a sense of joy and then a panic

I spent yesterday watching Rose Red, reading J-horror reviews on evildread.com (a cute little site), and researching Junji Ito, the guy behind Uzumaki and Tomie.  I've always been intrigued by Uzumaki but not wholely impressed by Tomie - not that I've read either manga, but I've seen Tomie the movie and I found it rather ho-hum.  Uzumaki, on the other hand, I would love to read, and Gyo looks even better. 

Okay, I should restate that.  Uzumaki looks disgusting and disturbing (people turning themselves into spirals by putting themselves in washing machines?  dead bodies lodged on springs? - I still can't believe they made a movie out of this, but they did) and Gyo even more so (thank the good lord no one's made a movie out of this one).  I've been able to gather that it's about a town that's invaded by an infection that produces a gas from necrotic tissue that powers machines, and basically the townspeople become zombie-corpses lodged on mechanical "legs".  I don't really get it either, but the first thing that invades is this.  And who could resist that?! 

Probably a lot of people could resist that, come to think of it, but I guess I'm not one of them.  I'm thinking about going down to Kinokuniya and buying myself a copy.  I'll probably have to put it in the freezer a few times - I had a nasty childhood experience with a horror manga at a friend's house... to this day I can remember two of the stories contained therein (they weren't very original, but hey, I was ten at the time) - but I'm just so curious.

Clearly, I've been thinking a lot about horror lately.

It's always fun to read things that make you angry.  One of those things is, consistently, Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog.  Oh, Lisa Belkin. It is strange that our last names be so similar when we are so different.

Here, Lisa Belkin wonders whether fairytales are bad for kids.  You know - bad depictions of gender roles and women in general, absent mothers, scary, racist, unrealistic.   And some of her readers agree: "I think these fairytales are terrible - the mother dies, the stepmother is evil, people are locked in their rooms etc" and "I thought that infusing them early with the outdated and dangerous idea that Prince Charming would come along and fix everything would encourage them to become passive adults who didn’t know how to take responsibility for their own lives" and best of all, "the treatment of princess is beyond pathetic!!"

Did I just have a better reading of fairytales than these people?  I grew up on the non-sanitized, gross, awful, sad versions, by the way, because my parents basically would just see, "oh, a book in English that looks vaguely familiar, and there are pictures inside.  Look at the pictures, they're so pretty/colorful.  Here ya go, little girl!"  And I think the non-sanitized versions are better for kids - yeah, it's not so happy that Ariel turns into sea foam, but it makes for a better story, and actually presents a more moving depiction of love - in the original, the Little Mermaid is told by her sisters that the only way she can regain her fins and not lose her soul to the sea witch is for her to kill the Prince (who has willingly married some other princess), but the Little Mermaid refused and stabbed herself.  Great story.  Did it teach me that women should kill themselves for men?  Uh, no.  It's just a damn good drama.  And that's what fairytales are supposed to be - rich in detail and fantasy, exciting and grotesque and frightening and enticing all at once.  Like J.M. Barrie described Neverland (in the original!):

"When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real.  That is why there are night-lights... In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime.  Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win."

That's a man with a (scarily) good grasp on childhood culture. 

Maybe parents - at least Lisa Belkin - are way too preoccupied with motifs of beauty and "who gets who" in these stories.  Which I think says something about the parents, not the fairytales.  Are we really going to obsess about what our daughters learn about beauty from when they are four?  God knows they will learn to obsess about that on their own. 

Anyway, here's a few fairytales that I will be passing down to my own kids:
1.  The Town Musicians of Bremen - the best fairytale ever.  hands down.  forever.
2.  Beauty and the Beast - I don't know how anyone could object to this one, especially the gory original.
3.  Hansel and Gretel - too creepy to deny!
4.  The Little Mermaid - so tragic, so gothic.
5.  The Pied Piper of Hamelin - there's no moral to this story (except... pay the exterminator?).  it's just scary as fuck. 
6.  Puss in Boots - cats!  boots!  what's not to like?  God, I fucking love cats.
7.  The Ugly Duckling - the complete version is gorgeous and heart-wrenching and just, "I'm a swan!  Fuck yeah!"
8.  Thumbelina - cute, mature themes.  how's that for a juxtaposition.
9.  The Red Shoes - hello, traumatizing!  but what an original story.
10.  The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids - one tough mama.  quit your complainin' about absent mothers.
11.  Mother Hulda - preachy, but creepy and impeccably detailed.

Does no one know the song "Track III" off Der Blutharsch's When Did Wonderland End?  As in, no one on the internet?

What the hell.  I'm really not joking when I say it's one of the best songs I've ever heard.  But then again, no one seems to know Der Blutharsch except for this one girl whose shared library I listen to (how I discovered them).  This is a fact that makes me very sad.  I mean just look at this album cover.  Look at the awesome. 


They have albums called Track of the Hunted and Apocalyptic Climax II and When All Else Fails!  I seriously feel at home with them, in that really creepy way, you know, like Picnic at Hanging Rock home and The Serpent and the Rainbow home.  Speaking of zombies, my mother met a student while running the study abroad program in Malang who claimed to have met a zombie in Haiti.  That's crazy shit, but then again, Indonesians believe in little tiny vampires that are probably something like Fiji mermaids, but you never know with Indonesia.  Which is why the title of this post is what it is.  Who escapes hysteria by going to Borneo?  Borneo, home to the world's largest flesh-eating plant?  Who escapes hysteria by going anywhere in Indonesia?  Crazy people, that's who.  People who believe in zombies. 

Anyway, I'm going to do my best to transpose the lyrics, because I bought the song yesterday.

You come to me in the dead of night and I lay your dirty hands upon me
The blood ringing in my ears as you lay beside me now,
your stinking breath, smelling of death and regret
I want you more than I ever did before as I bleed for you
My desire for you is a curse, a scar, a wound which will not heal
I pray to God above to release me from this prison as I go down and I kneel
Your memory of the man I was before and the love I cannot feel
The night is closing in and I know man was born in sin
The woman screams and cries, freshly sees the murder in your eyes,
your journey through darkened skies, your adventure in blood and lies

I have no idea what this song is about, although I have my theories and they are all superlatively awesome.

Okay, speaking of Fiji Mermaids... WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.  No, really.  He actually used a human corpse?  Jesus.  Yeah, no wonder, it's Mexico.  Sorry, Mexico.