§1.0 - Points 1.0–1.13:
THIS BLOG'S CONTENTS: 1.1 - THIS BLOG'S TITLE:
1.2 - PART VI. CHANGELINGS, TROGS (GOLEMS), MOTHERHOOD AND THE MASSACRES OF WHITE CHRISTIANS IN THE FILMS: 'THE HOLE IN THE GROUND, PREMIERED AT THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 25 JANUARY 2019, 90 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY LEE CRONIN', 'THE PIT, 23 OCTOBER 1981, 101 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY LEW LEHMAN' AND 'JUG FACE, 23 JANUARY 2013, PREMIERED AT THE SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, 81 MINUTES', DIRECTED BY CHAD CRAWFORD KINKLE'—A BLOG, 25 AUGUST 2024, BY CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY /
1.3 - THIS BLOG'S LISTED SECTIONS AND NUMBERED POINTS:
1.4 - §2.0: Points 2.0–2.12: DISCLAIMER /
1.5 - §3.0: Points 3.0–3.2: DATES OF RESEARCH, WRITING AND PUBLICATION /
1.6 - §4.0: Points 4.0–4.22: "YOU ARE NOT MY SON." /
1.7 - §5.0: Points 5.0–5.15: BUT A SINGLE MOTHER CAN LIVE WITH HER CHILD /
1.8 - §6.0: Points 6.0–6.13: ONLY ONE CONNECTION TO THE TRUTH AND AN INCREDIBLE ONE AT THAT /
1.9 - §7.0: Points 7.0 –7.16: SURVEILLING THE CHANGELING'S CHANGES /
1.10 - §8.0: Points 8.0–8.15: REGARDING PATHETIC FALLACY AND FIGURES OF THE UNDER-WORLD IN THE FILM /
1.11 - §9.0: Points 9.0–9.25: COMPARISONS MADE TO THE FILM: 'THE PIT, 23 OCTOBER 1981, 101 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY LEW LEHMAN' AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE TROG'S SYMBOLISM /
1.12 - §10.0: Points 10.0–10.25: A FURTHER COMPARISON TO THE FILM: 'JUG FACE, 23 JANUARY 2013, PREMIERED AT THE SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, 81 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY CHAD CRAWFORD KINKLE' /
1.13 - §11.0: Points 11.0 –11.18: SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN /
+++§2.0 - THE DISCLAIMER—Refer to Points 2.0–2.11, directly beneath.
2.1 - All rights reserved © Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia. 2.2 - Changing the content or re-publishing this blog is strictly prohibited. 2.3 - This blog is protected by the: 2.4 - Privacy Act 1988 of Australia, against unauthorized access to Craig Steven Joseph Lacey's Samsung Galaxy A05s, and Google account; 2.5 - Cybercrime Act 2001 of Australia, against computer fraud or internet fraud; 2.6 - Copyright Act 1968 of Australia, against intellectual property theft; 2.7 - Universal Copyright Convention, circa 1952; 2.8 - Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 9 September 1886. 2.9 - Fines and/or prosecution will apply according to Australian and International law in reference to unauthorised access and use of this blog published through the Blogger app of Google.com and the author's storage device(s) with the data. 2.10 - A total of four images have been used within this blog. 2.11 - At directly beneath points: 4.10; 5.17; 7.3; 8.2 and 10.5, the last being a single image of a composite of three film-stills from: Jug Head, 23 January 2013, 81 minutes, directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle.
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§3.0 - DATES OF RESEARCH, WRITING AND PUBLICATION—Refer directly beneath to the points 3.0–3.3.
3.1 - This blog was started at 19.08.2024 and completed 25.08.2024, as researched and composed only by Craig Steven Joseph Lacey at Brisbane City, Queensland, Australia, 4000. 3.2 - Word count: 6,802 and characters count: 40,002. 3.3 - Last up-dated: 23:58, Australian Eastern Standard Time, 25.08.2024.
§4.0 - "YOU ARE NOT MY SON."—Refer directly beneath to the points 4.0–4.22.
4.1 - In the Irish film:
4.2 -
The Hole In The Ground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 25 January 2019, 90 minutes, directed by Lee Cronin, through the production companies: Savage Productions; Wrong Men; Made; Irish Film Board; Bankside Films; Wallimage; VOO; Be TV; BNP Paribas; Fortis Film Finance; Head Gear Films; Metrol Technology; Broadcasting; Authority of Ireland; Finnish Film Foundation:
4.3 - a single mother's relation to her young male child is scrutinized as a relation that proves to be the inversion of the film already extensively critiqued through my blogger site:
4.4 -
You Are Not My Mother, 13 September 2021, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, 93 minutes, directed by Kate Dolan, through the production company: Fantastic Films. 4.5 - Quite literally, regarding this film the mother, Sarah O'Neill, acted by Seána Kerslake, exclaims to Chris O'Neill, acted by James Quinn Markey: "you are not my son."
