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March 29, 2006
Horror Flicks
When I was about ten years old my brother, sister and I went over a neighbor's house during the summer and watched Pet Cemetery. Because of my age, naivety and innocence the movie had a fundamentally terrifying effect on my young mind. The experience was powerful for a number of reasons, the first being that I had no idea what I was in for; the concept that a moving picture displayed on a television screen could effect my emotional state in such a way was absolutely foreign and new to me. It was also the film's setting of a happy family's fresh move into a new home and their descent into fear and madness that shook the foundations of my own home life because, just two short years before, we had moved ourselves. Was it possible that in my own life a few small events could snowball and result in the demise of my family's sanity and put our lives into jeopardy?
It is my belief that terror manifests itself where the absence of rationality exists. It is in both the undiscovered areas of our minds as well as the imperceptibe hairline cracks of our rational inconsistency that allows fear to take root in the rich soil of the unknown.
A couple of years ago Pet Cemetery came on television during a lazy Sunday afternoon and I immediately changed the channel as my heart began to race. I rethought my decision, tuned back and watch the entire film again. At moments I was laughing out loud at how, over the course of time, the movie had transformed from one that inspired absolute terror to another campy flick fit for Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But, as my understanding of the world around me grew the harder it was to actually scare me so I started to take an interest in the B movie category of the genre enjoying such camptackulicious cinematic romps like the Puppet Master Series and the requisite Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street fare.
Though they were few and far between some movies still had the ability to conjure fear like The Exorcist which, because of my faith, scared the absolute hell into me and The Ring which through it's fantastic art direction and writing was able to wed our placid outlook on technology with age old ghost stories and urban myths making television static something to be afraid of. (Walking into a dark room alone with a television in it still freaks me out.)
But true fear, the kind that presents itself when you feel as though you may be involved in a cycle of danger you have no control over, is something that can only be achieved by creating monsters out of the ordinary. By showing you something that exists and is innocuous from the exterior and threatens you not through violence but, by a misuse of power. Watching documentaries on Hitler still absolutely ruins me but I am able to cope citing that the world could never possibly let that happen again. After all, the stage was set for the Holocaust: racism was widely accepted and propagated, not just by the Nazi's but by people like Ghandi and the United States government. It was the monster that rose out of our comfortable misassumptions about the world and racial superiority and through it we all learned about the evil that always existed beneath humanity's collective sin.
So what scares me today? Greed, corporate America and capitalism. I know that sounds all commie-pinko-liberal-facist but, it does. It inspires in me a new fear in that we, as a nation and as a world, accept greed and the acquisition of wealth as the rubric for success. I'm a libertarian and I think that the government should stay out of everyone's business as much as possible but my stance might be changing after I watched 'Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room'. It is the most terrifying piece of footage I have ever witnessed because it exposes the absolute power that large corporations wield right now at this very second. It is as if Jason with his hockey mask and Freddy with his ability to hunt me in my dreams have become real. These are men who can, by signing their names on a check, ensure the outcome of elections and rewrite the constitution; who can make pensions evaporate and jobs disappear in the name of a free and unregulated market.
The scary thing is that the documentary under-girded my growing lack of trust in the government as the entity able to act as an equal and opposite power to this growing menace. It goes without saying that with every piece of information I learn about the Bush family the more scared I become but, that's for another essay altogether.
Where fear turns to terror, however, is in the realization that I can't simply watch through the rest of the movie to see how the monster is vanquished. These are real human beings, actual entities that affect my life today who I encounter everyday on the news telling me we're doing the right thing in Iraq, in commercials assuring me to buy pills because I might be sad and on the radio telling me not to trust those kooks who doubt our president and 'hate the military'.
One thing I am sure of is that I won't let fear dictate my life, I have chosen to live by a different economy, one where the giving and receiving of unconditional love is not a commodity to be bought and sold but given freely and lavishly to everyone, even my enemies. The more I think about the gospel and Jesus' radical message the more it's seemingly initial lunacy makes absolute sense. I am owed nothing and I owe nobody anything but, if I give love without hesitation and think of others before myself this world will undoubtedly be a better place.
Seriously though, see that movie, it'll send shivers up your spine. I heard that it's up on Limewire but, I wouldn't know anything about that. Semi-colon parenthesis.
Speaking of 'flicks' my buddy Jesse just made it to the internet and has posted a bunch of his impending graffiti masterpieces up in his MySpace profile pictures. Check that shish out and send him some love, he was nasty when we were roommates in college but the animals he has been working into his pieces now are out-of-control-silly-funky-fresh. If my landlords wouldn't freak, I'd let him come and paint up my walls right now. Respek.
Posted by Jon at 12:48 PM | Comments (3)
March 27, 2006
Paddling Out
A few days ago I watched a documentary on big wave surfing called 'Riding Giants', an excellent piece of film by Stacy Peralta, the writer and director of my favorite documentary of all time, 'Dogtown and Z-Boys'. I never have, and probably never will, take up surfing as a serious pursuit - citing my monopolized schedule stuffed with writing, design, photography and electronic music - but, the film moved me in a way similar to the affect that Crystal Method's Vegas, Dieselboy's 6ixth Session and movies like The Matrix and Hackers did. Only this time it wasn't that I identified with the surfing subculture's exterior skin (like I had with those other aforementioned things) it was the surfer's mindset, their single minded devotion to catching big and 'gnarly' waves, that struck a chord within me.
For an hour and forty minutes you get the privilege of watching conversation, footage and profiles of people who are passionate. It's infectious, and I haven't been able to shake the effects of the film for days. For a total of four solid minutes I thought about buying a surfboard and flying to Hawaii so I could live on the beach but quickly came to my senses. I'm the guy who watches the cooking channel and thinks he should be a chef, the heterosexual who watches Project Runway and starts shopping for sewing machines or the indecisive DJ who hears another stellar mix and wonders with fear if he's been buying the wrong vinyl for the past couple of years; I am drawn to passionate, proficient people and want what they have: devotion.
This all came into sharp focus when the film started to show people wiping out and I heard their descriptions of what it's like to be held under water for minutes as the ocean tosses them around like ragdolls. It was absolutely terrifying hearing their accounts of near death being juxtaposed with footage of some vicious wipeouts as men paddled to stay in the vein but quickly were flipped down the face of a 40 foot wave only to be dragged, under water, back up to the top and smashed back down into a frothy cauldron of white-water. There's something inexplicably powerful about hearing a man explain to you the thing that nearly killed him and then watch him go and do it. It's the same rush I got during the culmination of 'V for Vendetta' (go friggin' see that movie, by the way) and the same feeling I think anyone gets when they see someone who is willing to die for something they believe in. And I think that's where the true joy of surfing presents itself: when you start to ride the waves you know can kill you; when you decide to drop down the face and commit to the point where there is no turning back.
I think I finally understand what Jesus was talking about when he said, 'Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it'. These surfers have all come to the conclusion that life isn't worth living unless they are riding the waves that can kill them. They're willing to die for that feeling. I want to die for a feeling, I want to abandon myself into the bosom of a terrible and powerful God and see where it takes me.
The love of God and my submission to His Kingdom isn't safe for my physical frame and it's desires but, strangely, there is an inexplicable peace in embracing it's pure terror and recognizing that all the self preservation humanity has trained me in is wrong. There is no freedom in 401k's, retirement funds, in fast cars or fame and fortune. There is no peace in security systems, seat-belts or medicine when I'm sick. Only in Christ, only in His love, only in gazing into the maw of his terrible face can I become truly free, truly at peace and truly eternal.
Posted by Jon at 10:29 AM | Comments (4)