Religion and Music

The last of the anniversary vote-getters is the topic of this post: Religion and Music. Music has always had a central role in religious practice. The earliest worship scriptures we have (namely the 1500 BCE Vedic writings from South Asia) are hymns. In other words, they are songs. Prior to that, certain ancient Mesopotamian writings make clear the role of music in reaching out to the deities they worshiped. There are those who argue that music is inherently religious, while others argue that music created religion, or vice versa. That's a debate for another time  - it's clear the two have long been interrelated, and will continue to be.

What I want to do here is look at some of the ways religious ideas have been employed in popular music from the last few decades, particularly in songs that (for one reason or another) I have personally found compelling. There are prominent examples I won't do much with, like Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" or Joan Osborne's "What if God was One of Us?" not because they're bad songs, but they just never really spoke to me.

The first example, for both the song and its video, is Madonna's (controversial) "Like a Prayer" from 1989. The video is below and the lyrics are here.

While some saw the song and video as blending the sacred with the profane and showing how sexuality could be sacred (even comparing it to the Biblical Song of Songs), others saw the video and its use of Christian imagery as blasphemous, including the pope at the time, John Paul II.

In other cases, songs use religious imagery or ideas to critique society. One such example, also from the late 1980s, is Motley Crue's "Wild Side." Supposedly, bassist and lead songwriter Nikki Sixx wrote the song as a twisting and inversion of the Lord's Prayer to describe life on the pitiless streets of Los Angeles. Read the lyrics and see for yourself.

Some bands employ religious imagery over and over in their songs, like U2. We could talk about "Pride (In the Name of Love)," "Mysterious Ways, " "If God will Send His Angels," for Christian imagery or, I would argue, "Beautiful Day" or "Walk On" for Zen Buddhist inspirations. However, I have always enjoyed one of the band's lesser known and rougher-edged tunes: "The Fly." Off Achtung Baby, the song was conceived of as a message sent from a demon or a trickster figure suffering in Hell. Read the lyrics and take a listen.

I enjoy everything about the song, from how the distorted guitars match the distorted thoughts, to the switch between high-voiced choruses and snarling verses, to the soaring guitar solo. The greatest part, though, is the philosophical: the singer ("the Fly" persona) offers many compelling and persuasive aphorisms, but he is, after all, a denizen of Hell. Is he being insightful and offering sincere advice, or is this just another attempt at deceit? I used to think of the song every time I taught Othello in Core 4, since that combination of insight and deceit perfectly summarizes Iago. Whichever it is, we get some of my favorite lyrics of all time about the experience of writing or any other kind of creative endeavor: "Every artist is a cannibal / Every poet is a thief / All kill their inspiration / And sing about the grief." 

One final example evokes, in both its ebullience and its lyrics, the sentiment with which we started: music itself is a kind of religion as it gives rise to spiritual, transcendent feelings. This is the song "Ever Tear Drop is a Waterfall" by Coldplay. Read the lyrics and take a listen.

The song talks about how the beat of the music melds with the narrator's pulse, puts "Heaven in sight" and lights up the "Cathedrals in my heart." That's a beautiful image for how music and religion connect with one another, not to mention our own vitality. Beyond that, I've always found this song to be particularly inspirational. Whenever I'm down, I like to think I'm only "in the gap between the two trapeze" -- whatever it is, it's just a blip and I'll catch hold in a minute. In addition, I love the mind-blowing Zen-like quality of saying that "Every siren is a symphony / And every tear's a waterfall."

Religious experience is often defined as "ecstatic," which derives from Greek literally as "standing outside oneself." If you've ever been to your favorite band's concert and felt part of something bigger than yourself as the crowd cheers, or just been compelled to dance at home alone to a catchy song, can't we say that's being pulled "outside oneself"? Whenever we do, we enact what humans have known since the beginning: music and religion go together.

What are your favorite songs that deal with religious topics, images, or themes? What music gives you a transcendent feeling? Feel free to comment to this blog or at Facebook. Until the next time, take care.

Black Panther: the Poison of Anger and the Need for Justice

As has happened in the past, a topic has captured my interest to supersede my regularly scheduled blogging subject. (Don't worry, "Religion and Music" will have its day.)

This past week I (finally) had the chance to see Black Panther, the story of a superhero from the fictional African nation of Wakanda, and it was as epic as everyone has been saying. This is a tale of truly mythic proportions, all with a resonating social conscience. There is a great deal I think this movie can teach us about how festering anger, even righteous anger, can destroy the good along with the bad. Simultaneously, it points out the need to recognize the egregious mistakes committed in the name of "tradition." These points are primarily carried out in the contrast between T'Challa (a.k.a "Black Panther") and N'Jadaka ("Killmonger"), which evokes (to me, at least) nothing less than the grand complexity of the Indian epic Mahabharata.

