RMJ has a really good article about the urban legend about the panic that Orson Welles supposedly whipped up with his War of the Worlds broadcast. Turns out that the legend is mostly a bunch of journalistic hype with little behind it. RMJ also points out something to really be afraid of.
I've been thinking about what Marilynne Robinson called "a kind of a hobby of fear, a sort of fear fad," that is ginned up by the media, which is what Orson Welles supposedly did on one Halloween night when radio was young, every day all day of every year. I remembered this scene in the movie The Seventh Seal, which is particularly appropriate for the month that FOX has been trying to whip up fears of the plague from the South.
JONS: What is this supposed to represent?
PAINTER: The Dance of Death.
JONS: And that one is Death?
PAINTER: Yes, he dances off with all of them
JONS: Why do you paint such nonsense?
PAINTER: I thought it would serve to remind people that they must die.
JONS: Well, it's not going to make them feel any happier.
PAINTER: Why should one always make people happy? It might not be a
bad idea to scare them a little once in a while.
JONS: Then they'll close their eyes and refuse to look at your painting.
PAINTER: Oh, they'll look. A skull is almost more interesting than a naked
woman.
JONS: If you do scare them ...
PAINTER: They'll think.
JONS: And if they think ...
PAINTER: They'll become still more scared.
JONS: And then they'll run right into the arms of the priests.
PAINTER: That's not my business.
JONS: You're only painting your Dance of Death.
PAINTER: I'm only painting things as they are. Everyone else can do as he
likes.
JONS: Just think how some people will curse you.
PAINTER: Maybe. But then I'll paint something amusing for them to look
at. I have to make a living at least until the plague takes me.
JONS: The plague. That sounds horrible
PAINTER: You should see the boils on a diseased man's throat. You should
see how his body shrivels up so that his legs look like knotted strings # like the
man I've painted over there.
The PAINTER points with his brush. JONS sees a small human form writhing in the grass, its eyes turned upwards in a frenzied look of horror and pain.
JONS: That looks terrible.
PAINTER: It certainly does. He tries to rip out the boil, he bites his hands,
tears his veins open with his fingernails and his screams can be heard everywhere.
Does that scare you?
JONS: Scare? Me? You don't know me. What are the horrors you've painted
over there?
P
AINTER: The remarkable thing is that the poor creatures think the pestilence
is the Lord's punishment. Mobs of people who call themselves Slaves of
Sin are swarming over the country, flagellating themselves and others, all for
the glory of God.
JONS: Do they really whip themselves?
PAINTER: Yes, it's a terrible sight. I crawl into a ditch and hide when they
pass by.
JONS: Do you have any brandy? I've been drinking water all day and it's
made me as thirsty as a camel in the desert.
PAINTER: I think I frightened you after all.
Only I can't see the FOX viewers blaming themselves for their imaginary calamity. And Bergman, being a good, moderny 20th century European blamed everything on religion when there was plenty of blame that rightly belonged in other places. It was easier to blame because it was safer. That doesn't make his insights into the human fascination for being scared and the power of that fear any less impressive. In the end of the movie the Knight, Jons' master, Antonius Block won over death by saving the actor, his wife and their baby by losing his chess game with death knowing he would die. His act of self sacrifice on behalf of those who were about the least of those in the movie was his triumph. That's the only real victory over death and it involves dying.
"To conquer death, you only have to die."
ReplyDeleteProbably the best line in JCS.