4.6 - As the film unfolds the changeling son, "Chris", begins to exhibit behaviours dissimilar to a child per se, despite his exact resemblance to Sarah's real ten year old son.
4.7 - How can the audience believe the film's continual "revelations" as anything but the portrayal of her "delusion"?
4.8 - The suspension of disbelief is on Sarah's side as the film's protagonist whose perspective is the focal point of the narration, and while meagre information is revealed regarding her character's personal history, Sarah is portrayed as a mother compelled to protect the safety and interests of her boy, to commend her as being a moral enough person.
4.9 - As a mother whose suspicions of an impostor son must be believed by the audience through a sympathetic identification, the so-called scrutiny must reveal an unbiased methodology of parental-based detection, or else the mother is deemed an uncaring woman who has turned against the naturalness of motherhood to dæmonize her own child.
4.10 - Sympathy is possibly most evinced from the audience in reference to the frustration of Sarah's circumstances: for even if she finds evidence to prove her intuitions correct, against such a thing as an impostor son, who can really help?
4.11 -
The sense of isolation of the home and occurrences are as a "vignette event", where it could be the case none of it happened anyway.
4.12 - Isolation is a subject that has received an earlier filmic treatment set within contemporary Ireland:
4.13 -
Isolation, 11 September 2005, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, 95 minutes, directed by Billy O'Brien, through the production companies: Film Four, Lions Gate Films and The Irish Film Board. 4.14 - Experimentation of a genetic type of grotesque inhumanity, on an isolated farm in which hybridized cows and humans are bred—possibly as a variation to the minotaur myth—is of the science-fiction, horror genre category, separate to this film directed by Lee Cronin that meets the possibly over-general criteria for the genre of the 'super-natural / psychological thriller'.
4.15 - The psychology that emerges from the mother–son family unit regards its existence without a father as still supposedly a scenario that is of the "shock of the new", particularly in reference to this film that involves a film script without a direct mention of the father, to suggests both the mother and son wish to move on and forget him.
4.16 - That dissociation is proven reasonable enough when Sarah's treating physician pulls back her fringe to reveal a large scar across her forehead, indicated as caused by the now absent husband.
4.17 - To a greater extent the question that is posed by the film is:
how can the son ever really be known, when the father is omitted and, it would appear, to be forgotten? 4.18 - The boy's identity remains under question by lighting and visual techniques, as the diffused light found throughout the film as captured by Tom Comerford's cinematography is contrasted to dark silhouettes or partially visible forms of spaces, such as the home's interior or the forest, and an almost monochromatic lens that reveals a white light reminiscent of the moon's luminosity, visible also during day-time scenes.
4.19 - Refer to the film-still directly beneath in which Chris's figure is cast in to shadow such as to present the enigma of his transformed self, against the light streaming in through the window's curtains.
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4.20 - That question, at point 4.17, of course, is asked in the absence of the husband, who may have disappeared in a "puff of cloud", as that great, awful dæmon, Mephistopheles, always seems to do when he is about to receive his come-uppance, viz. for such matters as organizing the scenarios presented by this film. 4.21 - Psychologically, the absented father of the film's narrative symbolizes the sins of the father, and such as the case with the film: You Are Not My Mother, 13 September 2021, 93 minutes, the father's almost complete absence is indicative of an over-compensation regarding his apparent non-involvement in the matters that unfold in such films. 4.22 - To seemingly exonerate himself of any accusation, the mother, Sarah, must be demonstrated as being tested by the truth of, here in this film, her maternal love, by way of an almost impossible ordeal—though this is averred argumentum ex silentio, once again, because the inferred subject is absent from the narrative.
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§5.0 - BUT A SINGLE MOTHER CAN LIVE WITH HER CHILD—Refer directly beneath to the points 5.0–5.15.
