Week 4: New Weird

What is “weird”? Before reading From Hell, I had anticipated a historical fiction graphic novel that simply focused around the story of Jack the Ripper. The only previous knowledge I had of it was the film adaptation that I had watched many years ago. Upon reading, I quickly learned how loosely adapted it was.

   In From Hell, Prince Albert Victor weds and fathers a child with a girl from London’s East End known as Annie. To cover up this scandal, Queen Victoria separates Annie from Albert and has her sentenced to a mental institute, where her royal physician, Dr. Gull, impairs Annie’s sanity. A group of prostitutes discover the secrets of this scandal and attempt to use it as blackmail against the crown. Dr. Gull then begins to kill off these prostitutes, not only to suppress an illuminati threat, but also to ensure male dominance through mystical ritual.

     This historical fiction story reels in a more science fiction element, bringing out it’s “weird” quality, playing with the idea of time. Visions and prophecies are constantly recurring throughout the narrative, in the prologue, Lees tells Abberline how all his visions were false, yet they still came true.

    “What is the fourth dimension?”.  

   As Dr. Gull murders his last victim, he has visions of the future, where the art takes us away from Victorian London to a more modern setting of skyscrapers and businessmen on their computers. As he dies, his soul transcends through the past and future, inspiring other serial killers and visiting those that escaped him and aided him of his murders.  Dr. Gull is portrayed as an extremely misogynist character that believes women had ruled over men for some time:

   “Women had power once: Back in the caves, life hinged on childbirth’s mystery, and we served mother goddesses, not father gods, ‘twas thus for several million years. Then men rebelled, perhaps a few at first, a small conspiracy.. who, by some act of social magic, politics, or force, cast woman down that man might rule. Time passed, and kingdoms passed from father unto son. The matriarchy was forgotten.”

   During his vision on his death, Dr. Gull believes to have become God and has ensured male dominance throughout the twentieth century.  

       “And this perplexing vision is the last thing that I see as I become God.”

Week 3: Asian Horror

   Reading Kwaidan introduced me to the Asian horror genre, that I was originally unfamiliar with, besides a very few films I might have seen over my lifespan. Asian literature is much more new to me, especially the structure of their culture and take on morality, whereas Western culture is almost on a completely different spectrum. Rather than just viewing good and evil as black and white, their idea of morality covers the grey. 

   In the one of the short stories found in Kwaidan, Jikininki, a priest named Muso was travelling alone in the mountains and lost his way. Along his path he comes across a hermitage where an aged priest lives. When Muso begged for lodging, the priest refused him, but redirected him to a nearby village where he may obtain food and lodging. At the village, he encounters a funeral and decides to perform the service for this death to express his gratitude for hosts' generous hospitality. Overnight, as he performs the service, he encounters a flesh eating monster that consumes the deceased body. After this event, Muso learns from his host that the priest he encountered earlier does not actually exist. He then returned o the hermitage and found the priest once more and discovers that he is actually a jikininki -- an eater of human flesh. Due to his greed and selfishness during his life as a priest he was reborn this way and cursed to feed off all the deceased of that district. He then seeks Muso's pity to pray for him and release him from this state, which Muso does.

   This short story is a good example to demonstrate the difference between Asian horror and Western horror. Here, the jikininki is a pitiful monster that isn't truly evil yet also not truly good. He only feasts upon the deceased and when Muso first asked for shelter, rather than killing (or eating) him, he kindly redirects him to where he may find lodging and food. He even begs for Muso to free him from his state, his only sin is that he was greedy and selfish. In the end, it is suggested that he finds peace thanks to Muso's services. In a more Western take, the jikininki would have leaned much more towards evil on the morality scale and appear less pitiful and more grotesque, especially since our sense of morality is highly influenced by Christianity, which is more strict in those rules.