The horror movie Scream claims another victim.
Happy Halloween!
October 29, 2003 – November 13, 2003
In just a few years, this “nice little holiday” has really taken root in our French culture. Even perfume shops have gotten in on it. It’s a fantastic marketing operation. The other day I walked down a street in my town and saw a poster stuck on the door of a café, put up by a local nightclub. The poster showed a smiling skeleton wearing an American helmet, with the caption “Get bloody!” Just like in the United States, our kids will go around dressed as witches, devils, and hideous monsters, knocking on doors and demanding “Candy or else!” And everyone will laugh and hand out sweets.
But what lies behind this Halloween celebration? The answer: the eroticization of death and evil, of everything monstrous. Last year I found in a store a new version of the Scream mask, complete with a black cape (in English, “to scream”: to let out piercing shrieks). The manufacturer added a little gadget: a tube and a bulb. The person wearing this “costume accessory” could, apart from looking like some kind of walking corpse... make blood drip down his masked face. Of course, it was made in the USA, imported in bulk or produced via outsourcing under an international patent. Here’s a copy of the illustration showing this “costume gadget”:
Another photo shows how the user can make “blood drip” by squeezing the bulb:
I asked people in that shop about it. I asked if they thought it was okay to sell such an item. I reminded them that a year earlier a teenager committed a crime while wearing such a mask: he stabbed a girl fifteen times, copying what he’d seen in the movie. Everyone stared at me, wide-eyed.
There was a policeman present. This happened in the village of Venelles, near Aix-en-Provence. I asked him for his opinion. The cop hid behind his “duty of discretion.” Sure, right. I wasn’t asking him to speak as a law-enforcer but as a man, a father. He bravely dodged the question, replying “there’s no law forbiding the sale of this item,” and the shopkeeper in Venelles chimed in: “this sells really well.”
That’s exactly how Americans react when we point out things that aren’t right:
– It’s legal.
In the United States you can do “anything that’s legal”: get guns, assault rifles, carry weapons. And a fool like Charlton Heston—the Moses of The Ten Commandments—became the champion of this “unalienable right inscribed in the U.S. Constitution.” A right that means that, with 11,000 gun deaths per year, Americans lead the world in murder rates per capita.
A year ago, a young Frenchman named Didier Leroux murdered a girl by stabbing her fifteen times. He admitted he’d “identified with the character from Scream.” On November 14, 2003, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. These days I sometimes see his face on TV. Would he have committed that crime, would he have “acted on it,” if he hadn’t found this accessory to help him do it? We’ll never know. But I also noticed that a year later, almost to the day, in November 2003, another young man recreated the same scene using the same accessory. Which politician will have the courage to tackle this aspect of the “market”?
These objects severely harm the mental health of young people.
Yesterday I casually watched one of the Harry Callahan movies starring Clint Eastwood. Mere pretext to show murder, more murder. A woman coldly kills men who raped her. Inspector Callahan enters the scene and methodically shoots a dozen guys, most of whom are crazy-eyed maniacs ready to rape again. Callahan shoots with weary indifference, like “someone doing his job.” This is the image we imprint on our children’s minds, scene after scene. It’s vomit-inducing mediocrity. It’s... commercial. How can anyone imagine this won’t leave marks on viewers’ minds? Mimicry and imitation play a huge role here. I prefer Eastwood in another action flick, Space Cowboys. In it, a group of survivors from the 1950s space program manage, by holding NASA hostage, to fulfill their dream: going to space. It’s lively but not morbid. Morbidity “sells,” but is it unavoidable? Sadly, it’s just the easy route for the market. Blood, gunshots, knives, monsters, screams of horror: admittedly, these are... sellable. But the market economy has its downsides.
Just a digression. Do you remember how Hollywood portrayed the scene where Moses kills an Egyptian foreman? There’s a poor woman whose scarf gets caught under a stone; she’s about to be crushed. “You can’t stop a moving stone!” says the foreman. Then Moses—aka Charlton Heston—steps in and kills him. I’ll simply reproduce the exact biblical text, just like that:
He looked to the right and left and seeing no one there, killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. Exodus II, 12
No one knows if Moses actually existed. There’s no historical evidence for it, nor any proof that the Hebrews were ever held captive in Egypt. Nothing remains from that time. That doesn’t prove it’s false or true. When the Hebrews left Egypt after their god killed every firstborn son in every Egyptian family, they didn’t leave empty-handed. Go read the Old Testament:
The Israelites did as Moses commanded. They asked the Egyptians for gold and silver ornaments, and they took them. Exodus XII, 36
This isn’t meant to be anti-Semitic. It’s just to show how Hollywood distorts traditional texts and how religions carefully keep certain aspects of their sacred writings hidden. You’ll find parallels in Christianity. I’ve posted excerpts from Saint Paul’s letters and Acts.
