Black Magic Nation: The Occult in American Culture

Yes, obviously.

Who's afraid of a little black magic? Well, Middle America, actually. Mrs. Peggy Sue Walters, president of the PTO at Peaceful Creek Elementary in Peaceful Creek, Kansas*, is deeply concerned that those big city satanists are going to corrupt her little darlings.

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What is poor Mrs. Walters to do? She's a good, traditional woman- she can't have little Wendy growing up to be a homosexual or little Zachary voting for a Democrat! It'd be a disgrace to the good Walters name. But no matter, Peggy Sue wasn't crowned Miss Teen Peaceful Creek ten years in a row for nothing- she knows to do what has to be done.

If anyone knew what went into this...

So Mrs. Walters got to work and made a list of the biggest threats to her children, and she was kind enough to share the list with me. What follows is the result of months of her hard work, with explanatory commentary added by yours truly.

1) Satanic Messages In Music, Audible When Played Backwards
       
      In the 1980s, Christian groups across the United States absolutely LOST THEIR MINDS at the thought of classic rock bands- Pink Floyd, Queen, and Led Zeppelin were huge targets- encoding secret Satanic messages in music that were only intelligible when the track was played backwards. Admittedly, none of the major bands in question were American, but this really only proves my point. What is it about American culture that made audiences here hear things that no one else did? AC/CD was called out, but no one in Australia had made these accusations. The Beatles were accused, but parents in Britain were oblivious to questionable backmasked content.

What you can't see is the child caught in their Satanic embrace.

2) Satanic Ritual Abuse
   
    Oh, here's the big one. Back in the 1980's, when America had absolutely nothing to worry about besides the devil, a little book called Michelle Remembers was released and became an immediate best-seller. Published by a  psychiatrist named Lawrence Pazder and his patient-turned-wife, Michelle Smith, Michelle Remembers was the heart-wrenching account of the delusions of a mentally ill woman and her abuse by a morally bankrupt walking ethics violation. However, members of the frightened public aren't known for their reading comprehension skills, and therefore the alleged abuse suffered at the hands of a Satanic cult was the focus of scandal.

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Never mind that half of what was described in the book was physically impossible- it describes levitation, the summoning of Lucifer and the Virgin Mary, and magic, among other things- and the rest was completely unsupported by any outside source, the book was a hit. Oprah endorsed it and accepted the account as absolute fact, and that was all anyone needed to hear.

Of course,  Mrs. Walters had a longer list- she is nothing if not thorough- but she revoked her permission to detail it after she said that I wasn't taking any of her core beliefs seriously. To be fair, that allegation is entirely accurate.

Hubba Hubba: Humbert Humbert as the American Anti-Hero

 Quite reasonably, when I requested suggestions for an antihero to write about, Humbert Humbert never came up. One of the most despicable characters in modern literature, the reader is reluctant to describe him as a hero at all, but Humbert cannot be stripped of this status just because one is loath to assign the title.

Yep. This guy.

An antihero is a main character who lacks some or any heroic characteristics. Humbert Humbert fills that description with ease, and indeed surpasses it. Not only did Nabokov subvert the traditional hero with the repulsive Monsieur Humbert, he subverted one of the classic narratives of our culture.

Yes, I realize that describing the story of a pedophile and his victim as a classic narrative is unusual, but give me a moment to explain. You enter a movie theater halfway through the film, no idea what the movie is about or any of the characters. You look up and see a tall, dark, handsome man (as Humbert is described) waxing poetic about his love, a woman of whom he is in desperate pursuit. The world is against their union and the object (this word choice is intentional) of his affection lacks any real agency or personality. Suddenly, the fire alarm goes off, and you must leave. You never finish the movie, but you're discussing it with a friend and have to determine a hero and a similar film. Of course, the man is the hero, and if pressed for a similar film for comparison's sake, you'd likely choose the leading romantic drama of the moment.

Or, you'd compare it to Lolita, as this is the essential storyline.

Basically the same movie

An antihero is created by the casting of a villain in the role of a hero, and Humbert Humbert has created that narrative for himself. He is deranged, potentially gay (according to the novel), murderous, pedophilloic, abusive of the girl in his care- yet he is the closest thing Nabokov gave the audience to a hero. Worse, he knows what he did was wrong, as he proves again and again, but still he forces empathy from the reader. Millions of otherwise intelligent readers have come away from Lolita with the impression of it as a love story, when really their reactions should have been more similar to Figure 1 than Figure 2. 

Figure 1

Figure 2

How did the abhorrent Monsieur Humbert elicit such a reaction? Simple. The same way Ichabod Crane became a hero- he was placed there. However, no hero is as misplaced as Humbert Humbert.