Splendor: Less than Splendid- Aesthetics, Agency & Greek Mythology

Splendor is the 1999 follow up film to Gregg Araki's closing movie in his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, Nowhere (1997). It continues with his typical themes of youthful confusion in regards to personal identification and interpersonal relations. In comparison to its predecessors, whilst still queer and focused on the extremely personal and malaise in the mundane over any sort of statistical debasement of nuance, however with less of and more mere whiffs of priorly presented grit; taking on a tone which now is deemed as the 'Netflix aesthetic'. Monotone lighting and average storytelling, even in its presentation of polyamorous exploration and young adult's lustful, romantic navigation. Maybe that's the point though, as a way to ground it more as the 90s came to a close and the years of sleek, clean fruitiger aero loomed closer; the method of delivery shifted as the centuries did, and decades of said grit and shit opted for a more bright vision for things, in spite of yet to come Y2K scares or the amassing post-Columbine anxiety, given the film was released in September of the same year said shooting occurred there may have been an effect on the filming of violence depicted against younger individuals; or 9/11 trauma a year and nine months into the new century two years later.

What fascinates me nonetheless, even in not particularly being the biggest fan of this Araki movie is the embedded agency in all the youths. Certainly it got them into precarious and ugly situations: rapes, alien invasions and accidental asiatic convenience store homicide; however even in those wakes there's a continued existence with a vital grit and interesting independence. Going back earlier with something like The Goonies and kids on a free-range mission; or Stephen King's depiction of near-totally free-range pre-teens in the 1950s with the societal restrictions and abuse and all in IT; the agency offered an alleviation almost as much as it could be a deadly detriment. "But, suffering sharpens the wits and makes one resourceful," wrote Ovid in his Metamorphoses in the legend of Tereus, Procne and Philomela; wherein the first name in the title essentially manipulates his way to kidnapping Procne's sister, Philomela and proceeds to rape her, keep her hostage and mutilate her mouth by removing her tongue and ability to speak; eventually getting free via a woven tapestry gotten to her sister; the two kill the child Procne had with Tereus and feed him to him. Needless to say, it's quite a vividly written mythology as in the end, they all turn into birds, but in a way a fever dream one can imagine playing out in say, the akin surreality of the Teenage Apocalypse trilogy.  

That said, that Ovid's quoted line is but a platitude in the same vein as 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. It can, as much it can also leave a scar that never heals and never goes away. The Body Keeps The Score and sometimes can't sustain anymore, even as fast as one can ride their motorcycle down the highway as the author Bessel Van Der Kolk details in said excellent exploration and explanation of trauma and treatments to it. To Ovid's poetic mythology or the general parable, it's as much the same in leaving a scar as, "whatever doesn't kill me better fucking run," in either case, whether out of a case for lex talionis or escaping devastating emotional wreckage and contracting baggage.

Cinematically Columbine

1.Elephant

Watching Elephant, a 2003 film from director Gus Van Sant. From what I understand it’s largely based on Columbine, and has a more homoerotic interpretation of Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold’s dynamic. I find I highly probable, or possible that in reality the two engaged in some sort of homosexual exploratory activity and could have been some kind of killer-queer-duo in the end.

So far the film has opened on a shot of lights at what is presumably a football field in front of a grey-green overcast sky– as if a tornado is about to form by the color scheme. Then switching to a drunk parent driving, then pulled over by his choppy-haired bleach-blond son John; then trying to make-up with his child by talking about going hunting together over the weekend. Then cut to a photographer named Eli in a park photographing a punk couple. A tag-team football match in a field before what appears to be a more legitimate practice goes on in the background. Eric arrives at school and calls his brother to come pick up their hungover father, as the principal walks up behind him and sends him to the administrative office for tardiness. 

A brunette wearing a beach style necklace then walks into frame, putting on a red lifeguard hoodie; as the camera pans and proceeds to follow him across the campus where he stops to meet a girl, who he’s presumably dating, then walking into class with her after the viewer learns their names: Nathan and Carrie. John receives detention. 

Now to a shot of John crying, a girl kisses him on the cheek. She then goes to a Gay/Straight Alliance club meeting. Cut to the meeting where a never-changing youthful discussion about sexuality occurs. 

For the majority of this section I was under the impression John was an imitation of Eric Harris, based on the hair. However after stopping in the hall for Eli to take a picture of him, walks out the door where he is greeted by two armed students walking into the building, where their names are revealed: Eric and Alex. A bit on the nose. 

Two scenes in a row then with the Dylan Klebold representative, Alex. One of which depicts him going through the kitchen and cafeteria taking notes. When inquired about by a classmate answers in that which can only be known as foreboding by the audience, of she’ll just have to wait and see. 

Okay, I get it now. In terms of the focus on the mundane aspects of a school shooting: the elephant in an otherwise banal room. In that and with its focusing on the different perspectives it also likens in to the old parable about three blind men feeling an elephant, all with their own incorrect opinion and personal truth of feeling the large mammal. Personal, not statistical in its portrayal.

Now focusing on three girls, briefly shown as Nathan passed by them in his long walk scene. I think this is showing who will die side by side with who will be the reason why, and who will be negatively seen in the wake of their deadly actions. An interesting style of simultaneous one-shots. “I wanna live to get mine,” one of them remarks regarding a driver’s license as they walk from the cafeteria into a restroom; wherein they perform bulimic activities in side-by-side stalls. 

