Month: December 2023

‘Gaya,’ a Surreal Adventure–Chapter Seven

Finally, Tesel’s men reached Gaya’s right hand, and the group of fighters led by Lia and Fil reached the left hand. The tunnels of Gaya’s arms opened out into the spacious chambers of her hands, and all the warriors could fit into each chamber with ease.

As they filed in, they felt a presence enter their bodies like air entering the lungs. This ‘air’ seemed to be their trainers of newer and better fighting skills, for they immediately found themselves moving with better grace.

The presence felt as if it were flowing through them…and making them flow everywhere they went. Swordsmen moved their swords in graceful arcs, almost like dancers. Spears were thrown in similarly flowing arcs, always landing exactly where intended. Arrows were shot with the same, flawless marksmanship.

The next thing to improve was their speed. They practiced drawing out and swinging their swords, and they were amazed at how lightning-fast they’d become in so short a time.

“This is incredible!” Tesel said of his own movements, as well as those of the other fighters he was watching.

“I feel as though I can take on all of Aisa’s army all by myself!” Lia shouted with pride as she swung her sword so deftly.

“So do I,” said another female fighter, doing the same faultless cutting of the air with her sword.

“This is so miraculous,” Fil said, with his sword swaying so poetically and swiftly, “that I need to put this improvement of mine to a test.” He took out his cup of wine, and instead of just sneaking a swig for fear of Tesel catching him, he now gulped it all down openly, without inhibition.

Then, once the cup was empty, he waited a moment or two to feel the buzz. He sheathed his sword as he waited.

Now, feeling nice and tipsy, he resumed his practice. He pulled his sword out of its sheath; as quick as a flash, it came out with perfect smoothness, with a screech of the metal blade. Then he moved about, with it slicing in the air as swiftly and adeptly as before. His wine buzz was in no way slowing him down or making him clumsy. It was as if he were completely sober.

“I cannot believe it!” he said with a grin. “I want to take on Kappitta all alone!”

Indeed, all the warriors were letting out triumphant shouts as they continued dancing with their swirling swords, tossing their spears with calculating accuracy, and firing arrows to hit what seemed microscopic targets.

“This is joyous news!” Tesel shouted, loud enough to be heard also in the other hand. “We now have the heart to defeat our enemies with resolve and determination. We have the skill to hit them fast and with precision. Now, there is only one more thing we need to ensure victory: insight from Gaya’s brain to know the secret of Aisa’s power. What weakness, in his army and in Kappitta, must we exploit to defeat them? For this knowledge, we must reunite at her shoulders, and march up to her head. Onwards and upwards!”

They all turned around and began their march out of the chambers of Gaya’s hands; but after only a few steps of each pair of feet, they noticed a slight trembling. Was it another earthquake? They looked back and saw slight movements in one or two of the fingers.

Then they heard a female voice from above:

MyGod!HerfingersclosedaroundmineafterIaskedhertodoso!
Whatwasthat,Lila?
Phil,Iwhisperedtohertograbmyfingersasmyhandtouchedhers,andshedid!Shecouldbebeginningtocomeoutofhercoma!
Maybe.It’sagoodsign,butlet’snotgetourhopesuptoohigh.
Yeah,wedon’twannasetourselvesupfordisappointment.Still,it’sexciting!

Not knowing a word of what was said by the god and goddess, but still encouraged by the feeling they were getting from the two above, the warriors continued their march out of the chambers of Gaya’s hands and back up her arms to her shoulders.

Cyclone

A disaster is coming our way,
but what
form
will
it
take when we see it twirling toward us?

Will we see burning landscapes and rising seas,
with dying plants
and animals on
a planet far
too hot,
though we could have prevented it long, long ago?

Or will we be cooked in a nuclear mushroom,
with millions incinerated,
the truly lucky ones,
and the rest will
have to wait
and slowly
die with large, hungry holes in their stomachs?

Or will our death bring a new birth, and in between
the end and a new beginning,
a truly monstrous time
of painful change
that’s needed
to weed out the greedy and cultivate our garden?

Analysis of ‘Le Marteau sans maître’

I: Introduction

Le Marteau sans maître (“The Hammer Without a Master”) is a chamber cantata composed by Pierre Boulez from 1953 to 1955. It sets surrealist poetry by René Char to music for contralto and six instrumentalists. It is one of Boulez’s most famous and influential compositions.

He was already known as a composer of total serialist pieces. Originally, Le Marteau was a six-movement piece in 1953 and 1954, but in the following year he revised the order of the movements and interpolated three new ones. He would make further revisions to Le Marteau in 1957, since he always felt that his compositions were works “in progress.”

Four of the nine movements have the text of three poems by Char sung, one of them sung a second time, while the remaining five are instrumental ‘commentaries,’ as it were, of the poems. The poetic subjects of the movements are not each grouped together by poem; instead, they alternate with each other.

The first cycle, “L’Artisanat furieux” (“Furious Craftsmanship”), is made up of movements I (‘before’), III, and VII (‘after’). The second cycle, “Bourreaux de solitude” (“Hangmen of Solitude”), is comprised of movements II (commentary I), IV (commentary II), VI, and VIII (commentary III). The third cycle, “Bel Edifice et les pressentiments” (“Stately Building and Presentiments”), is made up of movements V (first version) and IX (again).

The instruments heard are alto flute, vibraphone, guitar, viola, xylorimba, tambourine, bongos, frame drum, finger cymbals, agogô, triangle, maracas, claves, small tam-tam, low gong, very deep tam-tam, and large suspended cymbal. The combinations of these instruments vary with each movement, just as the instrumental variations are from movement to movement in Pierrot lunaire, the Arnold Schoenberg composition that greatly influenced Le Marteau.

This link includes the text in the original French and in English translation. Here are links to recordings of the piece, with the score, and a live performance of it.

II: The Text

As I said above, the text is made up of three surrealist poems by René Char. Since the jarring, unnerving, non-rational images of surrealist art and literature are meant to give expression to the feelings of the unconscious mind, I will interpret the meaning of Char’s clashing, illogical imagery using free association, a psychoanalytic method meant to help bring out unconscious meaning. That is, I’ll be associating common themes among the freely expressed images Char used in his poems.

“Furious Craftsmanship” is the wildly striking hammer of the artisan who creates without any sense of conscious control, that is, a hammer without a master, as it would seem. Such an idea would seem to sum up the entire composition, a wild, uncontrolled expression of feeling, or one controlled unconsciously, by a master of whom we know nothing, as if he didn’t even exist.

“The red caravan on the edge of the nail” parallels “the head on the point of my knife.” With the caravan paralleling the head, we can see the violence, the furious craftsmanship, of the imagery, especially with the “corpse in the basket” immediately following the caravan on the nail’s edge.

The verse is full of incongruous images of one thing far too big for the other: a caravan on the edge of a nail? a corpse in a basket? work horses in a horseshoe? In these surrealist images, we see a reversal of the normal order of things; what is large is inside what is small.

This reversal of order suggests a desire for revolution, something keenly felt by many around the time of 1934, when Char wrote these poems (note also that Char was later part of the French Resistance against Nazi occupation in 1940). Surrealism was understood to be a revolutionary movement, as leader André Breton explicitly said it was; it was associated back then with communism and anarchism. Now, it would be more than a stretch to say that Boulez had any such ideological sympathies, but he certainly wanted to make complete breaks with musical traditions, and he was interested in many of the radical movements of the time; his choice of Char’s poetry was certainly a reflection of this radicalism.

Certainly one aspect of revolution–violence–is evident in this poetry. The head on the point of the knife is apparently a Peruvian one. The image “knife Peru” suggests the violence of Incan human sacrifice, in which boys and girls were chosen to be killed by strangulation, a blow to the head (there’s that ‘hammer without a master,’ or one held by a ‘furious artisan’ of sorts), suffocation, or being buried alive. None of this killing involves the use of a knife, but the “knife Peru” is sufficient in its association with sacrificial violence.

More violent associations are to be made in the second poem, “Hangmen of Solitude,” or lonely executioners. “The step has gone away, the walker has fallen silent,” indeed, if the trapdoor of the gallows has fallen, and the condemned is hanged. His body swings like a “Pendulum.” He has fallen silent “on the dial of imitation,” because to imitate is not to express one’s own ideas, but rather those of others.

