Stones in 'Nam

To end this blog, I wanna pull out an example of a more contemporary date. In the comedy film Tropic Thunder (Stiller), the shooting of a Vietnam film goes horribly wrong, as the director blows up and the archetypal cast is left alone in the jungle. In one of the scenes Ben Stiller's character runs in the jungle, with the song playing in the background.


The song, dating from 1968 was of course released during the height of the Vietnam War, and is part of that canonical Vietnam soundtrack, that films' covering the war have been presenting. Just think of The Doors The End, featured in Francis Ford Coppola's dark Apocalypse Now (1979), heard right in the beginning when a treeline is napalmed in slow motion.

Another classic Vietnam film is Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), and in that film Jefferson Airplane's song White Rabbit is immortalized, heard while the troops are getting high on marijuana during some rare down time (incidentally White Rabbit also features prominently in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in which Dr. Gonzo wants Raoul Duke to kill him "when White Rabbit peaks").


Or indeed another canonical war film, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987). Think of Nancy Sinatra singing These Boots are Made for Walking or another Rolling Stones classic Paint it Black, playing during the end credits.

Sympathy for the Devil epitomizes a specter of different things. It is a document of the late sixties culture, the way Tropic Thunder uses it, it is a inter textual literary song, it is about the seductive sexually charged Devil manifested in Mick Jagger's characteristic strut. It is all of these things and more.

Gonzo Devil

I wanna come back to the actual song Sympathy for the Devil which is the focus and starting point for this blog.

Hunter S. Thompson's semi-autobiographical novel from 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, describes how Thompson's alter-ego Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drives to Las Vegas, first to cover a dessert race - The Mint 500 - and later to cover a national convention on the dangers of drug abuse. The two characters load up the trunk of the huge car they've rented with most of the psychoactive drugs known to man. The story follows the protagonists drug-induced haze through Las Vegas, brutally depicting drug culture and America after the initial euforism of the flower power revolution of '68.


On the road to Las Vegas in a great red convertible, the couple are constantly listening to Sympathy for the Devil on a transistor radio - over and over again, for, as Raoul Duke puts it:
"maintain our rhythm on the road" and as a "kind of demented counterpoint to the radio."

In the film adaptation from 1998, director Terry Gilliam also wanted to use the song, but was unable to secure the rights, so instead he has Johnny Depp (Playing Raoul Duke) whisper the line "No sympathy for the Devil".

HORNS!

To find an example of the Devil being portrayed in what we will recognize as traditional on film, that is red-skinned and horned, we can turn to the always visual proficient British director Ridley Scott and his 1985 fantasy film Legend.


In Legend Tim Curry plays the demon (styling himself the lord of darkness) as we know him from religious iconography. He is red-skinned and muscular, has massive black horns, very tall, humanoid but monstrous in appearance, has long black nails/claws, a deep, booming voice and pointy fangs. Magnificently played by staple bad-guy, actor Tim Curry.



Another monstrous depiction of the Devil that springs to mind, is Satan in the satirical cartoon series South Park. Much like Legend, Satan is big, red and has horns, but he hasn't exactly got a booming voice, rather he is extremely squeamish and emotional. He is also homosexual and in a high-strung sexually charged relationship with the late dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Devil on film

I've been talking some about how the Devil is portrayed in books, now I wanna talk a little about the devil on film.

It's not very common to see the Devil in films. As with books it's a fine line between ridicule and fear. The other problem with the Devil on film, is how does he look like? The classical image of the red Devil with horns, goats' hooves and a pitchfork is to worn out to be scary. Film directors tend to portray the Devil in a human shape, ranging from little children to beautiful women, or as an incorporeal power which is invisible, or a few brave ones even try the classical monster-portrayal of the Devil. I will explore a few examples.

Al Pacino as the Devil in The Devil's Advocate

The film The Devil's Advocate (Hackford, 1997) plays on the popular notion that defense lawyers are Satan himself. Al Pacino gives a memorable performance as a Satan, who in expensive suits and big Manhatten penthouses, tries to orchestrate the arrival of the Antichrist. In a rather obvious reference, his name is John Milton.

Linda Blair possesed by the Devil in The Exorcist

In The Excorcist (Friedkin, 1973), the Devil apparently is without form and requires a human host to manifest itself in reality. The first victim is the young girl Regan Macneil, which the Devil infuses with supernatural powers and a foul language. During the excorcism, the Devil is convinced to switch to the priest Karras, upon which he immediatedly kills himself, and thus entering the cycle (for a while).

Paradise Lost

In regards to Satan's battle against God, which I talked about in the last entry, one of the most influential depictions comes from John Milton's famous epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). In this tome there's two narrative tracks, one about Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and the other depicting Satan and his allies rebellion against God, and their banishment to Hell.

In Milton's depiction of Satan, his most prominent flaws are his narcissism which is severe to the point of him being delusional. Indeed Hell is described as being the product of Satan's dellusion.

