Terror Able

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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.

Neverwhere Angel

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Neil Gaiman is popular among my students. At least among those that still read for fun. A couple of years back one of them lent me a copy of American Gods, and the story stayed with me. Having lived for many years in Wisconsin, and having visited the House on the Rock, the novel was like a kaleidoscope of some of my more pleasant memories of the state. Neverwhere is quite different and yet equally compelling. Gaiman peoples his worlds with characters just on the edge of believability thrown in with protagonists who tend to be completely confused by what they’re experiencing. Instead of gods, in Neverwhere there is an angel with the unlikely name of Islington and we have the myth of Lucifer’s fall retold in fantasy format, rolled together with Alice in Wonderland and the myth of Theseus. For starters.

A person is a composite of what s/he reads and learns and accepts. The books we digest, each in a unique recipe fitting our individual tastes, create new compounds and concepts that explore our personal realities. Neverwhere takes the reader down a rat-hole instead of a rabbit-hole, but nevertheless follows a young girl on a journey of maturity. The hero’s quest is undertaken to actualize both protagonist and idol, and along the way the beast in the labyrinth must be encountered and slain. Theseus, the flawed hero, dominates a world where even saviors have peccadilloes.

The protagonist of Neverwhere does not believe in angels, despite his encounter with one. As Gaiman puts it: “it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.” Belief generally involves not seeing. Once the object of belief is empirically confirmed, belief becomes knowledge. Today the belief in angels remains unabated. No empirical proof, nothing tangible confirms this belief beyond the anecdotal accounts of those who claim to have experienced them. Even the fanciful image of their androgynous good looks and unlikely wings remain untainted for all the centuries. Neverwhere raises an intelligent question about angels, but to discover what it is you’ll need to go down the rat-hole as well.

Evolving in America

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Columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. is one of the most sensible men in America right now. Witty, humble, and bright, he sees clearly and shoots straight. In an allegory entitled “A tale of a giant grown stupid” he illustrates the frustration many intelligent people feel in a country where thinking is viewed askance, and accepting empirical data is rife with suspicion. He begins his article by citing a statistic in Science that indicates some 60 percent of high school biology teachers in the United States inform their students that they don’t have to believe in evolution, they just have to know enough to get through the test. And evolution is not alone in the field of falsified information. Americans are regularly fed a high-fat, low-fiber diet of poor quality religion and told it is the only correct one.

While the remainder of the developed world has moved on to more important issues, we in America are still stuck in Fundamentalist kindergarten. The constant barrage of insipid theology from self-proclaimed doyens of the Scriptures assures the masses that the price of heaven is a healthy dose of creationism. Making matters worse, most biblical scholars choose not to engage these misguided spokespersons, choosing instead to believe they’ll eventually just go away. But why go away when you’re winning the fight?

Evolution is such an odd issue over which to argue. Neither serious biologists nor serious biblical scholars have any problem with it. Only a society increasingly under the power of a jacked-up, over-eager, offensive Christianity buys the feeble creationist rhetoric. And buys it in bulk. That is the American way. For many, society’s ills may be blamed on too much thinking. The Bible requires no thought, just the ability to see in black and white. And the Bible has proven a more powerful weapon than an H-bomb in the educational curriculum of our bright young minds. America itself is evolving. Unfortunately it is evolving into a nation satisfied with simplistic solutions to complex problems. And Bible scholars do nothing and wonder why everyone ignores them. Once upon a time there was a giant. Only it was not sleeping, it was already dead.

Witch World

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Little did I realize when I posted an entry on witches two days ago that the news this week would itself become bewitched. Tuesday’s New Jersey Star Ledger contained a piece entitled “Catholics publish guide to witches and wizards.” Then the next day a former student posted a link to CBC News article headlined “Witches to face prison for false predictions.” Last week the Jehovah’s Witnesses left an issue of Awake! at my door that reveals “The Truth About the Occult.” Coincidence or black magic? Are we really in the twenty-first century? If only employment had the same staying power as superstition there would be no jobless rate to complain about!

