Supernatural Means of Inducing Impotence: A Study in the Human Imagination Inspired by Fear

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Assisted by demons and by magic, witches could perform wonders. They often produced such marvelous feats as changing women into men, although, it was said, they were unable to do the opposite, transforming men into women, because, as R. E. L. Masters observes in Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, “it is the method of nature to add rather than to take away” (128). Apparently, although demons are, by nature, supernatural, their powers are, nevertheless, constrained by the “methods” of nature.

According to Masters, witches frequently practiced “ligature or the production of impotence by magical means” (128-129). They used various means. They might make a woman appear so repulsive that her looks would quench her man's desire (129). (Think of the bathtub scene in The Shining.) More often, witches and demons left men's libido unchanged, so that their victims could the more greatly suffer, being unable to satisfy their lusts (130).

Demons could also prevent intercourse by placing themselves between a couple, thereby preventing any physical contact between the man and the woman; could “freeze” lust; and could either cause the penis to remain flaccid or to be unable to “perform” in its erect state, “closing . . . the seminary ducts” (131).

Another tactic available to demons and their witches was said to be the theft of the male genitals themselves, either actually or by means of inducing an illusion to this effect, although this method was hotly debated (131-132). Masters declares that he has tried, with some success, to reproduce the illusion through hypnosis: “I have so managed that the subject could neither see nor feel his sex organ” (132).

As an alternative to blocking the seminal ducts, demons and witches could desensitize the penile nerves, making the organ incapable of assuming its erect state; could cause the semen “to congeal and become hard as rock, so that it could not flow out of his urethra”; shrink the organ “to a mere shriveled shred of flesh”; close the vagina to prevent the introduction of the penis; or cause the penis to retract into the man's abdomen (134).

One of the chief means of inducing impotence in human males was the “tying [of ] a knot in a cord . . . . and there were at least half a hundred different knots, each inflicting a different degree or form of impotence or frigidity,” permanent or temporary in its duration(135).

The same ingenuity of imagination that devised this array of magical means for inducing impotence also suggested a variety of cures. God Himself might intervene on behalf of the impotent man or the frigid woman; magic spells might be reversed through “confession,” remorse, making “the sign of the cross, humility, meditation, and a pilgrimage to a holy and venerable shrine; or, by urinating through her wedding ring, a wife might “undo the ligature” (136).

Witches might also provide methods of preventing such curses. Using “pagan amulets and charms” might do (that is, undo) the trick, and there were several from which to choose, including “phallic symbols” (an “upright knife and broomstick”); “bisexual symbols” (“a horse's skull, a goblin's foot and a pentagram”); or “vulva symbols” (“horseshoes and hag stones, or rocks with holes bored through them” (136). “A love potion or philtre” might overcome impotence or frigidity, or a witch might “restore” an impotent man's manhood after he agreed to “copulate with her.”

There was a limit to the powers of demons and witches to impose impotence and frigidity, however, set by God Himself, according to Johann Klein, and a reason for this limitation. As Masters summarizes the divine motive: “God in all his divine love and mercy would never allow such universal impotence or permit his beloved children to perish by so odious a means” (137).

This chapter, “Sexual magic,” of Masters's intriguing book shows, once again, how inventive the human imagination can become when a woman is threatened with or (monstrously, to be sure) subjected to torture until she “confesses” what her tormentors want to hear and the sexual repression of both the victims and the victimizers seek release through any means possible.

Certainly, no writer would or should subject him- or herself to such extremes, but imagining that the same fate could await one as thousands of women (and a relatively few men) suffered at the hands of the Inquisition during the Middle Ages could produce similarly imaginative and horrific “accounts” of supernatural activity, whether related to human sexuality, psychopathology, or some other sphere of human experience as it is represented in fantastic fiction, including the horror genre, which, unfortunately, is too often rife with “torture porn” misogyny, and sadomasochism.

The threat and fear of imminent death seems to have been a strong muse, indeed, for both women accused of witchcraft and for Scheherazade, the author of The One Thousand and One Nights.

"Eros and Evil": A Review of Medieval Beliefs about the Sex Lives of Witches and Demons

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 In Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, R. E. L. Masters supplies a focused historical account of what he describes as "the sex lore of witchcraft" (146). Such lore, he declares, contains "all the elements usually found in the pornographic and obscene work of literature" (147). The topics that Masters covers in his intriguing, frequently shocking, book testify to the accuracy of his assertion.

