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2003-06-13-9:46 a.m.
Friday, June 13
Book of the Day
A bit of the superstitious for Friday the 13th.
Bullied George Orwell 'killed' Eton boy using black magic
By Catherine Milner
(Filed: 18/05/2003)
George Orwell spent his life believing that he had killed a fellow
pupil at Eton using voodoo, according to a new biography.
The late Sir Steven Runciman, the medieval historian, revealed in a
letter written shortly before his death that he and Orwell practised
black magic on a wax effigy of Philip Yorke, an older boy who had been
threatening and offensive.
They were horrified, however, when Yorke first broke his leg and then,
months later, developed leukaemia and died.
The incident was uncovered by Gordon Bowker, whose biography of Orwell
is published by Little, Brown. In the course of his researches, Bowker
interviewed Runciman, who had befriended Orwell when he was sent to
Eton in May 1917.
Orwell, who had entered Eton on a scholarship, was bullied on a number
of occasions. Rather than accept it, however, he appeared set on
revenge and was happy to accept Runciman's suggestion that they do so
by using the occult.
Orwell - whose real name was Eric Blair - had become fascinated with
the subject after reading several volumes of ghost stories. These
including The Leech of Folkestone, from The Ingoldsby Legends by R. H.
Barham, about a maid making a wax image of her mistress and skewering
it with a pin - to lethal effect.
Runciman said: "Our making a wax effigy of an older boy whom we
disliked for being unkind to his juniors was, I am ashamed to say, my
idea . . . Blair found that interesting and willingly collaborated. It
was he who moulded the melted candle into a very crude human body.
"He wanted to stick a pin into the heart of our image, but that
frightened me, so we compromised by breaking off his right leg - and
he did break his leg a few days later playing football - and he died
young."
Although Runciman was unclear how quickly the voodoo apparently
struck, records show that Yorke died of acute lymphatic leukaemia in
July 1917, only three months after Orwell had entered Eton.
Prior to this confession, Runciman had never previously mentioned the
incident, which left him with a terror of the supernatural. Orwell,
too, seemed profoundly affected. He never wrote or spoke about his
experience or Yorke's death; however, he did tell friends that he
changed his name from Eric Blair because he thought that his enemies
might use his real name to work magic against him.
Bowker said that Runciman had contained his feelings of guilt at
Yorke's death all his life and had never spoken to anyone about it.
The voodoo incident only came to light when the biographer, who had
gone to interview Runciman because he was a schoolfriend of Orwell,
became intrigued at a throwaway comment that he made about the
incident.
A year later, two months before he died, Runciman unburdened himself
in a confessional letter to to Bowker. The historian, who came from a
aristocratic family, had lost contact with Orwell after they left
Eton. He later became one of the pre-eminent medieval historians of
all time at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was knighted in 1958 for
his contributions to historical research.
"I suspect many people will pooh-pooh black magic," said Mr Bowker,
who has written a number of acclaimed biographies, including those of
Malcolm Lowry and Lawrence Durrell, "but they will have to accept
Runciman's version of events."
Peter Davison, who edited the 20-volume Complete Works of George
Orwell, said yesterday: "This new discovery is fascinating. Orwell is
always presenting us with surprising aspects to his character. He
always had an interest in things not precisely of this world and this
is the earliest manifestation of it. I am sure it affected him greatly
- he would have been very sensitive to its possibilities and
complications."
Orwell, who died in 1950, remained interested in magic and mysticism
throughout his life. Although they do not feature in his best-known
novels, 1984 and Animal Farm, in Orwell's 1939 novel Coming Up for Air
the lead character discovers that the pretty market town of his youth
is reduced to a suburban sprawl and rants: "I'll be a ghost . . .
Maybe I can work a bit of black magic on some of these bastards."
