Transcription
If the point of the folk story is the hero's journey, and the point of horror is the outsider lurking, fear of that which is outside the bounds of the ordinary, I want to focus on two apparently very different movies that precisely present us with a journey and an outsider. One which I don't think works, Green Knight, and the other which I think does, Noseratu by Edgars. And there will be spoilers ahead.
The heroes journey into a far off deathly wilderness outside the circle of security, a familiar human community. And the encounter there with something ancient, some secret king recurs across traditions. On one level, it represents the encounter with the bedrock of the hero's own self. his personal vision of stability, ancientness, royalty, only truly understood in the wild through a trial of exile, of death. Abraham's encounter with the mysterious Melchisedc. Odin appearing in disguise as the underworld's fairyman. Inas meeting his own departed father after entering the volcanic caverns of Italy.
I want to address this archetype in terms of its corruption. what happens when something evil occupies the place of the wilderness and initiation is thwarted. And I want to do that through two recent movies that reimagine older stories. There's a sense in which their directors, Edgars and Lori, take the A24 film aesthetic and develop it in different directions. Edgars has taken it in a more sincere storytelling direction and Lori in a more detached inappropriate to the subject matter direction.
Now on the surface they have little to do with each other. One retells a lesser episode of the Arththeran cycle whereas the other is a contemporary remake of a modern movie based on a modern novel Bram Stoker's Dracula. But these are in some ways corresponding opposites. In Noseratu, a young husband is tasked with traveling to a far-off count's estate in order to arrange his purchase of property in the fictional German town of Visber. The count in question is a vampire whose true purpose is to move to the new country, yes, but also to steal the young man's wife, Thomas Hooter's wife, Ellen.
Edgars improves on the original novel and films by providing a reason for the beginnings of Orlock's fixity of desire on Ellen. Just as a vampire must be invited into the home, just as this foreign count must arrange to buy property in order to move to a new country, so too his haunting of Ellen had to be invited. Long afflicted by melancholy, fruit of her being attuned to the unseen. In a heathen age, she would have been a priestess of Isis, she's told at one point, she prays for comfort and company. She asks for any elevated being, any lofty, any subtle, any powerful entity who might be listening to aid her. Anything come to me. Here we have the danger of orienting our pleas and prayers, our will and worship towards anything other than the transcendent source. Her prayer is answered. Orlock hears her and comes to her in spirit from his far off domains. She agrees to be his. So his claim upon her, though morally and spiritually illegitimate, in a sense holds formal legal primacy over her actual human marriage. many years later to Thomas.
Orlock's purpose is to alienate her from being human. You are not of the human race, not for the living, he tells her. Pain seeks to divorce us from the lived reality, the warmth, the tenderness of real persons. And the demonic identification with trauma becomes a feeling of elevation. We are set apart, made different, better. This kind of parodic aristocracy that Orlock represents is about being initiated into the unnatural, feeling yourself traumatized by it and better than other people who have not been ruined by that trauma. And that idea of identifying with our trauma I developed in a previous video as well. The vampire is principally then an astral parasite hanging about in the imaginal realm just as he appears to Ellen. Edgars is adding something valuable to the cinematic lore with this move.
Once Thomas travels to the Carpathian Mountains, he stays with a group of locals, and at one point in the night, he leaves his lodgings and finds them gathered around a coffin they've dug up, proceeding to stake the corpse inside. Now, they are led by a naked woman on a horse. She, like Ellen, must be a vampire's object of desire, and she can therefore identify the body of the predator, drawing out its appetite. Presumably naked, her blood would be easier to smell, for example. But the slaying of the vampire here in keeping with Stoker's original is fundamentally different from that of Noseratu the movie. Count Orlock is not staked by a man. He is not found or drawn out by his sought-after bride to then be ended by her husband. Rather, Ellen is given over to him in sacrifice. He consumates his desire for her, feeding on her until dawn, and unable to cease from his consuming thirst, stays even after sunrise. He once described himself as an appetite, and Ellen does to some degree share in that appetite. It's his but also her obsession, her compulsion that is fully given into.
