Monster in the Mirror: Ep 5: The Sheepdog, The Wolf, And The Warlock
Rudyard Kipling is best known for his children's classic The Jungle Book. But the creator of boy-hero Mowgli also created copaganda for his Nineties - the 1890’s.
In his recurring character Adam Strickland, Kipling fashioned an officer who elicits scorn for his unconventional methods, but who always gets his man. In the story we’re going to look at today, “The Mark Of The Beast,” Strickland faces a mysterious Hindu priest who curses his friend by turning him into a wolflike beast. As such, “The Mark Of The Beast” isn’t just a cop story. It also features two horror archetypes that would come into their own in the 20th century: the man-beast and the supernaturally powerful devil worshipper. Or, if you like, the Wolf-Man and the Warlock. In this episode, we’re going to talk about how Christocops today similarly see themselves as fighting an uphill battle to keep Wolf-Men and Warlocks at bay . . . by any means necessary.
Text of "Mark Of The Beast":
https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/134558/TheMarkOfTheBeastRudyardKipling.pdf?sequence=1
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RECOMMENDED READING:
Kathryn Belew, Bring The War Home
Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism
Martin Danahay and Deborah Morse, ed. Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture
Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Kipling's Tales Of Horror And Fantasy
Craig Mann, Phases Of The Moon: A Cultural History Of The Werewolf Film
Alex Vitale, The End Of Policing
Jeffrey Victor, Satanic Panic: The Creation Of A Contemporary Legend
Written, narrated, and produced by Lucas Kwong
Theme song "Lair" by The Brother K Melee (www.brotherkmusic.com)
Voice actors: Christian Young-Valdovinos, Lucas Kwong
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundi And now, this week's episode of The Monster in the Mirror.
And the award for Best Director goes to Adam Strickland for the film Mark of the Beast.
Thank you.
Thank you, Hollywood.
Thank you.
All right.
Shut up, everyone.
Shut up.
I got a lot of names to get through.
Shut up.
Okay.
I want to thank Mel Gibson for helping me beat my DUI.
I want to thank Justin Bieber.
Justin for that amazing... Yeah.
Yeah.
Give it up for that amazing theme song.
Yeah.
Alright, settle down.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio for making that torture scene as realistic as possible.
Uh, Elon for unsuspending my account.
Sean Foyd for all the cocaine.
Uh, Jesus Christ, my personal lord and savior.
Really, a whole bunch of people who helped me indoctrinate depressed and dysfunctional reactionaries.
Uh, oh, they're playing me off.
They're playing me off.
Hashtag save the children.
Mr. Wells.
Mr. Wells!
Wake up!
Am I boring you, Mr. Wells?
You know, as scintillating as your prose is, I'm starting to get the distinct feeling that I might be better off finishing my Romanocleth on my own.
The process by which I commandeered the Angelino Propaganda Factory is Byzantine and requires strict concentration if one is to recount it accurately.
Perhaps I've taxed your faculties enough for one evening.
All for the duration of your mortal existence.
And now my final act of prestidigitation.
I know I said I would let you live, but I see no reason to let you remain in the realm of visible humanity.
Not when I have here a bottle full of your own dematerialization serum to render your body not just unseen, but unheard, ungraspable, unfindable.
It's too bad you never devised an antidote to reverse the process.
Look on the bright side, Mr. Wells.
I could have sent you to the invisible man in the sky.
Open up, my boy.
Time to take your medicine.
The Sith.
The Sith.
The real-life antics on cops, Law and Order, the variations on Die Hard that popped up in theaters every summer, and if that wasn't enough, the immortal video of OJ Simpson hightailing it down LA's 91 Freeway in his white Ford Bronco, pursued by the California Highway Patrol.
Reuters is reporting that the police tracked O.J.
Simpson through his cellular phone.
Apparently, he was on the cellular phone, and they tracked him through there, and that's how they picked up this car.