Detail of a drawing by Mark Blanton

Without going into detail, the first part of the 322-page volume reviews, among other topics, "the origins of incubi and succubi," demons who have sex with women and men, respectively; "the anatomy of the devil" and "the semen of the demon," which indicate that both demon penises and semen have decidedly strange, sometimes contradictory, properties; "offspring of demonality," among whom, Masters, naming names, reports, are included Plato, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne's daughter, and Martin Luther. Other topics are just as interesting--and bizarre.

The second part of the book seeks explanations for the strange beliefs about and the alleged practices of medieval witches and demons. Masters suggests that alcohol and drugs, blind faith, delusion, hallucinations, mass hysteria, mental illness, sexual repression, and superstition—and the torture inflicted upon suspected witches by members of the Inquisition—can account for these phenomena. Witches and demons need not apply. (Possibly, he should have included politics as well.)

Published in 1962, the psychological sources the author taps may be outdated, as are some of the concepts associated with that field of human endeavor; however, in general, his explanations as to the possible causes of the "witch craze" are, for the most part, credible and convincing, and Eros and Evil makes very interesting reading.

Detail of a drawing by Javier Gil

The book also gives readers and writers of supernatural horror a glimpse into the mad, mad world of the medieval mindset. It was (and is), in many ways, an unfamiliar, fantastic world in which witches and demons not only copulate and otherwise engage in a variety of sexual acts, many of which would at the time have been considered unnatural, perverse, and sinful, but the volume also acquaints its readers with such particulars as the anatomical nature of the damned and the ingenious solutions they developed to such problems as how to obtain and deposit semen (since, according to some theologians, demons could not supply this substance themselves). Such details can fire the imagination of writers of supernatural fiction.

 
Whether Ira Levin read Eros and Evil before he wrote Rosemary's Baby is unknown, to me, at least, but Masters's book would definitely have been a great resource for Levin's novel. It would be an equally invaluable source for other writers who want to be accurate as well as lascivious in describing the sex lives of witches and demons. It would also be a good read for artists who depict such shenanigans in illustrations, paintings, sculptures, or other visual or plastic media. For those who are interested in such art, Mark Blanton and Javier Gil are highly recommended (but be forewarned: their art is both "demonic" and lascivious!)

What's So Monstrous About Monsters?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

What makes a creature monstrous?

That's a question with which artists and writers) have contended for centuries. As a result, there are quite a few visions, visual and literary, of the monstrous. In this post, we'll consider a few examples of the former, as we examine a few ancient, medieval, and modern examples of monsters, as artists have envisioned them.

Since ancient times, the unknown has been one source of the idea of the monstrous. Many of these monsters, the likenesses of which are passed down to us in pictures, sculptures, and poetry, from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere, are hybrids, mixing characteristics of both human beings and the so-called lower animals. Included among these creatures are such monsters as centaurs, hermaphrodites, lamia, minotaurs, and sirens, to mention but a few.

Other monsters are of gigantic scale, are missing an organ, an appendage, or another feature: the cyclops is a prime example, both of a gargantuan figure and of one who is missing an organ, having, as he or she does, only one eye. Another well-known specimen is the monopod, which was also known as the sciapod, skiapod, or skiapode, who appear in Aristophanes's The Birds (414 BC), in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (79), and St. Augustine's City of God (426).

In a few monsters, traits or organs were multiplied. Cerberus had three heads; hydra, many.

Often, ancient monsters inhabited remote places. The fact that they lived far away made an encounter with one of them unlikely, because long-distance travel was rare for ordinary people, except, in some cases, soldiers. For the same reason, oceans were often represented the homes of mysterious creatures, many of whom were of gigantic size and strange appearance. Examples include the the biblical Behemoth, the Norse Midgard Serpent, and Scylla and Charybdis.

Our brief survey of ancient monsters suggests many often exhibit these one or more of these characteristics:

• Mix human and animal characteristics
• Are gigantic in size
• Are missing one or more organs or traits
• Have one or more extra organs or traits
• Reside in distant locations

In Judaism and, later, in Christianity, monsters were no longer simply natural phenomena; they were created by God, for divine purposes. For example, hermaphrodites were tokens of his wrath; their births were warnings of God's fury concerning the conduct of particular communities and of the divine punishment that would occur if such behavior continued. Likewise, the gods of earlier religions were subsumed by Christianity, pagan deities becoming demons in Christian theology.

Throughout the Middle Ages, many monsters were drawn from the same sources: ancient and Christian accounts of these fascinating, terrible creatures, although, now, all familiar monsters were interpreted from the Christian perspective, with pagan monsters assuming demonic significance.