I suspect that the notion of imitating others being tantamount to being silent must have resonated with Boulez, since he was known to feel disdain for any musician continuing any traditions, anything done before, hence his insistence on breaking with the musical past. To him, the older music was just “on the dial of imitation,” nothing new, tantamount to silence.

His haughty attitude toward the music of the past was not limited to the likes of Mozart or Beethoven. The music of even his own teacher, Olivier Messiaen, which is more than often enough plenty avant-garde, was the object of his contempt. Boulez called Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine “brothel music,” and he said the Turangalîla-Symphonie made him vomit.

So any kind of imitation was anathema to Boulez. In the third Char poem used in Le Marteau, we find the line, “Man the imitated illusion,” which must have affected Boulez similarly to “the dial of imitation.” All of this being said, though, one must find it curious, and perhaps a tad hypocritical, of Boulez to be so fiercely judgmental of “imitation,” when one considers how he stuck to serialist techniques for so much of his career as a composer, instead of quickly shifting away from them in search of other avenues of experimental expression. His early-acquired aptitudes in mathematics must have been what sustained his interest in serialism for so long.

Back to the poem. Apart from its association with the swinging body of the hanged condemned man, “The Pendulum” can also be seen as an upside-down hammer–which normally would move in an overhand arc down to what it would hit–instead moving in an ‘underhand’ arc, if you will. The pendulum is thus like an arm, throwing in an underhand motion its load of reflex, or instinctive, granite.

In any case, that pendulum–whether representing the swinging body of a man hanged, or an upside-down hammer swinging up to hit, perhaps, a head, like those of the child sacrificial victims of the Incas whom I mentioned in my discussion of the previous poem–is just another symbol of violence in these poems. Boulez would condemn to either a metaphorical hanging, a blow to the head, or a knifing, all those musical imitators, those who won’t try to produce something truly new in music.

Now that “instinctive load of granite” that’s thrown by the pendulum could be of the material used to build the “Stately Building” of the third poem, where we’re heading now.

Could the words “I hear marching in my legs” be those of the condemned, hanged man…that is, his spirit after having been killed? “The dead sea waves overhead” suggest a drowning man looking up at them. The “child” on “the wild seaside pier” seems to be looking down at the drowning “Man the imitated illusion,” because the child, with his “pure eyes,” is alive, above the water, in being natural and original, not imitating anyone, as the drowned, hanged, or sacrificed ones do. The child, in his wild naïveté, has not yet been corrupted by an illusory society of imitation.

Perhaps the condemned hear marching in their legs because they refuse to admit they lack the originality that Boulez insists they must have to justify their existence. The condemned imagine they have the needed originality, so they must still be alive; and yet, those “Pure eyes in the woods,” the natural world where creativity is real, original, and not a mere imitation of past art, “are searching in tears for a habitable head,” that is, those pure eyes weep over how difficult it is to find an original head worthy of living in.

Those judgmental hangmen are truly in solitude, lonely executioners, for they can find no kindred spirits who want to join them in their avant-garde experimentation. Small wonder Boulez had fallings-out with not only Messiaen, but also fellow avant-gardists John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Boulez must have had many presentiments about the beautiful buildings his peers were making around him–never experimental enough for his so lofty standards.

III: The Music

I’ll start by making some general observations.

Just as both the surrealist text and the serialist music of Le Marteau are unconventional, so is the choice of instrumentation. Boulez’s choice of vibraphone, xylorimba, guitar, and percussion suggest anything but Western classical tradition. Rather, they suggest African and Far Eastern music: the vibraphone is like the Balinese gendèr; the xylorimba, the African balaphone; and the guitar, the Japanese koto. None of this is to imply, however, that Boulez was trying to imitate these musical styles.

Now, this mixing of East and West implies that Le Marteau has a universal quality to it; that paradoxically, while its experimental post-war modernism may be alienating to many in the audience, this implicit mixture of European and non-European cultures makes it a music for everyone.

Tied to this idea of universality in the choice of instruments is how the voice and instruments also comprise a continuum of sonorities. This continuum ranges from the fluid, legato sound of the voice and alto flute, on the one side, to the staccato, percussive sounds of the xylorimba and drums, on the other side.

This continuum could be heard thus: the voice and alto flute (breath); then the viola, which coupled with the flute represent monody; then the guitar, coupled with the viola when played pizzicato, provide plucked strings; then we have the long resonances given by the guitar and vibraphone; and the struck keys of the vibraphone and xylorimba mesh with the striking of the frame drum and bongos. This continuum of one extreme of sound to the other, with every intermediate sound, thus represents another kind of musical universality in that it includes, in a sense, every kind of sound.

The “Furious Craftsmanship” cycle, or movements I, III, and VII, uses this tone row, according to Lev Koblyakov: 3 5 2 1 10 11 9 0 8 4 7 6, though Ulrich Mosch argues that this sequence is really the inversion of the basic set. In any case, this tone row is grouped into five sets according to five rotations of the pattern 2-4-2-1-3 (one must recall Boulez’s mathematical predisposition); so the first rotation would be 3 5-2 1 10 11-9 0-8-4 7 6, for example. The other groupings of the row would then be 4-2-1-3-2, 2-1-3-2-4, 1-3-2-4-2, and 3-2-4-2-1, with the second rotation being 3 5 2 1-10 11-9-0 8 4-7 6, for example.

In the “Hangmen of Solitude” cycle, that is, movements II, IV, VI, and VIII, Boulez associates particular pitches with particular durations, as Steven D. Winick observed. So C gets a sixteenth note, C-sharp gets an eighth note, D gets a dotted eighth note, etc.; in other words, as the pitch rises by a half-step, so does the associated duration increase by a sixteenth note.

As if all of this weren’t complicated enough, Boulez occasionally swaps the durations of a couple pitches, this being an example of his wish to employ what is called “local indiscipline,” which allows for some freedom and flexibility, or “a freedom to choose, to decide and to reject,” as Boulez himself said. As a result of such complexities and variations, it can be virtually impossible for the listener to decipher all of these serializations.

Along with coordinating serialized pitches and durations, he also assigns dynamics and attacks similarly. Starting on D, with its dotted eighth note, Boulez groups pairs of rising chromatic pitches six times (D and D-sharp, E and F, F-sharp and G, etc.), and he assigns a dynamic to each pair, from pp to ff.

What’s more, the first note within a pair gets a particular attack–legato for p and pp, accent for mf and mp, and sforzando for f and ff. Yet again, while these are largely discernible enough to be understood as deliberate, he complicates matters further with his use of “local indiscipline.”

The ninth and final movement is in a number of ways an amalgam of the previous movements. It’s broken up into three large sections, the first of which includes variations of quotations from the central movements of all three cycles (III, V, and VII, but in reverse order), as well as repeating the text from the fifth movement. Also, all of IX’s tempi are taken from previous movements.

IV: Conclusion

So, while all of this music is so meticulously planned, to the untrained ear, it sounds like an atonal, arrhythmic chaos of dissonance. There is a dialectical relationship between this precise planning and the ‘chaos’ that it seems like. As in all of total serialism, the arrangement of pitches, durations, dynamics, attacks, accents, etc., is all completely divorced from conventional notions of ‘expressivity.’ One cannot tap one’s toe to this music; it’s hard to hum the wide leaps that the contralto does in the piece. Yet Le Marteau is among Boulez’s most acclaimed works, and is considered a landmark of postwar twentieth-century music. People have connected with it, in spite of itself.

The music, in its impossible complexity, its planning to the minutest, most mathematical detail, and its seeming randomness, makes it a perfect counterpart to the text, with its surreal expression of the unconscious mind. Like the unconscious, the music is a mystery that takes a long time to unravel. How the unconscious expresses itself, hiding in plain sight and coming out in such forms as seemingly nonsensical dreams and parapraxes, seems random and meaningless; but a skilled, patient psychoanalyst can go through all of these seemingly inexplicable expressions and find meaning in them, just as a music analyst can find order in Le Marteau.

This is why I say that the music of Le Marteau is symbolic of the unconscious mind, verbally expressed, like the talking cure, through the three Char poems. In Lacanian language, the music represents the inexpressible, undifferentiated, traumatic world of the Real, while the text represents the verbalized world of the Symbolic.