5.1 - The film represents a scrutinous eye—the absent father's eye—deliberately conflated with Sarah's over-active doubt that deteriorates to the more serious, paranoia: a matter of which could have verification by the fact she is recently prescribed a brand of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, probably the pervasive diazepam ("valium") for "anxiety troubles"—though attitudes towards the use of such medication among audiences can still maintain, such medication use declares a sort of defectiveness and unreliability, thereafter discrediting the treated person. 5.2 - Sarah takes the medication in a gesture that covers over her mouth with her hand, such as to symbolically express its silencing of herself—and it is a subject examined regarding, again to mention: You Are Not My Mother, 13 September 2021, 93 minutes, directed by Kate Dolan, in which the much more affecting lithium is administered to the mother to settle her down, instead transforms her—and in reference to my earlier blogs on the Three Mothers Trilogy, compare that other secret, mind-altering drug: laudanum. 5.3 - This film of circa 2019 is less chaotic in its narration as a small but intimate world is brought in to focus through enclosed, dimly lit scenes of Sarah and Chris in the home, such that the scenes set in Sarah's vehicle, the next-door forest, Chris's elementary school, the neighbour's home, all are of an outside world that when it emerges as a focal point to the narrative, is brief and almost unreal. 5.4 - Refer to the film-still directly beneath of the mother, Sarah, and son, Chris, sitting at the kitchen table with a stove in the back-ground, that appears to be luminous, as though a light is switched on in the stove's smoke canopy when in fact the twilight has entered from a window and glimmers in the stove's metal finish—possibly a metaphor for maternal angst.
5.5 - The character of Sarah is continually challenged by the presentation of questionable facts. 5.6 - At one time, late at night, when Chris appears to have gone missing, Sarah takes a torch in to the dark woods—almost seeing an apparition of something near a tree—to return to the house to phone police and, while doing as such, Chris appears to claim he was at the house all the time. 5.7 - The test (or experiment) is psychologically grueling and ultimately taxing: when Sarah really should be about establishing her new home with her son, she is beset by such other-worldly hindrances, which prevent her realising her dream of a new life. 5.8 - The nation of Ireland involves a terrible history, following circa 1169, when the Anglo-Normans took great swathes of Irish land supposedly as decreed by the papal bull: Laudabiliter, circa 1155, of the English-born Pope Adrian IV.; a time when the Catholic Church applied tests as "trials by ordeal", such as in reference to charges made against women for being witches—considered proved if she stayed afloat in water, rather than drowned. 5.9 - Refer to the excerpt of "the ordeal by water", directly beneath: 5.10 - 'Much to the delight of the assembled by-standers, both Mary and her mother floated to the surface during this initial phase of the trial. Consequently, they were removed from the water, examined for witches' marks and then subjected to a second swimming. This time, however, they were bound in the more traditional manner, the left thumb tied to the right toe and the right thumb to the left toe, with a rope about their middle extended to the shore. Once more both of the women floated to the surface, confirming their guilt. They were subsequently imprisoned, brought to trial before the assize of Bedford, formally convicted of witchcraft, and executed'—from: page 221, "The Ordeal By Water (Swimming of Witches) In The East Slavic World" by Russell Zguta, in: Slavic Review, circa 1977, Volume 36.2, pages 220–230. 5.11 - To take a leap back to the future, that is, during more recent times, the "Saw franchise" of supernatural thriller / horror genre films of the 2000s, created by the Australian film-makers James Wan and Leigh Whannell, involve narratives predicated upon torturing people in order they prove their mettle, that is, by an absent master-mind—inferred to be a modern re-versioning of the grand inquisitor, as of the Christian-related, historical Inquisitions. 5.12 - For an example of one of the franchise films refer to: 5.13 - Saw, 19 January 2004, premiered at Sundance Film Festival, 103 minutes, directed by James Wan, production company: Twisted Pictures. 5.14 - The father, "Mephistopheles", then orchestrates the harrowing of hell for his "recalcitrant" past wife, with the expectation she will return to him for help. 5.15 - Regarding this film, Sarah and Chris move to a new home during the film's ending, to a set of modern-styled flats, nearer to a community, and it is indicated not to the husband / father.
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§6.0 - ONLY ONE CONNECTION TO THE TRUTH, AND AN INCREDIBLE ONE AT THAT—Refer directly beneath to the points 6.0–6.13.