Before we get to that, though, there are a couple of other items worthy of note in this film. (Be careful if you haven't seen it yet, because I may give away spoilers.)

First, in what may be an unpopular statement, Black Panther's portrayal of its female characters vastly surpasses what you find in other superhero films, up to and including Wonder Woman.

From the elite warriors of the Dora Milaje (led by the fierce Okoye), to the scientist Shuri, to Queen Ramonda, to the resourceful Nakia, these are rich, multifaceted, self-determined people who are actually the ones to put things back together at a crucial moment when all seems broken. Having just re-watched Wonder Woman recently, the female characters in Black Panther seem far more multidimensional, and thus more empowering.

Second, I was rather taken aback to hear the character M'Baku ("Man-Ape" in the comics) say "Glory to Hanuman" prior to a ritual fight.

Hanuman is an Indian religious figure, not African. I wonder why the filmmakers would select Hanuman as the patron of the Jabari ape clan when there were ape figures in African mythology, such as A'ani of Egypt or Ghekre of the Baule in the Ivory Coast. Whatever the reason, they found it necessary to censor the use of Hanuman's name for distribution in India.

Third, as I blogged about a while back, there is a complicated relationship between fathers and sons, and Black Panther expertly delves into that territory. This isn't anything new for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or obviously the comics, for that matter). A recurrent aspect of the Thor movies is the hero coming to terms with Odin's expectations, and failures. Tony Stark also deals with father issues, as shown in Iron Man 2 and Captain America: Civil War. That the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken the care to create a multi-generational narrative is impressive, and something that (as I have noted before) puts it in touch with other world mythologies.

As I  mentioned above, one myth that Black Panther powerfully resembles is the Hindu Mahabharata, specifically how the past histories and antagonism between the characters Karna and Arjuna parallel N'Jadaka and T'Challa. In Mahabharata, the young woman Kunti becomes pregnant -- via an incantation -- with the sun god Surya's child. Fearing what will become of her and the child since she is not married, Kunti abandons the baby, who grows up to be Karna. Later, Kunti marries Pandu, who allows her to use the incantation again, giving birth to five other sons, one of whom is Arjuna, fathered by the god Indra. Arjuna grows up in royal splendor as a celebrated figure in the warrior class. Karna is also a worthy warrior, but given the ignorance of his parentage, he is denied the respect and honors that are his right. He grows up resenting and hating the Pandavas, especially Arjuna, and when the war for the right to rule the kingdom begins, Karna sides with the Pandavas' deadly enemies. The enmity between Karna and Arjuna builds to a fever pitch until, in the last days of the war (and in an act that is not his most honorable), Arjuna kills Karna while the latter's chariot wheel is stuck in the mud.

Karna is an unquestionably tragic figure. He is filled with rage because his life was ruined by forces outside of his control. He was treated unfairly all his life, first by his mother, then the impersonal constraints of hereditary social class, then by his own half-brothers.

N'Jadaka, the antagonist in Black Panther, has just as much reason to be angry. He can also easily be interpreted as a tragic figure.

After his father was killed by T'Challa's father, N'Jadaka was left to grow up amid American poverty, discrimination, and institutionalized racism. During this time, his anger (toward global oppression, T'Challa's father, T'Challa himself, and Wakanda in general) only festers and intensifies. He learns combat skills and becomes a lethal, remorseless murderer nicknamed "Killmonger," all as part of a plot to return to Wakanda and exact vengeance on all who've wronged him. Killmonger is entirely justified in his anger, but his plan (to spread Wakanda's weapons across the world and spark dozens of insurrections and wars) would only metastasize his pain throughout the globe, not to mention reproduce the problematic colonialist policy he decries.

T'Challa faces his own issues with anger and vengeance, but to a degree he has conquered some of those inner demons after hunting down his father's killer in Captain America: Civil War. You can see his transformation in the clip below.

Even with this character growth, Killmonger at first proves to be more powerful, overthrowing and nearly killing T'Challa. While he hovers between life and death, T'Challa encounters his father and his other ancestors. Now, knowing that his father killed N'Jadaka's father and abandoned the young boy to poverty and discrimination in America, just as Wakanda has abandoned the world through its isolationism, T'Challa comes to an epiphany you can watch in the clip below.