Boulez, in so painstakingly working out the character of every note (pitch, duration, dynamic, attack, instrumentation, etc.), is in a musical sense making the unconscious conscious. Unlike all the other composers he had such disdain for, those who were, in his opinion, just mindlessly following in the clichéd footsteps of their previous followers of even more clichéd music, Boulez broke with tradition and with unconscious instinct (i.e., the tapping of the toes, the humming of a flowing melody). He would have nothing to do with “the dial of imitation”; he would have no society with “Man the imitated illusion,” for in his opinion, the imitation of previous art is the illusion of art.

The irony of the mallets hitting the keys of the vibraphone and xylorimba, and of the sticks hitting the drums in his piece–those ‘hammers without masters’ striking irregular rhythms (indeed, a casual look at the score will reveal changes in time signature with almost every, if not absolutely every, bar)–is that each tap is planned with fussy attention to detail. Those hammers really are with masters.

‘Gaya,’ a Surreal Adventure–Chapter Six

The separate groups reached Gaya’s shoulders and began their descent along her arms. Anticipation was high as they all wondered what new fighting skills they were to learn when they were in the chambers of her hands.

They all stopped about midway along the tunnels of her upper arms when they heard two male voices from above:

SothatisthegreatandfamousGayaWeld,pornstarextraordinaire?
Yes,itis,andshe’sallyoursforanhourfortwohundredbucks
Hereyouare,buddy
Thankyou,andherearetherules.Nohittingher,nobiting,andnoscratching.Shecan’thaveamarkonher,anywhereonthatbeautifulbody,’causeifthereis,anursewho’smoreofagirlscoutthanI’lleverbeaboyscoutnursewilltelleveryoneandwe’llbothbeinshit.Here,letmegiveyousomething.
Lube?
Yeah,incaseshe’sdry.Soaslongasyouremembertherules–don’thurtheratall–havefun.I’llbebackinanhour.
OK.

The troops still didn’t have the slightest clue about what was said about Gaya by the two gods, but they all had an instinct that told them it wasn’t anything good.

“I have a feeling that the gods are about to punish us, for some reason,” Tesel said with a frown. “I don’t know why, but I just have that feeling.”

The soldiers soon found that their instincts were correct, for they felt a few shakes, like the beginning of an earthquake. Then the shakes became regular, even rhythmic.

Back and forth, and back and forth, everything around the troops shook…and they were forceful, violent shakes, throwing the fighters in the air and making them all crash on the floor, only to be thrown again, back in the opposite direction, and forward again. Back and forth.

The thrusts forward were particularly violent, tossing the fighters further ahead than the being thrown back, so hitting the ground when going forward was harder than when thrown back. Fighters often fell on the backs of those in front of them when going forward, and when they were thrown back, they fell on the chests and bellies of those behind them.

In between this flying back and forth, Tesel, Lia, and Fil tried to give commands to cope with the problem.

“Can we try…Oh!…to grab onto anything…Ah!…the walls…Ooh!…the ground…Unh!…the ceiling!” Lia asked.

“Let’s try it…Ah!” Fil shouted.

The soldiers tried to grab onto the sides of the tunnels, but generally couldn’t. They just grabbed onto other soldiers, irritating each other in the process.

The shaking back and forth was getting faster and faster, making even fragments of conversation impossible.

Tesel wanted to tell his men to try to huddle up side by side, with men on the extreme left and right squeezed so tightly against the walls of the tunnel that the men would be stuck, and therefore, the shakes wouldn’t throw them anymore. He couldn’t, however, communicate the idea to his troops because the gaps in between the shakes back and forth had become far too brief to get a word in. All anyone could do was put up with the accelerated shaking, and hope it would end soon.

After another few minutes of the ordeal, the shaking suddenly stopped.

All the warriors just lay there on the ground for several minutes, alert, eyes wide open, waiting for the next shake and hoping it would never happen. Their hearts were pounding the whole time, they were sore all over, and they were breathing heavily.

During that time, they heard a few loud moans from high above.

“It seems to be over,” Tesel said, then he got up.

All the warriors finally rose to their feet. They rubbed themselves everywhere they were sore.

“Do you think the gods were angry with us?” Lia asked Fil.

“I don’t know what we could have done to anger them,” he said, “but they sure fucked us over.”

“That seems true, in too literal a sense for comfort,” she said. “If anything good came of that, at least we’re a bit closer to our destination.”

“That slight bend in the tunnel must be the elbow,” Tesel said to his men. “We’ll soon reach Gaya’s hands. Let’s carry on.”

They all continued down the arms.

Tents

Camping
is supposed to be
for people who are on
vacation, not the homeless.

High rents
can toss you out
of buildings, and into
tents, but so can bombers.

There are
camps for the
summer, and there
are concentration camps.

You are
in the open air,
& yet still, you are
trapped, just like rats.

Rows of
tents replace
the homes of Gaza.
Zion’s a cruel landlord.

Analysis of ‘This Is Spinal Tap’

This Is Spinal Tap: A Rockumentary by Martin Di Bergi is a mockumentary film co-written and directed by Rob Reiner (who plays Di Bergi), his feature directorial debut. It stars him, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, with Tony Hendra, RJ Parnell, David Kaff, June Chadwick, and a host of celebrities playing small parts throughout the film. Most of the film is improvised by all of the actors, though only Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer are credited with ‘writing the script.’

As a satire on rock musicians and the industry, This Is Spinal Tap was released to critical acclaim, but initially found only moderate commercial success. After being released on VHS, though, it found greater success and a cult following. Many media sources now place it among the best and funniest films ever made.

Here is a link to quotes from the film, and here is a link to the whole film.

While the foibles of confused, often stoned musicians, as well as incompetent management, are obviously major sources of humour throughout the film, perhaps the most important satirical target is the tension between artistic integrity and creativity on the one hand, and the mechanics of the profit-driven music business on the other. Put another way, capitalism kills art.

A hint at the contradiction is given away right at the beginning of the film, when Di Bergi introduces himself as a filmmaker who makes “a lot of commercials,” then he gives a brief description of an inane ad he filmed, hoping you’ll know which one he’s talking about. This comment in a sense parallels what’s to come, for the fictional hard rock band Spinal Tap would like to be regarded as legitimate artists, in spite of the often vulgar subject matter of their songs, which seem merely to copy whatever the musical clichés of the time happen to be. They’d even like a substantial amount of the American audience simply to know who they are, yet they’re “currently residing in the ‘Where are they now?’ file.”

Speaking of clichés, we get an example of one in humour a few times during these beginning minutes of the film. I’m referring to the Rule of Three in comedy: list three items, the last of which is the surprising, absurd punchline. Di Bergi was impressed with Spinal Tap’s “exuberance, their raw power, and their punctuality.” Then he says he “wanted to capture the sights, the sounds, the smells” of a touring rock band, After that, we hear from some fans why they like Spinal Tap: their music gives a female fan “a lot of energy”; a male fan says, “The metal’s deep”; and a potential groupie, it’s safe to assume, says she likes “the way they dress, the leather.”

It’s noteworthy that Di Bergi says that the US tour we see Spinal Tap on in this rockumentary is their first in almost six years to promote their new album, Smell the Glove, for that long gap in touring is surely among the main reasons, if not the main reason, for waning American interest in the band’s music. Consistent touring and playing of concerts is crucial for promoting a band and maintaining interest in them.

In direct contrast, the success of Rush in the late 1970s and early 80s has been attributed to diligent touring, in spite of the limited radio airplay their long songs got (George-Warren, Romanowski, Pareles, p. 847).

An omen of what’s to come during Spinal Tap’s disastrous American tour is when their limo driver (played by Bruno Kirby) is to pick them up from the airport, and he’s holding a sign saying, “Spinal Pap.” Later, when driving the band around, he tells Di Bergi that the band’s success is “a fad” and “a passing thing.”

The first song we see them play onstage is “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight.” The second verse, after the refrain, deals with wanting to have sex with an underage girl. The references to her being “just four feet” tall, and still having her “baby teeth” I prefer not to take literally for obvious reasons; I assume it’s just comic hyperbole.

Apart from the outrageousness of this naughty humor, I see the blatant sexual references in this song, in “Big Bottom,” and in “Sex Farm” as, apart from the obvious groupie adoration, a comment on how pandering to rock fans’ lewd desires cheapens one’s art in an attempt at increasing the band’s popularity and boosting sales. (I wonder, incidentally, if the singer wanting to get his hands on the underage girl is an oblique reference to stars like Jimmy Page having baby groupies like Lori Maddox, or the singer of the Knack‘s having his teen Sharona.) The irony in all of this pandering is how the business end of Spinal Tap is failing…as, perhaps, it should be.