6.1 - The truth is delivered to Sarah via very peculiar means: Noreen Brady, acted by Kati Outinen, an elderly woman and neighbour who takes the role of truly hysterical femininity. 6.2 - Noreen is discovered on the road between Sarah's and the Brady's homes when Noreen stands in the middle of it almost as though she is disorientated, and further, when Sarah attempts to converse with her, Noreen is heard to mutter inaudible words beneath her dark hood. 6.3 - At a later scene of Sarah at a dinner party with her adult friends, the disclosure of the history of Noreen's tragic past is made: Noreen is beset by grief over the death of her ten year old son, James—and she emerges as that staple figure of Victorian loss, a variation of Miss Havisham—befitting the gothic æsthetics of the film. 6.4 - Yet later a similar scene unfolds when Noreen causes Sarah to stop her vehicle: Sarah asks Noreen to step out of her way, to which Noreen offers no reply, but instead starts yelling the accusation: "he is not your son," against Chris who is moved to the inside of the vehicle. 6.5 - The melodrama transforms in to the ominous, when Noreen is shown to stare in at Chris through the passenger window, that within a few seconds she head-buts to leave a smear of blood on the glass. 6.6 - Here is the figure of the crone whose role is revealed to point out the hidden truth such as during a journey filled with ordeals to overcome, as narrated by classical myths and folk-lore tales, or the crone is shown to point the bone as a curse of judgment. 6.7 - For Sarah, the figure of Noreen represents the possibility of herself down the road at some later point, then truly mad, and further, as a point of telling the future, it also involves Chris's early death: it being the cause of his mother's later madness. 6.8 - Despite the madness, Noreen's accusation of an impostor for Sarah's son is proven correct, such that who is presumed insane and defunct, is revealed as who can provide the greatest clarity of truth. 6.9 - Through Noreen, Sarah's own doubts of acquiring mental infirmity may be registered as no greater than the illusions of hysteria that cloud the truth. 6.10 - The path to greater wisdom is beset by the unexpected: the film reiterates that nothing is to be presumed or taken prima facie, rather that surface appearances must be penetrated by the intellect towards an understanding, instead of overly brief, often dismissive prejudgments. 6.11 - But for Sarah the connection to the truth is short-lived, as Sarah, upon later deciding to attempt to query Noreen on what it is she meant by her accusation of Chris being an impostor, ventures to Norren's home and discovers Noreen's body, shown with her head buried in the soil, which would have prevented her breathing, while the remainder of her body is laid on the lawn. 6.12 - The police would never believe the fantastical elements of Sarah's testimony, such as the notion of a boy having killed Noreen for her accusing him of being an impostor. 6.13 - At that point in the film, Sarah presents with an hallucination she is shown to have, but that she keeps secret from police—when Chris is seen by Sarah with another police officer in the back-ground of Sarah's police interview, whose wrist Chris snaps off in a game of arm wrestle.
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§7.0 - SURVEILLING THE CHANGELING'S CHANGE—Refer directly beneath to the points 7.0–7.21.
7.1 - Chris demonstrates super-human strength during an out-burst after Sarah makes queries as to Chris's where-abouts, in reference to Chris's G.I. Joe figurine, the vintage "Duke", the First Sergeant of circa 1984, she found during a jog, beside the hole. 7.2 - Sarah herself takes to a new level of scrutiny by surveillance, in which she places a camera in the wall of Chris's bedroom, later to use the footage as evidence that Chris is no longer himself, or is an impostor—though the footage is not shown to the audience, it is gauged by the neighbour, Des Brady's reaction to slam the camera to the ground with an out-burst for Sarah to stop her suspicion. 7.3 - Refer to the film-still directly beneath that shows a type of spy hole in a brick wall through which Sarah is seen to stare almost at the audience, to display a visual pun on the subject of who is watching who?
7.4 - Chris has taken to eating spiders; a reversal of one of Chris's standard traits: he had until that time arachnophobia in which he could not tolerate spiders anywhere near him.
7.5 - At Chris's school he participates in a musical, singing a macabre song about a bog, such as the line—"oh, the rattling bog down in the valley", and the combined effect of the song's subject with Chris's piercing, smoldering performance, finally unhinges Sarah to cause for her to declare to her friend, Louise, acted by Simone Kirby, a parent at the performance too, that Chris is not her son.
7.6 - Chris then appears with his teacher, acted by David Crowley, as to enquire of Sarah's opinion of his performance and faced with the group before her: Chris, her local friend and Chris's school teacher, Sarah runs frantically down one of the school's corridors as though she has further acknowledged the real possibility that the town's people all know of the hole in the ground at the forest, but keep eerily stüm.
7.7 - The surveillance stops at this point.
7.8 - Chris soon afterwards beats—with his inexplicable super-human strength—Sarah unconscious and drags her to the home's lawn, where it is inferred he re-stages Noreen's murder, by burying Sarah's head face down in a hole, later compacted with dirt to cause suffocation.
7.9 - There is no doubt he is something of a döppleganger, but when Sarah struggles free and drags an unconscious Chris to the house's basement, Chris re-awakens and reveals himself to be a creature with almost a black dog's head, that ambiguously could be the head of a baboon or macaque per cynocephali, because the film's special effects are impressionistic and almost hallucinatory to deny the possibility of any sure verification.
