Devil May Care

Regular readers of this blog know that I often use this space to rail against the evil television. It can suck your life away, lulling you to the point where mindless drivel can seem like compelling entertainment. Like a drug, it is insidious in its ability to make something stupid seem fun; it’s a little devil on your shoulder telling you that Brett Michaels’ love life really IS interesting. As you may have guessed from the title of this essay, I use the “devil on the shoulder” analogy for good reason: The Prince of Darkness was on my television this past weekend. And I liked it.

I love horror movies, even bad ones, although I do all I can to avoid the tripe that passes for horror on the Sci-Fi channel. “Mansquito?” Flying half-man, half bug? Give me a break. No, the Sci-Fi channel isn’t very good…until they have their holiday “Twilight Zone” marathon. Then it’s good. I got sucked into it for a couple hours this weekend, waiting for the best episode of the series. “The Howling Man” (written by Charles Beaumont) is about a traveler who unwittingly unleashes Satan into the world. Lost in a storm, the traveler arrives at a monastery of sorts, populated by terse and less than friendly monks of an obscure order. They deny him shelter, and he collapses, earning a dry spot in spite of the monks’ inhospitable demeanor. Upon awakening, he hears a mournful howling and happens upon a haggard man in a cell who tells the traveler that he has been imprisoned unjustly for kissing a girl that the monk was sweet on. (I’m not making this up.) The traveler goes to the head monk (John Carradine) and demands to know why men of God have a prisoner that they’re trying hard to ignore. The monk tells the traveler that it is no man in the cell, but Satan himself, father of all lies. And that, of course, is the rub. Who’s lying, the crazy guy with beard in the cell or the crazy guy with the beard and the staff? The traveler listens to both arguments and sides with the prisoner. Now, the only thing barring the door to the cell is a “staff of truth,” not much more than a broomstick. There’s a window in the cell door that allows the prisoner to get an arm out. He could easily reach out the window, lift the bar and walk out, but he doesn’t. The traveler asks him why he doesn’t, and the prisoner utterly ignores the question, imploring the traveler to remove the bar…which he does. And, you guessed it, once freed the prisoner transforms into the classic Beelzebul, complete with goatee and horns. Before the traveler passes out (after being “zapped” by Satan), he realizes that he has been fooled. In an epilogue of sorts, we see the traveler years later, and he himself has captured the devil, after a couple wars and nuclear weapons proliferation, all consequences of his foolishness years earlier. He is explaining to a maid that he has the devil trapped in a closet and that she must not open the door (also barred by a “staff of truth” not much bigger than a pencil) while he is out. Does she let him out? Of course she does, and it starts all over again. Great stuff, huh?

My fascination with things macabre aside, I think what I like most about this story is the ease with which our hero is fooled. The concept of an evil presence is hard enough to swallow, but evil incarnate? Why, that’s just nonsense. Isn’t it? I once heard a priest say “The devil’s greatest trick is to make you think he doesn’t exist.” Now, I’m no logician, but there’s really no way to win an argument with that kind of reasoning. It’s akin to “everything I say is a lie.” In the words of the immortal William Dozier, “it’s a confounding conundrum!” It is the perfect story.

I’m digressing. I got to wondering why the devil would want to make you think he doesn’t exist. The obvious answer would be so that he could go about his malevolent business undetected, but what good is that? If he doesn’t get to laugh maniacally at the mortals he has corrupted and enslaved, why bother? By all biblical accounts (and there aren’t many), Satan just doesn’t figure in the big picture. In fact, he is mentioned only a few times in the old testament as Satan (a being), and should not be confused with Lucifer, a different entity altogether. In fact, it wasn’t until around the second or third century that he came to be considered by Christians as the antichrist. In spite of his popularity (?) today, he wasn’t a very big deal in the beginning. No wonder he’s so pissed off. But you know, the whole good versus evil thing just doesn’t work without him, and, much like God, we have created him in our image to explain away our responsibilities for acting like…God’s creatures. He is all of the things that are the worst in men and he bears the blame for all men’s sin. Research the etymology of the word “scapegoat”, and you’ll find one of his names. Nobody likes to have their name forgotten, and I’m sure the devil, full of pride, wants to be remembered.

I love the concept of Satan. I hope he lives on for centuries in films and stories. May we continue to keep him alive in our imaginations and invoke him to scare the shit out of children and the gullible. He frightens us for good reason: we can see ourselves in him. No matter how much we vilify him, we need him. In fact, I believe that he takes a great deal of delight in our aspirations of divinity. I offer this quote from Mark Twain: “But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?”

By thinking that we are above or different than he, by claiming a “golden rule” mindset but not living it, we prove ourselves to be that which we profess to hate. Rock on, Evil One.