A satirical crack at how rock performers all too often copy others, in a cheap attempt at a quick leap to success, is when singer/rhythm guitarist David St. Hubbins (McKean) formed a band with lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Guest) back in the mid-1960s called The Originals, but who had to change their name–upon learning of another local band with the same name–to “The New Originals.” A Canadian band, back in 1965, released a cover of “Shakin’ All Over” with the band’s name given as “Guess Who?” in the hopes that they’d be associated with the British Invasion (one might think of The Who, whose popularity blossomed the year before), and therefore boost the band’s career.

Eventually, David’s and Nigel’s band would be called The Thamesmen, which sounds derivative of The Merseybeats. One song from this period seems to sum up the whole tension between making music and needing to sell a product: “Gimme Some Money,” or GSM for short. The song is an obvious parody of the 12-bar blues-based rock ‘n’ roll songs of the mid-60s (à la Yardbirds, etc.).

The Thamesmen’s drummer at the time was “Stumpy” Pepys (played by Ed Begley Jr.), who died in a bizarre gardening accident that the police deemed “best left unsolved,” as Nigel says. This death introduces an, indeed, bizarre series of drummers’ deaths that makes one wonder if the other members of the band are guilty of foul play.

Their next drummer, “Stumpy Joe,” died from choking on vomit (someone else’s?). This joke seems to be inspired by John Bonham’s death by choking on vomit (Jimi Hendrix died similarly). Drummer Peter “James” Bond died, apparently, by spontaneous combustion onstage during a festival at the Isle of Lucy (Was Desi Arnaz there, by chance?). Their current drummer, Mick Shrimpton (Parnell), will explode onstage, too.

My speculation that Tap are secret suspects in these deaths is satirically based on how certain bands, like the Beatles and Genesis, had to go through a number of drummers to find the right one, then the band could go on and succeed. It could be argued that bands like the Beatles and Genesis were great bands right from the start, only they needed better drummers. Genesis went through three drummers (Chris Stewart, John Silver, and John Mayhew, these first and third drummers being fired) before settling on Phil Collins, who of course was crucial in building the band’s cult following during its prog rock phase, then–when he later replaced Peter Gabriel as lead singer–first hired Bill Bruford as touring drummer before settling on Chester Thompson, and the band switched to simple pop and became superstars.

Pete Best, surely the most unlucky man in rock music history, may have gotten a raw deal when he was fired just before the Beatles’ meteoric rise to superstardom, but Ringo Starr was clearly a far better drummer. The killing off of Spinal Tap drummers, while the band is struggling to cement their success, seems to symbolize this revolving door of drummers prior to a band’s striking it big commercially. Best must have felt ‘killed’ by the Beatles when he was fired.

Though Tap is soldiering on in their American tour, playing songs like “Big Bottom” (musically represented by a lot of bottom–David, Nigel, and regular bassist Derek Smalls [Shearer] all playing bass, keyboardist Viv Savage [Kaff] playing synth bass, and Shrimpton hitting a preponderance of tom-toms), the business end is having difficulties. Gigs are being cancelled, and Smell the Glove‘s release is being delayed over its controversial cover.

Bobbi Flekman (played by Fran Drescher), artist relations for Polymer Records, complains to Tap’s manager, Ian Faith (Hendra), about the cover, which shows the sexual degradation of a naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar on her neck and a glove shoved in her face to smell. Neither Ian nor the band can understand what is so offensive about the cover, since they–addled by their sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll hedonistic lifestyle–cannot fathom the idea that women are actually autonomous human beings with hearts and feelings.

Flekman argues that the Beatles were able to release a top-selling album with a cover that was nothing but white. (What’s ignored here, of course, is that The White Album, like any Beatles album, is guaranteed good music, unlike the sleazy nonsense that Tap produces, something trashed by the music critics.)

Next, Flekman discusses the cover with Ian and the band from a business angle. Both Sears and Kmart won’t sell the album because of the cover. Now, the issue isn’t so much the sexism of the cover, but rather how hard it will be to sell the album when so many conservative stores won’t sell one with a “sexy” cover. She argues that they could have pressed the stores to take the album if Tap’s previous work had been more successful. Sexism wouldn’t matter so much if sales were better, apparently. (Of course, the herpes sores on the lips of David, Nigel, and Derek suggest that the three lads have been made to smell the ‘glove,’ as it were, of a certain female.)

In any case, Smell the Glove ends up being The Black Album, though without an interesting cover, be it a sleazy one or not, it is doomed to poor sales. Apparently, a sexist/sexy album cover would have resulted in better sales after all, and that’s part of the satirical point of the movie. Good sales are valued more than good art. “Death sells,” as Ian says in his defence of the ridiculously nondescript death-black cover, but sex sells far better.

Attempts by Spinal Tap to incorporate high art into their music are vitiated by their tasteless expression of lust and their pandering to the lowest common denominator. Examples of this incompatible merging of high and low include Nigel’s pretty piano trilogy in D-minor called “Lick My Love-Pump,” the inexplicable quotation, on Nigel’s lead guitar, from the minuet in Luigi Boccherini‘s String Quintet in E Major in the otherwise meat-and-potatoes hard rock song, “Heavy Duty,” and the pompous way “Rock and Roll Creation” and “Stonehenge” incorporate elements bordering on, if not lapsing into, prog rock (e.g., changes in time signature, guitar leads with an arpeggiated diminished 7th chord…for that ‘classical’ effect, etc.).

As far as the lyrics of Tap’s songs are concerned, Derek’s ludicrous characterization of David and Nigel as “poets,” like Byron or Shelley, would be more accurately described, in the comic achievement of Guest, McKean, Shearer, and Reiner, as brilliantly cretinous. In a similar vein, Derek absurdly praises “Sex Farm” as taking “a sophisticated view of the idea of sex…on a farm.” All of this, on the musical and lyrical level, satirizes the contradictions between aspiring to higher forms of art and pandering to vulgar tastes for the sake of making more money.

Connected with this satire of the incompatibility of higher art with vulgar tastes–the incongruity of artistic freedom with churning out a product that sells–is the contradiction between musicians who have an obvious spark of talent and drug users’ dimwittedness. Note Nigel wanting to demonstrate a guitar’s sustain without even plucking a note; or his belief that the number eleven is what makes an amp louder than ten; and–upon realizing that making a woman the sexual submissive, rather than doing so with the boys in the band, is what was so offensive about the original Smell the Glove cover–Nigel’s and David’s musing of the “fine line between stupid and clever.” In spite of Bill Hicks‘s insistence that great music was made by people really high on drugs, I don’t think I’m being controversial in saying that drugs’ overuse doesn’t help with normal mental functioning–remember what happened to Syd.

David’s girlfriend, Jeanine Pettibone (Chadwick), comes to see him, and Nigel’s nose is out of joint. Ian won’t be happy with what he sees as her meddling, either. Her arrival, which coincides with that of Smell the Glove, or The Black Album, is significant, for her involvement is a parody of Yoko Ono’s involvement with the Beatles, right around the time when The White Album came out, from which John Lennon said, “the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album.” The unfair blame put on Ono for the break-up of the Beatles is parodied and paralleled by the sexist animosity Nigel and Ian shower on Jeanine, since Tap comes dangerously close to breaking up themselves.

Tap’s cheap pandering to whatever the musical trends of the time happen to be is reflected in the chameleonic changes in their style over the years with both the Thamesmen and Tap. After their mid-60s blues-rock pastiche, “Gimme Some Money,” the Thamesmen switched to psychedelic rock with “Cups and Cakes,” reminiscent of songs like Strawberry Alarm Clock‘s “Incense and Peppermints” and the Beatles’ “Penny Lane.”

When Nigel and David changed the band’s name to Spinal Tap, the pandering to current trends continued with “(Listen to the) Flower People,” just in time for the Summer of Love. And just as Black Sabbath shifted away from the peace-and-love hippie scene, preferring dark, Satanic themes, so did Tap replace its hippie audience with a heavy metal fanbase, as can be heard in the Tony Iommi style of the evil tritone chord progression opening “Rock and Roll Creation,” over which Nigel adds Iommi-style blues licks.