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is concerned about all the interest Harry Potter is generating. Afraid that tweens and teens might tiptoe into the dark side, the Catholic Truth Society has produced a booklet called “Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers.” The booklet, written by a former Wiccan, is a strange answer to J. K. Rowling given that Potter and friends are not members of the Wiccan faith. They are simply fictional witches that haven’t been grounded by the constraints of the Enlightenment. Fantasy grants them their magical powers, not the Devil. In Romania, meanwhile, witches beset by income tax laws are now facing hard time if their predictions don’t pan out. New laws in the economically depressed nation would require witching permits to be obtained and receipts to be given to customers. This is not to sweep out paganism, but to gain some lucre from it. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are just concerned that occult practices, often seen as mere entertainment, might lead the younger generation down the road to sex and violence.

I was disabused of belief in witches before I failed out of kindergarten the first time. Teaching religion and mythology classes at two major universities, I see students from many different backgrounds trying to improve their minds. But once the sun goes down a backlash against the empirical method is nightly unleashed. I’m not sure whether to pick up my Kant and Descartes or my mugwort and rosemary. Religion breeds these darker manipulators of magic, a force against which many fear God has no recourse. So in our world of high tech gadgets and space stations and cyclotrons, we still have to worry about witches. Theirs is a metaphor yet to be fully appreciated.

Weird sisters or strange attractors?

iConfess; Indulge Me

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I confess to being a Luddite at times. I was a late-onset cell-phone user and my last laptop (Macintosh, of course) survived ten years of hard, academic use before an accidental drop forced me into a newer model. Now I walk through student centers and see banners advertising “new apps” and wonder what an app is and whether it is something I should have already had old versions of. I’ve figured out that “app” is an apocopated form of application, and that it generally has something to do with handheld electronic devices. Now it seems that I’ve been out-teched by the Catholic Church. That great bastion of faith that agonized over Galileo for four centuries has now whizzed by guys like myself who cut our high-tech teeth on telephones that had rotary dials.

What is this new app? According to the New York Daily News, the app is called Confession. The program apparently lets you choose a commandment that you’ve violated and offers a list of sins to tick off. (I envy the priest who got that job!) A press of the button and your sins are forgiven. Sure is a lot easier than getting down on your knees and telling it all to a guy you barely know. This handy app even automatically tracks the time since your last confession, so you can give it to the holy father in nanoseconds. It only costs $1.99.

Technology has wreaked havoc on ecclesiastical tradition. Only the most severely shortsighted of churches denies the draw and retention of the electronic revolution. Problem is, the worldview that generated these religions simply doesn’t fit into a palm-sized box. The world of century one was full of demons and dragons, and all on a very flat earth. Confession, when it became a requirement, was a visceral outpouring of deep secrets and fears before a black-garbed authority figure who had the power to dole out Hail Marys like a theophanic thunderstorm. Now it can be done at the stoplight on the way to Starbucks. The last time the church had asked for payment for forgiveness Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Door. Today, I’m sure, it would be an electronic error report posted to a Wiki-board Domain, whatever that might be.

Forgive me, Father -- oh! I've got email!

Sacred Bowl

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No winners in this game

I am not a sports fan. Nevertheless, in years when we can afford cable I’ve watched the Super Bowl with a perverse curiosity. Especially when I’ve lived near the locus of one of the competing teams. Having grown up just north of Pittsburgh and having spent fourteen years just south of Green Bay, this year would have been a toss-up for me anyway. I have friends from both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and it was interesting to watch the pre-game posturing, knowing that someone’s self esteem would be low this morning after. The Super Bowl, unlike Sunday religious meetings, is an event that never fails to fill the pews. Football reaches across denominational borders into personal pride. It is an odd thing to find regional self-worth in the antics of highly paid professional players from all over the country secured in a single location by money alone.

Sports are religious for many. There are acolytes, saints, bishops and high priests of the gaming community. And the congregation feels special when their team wins. An odd way to measure civic pride. When was the last time that a city bragged about the social care offered to its unfortunate? Would sponsors pay millions to see a city cleansed of unemployment, uneven health care, and corruption? Shining cities just aren’t set on the hills any more. What shines are lycra leggings and polycarbonate helmets. And funny commercials. For one day many Americans are gathered around the common altar of the television screen and many, many prayers are uttered.

In a world full of serious problems, playtime may be essential release. Nevertheless, when the game is over the problems remain. If only people could get as excited about solving a genuine crisis, and feel a sense of accomplishment by helping those on the opposite team. Instead religions divide up into teams and compete for stakes higher than even a Vince Lombardi, stakes that are sometimes taken too literally. No matter what the teams may be, the losers are always the same. They are the ones who suffer no matter which team walks away with the prize. Who won the Super Bowl? Did anybody really win?

