Show Me the Love!

by Pamela Jaye Smith

  Being able to destroy other life lends a sense of godly powers. Some people just like to break things and kill people. Sociopaths and psychopaths are this way, even if the results of their actions isn’t always physical death and destruction. You can get an awfully lot of drama out of one character emotional destroying another. The term “gaslighting” comes from the movie Gaslight where a husband tries to drive his new wife crazy by making her think things are happening which are not.

  There’s a word for the glee we can feel when others fail, Schadenfreude. How much of it is simple envy and how much our fascination with dissolution is a question that can propel character conflict and character arcs.

  Some say that some people who do evil think they are actually doing good, as in Star Trek Into Darkness when Khan kills thousands to save his 72 colleagues. Yet, it’s obvious just from experience and observation that sometimes people actually like doing evil, and sometimes people get inadvertently sucked into the swirl of darkness. See the book The Power of the Dark Side, in particular the chapter “Lure of the Dark Side”. In Lawrence of Arabia there is a scene where T.E. Lawrence admits over gin and tonics at the officers’ club that what troubled him about having had to execute a wayward man to keep the tribe together was that he had enjoyed it.

  The challenge in portraying sociopaths and psychopaths is that they truly are not like other people. Some wiring in their brain never got hooked up and they simply do not have the capability of feeling empathy. Appealing to their sense of justice or consid-eration for others won’t work. Oh, they may fake it, but watch out – it’ll come to no good.

  A person’s attitude towards death depends greatly upon their belief about life after death. This belief affects their actions, from suicide bombing in order to gain entry into Paradise, to sacrificing themselves in moments of great danger so that others may live. Saints and martyrs willingly embrace death as proof and defense of their faith and in the “sure and certain hope of resurrection”.

  Life as we know it is always in danger of being wiped out – according to prophets, scaremongers and manipulators of the individual human’s trepidation about their own demise. Just as most cultures have creation myths, so too do most cultures have destruction myths. Often the causes are the elements: fire, water, wind. Others cast giant beasts, aliens, angels, or creatures from below the earth’s crust as the bringers of death and destruction. In some myths the destruction is a punishment for humanity’s bad behaviour. In some it is the opportunity to shatter the old structures and begin anew. Each large, if mostly arbritary, shift in the counting of time [2012, the Millennium, each century’s fin de siecle] gathers adherents of massive, usually planet-wide death and destruction.

  As the Roland Emerich film 2012 illustrated so powerfully, we are fascinated with destruction on a grand scale. California falls into the Pacific, a tsunami batters Tibet, and continents clatter around like billiard balls on an unstable table. Apocalyptic and post-apocalypitc films clutter the media landscape these days.

  On an individual scale, some people’s attitude towards death is that if their life is over, so is Life itself. ‘If I go, you’re all going with me.” For others it is the previously mentioned promise of a promised land in another realm. Reality sometimes sucks, so shifting into Paradise can look awfully attractive, especially if there is a charismatic leader urging you on to death. Unfortunately some people are so bereft of the ability to see things as they are and to make decisions based on reality they are easily led as willing sheep to a unneccessary slaughter.

  Dr. Sigmund Freud proposed that the death wish was about returning to the formless void, an echo of Buddhism and some agnostic and atheistic opinions.

  The duality of an individual’s attitude and approach towards existence has often been cast in the light of two Greek gods – Apollo the god of light, music and medicine and Dionysus the god of wine, ‘ecstatic joy, and savage brutality’. Western European thought was greatly influenced by this concept of duality.

  And then there’s necrophilia, sexual attraction to corpses. These days that probably extends to include zombie-love-sex. Eeewww.

  How it serves us now

  Unfortunately, particularly in Western cultures, death is seen as the enemy to be avoided at all costs, whereas in many other cultures it is simply part of the natural cycle of existence. Yet even if the culture is accepting and embracing of death and decay the individual usually quails at the thought of being-no-more.

  The success of most religions may well lie in their ability to comfort humans confronted with the surety of personal death and extinction by offering the illusion of immortality in some form or fashion.

  Some stories posit that extinction is Mother Nature’s way of cleaning house. The urge to kill or destroy is just our human way of playing out the nature of life itself on a more personal basis. After all, with 5 Great Extinctions to the history of life on Earth, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, world-sweeping plagues, and the looming threats of nuclear destruction and climate change there is a lot of death and destruction going on all the time. Finding one’s balance of sanity amidst all this – or not finding it – makes for compelling stories.

  Examples in Myth and Legend

  Most mythic systems have gods and/or goddesses of death. They’re not always scary, either. Sometimes they are the comforting arms of surcease from pain and the travails of earthly existence.

  Esoteric and magical lore holds that sudden death causes an explosion of light on the astral plane. If you call in creatures of the other world to do your bidding, you must pay them something for their services. That something is often a sacrifice which creates that light which is food for them.

  Thanatos is the Greek god of death, Hades is the king of the underworld, and Persephone is his lovely queen who spends six months of the year down with him (winter) and then six months up above (summer) with her mother, the vegetation goddess Demeter.