America exports its myths. Nice cowboy John Wayne kills nasty Indians. Bronson, the “vigilante,” eliminates villains. Here, Charlton Heston plays “flawless prophets” (did you know Heston leads a movement dedicated to preserving at all costs every good American’s constitutional right to bear arms? A right that makes Americans number one worldwide in murders per capita).
What is Halloween? It’s the eroticization of death, evil, and monstrosity. Beware: if kids who play these innocent games start taking them seriously one day... it’ll be too late to feign surprise: “But... how could this boy take those movie scenes seriously? They were just fiction! We... don’t understand.”
Sex mixes into everything. Sigmund Freud called this energy “psychosexual”; the libido can attach itself to anything, any act, any ritual. Want an example? Nazism. All Nazis were serious sexual deviants. Heydrich, assassinated by Polish partisans, was furious that his sadomasochistic sexual acts had been secretly filmed by police. Did you know that Himmler, promoter of the Final Solution, decorated his children’s room with furniture made from human bones and lamps with lampshades made from human skin?
What do you think? They were all like that. The key is knowing where deviation starts, where it ends, and where it originates. If two people of the same sex make love and show affection without bothering anyone, without flaunting their private affairs, no one will punish them. But there’s a limit. For torturers, inflicting horrible pain on others mixes with sexual pleasure. Sex can even lead to murder. Some serial killers can only achieve orgasm when they kill and ejaculate at the very moment their victim dies. Psychologically costly...
How are sexual behaviors formed? Are they “genetic accidents”? Are people born homosexual, sadistic, pedophilic?
At the embryonic stage, humans are asexual or... bisexual. Nature delays defining gender until much later. Evolution specialists say ontogenesis and phylogenesis overlap. In fetal development you see a shortcut through all evolution, from fish to primates to humans. Psychologically, a child has some traits from birth and others picked up during life outside the womb. But what do we know about this primitive, intrauterine psychology? Only recently have scientists realized fetuses might sense their environment, perceive tension, perhaps cries, feel maternal stress. Mammals give birth in dark, secluded places; mothers immediately show themselves by licking their newborns, imprinting their scent on them. It took ages for humans to realize it might be better to deliver babies—supposedly “blind”—under dim lighting and immediately place them with their mother instead of under bright lights and sterile conditions. How many births are actual traumas?
From these observations, can we hypothesize that sexual polarization is still fragile at birth? Psychologists always advocate coexistence of both genders within one person: feminine traits in men, masculine ones in women. According to Freud, little girls don’t initially locate their invisible sex organs; seeing those of a boy or their father, they associate sex with a penis. That’s what Freud calls “penis envy.” It causes them problems figuring out they’ve got none. Boys, meanwhile, suffer from castration anxiety. Girls who lack a penis dream of having one; boys with one fear losing it. All this goes on until they somehow work through it and find their footing.
Against this backdrop, there’s also an identification process. Konrad Lorenz discovered geese identify their mother as the first creature they see after hatching. After playing mom to a clutch, he offered them a lawnmower, which he’d made run near the eggs. Instant success. We know a pilot once went further: he made geese follow his aircraft in staggered formation.
Kids also undergo identification from birth. These early impressions are crucial. Instinctively they seek answers: Who am I? Where end my body? What’s the structure of the world around me? Who’s Dad? Who’s Mom? Whom should I identify with, and how? At this stage, all kinds of mistakes are possible. Some mental illnesses may stem from “hardware problems.” Some mentally ill people perceive their hands as foreign bodies. But who can tell what’s hardware and what’s software? Brain wiring and hormonal secretions are also shaped by experience.
Are there true hermaphrodites? Clinically, yes. But what about transsexuals? Innate or induced?