Son of Stone Flies

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One of my favorite comic books growing up was Turok, Son of Stone. We couldn’t afford as many comics as our friends, but among brothers we’d share our resources and get a fair variety of reading material. Turok belonged to my older brother. It felt so ancient and sophisticated, tinged with primal urgency as Turok and Andar attempted to make their way from the Lost Valley where dinosaurs daily threatened their existence. The comics had a gravitas that even The Valley of Gwangi lacked. In one installment, a scroll-keeper joined Turok and Andar and claimed his sacred scrolls would show them the way free of this accursed valley. Turok doubted this and was rebuffed with “Fools scoff at what they don’t understand!” as their erstwhile companion decisively re-rolled his scrolls for storage in a handy leather pouch.

One pilgrim's progress

That image comes back to me when I think of how ancient writers sometimes used ridicule to castigate competing religions. It even happens in the Bible. A friend recently inquired into the figure of Baalzebub, the famous “Lord of the flies.” The Bible attributes worship of such a deity to the Philistines, the popular pagan foil of the children of Israel. The Philistines, as we know today, were a sophisticated group of Indo-European settlers on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean who showed up about the same time as the early Israelites were emerging from their “Canaanite” milieu. Since they didn’t practice circumcision and didn’t worship Yahweh, the Philistines were shackled with the worship of ineffectual fish-and-insect deities. (Dagon would never regain his proper significance until he was rediscovered by H. P. Lovecraft many centuries later.)

A different pilgrim's progress

With the discovery of the Ugaritic tablets, the common usage of the term zbl (let’s say zebul, so it can be pronounced) was clarified. Zebul commonly designed “prince.” One of the recipients of this honored title was the deity formerly known as Baal. Baal-Zebul, “Prince-Lord,” the great thunderer Hadad. From the sketchy evidence of Philistine religious practice, it seems the new-comers did adopt some of the gods of their new land, and perhaps among them the lordly Baal. In order to disparage the cafeteria choice of their neighbors’ gods, a biblical writer renamed Baal-Zebul, Baal-Zebub, Lord of the Flies. There have been other explanations for the title, but the lessons learned from our youngest days often furnish our adult interpretative lenses. This explanation makes sense to me, and it reminds me of a bit of wisdom from Turok, Son of Stone.

Two Ghosts

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To escape the harsh realities of a fractured career, I turn to celluloid. Lest Hollywood distract me too much, I strictly limit my movie viewing to weekends when I can let down, for a few moments, my constant anxiety. Since my religious antennae are always prickling, I notice implications sometimes in unexpected places. So this weekend’s fare included two ghost stories. Both of them utilize religion to resolve the haunting, but in very different ways. An American Haunting purports to be based on real events involving the putative “Bell witch” of Tennessee. The movie takes many liberties with this scant folktale, including a church condemning a seemingly upstanding member and a Bible being dismembered as the angry spirit attacks the Bell family. In the end, the plot is confused by a revelation of family abuse and the viewer wonders who it is that tears apart Bibles.

The second part of my double-feature was The Screaming Skull, a 1958 horror film that fails to raise a single follicle in fear. Nevertheless, the moody movie does provide the Dies Irae for Stanley Kubrick’s opening theme of The Shining as well as a sense of isolation that would also inform the latter exemplar. The religious element comes in the form of a priest who is a close friend to a clandestine murderer. With the help of a ghostly screaming skull, the priest is the one who eventually solves the murder and rescues the intended victim of our erstwhile protagonist.

Nearly half a century separate these two ghost stories, and the role of religion in them has reversed. In the 1950s the clergy were society’s protectors. Even though Rev. Snow is the only main character who does not actually see the ghost, he is a safe haven for the victims of evil. Fifty years later, it is the church that sets up the haunting of the Bell family by its unyielding laws. The family quotes the Bible at the spirit and the ghost tears the Bible apart. There is no sanctuary here. Films, no doubt, reflect social attitudes. When the foundations have lost their hold, confusion results. Who is to blame for the suffering of Betsy Bell? The movie leaves that up to the viewer. There is no solid Rev. Snow to whiten the sins of this world. Only ghosts remain.