New additions to the ranks of the monstrous came from travels abroad or from pagan European tribes, before their conversions to the Christian faith. Of course, Christianity also supplied several monsters of its own, most significantly, Satan and the Antichrist.

Once Christianity became the religion of most, if not all, of the Western world, it united peoples from various tribes and cultures, becoming the unum round which e pluribus found its center. As polytheism gave way to monotheism and pagan faiths were replaced by one catholic, or universal faith (at least as the Western world is concerned), ideas about the nature of the monstrous changed, even as they merged under the authority and direction of Christian belief, authority, doctrine, and practice. Satan, demons, witches and sorcerers, heretics, and others who became victims of the Inquisition were the new monsters, common to all.

In modern times, the monstrous, as a concept, has taken on psychological significance, as the demons of hell become inner, or personal, demons, which is to say, personifications of individual human beings' unbridled impulses and animal instincts: aggression, lust, and the like. Especially in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the monstrous becomes primarily psychological, rather than cultural or theological per se. Alongside ancient and medieval monsters, we now have the narrator-protagonist of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the vengeance-minded jester of “Hop-Frog,” and the obsessive-compulsive protagonist of “Berenice.”

Monsters are of only two origins: natural or supernatural. (“Paranormal” is merely a term designating natural phenomena which are, as yet, scientifically inexplicable, and psychological monsters, like extraterrestrial monstrosities, are of natural origin.)

But what makes monsters monstrous?

There are a number of theories. Some say monsters are monstrous because they represent actual, existential threats. The werewolf, for example, symbolizes the beast within the human; the madman a person whose behavior is unrestrained by reason. Such monsters are the bane of the rationalist's existence (and aren't we all, at least occasionally, rationalists?) They suggest the Enlightenment, though it undoubtedly happened, might have occurred in vain.

Others contend that monsters are monstrous because they suggest the threat of the unknown and, perhaps, the unfathomable. According to this view, monsters are only monstrous as long as they origin or nature remains unknown. Once the nature of the creature in Ambrose Bierce's “The Damned Thing” is understood (it is of a color outside the range of human perception and, therefore, invisible), it is no longer monstrous (although it remains both terrible and dangerous). Such monsters are epistemological threats or, at least, insecurities. If knowledge is power, ignorance is impotence (and, often, impotence is helplessness).

Monsters who occupy a rung higher in The Great Chain of Being than our own rung on the celestial ladder are theological threats. God defeated Satan, casting him and his followers out of heaven, but, even if we are created in God's image, we don't have his omnipotence; our fight with the devil or with demons, as both The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose show us, is not an even match, nor is it one that we, by ourselves, without divine aid, are able to win.

Christianity, it seems, is in abeyance; its influence over the multitudes of the western world appears to have diminished. As a result, paganism has resurfaced, and with it, the old monsters are, once again, venturing out of the darkness to which they were banished by reason and faith, as the current popularity of vampires, witches, demons, and other such ancient monsters attests. Side by side with them, though, the monsters of Christian faith continue to exist. The psychological monster, the madman, in his (or her) various guises, including those of the serial killer (Ben Willis, of I Know What You Did Last Summer), the sadistic sociopath (Jigsaw, of the Saw franchise), the psychotic murderer (Norman Bates, of Psycho), the mad scientist (Dr. Moreau, of The Island of Dr. Moreau), and the overzealous fan (Annie Wilkes, of Misery) has, more recently, joined them.

What monsters might the future spawn? What fears will they embody? What means shall overcome them? These, alas, are questions only time will answer, if they turn out to be answerable at all.

Monsters in Our Midst

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In horror fiction, monsters originate from only a handful of sources:

• Natural
  • Physiological (e. g., mutation or birth defect)
  • Natural catastrophe
  • Human
    • Psychological
    • Social
    • Scientific/Technological
• Supernatural
  • Angelic/Demonic
  • Divine

Within this framework, the specific contents of these categories change, sometimes vanishing (at least for a time) or being replaced by newer understandings of the concept of the monstrous.

For example, among the ancients, hermaphrodites were considered omens from God. Signs of his displeasure, humans with both male and female sex organs were viewed as warnings form God. Their existence bespoke His wrath and the punishment that He would soon visit upon his sinful people.

