Okay, so here’s how my life tends to work. Somebody comes across something, whether it be a rumour about someone famous, or some odd piece of news trivia, or just some plain old trivia trivia. Some past event in history which heretofore has never been deemed all that important comes up as a topic, and whoever has done the running into invariably turns to ME, with a question. The reasons for this are varied, but it’s mostly because I’m just a big know-it-all about pretty much everything, even when it’s not asked for.
How to spell Hieronymous?
A recent case in point involves the fact that a few nights ago, I remarked with timely aplomb (mostly because I was wasted, and my verbal filters are pretty much non-existent when I’m wasted, thereby resulting in legitimate timely aplomb—as long as I’m not SO wasted the words get garbled in my mouth) that a situation was analogous to some “hellish chaos that you’d find in a Hieronymous Bosch painting.” Now, I’m the only one in my clique who took art, let alone took any art history (if they went to school, most of them are English or Communications majors), so I then had to go on finding books to my also equally wasted counterparts, showing them exactly what the hellish chaos of a Hieronymous Bosch painting looks like. Sadly, I only had one book with a few halfway decent pictures available of Bosch’s alchemically influenced “Garden of Earthly Delights” and even in that one, the plate was way too friggin’ small. This painting is an enclosing triptych, after all (the outside painting being a rather uncharacteristically placid spherical—also alchemically influenced—depiction of the world which some scholars think of as Bosch’s treatment of the post-apocalyptic “New Jerusalem” when all the fuck-heads on the INSIDE of the triptych will be purged from the universe) and it is god-awful huge—god-awful in every sense of the word. My pansy-assed little five by three inch plate barely picked up all the muckety-muck going on in the thing.
So I showed everyone the details that could be seen, one roommate remarking that, yes, my comparison of Bosch’s work to some of your worse acid-trips might not be all that off the mark, but he really took more stock in the idea that all the glass ovoid structures (actually influenced from alchemical “eggs,” which were similar to the beakers and flasks that we all used in chemistry class way back when) looked like really good designs for bongs. I was busy pointing out how there isn’t a decent human being ever portrayed in all of Bosch’s work, and all I get out of my students was “dude, sweet bongs!” Oh, well. Suddenly my other roommate asks: “How the fuck do you spell Hieronymous?” That’s my life.
It’s All in the Cut
An even better case happened a few years ago, and this is one of those examples of people having sick fascinations, and turning to someone who actually takes record of sick fascinations. One day at work, I strolled into the Senior Portraits department (I worked at a photo finishing company back then) and was faced immediately with: “Greg, how long does a severed head last after decapitation?” I think somebody was talking about The Exorcist III. That would make sense, if you recall the Gemini Killer talking about how “when I get one that’s gawking, I hold it up, and show ‘em its body!”
It didn’t matter how they got to the question, the point was, I got asked that question, because…well, I’m somehow supposed to know about these things.
Without pause I replied: “Usually between 13 and 18 seconds.” How did I know? Well, students, lets look into the accounts of witnesses to the numerous executions via guilloutine during the bloody French Revolution. Numerous severed heads were inspected for blinking, facial contortions, mouth movements etc. There is one account by a French physician and scientist who watched one victim carefully and tested for legitimate responsiveness:
“Addressing the reflex issue, one Dr. Beaurieux observed the execution of murderer in 1905, told in 'History of the Guillotine' by Alister Kershaw. First he saw in the head spasmodic movements of eyes and lips for 5-6 seconds. Then the face relaxed, the lids half closed, "exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to observe every day in the exercise of our profession.
"It was then that I called in a strong sharp voice: 'Languille!'" The lids lifted, and Languille's 'undeniably living eyes' fixed on the doctor, after which they closed again. Moments later he called out again, fetching another look by Languille. But a third call went unheeded.
"I have just recounted to you... what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted 25-30 seconds."
Twenty five to thirty seconds is a little longer than normal. And more than likely, as oxygen is deprived of the brain, combined with the shock-trauma, the brain shuts down more often after ten seconds. Still, what’s important to note was this particular severed head seems to have been responding to his name being called to him. Not exactly full sentience, since dogs and cats respond to their name, but that does denote higher neural functions still operating. And I understand now why a lot of the time they just put the head in a basket. Shit like a severed head gaping at you, and displaying genuine awareness would keep me awake at night I can tell you.