Evil cannot sustain itself indefinitely. It must by its nature burn out. The full and terrible emergence of some haunting intrusive thought of sin finally exhausts itself, but it also exhausts its host. Ellen dies with Orlock. As she struggles, she also on some level identifies with the thing that's causing her pain. The defeat of evil here is a giving in and a burning out. The catharsis of fully living out the horrible fate, some terrible destiny we have come to believe is unavoidable. The dragon receives his princess and is satisfied long enough to stop burning villagers. Orlock's plague subsides. But we ought to be pessimistic here. The plague that subsides after unnatural acts and bloodshed is only a temporary mechanical exhaustion, an energetic depletion. It will return. We haven't leared to resist and overcome. We've given in and deepened the hold of that plague in the long run. For all their backwardness, the villagers that Thomas witnessed staking a corpse were not so pagan in the porative sense of the term pagan. Not so superstitious, let's say, not so willing to engage in sacrifice as rational westerners end up being. They had their marked sacrifice lead them to the dragon for her man to then slay.
The vampire killer who looks back at Thomas angrily in a sense is Thomas. His scorn for Thomas is for his weakness, present and future. But Thomas did want to kill Orlock. He was deceived by his wife and by Professor Alban Eberhart von France. This is basically the movie's version of Van Helsing from the original novel. Von France and Ellen decide the only way is for her to give in and keep the fiend until morning. The professor says at one point that just as Jacob wrestled the angel in the Bible, he has long wrestled the devil. But in that case, we might hazard that whatever Jacob learned of the heavenly mysteries by wrestling the angel of the Lord, von France learned of the infernal. His conclusions are a skew. He's looked into the abyss too long, allowing it to look back into him. Ellen of course is also wrestling with the devil like von France and that's ultimately how she dies.
Orlock had given Ellen three nights originally like the three days of Christ's intombunement during which to decide to give in and be his bride. She has to do it willingly. That's part of the rules of the demonic game. We might ask, what if she'd resisted and not consented to join Orlock on the third night, relinquishing her previous bond to Thomas? Perhaps instead of death's victory over her, there might have been something like a resurrection. The movie takes place during Christmas, after all, and we might say it is ultimately an anti- Christmas or really anti- Easter conclusion. The female takes it upon herself to defeat evil by experiencing the full consummation of the lust it has for her. The scholar academic comes up with a rationale for this. But the male warrior, the self-indangering bridegroom, Thomas, does not fully emerge into his own. This despite Thomas having faced a season in darkness in sickness. Locked up in Orlock's castle once descending into the crypt but failing to kill the count eventually escaping and undergoing a dangerous journey back to his elen.
Orlock for his part is the antichrist draining blood rather than offering his own in order to teach others to overcome death. Orlock speaks of the honor which his blood demands as belonging to a long and noble line but replenishes that blood with the blood of commoners. It is the paradox of a primacy based on parasetism. Exploitation, economic exploitation is in fact a running theme. Thomas's journey to Orlock's eastern country in the first place is motivated by his being in debt and feeling he must in order to earn enough for his future family. Ellen reproaches him. And while we might be tempted to take Thomas's side, the need to get out from under debt is a real motivator and his ambition is legitimate. He also disregards his gut. He should have perceived that his boss was twisted and that the whole affair was off. He should have had faith enough in finding sufficient provision elsewhere. He is in some way at fault.
Lorie's the Green Knight also happens at Christmas. In both stories, the antagonist, albeit not a true antagonist, in the case of the Green Knight, but the figure with which our hero has to contend anyway, is a supernatural outsider to whose strange land the protagonist has to travel. There are three trials here as well. Three knights whose consequences Gain, the main character of the Green Knight, like Ellen, should have endured. In the original story of the Green Knight, which dates at least to the late 14th century, a strange figure presents himself at Camelot and offers to play a game. Whatever blow a knight agrees to deliver onto him, he will return one year hence. Impetuous, eager to prove himself, overplaying things a little bit, the young Gawne cuts the man's head off. But the stranger simply picks it up and tells him to meet in his green chapel one year hence to receive the same in return. Gane must live in dread for a year before journeying to his death. And on the way he spends time at a castle whose lord Bertilac takes him in and offers an exchange very similar to how the Green Knight did. Each morning he goes for a hunt and will give Gowane what he catches if Gane gives him what he received the previous night. Each night the Lord's lady tries to seduce Gowane. And though Gowane refuses, she does kiss him. So he kisses the Lord each morning in return. But on the third night he gets more than a kiss, he receives a green and golden belt which the lady says will protect his life. This, however, he does not give to the Lord the next morning. He breaks the deal like Ellen accepting Orlock.