Let me share a story. As a kid, I was taken to a house in La Baule where there was a boy my age—eight, I think. My family warned me:
“Claude, that girl over there in the tartan skirt and pigtails isn’t really a girl; he’s a boy. His parents dress him like that because his mom really wanted a daughter. So as not to hurt his feelings. But don’t ask questions, got it?”
That’s induction. How do you become yourself when others induce certain behaviors? I’ve witnessed such aberrations. No need for clothing details. Language—as Aesop noted, it can be the best and worst thing—carefully chosen words from perverse parents can induce total confusion, possibly incurable or hard to treat.
How does a young male turn out if his mother rejects him and he finds “maternal tenderness” from his dad or older brother, or even projects his own libido onto himself in narcissistic fashion, seeking his mirror-image “sexual object”? All this happens very early on. I don’t rule out a genetic origin for homosexuality, or even that it’s a remnant of a past incarnation. Why not? But there are other origins, like total failure in identification. Many homosexuals had a “untouchable” mother, loving but inaccessible; a “untouchable” father—Freudian terms—too perfect, too clever, too authoritarian or the opposite. But saying this doesn’t solve their problem. Some behavioral patterns may be totally irreversible, incurable. The person has “structured himself” that way; nothing can be done. Psychotherapy has limits. Also, once someone experiences sex, it works like Lorentz’s geese:
When I say this, I want to stress the importance of acquired experience. Parental messages can be extremely subtle, e.g., purely linguistic. I knew a homosexual who told me: “We were two brothers. I never heard my mom call me by name; she always said ‘the children.’”
What’s the future of our society? Should homosexuals be allowed to raise kids? To answer, we must look at this issue across history. It’s nothing new. The Amazons, a tribe that treated men like cattle, really existed; until wiped out by neighboring Watusi tribes (close kin of the Masai), they were ruled by a caste composed exclusively of homosexuals (you can see them in the film “King Solomon’s Mines,” a genuine ethnographic document). Greek warriors fought in pairs; their wives were kept locked up in gynaecea. For centuries, marriage, having a surname, claiming lineage was only for the wealthy; others, mere slaves, gave birth and sold their kids like livestock.
I recall a woman whose schizophrenic son founded an institution for similar patients. Her second son wasn’t much better. One evening I suggested a walk to this fourteen-year-old. His mom promptly replied: “He won’t come with you; he’s afraid of the dark.” I felt like yelling, “Shut up, you idiot!” Remember “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”: how a nurse destroys all the good work done by a rebellious delinquent; how a young man, hospitalized, after sleeping with a girlfriend hears “what would your mom say about this?” and instantly starts stuttering again.
Many things, even grave ones, can be induced or created from scratch. Most psychologists admit pedophiles were all abused as kids and... repeat the behavior. Want your child to be a pedophile? No problem, just abuse him.
Such people become socially unmanageable or hard to handle, since their fixations may be totally irreversible. It’s a real problem. One anecdote comes to mind. As a kid I went to Saint François de Salles Church in Paris’s 17th arrondissement. During religious instruction, where we mainly learned “not to do dirty things,” a strange figure appeared: a pianist, supposedly named Gilles. He’d had to quit his brilliant career due to pedophilia. Entering the church, with long hair, he wore a black velvet and lace page’s outfit, short cape, ruff, white stockings and baggy shorts, plus very bright red lipstick. He was accompanied by his mother. Our priests in cassocks pretended not to notice him. Why? Did his family donate generously to the parish? I’ll never know.
A few months ago I saw a brief news item on TV: the famous French Church spokesman, handsome and well-known, regular guest on talk shows, was suspected of pedophilia. He vanished from view thereafter. Maybe the Vatican simply advised him to take a long vacation. Around the same time, a scandal erupted in the U.S.: a network of high-ranking clergy involved in pedophilia. All swiftly covered up.
Church history is full of such scandals. Unless I’m mistaken, the final phase of papal inauguration, after voting in the Sistine Chapel, is a medical check-up performed by cardinals themselves. This follows the “Pope Joan” affair, a tale whose truth status remains unclear. Here are the facts:
After Leo IV died, a man called “John the Englishman” supposedly became Pope John VIII. Two years into his reign, he was exposed when he gave birth to a baby girl; he and his child were then killed (...). After some research, it turns out this pope or popeess never appears on any official list of popes. Likely it’s just legend; there was no female pope or similar tales! Yet until very recently, the phrase announcing a new pope from St. Peter’s balcony was:
- Duos habet et bene pendantes
Translation: “He has two and they hang nicely.”
