Hex

[poliphilo]

Hex is a jolly Brit TV show that started like it was going to be a rip-off of Buffy, but has steadily got sillier and more endearing.

A fallen angel (who looks like Ralph Fiennes, only more devastatingly handsome) is angling for the soul of a blonde ingenue. She is protected by the ghost of her lesbian school chum.

The lesbian ghost spends her time sleuthing and eating junk food.

I love the lesbian ghost.

Of course the angel isn't only after the ingenue's soul. When he isn't dogging her footsteps he's hanging out in this faintly absurd S/M club- with the leather-clad vixens and the coloured lights.

Ooh- and how wicked of him- he smokes like a chimney.

Supernatural evil=sex.

It's the Victorian equation. Sex was banished from the circle of the lamplight and the only way writers could deal with it- in popular fiction at least- was to have it erupt from the shadows disguised in a clay-spotted shroud. The classic ghost story is powered by thwarted desire and sexual guilt.

Once it became possible to write frankly about sex the ghost story withered and the sexy spook (Dracula for instance) dwindled into camp. Ghosts that are simply ghosts (and not metaphors for something else) are not really all that frightening. Were you scared of the ghastly ghouls in Pirates of the Caribbean? No, I thought not.

The modern ghost stories that work are not about sex. They are about things that scare us now. The Japanese movie the Ring is about our powerlessness in the face of modern technology. The Spanish movie The Devil's Backbone is about social dissolution and the breakdown of the family.

And something like Hex, which is still messing about with the demons of sex, can only hold our attention by cutting the supernatural with comedy.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

The modern ghost stories that work are not about sex. They are about things that scare us now. The Japanese movie the Ring is about our powerlessness in the face of modern technology. The Spanish movie The Devil's Backbone is about social dissolution and the breakdown of the family.



I hadn't thought about The Ring from that perspective, but it's true!

That movie really scared me. Scary movies rarely do--mostly they just make me jump (the director's cheap trick) when the music gets loud and a close-up face suddenly appears. But The Ring was chilling--that eerie jittery black-and-white video of the girl in the well...

I actually found myself thinking I was so creeped out that I might want to leave the theater! But that was fun, too.

I never saw the technology connection. It's so easy to see the sexual connection with Dracula--all that helplessness and violent kissing. Once you lose your virginity you're no longer innocent: once Dracula gets into your bedroom (and you have to ask him in!), he'll have his way with you.

When I was about twelve, I went to a slumber party, and we all stayed up late to watch Dracula on television. We were laughing nervously and feeling very jumpy by midnight, and Nancy's father suddenly materialized in the living room to tell us to keep down the noise, and we all screamed.

A fine movie. I understand Bela Legosi didn't know what on earth he was saying in English, which is one reason "Listen to them, the che-e-ldren of the n-i-g-h-t" sounds so deliciously odd and spooky! He was apparently just memorizing the pronunciations of the meaningless words.

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

Hex sounds like fun. Maybe it will make its way over to the US eventually. (Or maybe it's already here but I don't pay enough attention to television to know. . .)

I avoid scary movies as a rule, but a friend convinced me I had to see The Ring. I was freaked out for two full weeks after.

For me, it was not about technology, it was about the (apparently) unmotivated evil of Samara. The crux for me was the tape of her in the hospital in which the doctor says, "You don't want to hurt anyone, do you?" and she replies, "Yes, I do. I'm sorry."

I'm not saying the technology aspect isn't there, but it's certainly not what hit me.