocence of the 1950s before the Beat Generation led us down the path to reality, the film has earned cult status in recent years. More accurately titled, “A Regular-Sized Gila Monster Filmed in Close-Up,” the sub-mediocrity of the movie has probably done more for preserving it in popular culture than any other aspect. The film stars the relatively unknown Don Sullivan as a great teen role model who writes and performs his own songs. The number that receives the most Internet attention, and the one that makes this movie of interest to this blog is “The Mushroom Song.” Chase Winstead (Sullivan’s character) has a young sister who is just learning to walk with leg braces. To cheer her, he picks up a ukulele and sings: “And the Lord he said I created for you/A world of joy from out of the blue/And all that is left to complete the joy–/Just the laugh of a girl and boy/And there was a garden, a beautiful garden/Held in the arms of a world without joy/Then there was laughter, wonderful laughter/For he created, a girl and a boy/And the Lord said, laugh, children, laugh/The Lord said, laugh, children, laugh” with the final line repeated numerous times.

Laugh, children, laugh

Perhaps intended to underscore the societal norms of a time when “the Lord” made frequent appearances as an unseen supporting actor in many movies, this song is oddly out of place. The disability of Missy Winstead is obviously a device to raise tension: how will a disabled girl run from a giant lizard? The song, however, provides the resolution – the Lord will take care of all good people. Their response should be to laugh. The reference to Adam and Eve, fitting for teen fantasies of all generations, also belies the evolution of this monster. The gila grows to its great size because of chemicals in the water that wash to the delta somewhere in Texas. This creature did not evolve. The Lord will take care of it. The Lord and nitroglycerin.

Respectful teenagers with predictable haircuts and a society that believes a missing teenage couple could be doing nothing but eloping fits the world of the Religious Right exceptionally well. Even though they may not be perfect, these kids know right from wrong for they live in a black-and-white world with no ambiguity or ambivalence. Children of subsequent generations have grown up with shades of gray or psychedelic colors. The older generation is frightened by new developments, claiming that the world they know is about to end. In fact, an evolution is occurring. Those who try to hold society to the norms of the 1950s would do well to move ahead a decade and at least listen to Bob Dylan. No matter how far we progress, however, it seems that Texas will always delight in producing Lord-loving, bloated threats to rational civilization.

Not the Oscars

Leave a comment

I could blame this week’s Time magazine for declaring that one thing we don’t need to worry about is an end to the zombie craze, but in truth I really have no one to blame but myself. Having watched White Zombie a few weeks back, I decided to see Revolt of the Zombies, its sequel, this weekend. With holes in the plot large enough for a small planet to pass through, it leaves a great deal of creativity – and imagined continuity – up to the viewer. It’s a movie bad enough to make you want to slap the television in frustration, but it did bring a number of my standard (read “tired”) themes on this blog together.

In this confused romp through sci-fi horror, excused only leniently for having been filmed in 1936, the terms robot, zombie, and automaton are used interchangeably. This is one of the technically redeeming features of the film. The term “robot” was coined to indicate a mindless servant, and in their religious origins zombies shared exactly that function of the automaton. Today’s robots are machines, and the future of the Singularity (posted on a couple weeks back) revolves around this very point: machines will complete the degenerating biological frame. Somehow the zombies will save us.

The zombies of 1936 were surrounded by swaggering, stereotyped caricatures of the helpless female who has very little mind of her own (perhaps less than the zombies who actually do something to better their state). Racist images including a wizened Scot called MacDonald and subservient Asians make the film uncomfortable for present day viewers. One glimmer of intelligence in the film, however, comes from an awareness of the classics. After a rat’s nest of a plot that is essentially one man wanting another man’s girl, old MacDonald gives a commentary on the assassinated master of the zombies. He takes his line from Euripides’ play Medea – an original strong female that the Greeks so feared. “He whom the gods destroy, first they make mad.” Second, I would add, they make watch Revolt of the Zombies.

Sinking Ships

2 Comments

In anticipation of the Academy Awards, last night I revisited Titanic. Since I tend to view art from the perspective of metaphor, I was once again struck by how our society resembles that great ship. In particular, with the current turmoil between plutocratic governors and the average citizens who’ve elected them, the brazen upper-class passengers on the Titanic embody the interests of the self-interested. When Captain Smith leads the privileged first class travelers in “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” in their own private chapel unsullied by the second and third class detritus, the line “for those in peril on the sea” resonates with the Prosperity Gospel. The well-to-do are that way through no fault of their own; God loves them more and made them better off than the rest. And when icebergs float, those unloved by their creator sink.

Over the past few weeks, in the shadow of events unfolding in Egypt and even Libya, we have seen the assertions of the aristocratic governor class assailing the workers. Attempting to make unions illegal, reducing the services offered to the poor, attempting to shorten the lives of the elderly by withdrawing medical programs (let us not ask how much profit pharmaceutical companies make for they are dearly loved by their father who art in Fort Knox), they know the rush of divine power. Indeed, populations are so complacent that as long as we have our MTV (substitute here your favorite media narcotic), that we shrug our collective shoulders and say “whatever.”

Perhaps it is not the metaphor James Cameron intended, but it is the working class Jack who sinks to an icy grave while the privileged but bankrupt Rose remains afloat. Our sympathies are with the young lady abused by privileged society, but the lifeboats should best remain half empty to preserve the upper crust rather than risk all going down together. After all, the Bible informs us that bread cast upon the waters comes back. And those who take up more than their fair share of the lifeboats wager that when that bread comes back it will be docile and subdued after its ordeals in the North Atlantic, and the Carpathia will come and restore society to its proper order. And so perhaps it is only a metaphor that more than a decade later the shoo-in for the Academy Awards is a film about the royal family. I think I see an iceberg ahead.