I’d like to be sure of my memory. I believe this phrase (sacred formula) was used when announcing John Paul II’s election. It deserves clarification (&&& could a reader help us?). If yes, will the third millennium’s pope be inaugurated the same way? If so, we shouldn’t miss it.
I’m skeptical, you see, about institutions, whatever they are, especially when their status lets them operate above the law. I recall once, at a red light, driving a gorgeous convertible, I saw Le Troquer, then President of the National Assembly, recently implicated in the “Blue Ballet Affair,” a pedophilia case involving many politicians. No one went to jail; he simply resigned.
Do you think sex is unrelated to politics? Clemenceau, “father of the nation,” was a notorious sex addict who needed “a woman a day” (like our literary hero Simenon). Think of Kennedy, a big womanizer; think of his latest mistress, Marilyn Monroe, who “coincidentally” committed suicide after threatening to reveal secrets; some saw this as blackmail against a statesman. Extremely dangerous game.
Soon you’ll learn the true personality of Lenin, described by one of his mistresses, Lise de K. I believe everyone knows Mao Zedong was a voracious consumer of young flesh, even in old age, while demanding virtue and chastity from his “sheep.”
Sex and politics? Sex and history? Rohm, head of the SA rival to the SS, was a notorious “hardcore” homosexual, sadomasochistic variety. Hitler had him killed in the “Night of the Long Knives.” Who denies Nazism equals sadism, that this regime built an army of sexual deviants? Remember Dr. Mengele, smashing Jewish babies against walls at Auschwitz upon arrival.
Before Nazism arose, Wilhelm Reich, a German communist and psychoanalyst, noted this sadistic violence, especially towards Jews, appeared in a country where paternal authority was very strong; a father could imprison his son on a mere whim. Reich saw cause and effect: Nazi sadism was reaction to ultra-restrictive, castrating upbringing. Reich opened nurseries where, unusually for the era, kids were allowed free physical exploration instead of immediate suppression of any intersexual curiosity or attraction. Reich claimed kids raised this way turned out balanced and non-aggressive. He believed all top Nazi officials were people who’d suffered severe sexual repression as kids.
It’s easy to see how sadistic and masochistic behaviors can be induced. The masochist links his sexual drive, his first expression of desire, to suffering; eventually suffering becomes a necessary context for him. Sadism can arise via identification and imitation; parental images play a huge role here. Sadism and masochism can also result from intense guilt; one attitude is extra-punitive, the other intro-punitive.
For half a century now, television has subtly shaped people without their awareness. Who sows wind reaps storm. Who spreads violence reaps its fruits. That’s what this eroticization of death and evil—Halloween, that “popular festival”—implies: young kids saying “Candy or else!” while wearing masks. How can anyone believe this won’t leave marks on their psyche? At the start of this piece you saw “Get bloody!” on a poster advertising a Halloween party, featuring a skeleton wearing an American helmet. For ages now, Americans can buy camouflage outfits for “special forces members” for kids. When will we see tiny suicide commando outfits with explosive belts and detonators? Where is our society heading, trapped in this vicious feedback loop of ratings and money worship?
Early November 2003:
Another “passion crime” in France, committed by a man wearing a movie mask. This is the second such case in France (how many in the U.S. or elsewhere?). But it’s becoming commonplace amid endless daily horrors. The gadget is still on sale; this one and many similar items.
November 21, 2003: Hervé Duray emailed me after reading my “editorial,” accusing me of bias—meaning, I guess, that I see the U.S. as a primary source of global violence. Regarding movies and TV series, I stand by my view. It’s also in the U.S. that this bizarre phenomenon called Halloween emerged; someday it may bring in more cash than Christmas. The U.S. ranks first in homicide rates per capita (11,000 killings yearly), thanks to constitutional gun rights.