Old Deuteronomy

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Last night my family attended a performance of CATS. We can seldom afford shows, or even movies for that matter, but when CATS comes to town it is non-negotiable with my daughter. It is a must-see musical. Anyone who has seen the show knows it is all just for fun with only the thinnest of plots and the most colorful of non-religious characters (they are, after all, cats). T. S. Eliot and Andrew Lloyd Webber, however, were/are solidly C of E, and that orientation comes through in both some of the characters from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and the arrangement of the poems into the lyric of CATS. The basic message of the show is redemption, but the angle that I particularly noticed last night was the mosaic aspect of Old Deuteronomy.

Old Deuteronomy, the patriarch of jellicle cats and father of many of the cats in the junkyard, is a hobbled, old character who assumes the aspect of a law-giver to the younger generation. He has been to the Heavyside Lair and knows the path there. He leads Grizabella to her rebirth with the Everlasting Cat. Even his name suggests his association with the Torah, famously summarized in the book of Deuteronomy. When he is kidnapped (cat-knapped?) his return leads directly to the culmination of the show, the return to Mount Sinai.

No one would claim that CATS contains a profound religious impact, and yet the show conveys an unexpected emotional power. T. S. Eliot was not particularly known for his religious poetry, yet his personal beliefs permeate the children’s poems that form the basis for the show. His Moses is non-judgmental, a cat who was quite frisky in his younger years and who knows the value of a life well lived. A cat that believes in second chances. That simple message kept audiences returning to Broadway to see CATS on its incredibly long run. For those of us whose careers have run aground in mid-course, a Moses more like Old Deuteronomy would be a hopeful religious leader indeed.

Redemption through work

Dog Gone!

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Religion is a strange attractor. Maybe not in the exact same sense as in chaos theory, but in reality it brings together mental states so bizarre that science fiction and fantasy writers have a buyer’s choice. Yesterday the New York Daily News reported on a South Carolina woman who hanged and burned a one-year old pit-bull puppy. Why? The bitch had bitten the woman’s Bible. Citing the animal as a “Devil dog,” the southern woman became a vigilante for the Lord. Now she’s being tried on charges of animal cruelty. This story touched me in a number of ways.

With family roots in South Carolina, I can conjure up images of this happening. Having known many, many Fundamentalists, it seems even more plausible. Given the constant barrage of contrary messages descrying the presence of evil in the world, all the sudden any mutt can become Mephistopheles. Begging off the Baskervilles, the demonic hound has a long pedigree in mythical imagination. It is well known that the Bible cites dogs as unclean animals, but it is their charnel character that leads to the development of the full-blooded hellhound. Prior to the Hebrew Bible, in ancient Ugarit dogs had an infernal connection. It isn’t seen clearly, but the association is there. Snatches of the underworldly dog appear long before Cerberus, and last well nigh into the twenty-first century.

Hel and his hound

Unfortunately for the deceased canine, it is a myth. Hellhounds still abound in popular media, everywhere from The Omen to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Dogs, however, were among humanity’s earliest partners in the survival game. From about as early as I can remember, we always had dogs in the house, and nary a demonic encounter. We never put them on trial, even when house-training was in progress and an accident occurred.

The news story reminded me of an episode of Dragnet I saw as a child. A woman was arrested for murder, and Sergeant Friday, in his unflappable voice, told his partner it was because the victim had shot one of her books. In the final fade out, after Bill Gannon asked what book it had been, Friday holds up a Bible with a bullet-hole through it. I was a little confused. Was the woman guilty or was someone shooting a Bible just cause? The episode did not answer the moral dilemma. I can’t even remember the outcome. But in 2011 things haven’t much changed. If he goes to South Carolina McGruff better watch what he takes a bite out of, or it could be lynching time again.

Beside Metallic Waters

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My brother recently pointed out the story of Rev. John Van Sloten, a Canadian pastor who has written a book about how he’s come to see the gospel in the songs of Metallica. Yes, Metallica. Even the members of the 1980’s hard rock band found the association a little surprising. It all came about, it seems, through an open mind. The story is narrated in basic form on the Gibson guitar website. Young parishioners at Van Sloten’s church suggested he should listen to Metallica. Perhaps aware of the principally negative conservative Christian reaction to rock in general and hard rock in particular, the pastor says he ignored the advice. Then the minister was presented with Metallica tickets. A divine mix was in the works.

At the concert the pastor had a revelation: the issues wailed against by the band resonate well with the concerns of Christianity. In fact, some of the band’s concerns sound downright prophetic. The concept of prophecy today often revolves around a prediction of future events (à la Harry Potter). Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible far more often concerns social justice, speaking out against the oppressor. Metal bands, from their inception, were vehicles for protest. Disillusionment against a system that perpetuates unfairness either at a governmental or a cosmic level. When I sat down to listen to the lyrics of Black Sabbath for the first time, I was surprised how biblical many of them were (don’t tell Ozzy).

