Deal with the Devil

The story of Faust is an old one, and not that original. Man makes deal with the Devil, man is duped by the Adversary, man is dragged down to hell to suffer torment unending. It’s a fairly standard “happy” Christian tale. The moral being don’t ever consort or bargain with evil. Goethe added some subtlety to the tale. Not surprising as the man spent 60 odd years working on it. His tale while having a happy ending still re-enforces the belief that any encounter with “evil” or the devil will only leave one suffering. Salvation and happiness only come from God, specifically the Christian one.

My question is where did this idea come from? What makes this a classic tale? I imagine the opposite tale goes much the same way. Who ever got out of life better because he mad a deal with God? If you are a Christian or a Muslim or whatever, don’t delude yourself into thinking your bargain with the deity of your choice is sacred or special. Stripped of its poetic language it boils down to you giving up your independence and free choice, (allegedly given to you by the very being who wants you to give it all away) your soul in exchange for happiness everlasting. A bargain that you must take wholly on faith. No one has ever come back to tell us that God (or whoever) keeps his side of the bargain. Don’t bother mentioning Job or any other lucky fellow you might happen to know. Their happiness is far outweighed by the misery of the countless millions who have made the same deal and gotten only soul crushing poverty and misery as their reward. This in sharp contrast to the Devil, who in every story I’ve ever read at least keeps his end of the bargain. The Devil unlike the Man upstairs delivers on his promises.

So if you get a chance to make a deal with Mephistopheles (a slim possibility) I’d go for it. You’ll at least get something out of it. And when and if you burn in Hell (an impossibility) rest assured you’ll be burning with all the other poor saps who made a deal with the other guy, only to compound their pain and misery!

America continues to slip into fascism.

While I’m depressed about where our country is going. While I’m troubled by how tribal our political system has become. While I’m dismayed at the blind devotion of citizens to their political parties. This terrifies me, as do the rabid anti-comments it has so far solicited.

Steampunk and assorted other things.

I’m planning on writing more on Faxanadu. If I make any more progress on the game that is… Like I said in the previous post I’m stuck looking for some rock next to a fountain. Problem being I already found 3 fountains and none of them had a rock next to them.

Other news: I watched for the first time in a very long time Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Diana. Still a great film and the first ever steampunk movie as well, one might be able to say. Not because it is punkish or even that steamy, more so because it looks back on that era, Victorian times with some nostalgia, with a sense of losing something that was, and is, important. Not quite knowing what it is. Disney’s visuals were spot on. Rivets, curved brass, the whole design was marvelous and stands up today. I should re-read Verne’s book and see where and how the two are different, see what Disney changed. I know that the normal viewer is suppose to disagree with Nemo, we are suppose to find him inhuman and crazy, yet feel sorry for him. He is quite the effective Anti-hero. I though do not find myself finding him a monster. Much more monstrous to me is the character of Ned played by Kirk Douglas. This brash materialistic, selfish, shallow, stupid, “independent” man is the hero. I cannot find myself rooting for him though…

Randomness…

Had a slight break-down tonight after getting back from work. Why, you ask? Mostly because I have no idea what I am doing with/in my life. It’s the truth, I feel drawn about 12 different ways, but I lack the motivation energy to go down any of these paths. As I sit here typing I’m asking myself when did I become so apathetic? Is this even apathy? Am I just lazy? Why am I writing boring stuff no one wants to read about? Did Snow White ever get with any of those dwarves? Were the dwarves gay? Was Snow White butch? I have to imagine a girl raised by seven gruff, smelly, half-men being really really butch. The farthest thing from a fairy tale princess I can imagine. Wearing cast off clothes, belching and cursing. Not to mention, bathing irregularly. Even with all that she was still prettier than her wicked step-mother? If that is the case the old hag must have been a real piece of work?! Why did a King, who could have any woman he wanted, pick a hideous (psychotic, shallow and vain too) hag for a wife? Maybe she had really good parenting skills? When of course it came to children other than Snow White…

You should check out the little blurb they have on the Snow White story over at Wikipedia. Follow the link because if you just try to skip to it in Firefox through the address bar it takes you straight to the page on Disney’s Snow White. In the original story the evil queen, was forced to wear heated iron shoes and then dance until she collapsed dead! That’s pretty fucked up… not that killing a child just because she looks better than you isn’t… Also the mirror started saying that Snow White looked better than the queen after Snow White turned seven!? Who thinks seven year olds are hot? According to Wiki, seven was the age a girl became a maiden. So all those maidens you read about in old books and fairy tales? All the beautiful princesses that are being romanced by and married to Princes? They are all jail bait. And those Princes? Pedophiles. Someone out there is saying it was a different time and a different place, yadda, yadda, yadda. If that is the case then there is no such thing as pedophilia. It’s just a cultural more, a subjective decision made at random. And we can’t judge them.

Another interesting note is that in most tellings of the folk tale, Snow White doesn’t end up with dwarves. That is only in the German version that the Brothers Grimm decided to write down. In all those other version it’s not some species of half-men that might not be attracted to the most beautiful maiden in the world… it’s a band of robbers. Desperate, on the lamb robbers. Are you telling me these “upstanding men of strong moral fiber” are going to respect (as a woman) the hottest piece of ass in the world, that just happened to be hand delivered to them, no strings attached? I don’t think so, which means in this lovely fairy tale, we have the first recorded pedophilic gang-bang story for children, I’m guessing it is the only one too.

And to end it in the oldest known writing down of this children’s story, it isn’t the step-mother. Nope it’s Snow White’s very own flesh and blood mother. This pillar of maternal duty doesn’t need a huntsmen either. Nope she can do her own dirty deeds. Taking her seven year old daughter into the woods to pick flowers and leaving her there. Not being a to give in either, after she discovers her daughter didn’t die. She goes back to finish the job. Once by strangling her (using a corset), then by using a poisoned comb, and then the poisoned apple. Third times a charm.

Maybe she did deserve to dance ’til she died as her feet slowly cooked in red hot iron shoes.

Oh, and did I mention that folk tales totally kick ass. I could so return to this topic over and over.

%d bloggers like this: