Eros and Thanatos in Dark Fantasy

This week, I read Roshani Chokshi’s novel The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, a contemporary fairy tale for adults that includes a different slant on the theme of “kids doing magic.” When I started reading it, I wasn’t sure I’d like it, despite the siren call of fairy tale and mythological subject matter and the author’s darkly seductive storytelling voice. Actually, it was probably the latter that put me on my guard, along with the rapidity with which one character, an expert in the history of mythology, falls under the spell of an alluring but clearly dangerous woman, Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. Her name, if not her proclivities, places her in the category of things that are both very much what they seem and more than they seem.

Against a backdrop of glittering wealth and luxury, the two main characters conduct a cat-and-mouse courtship and are soon married. The Bridegroom—as the character is known throughout—agrees not to pry into his bride’s mysterious past, much in the manner of other mortals who married mermaids or selkies without fully understanding the risks involved. In this case, the bride, clearly no stranger to dangerous games, is in the role of Bluebeard to her handsome but somewhat overmatched husband. “Love is blind” is a saying that here is both metaphorically and literally true.

When Indigo gets word that her aunt is dying, she and her husband visit her childhood home, an island mansion off the Washington coast. As the house begins to reveal its secrets, voices from Indigo’s past insert themselves into the story, and we learn of another doomed relationship in which Indigo played the dominant role. As the Bridegroom searches for answers to memories he can’t explain from his own childhood, he picks up the thread of the story of Indigo and Azure, who were inseparable childhood friends until the day Azure dropped out of the story.

It would be easy to condemn Azure for falling under the sway of Indigo’s manipulations except for the fact that she’s not so much gullible as needy (and essentially orphaned). The two girls share a strong bond based on a belief in magic and the faerie realm, which they are able to indulge in Indigo’s home to their heart’s content under the eye of Indigo’s loving but indulgent aunt. The idyll the two girls share is tested as they grow older and Azure begins to feel the pull of the actual real world as an alternative to the Otherworld the girls have created in secret and which they plan to inhabit permanently one day. The descriptions of the girls’ beautifully conceived private realm, their revels, their play with costumes, hair, and makeup, and the luxuries with which they surround themselves have a seductive glamour that—at least in Azure’s case—feeds a nurturing sense of imagination. Her imaginary (and perhaps not-so-imaginary) world helps her survive adolescence.

Although the story is steeped in the seductions of Aphrodite (and Hecate), it becomes clear that the glamour, in Indigo’s hands, is more a snare than a gift. The Otherworld is really an Underworld, and Indigo is the Hades to Azure’s Persephone, a poor girl who keeps trying to return to her mother. The novel is rich in references to European and Middle Eastern mythology and folklore as well as fantasy; the girls have a special affinity for The Chronicles of Narnia (as does Indigo’s Bridegroom) and early on are determined not to meet the fate of Susan Pevensie, one of the siblings who visited Narnia and became a Queen, only to be later barred. (This apparently for the sin of growing up.)

To speak of the novel as Freud might, it’s only Azure who is really ruled by Eros and a lust for life; Indigo, whose main goal is to never grow up, is ruled by Thanatos (the death wish). For every impossibly lovely (and unsustainable) faerie feast of champagne, cake, and crushed pearls there is its dark counterpart, a still life of heavy foods surrounding a dead bird or beast. This story cleverly turns the idea of Eden on its head, suggesting that growing up and out of childhood is really the happy ending and that trying to remain in a state of stasis—no matter how agreeable—beyond one’s natural term is the true horror. This, of course, is a message one often encounters in fairy tales, in which one youth or another is being shown the way to adulthood.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride also marks the second novel or series I’ve encountered recently in which Narnia plays a significant role, the other being The Magicians series by Lev Grossman that I recently discussed. In Mr. Grossman’s novels, Fillory is a magical world that students from Brakebills sometimes find their way into. In some particulars, Fillory pays homage to Narnia: the Neitherlands is something like The Wood Between the Worlds; some of the people from Earth who go to Fillory end up as Kings and Queens there; and the passage between the two worlds is sometimes dismayingly abrupt (you might go there or come back without really meaning to). While characters in The Magicians books sometimes make nerdy references to The Lord of the Rings, their fantasy destination of choice actually resembles Narnia, a more markedly childlike world of storybook castles and talking animals than the more mature-toned LOTR.