7.10 - That is, the changeling (and döppleganger)
mythos remain shrouded in mystery. 7.11 - The "black dog" allusion is to Anubis, the Ancient Egyptian funerary god who is the male counter-part to Isis, a religious figure that has emerged in the discourse of my earlier blogs regarding the witch: Part III. Further Still On Dario Argento's The Three Mothers' Trilogy—the Film: 'Mother Of Tears: The Third Mother, 6 September 2007, 141:38 Minutes', Directed By Dario Argento; A Blog, 30 July 2024, By Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, at URL: <https://thoughtsdisjectamembra.blogspot.com/2024/07/part-iii-further-still-on-dario.html>. 7.12 - Anubis's connection to the later revealed creatures under the hole's bottom outer layer, is to that other hole in the ground, the grave, and the earth's containment of the under-world, which is a symbolism shared among the Abrahamic religions of: 7.14 - Christianity: Hell; 7.15 - Islam: Jahannam; 7.16 - Judaism: Sheol. 7.17 - The bottom of the hole, if anything, alludes to the Old Testament: 'Sheol', used to refer to a grave pit, an interpretation reinforced by the noun sheol's association to: 'bōr / בור', viz. a pit, that is found referenced in the Tanakh / Old Testament regarding the Israelites' captivity—for examples: 7.18 - Isaiah 14:15, English Standard Version: 'you will be brought down to Sheol, / to the lowest depths of the Pit'. 7.19 - Isaiah 24:22, English Standard Version: 'They will be gathered together / like prisoners in a pit. / They will be confined to a dungeon / and punished after many days'. 7.20 - Ezekiel's words of "the people of the old who dwell in the world below" and "who are uninhabited"—such as to refer to an emptiness of soul or character—is prophesied as the fate of the Tyrians, (a people of Phoenician ethnicity), after the Assyrian monarch will take them captive: 7.21 - 'I will make you go down with those who go down to the pit, to the people of old, and I will make you to dwell in the world below, among ruins from of old, with those who go down to the pit, so that you will not be inhabited; but I will set beauty in the land of the living'—from: Ezekiel 26:20, English Standard Version.
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§8.0 - REGARDING PATHETIC FALLACY AND FIGURES OF THE UNDER-WORLD IN THE FILM—Refer directly beneath to the points 8.0–8.15.
8.1 - During the scrutiny of the isolated mother–son relation, the landscape emerges itself as something of a third actor, in a filmic use of pathetic fallacy, a trademark trope of the super-realist style of super-natural thriller / giallo genre films. 8.2 - Refer to the film-still directly beneath, of the sink-hole in the forest—shown in one of the many ærial shots which contribute to the film's atmosphere of observation and scrutiny as from above.
8.3 - The forest, traditionally known per Western European folk-lore as "the woods", at the outer edges of the family home's back-yard, is a gloomy, silent place, devoid of bird or other wild-life, it is itself a threshold that marks the outer limits of knowledge: a liminal zone, where crossing-overs may take place. 8.4 - The pine forests of Wicklow shown in the film represent the inversion of the pastoral idyll, of the romantic or enchanted forest, which is the 'locus amœnus', inverted as the 'locus terribilis' comparable to that Stygian grove, ever shaded and chilly, as though frozen in time, representative of the outer gate of an inner circle that is symbolized by the hole in the ground, a portal to a different world inside another portal, the hole that is an entry point to the under-world. 8.5 - The film's allusions to Græco-Roman Classicism are faint, yet there are remnants, such as Sarah's descent in to the earth at the base of the hole: she sinks in to the ground as though re-born under-ground where cavernous rooms lead to a dungeon, where Irish children, abducted from the nearby town, are seen as skeletal remains, imprisoned until starved to death. 8.6 - As Sarah finds and unshackles the authentic Chris, who is still alive, Sarah awakens the creatures of the under-world, shown as figures emerging from the earth. 8.7 - This is the recurrence of the myth of Orpheus who goes to hell for his beloved, such as narrated by "Book 10, Orpheus Et Eurydice", in: Metamorphoses, by Naso P. Ovidius, translation by Arthur Golding, Brookes More, editor, in reference to Hades / Hell as amoena terribilis:
8.8 - '[the poet] dared descend by the Tænarian gate down to the gloomy Styx.
