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.

V for Vendetta

I would like to continue this theme of Sympathy for the Devil in popular culture, and found another example in famous cartoonist Alan Moore's graphical novel from from the eighties - V for Vendetta.


In the comic we are presented with a future dystopian totalitarian Britain. The fascist party Norsefire assumed power after a limited nuclear-war, by preying on the peoples fear and using to instigate a fascisctian dictatorship (sounds familiar?).

The state is organized in different departments, all corresponding to a part of the human body, inspired by Thomas Moore's Leviathan: The Nose (the detective branch), The Eye, The Ear (surveillance) and The Finger (uniformed police).

We follow the character V, who is an anarchist and a rebel. He was subjected to drug experiments in a government concentration camp, of which he was the only survivor. Since then he has planned the demolition of the fascist government, which he goes about by killing of key personnel (who are mostly also responsible for his own fate), by blowing up symbolical buildings, and generally ridiculing and humiliating the system, and thereby destabilizing it. He is dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, and matching clothes. Guy Fawkes was also a rebel, who in the 17. century - unsuccessfully - tried to blow up the government.

At one point in the comic, V says "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste", the first two lines from the song. He says this just before he kills one man, his mask is even protruding through his wig to resemble horns.

But why the comparison with the devil? V is the hero of the story, he fights the totalitarian system risking his own life, which very much would make him a GOOD character. At the same time he is a very ambivalent character. His true identity is never revealed, and it isn't really determined whether he is insane as a results of the experiments or not. He also viciously murders people, a death that certainly is well deserved, but nevertheless not an option the traditional hero usually retorts to.

Then again fear is a very important strategy for V, and he is very much interested in his enemies being as afraid of him as possible, too which a comparison between himself and the devil - or indeed some kind of vengeful angel handing out punishment - certainly should work very well.

Cowboy Bebop

Sympathy for the Devil has led a life of its own, almost since it's very conception - indeed since the recording of the song, which was famously caught on film by Jean-Luc Godard in Sympathy for the Devil/One Plus One from 1968.

If you pay attention to it, you get surprised of the number of references to it you will find in popular culture (not taking into account the numerous cover versions of the song, which is a subject that deserves a post for itself). As late as the other day, I was watching a Japanese animé (what we in the western world call a cartoon) by the name of Cowboy Bebop from 1998. The series is set in the future, specifically 2021, and follows the crew of the spaceship Bebop, who are bounty hunters trying to earn a living by catching criminals on the run.

the Cowboy Bebop cast

Music plays an instrumental part in the show, particularly american jazz from the 40ies and 50ies and rock from the 60ies and 70ies - for an example see the opening theme below.



In episode 6, which is called Sympathy for the Devil the crew of Bebop get mixed up with what appears to be a young boy - Wen - who is world famous for his harmonica talents. In reality the boy is more than 80 years old, but were immortalized by a freak natural phenomenon. At the end, using a special substance they manage to kill him, and he expresses gratitude of finally being able to die.
Though Wen is not the devil as such, he bears quite a lot of resemblance to the devil in the Rolling Stones song. He is immortal, he kills without hesitation and he tricks and uses people. The blues harmonica the boy plays also have some devilish connotations - i.e. he's made a pact with the devil to be able to play so uncannily good - and the general mood of this particular episode is very dark, which also resulted in it being removed by the Japanese censor board on the first run.

The physical manifest devil

In the lyrics to Sympathy for the Devil, we encounter a devil who is very much a physical being, as opposed to a metaphorical or abstract evil. The devil in the song has manifested himself, and is playing a leading role in big events in history. The biggest indication of this is in the lines regarding World War II:

I rode a tank held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg
raged and the bodies stank

The devil here playing a direct role in the events, posing as a German (blitzkrieg) general, riding a tank.
The other places in the lyrics the devil directly influences history pertains to the communist revolution in Russia:

[I] Killed the Tzar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain

And lastly regarding the Kennedy assassinations:

I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedy's?" when after all
it was you and me

In the remaining historical examples, the devil seems to play a more obfuscated role, preferring to manipulate events from the background.

What these examples, in which the devil is directly influencing history, show us, is that the devil is able to assume every identity he (or indeed she) wishes, both, it seems, as a way of taking possession of an already existing person, or by appearing as himself in whatever guise he wishes. The first instance seems to correspond with the Christian (catholic) ritual of exorcism, whereupon a priest will perform certain rituals, that supposedly drives out the devil or 'evil spirit' possessing some hapless individual. The latter instance of manifestation corresponds with the popular belief that the devil will come in many guises in its aspirations to lead you to temptation and sin.

On the cover of the Rolling Stone

In 1972 the author Truman Capote was send on the 'Exile on Main st.' tour with The Rolling Stones throughout America by the music magazine Rolling Stone. His assignment was to do a feature on the British band. Several months passed however, and the Rolling Stone editors still hadn't received the promised article by the famous writer.

With their great instinct for entertaining journalism, the editors armed now-iconic popartist Andy Warhol with a tape recorder and six questions, and send him to met Capote in New York. The result was a very informal and revealing interview, where (among many other things) Capote expresses his opinion about the phenomenon of The Rolling Stone.
The article was an almost word-for-word transcription of Warhol's tape recording, brought in the magazine as the cover story, and recently collected in the anthology The Rolling Stone Interviews1.

Walking through the New York City Zoo, Capote starts of by expressing his opinion about lead singer Mick Jagger: "A) Jagger can't sing B) he can't dance C) he doesn't know shit about music" What he does know, according to Capote, is how to act and perform "he (Jagger) has this extraordinary talent for being totally extrovert (...) but he don't know how to do any of the things he's supposed to do".

Andy is not really paying attention to Capote's opinions, and two times suggest that they go to a bar, so he can ask his questions and get a Grand Marnier, Capote agrees and orders a a J&B on the rocks, with water on the side.

Andy opens up with the first question "What was the problem with writing the article?". Capote states that for him to do a reportage, there has to be a certain element of mystery in it for him, something for him to uncover, and the tour didn't have that, it was very staged - psychologically, and all the people surrounding the band (record company people, managers etc.) were pathetic. All of them fighting each other about who were closest to the band.

Andy asks Capote about the "Airplane screw". Capote tells about a young doctor - Dr. Feelgood he calls him - from San Fransisco, who would go around the plane offering from a big tray of drugs, and who had something of a lolita-complex. He would pick up 13-14 year old young girls at concerts and get them back on the plane. He did that with a high school girl, looking for an interview for her school paper, and while he had sex with her the swiss photographer Robert Frank - filming for his documentary Cocksucker Blues - filmed the whole scene.
This was in no way a rarity either, Capote elaborates, both boys and girls would get with anyone who had the slightest connection to the tour.

Capote finishes of the interview by saying that there wasn't anything positive about the tour, except for the kids who would stand in line for days, and keep applauding long after the band had boarded their plane and left for the next city, but who where always thought of as "nothing". He did enjoy himself though, and feels no remorse for not having written the article.

The article ends with a strange conversation between Truman Capote and a woman in the bar:

Woman "Excuse me Mr. Capote. Next time your having a party, make your friends wear these"

Capote "Oh you'r so sweet..."

Andy "What is it?"

Capote "Who knows?"

1. I unfortunately only have access to a Danish translation, so all quotations will be my translation back to English.