This is it...The final week of our very first Halloween celebration.

 

 

On this last week before Halloween, I thought I’d take us back into the realm of fiction and fantasy with a look at the Harry Potter franchise. (The Walter Mercado book has the slight problem of not being Halloween-y enough, but at least I had the germ of this post’s idea bubbling away in the back of my head.)

When the first book came out in, oh, 1999/2000 or so, I hadn’t read it until Christmas of that year, so as usual I was a bit out-of-step compared to the rest of the world…about all I remember is one or two kids dressing up as him for Halloween at Central Junior High.

It’s not a very awe-inspiring start, is it? Oh, dear me…Ask me anything about Doctor Who and I’ll yammer on until your head explodes, but ask me about Harry Potter and I’ve got little to say. 

For me, the books are a good but unmemorable read, but they sparked a renaissance of “realistic fantasy” that still resonates today—I need only bring up Once Upon a Time, Warehouse 13, and Steven Moffat’s present-day take on Doctor Who as examples. All of these shows combine magical elements with modern, real-world sensibilities, and J.K. Rowling’s books are kind of a trend-setter in this light. There were other, similar works, but Harry Potter is the first mainstream example of “magical realism” done consistently.

Perhaps the series’ impact is greatest on film. The Harry Potter movie franchise took the then-unprecedented step of allowing its characters and actors to age in real-time. The filmmakers and executives at Warner Bros. should be applauded for their faith in the source material, but keep in mind that there almost wasn’t a series. The original approach, per the first movie’s DVD extras, would have been a “greatest hits” reel from the first three books, condensed into Harry Potter: The Movie. When this just didn’t work, everyone said “Okay, let’s just adapt the first book straight and see what happens.” (Interesting side note: Harry Potter’s then-competitor, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, attempted this approach and suffered as a result.)

Adapting each book turned out to be a good decision, because the books start out as a lighthearted children’s series with slightly dark overtones, but things get dark starting around Book 3 (I maintain that this third book is the midpoint of the series, the “grey area.”) People that you’ve come to identify with start dying and not even magic can bring them back. By the final book, the “chosen boy” has grown into a young man running for his life, and the world that once loved and revered him has turned against him.

A lesser series might not have moved past the lightweight fantasy, but Harry Potter stands out as a hallmark of the New Millennium for never talking down to its readers.

Welcome back for Week 2 of our Halloween celebration!

This week’s artifact:

In 1998 and 1999, the “end of the world” was on everybody’s mind…I sorely wish I had saved Charles Grant’s Millennium Quartet for Halloween, because those four books would have been perfect. As a result, the 16^th Century prophet Nostradamus briefly overtook the mighty Pikachu in terms of media saturation, because you could find Nostradamus magazines on your local supermarket’s tabloid rack, Nostradamus documentaries on cable, and scholarly works on Nostradamus’ prophecies on the shelves of bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.  

Why was everybody so interested in some old geezer from four hundred years ago? Well, for one thing, his prophecies are accurate and kind of eerie. Also, the craze started in October, which meant that it was about time for a couple of good scares. As Stephen King once pointed out, horror always works best when it taps into a specific cultural mood. (The Prophecies are in the public domain, too, which meant that you could practically print your own money if you spiced it up with enough fire and brimstone!)

Now that our introductions are made, let’s move on to some of the prophecies. Please note that all citations refer to the Damon Wilson book, which I found at Oak Lawn’s public library.

Doomsday, July 1999:

In the year 1999 and seven months,

From the sky will come the great King of terror.

Resurrecting the great King of Angolmois.

Before and after Mars will reign happily.