  The Greek Atriedes family was cursed from generation to generation and it often out-pictured as death, from chopping up two little boys and feeding them to their father to Clytemnestra slaying her husband King Menelaus in the bathtub right after his return from Troy.

  A celebration honouring the dead is a yearly event in many societies. Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos [Day of the Dead], Halloween, All Soul’s Day, and the Chinese Festival of the Hungry Ghosts are but a few. These could be symbolic backgrounds for your scenes dealing with death and destruction or someone’s desire for same.

  The Greek war god Ares in the Xena: Warrior Princess TV series just loved destruction and death. He was also quite attractive. Thor in Nordic myths is a war god whose hammer Mjolnir brings destruction and death, but always for the cause of the just and good. As anyone familiar with the myths or the recent Thor movies knows, Loki is the really bad guy devoted to destruction and to making everyone as miserable as he is. Greek again, Pallas Athena is the goddess of war, wisdom, and civilization.

  Just as most spiritual traditions promise resurrection and life eternal or reincarnation and life eternal, many embody this concept in a unique individual, often a god. The returning king or god is a theme throughout myth and legend; the Mezo-American Quetzalcoatl, the Christian Jesus Christ, the Mesopotamian Dammuz, the Norse Baldur, and the Briton’s King Arthur.

  Examples in History and Current Events

  Natural disasters provide plenty of death and destruction. Volcanic eruptions, floods, fires, earthquakes, tsunamis...and in Los Angeles we add riots and celebrity trials.

  Some historians think the ball courts in Mezo-America hosted games where the winners, rather than the losers, were sacrificed to the gods...a real honour, that. And perhaps all those blood-drenched pyramids where beating hearts were ripped out as food for the gods was just a misunderstanding of their version of “lift up your hearts unto god”.

  Thuggees in India were devotees of the death-destruction goddess Kali. They also happened to be blood-thirsty murderers.

  Big game hunting is
n’t as rampant as it used to be, but people still go for the thrill of the chase. Talk with a hunter for some insights into that pursuit of prey and the bringing of death. Films along this line are the Predator series, Running Man, and The Hunger Games.

  Gladiators in the Roman Coliseum, World Wrestling Foundation and Mixed Martial Arts in the ring, NASCAR explosions-in-waiting whizzing around a track – the promise of destruction and possible death draws thousands in person and millions via media.

  Still mostly underground but still happening are to-the-death contests, sometimes pure blood sport and sometimes to resolve gang disputes mano-e-mano.

  Goths and Death Metal glamourize the affinity for death and destruction.

  Female genital mutilation is a destruction of life force physically and emotionally.

  Witch hunts and inquisitions thrive on the deep-seated human drive for destruction of the “other” and blood-lust can quickly infest a group. Ethnic cleansing may not be far away.

  Youthful bullies and Mean Girl cliques typically do not belong in this category. Bullies tend to act defensively, triggered by being bullied at home. Cliques are enforcing hierarchies inherent in any animal group. Most child soldiers do not belong here either; they are forced into killing by factors beyond their control who may actually be people who love Death and Destruction.

  Some people love violence but it doesn’t necessarily mean they love death and destruction. A football player, a boxer, or a soldier may relish violence more as a contact sport without intending death or destruction. For the lover of death and destruction, violence is just one means to an end.

  Examples in Media

  All the horror, slasher, vampire, zombie, monster, evil alien, ghost, grinder, et cetera stories. Just IMDb “zombie” and you’ll find hundreds of movies.

  Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is a blood-bath. See the 1999 film Titus directed by Julie Taymor.

  Detective stories and murder mysteries are sometimes about one-off crimes of passion and sometimes about putting one over on “The Man” again and again just for the thrill.

  Post-apocalyptic movies can be cautionary tales about what survivors might do after the destruction and death.

  First-person shooter games let us play out our aggressive drives, hopefully without real-world consequences.

  The twin vigilantes in Boondock Saints are indeed taking out really bad guys who do horrid things, but these good Catholic boys do tend to get swept up into the destruction and the death and go at it with real enthusiasm.

  The Walkin’ Dude in Stephen King’s book The Stand.

  All of Quentin Tarentino’s movies have some characters in them who are in love with death and destruction.

  In the Battle of the Bulge a German soldier asks his officer (Robert Shaw), when the war will be over? Shaw replies, “The best thing possible is happening. The war will go on.... Indefinitely. On, and on, and on!”

  In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kilgore muses, “Someday this war’ll be over” with a disappointed look on his face. He also opines about the smell of napalm in the morning being the smell of victory.

  Why would you have a [Star Wars] Death Star if you didn’t want to destroy everything? The planet-killer weapons of the Babylon 5 sci-fi series do just that.

  In the The Chronicles of Riddick the Necromongers destroyed everything with glee, gusto, and determination.

  The cloaked figure of Death in The Seventh Seal plays chess with a mortal. The image of the two of them at the chessboard has been repeated in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and (500) Days of Summer.

