In memory of David J. Skal
The almost simultaneous republication of two cinema books written approximately 30 years ago (and out of print for years) in the last moments of 2023 is a good reading feast as well as a suitable opportunity to think about the changes in cinema. Many irreversible events have already occurred in the film industry and unfortunately in our societies. These are two books by two authors who share the same vision in many respects; Comprehensive knowledge not only of the history of cinema but also of the history of art and culture in general, an unbiased vision of all genres, popular culture is the true spirit of an era, and these are, in a way, complementary.
I’m talking about Monster Show. A cultural history of horror in Hollywood (Es Pop Ediciones) by David J. Skal and Satan. A magical cinematic history of Jesús Palacios (Valdemar). The first of these, whose original publication dates back to 1993, was published in our country by Valdemar in 2008. The original edition of the second edition, also written by Valdemar, dates back to 1997. Both, as already mentioned, have not been in circulation for many years, so all that remains is to thank the respective editors for so carefully putting them back. editions are made available to readers.
magic celluloid
Let’s start with the second. I discovered Jesús Palacios (Madrid, 1964) many years ago with his magnificent Alégrame el día (Espasa, 1999). I was a post-adolescent, or whatever it was when they were about to come of age, passionate about cinema, “good” cinema, about understanding each other. You know, among the classics: Hitchcock, Lang, De Sica; Between the Coens, Tarantino, Almodóvar, the moderns of the turn of the century… in short, what is true is not something to be disgraced or ashamed of. And suddenly, like a Trojan horse, Palacios’s book, under the friendly guise of its subtitle – “Hollywood cinema at its best” – shook many of the foundations on which my love of cinema rested. Behind what promised to be a beautiful compilation of quotes from famous films (which it was) hid a series of interpretations, theories, proper names and points of view that were unimaginable to me at the time. The book featured the great names of classical cinema, of course… but there were also, secretly, others unknown to me who promised thrills that were just as exciting as the well-known ones. A book that brought up the names of Billy Wilder, Von Sternberg, or Lubitsch, as well as John Waters, Ed Wood, or Zsa Zsa Gabor, without putting them in the same bag, seemed promising to me, to say the least. Moreover, Palacios not only talked about screenwriters and filmmakers, but also brought us closer to thinkers such as, for example, Oscar Wilde or Camille Paglia. He developed a theory that he called “movies/golem”, which remains daring, and at the same time delved into the joyful, half-secret and playful gay sensibility that structured much of classical cinema, with a festive outlook completely removed from classical cinema. corsets and extremely boring current “gender theories”. The truth is, I never read it again, but that distant reading was an illuminating glimmer that made me realize that there are endless celluloid gods to worship beyond what most movie guides and histories assure me.
Shortly after, I received the first – and I think so far only – print of this Exorcist in Hollywood, now finally recovered (and expanded!) and the love was total. First of all, it was impossible not to fall in love with a book that began with this statement of principle: «This is a book of gossip. “Personally, I believe that gossip is one of the most valuable literary genres of our century, and probably the most entertaining,” he says, then quotes authors such as Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, Kenneth Anger and Anita Loos… certainly This Palacios was a kamikaze, and also an extremely He was brave, funny and intelligent. In the pages of this book, names such as Jiddu Krishnamurti, Andy Warhol, Roman Polanski, Anita Pallenberg, David Bowie, Aleister Crowley, Jayne Mansfield, Anton LaVey or Madame Blavatsky have been heard, exhibited and mixed without any strong prejudices or mysteriousness. names (or rather read) for the first time by my youth.
From that moment on, until today, when man is in his forties and society has aged several centuries in just twenty-five years, Jesús Palacios’s books accompany me and not only discover unknown books, films, authors and genres. but above all by offering always unpublished and clever new perspectives on the same genres, authors, films or books. Fortunately, for those of us who admire him, our favorite film critic does not stop working, and to his many books we must add numerous forewords, journalistic collaborations, contributions to collective works or coordination of thematic books. His bibliography is almost endless, but to cite some of the most recent books he is responsible for, let’s mention titles such as Eroguro: Horror and eroticism in Japanese popular culture (Satori, 2018), Folk Horror: The progenitor of fantasy cinema. (Hermenaute, 2019), Weird Western: Western Cinema Without Borders (Applehead, 2021), The Esoteric Screen: Cinema and Occultism in 50 Films (UOC, 2021) or The Exorcist: The 50th Anniversary Book (Notorious, 2023), published by him Participate in thirty longstreams.
