Saturday, August 31, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Magic, Misogyny, and Endangerment Entertainment
For one reason or another, lately I've been reading a lot about the history of vaudeville and late 19th/early 20th century stage entertainment. It's a pretty fascinating topic that really resonates with modern pop-culture and the questions of race and gender, which is something I'd like to read (and write) more about in the future. I ran across a pretty amazing (and kinda surprising) example of this reading Jim Steinmeyer's "Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented The Impossible And Learned To Disappear", an informal history of stage magicians. For me, the most interesting part of his book was a discussion of the famous "Sawing a Lady In Half" trick.
The cliche of the tuxedo'd magician sawing his Beautiful Assistant in half really is what I think of when the word "magician" is uttered, though. As Steinmeyer points out, and as should be obvious, these visual tropes don't spring from the ether; they're the result of discrete historical events that introduce these stereotypes into the pop culture mythos. The man in the evening wear is one such trope; in the earlier history of stage magic, rampant orientalism and exoticism meant that most performers were swaddled in robes and crowned with turbans. However, the success of a few fairly spectacular showmen, including the father of modern magic (and the namesake of Houdini) Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, that presented their acts in evening wear reshaped the field and resulted in the trend we've come to expect today. This topic is unexplored in the works I've read thus far. Does the switch from The Exotic Orient to Western Gentleman's Attire in magic shows signal a response a need to clarify the dominance of western empire over its colonial subjects? It would be an interesting topic to explore.
Similarly, the "Lovely Assistant" really came into being only in the early 20th Century. Having left (finally!) Queen Vic behind, stage productions (and popular entertainment in general) became racier, both in terms of sex and violence. The ultraviolent spectacles of the Grand Guignol in Paris are perhaps the most famous of these "new" entertainments, and included fairly intense displays of brutality, murder, and sexual violence in their playlets that apparently left patrons shocked and titillated. Shock and titillation are, then as now, money-makers in terms of pop culture and entertainment, and their advent on the stage resulted in an arms race that pushed the boundaries of what "respectable society" would tolerate. You can see a similar evolution in vaudeville, where early acts (1870s onward) were billed as wholesome family fun; it was only in the later evolution of vaudeville that competition with new forms of entertainment and media consumption forced vaudeville to adapt to the new appetites of the audience. Thus, by the late teens and early 20s, shapely young women in revealing clothes became a part of the spectacle of the magic show.
What is striking, however, is how the Magic Show changed alongside the cast. Early magical entertainment of the 19th Century seemed to focus on manipulations, things like card tricks, coin tricks, billiard balls, etc. Things were appeared or disappeared, of course, and there were marked visual illusions that required complex apparatuses and staging. However, reading Steinmeyer's book, I'm struck with the view of the Magic Show as an almost bastard brother of the scientific lecture. Many of the descriptions of magic shows are couched in terms of public experiments, with the Magician in the role of scientist. This makes sense in early magic shows often shared a lot with the spiritualist movement, either overtly offering spiritualist phenomena with purposefully obfuscated provenance (supernatural, or just clever trickery?), although the same experimentalist approach seems, to me at least, to have persisted well beyond table knocking and ectoplasmic vomit. However, the evolving marketplace of entertainment ideas drove magicians to seek more and more spectacle in their shows, including bigger and bigger illusions and more daring tricks. Into this fast-pasted world of competing magicians and magic shows, steps Englishman P.T. Selbit and his trick "Sawing Through A Woman" in 1920.
The trick is just what it purports to be: Selbit straight up saws a lady in half, while people watch. Yet, for some reason, it sets off an explosion of imitations, some gruesome, some playful, that quickly spread throughout the Magic Show world. In fact, the idea of "torture illusions" becomes a thing for performers, and are almost always specifically about torturing a lady while people watch. As Steinmeyer points out, these types of illusions come to dominate Selbit's career too. By 1922, he'd returned to England, and spent his career building a repertoire of "X a Lady" style illusions, including "Destroying a Girl", "Crushing a Woman", and "Stretching a Lady", among others.
As Steinmeyer points out, the timing of the development of this trick and its rocketing to pop culture prominence is no coincidence. In England, women's suffrage had only been awarded in 1918, while the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 in the US. Misogyny, then, was only recently removed from the official structure of two of the English-speaking world's largest governments, and even a cursory perusal of anti-suffrage publications, cartoons, etc, can show the vehemence that had been directed against the individuals advocating for Women's rights. Misogynists, then, would be looking for revenge wherever it could be found, and even the fictional revenge of pretending to mutilate a lady could salve the wounds that Patriarchy had been dealt by allowing women to vote.
Amazingly, Steinmeyer writes that Selbit, the originator of the Sawing illusion, originally had challenged prominent badasses Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst to be the victim in his trick. That's amazing! Challenging important and well-known feminist "agitators" to be "sawed" in half for his illusion!? Selbit was lucky Sylvia didn't punch him in the balls for that. Of course, neither of the Pankhurst sisters took him up on his offensive idea, although it gave him quite a bit of publicity regardless. A review of Selbit's show at the time apparently commented how wonderful it would be for Selbit to be able to say that "he has actually 'sawn off' the redoubtable 'Sylvia'!" (Steinmeyer p. 293), which kinda just says it all, really. Even if she wouldn't get actually murdered on stage for the amusement of the crowd, the very act would "saw her off", reducing her (and by extension, the movement she championed) to a legless thing of mockery.