The Eric Harris caricature, succinctly named Eric, enters the scene as Alex/Dylan plays Beethoven on his piano. The Elephant in the room here clear as day, in that it’s a deconstruction of the idea music was to blame for Columbine. He comes in through some basement window and proceeds to hop on a bed, open a laptop computer and begin playing a Doom imitation. About half an hour left in the film now. Beethoven ceases and Alex joins Eric on a couch, taking the computer into his own jurisdiction and goes to a website selling guns. Then to a scene at night, storming while the camera slowly gives an overview of the room and two future perpetrators sleep. Waking up for a breakfast of pancakes, then ditching school to await the arrival of guns ordered two scenes prior; waiting in the living room watching a documentary on Nazi Germany until they do. Getting them, the narrator on TV flatly asks, “Peace, did Hitler say?” as they tore into the packaging of their newly purchased automatic weaponry. They then proceed to Alex’s garage where they practice shooting at a pile of accumulated fire wood there. 

Focus changes once again to a face shown prior but now given the name Michelle wearing a pinkish/red sweater half walking half jogging down the hall, passing by Eli as he snaps his pictures of John. She makes her way to the library where she signs in and begins work reshelving volumes. To Dylan once more, this time showering. Eric then joins and one comments, “I never kissed anybody,” and the two proceed to do just that under the running water. Cutting then to both dressed, tying their shoes and going over a map spliced with them setting up explosives in the cafeteria and moments yet to occur in the near future. 

“Most importantly, have fun man,” Alex tells Eric. A slient drive with in a car with a cracked front window as they go to their educational institution; where they encounter John on their way into the campus buildings. Following John then as he runs to warn others…

I stopped notation for the culmination of the event as the two conducted their sociopathic massacre. Eric ranting to the principal about actually listening to struggling, troubled kids, then shooting him numerous times in the back, after letting him run for personal amusement. Alex entering the bathroom with the three girls and killing them. Eventually meeting up with Alex again for a brief interaction with his partner in crime, who then shoots Eric too whilst discussing their kill count. Alex proceeds to the kitchen where he finds and corners Nathan and Carrie in the freezer, listlessly– albeit with a hint of personal bemusement– recites eenie meenie meine moe while waving the automatic rifle between the two, movie cutting back to the overcast grey-green sky where it began as he gets to the end, with no clear indication of who he shot next: just one or both? Himself too? The Elephant in the room.

Researching a bit and I learn that Gus Van Sants presentation of events was heavily inspired– as well as taking its title from– a 1989 BBC short film by Alan Clark, fittingly about murder as well. It depicts numerous, senseless acts of murder where rhyme and reason are stripped away. In a way it’s very Lynchian as is its imitation by Sant in their emphasis on long, uncut scenes following a character: allowing for the viewer to simply take it in and sit with, well: the elephant in the room. 

2.Zero Day

Starting Zero Day, an adaptation of the Columbine Massacre which came out in 2002, a year prior to Elephant. So far the movie has more of a found footage feel to it; seemingly imitating the real home videos created by Eric & Dylan. Opening with almost 1to1 physical embodiments of the class of ‘99 killers and introducing them as Calvin and Andre. In this it shows a birthday party for a five year old Calvin, sitting rather unamused and looking quite uncomfortable, it seems he’s portrayed in what would be today phrased as an ‘autistic’ way. Main introduction to the two however comes in a few minutes after these opening credits where the two and a friend set up their camera in front of their school, where Calvin gives a standard mockery of the whole, “best years of our lives” trope so often repeated by adults in regards to the teenage experience. 

At this point it would seem Calvin has a plan, whether Andre knows and is in on it beyond his scheming is unknown to the viewer. With direct allusion to real statements made by and written in the Diaries of Eric & Dylan, it’s a lot more on the nose about the coming violent event than Elephant; even with something like Alex taking notes in the cafeteria and making a reference only he and audience would understand. 

Footage cuts between dates and old-school teenage debauchery: lighting illegal fireworks at a lake on the 4th of July and using long since expired eggs to throw at a house in the middle of the night on Andre’s birthday; using a newly gifted camera to capture the moment. More redoing of the Columbine home movies; now confirming Andre knows the plan as he explains the plan for posthumous uncovering of their ‘tell-all’ footage. Opening a space in a nearby bank so as to prevent pre-mortem discovery. 

Calvin gets his bottom bracket of braces removed. Mundane spliced into what is generally viewed as insane. 

Going through Andre’s fathers’ gun collection which according to Andre, was used for hunting. He explains that in spite of being out of the room by his dad’s own design when he would go to grab the mobile artillery, he’s known where both safe and key where located since the 5th grade and was merely humoring his parent thereafter. Andre then constructs one of the rifles after sorting through the other guns. 

July turns into August, showing now Calvin exploring a cemetery with a girl named Rachel; who comments that she views Andre as violent and weird– and from what can be gathered the feeling of dislike between the two is quite mutual– having, “a lot of anger” unresolved that makes her uncomfortable. Calvin asks her about how she perceives their dynamic to which she says she views Andre as the more dominant and in charge of the two. She then takes the camera and asks Calvin as to why he films everything with no clear-cut answer given.

Then to a bit where Andre and Calvin are constructing untested pipe bombs, espousing detailed instructions on how to and the efficiency in certain techniques; much pulled directly from the online presence of Eric Harris. Cut to Calvin musing on the difference between mere suicide, which he notes while thousands do and in that he’s no different: what makes his case exceptional is his choice is his, “way of the samurai,” addition to it.

On another date the two discuss Andre’s cousin Chris and using him as an unbeknownst “patsy” to steal guns from for their “Zero Day” plan. Going out with an unsuspecting Chris to practice shooting; footage of which again harkening back to that taken by the real-life perpetrators in Littleton, Colorado. When back at his cousin’s place they inquire to him, in what to most would seem typical youthful morbid curiosity, which gun would be most optimal in use to kill a person, to which Chris responds that any would really do the trick.

Camping with Calvin’s family and a brief moment of joking around with his younger brother.

