glahnstack 7
A glance at A Christmas Carol
The Passions of Carol (1975) lightly adapts A Christmas Carol but there is not much dialogue at all. Other than a drag queen Ghost of Christmas Present the movie is 90% full penetration while orchestral Christmas classics play. I never expected the rare feeling I had watching two mouths sucking the Native American from Predator's penis (he is an Elvis impersonator here) while The Exorcist’s “Tubular Bells” played. Somehow it reduced the vulgarity of the sexual act to the point of being quite festive. It turned into a 70s Maxwell House “Good to the Last Drop” commercial except with a large penis entering in a "seated spoon" or "champagne room" position that lasted so long my mind disassociated the sexual act altogether and it was like watching some repetitive machinery like those rocking horse pumpjacks bobbing for oil. After a while, I could almost feel the falling snow.
Is “Tubular Bells” a Christmas song? I guess it possibly is in a way.
I had just read Powys’ essay on Dickens where he discusses the author not touching sexual intercourse at all. His works are almost entirely sexless. Critics of the time said he was melodramatic. They still do. They say he exaggerates his characters to preposterous qualities. He is almost like a man that puberty didn't fully disenchant who still has a magic wand to paint the world as it really is: a sort of horror cartoon.
If he didn't conquer nature's incantation of puberty fully he at least reflected some of its design. Thackeray is all but forgotten trying to paint things "as they are" but the world is not as it should be so the audience wants it as it isn't. They like it as a cartoon, sure, but one with a little less horror.
And that is fun. Sure, the odd young lady reading in the woods is not a witch and that man over there is not a goblin but spiritually they might as well be. And it is fun to think of them as so. That is why Dickens' man-child wand has a compelling power. It is like a merry animism. Directing your own vision onto the foul world around you until it is a fantasy worth living in.
This was Scrooge's problem. He was a realist. A Thackeray. Facts and only facts like the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind who refused all fairy tales and objects of fancy from his classroom and household. Allowing no room for the sweet Witch-Hag Mystery to twiddle her gnarled fingers. "Fact, Fact, Fact!" said the gentleman. And "Fact, Fact, Fact!" repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
Poor young Scrooge with no friends except for books. A terribly cruel father. His sister Fan, who loved him unconditionally, died in childbirth. And as for Belle. A loving wife could fall out of love and leave. She could grow old and boring, too. Money had no emotion. It was arithmetic. Scrooge was neglected by man so why should he not neglect mankind?
But the childhood books kept something alive that the fear of the world could not kill. The Ali Baba. Robinson Crusoe. Compared to the likes of the Cratchits (excepting Tim) Scrooge was so much more advanced, even as a miser. Who wouldn't choose Scrooge over that stump Bob Cratchit? Once angered he could be incredibly funny and witty. Early Scrooge, contemptible Scrooge, is even more cruel and hilarious after several readings. His true self was so sore inside that swollen puppet.
Scrooge's transformation into euphoric brilliance was bound to happen. The seed of fantasy was planted. The Ghosts were there only to tickle the last raw nerve. He was primed to pop. Dickens was said to have laughed and wept while writing the story under the duress of financial misfortune. After underlining "The End" several times upon completion, he "made himself merry" just as his most well-known character - like a Madman.
Some letters of Dickens were found ten years ago suggesting that Dickens was attempting to have his wife Catherine locked away in a mental asylum. Supposedly it was because he was in love with an eighteen year old actress. She was his fresh new stimulant and, as all of us well know, those are always a Faustian bargain. Always a “muse” will come back to haunt your ass much worse than a Christmas phantom. Ideally, this occurs after we are in the cemetery.
Recently, another author's exploits were discovered (luckily he was in the churchyard). But I never liked the idea of a perfect creator just as I despise the idea of a perfect god. Creation is an act of the defiled trying to right things. Not merely societal wrongs but an author overcoming his own shortcomings. Any god has to be a failure in his own "kingdom." Every creator has a Lucifer and multiple demons, his universe strewn with several failed projects.
There would be no need of imagination in a perfect world. Nor would there need to be such a thing as art. So here we are. And there, crazed on Christmas morning, is Ebenezer Scrooge. And there is Dickens writing book after book. His DNA pulling him one way and his imagination like a rebelling angel haunting him in the night, shaking its chains saying, "None of that is you! Forget all that. You are good! You are good!"