Lovecraft, England, and Cats

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Part 5)

This story shows Lovecraft at perhaps his most nostalgic – and, in some ways, his most non-horrifically eloquent.  Consider the description of King Kuranes: “For though Kuranes was a monarch in the land of dream, with all imagined pomps and marvels, splendours and beauties, ecstacies and delights, novelties and excitements at his command, he would gladly have resigned forever the whole of his power and luxury and freedom for one blessed day as a simple boy in that pure and quiet England, that ancient beloved England, which had moulded his being and of which he must always be immutably a part.”

 

Sure, this story is weighted down with elaborate and elegiac prose, but it’s worth it.  And the haughty tone is continually undermined, and enlivened, by both horror and humor.  Amid all the splendor is the echo of the daemon-sultan Azathoth’s apocalyptic insanity and the creeping, sprawling incoherence of Nyarlahotep.  And prancing through the pomposity are the absurd cats – feline chiefs, warlords, Mafiosi… dangerous but so very cuddly.  Even the most sullen or prosaic mind should endeavor to endure the stilted glories of the Dream Lands to find at the bazaar of the sheep-butchers, in Celephaïs, a “grey and dignified being… sunning himself on the onyx pavement” that “extended a languid paw as his caller approached.”  Meow.

Camp Crusaders! - The Penguin Goes Straight / Not Yet, He Ain't

Batman, Season One, Episodes 21-22

Personal Rating: B+

Villain Spotlight:

“Vengeance… wheh… wheh…”

The magic of the Penguin is that he is (or wants to be) a “respectable” member of society, as well as a crook.  In this case, he establishes a reputable protection agency – and attracts the attentions of a high society lady.

Social Commentary:

Penguin: “It’s a penetrating documentary in our time.  It’s a mirror of our clichéd minds, of our sadly weakened moral fiber.”

Bruce: “Precision, Dick, precision.  The key to success in life, as well as in sports.”

The Zen of Camp:

Batman frightens a prisoner with his ridiculous, flapping shadow.

Batman pauses to drink a glass of milk.

Notes:

Alfred has such a soothing personality – so formal, so dutiful, so British.  And it’s nice to see him have an action scene against the Penguin, albeit a brief one.

The Realm of Slimy Things - The Hobbit, Ch. V

If one thinks of nature in the abstract, it is easy to conceptualize it as hostile – the heat of the desert, the wrath of the hurricane.  If we bother to think about the complexity of nature, we may be more likely to consider it as a benevolent matrix of life.  Yet it is intriguing to think of a nature that is both complex and yet hostile to humanity, an old and hidden web of life that waits to capture people (or hobbits), rather than to support or nurture them.

 

We find something like this beneath the Misty Mountains: “There are strange things living in pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains… things more slimy than fish…. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins… and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about.”  It is in such a space, of course, that we encounter Gollum.

Leaving aside what we learn in The Lord of the Rings, we might wonder whether Gollum is just an avatar for ancient intricacies of power that spawn and slumber in the uttermost depths of the world.  Are there ooze-encrusted nexuses of consciousness posing riddles through the croaking flesh of demented hobbits?  And, if we let them be, will we find some measure of benevolent complexity among the rivers, trees, and starlit sanctuaries above the realm of slimy things?

Image: American Museum of Natural History

Camp Crusaders! - The Purr-fect Crime / Better Luck Next Time

Batman, Season One, Episodes 19-20

Personal Rating: B

Rampaging tigers, creepy caverns, labyrinthine lairs – this episode feels like a big-budget spectacular!

Villain Spotlight:

What an entrance from Catwoman – a whip and a thrown cat!  And there’s an adorable “threat kitten” sent to Commissioner Gordon.  Julie Newmar will get even better at this role, but she’s already quite good.  Later, Catwoman hums happily to herself while stealing the cat statue.  She may be indulging criminal tendencies, but at least she’s having fun.

Social Commentary:

Batman reminds Catwoman that “pets are a responsibility” while evading her killer tiger.

The Zen of Camp:

Daunted by four-level chess, Dick declares “Gosh, Bruce, I think I’ll just stick to Latin crossword puzzles.”

Catwoman seasoning Robin with catnip, before she feeds him to the tigers.

Ghouls, Gugs, and the Geography of Dreams

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Part 4)

I can’t help but think that the geography of the Dream Lands could provide a map to Lovecraft’s subconscious.  That’s probably a dangerous place to go – and I won’t attempt a full scale dream analysis.  Yet it’s intriguing that a place somewhat like a graveyard is a the boundary between the fathoms of slumber and the somber cities of reality: “They emerged on a dim plain strown with singular relics of earth – old gravestones, broken urns, and grotesque fragments of monuments – and Carter realised with some emotion that he was probably nearer the waking world than at any time since he had gone down the seven hundred steps from the cavern of flame to the Gate of Deeper Slumber.”