August becomes early September and Andre recites their plan, explaining why they have no set date except to wait until the temperature outside reaches exactly zero degrees fahrenheit; as it would be announced on the radio as the two wake up one morning. Going over their, “invasion plan,” then with a slide show on an old box computer, meant as layout for their own killing spree and outline for others to imitate. Eric expresses anticipation in a video on his own. Later on in the course of months the two go to a poetry reading at night, where Calvin gets on the stage in a military-style outfit and recites his own piece. Comparing himself to a bullet and the Third Reich, ending the limerick with, “and it’s a wasted life.” Getting offstage they heckle the next act and leave as Andre expresses annoyance and dramatically emphasizes that Calvin could have caused major social and personal repercussions from his reading being so topical.

September suddenly to New Years Eve and clearly nothing came of the reading. Cut then to January 10, where Calvin explains while the temperature had in fact reached zero their plan was forcefully postponed on account of Andre catching a stomach virus. Calvin then explains that while Andre has an ideal of some interschool/interstate spree after their own school is shot up, he at least knows he will be coming back out of the school in a body bag. Back at the bank they discuss leaving a trail to their box of video tapes, talking about the superficial blame which will undoubtedly be attributed to various influences from music to movies, which Calvin asserts as wrong because the idea is their own.

January then cuts to April where the two have a bonfire. Burning their books, video games and movies so as to emphasize that the idea was truly of their own scheming. Calvin reading a kindhearted note Andre saved from a girl in the 8th grade, to his dismay. In burning all their shit they realize now they ‘have to’ act quickly. Then they talk about prom, Andre detailing his disdain of Rachel. Banal teenage drama. Turning then to the topic of who was leader in the coming escapade, lightly mocking the notion. 

In a limo all of a sudden with a person named Josh filming, picking Calvin and Rachel up. Andre not present as he exclaimed a scene prior he wouldn’t stoop so low. Young adults enthusiastic with menial adolescent babble. Then showing Andre, filmed by his dad on the camera he bought his son for his birthday at the beginning of the movie, surprising him at work then riding in the car with him while expressing pride in him as they make a final pizza delivery, heading home after. Back to the limo less around an hour later, post-prom and the party more rowdy than before– likely a bit intoxicated. Calvin has the driver take him to Andre’s to be dropped off.

“We acted alone,” Calvin emphasized once again. An hour after arriving to Andre’s the two talk of how it was all an act of their own volition and even if they had been discovered earlier, would have done it eventually nonetheless. “Could you blame them for not noticing?” whilst pinning the responsibility on the world around them for molding them into doing the soon to commence shooting; relating it to a duel like in the old days, a way to squash beef. Relating themselves as deities in human form for their ability to choose life and death of their classmates, and their whole point in the act was, “respect and love for fellow man,” acknowledging the seeming contradiction in their perpetration and doing away with it being to teach people to value life. They then finally go back to Chris’ house to steal the weaponry, only slightly complicated by a party across the street; leaving the clueless cousin a note they had merely borrowed the guns to use in a home movie.

Turn to May first, the morning after, and they park in the school lot preparing their firearms. Expressing nervousness and debating who gets/wants what gun, and how instrumental each other were to the act. They then exit the vehicle, leaving the camera rolling on the dashboard as they make their way into the school.

From there it shows black and white security camera footage as 911 calls are overlayed over the chaos unfolding. Throughout the bloody ordeal the operator on a phone left on attempts to make herself audible to Andre, whose name she learned from someone yelling it, repeatedly attempting to reason to unhearing ears. Describing what she heard in the room– a library– from the landline audio until the two simultaneously blow their brains out. The film then cuts to 9 days after their attack, with some other adolescents sneaking onto the campus grounds where crosses had been erected to the dead youth, including Calvin and Andre. Already vandalized, the troupe proceeds to light them on fire, drive away and the movie ends.

3. Collected Considerations

I was discussing with a friend once regarding the epidemic of school shootings, stating I personally doubt such events would cease anytime soon– more likely it is that they will evolve into another form. The school shooter, as Calvin noted and Shane Bugbee has explained to me evolved out of strings of suicides which would start with one kid, then run through a school and then infect another nearby. Such base never yet going away either, given the many perpetrators in such events in the end of their murderous moment take themselves out. 

Both films explore the mundane aspect of the murders, even with the central reference point of Columbine, which in of itself is banal. As a result of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold it’s an eyesore, whereas had the events of April 20, 1999 not occurred, it would be passed by like any other educational institution is on the road. 

In a bit of irony to it all, like Calvin and Andre relating themselves to deities and Eric Harris’ shirt on the day of the massacre reading, “Natural Selection,” none of it would seem so. Harkoning back to the 1989 inspiration for the 2003 Elephant adaptation, what’s presented is senseless and without meaning beyond likenability to the three blind men feeling around. None of it is done over food, shelter or any resources beyond a vague motif of ‘revenge’. Certainly, other species such as Dolphins engage in the activity of killing for sport. The fittest blowing their brains out with their victims; only achieving their goal posthumously in getting on the cover of Time magazine. Another case to be gawked at, grappled with and grabbed onto with mortal fascination and/or imitation.

A contrasting view to the violence depicted in these films, and mundane surrounding them all, I think of Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy. Namely, the second installment The Doom Generation. Portraying in this movie a wild ride of a night three adolescents share, going through a ringer of violence and bisexual exploration, which culminates in Jamie Duval’s character having his penis chopped off by a gang of Neo Nazis, dying from shock and blood loss as the leader of the group proceeds to rape Rose McGowan’s character… They then in turn get killed and Rose escapes outside with the other still-alive young adult, driving off as if nothing ever happened. She lights a cigarette, a minor but constant dissociative self-medication throughout the movie, beginning and ending with said action so simple and everyday. The difference in nihilistic violence portrayed by Araki in his films is that while senseless, is often enacted upon the youth by older forces; while in Zero Day, Elephant and Columbine the gore is caused by the youth brutalizing the youth. 

The full answer however, is there is none as I told my friend once. It’s, as Gus Van Sant and his predecessor implored: an elephant in the mundane malaise.

