Que Será

The world is a vampire,
sent to drain.
Secret destroyers,
hold you up to the flames.
And what do I get
For my pain?
Betrayed desires,
and a piece of the game.

There’s an old Southern Baptist joke that the first song in the Presbyterian hymnal is “Que será, será.” (A little “5 points” jab for those not familiar). I’ve noticed a fair amount of chatter online recently regarding the extent to which demons are involved in horrific acts. As a Catholic, I’m very comfortable associating murder of the innocent with the demonic. However, there are pitfalls here. For one thing there is a trend in which, by myopically focusing on the demonic, folks advocate a total rejection of politics. Politics, we are told, is nothing but a right-here-and-right-now materialist irrelevance operating under the dominion of the Prince of this World. No, a million times, No. This will not do. (Im going to assume anyone reading here already knows I absolutely in no way equate politics with voting, supporting political parties, etc.) Politics just is bound up with the Good, and the Good casts its benevolent shade upon all. Apart from being the sole survivor on the proverbial deserted isle, one literally cannot escape politics – this is also why those who do so attempt descend into such loony larping expeditions. No, Catholics should not attempt to “avoid politics.” Catholics should boldly, manfully, advocate for good politics – first and foremost of which is a complete and unequivocal rejection of the wicked politics-as-liberty-loving liberalism. There’s a certain sense in which “Que será, será” is something like Providence if you squint the right way. (Wikipedia informs me the phrase has at least a tangential relationship to Roman Catholicism.) But what “will be” right here and right now is inextricably bound up with our politics. Placing your hand before your eyes chanting, “I’m now invisible” will not exonerate you. Catholics should not be shy proclaiming the truth that demons are real. Very, very real. However, the vampires only come out at night, and under the liberal tyranny it is always and everywhere bleakest, darkest night.

The Peripatetic Monstrous

In the Poetics Aristotle identifies two fundamentals to the plot of tragedy: peripety and discovery. Peripety – pronounced with the same syllable stressings as “discovery” – is something like a substantial change to a person, thing, or context. Discovery is, well, a discovery or finding of a substantial fact that was previously hidden within the seemingly mundane. Aristotle intriguingly argues that peripety – and thus the emotional impact of tragedy – is most powerful only when occurring upon discovery. A rebuke to juvenile post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy and the deus ex machina dream sequences of laziness or lack of talent. This obviously brings us to Fright Night. Contemporary horror gets a bad rap these days, but the problem (poorly understood and thus jumbled in a heap of bad critical jargon) is generally the “contemporary” as opposed to the “horror.” It would be like reading Fifty Shades of Gray and believing this is a prooftext against the novel simpliciter. Regarding “contemporary horror” this blog hops on a hobby horse battering nearly all things of the adjective while donning the helmet and considering with sympathy the noun properly understood. Fright Night makes a nice test case. Stylistically, FN is excellent. The vampire is immediately, inexcusably, and unapologetically evil – a sexual deviant, a murderer, a grotesquery, a liar. “A liar from the beginning…”. Upon – inadvertently, yes – discovering the vampire’s evil Charlie is ripped from the act of his own debauchery and intriguingly for the remainder of the movie loses complete interest in such sin as his knowledge of the abyss of depravity of the vampire grows. And the powers of holy water and crucifixes are quite real. The foreboding dread is excellent, as Charlie pleads with literally everyone of the mortal dangers they face. As we’ve noted before, horror pulls the scales from the eyes of Tiresias while slamming them upon everyone else. But then again this is a vampire movie of 1985 what do you expect? Unfortunately despite its truly wonderful stylizations – seriously it’s wonderful – FN fails as great art precisely along Aristotelian critique. Discovery, occurring within minutes of the opening, is divorced from a non-existent peripety. Thus jump-scare and “inevitability.” Fortunately The Lost Boys would learn from these earlier mistakes.

Back To The Future

And someday there will be a more complete machine. One’s thoughts or feelings during life-or while the machine is recording-will be like an alphabet with which the image will continue to comprehend all experience…The fact that we cannot understand anything outside of time and space may perhaps suggest that our life is not appreciably different from the survival to be obtained by this machine. – The Invention of Morel

From the Hopi Indians – terrifyingly shown in The Endless – to Nietzsche, purveyors of the “Eternal Recurrence” myth make strange bedfellows. Morel, seeking an immortality from eternity, hops right in with them. Morel has invented a machine which “films” every moment of a crew of vacationers to a deserted, dangerous island for a week. Once the filming has completed, it will then project – repeatedly – the entirety of that which has been filmed. In other words, every single second of the vacationers’ week on the island will be repeatedly projected onto the “screen” of the island over and over and…. An inverse of the much later The Matrix, Morel’s invention captures the total physical essence of those who pass within its lens. Thus and delightfully anti-Cartesian, this projected totality of physicality cannot exist without soul – and neither can those who have been filmed as their souls are ripped out of them and transmogrified into the projected images. A fugitive to the island, fleeing a life sentence behind bars, is startled when, after safely landing, the vacationers suddenly “show up.” He hides, fearing discovery; however – and not understanding any of this – he falls in love with a beautiful vacationer. He bravely reveals himself to her, and she walks away. He speaks to her, and she “ignores.” He makes her a beautiful gift. She unthinkingly walks over it. When he finally understands the horror of the eternal recurrence, he first desires to study her – repeatedly as the movie repeats every week. He learns her every move, her every word, her every decision. He can explain everything about her. But does he really know her? No. Despairing, he chooses to join them in the movie and flips on the machine to film; and his soul is slowly torn out of him as he joins the images. Of all the wonders of heaven the Holy Ghost has revealed, perhaps the most “terrifying” is that the blessed will both know and be fully known. We won’t be explained – no therapy needed in heaven. We will be known. It is only terrifying this side of purgatory. On the other side of that arduous mountain, every single thing about you will be loveable. Inconceivable.