On the third night at the Green Chapel, Gane finally meets the Green Knight again, who it turns out was Lord Bertilac all along and who knew of the temptations to which Gane was being subjected. In fact, the lady was merely testing the young man. Presumably, she is Morgan Lefay, the witch. Lorie's version departs from the original in a few ways, especially at the end. Lorie's gane wears the belt, survives the blow, and goes back to Camelot, eventually becoming king, but living in regret for not honoring the original deal. He feels himself a coward, but that was all a vision, a fantasy. He snaps out of it and is still at the chapel. So, he takes off his belt and readies himself to face death. In the original, the knight gives him three blows, two false, one real, but nonelethal. Quote, "I promised thee a stroke. Thou hast it. Hold thyself well played. I hereby release thee of the remnant and all other rights. Had I so liked, I could have dealt thee a worse blow." End quote. Here too, Gawne reproaches himself for wearing the safety bestowing belt. Quote, "he shrank for shame all the time the Green Knight was talking, and the first words he uttered were, 'a curse on both cowardice and covetousness. In them are both villain and vice that destroy virtue.' Then he caught hold of the girdle and violently flung it at the night. 'Lo, there is the false thing, and may evil befall it. For fear of thy stroke cowardice seized me, and for covetousness I was false to my nature, which is loyal and true as befitteth a knight. Now am I faulty and false and fearful.'" End quote. In flinging off the belt, he is perhaps ready now to face a true death. But the knight forgives him. Quote, "Thou hast made such clean confession of thy misdeeds, and hast done such penance at the point of my sword, that I hold thee free from thy fault, and as innocent as if thou hast never forfeited innocence since thou was born." And here I give to thee again the girdle that is gold hemmed and green as my gown. And thou shalt think on this chiding when thou goest forth among princes of price, and this shall be a pure token of thy chance at the green chapel to chivalous knights." End quote. Later, the whole court of Camelot decides to wear the green belt in solidarity with Gawne. The original belt, we read, was made of the Green Knight's weed or moss all along. It's his own magic. The purpose of the Green Knight and what he's owed as part of the game is not at odds with the belt. The belt is an extension of this supernatural outsider nature. Wild, fearsome, but also endowed of grace. It is a chapel after all, where the final meeting takes place and all Gane's sins are forgiven. In fact, Gane's keeping of the belt seems perfectly just. The Green Knight is supernatural and knew he would not die no matter what Gane did during that first challenge. Therefore, Gane is justified in using the very same magic to survive. Albeit, he is deceitful. His wearing the belt is fairer, however, than his not wearing it. We get the sense that if Gane had passed the test and given the green belt to Lord Bertilac, the green knight in disguise on the third morning, that lord would have given it back or found some other excuse not to decapitate Gane because it would not have been reciprocal to decapitate Gawane. The Green Knight survives decapitation. A mortal human does not. And for Gane to participate in that unfair exchange and throw his life away would not in the end be virtuous either. Is Gane's self-reroach not an excessively literalistic youthful approach to knighthood? That seems to be both the Green Knight's take to whom he owes his life and Arthur's to whom he owes his loyalty. Both are indulgent. When Gane returns to court, Arthur has nothing to reproach.
The main difference between the original ending and Lorie's is that the belt is not brought into Camelot, nor is it reproduced for the whole court to wear. Gane does learn his lesson in the original, and while he embraces death in Lor's adaptation as well, he does not bring the fruit of that embrace home. For Lori, the belt is a temptation to be discarded, not a trophy to be taken back to Camelot. This makes symbolic sense because in that cinematic version of the tale, reconciling with nature is about accepting death, but not about what transcends death.
