Taintedlovepaper

Download as docx, pdf, or txt
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 7

Cree Dueker

Daemonic In Film
Final Paper
3/13/14
Tainted Love

What I found most interesting this term was the concept of daemonic love. All love is
daemonic or can become daemonic through human emotions and actions. We watched many
films throughout this term that I believe showcase the violence of human emotions and how love
becomes daemonic. I have created an online mixtape which I believe juxtaposes that which we
feel is normal human emotion and a more innocent love to a more daemonic, primal,and sexual
love. Although these tapes seem opposite to one another the are really just two different sides to
the same coin. I have attempted to explore what love is, most times it starts as a simple
infatuation or friendship with another person but can quickly descend into something more
intense and meaningful. But love can very easily become dark through the naturally evolving
feelings that people harbor. Love is inherently daemonic because we as a species are inherently
daemonic. Two daemonic beings could never attain a purely innocent love.

To Die For introduces us to a fairly common couple. The wife of the story (Nicole
Kidman) has an obsession with being on television whereas her husband wishes for an average
life with children. Her husband embodies the average Joe seeking out the American Dream
and a song that encompasses his feelings would be Kimbras Settle Down. He wants an average
life with his wife and children whereas she would never want to ruin her body or give up
attention that she could have to a child. She is a malignant narcissist in the fact that she will

eliminate anyone who gets in the way of her goals as well as being too narcissistic to even
believe that she will ever be caught for her crimes. She is able to manipulate the men around her
into doing her dirty work so that she may play the part of a mourning wife. She is obsessed with
being the center of attention and can be seen throughout the movie directing attention to herself
most of the time through un-subtle cues. In Caroline Cooneys Goddess of Yesterday there is a
quote which depicts how Nicole may have felt when she was able to convince a young boy who
was obsessively infatuated with her to murder her devoted husband. And Helen smiled. Two
armies were fighting over her. Shouting her name in love or hatred. Dying for her. She was
everywhere, like weather, passing through the chaos as a goddess, untouched. She wore a white
gown, and it was never sprayed with blood. This quote is able to resonate with the film on
many levels. Shouting her name in love or in hatred, can be seen in the film when she is being
accosted by reporters after her husbands death and instead of sadness she feels only satisfaction
in knowing they are all interested in her and their story is her life. She was everywhere, not
only does she work as the weather girl but by being a television presence she is figuratively
everywhere, she is in your homes, she was there , her face lit up hauntingly by the television
screen, when her husband was murdered. She was also like Helen because she was never sprayed
with blood. Although she was the orchestrator her hands were never dirty and her image was
always pristine. She used love and lust as a tool to attain her goals and was daemonic both in her
personality and her use of others.

Throughout the film Hannibal we are able to see the dichotomy of the love between
Hannibal and Clarice. They are juxtaposed as characters with Hannibal being the essence of
sophistication whereas Clarice is a down to earth country girl trying to fulfill her dreams of
heroism. They are also opposites in their mannerisms in which he is cultured and somewhat

fancy and she is more gritty. His love for Clarice is daemonic in the sense that he wishes to
possess her and in parts of the movie treats her as his very own possession or toy or doll but it
also humanizes his character to a degree because it shows that he has a range of emotions and is
able to feel love for another person. She is a goddess She is terrifying With hands like silk and
sandpaper She is the place you go to sin She is the place you go to repent. Hannibal brings this
quote to life in the scene where he has Clarice and the agent in the vacation house and he is
cooking them a meal consisting of the agents brain, the same agent who had been nasty and rude
towards Clarice. He dresses her up in a designer dress and shoes in an effort to enhance her
beauty with touch of his sophistication but to me it is more like disguising her sandpaper like
personality and mannerisms with a silk dress. Although Hannibal is clearly a cannibalistic killer
we are able to see that he treats Clarice with care and that no harm will come to her by his hands.
This film also illustrates for the viewers the daemonic aspects of being a human. Throughout the
film we are shown Hannibal eating, the consumption of in his case human flesh. Humanity is
involved with the devouring of flesh daily and in his case it is a brutal activity. When he is
cooking up the agents brain it is only shocking to us because it is a human brain whereas we are
desensitized to the consumption of flesh and blood average people do daily. The theme of
cannibalism and through eating someone being able to be with them always and possess them
fully is a theme in many songs on my mixtape and I think focuses on peoples primal urge to eat
and also save themselves from the fear of being alone.

