Christine Brown: I beat you, you old bitch!
In the same way that our conventional beliefs in good are based on a template, a formula, a tradition, our ideas about evil and our beliefs in evil are also based on stereotypes. Drag Me To Hell is a scary flick - whether you believe in hell or not - simply because it touches all the 'fear' buttons.
Here they are:
- witches exist
- curses (like blessings) are plausible
- sudden loud noises frighten us along with
- the dark
- uncertainty
- a sense that bad things happen to bad people (or because you do something 'wrong' you deserve something wrong happening to you/conversely that good things happen to good people)
- that hell is beneath the earth
- that hell is associated with heat, and flames and fire
- that inexplicable sounds, like the wind, banging windows or doors, creaking, are the embodiment of evil
- graveyards are places where evil resides
- rain and soil and the weather can deliver us unto evil
- evil are in certain animals, like cats and goats
- insect pests embody evil
- objects can attain life and personality, like buttons and handkerchiefs
- we are controlled and at the mercy of invisible forces.
You might want to go through those and see them for what they are. Some - if not all - of these have biblical reinforcement. A noise can be just a noise. Laughter for example can be innocent laughter, but through a paranoid schizophrenic is could be demon-voices or a sign of madness. Night is no different to day minus light.
But here's where it gets interesting. In Drag Me To Hell we see the classic embodiment of evil, which is depicted in countless children's story tales. It's the wicked witch. It's an old woman who may or not be impaired in some way (a hunchback, a hooked nose etc). In fairy tales witches are almost always hideously ugly, and unkempt. But they are always powerful and poisonous. They tend to wear dark clothes, and often hats, and are associated with broomsticks, black cats, magic spells and of course, curses.
If you take all the mythology and distill it, and you want to render it in a story, you have to remember what the wicked witch actually symbolises, and where she comes from. The wicked witch tends to be the foil of a young princess, although she may ensnare the prince. Here lies an important clue. Because what the witch really represents is the subliminal hatred the princess feels towards her mother in law. The wicked witch then is actually a caricature for mother in laws everywhere. Throughout history, probably, mother in laws have attempted to sabotage the marriage or dalliances of their precious sons by various means - both foul and fair.
It is very interesting to note in DRAG ME TO HELL that there is the omnipotent witch, and after her death (because she's more imagined than real), Christine encounters her partners mother, a disapproving, snobbish woman. Christine yearns for her approval, and bakes a Harvest Cake as part of her effort to win her over. Naturally the mother in law is disdainful at this attempt at domesticity.
The other point to make about the wicked witch is that she is a foreigner. A gypsy. Dark skinned. In Drag Me To Hell she sounds Russian. Once again, the suspicion of foreigners is something most people feel. Drag Me To Hell portrays the witch as a vomiting (sick, contagious) and vengeful terroriser. We feel for Christine as she battles to overcome the growing malaise that her encounter with the 'witch' propels her into.
Drag Me To Hell is shocking and scary for other reasons besides. Sudden activities, unexpected sights, very loud (and it has to be said, unlikely) noises. Whilst some scenes are terrifying in and of themselves, others are highly unlikely, and even laughable. It was interesting to note that the audience, who were very vocal throughout, groaned when the fly entered her nostril, gasped at the horror scenes, but chuckled or guffawed at a particularly gross but nevertheless scary scene that overstepped the the subtle boundary between terror and absurdity.
Now, the stereotypes are not necessarily false. For example, a foreign person or foreign noise may well present the first clue to some impending disaster. And, let's face it, if you go around doing bad things to people, bad things will come to you simply as a matter of cause and effect. This is true but not necessarily so. Look at the longevity of present day dictators like Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong Il. Has doing evil had a telling impact on their lives? One imagines, also, if the reaction to all this evil would have encouraged these men not to persist in it, but Kim still fires his missiles every so often, and Mugabe oppresses and it appears they continue to reap the benefits. So a general rule may exist, but it is not infallible or absolutely true.
Towards the end of Drag Me To Hell Christine admits that she should have granted the old woman the loan extension. Here the question arises, does she have a good heart after all? Did she deserve to live happily ever after? The waiting train, the ring and the 'prince' all represented the 'happily ever after phase'. All of this is based on the the premise, again, that bad things happen to people who do bad things.
Well, Mugabe and Kim Jong Il are the exceptions. Look at what happened to Hitler. And in terms of the average of all our actions, I am afraid that we can summarise our actions on Earth as evil. Evil being defined as something that is 'not good'. It is not good that each person consumes as many resources as we do. It's not good that we occupy our minds and hearts with meaningless drivel. It's not good that we are unable to respond to or even recognise that our environment is deteriorating rapidly around us. And for this there is a consequence. There is a consequence to our collective actions.
I don't know how those consequences will manifest, but they are, so far, as increased food shortages, the loss of jobs, and increased fear and uncertainty. The positive message from Drag Me To Hell is that fear isn't real. If we can shrug off the stereotypes and deal with the real issues, we can save ourselves a lot of torment. If we can see the facts rather than be numbed and controlled by the implications we'll be able to respond effectively. Who governs the way we respond? You do. You make the choice. Guard your thoughts. Be alert. Don't take what others say at face value.
The bad news is pretty bad. Because there's another lesson that is horrifying in our context, but nevertheless a simple truth. Drag Me To Hell demonstrates that you can't foist your problems, your addictions, your greed and lusts, your responsibilities, your destiny, onto someone else. You have to account and face what's coming. If you've been greedy you have to pay up, or fess up, or serve your sentence. And we know we have all been greedy. Anyone who drives a car burns a huge amount of the proportionate resources there should be per person. I think we intuitively know that.
For me, the scary part is that very few of us can even begin to imagine the situation we are already in, let alone agree on where we're at. We're in denial. That means our response to reality when it catches up to us is likely to be filled with panic, despair and absolute uncertainty. This website aims to prepare people mentally, and to say, we knew this was coming and there is a better way to manage this process. Here's what we can do.
Our choices may have become fewer, but our response can always better, more practical and more sustainable. We can control our response, and the quality of our response. If we don't make these choices, nature will make them for us. If that happens, nature also gets to decide whether it needs us to be part of the system. If we're able to believe that we're connected to, and part of nature, nature may be persuaded to eventually go easier on us.
More on Drag Me To Hell: half the picture is spent sullying Lohman's soft, appealing features with phlegm, maggots or embalming fluid. As a parable of the unwise decisions money tempts us into, it's as pertinent to certain dealers and leaders as it might be to a director coming off the back of an increasingly fraught series of superhero movies. (The final twist, certainly, underlines the importance of keeping a close eye on the pennies.)
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