In the News
News of the Apocalypse
Apocalypse soon
Evangelicals in the US believe there is a biblical basis for opposing the Middle East road map
Giles Fraser
Monday June 9, 2003
The Guardian
Just as new life is being breathed into the peace process, religious groups throughout the US are whipping up hostility to the road map. The aim of the Christian-Jewish "interfaith Zionist leadership summit" held in Washington last month was "to oppose rewarding murderous Palestinian terrorism with statehood". Attending the conference were some of the most influential figures of the Christian right; behind them a whole infrastructure of churches, radio stations and bible college courses teaching "middle-east history".
Since the late 19th century, an increasing number of fundamentalists have come to believe that the second coming of Christ is bound up with the political geography of Israel. Forget about the pre-1967 boundaries; for them the boundaries that count are the ones shown on maps at the back of the Bible.
Site of the Day
apocalypse!
apocalypticism Explained
In 1999, PBS' Frontline presented a documentary on "end-of-the-world-isms" and told the stories of various sects and their experiences with the coming-and-going of the end.
Prophetic Belief in the United States
William Miller and the Second Great Awakening
So what happens when the first disappointment comes?
When the first disappointment came in 1843, they went back to the drawing board, and they realized that they had made an error of one year by neglecting to take into account the transition from BC to AD, and because of that, they had gotten it off by a year. So they simply moved it forward one year to 1844. So that extended the excitement for one more year. But then at that point came the Great Disappointment, and the movement simply fragmented for the moment. ...
How do they prepare for that final day? Tell me about the Great Disappointment.
After the Great Disappointment, we have very poignant accounts of believers who describe the dismay, the weeping, literally the disappointment they felt. They had anticipated that they were going to be carried into heaven. It didn't happen. The world went on as before. Life went on as before. And it was a very traumatic experience for those who had been caught up in the movement. ...
2003-06-11-10:57 a.m.
Wednesday, June 11
Tuesday's DVD
The Cat's Meow (2002)
Peter Bogdonavitch
To give you some background, in 1923, publishing God William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies gave a birthday party for Thomas Ince, producer of the first Hollywood Westerns. The party was held on Hearst's behemoth yacht, Oneida, and Ince was a bit late because he was working on a deal with Hearst's people for his film company.
On the boat were Hollywood's elite, the sort of people Hearst (and Davies) might want at such a party. Nobody is sure exactly who, and the number of people rumoured to be on board would probably have sunk the boat.
The most agreed-upon members of the party were Charlie Chaplin, probably the biggest star of the day, Louella Parsons, the gossip columnist who supposedly exited the ship with a lifetime, I'll-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine contract
with the Hearst empire, Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, Hearst's film production manager, and a jazz combo.
br>
48 hours later, Ince supposedly had a bullet in his head (or was it a ruptured ulcer?), and 48 hours after that, a quiet funeral was held. No ship log exists. There is no official information, but a lot of stories were told,
particularly one told by Orson Welles to the director of this film.
The story goes that Hearst became aware that he was being cuckolded by Marion and Charlie - and the information came from Ince, who was trying to win Hearst's confidence. Hearst became enraged, and, thinking he saw Chaplin with Davies, and
shot
him - only it was Ince in Chaplin's bowler hat. Hearst and his cronies worked up a few schemes and paid everyone off. Since he controlled the press and the government, he got away with it.
Bogdonavitch forgot about the story for awhile until he was presented with a screenplay adaptation of a script about the same subject, and now we have The Cat's Meow. Personally, I think the subject matter is much more interesting than the film, and I hope Bogdonavitch doesn't make the Fatty Arbuckle Trial story.
But it was a stunningly shot picture. In watching the extras on the dvd, I learned that the costume designers were ordered to clothe the cast in exclusively black and white - with only a few touches of gold jewelry for color. The effect is delicious. It brings the scenes into sharp focus - they pop out at you. I only wish that I felt the same way about the acting and script. I would recommend it for a nice evening of DVD watching, however.
2003-06-09-9:44 a.m.
Monday, June 9
Sunday's DVD
Invincible (2002)
Werner Herzog
Invincible is a folktale, a Greek myth, 1927's Metropolis, a sermon, a bedtime story. And it knows it.