But they don’t hold a monopoly on violence, nor on getting their youth and even very young kids involved in cycles of violence. Duray sent me a sequence of images, truly horrifying and disturbing. Warning: 75 pictures with heavily biased commentary. Ignore the English captions; just look at the photos. Here are a few samples; the rest are similar. The most dramatic shot shows this:
A barely one-year-old baby aims a nine-millimeter pistol at an enemy; on his forehead are photos of his father and brother, killed in combat. The revenge spiral. Eye for an eye (a principle shared by both communities).
Record holder: a baby dressed as a suicide commando....
Elsewhere, moms mark their toddlers as future fighters by painting jihad symbols on their foreheads.
Desperation must run deep in that region to produce such images. Those wanting to see the whole set:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pal-child-abuse/?PHPSESSID=
I believe one must see such photos to grasp how insane our planet is becoming. Does it still make sense to be pro-this or anti-that?
On our planet, extremism is taking control of history.
Extremisms of all stripes, ethnic or religious. In the Middle East, things have reached a point where retreat seems impossible. Ariel Sharon builds walls, nibbles at Palestinian territory, creates a ring of colonies in the West Bank meant to completely fragment any potential Palestinian state. Even though Israeli air force pilots refuse to bomb civilian targets, on the other side a new generation of suicide commandos is being trained.
In a file I tried to outline Israel’s history, originally a tiny state. Initially, vast lands around Jerusalem made that city and surroundings an international, multi-religious zone—which seemed sensible at the time (but who controlled it?). Arab nations back then lacked historical wisdom, “pragmatism” to accept this minimal state. Successive wars resulted in crushing defeats for Arab neighbors (think Six-Day War, complete collapse of Nasser’s troops). Meanwhile Israelis developed total paranoia, fully justified. Since Israel’s founding, Israelis live on guard, sleeping “with a Colt at hand.” Any attempts at normalization failed (assassination of Anwar El Sadat). Extremists killed liberal leaders on both sides. A Saudi prince proposed recognizing Israel if it returned to pre-Six-Day borders; that’s quite late, really.
I have no advice or proposals. Even if we imagined (a lovely utopia I briefly mentioned on my site) pairing mixed couples—Israeli men with Palestinian women or vice versa—they’d still need protection from extremists on both sides! That’s obvious.
I merely wish to inform. I wanted to show how movies, images, TV series and Halloween—originating in the U.S.—under their playful guise contain deeply unhealthy elements. I added these “products” thrive thanks to “golden calf worship” of market economy; thus American kids (and millions worldwide) can buy costumes of perfect “special forces soldiers.” In the images you’ll see very young Palestinian kids “dressed as suicide commandos.”
These images assign no specific culprits; they’re meant to make us aware of the level of collective insanity we’re sliding into globally, which shows no sign of abating. In rare countries where communities still coexist peacefully, terror attacks appear, meant to pit them against each other (like in Turkey last November). Tragically, no nation can pose as morally superior today. Communism collapsed under blame for millions of Stalin’s victims. How can we admire U.S. leaders whose personal fortunes run into billions? Religious leaders offer solutions dragging us centuries back regarding women’s rights. It’s like a bad dream.
You said globalization?
I overheard economists debating its merits. One started by noting Europeans get DVD players cheaply by manufacturing them in China. Ignoring that some countries like China verge on slavery, he argued liberalism benefits everyone: Chinese raise living standards via exports; French enjoy cheaper goods.
But what salaries pay for those services? When all European production relies on labor outside national borders, French folks can only consume services—but with what income?
Globalization means some countries once seen as poor now offer cheap labor reserves; their citizens become consumers too. As one economist noted, letting these folks work helps raise their standard of living. Indeed, some populations escape absolute poverty. One economist added: “we shouldn’t oppose kids working, provided they also get education.”
Rich nations can’t forever ignore global misery; modern media brings it to our attention. But don’t expect rich countries to export Western social protections abroad; market policies target regions with lowest labor costs, i.e., least social safeguards. To “keep pace with market demands,” rich nations’ social systems erode; unemployment rises. Workers must shoulder ever-heavier taxes to cover unemployment stemming directly from relocating production to low-cost zones. Basic economic logic.
Yesterday I heard economists passionately defending pharmaceutical companies’ profit margins: “Those margins drive research. Without profits, research stalls.”
We live on a planet seeking morality. Who still believes market economy embodies highest moral values?
So, what then?
God is dead, Marx is dead, and I myself don’t feel too well.....
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