This epiphany restores T'Challa strength, physically as well as morally. Prior to that, he had been an apologist for his father and the Wakandan way, but now he recognizes all of their omissions, shortcomings, and crimes. Though T'Challa and N'Jadaka have not had their rematch yet, this scene decides the outcome for it inverts the relationship between the characters. Previously, N'Jadaka possessed the greater moral claim due to the wrongs he suffered and T'Challa's refusal to acknowledge them. However, N'Jadaka forfeits that claim by following a destructive path equivalent to the name "Killmonger." He has allowed his anger to make him cruel, vindictive, and oblivious to how he has become just like those he hates. On the other hand, when T'Challa shows the willingness to question and challenge his own society's assumptions and criticize it where it must rightly be criticized, he truly becomes "Black Panther" again and regains the moral high ground.

Black Panther has much to teach us about how to deal with injustice. N'Jadaka is completely justified in his outrage, but by myopically seeking vengeance, he loses himself to the identity of Killmonger. To paraphrase my colleague Rob Reuter, holding onto to anger is like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt someone else. Clinging to rage only corrodes your soul and turns you into that which you despise.

At the same time, it is naive and unreasonable to expect those who've been wronged to "just get over it." In Mahabharata, Kunti reaches out to Karna and entreats him to join his brothers and simply forget all of the wrongs done to him. Karna refuses, and I don't blame him: without Kunti acknowledging the impact of her actions or the Pandavas questioning their hereditary privilege, what reason does Karna have to join them? In contrast, after defeating Killmonger, T'Challa takes him to see his first Wakandan sunset, something he'd dreamed of as a child left in America.

T'Challa then offers to heal him so that he live the rest of his days in Wakanda. To me, these gestures are far more meaningful than Kunti's, as T'Challa honestly acknowledges Killmonger's grievances. This also makes T'Challa a more appealing character than Arjuna, who never shows Karna any sort of mercy. In the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna does question his society's warrior orthodoxy in the way T'Challa questions the ways of his Wakandan ancestors. However, Arjuna's concerns are ultimately satisfied and he reverts to his prior perspective. T'Challa is forever changed and sets about reforming his society. Killmonger, on the other hand, cannot bring himself to change. He is not capable of responding to T'Challa's offer. Anger has consumed him and he lets himself die rather than contemplate any other way of living.

That part of the film haunts me. What if Killmonger had chosen instead to transcend his anger, go with T'Challa, and embrace his heritage as N'Jadaka? What could the two of them have built together? What could we do if we all acknowledge our anger, admit to our injustices, and then rebuild as one? What would that be like? If Killmonger had just let go of his anger and hate, they could have built a new Wakanda together. Now, all they have is a sunset.

That's all for now. Until the next time, take care.

This Blog Will Eat Your Brain! (Or, the Mythology of Zombies)

Holding true to my promise, the topic for this post is the second-highest vote recipient of the anniversary election: Zombies!

The image above is from George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the very first zombie movies ever made. Admittedly, the zombie has never been one of my favorite monsters to think about or study. They've only emerged to wander lethargically through my imagination quite recently, and due entirely to my sons' discovery of a certain computer game.

They seemed so taken with the muttering, shuffling, vacant-eyed creatures that I started to wonder what all the fuss was about. Zombies have certainly become famous, from World War Z to The Walking Dead to Zombie Apocalypse games and speculations. But what exactly is a "zombie" and where does the figure come from?

At root, a zombie is a reanimated corpse. In world mythology, the Egyptian god Osiris, killed by his brother Set and revived by his wife Isis, is an ancient example of a figure coming back from the dead. He is never quite the same, though, and is only able to live in the underworld, where he serves as its ruler.

In Celtic Irish myth, there is a creature called a marbh bheo, which is a human come back to life, but only for a select period of time, such as samhain (what we call "Halloween," the New Year's Eve of the Celtic calendar). The marbh bheo could eat, drink, dance, and even exact revenge for grievances experienced during life. But they could not speak, lest they divulge the secrets of what lies beyond death.

The region most associated with the Zombie myth, though, is the Caribbean, particularly Haiti and the greatly misunderstood religion of Vodun (sometimes called "Voodoo"). Put briefly, Vodun arose from the mix of West African traditions, Catholicism, and the brutality of the slave experience in the Caribbean. Vibrant rituals and personal connections to figures in a wide pantheon of gods (called loa) characterize Vodun. (As an aside, I have always found Baron Samedi to be one of the more intriguing loas. Perhaps the picture below will give some indication as to why.)

