1.0: BLOG'S TITLE: PART II. CRAIG STEVEN JOSEPH LACEY'S COMMENTS ON THE FILMS: 'WILLOW, CIRCA 1988', HARRY POTTER, 'THE OMEN, CIRCA 1976' AND 'MARK OF THE DEVIL, CIRCA 1970' AND FURTHER, COMMENTS ON THE PAINTING: 'EXAMINATION OF THE WITCH, CIRCA 1853' /
1.1: BLOG'S CONTENTS:
2.0–2.5: A BIRTH-MARK OMEN /
3.0–3.2: 'WILLOW: TELEVISION SERIES, CIRCA 2022' /
4.0–4.4: THE CHANGELING DYNAMIC /
5.0–5.2: MARK OF THE DEVIL /
6.0–6.1: STIGMATIZATION /
7.0–7.1: 'THE OMEN, CIRCA 1976' /
8.0–8.2: 'WITCHES TORTURED TILL THEY BLEED, CIRCA 1970' /
9.0–9.1: THE WITCH'S TEAT /
10.0: 'EXAMINATION OF A WITCH, CIRCA 1853' /
11.0–11.2: THE DWARF /
12.0–12.3: WHITE IS PURE OR CHILDISH /
13.0–13.2: DISCLAIMER //.
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2.0 – A BIRTH-MARK OMEN: The American film: 'Willow, circa 1988', 126 minutes, directed by Ron Howard, involves a plot in which a self-obsessed Queen, the sorceress Bavmorda of Nockmaar, orders for the pregnant women of her realm to be imprisoned in order she guard against—per a prophecy—an infant being born with a birth-mark shaped as a rune, viz. a letter of the Celtic alphabet.
2.1 – Nonetheless, the infant is born and escapes the sorceress's wolf-type hench-men, to float in a ruddy raft down a river to a village of dwarves, where the eponymous character, a novice wizard and dwarf, takes the baby girl in, and becomes the unlikely hero: supposedly as a type of changeling, Willow emerges as a victorious wizard-dwarf to reverse perceptions of small or different persons being of meagre value.
Figure I. The theatrical release poster of the film, 'Willow, circa 1988' directed by Ron Howard; art work by John Alvin.
2.5 – The theme of an infant marked with a sign is the variant of the omen, a central aspect of the changeling mythos: the ominous sign may be one of change for good or evil; change, or transformation, often demands behaving in ways which are unfamiliar and that can be up-setting for all involved.
3.0 – 'WILLOW: TELEVISION SERIES, CIRCA 2022': 'Willow, circa 1988' by Ron Howard is the direct inspiration for a recent television series of eight episodes which premiered on the net-work: Disney+, 30 November 2022.
3.1 – While the television series was supposedly cancelled, the stigmatized positions of persons suffering from disabilities or who occupy a cultural difference to the main-stream culture, remains a contemporary dream-scape to the realities of every-day life.
3.2 – The texts of Harry Potter, both books and films, further reveal the relevance of such mythos to contemporary Western World cultures.
4.0 – THE CHANGELING DYNAMIC: The "change-ling" is, as if a person could be reduced to an effect, said to be an effect of change: there is an "ex-change" of a healthy child by fairies or goblins for one of their queer children, whereby the æther-world's hidden forces confer to bring about change in people's lives; at the very least, through mixing around infants from families or causing disability in a child by violent abuse to impact upon a family.
4.1 – The impacts of the so-called æther-world involve recognizing the bona fide from the impostor; interpreting the signs which may, prima facie, appear correct, really refer to some-thing forgotten or unknown: but when an error occurs, blame is placed upon the impossible, trickster-type antics associated with the æther-world—or to use the author, J.R.R. Tolkien's phrase: "middle earth" as indicative of such Pan / Celtic symbolism—and accountability is lost in the mist of where reality meets dreams.
4.2 – In the folk-lore, change is acknowledged as occurring through a person: often the much-lauded new-born, who is symbolic of an unknown potential to transform the people's lives, such as Jesus Christ's Nativity is symbolic, viz. of the gift from God: the messiah, no less; but when the new-born or child or child-type adult bears the stain of the birth-mark, such persons are treated with austere distrust or persecutory antipathy.
4.3 – The uncertainty of change itself is shared by such fantastic beings as familiars, half-breeds, Siamese twins, ghosts, goblins, trolls, witches, sorcerers, et al.: except for the changeling who is often deemed a real person, viz. an infant or dwarf; perceived as embodying a connection to the forces of change, is approached as the catalyst for change of which cannot be totally controlled and as such can provoke frustration by the folk who expect change to be magically bestowed by particular people, when change occurs by changing one's own attitudes.
4.4 – Often at the psycho-sociological level, control is attempted to be taken back, by society causing the infant to carry the burden of change: as an unwanted change, it is the curse of impending doom, or as welcomed change, a frightening yet lively out-put of creativity and innovation; the impacts for the one labelled a changeling often involve estrangement, isolation and other mistreatments.
5.0 – MARK OF THE DEVIL: Specifically, the sign that portends of ruin is the so-called "mark of the devil", which is claimed to signalize a "transformed and transforming person", such as a changeling is described: often marked-out by deformity, that in many cultures is read as a sign of being cursed, or of being an accursed thing, a birth-mark, distinctive skin-lesion or physiological deformity / scar, that is divergent from "normal" appearances, are interpreted as portentous of some hitherto known strife—are really matters of medical ignorance or pseudo-medical myth.
5.1 – There may be an extant connection of the brand or tattoo, which can be used to show membership, that was used in slavery to identify a specific class of slave: the birth-mark seems to be pre-ordained, a matter of fate, not dissimilar to the drudgery of slaves, the birth-mark sign is something of an evolved adaption from such ancient and barbaric practices.
5.2 – The "mark of the devil" or "witch's mark / stigma diabolicum" is possibly a Judeo-Christian phrase, that derives from the 16th century, reaching the zenith, circa 1645, during the historic, European witch trials which continued in the regions / colonies of the so-called New World, viz. the Americas, the Dutch East and West Indies, and Australasia.
6.0 – STIGMATIZATION: Through such stigmatization, infants, children and some adults are subjected to grossly unjust mistreatments and often murder or sacrifice dressed as just execution.
6.1 – No film of the Western World canon would provide a narrative on the torturing or killing of children, whether the children were deemed condemned or part of some perverse eroticism; whereas within Eastern Asia there is less an ethical compunction due to fanciful perceptions, a child is similar to an adult, in which the child is simply a small adult, that is, when children are physically and psychologically vulnerable, lacking physiological maturity and life experience.
7.0 – 'THE OMEN, CIRCA 1976': Further, the child is said to be possessed, or a connector / channel to the dæmonic / Satanic, such as the cause célèbre, the supernatural-thriller genre, American film: 'The Omen, circa 1976', 111 minutes, directed by Richard Donner: the narrative in this context plays upon the mark of the devil, the mark of the beast '666', on a boy who is considered to present one of the signs of the Anti-Christ, whose plans are to take-over the Christian world.
7.1 – The Christian orthodoxy is confused by having to involve the reading of omens, or the seeking out of the Anti-Christ to exorcise, such as those identifying with the vampire, viz. 'Dracula, [circa 1897], circa 2002' by Bram Stoker, (edited by John Paul Riquelme, Bedford Saint Martin's, 608 pages, ISBN: 9780312237103; 0312237103), and mythos of the undead or zombies; the Christian doctrines become enmeshed in the folk-lore on the devil and his legion.
8.0 – 'WITCHES TORTURED TILL THEY BLEED, CIRCA 1970': In the Western World, texts have been written and published or filmed as based on the torture and killing of women, in reference to the witch trials: for example, the Austrian film: 'The Mark Of The Devil', other-wise titled: 'Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält / Witches Tortured Till They Bleed, circa 1970', 97 minutes, directed by Michael Armstrong, that is an attempt to portray the history of the corrupted Catholic church in a frenzy of hysteria involving the torture of women to elicit confessions of being that which they are not, viz. witches.