Unfortunately, Steinmeyer's goal in writing his book is not to explore the role of gender in stage entertainment, so he doesn't get much farther into it than pointing out the relationship between anti-suffrage and misogynistic audiences/culture and the stage. He also points out how the general theme of expanding violence and torture in entertainment may also be a response to the horrors of World War I, although he merely asserts this as an idea rather than demonstrating it historically. Steinmeyer, of course, is not a trained historian, and the point of his book is much more focused on tracing the lives of the men who developed and shaped modern stage magic.
Still, it's a breath of fresh air for a popular writer to point out instances of blatant misogyny, and the particular instance of "Sawing a Woman in Half" is just absolutely bonkers. I mean, it really is a perfect example of the intersection of misogyny, feminism, and popular culture. It's outside of my academic bailiwick, so I don't know if anyone has written a specific article or book on the subject, though I'd love to see an academic historian's take, or a gender studies take, on the issue. There must be absolutely crazy sources, lots of weird playbills and posters that you could really mine in a material cultures sort of way to explore the suffrage and women's rights movements in the early 20th Century.
And, of course, as an example, it's just so amazingly (or, sadly, not so amazingly) relevant to modern culture and the anti-feminist backlash visible in modern pop entertainment. Female endangerment is a staple of entertainment, whether it's modern TV, Movies, Video Games, or just standing around a stage watching a magician saw a woman in two.
The cliche of the tuxedo'd magician sawing his Beautiful Assistant in half really is what I think of when the word "magician" is uttered, though. As Steinmeyer points out, and as should be obvious, these visual tropes don't spring from the ether; they're the result of discrete historical events that introduce these stereotypes into the pop culture mythos. The man in the evening wear is one such trope; in the earlier history of stage magic, rampant orientalism and exoticism meant that most performers were swaddled in robes and crowned with turbans. However, the success of a few fairly spectacular showmen, including the father of modern magic (and the namesake of Houdini) Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, that presented their acts in evening wear reshaped the field and resulted in the trend we've come to expect today. This topic is unexplored in the works I've read thus far. Does the switch from The Exotic Orient to Western Gentleman's Attire in magic shows signal a response a need to clarify the dominance of western empire over its colonial subjects? It would be an interesting topic to explore.
Similarly, the "Lovely Assistant" really came into being only in the early 20th Century. Having left (finally!) Queen Vic behind, stage productions (and popular entertainment in general) became racier, both in terms of sex and violence. The ultraviolent spectacles of the Grand Guignol in Paris are perhaps the most famous of these "new" entertainments, and included fairly intense displays of brutality, murder, and sexual violence in their playlets that apparently left patrons shocked and titillated. Shock and titillation are, then as now, money-makers in terms of pop culture and entertainment, and their advent on the stage resulted in an arms race that pushed the boundaries of what "respectable society" would tolerate. You can see a similar evolution in vaudeville, where early acts (1870s onward) were billed as wholesome family fun; it was only in the later evolution of vaudeville that competition with new forms of entertainment and media consumption forced vaudeville to adapt to the new appetites of the audience. Thus, by the late teens and early 20s, shapely young women in revealing clothes became a part of the spectacle of the magic show.
What is striking, however, is how the Magic Show changed alongside the cast. Early magical entertainment of the 19th Century seemed to focus on manipulations, things like card tricks, coin tricks, billiard balls, etc. Things were appeared or disappeared, of course, and there were marked visual illusions that required complex apparatuses and staging. However, reading Steinmeyer's book, I'm struck with the view of the Magic Show as an almost bastard brother of the scientific lecture. Many of the descriptions of magic shows are couched in terms of public experiments, with the Magician in the role of scientist. This makes sense in early magic shows often shared a lot with the spiritualist movement, either overtly offering spiritualist phenomena with purposefully obfuscated provenance (supernatural, or just clever trickery?), although the same experimentalist approach seems, to me at least, to have persisted well beyond table knocking and ectoplasmic vomit. However, the evolving marketplace of entertainment ideas drove magicians to seek more and more spectacle in their shows, including bigger and bigger illusions and more daring tricks. Into this fast-pasted world of competing magicians and magic shows, steps Englishman P.T. Selbit and his trick "Sawing Through A Woman" in 1920.
The trick is just what it purports to be: Selbit straight up saws a lady in half, while people watch. Yet, for some reason, it sets off an explosion of imitations, some gruesome, some playful, that quickly spread throughout the Magic Show world. In fact, the idea of "torture illusions" becomes a thing for performers, and are almost always specifically about torturing a lady while people watch. As Steinmeyer points out, these types of illusions come to dominate Selbit's career too. By 1922, he'd returned to England, and spent his career building a repertoire of "X a Lady" style illusions, including "Destroying a Girl", "Crushing a Woman", and "Stretching a Lady", among others.