In this place Carter meets the canine, rubbery ghouls, some of whom, at least, were once human.  The ghouls are disturbing, grave-robbing, flesh-eating creatures, but they are intelligent and surprisingly helpful to Carter.  They even have their own rather ghastly ecology, involving the huge and ravenous gugs.  “Ghouls came here often, for a buried gug will feed a community for almost a year, and even with the added peril it is better to burrow for gugs than to bother with the graves of men.”  Thus our lesser nightmares, like ghouls, are cannibals, feasting on our greater fears.  And on such guides, perhaps, we must sometimes rely, though they seem savage and monstrous – for these ghoulish things mew with their own kinds of sentience, and harbor us no particular ill will.  At least they know their way through the tenuous geography of dreams, leaving a trail of moldy bones and winding burrows.

Image: Caspar David Friedrich

Camp Crusaders! - True or False Face / Holy Rat Race

Batman, Season One, Episodes 17-18

Personal Rating: D

Villain Spotlight:

False Face is as bland as the fake face he wears.  I do like how he cringes like a vampire in sunlight at the mention of the word “true.”

Social Commentary:

Bruce: “Part of our heritage is the lore of living things, the storybook of nature.”

The Zen of Camp:

Mr. Ladd:  “Bless you, Batman.  Every law-abiding citizen of Gotham City goes with you today in spirit.”

Ladd’s Secretary, breathlessly: “And if it were possible, in body.”

Other Cool Stuff:

Batman has a laser?

Sympathy for the Goblins - The Hobbit, Ch. IV-V

We learn that goblins “are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted.”  Yet, if goblins are that way by nature, can we really blame them for being true to themselves?  After all, these little fellows even have a natural aversion to sunlight: “it makes their legs wobble and their heads giddy.”

One of the goblins calls Thorin a liar – and in this, it is the goblin that is telling the truth, not the dwarf.  In the battle that follows, Gandalf’s elven sword “burned with a rage” and “was bright as blue flame for delight in the killing of the great lord of the cave.”  The blade sounds a bit bloodthirsty – even if we are dealing with nasty goblins carrying pointed armaments.

And, like the aliens in the film Mars Attacks, the sheer effusiveness of goblin malice is almost charming, as when they fill the caverns with “yells and yammering, croaking, jabbering and jabbing; howls, growls and curses.”  Aww, they’re angry and cute and ineffectually evil.

Image: Nakajima Kaho, Oni Senbei

Camp Crusaders! - The Joker Goes to School / He Meets his Match, the Grisly Ghoul

Batman, Season One, Episodes 15-16

Personal Rating: A

Rigged milk machines, corrupt cheerleaders, and Dick Grayson’s faux dark side.  What’s not to like?

Villain Spotlight:

The Joker’s appearance at Dick’s high school is pretty awesome.  Batman threatens him with five years in prison for loitering on school property!  What kind of police state is Gotham City running?

Social Commentary:

The students are Woodrow Roosevelt High are quickly corrupted when free money starts pouring out of vending machines.  Dick Grayson despairs!

Commissioner Gordon: “A mobile slot machine torture van.  Being in possession of such a vehicle violates 17 separate statutes.”

The Zen of Camp:

Suzy: “Being chief cheerleader puts me on the student council.  Once you’re on that, you can get away with anything.”

The Narrator: “Holy Cow Juice!”

Other Cool Stuff:

“The Easy Living Candy Store.”

Dick trying to act tough and cool to get information from the crooks, but obviously unfamiliar with cigarettes.

The Silence of Nightmares

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath  (Part 3)
 

Throughout the story, Lovecraft uses both sound and silence to express different elements of strangeness and horror.  In some of the most striking moments he juxtaposes the two in order to heighten the sense of disorientation.  For example, “Dying almost-humans screamed, and cats spit and yowled and roared, but the toad-things made never a sound as their stinking green ichor oozed fatally upon that porous earth with the obscene fungi.”

The silence of the toad monsters is noteworthy, but the quietness of the night-gaunts is even more essential to their impact on the reader.  These creatures are “noxiously thin and horned and tailed and bat-winged” yet, in flight, “They made no sound at all themselves, and even their membraneous wings were silent.”  This seems to be something more than just arcane biology – it is almost as though the world itself collaborates with the monster to create the silence – and why not?  After all, these are the Dream Lands.