The Love Witch (2016) Analysis w/ Shane Bugbee (orig. 3.27.2026)

Claudia: It's recording.

Shane: Or do you want me to talk?

Claudia: Yeah, that was an interesting take on it.

Shane: What was?

Claudia: That it's basically what you've been saying.

Shane: Oh, it definitely felt like that. It felt like, "Wow, this is what I've been saying." Like how LaVey was a mama's boy—there's a lot of that kind of stuff going on in Satanism. At least, let's put it this way, that may be where the Satanic Temple shines. They have politically active, politically correct gals in the group. Maybe that's where the men—I bet you, like the Church of Satan, the women are very predatory. I'm going to bet, if I understood the Satanic Temple crowd enough, the men are the predatory ones. I'm going to bet you that's how it is.

And that's an interesting thought. I don't really hang out with Satanic Temple people. In fact, I don't hang out with anyone younger than the Church of Satan crowd anymore; I did that for a few years in my life. It was just because LaVey touched me. I talk about it a lot, or people ask me about it a lot. LaVey understood that, though.

I thought about him watching it and I felt like I could see LaVey in here laughing too. I started laughing at parts that no one else was laughing at. Some of it was obviously funny, and I laughed at those parts too, but I continued to laugh because it was just like a documentary of my life, and everyone's life I know that's into Satanism.

Just think about any of the heavy hitters in Satanism you know—anyone you're thinking about, anyone that knew Anton LaVey. Know this: they are having the same kind of life. They are with a very predatory woman who won them over with her sexual prowess, and they are under control. They are under that person's thumb. They cannot do anything without that person's permission; that's just the way it is.

But I grew up in Chicago—my nationality is a Chicagoan—but some of my family is Italian, so I got to see inside that culture. Italian tough guys are not really tough guys; it's their wife. They go in the house, and their wife is a predatory woman. It's just like that movie, where she'll get on him: "That guy is calling you, he's treating you like a bitch, you got to go fuck him up!" That's the woman inside the house. Then the guy comes out full of rage and kills someone because he was called a mama's boy or called names by his partner. It's like, holy shit.

But I thought it might be recent too because of some of the raps, like "marriage is bondage," which I've said. If this movie's only 10 years old, I'm not the first person to say that, but I definitely am the first in Satanism. There are not too many people in Satanism that admit to flaws and weaknesses—they're the alien elite, after all.

Claudia: Whatever that means.

Shane: Yeah, I'm the alien, I'm the fucking spaceship. I don't know what I'm saying, I'm like Kanye. I just thought it sounded cool.

Claudia: I thought it had a good visual aesthetic. I thought that was cool.

Shane: Oh, I loved it because it was campy and horrible. But I will tell you, whoever wrote that knows what they're talking about. This is what I'm saying. Wherever they read this stuff, it felt like we were in a time machine back in the day of LaVey. I would have loved to have seen this with Carla, because Carla has all these big ideas about doing shit with the Satanic Witch stuff. But that's the problem with the world: everyone's got big fucking ideas, and no one can make them happen. And the people who can make them happen are funded and killed. I know, I'm one of them. Yeah, so what else about that movie? Are we going to smoke that joint?

Claudia: Sure.

Shane: What the fuck, I thought we were going to smoke on the way in there, but I didn't need any, did I?

Claudia: No, I thought we were...

Shane: We were late, we were at the wrong movie theater. It was like retro—and don't tell me retrograde doesn't happen, because all these weird things happen. I'm never late to a movie, and if I am, it's probably because of a retrograde if I look at the calendar. It's a people watch. We're in Logan Square at the Logan Theater.

Claudia: I guess the first half hour wasn't that important.

Shane: Well, I figured it wasn't, based on the name of the movie: The Love Witch. I thought it sounded like a porn. And you know what? I thought about the old days of porn and how it was filmed with that beautiful aesthetic and those kinds of actors. They would act just like that. Old porn wasn't hard or what people would call misogynistic; the old days of porn were really campy and cool like that. So I say bring that back, or it should have had porn in it. I mean, porn is a little crude, but you can do things like finger-fucking to make it more graphic. I would have been more graphic.

Claudia: You already did that though.

Shane: What?

Claudia: You already did that though.

Shane: That's true, I'm Satan. I loved the movie. I went into it thinking, "Oh my God, what if this thing triggers me because of my life?" I'm not getting involved with any more witches, because I go to a therapist and a psychiatrist who tell me better. They talk me down. Just them teaching me boundaries and stuff like that has helped out a lot. Now I catch it and I'm like, "Oh Jesus Christ, another fucking witch." Witches.

Claudia: Well, it's better than that other one.

Shane: Which one is the other one?

Claudia: That four-hour castration movie.

Shane: Oh, the one you came out laughing so hard from. I don't know what I would tell you now that I'm smoking this weed, Jesus Christ, but I will tell you there's a flaw in that movie. They would say black witches are like the love witch. Satanists are pretty diverse, so I see that thread in there, but there's also a very upper-scale, healthy side. They've had generations of education and healthcare, they know what mental healthcare is, they go to counselors, and they deal with life a little differently than some of the more radical Satanists.

There are plenty of people who consider their mind the most important thing, not their genitalia. We are not only a carnal animal beast, but we're an intellectual breed. That turns people on. I'll tell you this, here's what I thought: oh boy, I've dated plenty of sad girls. That's what a witch is in the context of this movie—it's a sad girl. It makes me sad that someone would find power in their genitalia, because that's a very limited part of someone. It's very fun, and I get how manipulated you can be using it, but...

Claudia: I think the detective guy kind of spoke to that end, too, because he mentioned borderline personality disorder, or almost being on that spectrum. And that's really on the head, because I've noticed that's pretty rampant within Satanist groups, at least online.

Shane: You mean amongst women or amongst Satanists in general?

Claudia: In general.