As Steinmeyer points out, the timing of the development of this trick and its rocketing to pop culture prominence is no coincidence. In England, women's suffrage had only been awarded in 1918, while the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 in the US. Misogyny, then, was only recently removed from the official structure of two of the English-speaking world's largest governments, and even a cursory perusal of anti-suffrage publications, cartoons, etc, can show the vehemence that had been directed against the individuals advocating for Women's rights. Misogynists, then, would be looking for revenge wherever it could be found, and even the fictional revenge of pretending to mutilate a lady could salve the wounds that Patriarchy had been dealt by allowing women to vote.
Amazingly, Steinmeyer writes that Selbit, the originator of the Sawing illusion, originally had challenged prominent badasses Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst to be the victim in his trick. That's amazing! Challenging important and well-known feminist "agitators" to be "sawed" in half for his illusion!? Selbit was lucky Sylvia didn't punch him in the balls for that. Of course, neither of the Pankhurst sisters took him up on his offensive idea, although it gave him quite a bit of publicity regardless. A review of Selbit's show at the time apparently commented how wonderful it would be for Selbit to be able to say that "he has actually 'sawn off' the redoubtable 'Sylvia'!" (Steinmeyer p. 293), which kinda just says it all, really. Even if she wouldn't get actually murdered on stage for the amusement of the crowd, the very act would "saw her off", reducing her (and by extension, the movement she championed) to a legless thing of mockery.
Unfortunately, Steinmeyer's goal in writing his book is not to explore the role of gender in stage entertainment, so he doesn't get much farther into it than pointing out the relationship between anti-suffrage and misogynistic audiences/culture and the stage. He also points out how the general theme of expanding violence and torture in entertainment may also be a response to the horrors of World War I, although he merely asserts this as an idea rather than demonstrating it historically. Steinmeyer, of course, is not a trained historian, and the point of his book is much more focused on tracing the lives of the men who developed and shaped modern stage magic.
Still, it's a breath of fresh air for a popular writer to point out instances of blatant misogyny, and the particular instance of "Sawing a Woman in Half" is just absolutely bonkers. I mean, it really is a perfect example of the intersection of misogyny, feminism, and popular culture. It's outside of my academic bailiwick, so I don't know if anyone has written a specific article or book on the subject, though I'd love to see an academic historian's take, or a gender studies take, on the issue. There must be absolutely crazy sources, lots of weird playbills and posters that you could really mine in a material cultures sort of way to explore the suffrage and women's rights movements in the early 20th Century.
And, of course, as an example, it's just so amazingly (or, sadly, not so amazingly) relevant to modern culture and the anti-feminist backlash visible in modern pop entertainment. Female endangerment is a staple of entertainment, whether it's modern TV, Movies, Video Games, or just standing around a stage watching a magician saw a woman in two.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
A Field Guide to UK Hellholes
The exploration and investigation of the various entrances to Hell is, of course, a deeply serious field fraught with jargon, theory, and the complex literature of the Academy. Thankfully, some researchers have recognized the IMPORTANCE of bringing this vital work to the PUBLIC in a useful and accessible manner. Here is just such a resource, vital in these troubled times: The Catalogue of UK Entrances To Hell.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Flash Fiction Fridays Archive 1
Just 'cause I can, I thought I'd archive my Flash Fiction Tweets (@Geoliminal) here, where they can be easily accessed.
"He's finally doing something useful" she said. The roses had never looked healthier, and she'd saved on fertilizer.
"I told you," said the Genie, "THINK before you make your wish." The lime-green puddle bubbled sadly in response.
The survivors crawled from the wreckage of their collided time machines. "Fucking Mondays," thought the Ankylosaur.
"Neon pink; IR/UV; Hypnoswirl; Retractable Stalks. Jesus," sighed the cyborg, "don't they just make regular eyes anymore?
The city's smoking ruins stretched to the river, boiling in its banks. "Gotta spend money to make money," said Rich
She left, and he went to the spot where she had buried something. He dug with his fingers, but found only an empty hole
"Look, it's not like I had any choice," he said, dropping diamonds one by one down the drain. The cat just yawned
The cork bobbed, and he felt a sharp tug. No bites all day, and now! He tossed the pole in the pond, and went home.
The robots were a whirlwind of chaos. "Why'd you set them on 'Marx Brothers'!?" he shouted. "Why not?" she answered.
We were a little worried when the bees became sentient, spelling out words in honeycomb. Great landlords, though
For days the rain sheeted down, which wasn't as bad as when it went back up again, rivers streaming into the clouds.
"Look," he said, "in 15 years, I've never refilled the underground tanks. Ever." I looked at the gas pump, uneasy.
"Shit!" she said, shuffling tarot cards again. "Two Towers? Three Fools!?" She checked the box. "Fucking pinochle deck."
"The adaptor you keep in here is expired, by the way" she said, holding his wallet in her clamp. His diodes blushed red.
He jammed the driftwood between jelly and sand, and heaved. Slowly, the mass wobbled into the surf and drifted away.
Goddamn brat drew on the walls, rhinos and wolves, and a crazy man with antlers! So I beat him with an auroch bone.
INPUT:"User Name?":U$ PRINT:"Hello":U$ INPUT:"Time Travel Coordinates?":StanRefDate IF paradox THENGOTO HoundOfTindalos
"He's finally doing something useful" she said. The roses had never looked healthier, and she'd saved on fertilizer.