Today, hermaphrodism is understood as an effect of male hormones, an adrenal glans disorder, or aromatase deficiency. In other words, the condition results from natural, not supernatural, causes. In male-to-female or female-to-male transgender transgender cases, the cause of gender dysphoria is corrected through hormone therapy, gender-confirmation surgery, and other surgical or medical procedures. Its cause is psychological; its remedy is medical and surgical.

With the change in the understanding of the causes of hermaphroditism and transgender conditions, intersex individuals are seldom cast as “monsters” in contemporary horror fiction, and, when they are cast as such, as in Sleepaway Camp (1983), critics, like much of the general public, movie-going and otherwise, are offended by such representations.

Likewise, zombies, as they are depicted today, more often result from radiation, mental disorders, pathogens, or accidents during scientific experiments than from voodoo or magic. These fundamental changes, both in the way we view the world and the basis of epistemology, have led to changes in the nature and origin of the zombie.

In short, the category of horror “monster,” which once included hermaphrodites as omens of God's displeasure and imminent wrath, are now more frequently seen as having experienced a hormonal or glandular problem or as having experienced gender dysphoria. Their conditions are caused by physiological or psychological, not supernatural or divine, agencies. Zombies, likewise, have been given a natural, rather than a supernatural, origin.

Frequently, horror movie monsters are seen as representing metaphors for political, social, or cultural events typical of particular time periods:

Godzilla (1954) has been seen as representing the nuclear bombs that the United States dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Them! (1954) ends with a caution about the dangers of “the Atomic Age,” as myrmecologist Dr. Harold Medford warns, “When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.”

The 1966 science fiction-horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which people were replaced with alien look-alikes, has been regarded as an allegory for both McCarthyism and communism.

Some critics regard The Fly (1986) as a metaphor for AIDS, although director David Cronenberg said he intended the horror movie to be a metaphor for “aging and death.”

Although no horror movie seems to sum up more recent decades, a film in which political figures instigate armies of ordinary citizens to go to war against one another might be just the type of film to symbolize the current state of affairs in the United States, wherein Antifa and Democratic protesters, encouraged and emboldened by otherworldly or demonic, hypnotic versions of Senator Maxine Waters, who exalts the public confrontation of individuals who disagree with her party, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who claims civility is impossible between Democrats and those who oppose them, attack their opponents in the street, confront political appointees during meals in public restaurants, disrupt Senate hearings, and attack the Supreme Court Building, eventually precipitating a war that endangers the entire country. Such an allegorical film, called, perhaps, Demonic Uprising would certainly capture the spirit of our age.

"Oculus": A Psychological Horror Movie with Philosophical Implications

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

I admit it: I'm a movie poster fan, especially if it's designed to promote a chiller or a thriller. Itself a work of art, such a poster often gets to the heart of the film's basic claim, or theme. By “theme,” I mean both the central idea the movie conveys and the primary, or core, emotion it elicits, for, in art, the mind and the heart are as one when thought and feeling agree. That's not to say there's such agreement throughout the film. Typically, there isn't. By the end of the movie, though, the mind and heart typically unite, supporting one another, and, through feeling, thought becomes belief.

Some contend that our personal and social values are the sources of our beliefs, and they may be right, but I believe—ironic this particular word should appear in my thoughts as I'm writing about thought, emotion, belief, and, now, value—that, without the marriage of thought and emotion at some point, belief will not take root, and belief, arising from a value we or our society holds as true, often without individual examination, will be based solely on one or the other, thought or emotion. Such a basis is weak and susceptible to surrender.

So, anyway, back to the topic at hand: movie themes as they're expressed in posters promoting chillers and thrillers.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Frederick Nietzsche wrote, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” The mirror in the horror movie Oculus could represent Nietzsche's abyss. But what, exactly, is this abyss—and how is one to prevent one's becoming a monster if he or she fights monsters? There are monsters aplenty in the film, as there are monster fighters, but none of the slayers appear to survive against the abyss. Could the title of the movie suggest an answer to the questions its symbolic mirror poses?

Let's begin our investigation of these questions with a consideration of the posters designed to promote the feature film. There are three in English, and one in Italian.

In one of the posters, a boy (10-year-old Tim Russell, we learn in the movie) and a redheaded girl (his 12-year-old sister, Kaylie) stand, facing away from a large mirror in an ornate, but rather grotesque, metal frame. Tim wears a red-, black-, and green-striped shirt; Kaylie, blue denim overalls over a light-blue sweater. Her hair is slightly disheveled, and both children look frightened—indeed, they seem near panic. Neither of them is reflected in the mirror, although Tim is tall enough for the back of his head to appear in the looking-glass and Kaylie is tall enough for the back of her head and her shoulders to be reflected in the glass. Instead, the mirror displays the opposite wall, showing a photograph or a painting (the image is blurry) above wall molding. Centered above the children, across the wall and the mirror, is the word “OCULUS,” in white letters; beneath it, also in white letters, in letter case, is the sentence, “You see what it wants you to see.” Presumably, the “it” in the sentence refers to the mirror.