Turning to one of his funniest books, The Devil in Hollywood, it tells a parallel story from the first hundred years of American cinema. In reality, this book is less about the movies and more about the people who make them possible. An entertaining and well-documented tour through Hollywood featuring a handful of directors, writers, musicians, actresses and actors whose lives are connected to a variety of mystical and spiritual movements, from theosophy and spirituality to Scientology and spiritualism in the first decades of the last century. The new era of the nineties towards the wonderful and Luciferian sixties.
The book, as we said, was first published in 1997. Both cinema and society have changed a lot in these years… perhaps too much. That is why the author concludes this new edition with a comprehensive final chapter (“Lilith in Hollywood”) that reviews how Hollywood cinema’s relationship with the mystical and esoteric has changed. In fact, how our entire understanding of reality changes in practice. After the application of digital technologies to almost every aspect of our lives, the absolute and voluntary invasion of privacy by social networks, the emergence of new and increasingly fascinating forms of censorship (or cancellation, to use a terrible euphemism), and the rise of that dark Lovecraftian entity called Artificial Intelligence, some of us are no longer he can do nothing but lament for an age that does not exist. An unholy elegy to summon the souls of Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington, Anton LaVey, David Bowie, Irma Serrano… and finally, all those unrepeatable creators who have died in recent years and were not afraid to explore this world . Unknown mysteries hiding under the veil of Isis. For those who want to embark on this adventure, I can think of no better guide than Jesús Palacios and this highly entertaining Satan from Hollywood; Of course, it was happily reprinted by Valdemar.
Fear and mass culture
A few weeks ago, we were surprised by the news that David J. Skal died in a car accident in Los Angeles. This news caught us off guard and shocked us even more because in November, Skal had proposed a small tour of our country to promote his most famous book, Monster Show. The cultural history of horror has been beautifully republished by Es Pop Ediciones alumnus Óscar Palmer, who was also responsible for the translation.
For some reason that eludes me, at this point fantasy movies (sorry for the redundancy) and horror movies are still viewed with a certain disdain, if not disdain, by some “serious” critics and audiences. It would be annoying if it didn’t slip into the ears of us fans, that classist and boring smell emanating from those (you know who I mean) who believe that they hold absolute truth and have a monopoly on taste. Those who say “I hate reggaetón, I only listen to good music” or those who say “I don’t read comics but I like comics”.
At most, they safely admit that they have enjoyed some horror movies made long enough ago to raise any suspicion (Panther Woman) or other horror movies directed by well-known writers (Psycho). In an even more perverse development, a term has emerged in recent years that yours truly finds despicable: elevated horror, so that these critics and audiences can shamelessly admit that they’re enjoying a terror movie, but not because it’s a horror movie. very scary, but I don’t know, since he talks about “important” issues for a single mother, such as family reconciliation or the integration of immigrants. Since these are films that reflect “current problems” and are not “escape from cinema”, they can easily be claimed by both the most staid critics and the most “determined” viewers. What both genres ignore, however, is that horror movies, since their origins a century ago, have been a thermometer that accurately and faithfully (but fortunately not literally) reflects the traumas, crises, and fears of the moment. they were done.
At least that’s the hypothesis developed by David Skal in this illuminating Monster Show (which we share from here on out). With his encyclopedic knowledge and brilliant writing, Skal reviews the different themes and tropes of horror cinema, from its beginnings in the 1920s to the early 1990s, when this exciting work was first published. And it shows how every major crisis and major change of the 20th century is reflected in these films, often unintentionally but always clearly. Two world wars with millions of dead and disabled; the Great Depression and its devastating famines; the Cold War and the fear of impending doom; the emergence of the consumer society and the cult of technological progress that derived from it; sexual liberation in the sixties and the resulting changes in reproductive traditions; or the brutal AIDS epidemic of the eighties, which (even more) stigmatized and ostracized the gay community, was timely reflected by hundreds of films devoted to the terror, serving as unconscious catharsis for an entire generation of viewers. Creatures such as ghosts, zombies, vampires, serial killers, or cursed dolls have faithfully represented each of the fears arising from these and other situations. And there is nothing better to witness this than to examine without prejudice the five hundred pages of this wonderful work by David J. Skal. They will thank me.