Life itself can also be seen as daemonic; we are made of flesh, born in blood, we are
sexual beings who then grow old and rot. Like Hannibal the film Natural Born Killers also
makes an argument about people and life being inherently daemonic. We are already a daemonic
species through our destruction of the environment and the murdering of animals. They argue

that no one is innocent, we are all daemonic in our own way and through our own histories, what
is to stop them from killing when everyone deserves to die? In the film they say that you cant
blame the snake for being a snake, it is used to illustrate the point that you cant blame them for
being killers, its just who they are. This film focuses on the two inherently daemonic people
falling in love with one another and exposing lifes daemonic nature. In Shakespeare's Macbeth
there is the quote Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it. Natural Born
Killers makes the argument that we are all attempting to look like the flower when we are
actually all serpents, instead of trying to conceal who we truly are we should learn to accept the
daemonic within ourselves and create a society where we are all snakes. The love between
Mickey and Mallory while unfalteringly genuine is also shocking to the viewer because of their
intensity and passion while being completely open and honest with one another and accepting of
their own daemonic personalities. He saves her from her abusive father and is able to take her
away to lead a better life in which she is free and in her case free to act out her daemonic
thoughts. Mickey possesses Mallory in the sense that he is able to bring out her daemonic side
and incite the daemonic in others through his words and actions. Mickey and Mallory see
themselves as angels whereas everyone else sees them as demons. They were angels who fell just
like Lucifer who was Gods favorite before his corruption.

Lolita was a very interesting film and entertaining to watch but it was also for me deeply
unsettling. Although Jeremy Irons character did seem to hold a true love for Lolita she was
still a child. In the film she was 14 whereas in the original book she was 12, at what age is a child
ready to enter into a relationship and understand sex and love? At what age can they truly
consent to a relationship and all it entails? In this film Lolita is not who he thinks she is. He
holds this ideal image of her whereas in reality she is just a child, at times rude and gross and not

at all noticing of his love where he is not noticing all of her faults lost in his mind where his
original Lolita lives. The daemonic aspect of this relationship was not only the taboo of
pedophilia but also the dangers that surround the feminine ideal. By constructing this ideal of
who Lolita was he was blinded to her faults and her dangerous actions, she chooses to run from
him and be used by another man and after finds herself married and pregnant. Having an ideal of
a person is also dangerous because they will never fulfill the ideal, they are an imperfect person
trying to fill the mold of an idea. This danger also arises in a movie called Ruby Sparx where a
struggling writer creates a living girl through writing about her but when she is not all that he
expects he uses his power over her to change her and takes drastic measures in exacting his
power. This love is daemonic because at a basic level it is one sided, he is creating the person he
wants and discarding the bits that he doesnt like. It is also dangerous because in both Lolita and
Ruby Sparx the man has all the power over the woman, in some cases leading to abuse and
misuse of their trust.
This abuse can be seen on extreme levels through the film Crazy Love. Unlike other films
that we watched this term this was disturbing mainly due to the fact that it is a true story. Instead
of speculating if something like this could ever happen we are presented with the facts of the
situation and left to draw our own conclusions on how this couple could ever exist. After Linda is
blinded we are present with a Frankenstein type quote in which one of their friends say that she
was different and that they got back together because He created her. It is like saying that
through his actions she became his own experiment or creation. This is mimicked in the film
Ruby Sparx where the men use this power to change the woman and to keep her securely
tethered to them so that they have no other option but to stay in an unhealthy and dangerous
relationship. Their love is daemonic because they feel the need to give their partner no

opportunity to leave. In Crazy Love Burt himself is a daemonic person because he feels the need
to go to drastic measures in order to keep her faithful to only him and keep her by his side where
he does not feel the need to also be faithful. By scarring her face he has made it so that he will
always have the power in the relationship and even if they were able to overcome such an event
there will always be the underlying threat of violence. It is the same underlying threat that keeps
the characters in Ruby Sparx from becoming a couple. Even if they were to work out their
problems there is the underlying threat that he could just write something to change how she felt
and endless possibilities of what else he could make her do.
A tale of daemonic love can also be found in the movie The Brass Teapot in which a
struggling couple finds a magical teapot which spits out money when someone near it is in pain.
As one could assume this soon takes a dark turn in which the couple hurts not only themselves
but also each other to get more and more money. At first they seem like an average couple with
some average problems but it seems like as their greed grows so does their daemonic side.
People are at their roots daemonic but for this couple their daemonic tendencies rose when the
opportunity to make money from one anothers pain arrives. They chose to pursue money and
while still being in love with one another things grow darker when the teapot stops giving out as
much money. They go from physical violence against one another to emotional violence and then
must hurt others to get the money they lust after. They are daemonic in the sense that they would
put aside morals for money and their love for one another is shaky at best once they see how
daemonic the other one is and how far they would go.
Love is inherently daemonic because we as people are daemonic and imperfect. We often
fall in love with the idea of someone more than the actual person. The other side of this coin in
that we can focus too much emotion on one person and it becomes dangerous through passion

bending into something more sinister such as obsession or wanting to possess. We live in an
inherently daemonic world and we are brought into it as daemonic beings. We are unable to
attain an innocent love because we are flawed and unable to separate ourselves from our more
primal desires. In the Little Prince it is said that, Of course Ill hurt you. Of course youll hurt
me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become
spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of
absence. Even in a childrens book it is accepted that we are daemonic people who will both
hurt and love one another, and being able to feel both emotions towards one person. Our love for
one another is inherently daemonic but only when people act outside of social norms or break
laws are these daemonic tendencies acknowledged.

You might also like