In another poster, a close-up of the Kaylie is shown. She is older than she is in the first poster (23 years old, we learn in the movie). Her hair is neatly combed, falling to the sides of her face. She wears a natural-pink shade of lipstick, but no other makeup. A pair of small hands, one arising from either cheek, cover the locations in which her eyes would normally appear. The hands are the same color as her complexion and appear to be natural parts of her body. Below her chin, the sentence, in white font and title case, reads, “You see what it wants you to see.” Beneath this caption is the word “OCULUS,” in white font and capital letters. If the eyes are the mirrors of the soul, the girl has no mirror into her soul, for her eyes are missing, stolen, perhaps, but not by an external agent, for the hands which cover the locations in which her eyes would normally appear are parts of her; they grow from her own face.

The third poster shows the mirror, its frame now green in color, rather than leaden gray, but otherwise unchanged. It stands on a bare wooden floor, in profile. Kaylie, age 23, steps from the surface of the glass, wearing a dress the same color as the mirror's frame and surface. Only the parts of her body—her face, upper torso, left arm, right leg, and part of her left leg—that have emerged from the looking-glass are visible, as if the rest of her does not exist. The mirror appears to be a portal between two worlds or dimensions. In the darkness of the room, behind the mirror, the centered same word and sentence appear as are shown in the previously described posters. Both are in the same color and font styles: “You see what it wants you to see,” followed by “OCULUS.” This poster seems to allude to Lewis Carroll's novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, thus casting Kaylie in a role similar to that of Alice, who enters Wonderland through an enchanted mirror.

In the fourth poster, Kaylie, age 23, stands in a room with a bare wooden floor. Her neatly combed hair is in a ponytail, and she wears a patterned dress. (She is shown from behind, down to her shoulder blades.) The mirror, in its ornate, but grotesque, gray metal frame, stands against the far wall. Although Kaylie gazes into it, the glass reflects someone else: a cadaverous, dark-haired girl with a ghostly pale complexion. She wears a white dress. Her left arm is at her side, its palm facing forward. Blood wreaths her neck, stains the bottom front of her dress, and is smeared across the palm of her hand. Across Kaylie's back, in white capital letters, “OCULUS” appears. Below it, also in capital letters, but in a smaller, yellow font, is the phrase, “IL RIFLESSO DEL MALE” (“THE REFLECTION OF EVIL”). If the mirror lets Kaylie see what it wants her to see and reflects evil, the implication appears to be that, in viewing herself, Kaylie sees the evil within herself. Is the image in the looking-glass a sort of portrait of Dorian Gray, then, an image of herself that decays as a result of the evil deeds she commits while Kaylie herself remains young, healthy, and beautiful?

The allusions to Alice and to Dorian Gray complexify and enrich the possible meanings of the posters, as does their apparent reference to Nietzsche's metaphor of the abyss. The movie's plot, of course, will suggest whether and to what extent any of these possibilities may apply to interpreting the theme of the film.

After Alan Russell, his wife Marie, and their children Tim and Kaylie move into a new house, Alan buys an antique mirror for his office. Shortly thereafter, he sees his body decaying, and he begins to have an affair with Marisol, a female ghost or incubus who has mirrors in lieu of eyes.

Gradually, he and Marie go mad. Marie withdraws, as she becomes paranoid. The family's dog vanishes. Kaylie, seeing her father with Marisol, tells her mother, and Marie and Alan argue. When Marie tries to kill their children, Alan locks her up. The food supply dwindles, and Kaylie, seeking help from her mother, finds Marie chained to a wall inside the house.

Tim seeks help from the neighbors, who refuse to assist him, believing he's making up a story about his parents. Kaylie's telephone calls are answered by the same masculine voice.

Alan frees Marie, and they attack the children. Alan kills Marie when she has a lucid moment. Aware that the mirror is the source of their parents' madness, Tim and Kaylie attempt to smash it, but hit the wall, thinking they are hitting the mirror. Like their parents' behavior, theirs, too, is controlled by the mirror.