8.1 – Beneath the peculiar marketing and hysteria regarding this film, labelled as being of the sexploitation genre, the priest-commissioner of the veritable inquisition, viz. Lord Cumberland, acted by Herbert Lom, is that elusive Mephistopheles figure of which much discussion has been written in my blogs, such as in reference to: 'You Are Not My Mother, circa 2021' by Kate Dolan—as revealed in the narrative of the film of circa 1970, Lord Cumberland as Mephistopheles has a quick escape "out the back exit"—the true significance of his involvements remain shadow-like and elusive, rather than, prima facie, audiences accept him as truly representative of the Christian church, but an heretical re-versioning or bastardization.
8.2 – In the film 'Willow, circa 1988', the presence and role of a ruthless maternal figure, viz. a witch and often a queen, is obviated, rather than censored: but more to the point, is how either a victim-child / victim-disabled person or witch / sorceress, are placed in stigmatized positions, and further, how the manipulative patriarch is mostly absent of the show, and hench-men are instead present as a masculine force of mercenaries.
9.0 – THE WITCH'S TEAT: The sign of the "stigma diabolicum" as the witch's mark was the witch's teat, a third nipple that could be found on the woman's anatomy other than her breasts, viz. a supernumerary nipple, by which a familiar or devil / dæmon could suck blood for nourishment.
9.1 – In the observation of the familiar or devil in a bodily collusion with the witch, the figures are described as 'kambion': half-breeds such as human-hybrids and dwarf-type creatures not dissimilar to children or changelings dependent on the mother-figure as sucklings are still dependent on the mother-figure—which include the changeling, but the further point should be made, most changelings are orphans or waifs with-out parentage as such, are often fostered or left to the streets or leafy grounds to live on their nimble wits.
Figure III. A painting titled: 'Examination Of A Witch, circa 1853' by Tompkins H. Matteson of New York, the United States of America.
10.0 – 'EXAMINATION OF A WITCH, CIRCA 1853': To briefly mention, the painting 'Examination Of A Witch, circa 1853' by Tompkins H. Matteson, the presence of the perfidious man dressed as clergy is shown: in red stockings to signalize blood, he is depicted to watch on, at one remove, from the witch-hunt inquisition that could be interpreted as ethnic cleansing, that is, in the mid-19th century New York State of the United States of America.
11.0 – THE DWARF: The dwarf is, with the witch, the main figure or symbol of the changeling folk-lore: the dwarf's short stature places a comparison of the adult dwarf with a child or vice versa: the changeling infant is often portrayed as wise or old beyond his actual appearance to represent a freakish anomaly to the natural order; but the inference is, nature's so-called order is subject to a numinous or super-natural one, which is open to interpretation often favouring an unjust and racist culture.
11.1 – The involved person's deformity, biological variance or disease seems to herald of an ominous engagement from which, he who meets such a person (changeling) will wish he had not, or that is the alleged impression taken to instruct any who think of becoming involved with a changeling, that causes for ostracism and scape-goating mechanisms: the source of social injustice.
11.2 – More often than not, the aberration, the changeling, will be determined within the ranks of the hegemonic race, to be an example of miscegenation or in-breeding conducted by other races.
12.0 – WHITE IS SICKLY OR CHILDISH: Particularly relevant is the baby's birth-mark of 'Willow, circa 1988', that under a lens of racial politics must be read as racism against persons of Germanic or Nordic, viz. Celtic origins, because runes derive from such ethnicities and cultures.
13.0 – DISCLAIMER: This blog post is the exclusive intellectual property of Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–; Google email: craigsjlacey@gmail.com; by way of law, no hacking, copying, editing or disseminating of it is permitted.
13.1 – Three photographs have been used within this blog: Figures 1 to 3; each of which is used within the editorial-educational rights's context.
13.2 – Craig Steven Joseph Lacey, 4 December 1976–, Australia; 17 April 2023, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4000; Copyright 2023, Craig Steven Joseph Lacey.
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