Though the fictional discography of Tap would date the album, The Gospel According to Spinal Tap (or Rock ‘n’ Roll Creation, with its cover design parodying Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti), in 1977, when punk rock’s and new wave’s return to simple, three-to-four minute songs made the more pompous arrangements of the early 70s anachronistic, I for that reason would date the album back about five years earlier.

Similarly, I’d date “Big Bottom” about ten years after the given release date of 1970, and “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” at least five to seven years later than the given 1974 date (after all, a song with similarly controversial subject matter, by the musically talented but despicable Ted Nugent, came out–“Jailbait“–in 1981). The release of “Sex Farm” in 1980 sounds about right, since its lyrics’ lewd subject matter sounds like a parody of AC/DC’s cock rock lyrics.

All of this pandering to the popular tastes of the time, a dumbing-down intensified with the tasteless lewdness of the lyrics, reinforces the film’s satirical targeting of music for money, a sacrificing of art on the gold altar of capitalism.

The cheap appealing to sexuality continues with our understanding that there are “armadillos” in the tight trousers of David, Nigel, and Derek…though in the embarrassing airport metal detector scene, we seem to know why Derek’s surname is what it is. Just as Tap’s artistic aspirations and pretensions are phony, so is their swaggering sex appeal.

Indeed, the band’s career is less about art than it is about partying, as we can see on the face of Viv Savage during Tap’s performance of “Heavy Duty.” (Seriously, moviegoers must be wondering how to get in contact with the wasted keyboardist’s drug dealer–Viv’s obviously on really good shit! Is his dealer still alive? Hope springs eternal!)

Problems at the business end continue when a planned album signing of Smell the Glove in a record store results in no fans showing up. Ineffectual Polymer Records promoter Artie Fufkin (played by Paul Shaffer) blames himself, but the problem goes far beyond him and even Tap’s similarly incompetent manager. The satirical point behind the film is that a band so dedicated to pandering, instead of to music as art, doesn’t deserve to be successful.

The comedy of This Is Spinal Tap hits so close to home–“It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”–that a number of rock stars (e.g., Steven Tyler) who saw the film failed to see the humour in it. Being lost backstage at a gig, and being unable to find the stage, is a common problem for rockers, which should be easy to understand when one considers how a band goes to so many different gigs, all for such brief times, that they can’t be expected to know the–I can imagine–often labyrinthine structure of the halls in these buildings.

Just as John Lennon allowed Yoko Ono to give her input during the Beatles’ recording sessions, thus angering the other three through Lennon’s breaking of the rule of not allowing girlfriends or wives in, so does David allow Jeanine to interfere, thus annoying Nigel and Ian. Her absurd idea of putting makeup on the band members’ faces, to represent their astrological signs, is an obvious sendup of Kiss.

The very song, “Stonehenge,” is a great poking of fun at the growing “Englishness” of pop and rock since the British Invasion, as is the American comedy trio of Guest, McKean, and Shearer doing British accents (just as, on the other side of the coin, it was common for British rockers to be “fake Americans”. That would explain Nigel’s pronunciation of “semi” and Derek’s “zipper”. Jeanine says “airplane” and not “aeroplane”, and pronounces exit ‘egg-sit’ instead of the British ‘ex-it’).

This mocking of British pomposity is augmented not only through the inclusion of a Stonehenge monument onstage, but its careless measurement of 18 inches instead of the correct 18 feet. Nigel’s playing of a mandolin towards the end of the disastrous performance–with the miniature monument in danger of being trampled by a nearby dancing dwarf–adds to the pomposity in its implied parody of folk rock moments by bands like Jethro Tull.

Another example of Spinal Tap aiming for high artistry, but failing hilariously, is in Nigel’s guitar solos. The example given shows him ‘shredding‘ with his left and right hands so badly out of sync, it’s as if the distance between them were as wide as that of the Grand Canyon. Even more absurd is the self-indulgent noise he makes, a parody of Jimmy Page’s bowed guitar (see here, starting at about 11:30, for an example), not with a bow, but with a violin!

Ian’s quitting Tap can be compared with the death of Brian Epstein, since with these managers out of the picture, the bands they were holding together would then begin to fall apart, as we see when Nigel suddenly quits out of frustration at the Air Force base gig.

Ian’s and Nigel’s misogynistic attitude towards Jeanine’s growing involvement in the band’s affairs is topped by David’s saying that her help won’t be compensated for with any remuneration, an interesting irony considering how henpecked he is by his girlfriend.

More satiric examples of rock’s pretentious attempts at high art come with Tap’s performance of “Jazz Odyssey” in front of a festival crowd, who have no patience to hear a tedious and poorly-planned improvisational jam. Later, when it really seems as though Tap is soon to end, David and Derek discuss a few ‘high art’ projects they haven’t had time to do because of their full-time commitment to the band: a musical based on Jack the Ripper (Saucy Jack), and David’s acoustic guitar pieces played with the London Philharmonic. It’s easy to see how they “envy” themselves with such absurd ideas that will never get off the ground.

With the band’s future seeming moribund, Nigel reappears before the next gig with news from Ian that “Sex Farm” is on the charts in Japan. When no one else will have Tap, Japan will save them. So Nigel is back in the band, and they all fly to the Far East.

During a resulting concert there, we see a few examples of racist and sexist humour, the kind one wouldn’t think filmmakers would be able to get away with today. First, Japanese fans in the audience are all seen moving their arms, with pointed fingers, in the air to the beat, suggesting the Asian stereotype of mass conformity. After this, we see at the show that Ian has returned as manager, and Jeanine is sitting with a book and keeping her mouth shut as he stands by her, watching with his cricket bat, as if ready to whack her with it if she dares open her mouth.

I’m guessing that–apart from there being plenty of shots of the Japanese fans enjoying the show most individualistically after the stereotyped shot, and apart from our understanding that Ian is no less incompetent a manager than Jeanine (though as a professional, he shouldn’t be, while her inexperience makes her mistakes perfectly understandable)–the racism and sexism are deflated elsewhere in the film through its acknowledgement of these issues as serious problems (i.e., the original cover design for Smell the Glove, and Di Bergi asking if Tap’s music, with its mostly white audience, is racist…not so if Tap is now big in Japan!).

Another example of the film’s satirizing of capitalism’s degenerative effect on art is David’s purchasing of a set of tapes called The Namesake Series, on which famous people with the same surnames as those of famous authors read their books. The reciters get increasingly absurd in their incongruity with the writers they’re reading (i.e., McLean Stevenson reading Robert Louis Stevenson, and Julius Erving reading Washington Irving).

As the end credits are rolling, Di Bergi asks each member of Tap what he’d do if he wasn’t in rock-and-roll. Derek says he’d work with children (Doesn’t he already?). David says he’d be “a full-time dreamer.” Shrimpton is fine without rock-and-roll, as long as there are still sex and drugs in his life. Viv Savage says he’d “get stupid” and make a fool of himself in public. Nigel says he’d sell hats.

Note how none of them say they’d take their creative instincts into other avenues of expression. (In contrast, when Captain Beefheart and Grace Slick retired from music, they focused on the visual arts.) Without rock-and-roll, and their attempts to pander to vulgar tastes to make money off of it, these five guys would either have a regular, mundane job selling a product or service (I assume Derek would become a grade school teacher), or just be a wasted slacker or a rake.

These seem to be the options that a capitalist society offers the working class: as an artist, be a panderer; otherwise, do a dull nine-to-five job (if you like the hours), or be a ‘loser.’

The market is so free, isn’t it?

‘Gaya,’ a Surreal Adventure–Chapter Five

The half of the group led by Tesel went up in the direction of the right shoulder, and the half led by Lia and Fil went up in the direction of the left one. It was dark, and none of the warriors really knew their way around, so it was hard for them to choose which tunnels were the best to go through.

As soon as all of them went through their chosen left and right entrances in the chest area, they felt a wind sucking them all up, deep into the middle of the large chambers they’d entered. Yelling and screaming as they all flew up in the spacious chambers, they smacked into the inside upper walls, then fell to the floors all around the entrances they’d just come up in.

“We went…the wrong way,” Fil said in gasps to Lia. “We’re in…the lungs.” He was rubbing his left arm, on which he hit the floor.

“I know,” Lia said, rubbing her right leg. “We never learn these things ’til it’s too late.”

No one had any more time to rub his or her hurt body parts, for another wind sucked them up to the ceilings of the lungs, against which their bodies smashed. Shouts of pain echoed all over the chambers.

