Spirit photography

All of this recent talk about the spirit world has reminded me of the excellent exhibition of spirit photography last year at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The exhibit, cleverly titled The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, featured over 120 photographs from the heyday of spiritualism, illustrating not only the methods of the spirit mediums of the day, but also giving us a look at the infancy of photographic trickery. The exhibit closed in December of 2005, but luckily we still have the catalog published by the Yale University Press entitled, fittingly, The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult. This is a beautiful coffee-table book that collects mere than 250 photos, mostly from the late Victorian era through the 1930s, and is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of spiritualism, photography, or psychic entertainment.

While you’re waiting for your copy to arrive, head over to the American Museum of Photography's online exhibition, Do You Believe: A Ghostly Gallery. It’s a brief but enlightening collection of antique spirit photographs, each accompanied by a short description (when you click on the image).

One can only wonder if 100 years from now anyone will be studying “The Spirit of John Lennon” for insights into our gullibility.

John Lennon sceance

With all of the press leading up to last Monday's pay-per-view special "The Spirit of John Lennon," it's surprising to see so little follow-up about the actual program itself. The majority of reporting about the show has come in the form of a single Reuters story that's been picked up around the globe.

For those unfamiliar with the program, "The Spirit of John Lennon" was a pre-recorded 90 minute special that followed various psychics around the globe in pursuit of contact with the late musician's spirit. During a segment taped at New York's La Fortuna restaurant, one of Lennon's favorites, the video was interrupted and a narrator announced that something strange had happened. Sure enough, when they went back and examined the audio feed of one of the psychics, a ghostly voice was heard. Another "independent" psychic was brought in to examine the recording and confirmed that the voice on the tape was indeed that of John Lennon. And what was John's message from beyond the grave? "Peace... the message is peace."

The show was produced by Starcast Productions, who gave us "The Spirit of Diana" in 2003 which surprisingly failed to contact the Princess but wound up earning an estimated $8 million. No word yet on earnings estimates for the Lennon version.

Current horror trends (continued)

As a follow-up to yesterday's item on ABC/Nightline's analysis of the current trends in horror movies, I give you an article an article by David Edelstein from February 6th: Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex...

Edelstein presents a well-rounded examination of this recent sub-genre, reminding us that Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" fits neatly in with "Hostel" and "The Devil's Rejects."

Unlike the old seventies and eighties hack-’em-ups (or their jokey remakes, like Scream), in which masked maniacs punished nubile teens for promiscuity (the spurt of blood was equivalent to the money shot in porn), the victims here are neither interchangeable nor expendable. They range from decent people with recognizable human emotions to, well, Jesus.

I might go so far as to suggest that Gibson's film helped pave the way for many of the current wave of shockers to get made and released.

Also interesting is the way Edelstein connects 9/11 and its aftermath to our appetite for these films.

Post-9/11, we’ve engaged in a national debate about the morality of torture, fueled by horrifying pictures of manifestly decent men and women (some of them, anyway) enacting brutal scenarios of domination at Abu Ghraib. And a large segment of the population evidently has no problem with this.

I can certainly buy the argument that the constant coverage of the Abu Ghraib tortures and the debate which followed have brought the topic of torture out into the open, in many ways desensitizing us to the idea. If shock-filmmakers still intend to shock us, they now need to compete with the hostage beheading videos on the internet.

Finally, Edelstein admits with Nightline never will:

I am complicit in one sense, though. I’ve described all this freak-show sensationalism with relish, enjoying—like these filmmakers—the prospect of titillating and shocking. Was it good for you, too?

Horror films in the spotlight (again)

It was another good weekend for horror. The new film "Silent Hill" opened in the number one spot at the U.S. box office, taking in over $20 million, with "Scary Movie 4" coming in at number two with $17 million in its second week of release. These box office successes come on the heels of several other critically panned but profitable horror hits such as "Cabin Fever," "Wolf Creek," "Hostel," and the "Saw" series.

Seems like we're going through the latest wave of horror popularity, and the media is taking notice. ABC's "Nightline Online" today features a story on the increasing level of violence in these films accompanied by a video piece called "Hollywood Blood Lust," which marks the debut of their new 'videocast' feature.

Obviously, the title "Hollywood Blood Lust" could be more accurately titled "America's Blood Lust," as both pieces reinforce the fact that the movie studios only continue to make these films because they're popular with viewers, especially the youth market. There's a bit of cursory analysis of what societal factors may be causing the renewed interest in the genre with the obvious blame going to terrorism and the war in Iraq. This is clearly a convenient and lazy conclusion. The fact is that every few years there's another resurgence of interest in horror, and with the advancement of effects technology, and filmmakers looking to ratchet up the shock-factor, each new wave of movies appears to be more graphic and violent than the generation before (with the recent wave of Japanese remakes being a notable exception). And every few years another round of shallow reporting attempts connect the popularity of these films with the breakdown of society.

This type of sensational fear-based journalism satisfies the same "Blood Lust" for adults as the movies do for their kids.