Recycling Stories For the Silver Screen

Good day, good day, my good and friendly readers! I apologize for having been gone for the better part of a month. My wife and I were traveling for vacation, going from San Antonio to Indiana to Florida and finally back again. It was very enjoyable, despite the sunburns. Speaking of which, here’s some good bit of advice: if you ever use the spray-on sunscreen, you still have to rub it in. My wife and I learned that the hard way. But even so, it was a very, very enjoyable time and I’m sad to see it over.

Now coming up soon, in approximately two weeks, is the debut of my brand-new, not-even-yet-written steampunk series, The Rift! The official premier date for it is July 11th. While I’m currently constructing an elaborate world and filling it with unique characters and mechanical/analog technology, I’m also brainstorming slight variants to the name. I’m thinking something to the effect of The Disparate Rift, or The Fantastic Rift, or something to give it a more sensationalistic title, The _______ Rift. If you have any ideas, feel free to shoot them at me, I’m open to suggestions. What adjective would help describe a story about the voyage of a steam-powered flying ship in a Victorian culture, which climaxes in the appearance of a horrific antagonist of Lovecraftian persuasion? Perhaps my brain needs more steam in order to think up a more advanced title.

Anyway, today I would like to share something I’ve noticed on the silver screen (that’s television, if you don’t know). Oftentimes, when a powerfully unique story hits the big screen, it only takes a year or two for the basic formula of that story to be incorporated into smaller television shows, with each show doing their own take on it. Other times, we see a trope start showing up across a variety of television shows. With these in mind, let’s explore four of these stories and see how they’ve been utilized in different ways on the small screen. I’ll begin with the least utilized and culminate in that which we see most often.

The Hazardous Challenges

Inspired by the 2004 film, Saw, this theme places the protagonist in some sort of temporary prison. He has no idea how he got there, but as his mysterious and almost never-seen captor begins presenting him with life-or-death challenges, he begins to understand that he’s being punished for past deeds. I enjoyed the first two Saw films (but none after that, as I feel that they lost their psychological component in favor of gratuitous amounts of gore), and so I was surprised when I saw an episode in the fifth season of Smallville entitled “Mercy.” In this episode, Lionel Luthor is held captive by a former employee whom he wronged, and he’s forced through various tasks which threaten his life but also force him to revisit his past decisions. Smallville, in this episode, essentially transferred the Saw formula in order to see what they could do with it, even going as far as having puzzles and clues in the challenges. But, as we’ll soon see, Smallville was notorious for stealing the formulas of films in order to flesh out some of their “filler episodes.” To their credit, though, they often used these episodes to advance the development of individual characters. In this case, it was Lionel.

What Happened Last Night?

Fans of the 2009 film, The Hangover, will recognize this next formula. What happens when a group of friends (usually between 3 and 5) wake up the morning after a grand party with no memories of the previous night? They retrace their steps, discover that they were drugged and find copious amounts of evidence and eyewitness testimony all pointing to a long night of drug-induced shenanigans. As one can imagine, this theme always veers on the side of comedy, whereas the previous theme stuck firmly to the horror genre. In Smallville‘s final season, we find this formula in the episode “Fortune,” chronicling the hijinks of Lois and Clark – accompanied by their friends – the night before their wedding. But lo and behold, just today I started rewatching an episode from the sixth season of the detective comedy-drama, Psych, in which the same formula was used. “Last Night Gus” covers four characters as they try to solve a murder to which their own prior-night’s hijinks were inextricably tied.

The Dreamscape

By far the most psychedelic of themes we’ve mentioned so far, this one may have its origin in the 2000 fantasy-detective film, The Cell. In this, Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughan use advanced technology to enter the comatose mind of a serial killer in order to locate his last victim before she dies. But during their ventures into the madman’s psyche, they explore the different facets of his personality and ultimately learn exactly what makes that killer what he is. This formula was used in yet another episode of Smallville, the 7th season episode, “Fracture.” After Lex Luthor is shot in the head, Clark elects to use experimental LuthorCorp technology to enter the comatose man’s mind and rescue him. Once there, Clark discovers a young boy (representing the good in Lex) dominated by a violent older man (representing Lex’s darker side). Sadly, this is an exact parallel to what Jennifer Lopez discovers in the mind of her serial killer: a young boy dominated by a violent grown man, a shriveled conscience overwhelmed by powerful evil. However, Smallville was not alone in exploring this theme: it also appeared in the sixth season of the animated comedy, American Dad, in the episode “Brains, Brains and Automobiles.” In this, Stan uses CIA technology to explore the bizarre mind of his comatose friend, a sociopathic alien named Roger. Again, we see a shriveled conscience, only in Roger’s case, it’s not dominated by violence but by wholesale insanity. Seriously, I could make very little sense of Roger’s mind. At least Lex and Jennifer’s serial killer were straightforward in their pathology.