He has some interesting similarities to the Hindu god Shiva, and perhaps one day I will blog about those comparisons.

Anyways, amid the complexities of Vodun, legends grew of how bokor (priest-figures) could use their own powers or draw on the powers of the loa to transform the recently dead (or the still living) into mindless servants. In that way, the slave-master dynamic is acted out once more, but to the advantage of those historically oppressed. Some thoughtful pieces have been dedicated to sorting out this sad, forgotten part of the zombie myth.

Could there be such a thing as an actual zombie? To answer that question, we must come to terms with the fascinating story of Clairvius Narcisse, potentially a real life "zombie." Clairvius was thought to have died in Haiti in the early 1960s from a mysterious illness. His family buried him and that, supposedly, was that. One day in 1980, however, he wandered into his sister's village, dazed and confused. Over time, his memory returned to him and he recounted being given a strange powder by a bokor. He claimed that his "death" was really just a kind of coma and the bokor and others later exhumed him from the grave and shuffled him between employers as a field laborer for almost two decades. The whole time, Clairvius said, he was given more of the powder, which kept him in a foggy, hazy, and compliant mental state. Only when the powder wore off could he escape.

Could it be true? If so, what might be in the mysterious powder? Wade Davis, a Harvard-trained ethnobotanist, has long argued that the answer lies not in magic or religion, but neuro-toxicology. Davis suggests that the zombie myth, especially as it appears in Haiti, can be explained by a toxin (called "tetrodotoxin") present in certain plants and some fish. When harvested from these sources and administered at a sub-lethal dose, the toxin impairs metabolism and the parts of the brain that govern speech and willpower. Hence, you get a shuffling, mumbling, compliant servant - in other words, a zombie.

Both the story of Clairvius Narcisse and the findings of Wade Davis are controversial. Putting aside the question of whether zombies are "real" or not, we are still left with the question of why they are seemingly everywhere now in popular culture.  Whether it's terrifying zombies (like 28 Days Later) or silly zombies (Shaun of the Dead), the figure has certainly evolved, but its prominence appears to be growing.  Why?

In the wonderful phrase coined by scholar Judith Halberstam, "Monsters are meaning machines." In other words, monsters are closely connected to the times they represent, expressing the particular thoughts, fears, anxieties, animosities, and so forth of the period in which they appear. A perfect example is Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, which is a tapestry of Victorian England's repressed tumult over issues of class, race, and gender. Similarly, the original Japanese movie Godzilla (1954) is a poignant and visceral treatment of the horrors of atomic warfare. What do zombies embody that make them a meaningful monster for the current cultural moment?

The most persuasive argument I uncovered in the course of researching this blog is that zombies represent total societal and moral breakdown. They are a marauding, speechless, senseless, irrational, random force that threatens to consume you and turn you into one of them. A time of failing economies, environmental devastation, and perpetual war and strife is a moment when the threats to civilization are global and dispersed rather than specific. In that situation, the zombie, a monster that symbolizes the utter breakdown of civilization, would be popular.

That's all for the zombie, for now. Next time, I tackle the third highest vote recipient: religion and music. Until then, take care.

Real-Life Monsters

Today marks the one year anniversary of my very first blog. Happy birthday, Forest Dweller Thoughts! It's been an interesting year, quite unlike any other in my life and the blog has served as creative and personal catharsis many times over. Thank you to everyone who's been reading it. I appreciate being able to bend your ear from time to time.

There will be a little more retrospective at the end. First though, as followers of my affiliated Facebook page know, I held a contest to decide the topic of this anniversary post. The top vote-getter: "Real-Life Monsters." So, you wanted it, here you go!

As former students will recall, the study of monsters has figured prominently in my academic research. Over the last twenty years, a group of interdisciplinary scholars have developed something called "monster theory," which purports to analyzes myths and stories of monsters from around the globe. In a class once, I asked what people thought the key ingredient was for being a monster. "Scary," was the answer. The academic study of monsters tries to delve down into what accounts for that. Some of the cross-cultural characteristics of monstrosity include deformity, anthropophagy ("eating people") or violence, representing the wilderness, and association with the night. All of these things break fundamental social or psychological categories. Monsters scare us because they represent breaks in what we consider to be the natural order of the community or the world.