And there passed through pale-glimmering phantoms, and the ghosts escaped from sepulchres, until he found Persephone and Pluto,
master-king of shadow-realms below:
and then began to strike his tuneful lyre, to which he sang —
“O deities of this dark world beneath
the earth! this shadowy underworld,
to which all mortals must descend!
If it can be called lawful, and if you will suffer speech of strict truth (all the winding ways of Falsity forbidden)
I come not down here because of curiosity to see the glooms of Tartarus and have no thought to bind or strangle the three necks of the Medusan Monster, vile with snakes [the Cerberus]
But I have come, because my darling wife stepped on a viper that sent through her veins death-poison"'—from The Persus Digital Library, Tufts University, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Arthur Golding circa 1567, accessed, 21 August 2024, <https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text>.
8.9 - True to the super-realist style the special effects are constrained: really only used in very minimalistic terms, such as in reference to a spider here or there, shown by computer animation to crawl along the ground or floor, later to be swallowed by Chris, and the almost deformed back of Chris that is revealed to Sarah as she stares in to Chris room through a key hole. 8.10 - Rather than Sarah stand outside looking in, at the base of the hole she is inside the navel of connection between the world of the dead and living, though on this latter point of the living, the rural regions filmed outside of Dublin are portrayed as exilic states of purgatorial gloom. 8.11 - Here, at this point, the changeling mythos, as discussed in my earlier blogs, is taken to the other side of the folk-lore legend, viz. of the darker creatures, such as of the trolls and goblins of the woods, regarding which point, this film presents a quite different category of creature. 8.12 - The creatures are suggested to be golems, made of the dust and soil that surrounds them in their pit. 8.13 - Within the pit, a dungeon is revealed that has held children from the town in shackles, given the fact their skeletal remains lay still shackled, but more to the point, Sarah discovers her real son, Chris, and unchains him, to awaken the creatures as if from the earth itself. 8.14 - As Sarah drags Chris through a tunnel, one of the creatures grabs hold of Sarah's arm, at which point, it becomes Sarah, such as to suggest that the golem can emerge from their cavernous existences as changelings; as döpplegangers—they have no identity of their own, but must imitate some-one else. 8.15 - At that moment, the presumption that only children are substituted through the lore of that changeling mythos is destabilized, such that within this cinematic vision of contemporary Ireland, no-one is free from the question of authenticity.
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§9.0 - COMPARISONS MADE TO THE FILM: 'THE PIT, 23 OCTOBER 1981, 101 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY LEW LEHMAN' AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE TROG'S SYMBOLISM—Refer directly beneath to the points 9.0–9.25.
9.1 - There are a number of similarities between the film mostly discussed within this blog: 9.2 - The Hole In The Ground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 25 January 2019, 90 minutes, directed by Lee Cronin, and: 9.3 - The Pit, 23 October 1981, 101 minutes, directed by Lew Lehman, production company Amulet Pictures. 9.4 - Arguably, the crucial points of similarity refer to the central aspects of the narratives to involve a: 9.5 - boy featuring challenging behaviours; 9.6 - a suspicious mother figure; 9.7 - the woods / forest; 9.8 - A hole in the ground; 9.9 - creatures / spirits living in a hole. 9.10 - The mystery of sexuality as an aspect of identity blooming during adolescence, the time of coming-of-age, is openly examined in the film of circa 1981, though repressed regarding the more recent film, that focuses on the prepubescent Chris. 9.11 - The approach that embraces folk-loric meta-narrative as analogous to legend as pseudo-history, such that I have implemented arguably over-rides "the psychological" approach that tends to forward an asocial argument, as though people are separate to society, politics and history. 9.12 - The boy, Jamie, is presented as developmentally delayed, yet his intrigue with the opposite sex is usual at the pubescent age—though he conducts a number of regressed behaviours, such as the use of a teddy to talk to, that may as much indicate isolation and loneliness, but his discussion of "Trogs", living in a hole in the woods, would be deemed delusional when it may have a correlation to something outside psychology's various theories. 9.13 - The name "Trogs" that Jamie uses to refer to the creatures with yellow eyes living in the hole, bears similarity to Frogs: pets Jamie keeps in a terrarium at his house, but 'trog' could be interpreted as an abbreviation for 'troglodyte', that is, a human cave dweller, which in this context takes a pit to refer to a cave. 9.14 - The "Trogs" are further found as the permutations of: 9.15 - "The Invisible People" who abduct a white child, are one of Brazil's indigenous tribes in: 9.16 - The Emerald Forest, 3 July 1985, the United States Of America, 114 minutes, directed by John Boorman. 9.17 - "The Troglodistes", a group of mole-men who live in the sewers of Paris in: 9.18 - Delicatessen, 17 April 1991, France, 99 minutes, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. 9.19 - "The Morlocks", a fictional species of humanoid ape that dwell beneath the earth, that construct machines and cannibalize humans from the earth's surface, as from the texts: 9.20 - The Time Machine, 8 March 2002, 96 minutes, directed by Simon Wells, based on: 9.21 - The Time Machine, 17 August 1960, 103 minutes, directed by George Pal, that is based on: 9.22 - The Time Machine, circa 1895, by H.G. Wells; re-published, circa 2005, London: Penguin Books Ltd, 128 pages, ISBN-10: 0141439971 and ISBN-13: 9780141439976. 9.23 - "A cannibalistic clan of Native American Indians" in the film: 9.24 - Bone Tomahawk, premiered 1 October 2015, at Fantastic Fest, 132 minutes, directed by S. Craig Zahler. 9.25 - The "Trogs" of any one of the above listed texts could be fictional recreations of historically recorded peoples known to have lived in caves or pits, and certainly in forests, as of tribal or "illegal immigrant" peoples.