"I told you," said the Genie, "THINK before you make your wish." The lime-green puddle bubbled sadly in response.
The survivors crawled from the wreckage of their collided time machines. "Fucking Mondays," thought the Ankylosaur.
"Neon pink; IR/UV; Hypnoswirl; Retractable Stalks. Jesus," sighed the cyborg, "don't they just make regular eyes anymore?
The city's smoking ruins stretched to the river, boiling in its banks. "Gotta spend money to make money," said Rich
She left, and he went to the spot where she had buried something. He dug with his fingers, but found only an empty hole
"Look, it's not like I had any choice," he said, dropping diamonds one by one down the drain. The cat just yawned
The cork bobbed, and he felt a sharp tug. No bites all day, and now! He tossed the pole in the pond, and went home.
The robots were a whirlwind of chaos. "Why'd you set them on 'Marx Brothers'!?" he shouted. "Why not?" she answered.
We were a little worried when the bees became sentient, spelling out words in honeycomb. Great landlords, though
For days the rain sheeted down, which wasn't as bad as when it went back up again, rivers streaming into the clouds.
"Look," he said, "in 15 years, I've never refilled the underground tanks. Ever." I looked at the gas pump, uneasy.
"Shit!" she said, shuffling tarot cards again. "Two Towers? Three Fools!?" She checked the box. "Fucking pinochle deck."
"The adaptor you keep in here is expired, by the way" she said, holding his wallet in her clamp. His diodes blushed red.
He jammed the driftwood between jelly and sand, and heaved. Slowly, the mass wobbled into the surf and drifted away.
Goddamn brat drew on the walls, rhinos and wolves, and a crazy man with antlers! So I beat him with an auroch bone.
INPUT:"User Name?":U$ PRINT:"Hello":U$ INPUT:"Time Travel Coordinates?":StanRefDate IF paradox THENGOTO HoundOfTindalos
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Samizdat Volume 1, Number 1
Here it is, Samizdat, volume 1, number 1. Ten pages of ridiculousness. It's physical expression has already been distributed about the Metropolis.
The whole thing is downloadable here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2wEWYELakqcWDN1U2h4RUFLQkU/edit?usp=sharing
Monday, July 29, 2013
Final Edits on Samizdat V.1N.1
Here at Samizdat HQ, the editorial staff (me, my cats, and an overtaxed coffee maker) are putting the final touches on the FIRST issue of our meatspace presence, the honest-to-Cthulhu paper-n-ink version of Samizdat: The Journal of the Geoliminal Research Society. Here's the Table o' Contents, as it stands now:
If you find yourself in our EXTREMELY circumscribed geographic area, you may come across this bizarre communique. We'll eventually get 'er up on the interwebs here, too, I reckon.
PEACE BE UPON YOU, GEOLIMINOIDS.
 |
| The ToC for Samizdat V1N1; Click, and the image, she gets bigger! |
If you find yourself in our EXTREMELY circumscribed geographic area, you may come across this bizarre communique. We'll eventually get 'er up on the interwebs here, too, I reckon.
PEACE BE UPON YOU, GEOLIMINOIDS.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Gates to Hell
Gateways to Hell are common features on the mythic landscape, mapped out in fiction and folklore. It's telling that while there's only one way to get to Heaven, Hell appears to be well served by numerous access points easily accessible to the day hiker or sight-seer. The countryside is pockmarked with them, whereas it's much harder to pin the location of the Pearly Gates to the map.
This fascination with the underworld predates Christianity, of course, and much of the modern iconography of the Christian Hell is borrowed wholesale from older religions and myths. However, the fact remains that humans have always had a deep interest in passages to terrible, otherworldly subterranean realms. Famous ancient entrances to hell are commonly associated with unusual or spectacular geology, primarily of volcanic origin. Sicily's Mount Etna, for instance, or Mount Hekla on Iceland, both fiery conical stratovolcanoes noted for spectacular displays of pyrotechnics and telluric rumblings. Similarly, the recently discovered and wonderfully named "Plutonium" of Hierapolis (in modern day Turkey) is closely associated with travertine deposits of an active hydrothermal system, as well as murderously toxic fumes. This location, complete with temples and state-of-the-art (for the Roman world) tourist facilities was believed to be a conduit directly into Hades. Animals were sacrificed by driving them into the caves, where they would be asphyxiated by poisonous vapors. Apparently, they even sold birds to visitors, so pilgrims could chuck them into the caves as see the lethal results of this door to hell for themselves. One is, of course, also reminded of the Delphic oracle, who was said to breathe subterranean fumes in order to achieve her prophetic visions.
Other Gates to Hell described by ancient traditions are less spectacularly visual than erupting volcanoes or fuming hydrothermal vents, though often equally geological in nature. As a brief example, to the Romans, Lake Avernus (in the modern day Campania region of Southern Italy) was believed to be the Gate to Hell used by Aeneas, the mythic founder of the Latin people. Interestingly, Lake Avernus is a crater lake, located in an apparently extinct volcanic cone, although ancient tradition claims that poisonous vapors emitted from the lake killed birds that tried to fly over it. Today, of course, it is posses no hazard to anybody, though such may not always have been the case. Active volcanism or the sudden release of built-up carbon dioxide due to lake overturning could be the source of these stories. Volcanoes, lakes, caves, yawning fissures; all openings into the earth, yonic gates linking two worlds.
