I began a new temp job today, working for this place that scans documents into the computer. Two kinds of documents, it seems. On the one hand, they do health care billing forms - HCFAs, UB92s and the like. On the other, they scan the forms filled out when you return shit to the Gap. Having worked these sorts of jobs before, having large amounts of personal information fly before my eyes (today I scanned around 6000 of the Gap forms, each with name, address, phone number) has made me devise my ingenious serial killer plan - to be the guy who uses his random data processing jobs to pick his victims, bouncing from assignment to assignment and victim to victim. It's brilliant - there'd be no connection between the victims, so you couldn't get traced that way. Plus, it'd be a great commentary on something. So I guess it's better for a book. Or I could start dancing naked in the middle of the night, screaming "I am Christ!"
There's a guy at the job who looks like Fred Leuchter, which is creepy. He doesn't have the accent, though, so I don't think it's him, unless he's thoroughly de-mass-holed himself. At the Tivoli I saw The Weather Underground, a decent documentary, and in the theater lobby there was a stand up cardboard cutout (like those of stormtroopers and Han Solo) of Robert McNamara advertising The Fog of War. When I was picking up Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Survival in Auschwitz at Subterranean Books, in between lost and forlorn gazes at the pretty, pale cashier with an enormous and alluring red afro, I saw a flyer advertising a preview of Fog on Wednesday, which I'll try to go see.
Errol Morris' theory is that people create these narratives of their lives, that they imagine themselves as protagonists in some drama. Fred Leuchter saw himself as a champion of a controversial cause when he thought he'd disproved the Holocaust. Morris said that while Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan had as its thesis that anybody can be a hero, the thesis of Mr. Death, the Leuchter documentary, was much more interesting, that anybody can think himself a hero.
After seeing Capturing the Friedmans, I think that some people feel the need to create stories about their life that are nothing but suffering. Put in here the people with memories of recovered abuse. Put in here that girl I once knew who had a weekly relationship drama with a guy whom we all discovered later had no relationship with her at all. The key elements are horrible trauma and a complete disconnection with reality. Think of those awful tales of completely innocent parents who have to deal with children they love who now have fallen into the notion that the parents horribly abused them once upon a time.
I also put in here those people who tell tales of alien abduction and rape. I've always loved these stories. They've kinda peaked in popularity, though. The archetypical big head big eyes grey skin alien became a logo. The X-Files and Perfect Dark. I have been reading tales of the much less hep kind of alien abduction, the ones that involve giant lizards. It's funny, but there really is a bias against these stories in the alien abduction community. These people have standards? But I guess they do. Anyway, Whitley Strieber really set off the grey-style explosion. After digging through the video vault in the basement, I pulled up an old copy of Communion, which was alright but not as scary as I'd remembered it. Though its extended hypnosis sequence got me thinking about the connection between that and the recovered memories of sexual abuse.
I couldn't find, unfortunately, The UFO Incident: The Barney and Betty Hill Story. This is a TV movie starring James Earl Jones as the Barney half of the biracial masshole couple who set the standard way back in the day for the alien abduction scenario. They had all the classic elements that would feature in episodes of Unsolved Mysteries in years to come. They had "missing time." They had big eyed aliens. They had medical examinations. In the tv movie, Barnard Hughes even puts 'em under hypnosis to tell their stories.
In reading up on the lizardmen, who tend to be associated with a hollow earth and are sometimes Nazis, I was struck by how much of a crossover with occultism there was. I guess I always knew that aliens and UFOs and the lot were always caught up in New Age type bullshit, but had never thought about it. Always a fan of context, I began to wonder if what these people experienced, at least what the non-outright-fakers, would be comparable to the fabled mystical experience. That is, they're all just pomo William Blakes. It's just that God is a lot less fashionable of a holy thing than Willy from V pumping your gramma full of cold, cold, reptilian gism, so nobody cares.
I don't fully understand how people make the leap to believing in utterly bizarre, completely fanciful tales that explain their lives as unending torment. But I think it's fascinating. I am a bit of a misery junkie, though. Which reminds me that I would very much like to read a book or see a movie which portrays a female victim of domestic abuse as perversely adoring the abuse. Last year we had Monster and, even better, Thirteen, giving us excellent and engrossing tales of female self-destruction, so I think the time is right. Maybe this could be worked into a Hamlet or something? Oh well, until that day arrives, I'll just have to satisfy myself reading Jim Goad and watching Seventh Heaven.
But I know that Ruthie's huffing household cleaning products when nobody's looking.
Extra Credit Assignment (+15): Identify the serial killer referenced in the first graf.
Posted by mattb at February 09, 2004 06:52 PM