During a rational moment, Alan tells his children to flee the house, before forcing Tim to shoot him, However, their escape is cut off by ghosts. Police arrest Tim, who sees his parents' ghosts watching him as he is escorted from the house.

After eleven years, Tim is released from the mental hospital in which he has been confined after “murdering” his father, no longer believing supernatural powers were associated with his parents' deaths. Kaylie, who works for an auction house, researches the antique mirror her father bought. Allowed to take the mirror home, she keeps it in a room in which it is monitored by surveillance cameras, an anchor suspended from the ceiling ready to smash the looking-glass at the flip of a switch. Before destroying the mirror, she plans to obtain evidence that it was responsible for Alan's death.

The siblings argue about Kaylie's plans. When plants begin to wither, they check the surveillance cameras' footage and discover they have performed deeds of which they have no awareness. Tim is now a believer in the mirror's supernatural powers, but the children's escape attempt is frustrated by the mirror's influence. Kaylie stabs an apparition of her mother in the neck, only to realize she has wounded her fiance. Attempting to telephone the police, she reaches the same mysterious masculine voice that answered her telephone when she was twelve years old. When Tim switches on the anchor, it strikes Kaylie, killing her. Tim is arrested and, once again, blames the mirror for his actions. As he is led away, he sees his sister's ghost standing with the spirits of his parents. The mirror has claimed another victim.

The authorities blame Tim for the deaths of Alan and Kaylie, but Tim blames the mirror. How should the series of fantastic incidents that occur in their new house be interpreted? According to Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Litearry Genre, the fantastic either remains fantastic—essentially, inexplicable—or is resolved as uncanny (natural, if unusual, and explicable in terms of scientific knowledge) or as marvelous (paranormal or supernatural in origin). Is Oculus fantastic, uncanny, or marvelous? The authorities view the events as uncanny; they are bizarre, but they are explicable; psychiatrists can explain them as effects of Tim's psychosis, which produced hallucinations. Tim, like Kaylie, believe the incidents that happened inside their new house were marvelous, having been caused by the mirror's supernatural powers. Depending upon one's belief system, either interpretation is possible within the framework of the movie's plot.

Let's examine the film's incidents from the stance that they are the results of madness, which means that not only Tim, but also Kaylie, Marie, and Alan were psychotic (and probably paranoid); they all hallucinated, seeing and hearing things that were present only in their own minds. Everything they believed actually happened occurred only in their own minds. As the text in one of the movie posters suggests, the mirror was not evil; it was merely a mirror. It did nothing more than exhibit a “REFLECTION OF EVIL.” The images it displayed were images of madness, of psychosis and paranoia. The mirror was, in Nietzsche's terms, an abyss. In gazing too long into this abyss, it also gazed into them.

What is the nature of the abyss? The answer to this question depends on who one asks, but it might represent, among other possibilities, despair (“the sickness unto death,” as Soren Kierkegaard calls it), death, existential meaninglessness, or absurdity; the inability to sustain a definite self; or a feeling of psychological impotence. But the abyss, in Nietzsche's formulation of the abysmal, is related to monsters: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” This association between the monstrous and the abysmal raises the question, what is the monstrous or, more specifically, what is a monster?

Historically, a monster was an omen created by God to warn of his impending wrath against sinful conduct. However, in more recent times, the monstrous has come to have psychological, rather than theological, significance. Today, many say people contend against personal or inner “demons,” metaphors for the inner conflicts that result from unresolved emotions.

It is by fixating, or becoming obsessed with, such feelings that one allows the “abyss” to gaze into oneself. People obsessed with vengeance may commit acts of vengeance; those fixated upon self-pity may become clinically depressed; people who dwell on fear may become paranoid; a person who ponders irrational behavior may become insane. An obsession with a particular type of abnormal behavior can not only cause such a behavior in oneself but intensify it, causing it to become extreme.

What monsters do the characters in Oculus see and hear? Their adversaries suggest whom they view as threats, as “monsters.”

Alan sees himself as being in a state of decadence; he sees his body as decaying. The body's physicality suggests he sees his flesh as the source of his decadence, a possibility borne out by his affair with the ghost or incubus Marisol. His personal demon is his emotional unfaithfulness toward his wife. His lack if fidelity causes him to view Marie as an enemy, rather than his spouse; he sees her as a monster whose relationship to him is emotionally unsatisfying.