They tried to stick their fingers into the gluey ceilings, to keep from being blown down again, but it was no use. Gaya’s next inhalation, a deep and powerful one, pulled them all off the ceiling and threw them down to the floor again. Some of the troops’ bones were fractured.

As he winced at the sounds of groans of pain all around him, Tesel was looking all over the ceiling to find the upper exit. As soon as he found the small black hole, he pointed at it.

“Everyone!” he shouted. “Try to get over there, to that hole in the ceiling, and crawl out of it!”

He shouted loud enough for those in the other lung to hear; Lia and FIl looked for and quickly found their upper escape hole.

“There it is!” Lia shouted “Try to get to i…”

Suddenly, the next exhalation carried everyone screaming up to the ceiling again. More screams of pain were heard when their bodies smacked against it. Those closest to the escape hole scrambled over to it as fast as they could before Gaya’s next inhalation, which was softer.

Those right by the escape holes–Tesel, Lia, Fil, and several others–clung to the sticky ceilings as tight as they could, so the breath wouldn’t blow them to the floors. Many others fell, some screaming, others already dead from their combined injuries.

The ones still at the top managed to crawl out the escape holes in time before the next breath came. After it came, and some of the warriors had clearly flown up closer to the escape holes, Tesel, Lia, and Fil reached into the chambers to pull out some of the men on the ceilings.

After they were pulled out, another inhalation pushed most of the rest of them down again, while others had dug their fingers deep enough into the ceilings to be able to withstand the wind and stay there. Between the breaths, these troops crawled out the escape holes. The next exhalation brought up the ones from the bottom; Lia frowned to see those coming up that were clearly corpses.

At the end of that exhalation, the dead bodies fell, while the survivors clung to the ceilings and struggled to get to the escape holes in time. Tesel, Lia, Fil, and some of the others who’d already escaped hurried to pull as many of the survivors out as they could.

The next inhalation came, and a few of the warriors trying to get out screamed as they were blown down to the floor again. The survivors who’d escaped watched and waited for the next breath to bring the remaining men back up. The exhalation came, but all the bodies that came up this time were passive and lifeless; none tried to grab on to the ceilings. When the breath ended, they all fell back down silently.

“There’s nothing we can do for them,” Tesel said. “Let’s carry on in our separate groups to the shoulders.”

“Come on, troops, let’s go,” Fil shouted out to his and Lia’s group. But before anyone took any steps, voices from above were heard again:

OhPhilI’msogladyoucametoseeher!
Howisshe?Shedoesn’tlooktoogood,Lila.
Herbreathingisgettingweaker,Ithink.IsometimesputmyhandoverhermouthandfeelbreathingbutthenIdoitagainlaterandherbreathingisweaker.Oh,Phil,I’msoscaredshe’sgonnadie.Whatarewegonnado?
Let’snotgiveuphope,Lila,thoughIwishyou’dgiveupthatbottleofJimBeam,Phil.
Oh,comeon,Cecil.Igottohaveafewswigsofthistohelpmedealwithwhat’shappened.

Again, the soldiers didn’t understand a word of what was said, but they felt a kind of identifying with the speaking gods–especially Tesel, Lia, and Fil. They all continued on their way to the shoulders.

Frosty

There is
no magic
in a hat
to cause
a freezing man
to come
to life. Hats
cannot warm
a head sitting
on frozen
shoulders out
where he has no arms
for work, a chest with no
heart to feel any happiness,
no home for him to enter.
He has no legs to walk in
from the cold. White Christmas
makes his body black in a lack of
hope. His only warmth is melting
in the spring and dying outside.
We see but don’t feed him.

Analysis of ‘Messiah of Evil’

Messiah of Evil, or Dead People, is a 1974 supernatural horror film written, produced, and directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. It stars Marianna Hill and Michael Greer, with Anitra Ford, Royal Dano, Elisha Cook Jr., and Joy Bang.

Though a lesser-known film, Messiah of Evil has been generally well-received. It’s wonderfully atmospheric, with beautiful, vividly colourful visuals. It’s been described as “unsettling” by Nick Spacek of Starburst Magazine, having given the film a score of ten out of ten. It was ranked #95 on IndieWire‘s 200 Best Horror Movies of All-Time; they said, “it’s full of  iconic and memorable scenes that recall to mind some of George A. Romero’s best work.”

Here‘s a link to quotes from the film, and here‘s a link to the full movie.

As with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Messiah of Evil does a subtle critique of capitalism. We see a satirical commentary on consumerism in the supermarket scene, with the ghouls eating all the meat in the meat section, then feeding off of Laura (Ford). We’re reminded of a similar satire on consumerism in Dawn of the Dead, with the zombies haunting the shopping mall.

Recall that this film came out in 1974, when the same manifestations of political upheaval happened that inspired much of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which came out the same year and also dealt with cannibalism. Early on in Messiah of Evil, we see Arletty (Hill) drive her car to a Mobil gas station, giving us an association with oil in the early 70s, when the oil crisis happened, an issue I discussed in my analysis of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Note the tension of the Mobil gas station attendant (played by Charles Dierkop), who is first seen shooting at someone (or some animal, as he seems to claim to have been shooting at). Then, when the creepy albino truck driver arrives (played by Bennie Robinson), the attendant, knowing how dangerous this albino is (with the dead victims in his truck, one of whom has a slit throat and was the chased victim seen at the beginning of the film), urgently presses Arletty to drive away without need of paying for her gas with her credit card. Finally, the attendant is killed by the ghouls of Point Dume (an obvious pun on doom), where she is headed to find her father.

My point is that the 1973 oil crisis marked the end of the post-war economic expansion era, which included welfare capitalism, strong unions, Keynesian government intervention to smooth over economic crises, and a strong push for progressive social reforms. The end of this era also meant the beginning of a reactionary, neoliberal push to the right; these trends have continued unswervingly over the past forty to fifty years, leading to the extreme income inequality and endless imperialist wars we’ve been suffering these years.

The evil spreading from Point Dume to the rest of the world, as is understood to be happening by the end of the film, can be seen to allegorize how neoliberalism has engulfed the world by now. The “messiah of evil,” that is, the antichrist, or as he’s called in the film, “the dark stranger,” appeared a hundred years before the events of this movie, when he returns; so he first appeared around 1873-1874, and has returned around 1973-1974. His first appearance would have been around the beginning of the Gilded Age, a time of terrible income inequality (the “gilding” being a gold covering of a far less valuable material, symbolizing wealth masking poverty); and his second appearance coincides with the beginnings of neoliberalism and our new Gilded Age.

Note how the gas station attendant tells Arletty that Point Dume is a “piss-poor” little town. Contrast this poverty with evidently rich Thom (Greer), in his nice suits and his hedonist mini-harem of women, Laura and Toni (Bang), soon to be replaced, it might seem, with Arletty.

One critic of the film, Glenn Kay, complained that the lead characters’ motivations are never explained in a satisfactory way, especially those of Thom; Kay also said that the titular Messiah is never properly identified. What Kay seems to have missed, though, is what is amply implied, but deliberately not explicitly revealed: Thom is the Messiah of Evil. In the flashback sequences, Greer plays the “dark stranger”; if one looks carefully at him in those shadowy scenes, one can recognize Greer’s tall, thin build, with the broad shoulders, in the black coat and hat. In an interview (<<bottom page), Greer even said he was soon to play “the devil’s son” in this movie.

So the hell that is brought to this town, and from thence to the rest of the world, is the evil of the rich, taking from the poor (Thom is wealthy, coming to the “piss-poor” town of Point Dume.). Recall 1 Timothy 6:10. Also note that the Beast came out of the sea (Revelation 13:1), just as the dark stranger comes out of the sea on a night with a blood-red moon.

In her search for her father, Arletty comes to a motel room and meets Thom, Laura, and Toni. Thom is listening to a dirty, poor old drunk named Charlie (Cook Jr.) tell the history of his birth, and of Point Dume. A hint as to Thom’s unsavoury character is how, instead of answering Arletty’s questions about her father, he rudely tells her to close the door, so he can continue to listen to Charlie’s story without any interrupting noise. Thom is fascinated to learn about Point Dume’s legendary history of the “blood moon” and “dark stranger” because he is intimately connected to them.