Many religious folks prejudge heavy metal as “satanic” and evil without even listening to it. I have always been struck by how much these groups frequently draw on bleak biblical images. Today we treat biblical characters as paragons of emulation. The Bible does many of its characters no such disservice. Prophets are to be heard, not emulated. We think of Isaiahs or Jeremiahs as pleasant supper guests who happen to have a divine word inside. In the Bible their actions often lead to recriminations, but their uncomfortable message is sound. I grew up in a tradition that discouraged heavy metal, as if something in the music were inherently evil. I applaud Rev. Van Sloten for approaching one of the formative bands of the genre with an open mind. Truth may be found in some very unlikely places.

New Age Present

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Okay, so I admit I’m curious. As my “six month” subscription to TAPS Paramagazine continues into its second year, itself somewhat paranormal, I get the feeling that I’m witnessing the birth of a new religion. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that new religions are hardly rare, but this one seems an accidental entry into the field. Now ghosts and religion are natural enough as corollaries. Both involve afterlife concerns and the unknown. Having watched TAPS Paramagazine feature fairies, tarot cards, and zombies, however, I wonder if the distinctions are becoming blurred. In this latest issue (January/February) many of the articles make explicit mention of God. God and ghost in the same breath, with the exception of a particularly holy spirit, is an odd combination, given the biblical injunction against mediums.

Spiritualism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was descried by famous debunkers such as Harry Houdini and accepted by famous intellectuals like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is that liminal area that stays out of the reach of traditional Christianity and Judaism, but strays into the afterlife-prepared psyche. If the dead are out there, they should be able to communicate. Right? And with God’s full approval, so it seems. This latest issue alone suggests that UFOs may be demonic, that clergy may be legitimately interested in ghosts, God may speak through dead children, and that one may become addicted to paranormal investigation. Sounds like a recipe for a New Age mythology. Throwing in light-hearted contributions about the Walking Dead, and suddenly zombies become real as well. Oh, and skunks have a special wisdom.

Traditional Christianity cautions against all of these things (except skunks). When it comes to the supernatural, it claims, there is only one super, supernatural being. The rest are charlatans and wannabes. The Bible certainly does not encourage consorting with ghosts, and yet, in this New Age milieu it is possible to find any remotely spiritual entity touted as proof of reality beyond reality. As Bader, Mencken, and Bader observe in Paranormal America, citizens of this country are inclined to believe. Where does belief lead when there is no pole-star to guide the ship? I sense that we may be steering into uncharted waters. Anyone want to volunteer to be captain? Religions always get to make up their own rules, so feel free to devise your own compass.

Black and White Zombies

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One of the sweetest privileges of a school-year weekend is the Saturday afternoon movie. The advent of relatively cheap, boxed sets of old films has opened the realm of many forgotten classics for me. My wife recently purchased one of those 50-movie boxes of classic horror films for me, and I’ve been making my way through it weekend-by-weekend, and occasionally there is a gem among the tailings. Yesterday I saw White Zombie for the first time. Back in the days when Bela Lugosi claimed a faithful following after his trend-setting interpretation of Dracula, he played a voodoo doctor with the power over zombies in this widely panned movie. In these days of the Walking Dead, it may be hard to appreciate that White Zombie was the first full-length film about our undead friends.

With the exception of the always professional Lugosi, the acting in the film received a well-deserved trouncing. Interestingly, the “van Helsing” of the drama, the doctor who overcame the monster, was a missionary. White Zombie is authentically set in Haiti, and it is never made clear whether the undead are really deceased or simply mindless. But the goofy, pipe-smoking missionary is the one who defeats evil at the end of the day. As noted elsewhere on this blog, monsters frequently emerge from the dark realms of religion, and the zombie especially so. Today, however, the zombie is all the scarier for being secular, unaffected by God or human deterrent. Originally it was a case of voodoo versus Christianity.

In what is perhaps an unintentional irony, the character who comes across the most sympathetically in the film, apart from the fetchingly pouting Madge Bellamy, is Murder Legendre (Lugosi). The missionary wins out by dim-witted happenstance, while the character responsible for the actual death of the zombie master is a partially aware zombie fighting against his fate. It may be assigning far too much credit to assert that the film had intentional social commentary, but White Zombie has had an often unrecognized impact on what has today become the symbol of corporate America: the once humble zombie.