(p. 428)

“Year 1999” and “seven months,” that’s July 1999. Easy enough. But what to make of the “great King of terror” coming from the sky? Damon Wilson doesn’t quite know what to make of it, but I remember reading in a large art-book called Little Boy: The Art of Japan’s Exploding Subculture something about a Nostradamus craze hitting Japan in the mid-70s/80s. In that book, there was a passage about the “Great King of Fright

Perplexed about the “Great King of Terror” though he is, Wilson explains “the great King of Angolmois” on page 429: he suggests that Angolmois is an anagram of the French word for “Mongols.” “King of Mongols” is therefore a reference to Genghis Khan, who butchered hundreds of thousands during his reign in the thirteenth century.

"Before and after Mars will reign happily:” Mars, of course, is the god of war in the Roman pantheon.

So, on July 1999, “the great king of terror” will come from the sky, and from this Genghis Khan will be resurrected (figuratively—it means that we’ll see a leader who will kill as many as Genghis Khan did), and that the 21^st Century will be a time of war. The past thirteen years have proven him accurate. So far, so good…Let’s take a look at his other millennium prophecies.

The Millennium Bug, Midnight 31 December 1999

That which lives but has no senses,

Will cause its own death through artifice:

Autun, Chalan, Langres and the two Sens,

Hail and ice cause great damage.

(p. 452)

“That which lives but has no senses…” Oh, that’s me, obviously—“where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling.” (I kid, I kid.)

Seriously, now: Damon Wilson’s notes suggest that the first line is Nostradamus’ prediction in 16^th Century terms of the modern computer, and that “death through artifice” is a prediction of the Millennium Bug (452). (“Death through artifice”…I like that. Nostro, old bean, I think you might have predicted a heavy metal album.) The artifice in question could be—and this is my own conjecture—a reference to the idea that computers would go from 1999 to 1900 instead of 2000, and this is where all the hubbub came from.

“Autun, Chalan [sic], Langres, and the two Sens” refers to communes in France. (add external source)

Nostradamus’ reference to these communes quite frankly puzzles me. Is there a connection that I’m missing?

“Hail and ice cause great damage.” No-o-o…you think? Somehow, I don’t think this is to be taken literally. Instead, we have to look at this as a figure of speech. “Hail and ice” = “freezing,” or “things going cold/stopping.” With the “2000/1900” shift in the world’s computers, it was thought that everything from planes to nuclear power plants to stock exchanges would go dead…and, by extension, society itself. The made-for-TV movie Y2K: The Movie ramped up these fears to include pacemakers stopping. Granted, it was predicted to be that bad for a while, but thankfully our best computer technicians prepared for the event.

Nostradamus also predicted that a series of natural disasters would plague us in the coming century.

For forty years the rainbow will not appear,

For forty years it will appear every day:

The dry earth will grow more parched,

And there will be great floods when it is seen.

(p.453)

“For forty years…” For heavens’ sake, man, make up your mind! I will admit that things have been pretty inconstant, especially within the last couple of years. The first two lines, of course, refer to the story of Noah’s Ark, in which God flooded the earth for forty days and forty nights and left behind a rainbow as a kind of peace offering.

This prediction could, on the one hand, be a literal prediction of bad weather to come. On the other hand, it also makes sense if you consider that Noah was one of the first (if not the first) “doomsday prepper.” Y2K survival kits were big sellers around 1999, as were generators, guns, etc., and there was an awful lot of talk about preparing for the coming apocalypse. (Never mind that a community of people would get more mileage out of their combined supplies by sharing and pooling their resources…but then again societal collapse is almost always portrayed as once-friendly neighbors suddenly waging war against each other.)

Nostradamus made several other predictions about natural disasters, but since they’re mostly variations on a theme I’ll skip over them in favor of more interesting territory…These next passages seem to predict nuclear catastrophe.

By heat like the sun upon the sea,

Around Negrepont the fish are half broiled.

The inhabitants will cut them up,

When Rhodes, and Genoa are in want of biscuits.

(p.456)

“According to Erica Cheetham, ‘Negrepont’ is the Italian name for the island of Ruboea [sic]” (Wilson 456). Damon, you silly goose, you meant “Euboea” when you said “Ruboea.”