What one defines as the "natural order" thus determines what is a monster, so monstrosity can be relative, making it an interesting point of cultural comparison. Examples that I've dealt with in my various courses have included the likes of Greek mythic beasts, Ravana from Hinduism, Bram Stoker's "Dracula," Lovecraft's "Cthulhu," and, the subject of my forthcoming book, the Buddhist god/demon Mara. In the blog, I've written about other kinds of beasts, like the Hodag of Wisconsin and the religious imagery of the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. All of these beings are fictional, though. Are there biological organisms that actually fit the "monster paradigm"? What are the most physically impressive/unusual (which sounds better than "deformed"), violent, or wild? What organisms most challenge our current natural or mental categories?

There were clearly such creatures in the planet's past. There was the South American arctotherium, a bear that weighed two tons and stood eleven feet tall, and the shastasaurus, a marine predator sixty-five feet long. This is in addition to the usual speculation about the largest carnivorous dinosaurs. But what about the creatures of today? What animals have the right combination of unsettling abilities or habits to label them "monsters"?

One that comes to mind is the Komodo dragon.

As the article linked above describes, this is the heaviest lizard on earth. They're ten feet long weigh at least three hundred pounds. They dart quickly at their prey and bite with serrated teeth while their venom glands release a potent toxin into the victim's flesh. Rather than wrestle the prey down, the Komodo then steps back and lets the venom do its work. The toxin contains an anti-coagulant and a sedative, so the prey tries to escape, but slowly falls into shock. Komodos have been known to patiently follow their prey, often for miles, ghoulishly waiting until it collapses.

Komodos don't really attack humans, but the same cannot be said for the Botfly.

The Botfly makes its living by laying its eggs on a mammalian host. The body heat causes the eggs to hatch into maggots, which burrow into the host's flesh to feed. They pupate within the host, then drop out to the ground to continue their life-cycle as mature flies. Yes, this can happen to humans and, as argued by Matt Kaplan in Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: the Science of Monsters, such real-life parasites may have inspired a very popular fictional monster, the "xenomorph" (literally, "strange form") of the Aliens movies.

Moving out into the ocean, researchers have only just recently confirmed the existence of two massive species of squid. There is the giant squid (architeuthis), which is found in every ocean of the world.

This species can be as much as thirty feet in length. In the seas of the Antarctic, though, lurks the mesonychoteuthis, the "colossal squid," which grows to be more than forty feet in length and possesses the largest eyes ever recorded in the animal kingdom at sixteen inches in diameter. (That's about as big as a beach ball.)

While the giant squid has suction cups on its tentacles, the colossal squid has razor-sharp hooks. Don't get into a tickle fight with one of these things!

This is a place where myth and science meet, as the concept of a gigantic cephalopod roaming the oceans first took the form of the monstrous kraken, known from Greek myths and also literary works such as Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. If a mythic monster like the Kraken could be proven real, who knows what else exists out there?

In case you were wondering, I passed up discussion of creatures like the python and the great white shark since they are already fairly well known, and the actual human deaths caused by these creatures are in the single digits annually. Do you know what organism is responsible for the most human deaths each year?

Through transmission of disease, the tiny mosquito reliably kills about three quarters of a million people around the world every year.

The fact that a little insect can wreak that much havoc tells us something about what it means to be a monster. The point of monsters is not their size or their violence, but really their attachment to the unknown. The word "monster" comes from the Latin monstrare, "to reveal." A "monster" is literally a "revelation," a de-monstration of what we do not yet understand. Each of the creatures I picked to talk about somehow represents the unknown, and it is the unknown, more than anything else, that truly frightens us.

And it was being thrust into the unknown that initially inspired me to go on this blogging journey. It's been a great journey this past year. The freedom to write what I want and make the connections my mind wants to make has really reinvigorated my love of writing. Based solely on the number of views, some topics did not resonate much (like World Wars, children's books, and philosophical perspective), which is fine because I still enjoyed writing them. In other cases, I was pleasantly surprised by the popularity of some posts. Ones about John Taylor Gatto and Wendell Berry, the sport of archery  and turkeys captured a fair amount of attention. The post opposing the Beaver Lake CAFO garnered a whole other level of attention, but the most viewed post was still Ghosts, about my time working with the Phoenix Team in Drexel Hall.

So, what will year two bring? Zombies, for one, since that was the second highest vote recipient. At times there will be more of the same, with comparisons of myth and popular culture, but all I can really guarantee is unpredictability. As I wrote in my very first post, the title for this blog (the "Forest Dweller") is someone who has left behind old, comfortable trappings to explore what is new. One thing I have learned over the past year is that we are always engaged in that process, whether we know it or not.

Writing these posts has been a fun journey. Thanks for coming with me. Until next time, take care.