Aside from the common linkages of geological and geochemical processes, there is a relationship between these ancient sites of egress into the Underworld and mystical experiences. Whether these experiences are the biological effects of exposure to vapors or come in the form of more subtle but no less important cultural and social factors, subterranean portals represent liminal spaces between the sunlit "real" world and a shadowy "other place" that is either physically or metaphorically hidden beneath the surface of everyday experience. Often, this interaction with the otherworld is dangerous or potentially dangerous; toxic fumes, either evident or rumored, serving to remind us that knowledge can be destructive.
A famous medieval Hell's Gate can be found in County Donegal, Ireland, at St. Patrick's Purgatory. Here, St. Patrick opened a gate to the underworld, using it as concrete proof of Hell's existence in order to convert the Irish to Christianity. Again, we see how mystical revaluation becomes a major theme of the subterranean gateway, linking our dull and uncertain world to the technicolor marvels of supernormal realms normally hidden from view. Too, St. Patrick's Purgatory, much like the Plutonium, is a pilgrimage/tourist site, commodifying these spaces of occult knowledge and reveltory gnosis to the masses.
Approaching more modern times, we see an interesting entanglement of Hell Gates with ideas about the Hollow Earth. Setting aside paradisaical visions of the mundus subterranean, strange gateways into various underworlds were still being mapped out. For instance, Iceland's Mount Hekla, discussed above, was still described as a gateway to hell in the 1600s, with tales of Eastertime gatherings of witches. The divergence of stories and ideas about the subterranean world into distinct utopian and distopian threads is interesting, as it maintains the mystical aspects while changing their moral components. These include the theosophical reimaging of Agartha as an interior "super-terrestrial" command-and-control center inhabited by benevolent Ascended Masters, and can be contrasted with the physically and morally stunted Deros, sadistic mole men with unearthly powers from the the Shaver Mystery mythos. Detailed discussions of these and other Hollow Earth ideas, however, will have to wait for another article.
Sticking to Hell, we can find plenty of modern gateways in the landscape of urban legend. These, while common, are noticeably different from previous incarnations of Infernal passages. First, gone are the erupting volcanoes and smoking fumaroles from the lists, having been replaced almost uniformly by (most commonly) ruined or abandoned buildings and infrastructure or (more rarely) caves and pits. This is an interesting development, situating these Gateways to Hell in concepts of wilderness, either reclaimed (abandoned landscapes) or "natural" (unexploited caves). In this way, the mystical associations come to represent Nature, perhaps reflecting the fact that "nature" is now considered as much a part of "otherness" as the underworld.
A second difference, though still related to the first, is found in the origins of these Hellholes. Older gateways to hell were, though marvelous, still a part of the "natural" world. This is partly ascribable to demonstrably real physical and geological phenomena, but must also represent the cultural and religious milieu in which these locales were constructed. Far from having a secular/sacred dichotomy, the natural world instead represented a cosmic creation where the mundane and the magical intermingled freely as part of the natural order of things. In such a world, of course there are physical loci for these cosmically important forces. However, in a secular world dominated by a materialist and rationalist worldview, physical access points to "otherplaces" simply become less likely. More pragmatically, it becomes difficult to accept that a volcano is a door to Hell after hundreds of years of vulcanology and geology have reclaimed these features for the "real" world.
To exist in a world of magma chambers and degassing regimes, modern Gateways to Hell must be situated in modern "mystical" locales. Almost uniformly, these modern places of mystery and power are found in institutional ruins, particularly in hospitals, asylums, schools, or prisons. In some cases, the ruins are simply assumed to have been one of these, without any historical evidence; in particular, a perusal of Gateway lists suggests that there was a time when everybody and their brother ran an asylum. Regardless of the history of a site, the important commonality between these modern Hellholes is their placement in abandoned landscapes of institutional complexes, mysterious places with unclear (or occult?) hierarchies of power and strange practices. Other than the origin of the location, this is actually fairly similar to volcanic or geological features of the past. All represent liminal sites dominated by cthonic mystery.
The "Seven Gates of Hell" in Hellam Township, PA is one of the more famous Gateways to Hell situated in the modern landscape, so famous in fact that it is addressed by the Hellam Township's website. Briefly, the story goes that the director of a suitably rural insane asylum built a series of seven gates to control access to the institution. Eventually, the asylum burned down, with many of the patients killed in the conflagration or in the immediate aftermath. As the tale goes, walking through all seven of the gates will result in the stroller getting whisked away to Hell. As the Hellam Township's website points out, there is much embellishment in this story, including the number of gates (one versus the fictive seven), the presence of an insane asylum (it was actually just a small hospital), and even the name of the road leading to the institution (a suitable romantic but sadly made-up "Toad Road").