Yes, Drugs Can Even Make the Dead Walk
In one of those odd coincidences, someone at work watched the film The Serpent and the Rainbow probably the same night, or at least the same week that I had recently caught it. Actually, when you stop and consider, figuring everyone in this area subscribes to the same cable system, and if enough people like me subscribe to enough premium channels, it’s inevitable you’re going to catch the same flippin’ film in one week. Invariably, once again, said person was asking me—because I’m supposed to know everything—just how much of this “Based on a True Story” is actually one.
Some of you may have not bothered to pay attention, and then it’s not impossible some of you are just plain not old enough to remember (god knows I was in high school, so figuring out what was going on in grammar school—as some of you may actually be—is beyond this old man’s mathematic and cultural skills) when this movie originally came out. Anyway, the gist of the movie is “American guy visits voodoo culture in Haiti, searching for a chemical cause behind the whole zombie lore and phenomenon, hoping that, perhaps, if there is a chemical cause, pharmaceutical science can use it for anesthetic purposes in Western medicine, mm’kay?”
So, how much of the movie is true? Well, the basis of it is in line with the real-life adventures and misadventures of author / anthropologist / ethno-botanist Wade Davis (although the characters’ names are changed in the film—why not sure), who did indeed travel to Haiti while in his graduate studies, searching for a botanical cause behind what in lore is called zombism.
Besides that, it pretty much goes into fiction mode most of the time.
Some of the events in the movie are sort of on track with the real deal, as evident in Davis’ book upon which director Wes Craven based the film. But let’s face it, a lot of dramatic license was taken, and not just with the friggin’ participants’ names.
To get to the heart of the matter, as explained by Davis, he was sort of hired on to head to Haiti, because he was an anthropological traveler, whose studies and teachers had some previous experience in both somewhat “primitive” cultures, and the things they grow and grow around them, and how they are used.
Initially, Davis and his associates, before heading to Haiti, thought that the exotic plant and flower known often here in the Western hemisphere as datura, would be the culprit for causing a near-death, semi-conscious state, that perpetrators could used on victims, convincing them they were “dead,” then raising them out of their coffins as “zombis” (as Davis chose to spell it for his texts), for use as virtual slave labour, often in Haiti’s overworked sugar fields.
Sound far-fetched? That’s kind of what Davis thought, too, until informed of a well-documented individual named Clairvius Narcisse, who personally could report being poisoned of some sort, and was raised from the “dead” as a zombi slave. He’s so well, documented that I’ve found this guy turned up in other of my weird books aside from Davis’. I’ve even seen his name brought up in television documentaries on the whole subject of “zombies”. The guy was a certifiable case of someone thought to have died, who returned some fifteen years after his supposed death, claiming to have been enslaved as a zombi. That aint no fuckin’ joke.
As it turns out, datura wasn’t the flower extract that Davis had hoped would be the cause of these zombi phenomena, but the practice—to Davis and other experts, at least—appeared to be legit. Instead, Davis turned up a ritual and more importantly a drug, derived from the puffer fish toxin (a substance noted for it lethal qualities) which had the effect desired.
Davis’ book, The Serpent and the Rainbow, is not only about his search for this substance—whose effectiveness and sheer reality is still debated some twenty-plus years later (a lot of scientists want to write off anything with kooky, psuedo-supernatural ties to it completely off the track, especially if it turns up an idea like primitive cultures having pharmacological knowledge that defies their chemical backgrounds). More importantly, Davis focused on the voudon (what we normally call “voodoo”) culture from whence the zombi ritual sprung, its spiritual insights, its social backdrop, and how it was often used as a modicum of social control in a country whose government is often more lawless than any criminal element that might inhabit the island.
The movie veers off of a lot of this. Why? Well, basically because it was directed by Wes Craven, and Wes Craven had to make a Wes Craven movie ultimately. In other words, he decided this story needed to be depicted as a horror film, and said horror film ultimately falls prey to all the supernatural stereotypes that Davis’ book was attempting to dispel.
Really, the book probably shouldn’t have even been made into a movie, whether it be attempted as a horror flick or not. It’s really more of a “bookish” type of adventure. It’s not an action-packed whoop ‘em up type of an affair, and in spite of its more esoteric and somewhat creepy plot-triggers and subject matter, it’s not something most people would pay entrance and mange popcorn to.
Oh, but as Joe Bog Briggs once pointed out, you do get a couple of boobie shots in the film. Just figured I’d throw that out there for the popcorn manging crowd.
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