Perhaps he feels trapped in his marriage. His purchase of an antique mirror suggests he is seeking self-awareness associated with his past. What has led to the emotional distance he feels between Marie and himself? Whatever he sees in Marisol is his own image of her; she has no eyes, no mirrors to a soul, because she has no soul. She doesn't exist, except as a delusion he has created out of his need for an emotionally fulfilling relationship. The mirrors of her “eyes” reflect only his own ideas about women, his own fantasies about what a woman should be and how she should behave.

Not surprisingly, her husband's own emotional distance makes Marie withdraw, and, afraid that her relationship with Alan is disintegrating, she becomes paranoid. She appears to blame her children for her failing marriage, because it is at them that she directs her rage. She argues with Alan, but she never attempts to harm him physically; instead, she tries to murder Tim and Kaylie. Consequently, Alan chains her to a wall—but is fettering her intended solely to protect his children or does chaining her also ensure that the distance between them is certain, affording him more time to fantasize about Marisol?

It's interesting that the Russell family's neighbors do not believe Tim's wild tale of his parents' insanity, nor so the authorities. Like the psychiatrist who treats Tim after his arrest for his father's murder, the neighbors may think Tim's ravings the products of insanity.

Was Tim's murder of his father an attempt to protect his mother from Alan? His parents argued. His father's emotional detachment from Marie obviously disturbed her greatly. She'd become withdrawn and paranoid. Finally, she'd snapped, attempting to kill her own children, and Alan had responded not by getting her the help she obviously needed, but by chaining her to a wall. In Freudian terms, the Oedipus complex may have had much to do with Tim's “accidental” killing of his father. The boy might also have been motivated by his concern for his and his sister's safety. If Alan treated their mother in such a manner, he might well treat them in the same way. 

 

Kaylie seems to have a problematic view of men, perhaps as a result of her father's treatment of her mother. They are distant emotionally, and her father seems to be emotionally unfaithful to Marie, an insight on Kaylie's part that causes her to imagine that her father is actually having an affair with Marisol and report this act of infidelity to her mother. When she calls for help, the same masculine voice always answers—her animus, Carl Jung might suggest—but no help is dispatched.

Men are not rescuers. They are more likely to be monsters than knights in white armor. Later, mistaking her fiance for an apparition of her mother, Kaylie will stab him. Does she fear that the example of her mother's withdrawal and paranoia concerning her father will also destroy her relationship with her fiance or does she fear her fiance will be distant and emotionally unfaithful to her, as Alan also been to Marie? In her mind, it seems clear, the guilt of her parents is interchangeable; they are both dangerous monsters.

During the movie, the characters have rare, brief moments of lucidity. During one such moment, Tim and Kaylie realize that their own twisted perceptions of others is causing psychological, interpersonal, and even physical mayhem. They attempt to break the mirror, that is, to escape the lens through which they view the other members of their family. However, their attempt to break through the filters they have created is inept, even absurd, and they remain captives of their own skewed perceptions and interpretations of events.

Eleven years later, Tim is believed to be well again and is released from the mental hospital. However, Kaylie is still deluded, believing the mirror has supernatural powers. The siblings argue, and Tim, whose madness seems only to have been dormant, again comes under the sway of his psychosis, as he and his sister imagine the houseplants are withering. Checking surveillance camera footage, they discover they've performed acts they cannot recall having done and blame their fugue states on the mirror.

Kaylie tries the same pitiful defense mechanism she employed eleven years ago. She telephones for help, but reaches the same mysterious masculine voice that answered her telephone when she was twelve years old. Instead of seeking help from the neighbors, Tim switches on the anchor suspended from the ceiling, but it strikes Kaylie, killing her.

Arrested, he blames the mirror for his actions, just as he'd done eleven years ago. As he is led away by the police, he sees his sister's ghost standing with the spirits of his parents. In his mind, the mirror has claimed another victim—the sister he himself killed, even as he had killed his father, who'd killed his mother. Truly, the mirror has been a “REFLECTION OF EVIL,” the evil of the family's own personal demons.

Although the idea that all the members of a family might go mad at the same time, their delusions, hallucinations, and behaviors reinforcing, sometimes complementing, and interacting with one another, is far-fetched, to say the least, such is horror fiction, a melodramatic genre that is, by both definition and convention, over the top. For those like me who are skeptical of psychoanalytical claims (and of psychoanalysis itself), Freudian and Jungian interpretations of human behavior, as represented in Oculus by the actions of the characters, are likely to seem too neat and tidy and too over the top to be satisfying.