Don't put in the DVD without understanding this. It's stylized. The actors speak in a kind of different language: poetic, almost free verse. The acting is broad like the films and theatre of the time in which it is set. Parts of the film, particularly the stage scenes look like Maxfield Parrish paintings. Some look like old magician posters.
As I look around the web for images and links for the movie, I notice that many film reviewers have complaints about the acting in the film. I see that the complaints are of the same type that silent-movie novices
have. They see actors moving their bodies in wide and exaggerated ways. The actors eyes open wide and they beat their chests in grief. That kind of acting is much the same as musical theatre, greek theatre, harlequinades, and the Commedia dell'Arte (or yiddish theatre, or Latino theatre, or Balinese theatre, etc.). It certainly takes some getting used to. "But there is sound, and it's not live theatre," you might say. Well, it is theatre.
It's telling a revered myth, a folktale, a biblical tale.
 That kind of reverence requires the elevated language of a sermon, a Shakespeare play, or an opera. Perhaps if you are the type who recoils, even rails against Shakespeare, this film is not your cup of tea. That's fine. Please disregard this review. You might as well say to me, "I don't like music," or "It's just a sunset."
The Hercules, or, in this case, The New Samson,
is Zishe Breitbart, the real-life "strongest man in the world" in 1920's Berlin. One can imagine this thought thoroughly infuriated the nazis who insisted that Jews were physically and mentally inferior. Breitbart's body was everything the Nazis valued, and the fact that they didn't know he was Jewish in the first place disproved the nazi idea that the Jew was immediately recognizeable by his inferior bone structure. After Breitbart's "race" was revealed, he became a Jewsih superhero.
And here is where we come full circle. Breitbart not only was figurative cover of 1920's Jewish Wheaties, the subject of grotesque parodies and jokes, and three films (one of which was, of course, a Yiddish film), he was the subject of a sort of Breitbart Cult, a real live legend. Thus, the Paul Bunyon folktale, the exaggerated physical acting, and the language.
I should follow this up by providing readers with a good list of silent films for beginners, and perhaps another list with films made before the fifties. Something happened to acting after this, and I suspect it might be the method.Truffaut and Fellini (two directors I like very much). Believe it or not, most people have not seen films made before the sixties (I'm being extremely conservative: it's probably the nineties). Presented with a silent or even an early Noir, they blink at the screen like they're residents of 1903, watching The Great Train Robbery.
Which, by the way, is a pretty entertaining film.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato
This documentary is not only the story of the rise and fall of a Christian television empire and its brightest stars, it's a kind of demented love story to Tammy from "the gay community." She, quite unexpectedly, was the only big-name christian star to embrace "the gay community" during The Epidemic. She also called "the christian community" to task for not only ignoring them but condemning and being afraid of them.
Tammy is indeed a wonder. While I see her as mentally and emotionally damaged, delusional, naive and possessing extremely bad taste, the film leads me to see her as ernest and truthful. That's just about the most important trait one can have.
Tammy is known for crying at the drop of a hat. I wonder if there is something chemical or neurological cauing that? I suspect that whatever it is, it's responsible for her extremely loving - and much too trusting - nature.
The other thing I always knew and was reinforced by the film is the fact that Jerry Falwell is the devil.
2003-06-06-11:41 a.m.
Friday June 6
More Thursday Movies
Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)
Directed by Manmohan Desai
This highly successful film has everything one might expect from a 1970's Bollywood movie: bizarre dance sequences, acrobatic karate moves, and a religious devotion to the Mother. It's just so damned long!
My favorite parts include the half-hour "introduction," where the three brothers are laid at the feet of Ghandi - well, a statue of Ghandi, the miraculous healing of Mother by Sai Baba - well, a statue of Sai Baba, and the rolicking Catholic Youth Easter dance around a giant easter egg,
followed by a rollicking Catholic bout of chop socky. Fear of a Brown Planet!