Arletty discovers a diary her father has written about his disturbing experiences in the town. His art, often black and white images of men in suits (suggestive of businessmen, or capitalists), reflects the change in his mental state, and like the diary, seems to be an attempt, ultimately failing, at therapy through expressing his pain. There seems to be estrangement between him and his daughter; he’s warned her never to come to Point Dume.

Thom, Laura, and Toni come to stay in her father’s home, where she is, for the three have not only been kicked out of their original motel for their questionable behaviour (we learn that Charlie has been killed), but no other hotel or motel will take them in. Since Thom is the antichrist, the refusal to him and his ‘groupie’ friends of accommodations seems like a Satanic version of the Christmas story, when pregnant Mary and Joseph couldn’t find an inn to stay in for the night, and had to make do in a manger.

Since I am linking Thomas with not only the devil, but also class conflict (he’s a Portuguese-American aristocrat), it might seem odd that he would have difficulty finding accommodations. Similarly, towards the end of the movie, he is fending off the ghouls with Arletty. I think the point is that Thom is hiding his true identity from her, because he has special uses for her…so they don’t kill her in the end. Part of the power of evil is how we have difficulty identifying it.

To give explanatory context to the seeming contradictions discussed in the previous paragraph, consider a few quotes by Baudelaire and Ken Ammi about the Devil either supposedly not existing or being the good guy. Similarly, 2 Corinthians 11:14 says that “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” Indeed, in dialectical contrast to the black clothes of the dark stranger, Thom is always wearing light-coloured suits.

Furthermore, while wealthy Thom is largely presented as if he were one of the sympathetic protagonists of the film, many billionaires in today’s world have postured as if they’re friends of the common people: Trump, Soros, Musk, etc., and many of the common people are fooled by this charade. Just as we shouldn’t be fooled by these narcissists in real life, though, neither should we be taken in by Thom, as the mindless ghouls are. Arletty is right, towards the climax of the film, to trust her initial instincts and stab Thom in the arm.

Another example of Thom’s unsavoury character comes out when it’s obvious to Toni and especially Laura that he aims to seduce Arletty. One of the key problems plaguing all human relationships is the jealous competition over who one loves the most…me, or my rival(s)? The prototype of this problem is discovered in the Oedipal conflict over whether the desired parent loves the child, his or her other parent, or his or her siblings. Laura is so disgusted with Thom that she leaves…for this, there will be fatal consequences.

She foolishly chooses to go to town that night by foot. On the way, the albino truck driver drives by and offers her a ride, which she foolishly accepts. He’s playing the music of Wagner (specifically, the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin), whose name he incorrectly pronounces the English way (actually, an innocent goof made by actor Robinson, but one allowed by Huyck, who found it amusing), instead of the proper German way. Allowing the error in turn allows me to indulge in an interpretation of it: I see in the albino’s mispronunciation his limited, working-class education.

Some interesting associations can be made about the driver and his odd choice to play Wagner’s music in his truck (as opposed to listening to, say, pop music, or R and B). He’s an albino African-American, playing the music of a composer who was an old Nazi favourite. The linking of a ‘white’ black man with music associated with Nazism might make one think of Dr. Josef Mengele, who did such things as alter his patients’ eye colour to make them ‘more acceptable Aryans.’ Recall also that fascism exists to protect the interests of the capitalist class against socialism in part by turning the working class (people like the albino trucker) against the left and towards the right, as Trump did with his followers.

Beyond these political implications are other creepy things about the truck driver. His albino whiteness reminds us of that of Moby-Dick, especially in the chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” in which it’s discussed how frighteningly unnatural the colour white can be. Finally, the disgusting fellow likes to eat living rats!

Laura naturally doesn’t want to stay in the truck of this freak, so she gets out and continues on foot to the town. She ends up in a Ralph’s supermarket, where she sees ghouls in the meat section eating all the meat like a bunch of gluttons. A number of the men among them, in suits and ties, remind us of the black-and-white men in the paintings of Arletty’s father, which gives us a clue as to what he, in his physically and mentally deteriorating condition, has been obsessed with.

The feasting ghouls all look over at Laura, and deciding that her flesh must be much tastier than what they’re currently eating, get up and run after her. Terrified, she runs, but can’t get out in time to save herself.

A key to understanding how this film is a critique, however subtle, of capitalism is seeing how the ghouls eating the meat in the supermarket, then eating Laura, is symbolic of consumerism. Note that in this feeding, we have a pun on consumer, as both eater and as excessive buyer of goods and services.

One way the capitalist class retains its power over us is by keeping us mindlessly buying things–rather like zombies–so we fill their wallets with money, instead of thinking about how to change the system. Volume One of Das Kapital begins with a discussion of the commodity, the basic unit of our economic system, seen as either a use-value or an exchange value, traded in for money. When our buying and selling focuses on only the things involved in the transactions (money and commodities), rather than the people involved, what results is what Marx called the fetishism of the commodity, which exacerbates alienation.

We get a sense, during the supermarket scene, of this excessive preoccupation with things, with products, over people when we see the greedy eating of not only the meat in the meat section, but of Laura, too, who is thus reduced to meat, a commodification of her body, as will later happen to Toni in the movie theatre scene.

Feminists have often written and spoken of how women’s bodies are commodified and exploited through such things as prostitution, stripping, and pornography. The cannibalistic eating of Laura, whom Thom has described as a model (Ford herself was a model), and later of Toni, can thus be seen as symbolic rapes.

Violence against women, as seen in the cannibalistic eating of Laura and Toni, as well as violence against the poor, as with the killing of Charlie, is an example of what I’ve described elsewhere as “punching down.” The capitalist class wouldn’t be able to keep its power over us if we “punched up” instead. We buy the capitalists’ products (we consume them), and we hurt each other (consuming each other, metaphorically speaking), instead of rising up in revolution.

This punching down connects the black albino listening to Wagner with the zombie-like ghouls eating meat, then eating Laura. Fascism is about punching down–that is, attacking foreigners, people of colour, leftists, homosexuals, etc.–to ingratiate oneself with the ruling class, or in a symbolic sense, making oneself ‘whiter,’ more class collaborationist, more pro-capitalist.

Another example of this film pushing the marginalized into the mainstream, that is, making them conform, is the choice of Greer to play Thom. Greer was known not only as one of the first openly gay actors to appear in major Hollywood movies, but also to act in early films that dealt with gay themes, like The Gay Deceivers and Fortune and Men’s Eyes. So in Messiah of Evil, we have in Greer a publicly-known gay actor not only playing a straight man in Thom, but also playing a womanizer.

On a comparable note, Thom as the antichrist is portrayed throughout the film as a normal man–that is, his evil is normalized. We wouldn’t know he was the dark stranger, a descendant of him, or his reincarnation–whichever–if we weren’t paying close attention. The same can be said about how neoliberalism has been insinuated into our lives over the past forty years without most of us even noticing this insidious evil–it has also been normalized for us. The bogus promise of economic prosperity that the “free market” is supposed to provide is an evil that’s been presented as a messianic cure to the ills of “big government” by such demagogic economists has Milton Friedman.

As for Toni, we can sense that her days, if not her hours, are numbered when she sings the famous first verse of “Amazing Grace,” but stops singing conspicuously at “I once was lost, but now…” once Thom enters the area. Like Laura, Toni is getting sick of Point Dume and wants to leave. She can’t even get entertainment from the radio, since it isn’t receiving any stations. Thom suggests that the bored girl go see a movie (he’ll have Arletty to himself that way).

Her in the movie theatre is yet another example of the film doing a social commentary on consumerism, our tendency to pay for pleasure instead of dealing with our relationship problems, such as her jealousy over his preference of beautiful Arletty. Thus we see in both Toni’s jealousy and her retreat to the movies a reinforcement of social alienation.

She watches a Western called Gone With the West, an indulgently violent parody of the genre. The zombie-like ghouls enter later in a large group; their mindless watching of the film is a social commentary on how so many of us do the same thing–pay to be dazzled by the media, which is part of the superstructure influenced by (and influencing) the base of society, or its means and relations of production.

It doesn’t take long for her to realize she has unwelcome company in the theatre, right from the sight of a ghoul staring at her just before the lights go out and the cowboy film starts. She snaps out of the lull the movie experience has put her in, and the ghouls notice her awakening. Then they, including the albino, go after her and indulge in more cannibalism. It’s as though they were punishing her for having woken up and begun thinking for herself.