The Satan in Paradise Lost is sort of similiar to the portrayal in Sympathy for the Devil. He is an evil character that corrupts man, but at the same time he is sort of fascinating and ultimately a lot more interesting than the good guys.

Dante's Satan

A very famous portrayal of Satan, we can find in Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy (1308-1321). This canonical classic describes Dante the poet's descend through the nine circles of Hell, and his ascend through Purgatory ending in Paradise. His guide through the afterlife is the Roman poet Virgil, who unfortunately just missed out on Christianity and is therefore caught in Limbo with other famous non-christian characters.

The depiction of Hell is probably the most famous part of the book (certainly the most entertaining in my opinion) - in which each sin is punished by a somewhat corresponding punishment. For example flatterers are steeped in excrement.



Reaching the absolute pits of Hell the two poets find the ultimate sinner, namely Satan himself. In Dante's depiction, Satan is not the ruler of Hell, nor is he eternally fighting God for power, as is the usual portrayal. Satan's battle against God was lost a long time ago in his initial rebellion, and now he is stuck in the deepest jaws of Hell, forever frozen and chewing on the three biggest traitors according to Dante: Brutus, Cassius and Judas.

It is in other words a totally powerless Satan against a omnipotent God. Hell therefore is God's domain as much as Paradise is, which he uses to punish sinners, and to take this logic a bit further, Satan is not some force corrupting man (as in the song), man is responsible for his own actions and has freedom of will to choose good or bad.

Portraying the Devil

It suddenly hit me that the Devil in Sympathy for the Devil isn't particularly scary or fearsome. He's partaken in wars and been key in the assassinations of some famous people (Jesus, Anastasia and family and the two Kennedy's), but a truly fearful Devil would perhaps claim responsibility for some more gruesome events, like the Holocaust, the Nanking Massacre, and generally mass torture and genocides. But of course, that would probably make the song very tasteless, and indeed I suppose some of it's popularity comes from the fact that the Devil is indeed sort of sympathetic and not particularly dangerous.

It's no easy task to portray the Devil in fiction I'm sure. It's a thin line between ridiculous and fearsome, and it really puts the writer (director etc.) in a tough spot, because he has to match the Devil in ingenuity - the Devil is never more clever than the creator makes him, so it's quite a task to make him supernaturally cunning.

One author who does an amazing job portraying the Devil/Satan was the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov in the book The Master and Margaritta, first published in 1966-67. The novel also served as the inspiration for some of the lyrics in Sympathy for the Devil.


Satan, in the novel, comes in the guise of Woland, a foreign professor and magician, who comes to Moscow to perform a black magic show. His very colourful retinue includes Behemoth, a giant black cat, who talks and walks around on two legs and has a weak spot for pistols and vodka.

The novel, which took Bulgakov many years to write, portrays satan as a well-spoken, albeit somewhat rambling, personage, which uses his supernatural skills to wreack havoc and punish and reward persons he finds deserving.

From Hell - The devil in other guises

There is no reference to Jack the Ripper in Sympathy for the Devil, but there could just as well have been, for I'm sure many of the residents in White Chapel in the fall of 1888 wouldn't have been surprised, if it was proved he was the devil himself.

Continuing with my theme of Sympathy for the Devil in popular culture, I have known broadened my perspective to also include devilish characters. One of the scariest books I've ever read is the graphic novel, or comic if you will, From Hell (1999). It's written by the same writer as V for Vendetta, which I talked about in my last post, namely Alan Moore.


From Hell is extremely detailed and researched work. It includes over 40 pages of notes, with references to sources. It is however a fictional account that is mainly based on Stephen Knight's entertaining but disproved theory, that the murders were part of a royal cover-up including also the Freemasons. Knight published his theory in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976). Moore acknowledged that it more than likely fictional, but uses it to create an exciting mix between fiction and reality.

In From Hell the Prince Albert marries and haves a child with a poor London East End woman, Annie Crook, without her knowing of his royal background. Queen Victoria learns of this, and removes the prince from his wife, and commits her to an asylum, where she is made insane by the royal physician Dr. Gull. When Annie's friends, who know of the Prince, attempts to blackmail the queen, Dr. Gull is once again dispatched to silence these prostitutes, and that's how the White Chapel murder comes to be.

A panel sample from From Hell

Dr. Gull who we follow from childhood, is portrayed very thoroughly. From his childhood, there is something very menacing about his character. As for example when he pops open his dead fathers eyes, or his wife's screams in a totally black panel on their wedding night. He is also a Freemason and (obviously) a misogynist, and the killings take on a very occult meaning. His purpose, besides aiding the queens cover-up, is to repress the women suffrage by his ritual killings. In the end when he's finished the job, he proudly proclaims 'I've given birth to the twentieth century'. A devilish character indeed.