In Defense of Blackest Night

For those that don't know, each year the two main comic publishers have what is now called anevent. These events are so large in scope that they touch upon every character currently in print. DC's latest event left some fans disappointed. Last year's event featured a high-concept apocalypse that played with the rules of storytelling and killed Batman. This year's event, The Blackest Night, almost seemed a rehashing of Marvel's "Zombie" franchise three years too late. I, however, thought Blackest Night was great.

The phrase, "struggle between life and death," is tossed around a lot in melodramas, but Geoff Johns used it as the setup for his story. Blackest Night shows the fight against death itself. This is Hamlet's most famous soliloquy in the form of a spandex clad free-for-all. That's it. I know a lot of people weren't crazy about the emotional spectrum of light. To say that all feelings can be broken down to seven emotions (a few of which aren't actual emotions) is a bit of a leap. Ethan Van Sciver, one of Johns's collaborating artists, agrees that referring to the driving forces as emotions seems flawed, he prefers to think of it in terms of motivation. Now, that leaves us with the idea that there are only seven motivating factors in the universe, which is still fallacious.

I want to take it a step further than motivation. I say that the real trick to lighting up a power ring is having a reason to live; after all, the whole story was about fending off death. It's easy to make a case for the positive (hope, compassion, love) and neutral (willpower) motivations. But what about the negative? Can it really be said that hatred, avarice, and fear make life worth living? Yep.

I did not enjoy reading Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, I want to get that out of the way early. But, like all dutiful high schoolers, I pushed through it. My memory always catches on one part, and that's the comparison between Hester and Chillingworth, particularly regarding love and hate. The following three sentences come from chapter 24:

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanour of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength and energy--all his vital and intellectual force--seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to support it,--when, in short, there was no more devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly.

To paraphrase, hatred was the only thing keeping Roger Chillingworth alive.

Silas Marner, also not one of my favorites, features an outcast gradually transformed by love. But that's not in the first act. The eponymous character begins as an outsider concerned with one thing: his gold. He works harder and harder, later and later in order to earn more wages, which he promptly hides under a loose floorboard. He never spends any, and the only joy he has in life is counting his horde. In chapter 5 he returns home to find his gold missing. He doesn't take it well.

Silas's next appearance follows a lengthy discussion of ghosts and spirits among visitors to the inn. He goes unnoticed at first, then cautiously greeted. His arrival at that point in the conversation and his sudden appearance in the room both mark him as ghost. Without his gold, he's might as well be dead. It isn't until he finds a small, blonde haired child outside his cottage that his spirits lift. The primary reason for this revitalization is because he believes the golden haired girl is his gold given human form. He refuses to part with her, taking her in himself. Hoarding this child as if she were treasure.

In Bruges is a movie I love. It's a darker movie, meditations on life and death and whatnot. Colin Farrell plays a hitman laying low in Bruges, Belgium after a job turns South. Things went bad, really bad. He spends the moving questioning morality, atonement, and the afterlife. To top it all off, he's stuck in Bruges. Everything is history, cobblestones, gas lamps, and too many bridges and canals without a bowling alley to be found.

Nearly everyone is afraid of death to some degree, it's the cornerstone of caution. Colin Farrell's character searches for some reason to keep on living. He finds it in fear. After some bullets find their mark on his person, he is rushed to an ambulance. All he can think of is whether or not there is a hell, and if so, what if it's like spending an eternity in Bruges. He no longer wants to die.

I know, now the response is, "there are more than seven reasons to live." Fine, there are. But only seven can manipulate that particular type of energy. If you don't like that answer, I suggest you try to plug a lamp in to the socket using string instead of copper wiring. Lots of things conduct electricity, but some are better conduits than others.

Outakes

We did much better this time.

Be Seeing You

I've come to understand that AMC is re-imagining The Prisoner as a week long mini-series. Though surprised when I saw the full page ad, the timing isn't all that surprising.

The Prisoner, a trippy television series from the U.K. in 1967, is one of the more relevant pieces of pop culture for post-millennium America. I believe that the resurgence of "socialism" as a hot button topic provided the final push needed to get a Prisoner remake a reality. I may not watch AMC's version, but only cause I'm digging the original too much.

The premise of the show is what happens when the Crown's top agent all of the sudden resigns. Considering the secrets stored inside his head, it would be quite easy for him to become a risk to national security. He's abducted and deposited into what could be seen as an international retirement community for the intelligence services.

I think that the themes present in this show will hit home with Americans with any political leanings in either direction.

Patrick McGoohan's protagonist refuses to play the game set out for him by the system. Each episodes' opening features the main character shouting, "I am not a number, I am a free man." The first episode finds him explaining his position to his supposed new superior, "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own." This rallying call for individualism appeals to our country's right wing. No. 2, the seeming (yet quite temporary) operations manager of the Village, often assures, "We're quite democratic, you know." The individual having to bend to the will of the majority, a majority that they don't understand, is an uncomfortable thought. This is what people are screaming about at town hall meetings now.

The philosophies of the Village are only half the problem. It's the forces backing up those concepts that lead to quiet chills. The opening sequence shows a man kidnapped from his home over political matters and then taken to a an unknown place where he is interrogated and threatened; today we call this an extraordinary rendition. One of the sets frequently employed on the show is that of the control room: a circular room of maps, monitors, and a seemingly motorized seesaw with cameras on either end. No. 2 and his associates often observe the protagonist from this location. That's the Patriot Act. The left wing is tired of shadow governments acting without the people's consent.

