new vid - "Jesus for the Jugular" - Carnivale
Jesus for the Jugular
Fandom: Carnivàle
Song/Artist: Jesus for the Jugular by The Veils
Duration: 4:22 minutes
Summary: Ain't nobody ever gonna have to die.
Spoilers: Whole series. Historical video footage.
Strong warning of disturbing WWII footage. View at your own discretion.
Password: enolagay
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
Thanks to betas Nina H. and bradcpu.
Premiered at vividcon 2007 Nearly New show.
How do you preach the word if you don't know how to read?
They hold your soul once you sign the deed
Would the sun still rise if there's no one around?
Would the fox be as quick if he hadn't his hound?
Let him go from me
This whole world spins with her feet off the ground
She'll make the stars applaud when she sits back down
There's a bull's-blooded fountain in the pit of a moan
That I'll summon an eclipse on my way to the lord
Let him go from me
Jesus for the jugular - one at a time
Ain't nobody ever gonna ever have to die
Notes
Vid in a nutshell
Put very simply: there's evil in the world. We see it in a fundamentalist evil figure, and we see it in the Eve-figure being led astray. Ben, being the actual Christ figure, tries to save as many as he could, but the extent of his powers is, as we know, to transfer life force between things, and not to create something out of nothing. He has to save people "one at a time", and it's nowhere near enough, even when he tries to go the complete Christ route and sacrifice himself.
And what next? Desperate times call for desperate measures and he turns to Trinity, "reason over magic". The tide turns, suddenly they are victorious. But quickly we see that it's a rock and a hard place; they may have ostensibly won, but as the ending clip indicates, it's a path that will eventually poison everything around it and lead to ruin.
***
I used some sensitive, even shocking, images in this vid, which gave me a lot of grief. There's always going to be a chance that these images would be viewed not as a necessary part of the vid, but instead a cheap gimmick to draw attention, and I sincerely hope that wouldn't be the case to most viewers. The decision to use them did not come lightly. For me, those images were justified because they supported the underlying theory; however, given the multiple background contexts and the way the narrative was delivered, it's very likely that the theory itself didn't get communicated the way I wanted it to. Consequently the necessity of those images will also come into debate.
As regards content, this vid came about following many discussions between me and my RL friend Nina. Without her keen insight and useful historical knowledge it wouldn't have been half as coherent. (And if you think it's incoherent now, think of what it could have been without her.)
Carnivàle is an astonishing show. But in order to make any sense out of what we've been given, it's necessary to extrapolate, and it's necessary to extrapolate a lot. Daniel Knauf's original plan was to have six seasons, or three "Books", spanning the 1930s and 40s until (at least) the explosion at the Trinity test site. What we got was a mere fraction of that. There are important questions that can't be answered, and a unified world theory seems like a distant dream. Why is Ben unable (or unwilling) to stop the Trinity explosion? What is the significance of Justin being the Usher as opposed to your standard Prophet of the House of Darkness? What is Sofie's ultimate function as the Omega? There are some interesting facts and speculation on Wikipedia, but it certainly didn't solve all the mysteries.
Throughout the show you can't ignore the fact that there is another war going on in the background. (Or will be going on, as the case may be.) It's an important war, with some similar ideas at its heart. But I think it would be a mistake to consider them the same war at a literal level. It would have been effective to align Ben with the Allies and Justin with the Axis powers, but their fight is one between free will and determinism; it's a notional war, not a human one.
I saw Justin primarily as a symbol, possibly of a fundamentalist aspect of the Church. He's certainly not the only aspect and it's not my intention to make any sort of blanket statement about the role that the Church played (or did not play) in the Holocaust.
Regarding historical connections, it was hard to know where to stop. Trinity directly led on to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we pondered for a while over whether to bring in the Cold War in light of there being so many Russian characters in Carnivàle - the fact felt like it could have been something relevant, had the creators been able to get that far. In the end I decided that it would have diluted the focus, so as far as the Cold War goes, it's by inference only in the post-apocalyptic Atomic Age section.
While we were intrigued by the Knights Templar, we couldn't really figure out a way to incorporate them coherently into the vid.
External footage
It was a stroke of luck finding Trinity and Beyond: the Atomic Bomb Movie at my local library. It was only after I did my can't-believe-my-luck song and dance routine that I found out it was narrated by William Shatner. Bless!