Terror | Terroir

 I've recently watched the Jordan Peele produced The Twilight Zone, and thoroughly enjoyed Get Out when it came out a few year's ago.  I've long made the case that horror is as (or more) necessary as terror, in our daily lives, and I think Peele's horror ouvre, as it continues to unfold in front of us, will provide an object lesson for my argument.

The other night, I watched Us, and was profoundly moved by it (and close to bowel-moved as well it was so freaking scary).  It is the story of a fear of an under-class rising up.  But this under-class is not comfortably something other.  Rather, they are us.

The notion is terrifying (as opposed to horrifying).  I do not love the quickly accessible distinctions between the two (including the one in my post linked to above); a more fulsome account, if desired.  The fear of the revolutionary uprising is something that the progressive / liberal-defining bourgeoisie want to mask.  We support (in principle at least) the overthrow of power, and watching these upper middle class families get their come-uppance is, I would argue, a terror movie rather than a horror movie.

But then, Peele does what he has done so marvelously in much of his recent genre work, he extends.  If you relish the terror of bourgeois families at their vacation houses getting terrorized and chased around by unknown baddies, then by extension you will cheer to yourself similar harassed and displaced.  Of course this (generally) does not hold true, and becomes where we enter the horror genre.  The apocalypse for everyone else and adventure / free to wander tale for ourselves is at the heart of the good old 'merican terror story (The Stand, The Road, Revolution, The Postman, et cetera et cetera).  We love these tales of terror as long as we are in the less than 0.6% who get to survive Captain Trips.

In Us, when we begin to see the masses of underworlders holding hands in lines across streets, in and out of buildings and over mountain roads, forming an echo (but what's the word for an echo that's louder - more heard!?) of Hands Across America, the implications begin to be horrifying.  They are coming for all of us: children and adults, black and white, rich and poor.  

For me personally, Hands Across America was already a horror-laden event.  In 1986, my two brothers and I piled in to the family station wagon with my dad, leaving my mom at home, and drove south toward central Illinois to join in the not-so-nationwide chain of humanity.  On the drive down, the three other boys in the car (7, 14 & 40 years my senior) were discussing apocalypse as some kooky preacher on the radio (and billboards I seem to recall) was predicting Armageddon in the coming days or weeks (evidently it wasn't high-profile enough to make this list, unless perhaps my memories are conflated).  My brothers and dad were discussing the concept academically (or at least the childish version of academically; my family, and in particular my dad, are textualist bible-y people, and while they didn't go in for specific predictions of any moment, I do have the sense that they all kind of generally believed in it 'eventually'), and my 8-year-old mind was swallowing it whole, and I was terrified that the end of my existence was mere days away (hours of it to be wasted in the way back of this damned car!). 

I don't believe that Jordan Peele tailored his horror story specifically to me, but I am curious (and it's probably too late to note, spoiler-alert) as to what the implications of the film might have been had it not been for the twistNotSoTwist ending.  Would Adelaide's (Lupita Nyong'o) doppelganger (Red), who in fact was Adelaide, have seemingly led the uprising had she not come originally from the top side. Revolutionary artists (or perhaps it's more often horror makers) often wind up creating works that actually make arguments quite the contrary to what they themselves believe or would espouse in the real world.  

• Thus, is the argument of Us that in order to make revolution, the underside need a spark (inspiration or perhaps permission) from a member of the ruling class?
• Just as the hippie horror-makers (Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) wound up making conservative arguments warning about the dangers of teenage promiscuity...
• And a work of horror fiction as seemingly revolutionary as Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves winds up making a very very conservative argument (albeit circuitously).

It's not to say that it's the fault of these brilliant creators that their works wind up making conservative arguments that they'd rather not be making.  Rather it's the tricksy nature of working in the media of terror and horror and trying to bridge the gap.  It's why a filmmaker like George Romero was less susceptible to falling into the same trap, because he started with the horror and embraced it for its own sake, and the meaning came afterward.  When you try to wield the ephemeral (which is what you're doing when you're creating a work of art), it gets slippery, and doesn't always go where it wants.

It's why when the artistic mockery of religion that is televangelist doomsayers like Jack Van Impe and publishing powerhouses like Joel Osteen and religiosity-based "university" educators like Jerry Falwell Jr... 

• Ply their craft, they wind up arguing against their personal ownership or understanding of church doctrine, and their political and moral arguments (not to mention their continuing calls for their own personal enrichment) wind up making the case for exactly the opposite of their intent.

Game, Seth, Match

I watched the surprisingly fun The Mummy reboot (or sequel?, i couldn't quite tell...).  It was pretty immediately forgettable, but harmless.  I'm surprised to read that it was so actively hated (except perhaps because it stars Tom Cruise).

Most notable to me was the inclusion of Set (or Seth) as a major player.  Seth was nearly my first name, I'm told - being my father's preference. 

Names have always been of interest to me.  Ever since I read A Wizard of Earthsea, and contemplated the importance of the true name of a thing (or being or person).  In the world of Earthsea, knowing a true name gives you the power over a thing. 

When i was young, i was disappointed in my middle name, Seth...  I kept it a secret when i could (in the reasonless way that kids tend to do).  Joel was a handle I was proud of - rare enough so i only knew a few of them.  It was biblical, meaning "Yaweh is God" (Jo-el), and had a short, simple, and somewhat interesting prophet narrative in there beside Amos.  Seth, on the other hand, was born - seemed like a replacement for his dead brother.  Other than a whole lot of begetting, which led to Noah, his role seemed pretty insignificant in life.