Shane: Okay, so there's one person that's more aggressive. Weird, okay, got you. Yeah, thanks, I would agree. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think when people don't treat their problems, that is the bad thing, especially when they have access to healthcare. I get it, I've had plenty of problems. I didn't want to be there, thinking, "Oh, this is a fucking Satanist movie, I don't need to be here." The last place I want to be is a Satanist movie, because people will know me there. So I looked and said, "Let's go."

Claudia: Yeah. I wonder who made it, if they were Satanic.

Shane: You were absolutely...

Claudia: ...correct to guess that it was The Love Witch. It was.

Shane: It was worth it. 

End of Analysis.

Demons of the Mind: Shakespearean, Freudian Frankenstein

 

Demons of the Mind is a 1972 film which in its essence is a Shakespearean drama and Freudian Frankenstein. The attacked and crippled man from A Clockwork Orange plays a medieval man of medicine, science and the occult study variety— called a charlatan, among other things by many— is hired to aid a Duke in curing some hereditary ailment; or as the balding Gandalf-esque character deemed it, a disorder which drives unsavory tendencies amongst the specific, familial gene pool. 

Namely and central to the plot are incestuous lacings where the Duke’s two children, Emil and Elizabeth, are shown to have quite a deep and seemingly very sensual attachment to one another. As it would seem and be realized through the course of his looking for an aid to the intergenerational malaise reported to him by the Duke, what disorder existed largely sprung of the Duke’s own devising and willing it to occur— in a mix of both unconscious and conscious course of doing so. Transpiring apparently as a result of grief due to witnessing his wife commit suicide and eventually developed attraction to his daughter. 

Ultimately he decides his bloodline can no longer continue, and sets out to end his ‘genetic curse’ and in the process shoots the hired wizard with his rifle on a mission to eliminate his two remaining kin and offspring. Following in close pursuit he manages to succeed in shooting Emil his son; but before he could then do away with an increasingly distraught Elizabeth, is engulfed by an angry mob of peasants and workers under his jurisdiction. Already agitated but then stirred up into a religious frenzy by a wandering, raving preacher they witness his familial transgression, and in quick action pin him to the ground to hack a hand off the Duke then finish the execution via planting a flaming crucifix into his torso with his daughter onlooking. 

Like Hamlet, the film focuses on the decay and ‘depravity’ of what those in the Marxist lineage would call the bourgeois’, or ruling class— as observed by the incoming attacking peasants. In that it resolves in a minor familial bloodbath as a result of its psychological decay beginning when Emil winds up killing his Aunt in order to get to his beloved sister after being induced into a psychotic episode where he also killed another girl— believing it was Elizabeth then resulting in aforementioned murder of his aunt. Similar to separated star-crossed lovers in Romeo & Juliet intentionally separated by familial disputes; nonetheless ending like Macbeth in masterminding oligarchs murder in a Frankenstein flash-mob fashion. 

Coming from the 1970s and the innate overtones of incest and projected pedophilic wishes from the Duke, I have to wonder how much takes inspiration from or in connection to a movement in the same decade— namely in France— of prominent intellectuals and figures moving to a more open consideration of the tendency. The French Petition against age of consent laws however did not come to until 1977 while the movie hit theaters in 1972. 

Age Aggression: Generational Envy & Influencing Insecurities

A delve into horror & human behavioral psychology to sitcom gilded glazing and the generational gap considered.

I. Existential Angst

Part of the 1980s line of campy B-horror movies is that of the 1981 Alison’s Birthday. Story to the film is a classic Satanic Panic tale: a secretive intergenerational cult preying on a groomed youth on the behalf of an ancient deity; who possesses the body of a 19 year old for some 80 years or so then the rite of reanimating this possession repeats. In the end it’s like Freaky Friday, the adolescent (Alison) wakes up in the body of the woman who had gone through such decades prior to her, as her own younger vessel is used as replacement. A longing, age-regressive instinct it would seem in celluloid form.

It’s similar to a more recently released movie, The Substance. The 2024 body horror bit shows this vampiric longing for this sort of youthful rejuvenation, to the point of conscious autocannibalism, and the main character losing her entire person in the introspective split attempt at batting away nature’s road to inevitable death. Wherein it differs in portrayal of this fear of aging as the plot to steal Alison’s youth is completely unbeknownst to her, while Sue seals her own fate knowingly after being told (and experiencing) consequences of abusing the reincarnating drug she takes. In the end both succumb to this end, one’s life stolen the other frantically eaten through in the averting attempt.

Thematic contents and concept not necessarily given in the same light, however the human denial of death is evident. As one ages they get consciously closer to that encroaching and unavoidable end date. Mortality Salience as prescribed by Terror Management Theory would go to explain this as a wholly natural one: biologically, like any other animal, a human has an innate drive for survival, paired with an evolved intelligence and subsequent overactive imagination. Combined psychological posit, as well as a movie the same vein of ‘80s B-horror flicks. The reverse-snuff film Frankhenhooker takes from the average interpretation of the tale, and adds more of an element of human grief into it, as a man resurrects his decapitated sister with the pieces salvaged from exploded prostitutes.

A similar human ship of Theseus scenario furthers this idea is season three episode fifteen of the grandstanding, all-referencingseries Supernatural. Antagonist to the monster hunting siblings in this episode is that of a nineteen century surgeon who achieved a form of immortality by replacing any ailing ligature or organ of his own with that of those surgically stolen from younger and healthier specimens.

With that accumulated explanation of the parable, this ill-perception of age and envy of youthful energy and time ticking down to the grave, coalesces into a generation animosity. In all the given theatrical examples it shows up as an idea of some form of perpetual reincarnation. In Alison’s Birthday it’s notable that the age of reanimation is in that of a 19 year old, switching with a 103 year old. Being revitalized in a fresh body the eldritch entity is able to exist (almost) ad infinum, regenerating eventually to when is generally spoken in hindsight as ‘good old days of age’. Rinse and repeat.