However, it is interesting to note that, in this case, the Gateway to Hell in PA is a perfect little microcosm of the whole concept of Gateways to Hell. A central, uncanny realm sequestered away from the rest of the world, access to which is controlled through mysterious gates, fire and wilderness symbols, and a single mad overseer that built the original gates. A modern twist is added, however, in the form of a man-made hell, alluded to in the form of barbaric medical practices of the past century and the general "freakiness" of insane asylums as houses of radical transgression.
This man-made aspect is an important attribute of the modern Gateway to Hell, a feature largely absent from their ancient and medieval precursors. A particularly telling example of this is the "Well to Hell Hoax", which made its rounds in the late 80s and the early days of the internet. Here, the theme of human and scientific hubris is neatly interwoven with a hidden, supernatural realm below the Earth. Briefly, Russian geologists were supposed to have drilled a nine mile deep hole into the Earth's crust, as which point they encountered a hollow space with anomalously high temperatures. They then lowered a microphone down, recording sounds of screaming and torment (later proved to have been cribbed form a horror movie), the idea being that these scientists had literally transgressed into Hell. Christian broadcast television, particularly TBN, used this story as a modern day St. Patrick's Purgatory, citing it as evidence of the literal existence of Hell and therefore a call to conversion and worship.
Interestingly, and this is pure speculation on my part, this story may have been influenced by the actual, historical occurrence of a natural gas fire at Derweze, Turkmenistan, from the 70s. Here, a Russian gas drilling operation resulted in a collapse and exposure of an enormous, gaping hole. Hoping to avoid a release of poisonous gaseous hydrocarbons, they decided to set it on fire, believing it would burn off in a matter of days. The fire, of course, still burns to this day.
Gateways to Hell are a part of the cultural landscape, though our relationship to them has changed over the years. Initially they were components of cosmic architecture, accessible through spectacular natural wonders like volcanoes of caverns. They played a role in linking the actual, physical presence of the gods or God to discrete landscape elements and, therefore, to everyday human existence. Modern day Hellholes, largely a subset of urban legends and paranormal lore, reflect our changing sensibilities. Rather than finding them in fire mountains or unplumbed caverns, infernal explorers have situated them in abandoned institutions or ruined architectures, man-made places that are being reclaimed by the natural world. And, along with the trees and wildlife, story-tellers have brought supernatural elements of a subterranean otherworld, a heterotopia of skewed perspectives and alien morality, perhaps reflecting a return of the Judeo-Christian concept of Satan or Lucifer to his pagan roots as a Horned God of the Wilderness. Like all myths, there real existence and power lies in exploring how humans view themselves in relation to their surroundings, and how they contextualize concepts of "otherworldlyness" on the landscapes they inhabit.
 |
| Rodin's Gate to Hell |
Other Gates to Hell described by ancient traditions are less spectacularly visual than erupting volcanoes or fuming hydrothermal vents, though often equally geological in nature. As a brief example, to the Romans, Lake Avernus (in the modern day Campania region of Southern Italy) was believed to be the Gate to Hell used by Aeneas, the mythic founder of the Latin people. Interestingly, Lake Avernus is a crater lake, located in an apparently extinct volcanic cone, although ancient tradition claims that poisonous vapors emitted from the lake killed birds that tried to fly over it. Today, of course, it is posses no hazard to anybody, though such may not always have been the case. Active volcanism or the sudden release of built-up carbon dioxide due to lake overturning could be the source of these stories. Volcanoes, lakes, caves, yawning fissures; all openings into the earth, yonic gates linking two worlds.
Aside from the common linkages of geological and geochemical processes, there is a relationship between these ancient sites of egress into the Underworld and mystical experiences. Whether these experiences are the biological effects of exposure to vapors or come in the form of more subtle but no less important cultural and social factors, subterranean portals represent liminal spaces between the sunlit "real" world and a shadowy "other place" that is either physically or metaphorically hidden beneath the surface of everyday experience. Often, this interaction with the otherworld is dangerous or potentially dangerous; toxic fumes, either evident or rumored, serving to remind us that knowledge can be destructive.
A famous medieval Hell's Gate can be found in County Donegal, Ireland, at St. Patrick's Purgatory. Here, St. Patrick opened a gate to the underworld, using it as concrete proof of Hell's existence in order to convert the Irish to Christianity. Again, we see how mystical revaluation becomes a major theme of the subterranean gateway, linking our dull and uncertain world to the technicolor marvels of supernormal realms normally hidden from view. Too, St. Patrick's Purgatory, much like the Plutonium, is a pilgrimage/tourist site, commodifying these spaces of occult knowledge and reveltory gnosis to the masses.
Approaching more modern times, we see an interesting entanglement of Hell Gates with ideas about the Hollow Earth. Setting aside paradisaical visions of the mundus subterranean, strange gateways into various underworlds were still being mapped out. For instance, Iceland's Mount Hekla, discussed above, was still described as a gateway to hell in the 1600s, with tales of Eastertime gatherings of witches. The divergence of stories and ideas about the subterranean world into distinct utopian and distopian threads is interesting, as it maintains the mystical aspects while changing their moral components. These include the theosophical reimaging of Agartha as an interior "super-terrestrial" command-and-control center inhabited by benevolent Ascended Masters, and can be contrasted with the physically and morally stunted Deros, sadistic mole men with unearthly powers from the the Shaver Mystery mythos. Detailed discussions of these and other Hollow Earth ideas, however, will have to wait for another article.