While I don’t think it can be said that C.S. Lewis ever really went out of style, it seems noteworthy that his work is having a bit of a run in the dark fantasy of current pop culture. Several films of the first books in the series were completed in the 2000s, and there have been other adaptations in the past. In both Flower Bride and The Magicians, Narnia or a Narnia-like world seems to me symbolic of a place of “stuckness” that adults or young adults are continually longing to get to: the fixation on a fantasy world can be either a dangerous obsession or a necessary detour to recovering something lost. Narnia is a more primitive place than Middle-earth (and so, more dangerous, I would argue), so whatever the problem is, it must be buried pretty deep.

The Third Man the Second Time Around

I just re-watched Carol Reed’s The Third Man, a film I last saw 16 years ago and remembered mainly for its zither music and dramatic final scene. The film and I have both aged at least a little since then, and of course it’s always revealing to see how a film changes for you with repeated viewings. The first time I watched it, I think I was intent on the plot; this time, I was looking for what would stand out from an archetypal viewpoint. The setting in post-World War II Vienna, with its piles of rubble, shadowy corners, and air of disintegration, lends itself to a showdown between forces of good and evil, and that certainly figures largely in the story.

The British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time, and I agree with its greatness, but I had forgotten how talky the first part of it is. Talk, talk, talk, as we are introduced to American pulp fiction writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) who has come to Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime to discuss a job offer—only to be greeted with news of his death. Martins conceives the idea of a cover-up when accounts of Lime’s demise don’t match up. Talk, talk, talk, some more. Despite being warned off by a British officer (Trevor Howard), Martins stays in Vienna and begins looking into Harry’s death while joining forces with Harry’s grieving lover, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). They seem to be the only two people who care that something untoward may have happened to Harry.

What struck me the second time around was how the film really came alive only when Harry (Orson Welles), concealed in the shadows of a doorway, is revealed to be alive. Although all of the actors in the film are wonderful, it’s as if all they’ve been doing is preparing the viewer for Harry’s return, and when light finally falls on his puckish face from an upstairs window, the action starts to move forward. Is there anyone nowadays who can match Orson Welles’ commanding presence? Nobody that I can think of. He relied on something other than good looks to draw your attention, a magnetism made up of an imposing physicality combined with an extraordinarily mobile face and an old-soul wisdom.

Major Calloway reveals to Martins that Lime had orchestrated a monstrous scheme involving doctored black market antibiotics responsible for killing and injuring many children. Although he initially refuses to believe this, Martins, now realizing Harry’s death was faked, arranges for Harry to meet him at a carnival. During this reunion, which I think is the best scene in the film, Lime reveals to Martins that not only is it true but that he has no remorse about it. He justifies his actions by telling Martins that the war itself revealed how cheap individual lives are held to be by those capable of making life and death decisions—why should it be any different for him? The two men are in a cable car looking down at the carnival from a great height when Lime admits the truth to his friend, attempting to bring him into the scheme, a moment reminiscent of Satan tempting Jesus on the mountain.

Martins finally agrees to help trap Lime and bring him to justice, which leads to an epic chase scene in the sewers beneath Vienna, a very Underworld image that is really the mirror of Vienna itself, in all its corruption. With the law finally closing in on him, Lime gives Martins one last chance to prove his friendship. The movie ends with Harry’s second and final funeral and the grieving Anna walking straight past Martins, who is smitten with her and would be much better for her than that rogue Harry Lime, but, well . . . what can you do?

The second time around, I thought the heart of the film was maybe not so much in the ultimate showdown as in the small moments, the intimacies among the characters. Harry is “wrong” for Anna, but he did her a great kindness once, and she loves him for it. There’s something tragicomic in the final scene and her single-minded march down the avenue, as if she could carry on her entire life blind to anything but her feelings for Harry. Martins, too, revealed that knowing the truth about Harry didn’t completely negate the meaning of their friendship. Far from condemning either Martins or Anna, I sort of admired their loyalty, the refusal to give up a human connection to Harry that each continued to honor, whether he “deserved it” or not. The real complexity of the film lies in the tangle of human feeling in the midst of moral collapse. It’s, ironically, in the grains of sand that Harry seems to have no use for, not the grand gestures.

Wordplay Puts You in Your Place

Due to technical difficulties (a power outage lasting several days), Wordplay was unable to post last week and apologizes to anyone who may have been waiting on pins and needles to hear from us (and by us, I mean I). My neighborhood was not among the first in town to get our power back, but we were far from the last; a customer in the store today told me that he had just gotten his power back after 10 days. That makes my ordeal relatively minor in the scheme of things. I tried to use it as an opportunity to think about what I’d need to do if a longer-lasting disaster ever strikes, so it might not be altogether bad that it happened. We depend on our modern conveniences so much but take them for granted until suddenly they’re not there anymore.