II. Absurdist Insecurity & Reconsideration

The Office was a sitcom originally set in the UK but more famous in and due to its American variation. Idea spanning the base material and spanning all nine of the successive series is that of a mockumentary about one select branch of a paper company and all that ensues within its walls and lives of the employees. Weddings, cruises, bears, beets and Battlestar Galactica the camera caught it all, much to the surprise and initial dismay upon realising just how intimate the recording over the years had been as the show neared its finale. In that finale capping off the ninth and last season of the sitcom as a whole, miniature monologue delivered from Cornell grad and by that point former Dunder Mifflin employee Andy Bernard (played by Ed Helms) expressed a sonder-ful sentiment saying, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them,” after having (presumably) seen up to then in the series as had consistent viewers by then.

Largely contrary to my own prior espoused opinion on the matter it would seem that the concept of generations has sense to it beyond comparison to wishy-washy astrology. Astrology is a concept which curates people into broadly defined categories based on certain traits shared. Generational differentiation does the same: a bracket, the segmented portion of people born during a certain era, with conscious connection to and development within it; and as a result an averaging of produced behavioral outcomes and emotional outlooks categorized by such a label. Like any broad stroke of a brush it isn’t all-encompassing however largely stereotypical, environmentally.

Within generations are its own groups supporting the idea. Shell-shocked soldiers, roofie ruminating revolionaries to angry aesthetic terrorists and marginalized, ordinary every day school shooters to emo’s, hipsters and groypers, what results in people’s development then rubs off and updates to the environment for every successive youth group.

Essentially it would seem that the issue is almost, or would be, that influence and its impact onto the younger members of the population. Older ages lay their moral musings, insecurities and baggage for the upcoming generations to sort through succinctly. Insecure baggage levies down as hysteria characterizing eras: the creation of the Atomic Bomb made groundwork for induced fear for lost futures.

Gaps in the eras and as a result worldly outlook it seems a reactive instinct to opposition of instituted, inculcated baggage— bad and good— of those raising them. As such they raise their children in differentiation to experienced adolescent rearing ills until nonetheless this is repeated by their children’s children, and so on. The seeming result to this in the grandparental generations is a more negative broad stroke painted on the youth (as well as vice versa) for being weaker, lacking in ethic, having been more coddled… lacking in what they in fact seemed to be raised lacking, some qualities of existence which led them to their older age and place in the world.

It takes two to tango, procreate and continue the ages so on and so forth.

Envy based on age and projected animosity as a result is and likely will always be a present conversation to continue. From the younger ages this envy is in response to lost, ruined, hopes and futures and perceived ease of experience with those of older eras like the gilded age or post WWII boom; and envy from the older generation for seeing the changes in their lifetime in abundance or ease of access to things that the youth seems to be coddled with, and made soft.

Uniquely then it is when the younger generation becomes older, there’s a reminiscence going along with the negation of natural age. A natural weariness of the progression, the past is often painted over with a primrose gleam in longing daydreams. Come then declarations of the ‘good old days’ and so called golden ages— glorified and gilded segments of time, a fetishized revitalization fueling both generational ambition and aggression.

Ensuing from this is the sense of nostalgia, despite if what is remembered is glossed over. A powerful, dopaminergic drug nostalgia can be. Like with Andy Bernard in The Office stating his own sense of it— when was it really? Throughout the course of the show his character routinely is put through the blender: an engagement failed as a result of being cheated on with a fellow coworker, constant ‘rage bait’ from peers, losing his job and family fortune in swift succession… in other words would those really be the best days of his existence? Likewise this can be taken to a personal autobiographical interpretation; as well as to a now incredibly common phenomenon of individuals of youth being nostalgic for times they themselves never even existed in.

Strange Illusions

 A short analysis of the 1945 film Strange Illusions

A teenager named Paul has a dream while out with a doctor, that his widowed mother has begun seeing a man with a murderous secret. Sinister in nature his dream was incredibly precognitive and he quickly makes his way home and upon arrival it appears the help of the house is in agreement regarding the man being ultimately a suspicious character. 

For a few initial instances, it seems Paul’s fretting is overblown concert as Brett, the man to soon be engaged to his mother gives off no innately unnerving vibe. However behind closed doors with the aid of what was supposed to be his doctor, expresses his own sense of unease at Paul’s prying about business he seemingly shouldn’t know. Proving Paul’s hypothesis correct, the man is in fact out for revenge against the family of Detective Cartwright, or the late father of the protagonist, for legal trouble. 

Paul’s sister comes to attention on the issue, divulging to her brother that while swimming Brett had forced himself on her. Explaining, though he stopped as quickly as he attempted, “I felt sort of queer about him ever since.”

All the while, in spite of Paul’s clear unease and Brett’s progressively more insistent attempts for a swift marriage, the widowed Ms. Cartwright remains incredibly oblivious to the situation. A fool in love, so to say. 

Overall the subtext of the movie seems to lend itself to the idea that the gut instinct of a child’s intuition is usually more accurate than mirror neurons being manipulated in a fully developed frontal lobe. 

Avatar: Misanthropic Muse?

 

Recently released was the third installment in James Cameron’s Avatar movies; and in seeing the new Fire & Ash film I left the theatre, like after the second movie, with an imbued sense of unbridled misanthropy. Leading to the pondering, is that truly the point? 

Ramping up Agent Smith’s prescription of humanity as a virus in The Matrix, the Avatar franchise depicts the species as exactly so, spreading to other worlds even. In this sense it’s akin to the Nina Paley documentary film Thank You For Not Breeding, which uses the analogy of humanity being akin to a cancer spreading uncontrollably and maliciously. 

Is humanity necessarily a virus, or could such be symptomatic to only its habits? With that, is it not a virus?