Another way the capitalist class keeps us under their control is through that superstructure described above–in this particular instance, the media (movies, TV, the radio, the news,…and in today’s world, social media). The superstructure’s media wasn’t nearly as bad back in the early 70s as it is now–with 90% of American media controlled by only six corporations, who thus have control over most of our access to information (which is now extended to a global network)–but it was bad enough back then to deserve a social critique in Messiah of Evil.

I consider this film to be quite prophetic–whether intentionally so or not–through its symbolism and allegory, it being a film that came out during the huge political upheavals of the early 1970s (the Watergate cover-up, defeat in Vietnam, racial conflict, and economic convulsions), these being upheavals some of whose repercussions are being felt in full flower today; I discussed such prophetic, if you will, filmmaking in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (link above).

The sickness that takes over the people of Point Dume, each with a bleeding eye, can be seen in the context of my capitalist allegory to symbolize how the mindset needed to keep us all subjugated to the new neoliberal order has negatively affected our mental health. We see the world in pain, for we ourselves are in pain–we weep blood instead of tears.

Along with this growing sickness, the ghouls all act as an undifferentiated group, with no sense of individuality. They go to the beach at night, looking up at the moon (waiting for it to turn blood-red) in collective expectation of the return of the dark stranger, an act called “The Waiting.” Similarly, working class people today, far from experiencing the liberation promised after the disastrous dissolution of the Soviet Union, find themselves passively accepting worse and worse jobs, with low pay, reduced benefits, etc. They feel like mere cogs in a machine, pressured to work harder and harder, alienated from their work. The limited range of opinions allowed in the media result in conformist thinking among the masses, just like those ghouls watching the cowboy movie with blank faces.

There are moments when the film is outright surreal, such as when insects come out of Arletty’s mouth. This sense of the surreal adds to the disturbing atmosphere of the movie, and it can explain certain aspects of the plot that don’t seem to be properly developed or explained.

An example of such an unexplained moment, one that seems contradictory to my presentation of Thom as the real villain of the film, is when he, walking the streets of downtown Point Dume alone at night, is briefly chased and attacked by ghouls. The shots of the chase and attack are presented in a choppy way, as jump cuts, suggesting a dream-like quality, as if Thom has merely imagined the attack.

No bad person believes he’s evil; the villains of history have always imagined that their atrocities were meant ultimately for the greater good. These bad people also narcissistically imagine themselves to be the victim, rather than the victimizer…so why would Thom be any different, in wanting to associate himself with the real victims of the story? Recall in this connection what I said above about how the powerful and wealthy like to be associated with the common people, sympathizing with their interests. Thom’s imagining of himself being attacked can be understood in this light.

After Thom gets away from his attackers (imagined, as I see them, for surely they’d still be giving him chase if they were real), he stops to catch his breath, and a poor woman appears, begging him for help from the ghouls. He turns away, especially when he sees her eye bleeding. Of course he won’t help her: he’s the messiah of evil who is bringing on these evils, and he wants her to complete her transformation into another ghoul.

Arletty’s eye is bleeding, too, and like her father in his deteriorating condition, she’s beginning to cut herself. It’s around this time that she sees herself in the mirror, with a bug on her tongue, and she vomits out a host of insects.

Two police arrive on the streets, where Thom is wandering, to deal with the ghouls. One of the cops is bleeding from an eye, and the other shoots him in the neck and tries to run away. The ghoul cop then shoots him dead. In the context of my capitalist allegory, it’s easy to see how a cop could be spontaneously bleeding from an eye and becoming a ghoul: cops have historically existed to serve the ruling class; even if a small minority of cops, like the non-ghoul cop, are good people at heart, it’s the whole system of law enforcement that they work for that is the problem.

Something needs to be said about the origin of the “dark stranger.” He was a former minister (hence, his status as “messiah”) and a member of the Donner Party, who were a group of American pioneers migrating to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. During the winter of 1846-1847, they were snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains; some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, and two Native American guides were deliberately killed to eat the bodies. Our dark stranger seems to have derived his taste for human flesh from this grisly episode, and in Point Dume, he’s been spreading his “religion” with cannibalism as, if you will, a new form of the Eucharist.

It’s interesting to consider the murder and cannibalistic eating of the Native Americans in the light of not only the film but also of the migration of the pioneers out west. The migration is an example of settler-colonialism, associated with the genocide of the natives. It’s also related to imperialism, the theft of others’ land to exploit it and thus enrich oneself with it. Settler-colonialism and imperialism in the modern world are also manifestations of capitalism, which further solidifies the connection of Messiah of Evil with capitalism.

Arletty has been told that her father’s body was found on the beach, him having been building a huge sculpture there, but the tide, it seems, collapsed it on top of him. She doesn’t believe it was really his body on the beach, though, because the coarse hands of the body weren’t the same as those of her father’s. It’s later confirmed that her father is still alive, for he returns to his home to face Arletty. His transformation into ghoul is also just about complete.

He tells her the history of the dark stranger, of how he attacked and ate some of the flesh of a hunter who, as he lay dying, tried to warn others of his killer. They thought him delirious, just as many are thought crazy who try to warn people today of the evils of neoliberalism, which has come “to a world tired and disillusioned, a world looking back to old gods and old dark ways, our world.”

Remembering Charlie’s warning, she has to set her ghoul father on fire to destroy him. In his wild mania, he spreads blue paint all over his face and hands; it’s as if he’s making a desperate attempt to be at one with his art to treat his growing mental illness. Her being forced to commit such a violent, fiery patricide can be seen, in the context of my capitalist allegory, to represent how neoliberalism has exacerbated modern alienation, in this case, alienation in the family.

Thom returns to the house the next morning. His frown at seeing her father’s charred corpse can easily be seen as his sadness at the sight of one of his ghouls–his children–killed. Other ghouls are waiting on the glass roof to attack; for all we know, he’s summoned them there. She, screaming in her traumatized state, attacks him with the shears she used on her father before burning him, cutting a big gash in Thom’s arm.

After he lies in bed, resting a while and recovering from his wound, the ghouls on the glass roof break in, fall into the room, and attack him and Arletty. He helps her fight them off, though in a minimal way, and they run out to the beach. Again, all of this would seem to make him look like a sympathetic character, but I suspect his intention is really just to lure her out to the beach, and his disappearance in the water is to lead to an at least implied plot twist, in which he later reappears from the water as the dark stranger with the appearance of the blood red moon.

As he and Arletty are running together along the shore, we hear Phillan Bishop’s eerie synthesizer ostinato in 17/8 time (subdivided 4+4+4+5). The two briefly embrace like lovers: after all, this is part of Thom’s attempt at a physical and spiritual seduction of her.

The ghouls start to congregate at the beach, staring out into the ocean as they’ve done every night, waiting for the blood moon and the dark stranger. Thom and Arletty go out into the water in an attempt to escape the ghouls by boat. He seems weakened from his arm wound, making it hard for him to swim.

According to the Wikipedia article on the film, Thom drowns; but I don’t think that’s what’s really happened to him, though Arletty seems led to believe this was his fate. As I said above, he merely disappears to get ready for his return as the dark stranger, the Beast, the antichrist (Revelation 13:3-4).

The ghouls get her out of the water at night, but they don’t kill her. They dress her in a pretty gown to offer her to the returning dark stranger at night, under the blood moon and among the ghouls’ bonfires. She’s too horrified, I’d say, to say Thom’s name upon recognizing him. Instead, we get a loud, hysterical scream from her.

She’s taken to an insane asylum, and like her father, she takes up painting, presumably as a kind of art therapy to soothe her madness. Trying to warn the world about the coming evil causes one to think she’s insane. Indeed, this evil is so traumatizing, so crazy-making, that all she can do is scream…yet no one will listen.

The film ends as it began, with a return to a shot in a hall in the insane asylum, with light in the middle, where Arletty can be seen wandering, and dark shadows around the edges of the shot. Just as the dark stranger has returned, so has this shot from the beginning returned, a coming full circle…just as the Gilded Age has returned to us today.

We hear her distraught narration, her trying to warn people of the spreading sickness that makes one a ghoul. Similarly today, some of us try to warn people of the growing sickness caused by neoliberalism and imperialism–the alienation and its attendant mental illness, its pressure to conform to today’s ways, as the ghouls all conform to the grisly ways of the messiah of evil. Yet, just as no one will hear Arletty’s screams, no one will listen to our cries of help.

“No one will hear you SCREAM!!!”