A typical zombie

Ghost in the Ark

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Jonathan Carroll’s The Ghost in Love demonstrates what might happen if all the rules were broken. Slipstream writing is new to me, being a conventional nineteenth-century American writer fan. Nevertheless, I regularly try to stretch my imagination wider than it has previously gone to see how others view the world. The Ghost in Love was quite an adventure into multiple realities. As with all fiction I mention on this blog, however, there is a profound religious dimension to the work. Besides the eponymous ghost of the title, the Angel of Death also makes an appearance in the narrative. Among his early lines is the statement that black-and-white movies are like prayer because it is necessary to work harder to overcome disbelief. This is just before the Angel of Death is stabbed to death.

In an ongoing theme of my own, however, the truly striking element was the use of Noah’s flood yet again. In the fiction I’ve been somewhat randomly reading, the flood story continues to appear at unexpected junctures, underscoring its depth in the human psyche. In this case, a talking dog has to solicit support from other animals to assist the protagonist in fighting off death. Invoking what Carroll terms UPTOC, “universal peace to overcome chaos,” Pilot the dog engages the hidden communication skills of animals that had been first instituted at the flood to get everyone aboard the same ark. In this sly rhetorical use of the theme, Carroll throws light on an aspect of the flood story that might otherwise remain unilluminated: it is a metaphor for universal peace.

Reading the news headlines can be a trying exercise. I fully realize that bad news sells better than good and that what we read in the papers is, like most human activity, a business enterprise. Nevertheless, the truth remains that humanity’s greatest enemy is itself. Peace has never been universal, not at least since Sargon of Akkad began toying with the idea of empire. Great catastrophes cost countless lives, but in those dark moments are glimpses of light: humanity at its most human, caring for others regardless of outlook or creed. Maybe that’s why the flood story recurs so frequently in literature. We’re not all in the same boat, but we are all trapped outside the one vessel that might save us. As we fight against the overwhelming waves, gasping our last breaths, we realize that we all have a lot more in common than we might have ever supposed.

Winter’s Music

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An editorial in this morning’s paper once again raised the question of whether we need a politically correct version of Huckleberry Finn or not. The story led me to recall the origins of rock-and-roll – not that Mark Twain was a rocker, but because I’d recently viewed the first installment of Time-Life’s History of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Both Huckleberry Finn and rock-and-roll owe a vast debt of gratitude to African-American culture, and both bear the scars of prejudice. An unfortunate aspect of life is that few people willingly subject themselves to hard labor when they realize an easier lifestyle is available (thus, Brave New World). This has been true since civilization began. With the advent of the Sumerians we begin to read about the slavery of war-captives. Even today, dressed up in fancy clothes, slavery of various degrees continues to persist. The reprehensible treatment especially of Africans for slavery is a heritage that will not easily be overcome. And yet American culture owes much to its African components.

While already in the back of my head, this was once again brought to the front by the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Explodes” episode of the Time-Life series. Now, being a musically deficient individual, I claim nothing particularly insightful here – my wife and daughter are the musically accomplished ones in this household – rock clearly has its roots in the blues and gospel. In the documentary Little Richard explains how rock was often simply music of the black churches transposed to secular clubs. Xenophobic “white” culture of the 1950s felt threatened by this catchy music and sought to disarm it. Calling it “race music” producers had the more popular songs covered by white singers such as Pat Boone. (His cover of “Tutti-Frutti” always makes me smirk.) The real element at work here was the prejudice against the other.

As a youth I recall literally throwing my rock albums in the trash because of a Fundamentalist tract that declared in no uncertain terms that it was the “Devil’s music.” I’d bought those albums with my own hard-earned money, but sacrificed them to save my soul. Little did I know that “Devil” was a code word for “African” in this fundie literature. Otherwise, why was it alright when Pat Boone (of The Cross and the Switchblade fame) sang the same song? Mistrust runs very deeply in monotheistic religions. Even today many branches of Christianity inveigh against the horrors of rock without acknowledging that the music has its roots in the cry for liberation on the part of slaves, as expressed in Christian worship. Civilization will always insist on retaining its slaves. At the very least modern western culture should say “thank you” for the unrequited gift of the musical voice of the twentieth century.