Benjamin Franklin is paraphrased as saying, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Both sides of the argument have been using this rhetoric, usually to try and shut down the other party. It gets me thinking about the American mindset. It seems the defining principle of being an American comes down to this:

We always think the other guy's out to get us.

I promised I wouldn't go "buy" a Ouija board.

Last week I watched Paranormal Activity. Yes, the movie everybody's been talking about. Am I really making my first real blog post in over a year about a flavor of the week sensation that will eventually die down and render this entry dated and passe'? Yes, yes I am.

I guess this is sort of a spoiler post. Though the movie doesn't really hinge on too many plot points, I'd hate to ruin someone's evening by having them hear about it here first. The film's premise is that Micah and Katie have been experiencing strange phenomena, now they're going to videotape it in order to get to the bottom of it. What you're watching is the footage, found and edited by a third party, of the goings on in their house. The psuedo-spoiler is coming up, so you many want to stop reading... now:

It's a demon.

It's announced within the first twenty minutes of the movie, so it may not be a huge spoiler. It appears that Katie has been followed by a malevolent entity since she was eight years old. As things get worse, the question hanging in the air (for the audience and for the players) is, "How long do you stay in a relationship with supernatural baggage?"

I'm going to go ahead and toss another spoiler out there, cause if you've read this far you clearly don't care. Things don't end well for the happy couple. Things really do not end well. But they could have.

I can't find my notes from class to back this up, but I remember my studies in anthropology, mythology, and folklore concerning demon possession. One is at risk for demonic possession when existing in a liminal state. Liminality is the state of being in-between, not having a set identity or social status.

The New Testament holds the story of Legion, one of the more well known stories of demon possession. The setting for the encounter between Christ and the possessed man is a graveyard. A graveyard is a liminal place, a crossing between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

In The Amityville Horror, George Lutz moves his new bride and her children to a spacious house with a dark history. George is the new addition to the family unit, he doesn't yet have a place, and is targeted for possession by the residence's resident wraith. His lacking a definite, fixed position in the group makes him an easy mark.

Now, Paranormal Activity's two primary characters are Katie and Micah, a young, unmarried, though committed couple. When asked about their relationship, Micah says that they're "engaged to be engaged." Thus assigning them to the grey area between boyfriend & girlfriend and fiancees. This puts them in a liminal state.

I believe that had these two kids taken time to figure out their relationship, everyone would've walked away fine. Now, it may seem that applying what I learned in Humanities courses at a State University to a motion picture scenario doesn't guarantee success any more so than the next guy's suggestion. But I can totally prove I'm right on this one.

Even if my liminality argument falls through, taking their relationship to the next level or calling it quits would have thwarted the demon's attempts. Let's say Micah proposes and Katie says, "yes." The Psychic tells them that beings such as ghosts and demons feed off of negative energy. The positive energy introduced by the engagement would give the demon less juice with which to work. On the other hand, after a long and serious talk, they might have decided to just be friends. Yes, this would produce negative energy; however, it would remove another source of the demon's power. The Psychic warns against trying to communicate with the demon, for it may view this as an invitation for further interaction. Micah does not heed this warning. If they split up, Katie wouldn't have to deal with Micah taunting, teasing, and actively seeking out the wickedness surrounding them. The demon would not have a door to step through without Micah's shenanigans.

So, what can we take from this movie? Yes, having a loosely defined partnership not weighed down by societal labels is fun, but it will get you killed.

This is us being silly.

Faith and the Fourth World

On the second read of Final Crisis #1, I was drawn to the above exchange. The casual reader sees this as the request of a dying man. Knowing that it is a god which fell changes the scene's meaning. These words are no longer a request, this is a commandment. This is the sole commandment of Orion, War God of New Genesis. Fight.

This line of thinking progressed. Considering Kirby's New Gods in religious terms leads to interesting places.

Darkseid rules Apokolips by fear. He is absolute authority with totalitarian ambitions. In Morrison's JLA: Rock of Ages, he transforms Earth into dystopia similar to Orwell's 1984. One word stands out on all signs, posters, and banners: obey.
This is the image often associated with the God of the old testament. Ecclesiastes 12:13 states, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."



Mr. Miracle, whom I love, also resonates with biblical themes.




Aside from the obvious similarity of a son being given to the enemy for the sake of peace, Scott Free features other Christ-like attributes. Being sent to the armaghetto only to eventually escape with Barda compares to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, in which Christ goes to Hell to free the righteous. Freedom, of which Mr. Miracle is living embodiment, is often viewed as the focal point of Christ's message. The word free, or variations there of, appears 68 times in the new testament.

I don't mean to keep posting about church and comics, I'll change subjects soon.

The Gospel According to Stan the Man

The current Wolverine storyline sets out to explain what happens each time when Logan is seemingly killed and then returns to life. It all starts on the war ravished fields of France in the second decade of the twentieth century. On second thought, there's too much backstory here. Wolverine beat the angel of death and now gets a second chance at life every time he dies, so long as he can beat him again.
I was explaining this to a church discussion group when some cynicism presented itself.

V: He killed the angel of death?
D: Not really killed, just defeated in battle.
V: Still, how can he beat the angel of death?
D: Well Jacob wrestled an angel to a standstill.
G: And Wolverine could totally kick Jacob's ass.

It was at this point when I realized something about myself. Each week that I've met with my church discussion group I've questioned the nature of God, religion, the church, faith, truth, etc. I never question the Marvel Bullpen. Some could argue that I don't question comics because I regard them as fiction, but the point remains. In all outer appearances I seem to have more faith in Marvel Comics than I do in my own religion.