Having said that, I guess it’s time once again to make the Wordplay disclaimer about what you can and cannot expect from the blog (and from me, as a person). This is not something I do because I don’t have a topic—rather, it’s a topic in itself and one I feel the need to revisit periodically. This is important because although I think my message on this has been consistent, I somehow keep getting challenged on it. At least, that is my sense of it.

In my quest to bring mythology and archetypal psychology to bear on everyday and cultural life, I’ve sometimes delved into current events and politics. I feel that a depth psychology lens is useful in making sense of these things. I’ve also used this lens (along with creative writing) to try to make sense of a number of bewildering things that have happened to me. There were times when I felt I was writing as fast as I could to save my life. If you think that’s an exaggeration, you haven’t really been listening. 

For a long time, I was desperate to get people to pay attention when I tried to say “something is really wrong here.” It seemed no matter what I said, no one reacted in what I considered an appropriate way, which was very odd. So I just kept writing. Someone said to me that she thought I needed to get some clarity on the situation. I’m not sure what she actually knew about any of it, but that was a helpful thing that she said. Once I started putting things into narrative form, I started to see connections between personal events that I hadn’t thought about before. Things began coming into focus, although I was a long way from total clarity (something that I still don’t have, although I’ve gotten the general outline).

When my writing became more revelatory, things changed. It was as if everything flipped upside down. People went from not taking me seriously enough to taking me too seriously in the wrong way. It was as if people thought I know things that I don’t know, unless I’ve figured them out just by thinking things through. Believe me, when your world turns upside down almost in a single day, you’ll understand the incentive a person has to make sense of previously inconceivable experiences. Your focus takes on a laserlike intensity because the survival instinct kicks in. Far from trying to save the world, I was trying to save myself, although if I inadvertently helped someone else in the process, I’m quite glad, of course.

What I’m saying is, I do not have any state secrets. I don’t (and never will) work for the CIA, the FBI, or any investigative agency, domestic or foreign. I’m not an undercover police officer or a private detective. I’m not an investigative journalist. I’m a writer, and I sell appliances at Home Depot to help pay the bills.

I wish I could tell you the number of times people have come into the store acting as if they thought I had some information to share with them. They’re so transparent sometimes. Everyone who does it acts as if they’re the first to come into my place of employment speaking in code and trying to insinuate that I owe them some information or that I’m not doing some job that I don’t even have. (The opposite is true: I feel that I am constantly being spied on and certainly harassed.) My best advice to them is that if they really are working in either espionage or some kind of investigative capacity, they are barking so far up the wrong tree that they’ve probably compromised themselves. If they’re just "citizen spies," as I get the impression some of them are, they’re not doing themselves (and certainly not me) any favors. If you haven’t actually gone to FBI school and completed the rigorous screening and training that I’m sure they go through, I don’t believe they would appreciate you setting yourself up as one of them. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you hear from them on this at some point, because it is in fact a crime to impersonate an agent.

Sometimes, this is all very amusing, but mostly it’s just an endless hassle. I’m surprised sometimes that I’m actually sane, but I put that down to native stubbornness. The sad thing is, even though I think I’m an honest person (and usually perceived that way by others), I can’t seem to get people to accept that I’m really not anything other than what I appear to be. Yes, I’m a pretty smart person, with many skills and capabilities, but I’m also the person who couldn’t even get a job with the L.A. County Public Libraries, a large, understaffed urban library system with few frills and perks on offer other than what I really needed, which was simply a job in my field. If I’m so special, why couldn’t I even get an entry level job? (I’d probably still be in L.A. if I had gotten a job, though that would mean I’d never have met the people I work with at Home Depot. On the whole, I would very much have regretted missing that, though no thanks to the hiring geniuses of Los Angeles, thank you very much.)

People in general seem to have a much different sense of what has been going on with me over the last 14 years or so than I do. I can tell you that I wasn’t born yesterday and would never have agreed to go through what I have gone through if I had had any way of avoiding it. I’ve certainly become a lot more wary of people’s motives and less “starry-eyed” than I used to be. When I was fairly new at Pacifica, I had an opportunity to apply for a scholarship from some vaguely defined leadership organization but decided against it because there was something just too nebulous about them. Now I will barely even fill out a survey from a company I’ve done business with for fear of inadvertently signing my life away.

If you came to the blog this week for some exciting take on what’s out there in the culture, I’m sorry: this is 10 minutes of your life you can never get back. You may be asking yourself, “Why do I even read this blog; it’s not what I was expecting at all.” Well, I don’t know—why do you read this blog?