"They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs."
A half-baked thesis on masks and the demonic spawned by a 1985 Italian horror film.
Maybe you’re like me and you like goopy, gory horror movies this time of year. They’re fun. And the more over-the-top the goop and the gore, the more fun there is to be had. A bit morbid of me? Nah, especially when you consider how unrealistic the violence typically is. Plus, horror movies are good for your health, so there’s that.
But when I sat down recently to watch the 1985 Italian horror film DEMONS — where the title of this post comes from — my mind couldn’t help but wander into some rather apropos and really fucking unhealthy commentary related to current events. I suppose that’s what happens when the collective consciousness is brimming with some sort of metapsychosis. It seems that even when you’re not gazing into the narrative, the narrative somehow still gazes into you, and that’s what I picked up on here, some oozy shit seeping in from that collective narrative abyss everyone is suddenly gazing into.
This film has thus spawned a short, half-baked thesis. It may be a bit jumbled, but I’m trying to put my finger on something that feels elusive but is, in fact, how I believe we experience Life on a fundamental level, and how that fundamental experience may have been altered (altared?).
So, tray tables in their upright positions, kiddos. Let’s strap on our Critical Thinking Caps™️.
The adage that Art imitates Life is incorrect. Art does not imitate anything, because Art is Magic and Magic is unable to be imitated. Magic just is. If anything, Life imitates Art, which is why Imagination is perhaps the most potent force inside the human vessel.
To wit: the premise of this film. A theatre full of moviegoers watch a movie where donning a specific style of mask turns a character into a demon. When one of the moviegoers in the audience then turns into a demon because she donned a promotional version of the mask in the lobby prior to the film, we have our first glimpse into the power of Art and Imagination — or more specifically, the power of Magic and Manifestation.
When the other moviegoers get hip to what happened with the demonic traitor in their midst — and in turn realize they’re trapped inside the theatre — they do the smart, rational thing: they blame the movie and decide to confront the projectionist so they can turn this damn thing off. Except the projectionist is nowhere to be found. In fact, there may have never been a projectionist to begin with.
This forces us to reconsider our existential position: If the reels are rolling but no one’s home, who loaded the film? A question which one of the characters in the film answers by formulating a new hypothesis: Fuck the projectionist, it’s the theatre itself that’s responsible for the demonic.
And now we’re getting somewhere: the ritual space known as the movie theatre. The proverbial magic circle, where the lights dim and the projection begins and then your consciousness is altæred for the next two hours. Images, sounds, symbols and ideas are literally embedded into your subconscious. Just like the magic lantern. Just like the phantasmagoria. (Also worth considering here: the screen as a filter of reality, which is an entirely different but related thesis and a post for another time.)
Which brings us back to the quote up top and up to the present day. “They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs.” They, of course, being the demonic, and the your referencing any human vessel that stands in the way of its agenda.
But how does one become demonic in the first place? To stick with the premise of this film, one simply has to wear the mask. More specifically, the mask leaves its mark on the wearer — in the case of the film it’s a physical mark in the form of a scratch (a mark of the beast perhaps?) — which is ultimately what causes the demonic shift.
And then the dæmonomania spreads. Like a contagion. Scratch by scratch, bite by bite, mark by mark, until all that’s left are the new graveyards of the downtowns and uptowns and midtowns, until all that’s left is the new version of the vessel, hosted by The Other, interacted with via screen, worshipped at the altar of what used to be known as Art and Magic but is now sadly and wrongly referred to as Science, the great demonic liberator.
That was the end of my original, half-baked thesis. A few nights later, I watched the classic 1960 French horror film EYES WITHOUT A FACE, which added even more apropos commentary related to current events.
I’ll spare you an explanation of the entire premise of the film, but the gist is that it’s related to some grotesque medical experiments. I jotted down a quote as an addendum to reinforce my half-baked thesis:
“My face frightens me. My mask frightens me even more.”
Indeed it does.