 

Captured and transported by the flying night-gaunts, Carter is encouraged to share in their silence.  “He screamed again and again, but whenever he did so the black paws tickled him with greater subtlety.”  Who but Lovecraft could make a caress, a tickle, a touch, into something so alien and monstrous?  “And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed… because they had no faces at all… but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be.”  A night-gaunt is a body of silence, a blank fear, a serpentine intimacy that is dangerous to human dreams, and to human dreamers.

Image: Odilon Redon, The Monster

Camp Crusaders! - The Thirteenth Hat / Batman Stands Pat

Batman, Season One, Episodes 13-14
 

Personal Rating: B

Villain Spotlight:

David Wayne’s Mad Hatter is quite entertaining.  A hypnotizing top hat?  Yes, please!  And what a mustache!

Social Commentary:

“Few men die of threats, Robin.”  Take that, um, threateners.

Mrs. Monteagle, regarding the abduction of a milliner: “You know, I’m sure the communists had something to do with this.”

The Zen of Camp:

Robin: “Clues are always helpful.”

Mad Hatter: “Yes, a fez.  I’ll dye him red.  I’ll buy myself a camel and go riding off into the desert wearing a tribal chieftain’s flowing robes and Batman on my head…. My idle flights of fancy, my little day dreams…”

Other Cool Stuff:

Alfred’s enthusiasm as being given an assignment by Batman:  “If I may be allowed, sir… Roger!”

The Bowladrome.

Notes:

Well, I’m not sure if doting henchwomen can be admired by right-thinking feminists, but when Diane McBain’s Lisa says “Oh, you pixie!” to the dapper Mad Hatter, it’s pretty darn funny.

Dreaming of Rivendell - The Hobbit, Chapter III

I want to step back a few pages and consider the arrival of the group at Rivendell and the house of Elrond.  It is a dream-like place, especially in The Hobbit.  Bilbo even starts falling asleep while he's still entering the valley as they "slithered and slipped in the dusk down the steep zig-zag path."  From there story time passes like dream time and their stay of fourteen days is mentioned even before Elrond is properly introduced.  The house itself is not described, and Tolkien remarks on how good times are "not much to listen to" but that bad events "may make a good tale."  Such unpleasant moments are described, evocatively, as "uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome."  It's not such a bad description of nightmares, actually, and a good representational counterpoint to the the pleasant dream of Rivendell.

We learn something else interesting in this chapter, that "Elves know a lot and are wondrous folk for news, and know what is going on among the peoples of the land, as quick as water flows, or quicker."  This seems a far cry from the melancholy, brooding image of the Elves that sometimes appears in The Lord of the Rings.  Are these Elves just gossipy?  Are they, to some great extent, politically and socially aware?  Are they some kind of fairy internet, a circuit of spirit and song that circulates through the ley lines of Middle-Earth?

Camp Crusaders! - A Riddle A Day Keeps the Riddler Away / When the Rat's Away the Mice Will Play

Batman: Season One, Episodes 11-12

Personal Rating: C

Meh.  With Batman, that’s still okay, but… meh.  Maybe it’s my anti-Riddler prejudice.

Villain Spotlight:

I still maintain that some of these villains are just as menacing and disturbing as they are comic:  “Genius… sheer genius!” says the Riddler to his own hands, before kissing them.

Social Commentary:

Citizen Batman reminds us that the security of all foreign visitors, whether peasant or king, is “the essence of our democracy.”

The Zen of Camp:

“You want a piece of cheese?” asks a pseudo-costumed River Rat gang member.

“Not without a good vintage port, you lackey,” replied the kidnapped king.

“I’ll never understand how girls like you get involved in things like this,” says Batman.

“Kicks, I guess,” replies the villain’s henchwoman.

Other Cool Stuff:

Batman’s handwriting on the blackboard in the Bat Cave is absurdly neat and clear.

Camp Crusaders! - Zelda the Great / A Death Worse than Fate

Season One, Episodes 9-10 - Zelda the Great / A Death Worse than Fate

Personal Rating: D

Villain Spotlight:
Zelda the Great isn't so great, as far as I'm concerned.  Really quite boring, actually.  I suppose she manages a somewhat stylish prison uniform, what with the little hat, and all.

Social Commentary:
"A loyal tax payer stooping to criminal methods?" asks Batman, incredulously.

The Zen of Camp:
In a plea for Zelda to release the kidnapped Aunt Harriet, Robin insists that he and Batman always deal fairly with criminals.  Commissioner Gordon chimes in: "Correct, criminals, we don't wish to undermine whatever remaining faith you have in organized society."  Oh, organized society - is there anything you can't do?