For us, there are other possible explanations, some of which, as we've suggested, are despair (“the sickness unto death,” as Soren Kierkegaard calls it), death, existential meaninglessness, or absurdity; the inability to sustain a definite self; or a feeling of psychological impotence. There are also artistic possibilities for interpreting the meaning of the abyss. While Jean-Paul Sartre maintains that “hell is other people,” the director of Oculus might amend the philosopher's premise to suggest, as Tennessee Williams, who warned against looking in mirrors, put it, “Hell is yourself.”

Nontraditional Sources of Villainy

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In times past, horror writers often created monsters to represent "the other," that type of individual or group that was outside the norm or otherwise different from the members of the status quo.

Minority groups, people who lived alternate lifestyles, foreigners, individuals who subscribed to minority political views, poor folks, mentally ill persons, and others whose views, values, behavior, or even melanin levels didn't accord with the rest of "us" became the "them" whom the rest of "us" demonized; they were often the monsters who populated horror fiction, albeit in a modified, symbolic form.

Fortunately, for the most part, this type of demonization is rare now. We can only hope it vanishes completely.

Meanwhile, what seems to be taking the place of these traditional, admittedly racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and otherwise repugnant "villains" seems to be animals (the pit bull in Bullet Head), a sniper (Downrange), ghosts (Winchester), parents (Mom & Dad), a computer (Unfriended: Dark Web and Upgraded), a demon (Piewacket), a psychotic doll (Cult of Chucky), kidnappers (House on Willow Street), a dollmaker (Anabelle: Creation), and any number of other monsters, human and otherwise. The variety of villains shows that “the other” as a source for monsters is not necessary; there are plenty of other roots of potential villainy from which to draw. In fact, these alternative sources are limited only by the imagination. And that's a good thing.

Metaphorical Monsters

copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

In high school, we learned that a metaphor is a figure of speech that explicitly states a comparison between two different things. Metaphors help us to unify experience, showing us how A and B, although mostly quite different, are also alike in some way.

I prefer a different definition for the term. I like to think of a metaphor as a verbal, or linguistic, equation. In this view, the metaphor isn’t simply stating that there’s a likeness, or similarity, between two different persons, places, or things. Instead, the metaphor is asserting that the two mean the same thing. If the metaphor is “fog blinds,” we’re saying fog = blindness, as, for instance, in math, 2 + 2 = 4.

One reason that I prefer the equation to the figure of speech concept is that the terms in an equation can be swapped with one another. If 2 + 2 = 4, then 4 = 2 + 2. Likewise, if a metaphor is considered an equation, fog = blindness can be recast as blindness = fog. This way of thinking helps a writer to remember clearly the significance of his or metaphors. When monsters are involved, remembering what one is about is important!

In horror fiction, monsters = metaphors; therefore, metaphors = monsters. This chart shows some of the metaphors that writers have employed to suggest comparisons between one thing and another:




There are many others as well, of course. Perhaps we will explore some of the others in future installments.

Some metaphors operate at several levels at the same time, creating a sort of chain of associations. These associations may be literal, symbolic, existential, and spiritual. Here’s an example, using fog:
The symbolic, or metaphorical, term in the first equation links fog with blindness. Fog, if it is thick and pervasive enough, can rob us of our ability to see clearly. It can blind us, as it were. Therefore, fog can be equated with blindness, as it is in the implied metaphor, fog = blindness. Notice, however, that these associations can be extended so that the literal-metaphorical becomes existential as well: blindness = fear of the unknown. What do children fear when the lights go out at night? We say that they are afraid of the dark, but what they actually fear is what may be there, unseen, with them in their bedrooms, invisible in the darkness. They fear the unknown. Therefore, blindness (a form of darkness, in a sense) = fear of the unknown. The chain of associations can be carried further, as the chart demonstrates. Why do we fear the unknown? We fear it because it may threaten us with harm or even death: fear of the unknown = death. Depending upon one’s religious convictions or lack thereof, death, in turn, equals either annihilation or, possibly, damnation--an eternity of torment in hell, cut off from both man and God: death = annihilation or death = damnation. (Of course, it could also equal an eternity of bliss in heaven [death= heaven], surrounded by fellow souls in the presence of God, but we are talking horror here, and, therefore, loss, not gain.)

The same way that some metaphorical equations can be extended so that they form a chain of associations, literal, metaphorical, existential, and spiritual, others can as well. The vampire is an especially rich and evocative possibility. Usually, those equations that can be so extended are the most effective ones for literature, whether of the horror genre or otherwise, because they furnish a broad plain upon which to explore the literal, the symbolic, the existential, and the spiritual aspects of the themes they involve.