Sticking to Hell, we can find plenty of modern gateways in the landscape of urban legend. These, while common, are noticeably different from previous incarnations of Infernal passages. First, gone are the erupting volcanoes and smoking fumaroles from the lists, having been replaced almost uniformly by (most commonly) ruined or abandoned buildings and infrastructure or (more rarely) caves and pits. This is an interesting development, situating these Gateways to Hell in concepts of wilderness, either reclaimed (abandoned landscapes) or "natural" (unexploited caves). In this way, the mystical associations come to represent Nature, perhaps reflecting the fact that "nature" is now considered as much a part of "otherness" as the underworld.
A second difference, though still related to the first, is found in the origins of these Hellholes. Older gateways to hell were, though marvelous, still a part of the "natural" world. This is partly ascribable to demonstrably real physical and geological phenomena, but must also represent the cultural and religious milieu in which these locales were constructed. Far from having a secular/sacred dichotomy, the natural world instead represented a cosmic creation where the mundane and the magical intermingled freely as part of the natural order of things. In such a world, of course there are physical loci for these cosmically important forces. However, in a secular world dominated by a materialist and rationalist worldview, physical access points to "otherplaces" simply become less likely. More pragmatically, it becomes difficult to accept that a volcano is a door to Hell after hundreds of years of vulcanology and geology have reclaimed these features for the "real" world.
To exist in a world of magma chambers and degassing regimes, modern Gateways to Hell must be situated in modern "mystical" locales. Almost uniformly, these modern places of mystery and power are found in institutional ruins, particularly in hospitals, asylums, schools, or prisons. In some cases, the ruins are simply assumed to have been one of these, without any historical evidence; in particular, a perusal of Gateway lists suggests that there was a time when everybody and their brother ran an asylum. Regardless of the history of a site, the important commonality between these modern Hellholes is their placement in abandoned landscapes of institutional complexes, mysterious places with unclear (or occult?) hierarchies of power and strange practices. Other than the origin of the location, this is actually fairly similar to volcanic or geological features of the past. All represent liminal sites dominated by cthonic mystery.
The "Seven Gates of Hell" in Hellam Township, PA is one of the more famous Gateways to Hell situated in the modern landscape, so famous in fact that it is addressed by the Hellam Township's website. Briefly, the story goes that the director of a suitably rural insane asylum built a series of seven gates to control access to the institution. Eventually, the asylum burned down, with many of the patients killed in the conflagration or in the immediate aftermath. As the tale goes, walking through all seven of the gates will result in the stroller getting whisked away to Hell. As the Hellam Township's website points out, there is much embellishment in this story, including the number of gates (one versus the fictive seven), the presence of an insane asylum (it was actually just a small hospital), and even the name of the road leading to the institution (a suitable romantic but sadly made-up "Toad Road").
However, it is interesting to note that, in this case, the Gateway to Hell in PA is a perfect little microcosm of the whole concept of Gateways to Hell. A central, uncanny realm sequestered away from the rest of the world, access to which is controlled through mysterious gates, fire and wilderness symbols, and a single mad overseer that built the original gates. A modern twist is added, however, in the form of a man-made hell, alluded to in the form of barbaric medical practices of the past century and the general "freakiness" of insane asylums as houses of radical transgression.
This man-made aspect is an important attribute of the modern Gateway to Hell, a feature largely absent from their ancient and medieval precursors. A particularly telling example of this is the "Well to Hell Hoax", which made its rounds in the late 80s and the early days of the internet. Here, the theme of human and scientific hubris is neatly interwoven with a hidden, supernatural realm below the Earth. Briefly, Russian geologists were supposed to have drilled a nine mile deep hole into the Earth's crust, as which point they encountered a hollow space with anomalously high temperatures. They then lowered a microphone down, recording sounds of screaming and torment (later proved to have been cribbed form a horror movie), the idea being that these scientists had literally transgressed into Hell. Christian broadcast television, particularly TBN, used this story as a modern day St. Patrick's Purgatory, citing it as evidence of the literal existence of Hell and therefore a call to conversion and worship.
Interestingly, and this is pure speculation on my part, this story may have been influenced by the actual, historical occurrence of a natural gas fire at Derweze, Turkmenistan, from the 70s. Here, a Russian gas drilling operation resulted in a collapse and exposure of an enormous, gaping hole. Hoping to avoid a release of poisonous gaseous hydrocarbons, they decided to set it on fire, believing it would burn off in a matter of days. The fire, of course, still burns to this day.