  In The Lion King the head of the pride advises his little cub about death and destruction with, “It’s the Circle of Life, Simba”.

  The Lord of the Rings pits the lords and hordes of death-and-destruction against the wizards and warriors of the Light.

  The Joker in The Dark Knight and Silva (Javier Bardem) in Skyfall.

  Examples in Music

  “Alice’s Restaurant” – Arlo Guthrie

  “Eve of Destruction” – P.F. Sloane

  “Senator’s Son” – Credence Clearwater Revival

  “This is the End” – the Doors

  “War, huh, yeah, what is it good for?” – Edwin Starr

  Symbols

  skull

  mushroom cloud of nuclear bomb

  radiation sign

  fangs

  sword

  hangman’s noose

  grave

  ghosts

  fire

  blood

  bones

  shattered things

  decayed flowers

  moldy food

  skull & crossbones

  Key Element – The Shining Action

  The poised moment between wholeness and destruction, between life and death. That moment between the outbreath and the inbreath when all possibilities exist. It can be as impersonal as the drone-driver’s finger hovering over the “fire” button and the quiet village thousands of miles away about to be obliterated. It can be as personal as two people sword-fighting and one getting and then pressing their advantage to the death.

  Show it as a long timeless moment of choice and you will strengthen both what came before and what comes after. In Saving Private Ryan the interpreter who was chosen to go on the mission lobbies to let a captive German go, instead of being killed by the other soldiers. Later, the German comes backl and knifes to death one of the American soldiers. The interpreter, in his anger and guilt, picks up a rifle and shoots the German.

  It will instill the possibility of a moral dilemma you can play up in your story. Or the lack of it, which can be disturbingly effective, as in Tarentino’s Inglorious Basterds.

  Written Descriptions

  Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work is an excellent analysis of how sociopaths and psychopaths who love destruction and death go about deceiving others, weaving their hypnotic spell, getting their way, and then dumping the people who were supposedly their friends, lovers, trusted colleagues. It provides a veritable outline for this character and even includes suggestions on how to recognize, fend off, or counteract their actions. If you are writing about this type of person, do use this reference book.

  Spend plenty of time describing what a character who loves destruction sees. Where others might see a hollowed-out shell of a bombed out building, your character could see the “empty rib-cage of a formerly alive and breathing creature”; where ordinary people might turn up their noses at the stink of a rotting corpse, this character could be exhilarated by “the sweet smell of decay”.

  They may be fascinated by the dismantling of a thing, a personality, a body – so describe for us that fascination, the looks, the touch, the feel, etc. The arsonist is always fascinated with the fire.

  Steep yourself in Clive Barker, Stephen King, and the The Silence of the Lambs series for some excellent examples of this kind of love.

  When a person flips into their destructive mode and goes berserk from bloodlust, change the way you write about them and how they speak. Use short abrupt sentences, or just inarticulate yells like in many battle scenes.

  Sometimes the soft-spoken controlled dialogue is more horrifying than shrieking threats of mayhem. When Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) says in Conan The Barbarian “They shall all drown in lakes of blood”, there is no doubt whatsoever that this guy loves death and destruction.

  Characters working from this type of love usually have a real sense of confidence. They are quite convinced that they are right in what they are doing, be it pulling the wings off a fly or genocide on a mass scale. So, they will not have those heart-searching moments of choice, despair, or regret. They may even speak and act cheerfully about what they are doing because it totally fits their worldview.

  Cinematic Techniques

  Closeup on the torturous or killing cut. Blood and guts.

  The reaction shot of the person doing the killing, to see the Love of Death and Destruction on their face.

&nbs
p; Reverse angle to show what the victim sees: the bullet or arrow headed in their direction, the blade or missile coming down, etc.

  This subject lends itself well to metaphors. Stepping out of the flames can represent the villain’s devilish mission or the hero’s escape from the fires of hell. For the former see Willem Dafoe’s Raven in Streets of Fire, Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian, and The Terminator. For the latter see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the cleansing fires at the end of Apocalypse Now, when the hero Captain Willard leaves Colonel Kurtz’s festering compound of death and destruction.

  People circled round and watching with lust for violence in their eyes: cage fighting, sword fighting, cock or dog fights. See Fight Club, Raging Bull, and The Fighter for some great examples. The thrill of some contests, like the drinking contest in Tibet at the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Miriam outdrinks the local bruiser to everyone’s rhythmic cheers. Then thanks to the pursuing Nazis, that place goes up in flames, propelling the Protagonists onto the next step of their adventures. Show us the elements and the people’s use of and reaction to them: fists, ropes, liquor bottles, etc.

  The quiescent results of someone’s Love of Death and Destruction: in Apocalypse Now, moving up-river into Colonel Kurtz’s compound with its severed heads and rotting corpses. Lines of crucified bodies as in Spartacus or The Life of Brian; the Romans could have just exiled those people, but instead they tortured them to death.