The film may be as bad as any Blaxploitation, or should I say, "Chutsploitation," but I can't help but admire the performances, especially by Rishi Kapoor, the son of movie legend Ram Kapoor.
I admit I have seen fewer than a dozen Bollywood movies, but I've noticed a trend: the reconciliation of Muslim, Hindu, and, sometimes, Christian. That was most noticeable in the film Bombay (1995). Amar, the oldest, is adopted by a Hindu police chief. Akbar, who becomes a famous singing star, is adopted by a Moslem tailor. Anthony, who's taken in by a Catholic priest, becomes practically a goombah, looking for all the world like Al Pacino, with his crucifix and star-spangled-hand-making-peace-sign-jean-jacket patch. Of course, he owns a bar and is pretty much a petty thief. Their first reuinion is in a hospital room as they all donate blood to their poor, bling, suffering mother. There is no doubt that the cult of the mother in India is no weaker than in, say, Mexico or the whole of Judaism. They all might as well be Al Jolson on his knees.
As long as she is the mother of sons.
Finding Nemo (2003)
It was pretty cute. and those fundies that are boycotting it because a fish has the voice of Ellen DeGeneres are, well, i>you know. Teaches the idea that children shouldn't be overprotected. If you let them go off by themselves sometimes, they might surprise you. Many parents might want to think twice before letting their teenagers watch this. Just kidding. I'd have to put this at the top of the list of Disney films, along with Beauty and the Beast. If I had a kid, I buy the dvd in a second.
2003-06-05-11:31 a.m.
Thursday, June 5
Thursday's Movie
The Secret Garden (1949) with Margaret O'Brien and Dean "Al" Stockwell
There are many, many versions of The Secret Garden, and I tend to love them all. This one is concise, well-played, melodramatic, and it includes a fantastically psychedellic technicolor scene of the Secret Garden in bloom.
The story is reminiscent of Bronte stories: a 19th-century english army brat grows up in India in rather opulent surroundings. She is cared for like a Princess (yes, like a Little Princess). She is even dressed by her darker-coloured servants. When a sickness hits, her family dies and she is left alone. She is rescued by soldiers and put on a boat for England along with a large group of English orphans. She is to live with her uncle, a reclusive hunchback in a grand stone home, surrounded by gardens and filled with servants.
But these servants are used to the English way of doing things, and are not amused by her regal behavior. She pouts for a few pages, and finally decides to venture outside after meeting her dour uncle, and hearing ghostly howling every night. She learns that 10 years earlier, her aunt died after a tree limb hit her on the head during afternoon tea. Her husband, after sleeping out his grief on the tear-soaked garden floor, locks up the garden "forever," and buries the key. Which is sad, because the garden is a lovely place, and his wife's favorite. True to the melodrama of the story, he covers all of his beautiful wife's portraits with heavy curtains, as if to both preserve her memory and forget her.
After a great deal of snooping, Mary the brat becomes much less of a brat and discovers all of the dark secrets of the estate. She cavorts with and probably later marries a colorful stable-boy named Dickon, the kid with the raven on his shoulder. She also teaches us some rather profound lessons of rosy-cheeked, fat and robust English Health, which comes from wholesome outdoor labour. Actually, it shows the late 19th-century's abandonment of bed-rest as a cure for most ills - well, high-class ills.
There are many versions of this classic to be rented:
The 1987 Version, a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. In this version, we get to see the children return to the garden after presumably WWI (?). If that sounds like a teaser for a sequel, it is.
Back to the Secret Garden (2000) is the disappointing sequel, wherein Mary entrusts her key to a new girl wjo must save the garden from neglect. I hear it's pretty sad.
The 1993 Version, directed by Agnieszka Europa Europa Holland, is perhaps the best. More glorious pictures of India.
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Alison Randall lives in Montreal, Quebec with her lovely husband, Francois Tremblay. Together, they enjoy their online atheist audio station, their weekly program, The Hellbound Alleee Show, cuisine, working on their various websites, and movies.
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