March 1st 2017

On mythology and my favorite film. in People suck. Cats are awesome. Dogs are alright.

•  March 1, 2017, 2:09 a.m.
 
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• Public

Religions come from myths, and myths start out as stories, and the story tellers are just ordinary human beings, prone to the same weaknesses and failings as anyone else.

I was raised predominantly in Southern Baptist country, in rural Tennessee, and my mother’s entire family are varying degrees of religious; so I understand christianity. My father was an atheist, for which I am grateful, because he prevented my mother from forcefully indoctrinating me, and making me go to church, like she wanted to. In my teenage years I found Wicca, and read more books on related subjects than I can easily count, so I understand modern paganism. I also have more than a passing grasp of LaVeyan satanism, Hinduism, and pre-christian religions such as the Druids, ancient Roman, and Greek mythology, and Gaelic mythology.

After all of that, I’m an atheist, because harsh life experiences have taught me that, however hard I may look, there is no “magic”, no deities, and no universal balance outside of the laws of physics.

Then there are the stories that I love just as much, no, even more than, the religious myths that I know the best. Specifically the cosmology of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and a few of Clive Barker’s best works.

The story of Cthulhu, slumbering beneath the sea, and awaiting his time to return, whilst giving nightmares to the sensitive; is surely as potent a myth as anything from Greece. Lovecraft created an entire pantheon, and a mythology, and hinted at the means for worship; and he did it all while barely surviving on the cheapest food that he could afford, such that he eventually died of stomach cancer, likely caused in part by his poor diet. My conviction is that he was an aspie, and I’m hardly alone in that.

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But I digress. The real reason I’m typing this is:

Nightbreed. Clive Barker’s mess of a film from 1991. I saw it when it came out on VHS, and I was immediately taken. The movie leaves a lot of unswered questions, in large part because the studio butchered it in an attempt to make it something other than what it was. They wanted a slasher film. What they got was a tribute to the monstrous. Barker said in an interview that a studio executive wanted to replace him as the director, but no one else wanted to take it, and he didn’t want to leave it. He had a specific vision for this movie, and it comes through, even in the butchered theatrical release.

After I saw it, I just had to own it, so I bought it on VHS. Then I sought out the story that it’s based on, Cabal, and bought that in hard back. Years later, of course, I bought the DVD. With the advent of the internet, I bought all of the comics, and the two making-of books, and a Nightbreed windbreaker, and a big theatrical poster. - Then in 2014, I heard about the Cabal Cut and I about had a heart attack. So of course I signed the petition for that, and I bought the directors cut. Now I’m getting the three volumes of The Nightbreed Chronicles and that nifty Peloquin mask that Trick Or Treat studios made.

But the thing is, Nightbreed the movie is deeply flawed. It’s beautiful because of its meaning, which so plainly shows through the problems; but the problems are there, nonetheless. The acting is terrible in some of the restored scenes of the director’s cut, such that after waiting DECADES to see it restored, I can plainly see why they were cut to begin with. The effects are awful in places, like peloquin’s bite, where you can plainly see the outline of the piece of latex with the bite mark on it. It’s abundantly obvious that Barker had far less money at his disposal to make this movie than he really needed, to do what he was trying to do; and yet he tried to do it anyway, presumably because his vision was just that important to him.

He said in an interview once that that same studio executive said, “You’re gay, aren’t you?”, and he said “yes”, and then he said, “And this is about that, isn’t it?”, and again he said, “yes”. - The idea of celebrating the persecuted outsider was important enough to him that he bucked the studio and over stretched his budget to get this thing made.

And I think it’s a testament to the power of a good story, because all it really gives you is a slice out of the story of the ‘Breed. It never properly introduces you to most of the creatures or their ackgrounds, it never tells you how Midian was created, and it doesn’t tell you how the story ends, or where they go. If you want to know that, you have to read the comics. But it’s a potent mythology, and well worth the paltry cost of the books.

And Barker himself is a deeply flawed man. He’s looking pretty rough these days, the ravages of HIV obviously at work. He threw “parties” where he had unprotected sex with guys he barely knew, and this is where it got him.

It makes me wonder how a devout christian would feel if they found out that, beyond question, the apostles all had terrible vices. “Hey, that guy who wrote the Book Of Mark? He was an opium addict.” Of course christians are better than any other group of people at rationalizing away unpleasant realities, so it wouldn’t even phase them; but I digress.

The Bible, and every other religious text, is full of stories written by otherwise ordinary people. People who, beyond what they wrote, don’t count; and who are all long dead. The stories themselves mutate, and grow, and change, with new readers, and writers, and publishers. How many books are left out of the Bible, and how many times was it “edited”?

And the same thing is happening, on a smaller scale, with the Cthulhu mythos, as every new writer to take on the subject adds his or her particular characters and stories. And the same thing is happening with Nightbreed, with the two comics series and the book of short stories, where Barker read and signed off on them, but contributed little or nothing to the stories themselves.

The mythology takes on a sort of life of its own, well beyond its creator’s original vision.

Literally believing in the truth of no mythology, means that, as far as I’m concerned, Nyarlathotep is just as important as Jesus, and Peloquin is just as powerful as Krishna. They’re all characters, in epic tales of the supernatural. (Of course Jesus and Krishna are positively boring compared any character that Lovecraft or Barker created, and you’ll never see either of them on one of my shelves.)

And it makes the shrine like set up that I’m putting together for that Peloquin mask just a little more blasphemous, which I find highly amusing.