This is only a metaphor

Carrie That Weight

Leave a comment

When it comes to keeping up with the classics, I have a lot of catch-up to do. This even applies to classic horror films – I’ve been a fan since college but slipped out of the groove for a decade or so and now I’m working my way back in. Recently I watched Carrie for the first time. Considering that it came out in 1976 (I still remember the original trailers), it has held up remarkably well. The story of the child struggling to become an adult against the wishes of an overweening parent never goes out of style. In keeping with a long-term theme on this blog, the religious element was fully represented as well.

The portrayal of Margaret White as a religious fanatic included incongruous elements that had clearly been selected for their ability to set a creepy mood. The statue of St. Sebastian with an abdomen full of arrows seems a strange fit for a Christianity that is apparently Protestant. Mrs. White’s veneration of the Bible settles better in a Protestant milieu than the Catholic background of director Brian De Palma. The decidedly unnerving scene where Carrie returns home from the prom to find hundreds of candles burning recalls a more Popish atmosphere, but the prayer closet resonates better with reformed traditions. This unholy mix creates a disturbing lack of specificity, as if religion itself is the danger.

Writers and movie-makers attempting to scare audiences have long drawn on the stock character of the over-zealous religious believer. One reason may be the lack of understanding such characters demonstrate towards those who do not share their views. While it would be comforting to suggest that this is a mere caricature, experience unfortunately belies this assertion. Religions around the world all have adherents who brook no rivals and claim victory only in convert manifests or body counts. Truly classic horror films draw their power from a deep honesty. And many people are honestly afraid.

Blessed Virgin (Not)

Leave a comment

What’s not to like about Aphrodite? Hesiod’s first Olympian, she represents the exuberance of life itself in the pursuit of love. In our patriarchal world her erstwhile consort Cupid has come to represent that strange and compelling force that drives so much of what mere mortals spend their time on. A colleague has pointed me to a new documentary that is being produced on Aphrodite (trailer available on YouTube). In addition to fascinating footage illustrating modern Cypriot rituals to the goddess, the film contains what many would consider a sacrilege: on Cyprus the virgin Mary and Aphrodite are viewed by many as two forms of the same entity.

While the modern, monotheistic sensibility bristles at any notion of shared divinity, it seems perfectly natural that when the “mother of God” was introduced to the island that gave the world its Venus, “its desire,” a mental connection became inevitable. Unlike many “virgin goddesses” of the ancient world, Aphrodite had no false modesty regarding matters of love. Even the mighty Zeus, so powerful that he might be called simply “God,” was unable to resist her draw. Ancient peoples often celebrated the gift of love without the embarrassment that the Victorian Age has so generously bestowed on much of the western hemisphere.

Pressing the point even further, when monotheism emerged the equality of genders became an impossibility. The one god must, by the standards of all human imagination, possess a gender. And since men dominated the societies that embraced monotheism the divine feminine was lost. Orthodoxy replaced humanity, and thus it remained until only recent years when women finally managed to make their voices heard. Aphrodite, unlike Hera, is not under the control of a lordly king. The film by Stavros Papageorghiou offers viewers a chance to see what has been lost by the western world keeping half of the human race silent.

Terror Able

Leave a comment

Saturday afternoons were made for B movies. After a hectic week, nothing soothes like grainy picture quality and poor dialogue. This weekend offered a chance to view The Terror. This 1963 Roger Corman film won its bad marks the honest way – by earning them. Nevertheless with Jack Nicholson playing against Boris Karloff and a plot so convoluted that I had to draw a chart to figure out what I’d just watched, the movie lived up to its grade. Throw in Francis Ford Coppola as an associate producer and it’s party time. Corman’s legendary cheapness and fondness for disproportionate claims of scares that never materialize only add to the charm. After watching the opening sequence one gets the distinct impression that Franklin J. Schaffner had watched this film before setting up the climatic scene of Planet of the Apes.

In keeping with a recent trend on this blog, the plot involved a witch. An old woman from Poland resettles in France to avenge her murdered son. The crone casts a spell transforming a bird into a beautiful young woman. The first words of the spells sent me fumbling for the “rewind” button. “Tetragrammaton, tetragrammaton,” the old woman intones to begin her spell. In a movie fraught with dialogue problems, this might be considered simply a choice of foreign-sounding, mysterious syllables to be uttered for an audience not expected to know that tetragrammaton is the title of the sacred four-letter name of Yahweh. By this point the plot was so convoluted that making God the agent behind a pagan curse seemed almost natural.

The analog with the Bible soon became clear. The Bible holds its sway over many because of its often beautiful rhetoric. Sparing the time to study what the rhetoric might have meant in its original context is an exercise few believers can afford to undertake. Our world has become so full of things that taking time to explore the implications of one’s religion must compete with ever increasing Internet options, thousands of channels of television, and plain, old-fashioned figuring out how to get along. Religion is a luxury item and, as experience tells us, it is best not to look too closely at luxuries – their flaws too readily appear upon detailed inspection. Allowing religion its exotic sounding mumbo-jumbo preserves its mystery and power. And if a witch says a theologically freighted word we can just chalk it up to entertainment. We are too busy to examine what our religions really say. Roger Corman may have unintentionally discovered a real terror in a movie that will keep no one awake at night.