Myths & Monsters

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?He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.?

~Friedrich Nietzsche

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Ashura falls on the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram. It is the culmination of the mourning period commemorating the death of Hussein, who Shiites revere as the third Imam. The story of Hussein relates back to the struggle for supremacy within the Muslim community following the death of the Prophet Mohammed, a major event marking the split between the Sunni and Shiite sects. Imam Hussein was the grandson of Mohammed and the son of Ali, a caliph following Mohammed’s death.  After Ali’s death in 661 C.E., his sons, including Hussein, struggled with the first caliph of the Ummayad Empire, Muawiyah, and his son Yazid I, for control of the caliphate. The day of Ashura marks the final battle between Hussein and Yazid, outside the city of Karbala in 680 C.E. Above, in Istanbul, Turkey, a Shiite presses his hand to a portrait of Hussein.

Rite of passage: Often, Shiite boys will begin the ritual of self-flagellation while still quite young. In the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, a boy makes the ceremonial cut on his forehead to mark Hussein’s death.

See the whole Photo Essay about the Ashura

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Daciana Viorica Brezeanu was a Romanian ballet dancer and gymnast who died from self inflicted wounds to the stomach and chest. She was said to have suffered from delusions that were religious in nature.

"She was always quoting scripture to ward off evil spirits – sometimes screaming at the top of her lungs. Soon after she quit the sports she so dearly loved, it all happened, " said her mother the night after her death. The police discovered several hundred animal bones beneath her bed in cardboard boxes. In one of the boxes was a letter written by Daciana and adressed to God, that stated "The demon has entered me. there is nothing to do now but give in to death." She was 19 years old.

The photo was taken Halloween day,1996 – about one year before her death.

On the afternoon of 6 May 1993, West Memphis was rocked by the news of the discovery of the mutilated bodies of three eight-year-old boys. They were naked; each had had both left and right hands tied to their corresponding feet with black and white shoe laces. One child, had multiple wounds apparently made by a serrated knife, and injuries of a type often seen as a result of forced oral sex. A second boy had multiple stab wounds and indications of forced oral sex. The police believe that these two boys died by drowning. The third child appeared also to have been forced into oral sex. The skin of his penis was removed and he had been castrated. He had many cuts from a knife with a serrated blade. He had bled to death. Christopher Byers had welts on his back from the buckle of a belt. These were initially interpreted by the police to have resulted from ritual abuse by Satanists. However, Christopher’s step-father John Byers testified at the trial that he had beaten his step-son with a belt at 5:30 PM on the day of the murder.

By 12.00 p.m. the next day, police were questioning their first suspect, Damien Echols. Several weeks later Jessie Misskelley, an associate of Echols, confessed to the murders, implicating Damien Echols and another friend, Jason Baldwin. Soon after, following a confession by Misskelley, the three teenagers were arrested and charged with the murders of James M. Moore, Steven E. Branch and Christopher M. Byers.

The citizens of West Memphis were relieved that the monsters that had committed these heinous crimes had been apprehended and justice would be served. There was a great deal of anger in the community directed towards these three adolescents, supposedly involved in Satanic cults, who were accused of killing three innocent boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Rumors of Satanic groups had abounded in this dominantly Baptist community for decades. Details of their exploits were well known although there was never any proof of any murders actually having been performed in the past. From the time the arrests were made until they were tried, local papers fed the community’s blood-lust, with stories of Satanic abominations appearing on a regular basis.

On Wednesday 19 January 1994, Jessie Misskelley was sent to trial after an attempt to have his confession suppressed was denied. Two weeks later, he was found guilty on one count of first degree capital murder and two counts of second degree capital murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole. He was seventeen years old. The trial of Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols began on Tuesday 4 February 1994. On Monday 18 April 1994, they were both found guilty on three counts of capital murder. The next day Jason, just sixteen, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of forty years. Eighteen-year-old Damien Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

DNA evidence presented in 2007 has conclusively proved that all three are innocent. However, the DNA of a step father of one of the boy’s was allegedly detected at the crime scene. The legal process is still ongoing. An extensive but partly outdated article can be found here.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is a 1996 documentary film directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about the trials of the three teenage boys in West Memphis, Arkansas for the murder and sexual mutilation of three prepubescent boys. The boys on trial for the crime are: Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, also known as the West Memphis 3.

Omen remake aside, there haven’t been any big studio "killer kid" movies in ages, and the few that there were have been pretty weak. The Good Son, for example -- it was rated R, but for what? He kills a pet and says "fuck". Ooooh. So I wasn’t expecting much from Warner Bros.’ Orphan; maybe she’d cause a car accident or something, but I didn’t think she’d actually kill anyone.

So imagine my surprise when, not even an hour into the (2 hour) movie, she takes a hammer to a woman and kills the ever-loving shit out of her. Yes! A "killer" kid movie with actual kills! And while the body count doesn’t get much higher (one more kill, though a fairly surprising one), Esther is a vicious little bitch. She attempts to kill both of her siblings on several occasions, threatens to castrate the brother ("I’ll cut your hairless little dick off before you even know what it’s for"), brains a bird, stabs a guy to death… it’s pretty goddamn brutal. There’s also a taut scene where a girl who bullied Esther at school is inside of a giant playground castle/house thing. Because it has corridors and doorways and such, it actually feels like a typical stalking scene that would occur in a real house, only now with children. It’s an interesting visual, and ends with the little girl getting tossed down the slide and breaking her leg. Again -- Esther’s not all talk and no action like some of her killer kid brethren.

But even without Esther the film packs a punch. The opening nightmare scene is more horrifying and disturbing than anything in the Nightmare on Elm St. films ever presented for a nightmare (the fact that it actually RESEMBLES a dream, with unexplained character/location changes and such, doesn’t hurt). And then later there is a terrific bit that plays on our understanding of cinema. Our hero mom (Vera Farmiga) pulls up to a red light and begins daydreaming as she spies a pregnant woman walking across the street. She keeps watching for a while, and then we hear a car honk. We all know this means that she’s daydreamed past the light turning to green again, so she starts driving toward. And then BAM! she narrowly misses getting side-swiped. It is then that we see the light, which is still red -- the honking was unrelated. Great misdirection.

Read the full Review…

Salad Fingers is a surreal psychological horror cartoon series originally created by British cartoonist David "Foyf" Firth in July 2004 which gained rapid internet popularity in 2005. The San Francisco Chronicle ranked it in the "top 10" pop culture phenomena for that year.

Watch all episodes here.

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I couldn’t help but think of Polanski and a little of Kubrick’s The Shining with today’s first glimpse into Antichrist. It comes across as distinctly "Von Trier", due to the technical style he employs with the use of handheld shots and natural lighting, but there are some complicated shots involved, and special effects work (no Donkeys were killed on set) that I suspect came from sources that go beyond literature and includes paintings, and perhaps ideas from the cited filmmakers above.

 

Written by Anders Thomas Jensen and von Trier, based on the theory that it was Satan, not God, who created the world, the trailer features a Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg who take the route that Jack and Wendy Torrance took – isolation from society bringis out the worst in people. The official short synopsis tells us that the marriage has reached the breaking point but doesn’t detail the key story element: the death of a child.