But then i learned that Seth was also Set - Egyptian, exotic... and he was a god of chaos, perhaps not of mischief, but he seems like he would probably get on well with Vodou's Gede (i didn't necessarily know all that when i first learned who my namesake could be).  

ri bondye

I'm reading Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and came across an interesting point. "Nowhere," he says, "is there an account or picture of Christ laughing" (97). This struck me as essentially true - nowhere in my recollections or 10 minutes of google-image searching is there a (canonic) picture of Jesus laughing, giggling, or even much of a smirk.

Of course 'Jesus is love', right, and I assume love is happiness, joy, happiness, laughter, 'good-ness in general', right?


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May 2018
In returning to this post so much later, I am immediately reminded of Buddy Christ (which i've added in hindsight - it occurs to me that many of my drafts that i finish retroactively remain colorless and uninteresting, because they almost never have pictures!).

I think this post was going to be a diatribe on religion, or an early public embracing of atheism or perhaps an early exploration of the relative joys of the Vodou pantheon and the disparate personalities you find in the loa as compared to the relative hemogeny of the holy trinity.

Although my personal belief system has only solidified more since starting this post, i am more and more often flummoxed by public atheists' open hostility to religion writ large.  I very much understand the social, historical, anthropological, cultural, psychological and even physical (not to mention psychical) reasons that people take part in religion.  The desire or push by non-believers to try to dissuade those who believe is in some ways reciprocity (anti-evangelical), but i don't see it as supporting the goal of atheism - which i generally think to be truth-seeking.

Part of joining (most religions) requires expressions (publicly or privately) of faith.  That being said, part of the joy of taking part in religious events, services, etc. is the very simple act of joining.  Years before i even started this post, i read Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent Dancing In The Streets, which traces the history of collective joy from medieval dance manias to modern rock shows or live sports events.  America especially, but modern western life in general, too, has gotten bad at being together (see Bowling Alone and even EPIC 2014 to understand this more fully).

Much of joining (only less than youth-ful indoctrination) is that the world as-is, is a pretty frakking depressing place to be.  Religion can help that.  I enjoy attending religious ceremonies mostly for the anthropological ambiance.  It's fascinating to see how people (your own people included) worship, and how far afield it feels from my life, but how lovely it is that it seems close to the lives of others.

follow the white budgie

I said this morning, as i was packing up to leave the house, that almost all of the pictures i've taken lately have been insurance/damage related (that's right, i can talk in slashes). Pictures of how the bed ripped into the hardwood floors, pictures of how the UPS guy bent our gate latch all to hell, and (just this morning) pictures of brigette's smashed up Accord...

So, i was looking up 'budgie' on Wikipedia and came across this image about conservation classification (how endangered the animals are) and i was thinking, since there is a classification on there of "extinct", shouldn't there be, perhaps, a nuisance-level on the other end of the spectrum, where you're actually encouraged to kill them. Say, for ants and cockroaches and Christian Fundamentalists (if they're serious, they ought to thank you for this).

I saw a sidewalk chalk activist today, he was drawing a big peace sign on the ground. I didn't really stop to pay attention what he was writing, but it struck me that i've never seen the people who leave messages in this way. But he looked pretty much like you would expect him to look.

At least i'll be gone by then...

I went to see Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth this afternevening & it was, i think, the scariest fucking movie i've ever seen. It's one of those movies that you see and you think, just what is it, that i think i'm doing here? Al Gore, who is decidedly not a scientist (but is a pretty damn smart guy), dedicates his work to solving Global Warming... Me, i dedicate my work to thinking about zombies & corpses... I suppose it all amounts to the same

I'm also currently reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Both of these texts are of the life-changing sort... at least in their textio-mission statements are concerned. Inconvenient Truth first and foremost is a work that wants to convince all viewers (and by extension [six degrees of it, seemingly]) the world needs desperately to sort this whole "we're all gonna die" situation out, but is also, in the end a 'what-can-i-do' today sort of conclusion.

Dawkins - who i've never read before, but loved for quite some time (via Douglas Adams) - creates a text whose stated goal in the first chapter is to convince agnostics that they should entirely abandon the idea of an active, interested God & that believers should similarly abandon their faith in the face of such absolute improbability of the existence of God. I'm not too terribly far in, as of yet, but the project seems to surround first breaking down "logical" arguments for the existence of God and then constructing the vast improbability of the existence of God (versus the odds/likelihood of a Darwinian-style natural selection of the universe).

Now i've just witnessed the Bears come back from a 23-3 deficit near the end of the 3rd Quarter and if i were more desperate to find God in the world than i am i'd say the victory was a minor miracle (a miracle in the tradition of the unexpected parking space close to the destination - which, as Dawkins points out takes the space away from someone else), because they were terrible offensively & scored 3 defensive/special teams touchdowns to win the game in the 4th Quarter. I'm sure there's some amount of 20 years of suffering (20/40 what's the difference) neccesitating great glory and happiness in the land to come (by which of course the first 6 weeks of the 2006 season)

Anyway... point being (was, beed?) a movie & a book that everyone needs to experience. Go now... you here four hours, you go now!