Anyway…Euboea is a Greek island out in the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. I wonder: Do the locations Nostradamus references hold any significant meaning, or is he just using them as examples? I’m inclined to think that he says “Euboea” because Greece has a very warm climate, and anything that makes the already warm water hot enough to broil the fish in the sea is cause for alarm. The image of dead, half-broiled fish floating up to the surface is extremely unsettling.

Now: What causes “heat like the sun upon the sea?” Obviously not the sun itself, but then the sun is a gigantic fusion reactor, which means that Nostradamus is trying to explain a nuclear meltdown. Remember that movie, The China Syndrome? It gets its title from the image of a reactor going into meltdown, becoming a superheated glob, melting a hole in the earth, and “digging to China” like in the cartoons.

“The inhabitants will cut them up/When Rhodes, and Genoa are in want of biscuits”—In a time of starvation (“in want” here means “lacking”), these fish are not going to market anytime soon. In fact, Damon Wilson suggests that this might be one step of a clean-up operation (456).

From Monaco as far as Sicily,

All the sea coast will be left desolate:

There shall be no suburbs, cities nor towns,

Which will not be pillaged and ravaged by Barbarians.

(p. 457)

This is it: the end of the world. There are neither cities nor towns because everything has been pounded to rubble, perhaps in some nuclear accident or attack. Barbarians are not out pillaging and ravaging because a) even the most ruthless barbarian should be smart enough not to go into a radioactive wasteland; b) there’s nothing left to pillage and ravage; and/or c) everyone—yes, even the barbarians—has died.

Nostradamus’ predictions about future warfare are even more chilling.

When a fish that is both terrestrial and aquatic,

By a great wave is thrown upon the shore:

With its strange, smooth, and horrible shape,

From the sea the enemies soon reach the walls.

(p.460)

Commentators have suggested that this “fish” could be a beached submarine or some kind of undersea missile (461), but I, in a more playful and macabre mood, would venture to say that Nostradamus got a vision of Pacific Rim. All four lines, especially the last two, sound a lot like the Kaiju devastating the human world. Let it not be said that I am out of touch with current events. For those of you who might not have gotten a chance to see this wonderful, wonderful movie, go out and buy it on DVD. You’ll be glad you did!

Ennosigee fire from the centre of the earth,

Will cause the new city to tremble.

Two great rocks will war on each other for a long time,

Then Arethuse will redden a new river.

(p.462)

Now, this one is properly chilling, or at least it will be with some explanation. “‘Ennosigee’ in the first line is probably a distortion of the Greek word ‘ennosigaeus,’ meaning ‘earth-shaker’” (462). “The new city” is fairly vague, but many take it to mean New York City…which becomes alarming when you take 9/11 into account. “Two great rocks…” Perhaps this means America vs. the Middle East (Iraq/“a rock”? Sorry; bad pun, I know).

“‘Then Arethuse…’” I’m not sure what to make of this allusion. It could be a reference to the nymph of Greek mythology, whose legend is often conflated with the story of Artemis (man approaches her while she’s bathing; she kills him), but “it might be a cross between Aries [sic] (the Greek god of war), and the letters ‘USA’” (462-3). Unlikely, but since the last line refers to something fairly obscure, anyone’s guess is as good as mine.

I should point out that when this book was published in 1999, an attack like 9/11 was practically unthinkable to so many of us. If that’s what Nostradamus was thinking of, then he must have had a hell of a gift.

With that, I think I’ll stop here, as the predictions I’ve supplied are the only ones that I can really connect to the Millennium.



The Millennium Museum is haunted!

For the first time ever, the forgotten ghosts of the year 2000 have gathered within the halls of the Millennium Museum. As I type these very words, they're roaming around, working their Halloween magic. It's kind of chilly in here...there are spider webs everywhere, and the sounds of wailing and clanking chains fill the exhibits. Don't worry--it's all part of the milieu. Perfectly harmless.