While the Na’vi natives of Pandora are shown to have many similarities to human tendencies— namely in regards to tribalism, such are purely logical in the face of the attempting onslaughts. Rather than extraterrestrial invaders coming down to Earth, the ‘sky people’ coming from Gaea are the abhorrent aliens. 

By the closing scene of the third installment, Pandora is made out to be clearly more than meets the eye, as prior films already heavily implicated. Zooming out for a final short, shows the planet inhabited but within the spiritual realm the population of Pandora all interconnects with.

Pandora gets its name from Greek legend. As the mythology claims, the first woman on Earth, Pandora, is given a box as a (poison pill) gift from the gods, and instructed not to open it. Like Eve in Eden however, curiosity got to the cat as was always planned; from the box all pestilence and suffering and all that can be claimed as ills to the human condition sprung. Pinning the punishment onto Pandora, as explanation for the negative in the Garden of Earthly Delights, simply for married in lineage to Prometheus, who both molded mankind and stole fire from the gods to illuminate his clay. 

Na’vi have a spiritual superior strength while man has mechanistic ‘might’. In that Pandora being as it is christened, is heavy in irony. Opening Pandora’s box isn’t humanity’s quarrel; it’s breaking in. Like Plato’s cave allegory, but the inhabitants of the cave are the enlightened ones; mixed with the Jungian invigoration of the primitive perceptions… the Na’vi are written to reflect this in blatant juxtaposition to the sky people. 

Living in conjunction with the world they inhabit. Intrinsically connected to it in a literal, metaphysical way. Even though intelligent and conscious of the fact as humans are on their home world, the Na’vi do not counterintuitively attempt to refute their link to the broader ecology. Portraying invading humans as largely sociopathic, save a select few. Mechanistically, snobbishly, and militarily mistaking the “savagery” of the native population for stupidity. Savage is subjective; throughout the course of climaxes, mankind is repeatedly reminded to be incredibly brutal in its breaking into the world. Not dissimilar to real world situations like American forces in the jungles of Vietnam fighting against speaking trees; or British soldiers unfamiliar to the Virginian terrain. 

Art imitates life; earth isn’t totally in shambles from pulsating tumors; and being the lie that attempts truth, the creation of an entirely new world being ravaged in interstellar rape, makes an acceptable allegory for box office hits. Differing in depiction from other blockbusters like the Independence Day movies, it’s a polar opposite picture. It’s not aliens invading, it’s aliens being invaded.

Psycho-Neurotic || Neurotic Nihilism IV.4

Brett Easton Ellis’ famed book turned movie starring Christian Bale, American Psycho; begins its descent into delusion with the imagery of foreboding red inscriptions quoting what Dante in his Inferno claimed to be on the gates of Hell greeting those who enter: “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” Blood red, as the text details. 

According to Ellis, his writing portrays a psychotic episode in textual representation. Dialogues as long as Ayn Rand’s monologues about anything, everything down to the minute smallest detail. Eyes viewing with obsessive compulsion, more than mere perfectionism; endless knowledge of memorized factoids about average apparel (at least, for Patrick Bateman’s class); and grandiosity all the while in a state of free-fall. Seemingly with no ground to finally crash down onto. Never is it told in the course of the nearly 400 pages of descent if the character portrayed is psychotic by nature or developed disorder…. Psycho being in the title, the implication is less of a mere fantasy from an unreliable narrator like Hubert Humphrey in Nabokov’s infamous Lolita, more an actual psychopath’s inner monologue after reaching past the point of depersonalization. 

Whether the presented perspective in the book is merely embellished from insane insight or delusional delight, is up to interpretation. 

Brett Easton Ellis has stated in interviews that Bateman is quite largely based on his own mental fugue of experience in the 1980s as a closeted, repressed homosexual. Readers and viewers of American Psycho might pause with that remark, given in both film and novel the character Luis makes explicit advances on Patrick; one must also consider the time, place and taste. 

Sexuality is a part of the human animal, for better or worse. A procreative prerogative paired with intelligent imagination. Similarly, that Homo Sapiens have animalistic impulses—harsher hobbies— often not disconnected to sexuality is true. Domesticated dogs are often neutered for a reason— it’s called ‘fixed’ quite ironically. Like sexuality barbaric, brutal behaviors are also loaded into the genetic gun. Like a dog, even neutered, humans get frustrated (to say the least) in said regard. 

Definitionally, the word psycho means, “a mentally sick or neurotic person.” Psychotic and Neurotic differ in detail; though are slight synonyms. Psychotic, coming out of psycho,  lending then to the term ‘psychosis’ which is defined as, “a major mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of personality.” In relation to Neurosis, such is, “less serious than a psychosis, marked by severe anxiety, depression and the like, without any apparent physical origin.” Then lending to Psychoneurosis, being a more direct verbiage for the idea of a neurotic individual (New Webster’s Medical Dictionary, 1981).

A state of psychosis implies neurosis whereas neuroticism in of itself is not psychotic. Psychoneurotic goes with neurosis, meaning a psychotic individual is psychoneurotic; however psychoneurosis on its own is not an implicit signal for psychosis; only neurosis. 

A better illustration to this, in less graphic though nearly melancholic lense: the 1980s dark fantasy Nietzschean film The Never Ending Story. Also based on a book, the movie makes a montage of the collapse of imagination— life in a sense for the human animal as we consciously live— into a literal gaping void of Nothing. Only is it resurrected by the reader of the story, who has to have the power of a truly wondrous, childlike, naïve imagination. 

Without imagination a person is, like Patrick Bateman, an automation. Alive, but a person without a person. Going through the motions of harsher hobbies, his being external rather than purely personal. Bateman exists in a banal branch of the American Upper Class in New York. Working despite not having to, the life of upper echelon business surrounds him. While he’s shown to not be the sole solipsist in a state of decay— all around his colleagues are consuming copious amounts of cocaine, fretting over suits and sluts, competing over better business cards, etcetera— it directly gives the perspective of his own person, without a person. Psychotic, past the point of neurotic depersonalization. The title of the book cannot be clearer in connotation for the contents of its pages: an American Psycho. 