Why is it green? Green is the color of earth, of living things, of life and of rot. Yes. Should have come creeping up the coals. We scrub it out fast as we can. When it blooms beneath our skin, we plead it out and it comes back. Red is the color of lust. But green is what lust leaves behind in heart, in a womb. Green is what is left when order fades. passion dies when we die too. What passion leaves behind in the womb i.e. pregnancy life is framed as the same as what it leaves behind in infection rot. Green and life is a byproduct of red passion according to Lorie's Lady Bertilac. So life here is as Orlock would view it a sickly plague spreading undead state. an after image appetite which must continually feed on passion on blood on the red. And yet the belt crucially is green and gold. Nature life green woven with grace more than life gold. Nature containing giving way to super nature.
There are many ways in which Orlock and the Green Knight correspond to each other. Both are immortal but in opposite ways. The Green Knight is about embracing death. orlock about desperately chasing life. The Green Knight is dealt a deathly blow and survives right in front of Gawne as a lesson that death or the fear of death have to be transcended and can be. Whereas the other Orlock wished to avoid death so badly that he made a deal with the devil to live forever only dying eventually because he can't resist life in the sense of desire, lust, feeding. Both are connected to the soil. The Green Knight represents the greenery of nature and Orlock must remain on the land where he first made the satanic pact that made him into an undead creature. Therefore, when he travels on a ship, he does so in a coffin filled with dirt from his land. The original Dracula, unlike Orlock, actually does die by decapitation as well as by being stabbed in Stoker's novel, whereas the Green Knight is decapitated but survives. Surviving decapitation represents the lowering of the head to the level of the chest. He picks up his head and carries it to the level of the heart. So you're subordinating ego to spirit. The heart traditionally is understood as the center of the self. So these are unconventional Christmas figures and they do correspond to each other in many particular features.
And the heroes of each tale are also opposite paths to renewing nature after winter. One through bringing in the belt of life. the green belt into death into the place where he expects to be decapitated but then eventually into Camelot where it's kind of like a Christmas tree green and living in the hearth the life of the wilderness enduring through the coldest season set to reignite nature after the passing of winter but the other Ellen renews nature through blood sacrifice catharsis her own death gane like Ellen fails his test and wants to embrace death but his trial is taking place in the wilderness. Ellen's is taking place in her own bedroom. He is a man. She is a woman. He is dealing with a genuine benevolent teacher who forgives his life. She is dealing with a demon. Everything about this trial in Ellen's case is inappropriate. And the result, even though her fault is really the same fault as that of Goane, it's a fault of innocence, if anything, of excessive innocence. But uh it goes wrong because the trial is misplaced.
If Thomas and Ellen are allegorical for the male and the female, the male is that will which is supposed to singlepointedly enter into the place of death, suspending its perception, its experience and slaying the inner fear of death. What you don't do is take the feminine, the soul, the experiential, and fill it up with destructive experiences. And that just desensitizes you and rather than transcending those experiences, you denature yourself. If I were to imagine a merging of the two stories, Ellen's magical inheritance would be connected to some distant descent from Camelot's court, and her family would have preserved the green belt. On the third night, Orlock might have tried to approach Ellen, but its protection would keep him at bay, even as she taunts him until sunrise. Green belt, nature in harmony here as a symbol for her chastity, her feelalty to Thomas in the face of the demon. In fact, there is a story about Isis since von France says Ellen could have been a priestess of Isis at one point, precisely refusing the advances of a fallen angel to gain knowledge of the solar mysteries.
Okay, thank you very much. I hope that was interesting. This is a bit of an analysis of two stories that I don't think have been related to each other, but I do see them as somehow opposite, somehow mirroring one another. Thank you very much. There's links in the description for ways to help the channel. There's links to social media, Twitter, my Substack, and so on in the video description. Thanks a lot for watching. Subscribe if you would like to, and until next time.