I'm not saying O.J.
wasn't guilty, but the sheer amount of copaganda I'd already absorbed made the actual facts of the case irrelevant.
On TV, he was just another perp pursued by the boys in blue.
90s Copaganda might seem like an odd place to begin a discussion of Rudyard Kipling, best known for his children's classic, The Jungle Book.
But the creator of Boy Hero Mowgli also created copaganda for his 90s.
The 1890s.
In his recurring character Adam Strickland, Kipling fashioned an officer who elicits scorn for his unconventional methods, but who always gets his man.
Strickland doesn't walk a beat in London, though.
He's a policeman out in the colonies, in British India.
Unlike his more famous counterpart Sherlock Holmes, Strickland isn't a private investigator.
He's on the force.
In most of Kipling's stories about Strickland, his hero combats everyday kinds of native adversaries.
An abusive husband here, a homicidal servant there.
But in the story we're going to look at today, The Mark of the Beast, Strickland faces a very different perp, a mysterious Hindu priest who curses Strickland's friend by turning him into a wolf-like beast.
As such, The Mark of the Beast isn't just a cop story.
It also features two horror archetypes that would come into their own in the 20th century, the man-beast and the supernaturally powerful devil-worshipper.
Or, if you like, the wolf-man and the warlock.
This is a very short story we're going to talk about today.
So short you could read it in the time it takes to listen to this episode, but it's an extremely efficient two-for-one monster deal.
A pure distillation of the fears of decline and degeneration that defined 1880s and 1890s Victorian Britain.
In this episode, we're going to examine how Christocops today similarly see themselves as fighting an uphill battle to keep the Wolfmen and the Warlocks at bay, by any means necessary.
East of Suez some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases.
Man being there handed over to the power of the gods and devils of Asia.
For Kipling, this story's opening contrast between Anglican God and Asian idols is a little unusual.
It's true that Kipling was a vehement imperialist, as captured in the poem we quoted in episode 1, The White Man's Burden.
But when it came to matters of religion, Kipling actually had a pretty strong cosmopolitan streak.
A committed Freemason, he bonded with Masonic Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians.
Regardless of Kipling's own convictions though, the anonymous narrator of this story takes religious difference extremely seriously.
In fact, it's the main lesson he takes from his time living in India some years before the story's main events.
There was a light in the temple and as we passed we could hear voices of men chanting hymns.
In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours of the night to do honor to their god.
Before we could stop him, Fleet dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely grinding the ashes of a cigar butt into the forehead of the red stone image of Hanuman.
After sketching the spiritual conflict of the story's opening sentence, the anonymous narrator, whom I'll call Sidekick, suddenly flashes back to the aftermath of a drunken New Year's Eve party in British India.
He's walking home from the party with Strickland and their buddy Fleet, a lumbering Britisher who's, shall we say, not a model of tolerant open-mindedness.
In the passage you just heard, an absolutely hammered Fleet stumbles into a Hindu temple, interrupts a service, and puts out his cigar on an image of Hanuman, the deity who takes the form of a monkey.
And then he utters the phrase that gives the story its title.
See that?
Mark of the Beast.
I need it.
Isn't it fine?
Amidst the subsequent priestly uproar, a mysterious figure emerges from the shadows of the temple.
So naked and so white that Sidekick dubs him the Silverman.
And then the Silverman makes Fleet pay for his offense.
We too stooped to haul Fleet up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who seemed to spring from the earth.
When the Silverman ran in under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleet round the body and dropped his head on Fleet's breast before we could wrench him away.
The Silverman doesn't slap Fleet, or point an accusing finger, or even speak.
From Sidekick's point of view, he just gives Fleet an oddly affectionate nuzzle.
It's a puzzling gesture, and only a little bit later do we find out that the Silverman actually bit Fleet on his chest.
Keep the unreadability of the Silverman's gesture in mind a little later in the episode.
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