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| Derweze's Door to Hell, a natural gas fire in a collapsed well |
Gateways to Hell are a part of the cultural landscape, though our relationship to them has changed over the years. Initially they were components of cosmic architecture, accessible through spectacular natural wonders like volcanoes of caverns. They played a role in linking the actual, physical presence of the gods or God to discrete landscape elements and, therefore, to everyday human existence. Modern day Hellholes, largely a subset of urban legends and paranormal lore, reflect our changing sensibilities. Rather than finding them in fire mountains or unplumbed caverns, infernal explorers have situated them in abandoned institutions or ruined architectures, man-made places that are being reclaimed by the natural world. And, along with the trees and wildlife, story-tellers have brought supernatural elements of a subterranean otherworld, a heterotopia of skewed perspectives and alien morality, perhaps reflecting a return of the Judeo-Christian concept of Satan or Lucifer to his pagan roots as a Horned God of the Wilderness. Like all myths, there real existence and power lies in exploring how humans view themselves in relation to their surroundings, and how they contextualize concepts of "otherworldlyness" on the landscapes they inhabit.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Geoliminal Resources: The Center for Land Use Interpretation
On their world wide internets site, the Center for Land Use Interpretation states that they are “Dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.” That’s a pretty tall order in both scale and scope, and you’d be forgiven for expecting another THC-steeped navel-gazing contest (scored by Phish). Luckily for all of us Earthlings, the CLUI is actually amazing, and just about knocks it out of the park.
Broadly speaking, the CLUI interrogates how humans and culture interact with the physical earth. If this sounds an awful lot like the academic discipline of Environmental History (i.e., the study of human interactions with the natural world through time), well, that’s cause it pretty much is, I guess. However, rather than using the tools of academic historians, the CLUI takes an artistic and interpretive approach to understanding human-earth surface relationships. In their own words, they “believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, that can be read to better understand who we are, and what we are doing.”
To this end, the CLUI maintains a residence program for artists, writers, researchers, and theorists in Wendover, Utah, where the various individuals come together to explore methods and approaches to investigating land and landuse issues. The work done there covers a lot ground, both physically and intellectually. Simultaneously, landscape interpreters from a variety of regions across the US also investigate land use and human interactions.
The results combine the addictive voyeurism of zooming around Google Earth with the thoughtful, meditative qualities of the best nature writing. Their newsletter, published annually, covers a wide range of locales and topics, things as diverse as uranium mining in the US, the Mississippi Delta, and aerial photo calibration targets from the 50s and 60s in the desert Southwest. Of course, given the emphasis on the form and morphology of specific landscapes, the pieces are commonly accompanied by excellent photography, essays in themselves.
Book reviews at the end of newsletters are appreciated resources as well, and include both dense academic works as well as art books, unified by the fact that BOTH ends of the spectrum provide some fibrous reading material.
In addition to the articles, the CLUI maintains a user-generated database of sites, browsable as a map. It’s well worth a look, and a good start to planning a completely rad road trip.
The CLUI also exists in meatspace, and if one was lucky(?) enough to be in LA, you could visit their physical location and actually see some of the remarkable exhibits on display. Unfortunately (again, ?) I’ve not been to LA in a while, and so haven’t visited. However, the images and descriptions of the exhibits suggest that they are just as awesome as everything else the CLUI does.
Humans, both individually and plurally, influence and are influenced by the world around them. The profundity of this fact is belied by its simplicity; the CLUI, a group of modern day zen-masters, recognize that we can read the landscape to better understand our story, both in terms of where we've been and where we’re going. As a geoliminalist, this is fascinating. As a human, this is vital.
Broadly speaking, the CLUI interrogates how humans and culture interact with the physical earth. If this sounds an awful lot like the academic discipline of Environmental History (i.e., the study of human interactions with the natural world through time), well, that’s cause it pretty much is, I guess. However, rather than using the tools of academic historians, the CLUI takes an artistic and interpretive approach to understanding human-earth surface relationships. In their own words, they “believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, that can be read to better understand who we are, and what we are doing.”
To this end, the CLUI maintains a residence program for artists, writers, researchers, and theorists in Wendover, Utah, where the various individuals come together to explore methods and approaches to investigating land and landuse issues. The work done there covers a lot ground, both physically and intellectually. Simultaneously, landscape interpreters from a variety of regions across the US also investigate land use and human interactions.
The results combine the addictive voyeurism of zooming around Google Earth with the thoughtful, meditative qualities of the best nature writing. Their newsletter, published annually, covers a wide range of locales and topics, things as diverse as uranium mining in the US, the Mississippi Delta, and aerial photo calibration targets from the 50s and 60s in the desert Southwest. Of course, given the emphasis on the form and morphology of specific landscapes, the pieces are commonly accompanied by excellent photography, essays in themselves.
Book reviews at the end of newsletters are appreciated resources as well, and include both dense academic works as well as art books, unified by the fact that BOTH ends of the spectrum provide some fibrous reading material.
In addition to the articles, the CLUI maintains a user-generated database of sites, browsable as a map. It’s well worth a look, and a good start to planning a completely rad road trip.
The CLUI also exists in meatspace, and if one was lucky(?) enough to be in LA, you could visit their physical location and actually see some of the remarkable exhibits on display. Unfortunately (again, ?) I’ve not been to LA in a while, and so haven’t visited. However, the images and descriptions of the exhibits suggest that they are just as awesome as everything else the CLUI does.
Humans, both individually and plurally, influence and are influenced by the world around them. The profundity of this fact is belied by its simplicity; the CLUI, a group of modern day zen-masters, recognize that we can read the landscape to better understand our story, both in terms of where we've been and where we’re going. As a geoliminalist, this is fascinating. As a human, this is vital.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
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