The Musical

What TV show these days would be the same without a strong musical episode? We’ve seen it as far back as the 90s with an episode of The Drew Carey Show, and then later in the sixth season episode “My Musical,” of Scrubs. Then it appeared in the sixth season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Once More, with Feeling” (which was amazing, by the way). And then was the somewhat forgettable episode of Psych‘s seventh season, “Psych: The Musical.” Some shows choose to give reasons for the sudden musical outbursts. For instance, in Scrubs, it was because a patient had a specific kind of tumor which gave her the impression that everyone was singing around her, and in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was because someone had accidentally summoned a musically-inclined demon whose very presence caused all those around him to burst into song (this is the only case in which being in the presence of a demon has actually seemed enticing to me). But Psych and The Drew Carey Show (the latter of which was already known for its highly experimental episodes) give no reason for the singing, with the characters seeming not to even notice the the musical numbers. Musical episodes, it seems, are becoming quite popular (and yet, they oddly made no appearance in Smallville). So come on, The Big Bang Theory. You owe us a musical!

These are some of the more fun themes and formulas which television shows have adapted from the big screens, except for the last one, which seemed to be a new development of its own. There are, of course, other themes, like the flashback episodes that almost always come in a show’s final season, and which I loathe. If you can think of any other themes or formulas that often show up, leave it in the comments!

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I explore the relationship between the Church and mental illness! It should be touchy, so I’ll ask you to please be brave.

What Scholars Really Say: The Enoch Enigma

Good day and salutations, my dear readers! I appreciate your taking the time today to listen to my thoughts…or read them, I suppose is more appropriate to say. Before I get started on today’s topic, I need to make two announcements. First, next month my wife and I are moving cross-country to resettle in our home state of Indiana. She received an excellent job offer there and it’s right where our family is, so the move is ideal for our future. Unfortunately, I do not currently have any job offers there, which means that I may be unemployed upon our move. So with this in mind, I’m asking that you spare some prayers for me as I engage in the job search. Ideally, I’d like to make money as a writer, but that’s excruciatingly slow going right now, so a job is needed, and for that, prayers are priceless.

Secondly, all of this moving, being right around the time of our regular vacation, means that for the next month or so my blog posts will be somewhat sparse. After this, my next post will likely be on June 27th, three weeks from now. But there’s news on that front! With my newfound interest in Wattpad, an online fictional writing website, I’ve decided that once I settle into my regular routine in July, I’ll only be posting blog posts biweekly, rather than weekly. In the intermittent weeks, I’ll begin posting a new, ongoing steampunk series called The Rift. My plans for this series cover everything from flying, steam-powered dirigibles to Lovecraftian monsters, so this is bound to be a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Now, onto the topic of today: the book of Enoch. I’m sure many of you have heard of this strange piece of literature, but if you haven’t, let me tell you about it. The book of Enoch (which I’ll simply call Enoch from this time on) was written sometime in the late 300s to early 200s BC, shortly after the time of Alexander the Great. It’s what’s known as an “apocalyptic text,” meaning that it reveals hidden aspects of history, predicts the future and foresees the ultimate end of the world (an event which scholars call the “eschaton,” hence the name of this literary style: apocalyptic eschatology). In the canon of the Bible, we have only two thoroughly apocalyptic texts: Daniel, which is half-apocalyptic, and Revelation. Enoch is essentially the perfect example of an apocalyptic text, as it matches up with nearly every aspect which defines a book as apocalyptic, even moreso than Daniel and Revelation. Enoch gets its name from its claim to have been written by the Biblical character of Enoch, a man who, according to Genesis 5, was so close to God that he was taken up to Heaven and was seen no more. It’s also notable that he was the great-grandfather of Noah. Yes, that Noah. The one with the boat. Now this is, of course, completely untrue seeing as how we know that Enoch was written shortly after the time of Alexander the Great, nowhere near the ancient days when the real Enoch likely lived, but apocalyptic texts are known for claiming to be written by famous people (like Ezra, Moses, Noah and even Adam in one case).

Those are the basics of Enoch. But what especially fascinates me is what we find inside it, mainly in the first section, known as “The Book of the Watchers.” In this, we find not one, but two separate rebellions by angels in Heaven. Each of these rebellions are orchestrated by a class of angels known as “Watchers,” sometimes translated as “Grigori.” Let’s explore these two rebellions in detail.