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§10.0 - A FURTHER COMPARISON TO THE FILM: 'JUG FACE, 23 JANUARY 2013, PREMIERED AT THE SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, 81 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY CHAD CRAWFORD KINKLE'—Refer directly beneath to the points 10.0–10.25.
10.1 - The opening sequence of this film:
10.2 -
Jug Face, 23 January 2013, Premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, 81 minutes, directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle—referred to in this discussion as "Film X";
10.3 - uses naïvely wrought illustrations, suggested as drawn by children, but their subject is not a child's subject, viz. the massacre of white Christians from a church and commune nearby, and it would appear to have been done at the very same hole in the ground in the woods as portrayed in the film:
10.4 -
The Hole In The Ground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 25 January 2019, 90 minutes, directed by Lee Cronin—referred to in this discussion as "Film Y".
10.5 - Regarding this discussion of the opening sequence of "Film X", refer to three film-stills within a single composite, directly beneath, that depicts crude, child-type illustrations of a massacre of Christians.
10.6 - The first film-still depicts a church near a forest, similar to Sarah's and Chris's house near a forest. 10.7 - The third film-still depicts a hole in the ground that is almost the exact, same sink-hole depicted in "Film Y". 10.8 - We might leave the two films' shared depictions of the amoena terribilis as something of the uncanny, but I have briefly written of my experiences of being labeled and persecuted as a changeling, and know that it was factual rather than something of the inexplicably uncanny. 10.9 - The "Film Y" does not offer an exposition that provides for an explanation of the opening sequence's scenes of a massacre, viz. the cutting of the Christian people's throats over the hole, but an explanation can be deduced. 10.10 - Christians who formerly lived at the site were massacred, perhaps along the lines of the "artificial apocalypse" I have discussed in my earlier blogs? 10.11 - The "Film Y" is not set in Ireland, but Nashville, Tennessee, the United States Of America, where many Irish Christians immigrated—refer to: Scots-irish In The Hills Of Tennessee, 1 August 1995, by Billy Kennedy, Ambassador Publications, English Language, 224 pages, ISBN-10: 1898787468, ISBN-13: 978-1898787464. 10.12 - The isolated house of "Film Y" may be the last one standing of a village with a church, and the villagers were subject to a massacre as depicted in "Film X". 10.13 - Both films indicate not only the usurpation of white Irish people, involving the demolition of buildings, but the installation of Occult-based forms of cults within such areas formerly of Irish Catholic heritage. 10.14 - This last point of 10.12 is suggested because the cult portrayed in the "Film X" involves worship of a dark idol thought to live in the hole in the ground. 10.15 - The cult's lore involves a pottery maker, who, as a commune prophet, after making a jug with the likeness of one of the cult members, is believed to condemn that member to death as a human sacrifice to the hole's dark spirit, and the film portrays the protagonist's execution as her throat is cut and blood poured in to the hole. 10.16 - The hole in the ground depicted in "Film X" is not the same as the one depicted in its opening sequence illustrations: the hole of "Film X" is unimpressively small with muddy water at its base. 10.17 - The small hole is aligned to the film's cinéma vérité style, in which is narrated a crudely simple set of beliefs that causes for the suspension of disbelief required to believe, that such cults as the one portrayed exist and involve ritual human sacrifice based on omens made by a local potter. 10.18 - The gaping sink-hole and the massacre of white Christians of the crude illustrations is distorted by modality, and possibly met with instant incredulity: children's versions of events are extended little credibility. 10.19 - Though most Western World audiences know of art therapists who analyse children's drawings to discern the truth of children's experience portrayed in their art, because small children often inadvertently tell the truth through expression, particularly of any deeply traumatic experience—or, as the old adage states: "from the mouth of babes". 10.20 - Thus, some element of credulity can be lent to the opening sequence illustrations after all. 10.21 - Comparably, for all the slickness of style of "Film Y", it merely transports the audience to another world of the super-natural thriller genre, after which the audience resumes daily life. 10.22 - While the dark idols at the base of the hole in the ground might be fanciful to some people, to others it is an essential part of a religious / cult-based perspective. 10.23 - I do not believe in changelings, but other people do and their beliefs have harmed myself throughout my life, such that the discussed films ought to be considered from an anthropological approach that I hope I have applied. 10.24 - The ancient and so-called modern cultures are, according to my experience, side-by-side, where secular modernity has filled a space that denies such notions I have discussed here, and the cult-based, ancient ways of life leaves no room for outsiders' perspectives. 10.25 - The cult is indicated to be based on psychological programming, so-called because it involves falsity, that is, the children, small children and adults children must lie for the sake of the father.