The Dao of Zoogs

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath  (Part 2)

The zoogs are rather quaint creatures, and in some ways they remind me a little bit of hobbits.  The live in burrows, have hearths in their homes, and tell "piquant tales to beguile the hours."  Randolph Carter is able to communicate with them in their fluttering language.  Even so, they can be dangerous, for they are rumored to have a taste for meat "either physical or spiritual."  One is left to ponder what spiritual meat might look like, but perhaps many a zoog has grown strong and healthy eating such fare.

Charming or dangerous, or both, the creatures are certainly enigmatic - "furtive and secretive."  They have "small, slippery brown outlines."  Are they something like otters or beavers?  Or something like this...?

 A Mighty Zoog?

We know that their civilization is not entirely peaceful - they fight wars with cats.  Thus we have the stirring scene when "the marshalled zoogs were about to strike the whole feline tribe in a series of surprise attacks, taking individual cats or groups of cats unawares, and giving not even the myriad cats of Ulthar a proper chance to drill and mobilise."  Perhaps there is even something vaguely Daoist about them.  After all, the great military strategist Sun Tzu, influenced by Daoist thinking, said "Victory is gained by surprise... Therefore those skilled at the unorthodox are infinite as heaven and earth, inexhaustible as the great rivers"  (Thomas Clearly translation).  Do the zoogs of the Dream Lands share something of that inexhaustible infinity?

Image: American Museum of Natural History

Camp Crusaders! - Instant Freeze / Rats Like Cheese

Season One, Episodes 7-8

Personal Rating: C+

Villain Spotlight:

Well, Mr. Freeze's heat-cold ray gun is kinda cool.  Otherwise, I’m not particularly inspired.

Social Commentary:

Commissioner Gordon: “No public official elected by the people can allow his emotions to overrule his dedication to duty and carry out the due process of law.”  Stay cool, Mr. Man, stay cool.

The Zen of Camp:

Commissioner Gordon looks on as Batman and Robin are lying in the hospital, frozen in a ridiculous “action crouch” after encountering Mr. Freeze.  He comments, “Two such magnificent specimens of manhood… why?”  

Batman’s intense delivery of the line “No, Robin, a cold wave… of terror.”  He does get really excited about crime fighting, doesn't he?

Other Cool Stuff:

Robin’s "afternoon tea" is an ice cream sundae, served on a platter by Alfred.  It's nice to see that formal standards are maintained, even in the seclusion of the Bat Cave.

Camp Crusaders! - The Joker is Wild / Batman is Riled

Season One, Episodes 5-6: The Joker is Wild / Batman is Riled

Personal Grade: B

Villain Spotlight:

I know lots of people love the Joker in The Dark Knight, but Romero’s Joker is genuinely creepy at times  - and I’m not just talking about the fact that he won’t shave his mustache while wearing that face paint.  Check out the laugh-growl he gives when he’s caught.  It’s not so much that this Joker is particularly sadistic (this is a comedy series, after all), he’s just conceited, ambitious, and a bit insane… but he’s having a great time through it all, as his perpetual laughter proves.

Social Commentary:

 Dick: “Gee whiz, Aunt Harriet, what’s so important about Chopin?”

Bruce: “All music is important, Dick.  It’s the universal language – one of our best hopes for the eventual realization of the brotherhood of Man.”

The Zen of Camp:

Robin: “We only have so much to give.”

Batman: “Try to explain that to little Harold, kneeling beside his bed, saying his prayers.”

Batman and Robin fighting with confetti, as though it was actually inhibiting their movements.

Other Cool Stuff:
Bat gas!

Notes:
The cliffhanger involves Joker threatening to unmask Batman and Robin on TV.  This would, purportedly, undermine their role as crime fighters.  Batman always insists that he's a "duly deputized" agent of the law, but his secret identity suggests that "the law" cannot handle absolute truth, that it is as masked as all the villains that it battles.  Law and order in Gotham depend upon a certain mythology - evidently involving bats.  And bat gas.

Myriad Meetings -- The Hobbit, Chapter III-IV

Rivendell is a place for meetings - we see that even more in The Lord of the Rings, but some of that appears in The Hobbit as well.  In fact, the "meetings" in and around Rivendell take a variety of forms, even beyond social encounters.

Meetings can mean physical alignments, like those involving celestial bodies: "We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together."  Then there are the meetings of characteristics that determine psychology and fate - constellations of identity and converging contingencies.  In the persons of Gandalf and Elrond, goodness and wisdom are continually meeting one another, even if they travel a difficult road:  "Even the good plans of wise wizards like Gandalf and of good friends like Elrond go astray sometimes when you are off on dangerous adventures... and Gandalf was a wise enough wizard to know it."