Chicken or the egg: what came first, the economic situation or mental illness?

To defer to Mark Fisher, hauntological philosopher of lost futures and acid communism; in his K-Punk writings speaking in various essays in regards to activities seen as degenerate, the difference in deviancy is quite little regardless of class position. What closes up the gap, according to Fisher, can be summed up as an extreme boredom of the banal bullshit; to the point of neurosis, leading to psychosis. 

Foregoing any conclusion to Patrick’s confession, it amounts to a completely void story. Not ending in arrest or death, simply five capitalized words stating: “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.”

Monolithic Misunderstandings || Neurotic Nihilism II.2.2

 

Laying in the midst of rubble, encapsulated in the world’s largest Brutalist tomb built atop the old Chernobyl power plant is the infamous Elephant’s Foot. A mass of pure radioactivity. A human creation. Bob Ross would say of it, a, “happy accident,” as it was not an intentional invention. It’s never so cut and clear. 

The Elephant’s Foot is to the real world what the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is: a creation by an intelligent consciousness that has no actual explanation for its spot in the universe when others stumble upon it. Radioactive decay ensures the Foot won’t be around forever, but high is the likelihood of that process outlasting the human gene altogether. Making a hunk for any possible future intelligences to scour the Earth before it gets engulfed by the sun to find; A Mass without meaning. 

Ominous is the choir in Also Sprach Zarathustra incorporated to accompany the existentialist film. Kubrick uses the most vocal moments in the number, in a way that could be seen as akin to hidden radiation when the neurosis of lack of understanding on the cosmic and personal level— though that is more of a stretching connection albeit, and would rather only make sense in hindsight to the film’s release and the moon missions being the former then the latter in historical sequence. The magnitude of what the Elephant’s Foot is to our species is rather trivial and meaningless to any other; which isn’t to imply nonhuman organisms do not feel effected from and are not affected by radiation, an awareness of something different exists but exactly what is unsure, like with the apes (and later homo-genus apes) Monolith in 2001 at the ‘Dawn of Man’.

It is possible the Monolith to be like the Voyager vehicles we launched, devices for exploration of just how far a species could send at least one thing rather than going only to attempt to find other life. Differential in that however as Voyager includes its Golden Record of the Earth (at least according to our species perspective) whereas the Monolith is merely there, obfuscating without any direct imposition or anything. It just is as it can be perceived: there. Meaning is by perception, what exactly can be perceived from an accidental hunk of radiation or traveling pillar?

One has meaning because we made it— literally— the other not so. Flip it around and it’s meaningless in that the meaning is subjective to the perception. Into new life or regular death, it’s there all by making and misunderstanding that maybe we can’t at a certain point… 

Running Man [2025] & Celebritarian Cycles

The Most Dangerous Game meets The Long Walk in Che Guerva fashion. Originally written by Stephen King and adapted in the 1980s— admittedly neither having seen or read either; nonetheless after flipping through the book at Barnes & Nobles briefly I felt the initial sentence to be a general description of the text, and the film’s revolutionary appeal. 

The 2025 adaptation is similar to another film released this year, One Battle After Another. Though less blatant as the DiCaprio film, the theme shows up main-frame nearly every scene. Ben Richard’s in Running Man is a father going to the absolute limit to aid his daughter. As case in point, Michael Cera’s character Elton Parakis has a pull down flag of Che (as well as an anarchy A, to name another). 

Conveniently called ‘the Network’ as the totalitarian regime in charge, there isn’t a leap in the 1960s revolutionary aesthetic as counter to the overt fascistic ones of the ruling corporation. Front and center, most notably the N in their logo is an obvious derivation from the swastika— like the four P’s put together for the Process Church of the Final Judgement’s icon; or Marilyn Manson’s chest tattoo. As a lesser nod, the symbol used in this society for dollar currency is akin to another symbol the National Socialists in 20th century Germany utilized: the Wolfsangel. Derived from the 13th rune in the runic alphabet of the Norse, it’s known as Eihwaz; and embodies mysteries associated with Yggdrasil, to put a long story short. 

Similarly to Stephen King’s other work (which also got a film adaptation this year), The Long Walk this tale is that of death as spectacle for the nation (United States, namely). While The Long Walk has no set limit and goes till the second to last person drops, Running Man is like The Purge for 30 days straight to those signed up. 

Unlike The Most Dangerous Game, the ending of the film is less of an open note; though a confirmation to one of the outcomes. In the end of Running Man, Ben chooses to slay his Zaharoff… while on live camera. Thus continuing the cycle. While the pendulum swings away from what Trump in 2016 called the ‘swamp’ he makes for a future— or even possibly of the moment martyr, as seen in recent months in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s demise. In rising up, he takes the place. “God conquered will become Satan/ Satan conquering will become God…” as Anatole France melancholically noted in the poetic work Revolt of the Angels. 

Remarked within the film, games being put on by the Network for pulling people’s pathos as being akin to the Circus Maximus, it strikes a chord when paired with the implications of Anatole France’s observation. 

Ancient history are the days of gladiatorial combat, at least for the most part. People have moved on, ‘fallen’ into more civilized manners. 

Evolving into spectacles of public execution: hangings, drowning the witch as well as the lovely gift to the world from the French known as the guillotine. Although the last of such in the Western world was just short of a century ago, as time and standards shift so does the way of more bloody entertainment. Take this film Running Man, which can be that fill for some. Wherein now much is better suited in psychodrama. Within the shockwaves in light of Charlie Kirk being publicly murdered, there’s an expressed need for the human animal to have more than mere cinema. 

What not, if just pictures fucking up our eyes?