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§11.0 - SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN—Refer directly beneath to the points 11.0–11.19.
11.1 - Sickenly, here in Australia disappearances continue to occur of children as though it is a tradition—it would be uncustomary to phone police as to the where-abouts of the well-known abductors—yet, might not some serious consideration be made in reference to the insights proffered by my blogs for the children's sake? 11.2 - According to Matthew 19:14, Jesus Christ began the Passion, at Perea, near Jericho, where to many of the followers on the trail, Jesus gave a sermon to one and all, but when approached by small children, Jesus Christ's disciples turned them away. 11.3 - By Saint Matthew's word, the Messiah is written to have said: 11.4 - “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven"—from Matthew 19:14, English Standard Version. 11.5 - The verb: 'suffer' is addressed to Jesus Christ's disciples as an instruction that, rather than turn the small children away from Jesus Christ, allow the small children to be included in Jesus Christ's sermons and, by extension, within society. 11.6 - 'Sufferance' is a synonym to: 'endurance', such as to confer the significance that the disciples and other adults might endure, it is inferred, small children's ignorance or unsettled conduct. 11.7 - Christianity commends that children have child-hoods and their "greenness" is to be suffered, to be endured, rather than punished through exclusion—for how else will the children learn? 11.8 - The matter of suffering small children may be taken too far, as indicated by such fictional texts as: 11.9 - The short prose piece titled: "Suffer The Little Children" by Stephen King, first published in the circa February 1972 volume of the magazine: Cavalier; re-published later in: 11.10 - Nightmares & Dreamscapes, 29 September 1993, Viking, 816 pages, ISBN: 978-0-670-85108-9. 11.11 - The narrative of the short prose piece involves the character, a third grade teacher, Miss Emily Sidley, who is advised by the quietest student of her class, Robert, that the other students, who are unnerving her, are changelings—or döpplegangers. 11.12 - Gradually, Miss Emily Sidley is unhinged by the peculiar sense of observation she feels under, though the boy, Robert, is the one who, in telling her the apparent truth, most vexes her. 11.13 - Eventually, fragile Miss Emily Sidley is led to shoot twelve of the children she has suspected to be changelings, that is, in a sound-proof room. 11.14 - While under religious or superstitious prejudices, children may be dæmonized, human killing or sacrifice is a transgression of the Christian God's law, and it ought to be remembered, Christianity exalts the truth rather than pander to the father's lies. 11.15 - People such as the character Miss Emily Sidley are condemned to eternal damnation for murder, as Jesus Christ says to the rich man who seeks eternal life: 11.16 - 'And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness [lying]'—from Matthew 19:18, English Standard Version. 11.17 - The wisdom of Jesus Christ and the New Testament may save souls, and is only availed through baptism and re-birth as a Christian who follows the wisdom of Jesus Christ. 11.18 - There is an overwhelming sense that Sarah and Chris are being "baptised by dirt" not clear waters; a metaphor that is applicable to the characters of: Jug Face, 23 January 2013, Premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, 81 minutes, directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle, viz. Ada, acted by Lauren Ashley Carter; Dawai, acted by Sean Bridgers; Jesseby, acted by Daniel Manche; Bodey, acted by Mathieu Whitman, etc. 11.19 - The characters—of what I refer to in reference to the films discussed within this blog—as "the grave-pit films", in their isolation are comparable to children, who really await their proper coming-of-age through the church, though until such time, remain suffering children.
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