Finally, there are more turbulent meetings - clashes and contentions.  We see this when the narrator notes "times when two great thunderstorms meet and clash.  More terrible still are thunder and lightning in the mountains at night, when storms come up from East and West and make war."

People, too, meet in all these ways - harmonious alignments, interwoven personalities, titanic collisions.  And perhaps all of them, in their own fashion, are rather magnificent.

Image: Arthur Rackham

Camp Crusaders! -- Fine Feathered Finks / The Penguin's a Jinx

Season One, Episodes 3-4

Personal Rating: A-
The cliff hanger is a bit weak, but the giant umbrella scene is cool.  And Penguin's plot is actually pretty clever.

Villain Spotlight:
Any villain who favors umbrellas as weapons deserves our respect.  He's probably my favorite antagonist of the series.  The top hat, the cigarette holder... oh, the affectation!

Social Commentary:
Dick is practicing French, gets frustrated, and is reminded by Bruce that understanding language may be the key to ending "the scourge of war."  "Gosh, yes," the young man admits.

We also learn that "Batman never lends himself to commercial enterprises."

Miss Robins, posing for Fun Boy magazine says, "What a drag it is being a famous movie star, and so rich."

The Zen of Camp:
Robin attempts to charge the Penguin with "illegal umbrellas."

Robin shouts "Bam" and "Zowie" while punching enthusiastically... in Commissioner Gordon's office, to demonstrate a point.  Pantomime combat always adds something to one's arguments.

Other Cool Stuff:

The Batzooka ("It sounded like a Batzooka!" cries a crook.)

Notes:
I can't offer enough praise for the comic acting of Adam West and Burt Ward.  Look at the way Robin clenches his jaw, the way Batman gestures with his hands.  Everything they do makes me want to laugh.  And listen to that perfect dead-pan delivery that West provides.  Incredible!

Also, it's interesting to speculate on the psychology of these villains.  They create these all-encompassing worlds around themselves.  Every detail in Penguin's life involves an umbrella, a penguin, etc.  His henchmen are labeled with bird names.  There's definitely something existential going on there.  Like some kind of happening, man.

Camp Crusaders! -- Hi Diddle Riddle / Smack in the Middle

This may be a fleeting ambition, but I'm going to try to evaluate every episode (or at least, every storyline pairing) in the classic 1960's Batman series, under the tagline "Camp Crusaders!"  It only just became available on DVD after all these years... and it's glorious.

Season One, Episodes 1-2: Hi Diddle Riddle/Smack in the Middle

Personal Rating: C+
This one has that weird, slightly "off" feel you often see with pilot episodes.

Villain Spotlight:
I've never been a huge fan of Frank Gorshin's Riddler (or any Riddler, for that matter) but you have to give him credit for his manic energy.

Social Commentary:
Can the law really be fair and just when the Riddler traps Batman in a fake lawsuit?

The Zen of Camp: 
"I shouldn't wish to attract attention," says Batman, as he walks in full costume through the discotheque.  He soon receives a compliment: "You shake a pretty mean cape, Batman."

Other Cool Stuff:
Yes, that was a rotary phone in the Bat Cave.  It was the 60's, after all.

Notes:
The narrator is so essential in setting the tone for these shows, establishing distance from the absurdity while enacting the absurdity, layering on extra irony, and generally sounding awesomely pompous.  The alliteration so frequently employed by the characters adds a dimension of pop poetry to the proceedings.

A Key and a Conspiracy -- The Hobbit, Chapter I (Part 2)

"We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy and devices."

Upon reading the second half of the first chapter, I'm struck by the dark and dreamlike quality of conspiracy that pervades Bag End.  The dwarves that have gathered there are plotting revenge, of course, against the dragon - "We mean... to bring our curses home to Smaug," says Thorin, in his fascinating way with words.  Yet this conspiracy is also a plot of restoration, an attempt to reestablish the prosperous Kingdom under the Mountain, a conspiracy of hearth and memory and - perhaps - even justice.  Even so, they are challenging an enemy that is not only powerful, but virtually immortal - dragons live "practically for ever."  It's a daunting prospect, to say the least.

The whole idea of Mr. Baggins being a burglar is, of course,  a running joke in the chapter, but there is something curious and poetic about stealing something that already belongs to you, as with the dwarves and their "enchanted gold."  And to complete such a theft, they will use a key that unlocks a mountain (essentially).  As with hobbits, little things can be paths to great ones.  And Gandalf reminds us that myths and legends may well be real enough, if one travels far enough to find them.

Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art