created in France 19th Century depicting the daily life of Satan
and his cohorts" From morbidanatomy.blogspot.com
you know this old Grateful Dead song? I remember being disappointed when i finally heard the Grateful Dead after reading the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test because I'd imagined their music as being..well, not so hokey I suppose. But anyway this post isn't about psychedelia (although I might riff on this theme in coming weeks as there seems to be a bit of a psychedelic fad in art aroung town at the moment) Nooo this little post is about devil things!!
I really love this film which is a bit odd because it can descend into some fairly cheesy b-rate melodrama moments but Polanski's films often have this strange tone and peculiar pace . I suppose you either like it or you don't. I find the traditional, European filmmaking techniques are nice and comforting and modernist and of course Satan and the occult (and antiquarian books) is always such a great theme.....Polanki's satan is fun and humourous and sexy... Satan is of the world, satan is of the light!!..rather than playing into a dreary oppositional encounter with God.
Visually, satanism and the occult often seems to have been hijacked by strange longhaired death metal bands from Sweden and their disenchanted, sweaty male fans ( or perhaps purple wearing witchy types but I can't even begin to go there without getting really creeped out) You imagine all sorts of depressing suburban encounters. I suppose you also imagine genuinely evil ones too.
Salem really makes this suburban emptiness and evil explicit in their music and videos..they're chillingly nihilistic, depressing and go to places that even David Lynch is almost afraid to. I don't know what bad drugs and bad white trash backgrounds these kids come from but it seems pretty authentic.
The allure of adolescent pop culture representations of "evil" seem prolific and fairly exhausted although I do like Tony Garifalakis's treatment of it even though he is probably one of the worst culprits of simulating teenage boys bedroom walls. Visually he is a little like Baldersarri in that he uses and reduces cultural icons to reveal/conceal something far weirder and darker- the unknown, the other, the uncanny, eyeballs and bits of hair....
I guess its a little obvious to start with Polanski and end with references to Sharon Tate, Charles Manson etc. It just kind of happened. I'm actually a little dismayed that i still find these references quite potent in conjuring up all those associations of horror and repulsion and the obvious links to mass media, cultural reproduction and appropriation, morbid curiosity and sensationalism.
Forgive me Roman.
Let's end with another jingle (jangle)......
(Chorus) Uh put your hand to the constellations
the way you look shld be a sin
you my sensation
I know I'm preachin to the congregation
we love jesus but you done learned alot from satan
I mean nigga did alot of waitin
we aint married but tonight i need some consumation
satan,satan,satan
may the lord forgive us
may the god's be with us
and in that magic hour
I seen good christians make bad decisions
Oh she do it, what happened to religion?
Oh she lose it.........
(Chorus)
Excerpt from Devil in a New Dress, Kayne West.
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