The First Rebellion: For the Love of a Woman

The first rebellion was instigated by an angel named Shemyaza (sometimes translated as Shimyaza, although with the lack of vowels in ancient Hebrew, it was likely something similar to Shmyzh, so feel free to spell it however seems best to you). Shemyaza was a prominent angel among the Watchers, and their job was, as you can probably guess, to watch over the earth and mankind. Unfortunately, this went badly for Shemyaza as he fell in love with a human woman. A large number of the Watchers, following his example, also fell to Earth and began breeding with human women. Naturally, kids entered the picture, but you wouldn’t expect half-angel/half-human hybrids to be normal, would you? Of course not. So into the scene enters the Nephilim, sometimes called Rephaim, great and powerful giants. Now this is especially important as this is a play off of a passage in Genesis 6 (of our actual Bibles) which describes the “sons of God mating with human women…creating the Nephilim, giants mentioned in legends of old.” Until the time when Enoch was written, the Nephilim were speculated on, and some minor legends circulated, but Enoch was by far the most sophisticated adaptation of their mythos.

Unfortunately, these Nephilim proved to be far less than altruistic. Enoch describes how they conquered, oppressed, killed and (as is sometimes claimed) even ate humans. Naturally, this did not bode well for God’s beloved humans, so he took action on two fronts. First, he sent the global flood not to wipe out a wicked humanity, but to destroy the mighty and wicked Nephilim, who all drowned. However, as misfortune would have it, though their bodies were destroyed, the spirits of the Nephilim survived, thus forming an origin story for demons. Secondly, God took Shemyaza and his followers and he chained them up beneath the earth, to wait as prisoners until Judgment Day. And thus was the first rebellion ended.

The Second Rebellion: Arts and Crafts

There was also another Watcher known as Azazel. While Shemyaza’s name seems to be an invention of Enoch‘s writer, Azazel actually does appear in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus (again, of our actual Bibles), where he is a mysterious character to whom the Israelites are to send a scapegoat from time to time. For clarification, it must be said that the mention of Azazel in Leviticus predates the Israelite concept of demons, which entered their mythology much later on. Anyway, Azazel is another prominent member of the Watchers. Now while he didn’t end up falling in love with a human woman, he did find the inclination to start sharing knowledge with humanity. He taught them medicine, metalwork, jewelry-making and, more dangerously, sorcery and magic. All of these things were, according to Enoch, forbidden by God, so Azazel and his followers were, like Shemyaza before them, chained up beneath the earth to await Judgment Day. Unfortunately, humanity had learned far too much at this point and the corruption by Azazel had left a lasting imprint.

Analysis

There are many fascinating things to discuss about these two rebellions. First, I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t remind you about a key verse in the book of Jude (again, in our actual Bibles). Only six verses into the book, we find a curious mention of how “the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, [God] has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.” That is, almost exactly, a verbatim quote from the relevant passage in Enoch, which predates Jude by almost half a millennium. Thus, Jude had to have read Enoch, or at least been familiar with the story. But the curious thing is how he references this passage as if it’s scripture. That raises some very interesting theological questions, but I’ll leave that up to you for now.

More importantly is the social analysis of these two rebellions, which is tied in with the origin of belief in fallen angels. Enoch was written at a time of enforced Hellenism. Essentially, the ruling Greeks were trying to force their culture, philosophy and mythology upon the Jews. Some Jews were more accepting of this, while others became nearly militant in their rejection of all things Greek. We can actually see this reflected in the stories. First, we have Shemyaza, who leads the Watchers in interbreeding with human women and producing dangerous monsters. Many Jews saw this as a metaphor for how the Greeks were intermarrying with Jews and creating half-Greek/half-Jewish children, thus diluting the ritual purity which the Jews had striven for in maintaining their religion. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with interracial/intercultural marriage, but I’m saying that the Jews at that time did think there was something wrong with it. So to the Jews who were reading the newly written Enoch, they found a metaphor for what was actually happening around them.

The second rebellion is nearly identical, except rather than intermarriage being the issue, the problem was the spread and influence of Greek medicinal, artistic and philosophical ideas. I’m sure many of the Greeks saw themselves in the role of Prometheus, “sharing the fire of knowledge with those backcountry Jews!” But the Jews would have seen Prometheus as an archetype of Azazel, that angel who was punished for teaching things man was not meant to know. Both rebellions, therefore, stand as symbols for the corruption of pure Judaism with Gentile culture and influence. And just as God had punished the angels, so they believed – according to most apocalyptic texts – that God was going to punish the Gentiles as well, for the same crime of diluting the proper relationship between God and his chosen people. This is definitely something worth thinking about in our own day and age.

Until next time, friends…