And--oh, look! They left behind a custom logo, the first of its kind!

I now declare the Halloween festivities well and truly begun! Come with me, if you dare...

Okay, I will make my confession right now: I have yet to see The Blair Witch Project. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, because I’m here to explain how it fits into the overall Millennium puzzle, not to provide a detailed review of it. I haven’t seen it, that’s true, but I have done some research on it, and from that I’ve gained a pretty good insight on its significance.

The first thing to remember is that Blair Witch was the first successful “found-footage” movie released in the United States. Up to Blair Witch’s release in 1999, horror movies were by and large slickly produced, multi-million dollar projects with celebrity casts and creative teams. Also, most of the releases tended to be franchise-based, such as the Scream series and Halloween H₂O (I know it’s supposed to be “Halloween 20 Years Later,” but…honestly, a casual glance would suggest that it would have something to do with water), or even remakes, such as House on Haunted Hill 1999 (although I suspect that was the only one in the 90s—I don’t quite count Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, because those are fairly highbrow literary adaptations). 

Blair Witch, on the other hand, was something moviegoers had never seen before…or since. It was a small movie made on the cheap, with jittery camcorder work and not one star to its name. None of that means it’s of lesser quality by any means. Its lack of star power and finesse added to its mystique and made the horror that much more intense…because there are no big-deal names, there’s no safe “curtain call” at the end. You’re left thinking, “My God…was that actually real?”

The second thing to remember is that it set off a new subgenre of horror in America: the “found-footage” drama. I mentioned already the tension of “real” and “not real” on a purely technical level, but the key premise is that we’re watching a documentary in which real college students accidentally uncover something ancient and terrible…and real. Earlier movies claimed inspiration from true stories, but Blair Witch upped the ante by having that true story actually unfold before us.  It gained a legion of successors, including the wildly popular Paranormal Activity series and J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield.

The third thing to remember is that it was one of the first multimedia experiences and one of the first movies to take advantage of the Internet as a storytelling device. There was a book (The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier), a series of young-adult novels, and a viral marketing campaign that influenced how movies are advertised. In an article about social media campaigns, Forbes said of Blair Witch, “The marketers behind this horror flick were able to generate big buzz for a movie with a teeny budget by using Web sites and message boards to stoke interest in the flick months before its release in the summer of 1999. Was the story of young documentary makers lost in the woods true or false? Fake newspaper clippings about the disappearance of the movie’s main characters and police photos of their missing car were posted[i].” Keep in mind—and I’ve said this before, when I reviewed My History is America’s History—that 1999 was the infancy of the Internet, and using it to advertise on Blair Witch’s scale needed a lot of creativity. This was before Facebook, before Youtube, before just about everything we take for granted today.

The movie’s Wikipedia article also mentions a trilogy of computer games[i]. While licensed tie-in games were by this point nothing new, these were unique in that, again, they were pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle. According to the article, they took place before the events of the movie (the first game took place in 1941; the second, during the Civil War; the third, during the era of the Salem Witch Trials), and shine light on some of the central movie’s unexplained mysteries. (Whether or not this is a good thing depends on one’s determination to finish the puzzle…some of the explanations are downright horrifying.)

Needless to say, I don’t remember very much of The Blair Witch Project at all, except that it was a very popular theme for Halloween gatherings for about a year or so. I do remember the figurine of the Witch herself, released by McFarlane Toys. Let’s just say that she won’t grace the cover of Maxim any time soon. As I said, though, it sparked the public’s imagination, and just…faded away. Who knows? Maybe the Museum will spark new interest in it. 

One thing’s for sure: She and all the other forgotten ghosts of 2000 can make themselves at home in the Museum. That's why it exists in the first place: it's a home for a forgotten year.

---

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project_(video_games)

---

[i] http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/17/facebook-old-spice-farmville-pepsi-forbes-viral-marketing-cmo-network-social-media_slide.html