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josiahduke · 9 years ago

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This was such a good read that I can’t NOT recommend it for anyone dealing with questions of faith and sexuality in the church.

40 Answers for Christians Not Waving Rainbow Flags

Many people have responded to last week’s post on The Gospel Coalition’s website titled “40 Questions for Christians Now Waving Rainbow Flags” in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in the United States granting State recognition of same-sex marriages. ��Some have answered the questions, some have refused to answer the questions, and some have responded with alternative questions. Sometimes I feel like the blogger that responded with just one question: “When are you going to listen to the answers to your questions?”

Indeed, I doubt that most people who shared the original post were the slightest bit interested in listening to any answers to the questions. The purpose of the post is clearly to convict LGBT-affirming Christians of falling astray rather than to gather feedback. This may all be for naught, but I am compelled to try because it is a tragically rare and exciting opportunity. So few non-affirming Christians ever want to know why we believe that we do. There are important people in my life who have never asked me these questions nor allowed me to posit them anyway in lieu of silence. I hope that this might be a more palatable venue– a paper slid under the closed door.

Here are some answers, not to be mistaken as a comprehensive treatment of LGBT-affirming theology.

How long have you believed that gay marriage is something to be celebrated? 8 years. Intelligent, thoughtful, Bible-believing Christians have been supporting gay marriage in gradually increasing numbers for more than 50 years.

What Bible verses led you to change your mind? This question means to show LGBT-affirming Christians that they have erred by placing their life experience or personal interests above scripture. This assumption is a very common misconception. Christians that have a high view of the Bible and are also affirming believe that the Bible does not condemn loving, committed, monogamous same-sex relationships in the first place. So our stand is not one against the Bible; it is one for a particular interpretation of the Bible that we believe is a more accurate one, and profoundly so. We stand FOR the Bible and believe that it is imperative that we understand it and apply it correctly. I was forced to reexamine my own understanding of the Bible’s teachings as I learned more and more about the realities of LGBT people and their lives, and that new information created irreconcilable contradictions between some of my strongly-held beliefs. When finally I could no longer ignore those contradictions, it became clear that my understanding of the Bible was flawed somewhere. Specifically, the church’s teaching that exclusively same-sex attracted people must remain celibate stands in contradiction with many of the Bible’s teachings about human sexuality including the imperative and fundamental nature of our sexuality (Genesis 2:18-24), the reality of celibacy as a gift given to very few (Matthew 19, 1 Corinthians 7), and the danger of forcing celibacy on those to whom it has not been given or denying marriage to a group of people (1 Corinthians 7, 1 Timothy 4). Further, the church’s teaching stands in direct contradiction with Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 19 that good teachings will bear good fruit and bad teachings will bear bad fruit. When I observe all of the warnings within these verses playing out in the regular destruction of gay people’s lives and faith under the church’s traditional teachings, I find ample reason—responsibility, in fact—to reexamine those teachings. In all of this, when our life experience comes into play it illuminates scripture rather than supplanting it. When we allow our experience to inform our understanding of scripture, that should not be mistaken for allowing our experience to trump scripture. The latter may be treacherous, but the former is essential, for it is God’s creation that we encounter in our life experience, and as Paul says in Romans 1, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” Additionally, see John 16:12-14 and Galatians 3:28. There are also many resources available that answer this and other questions in great detail. Dr. James Brownson’s book Bible Gender Sexuality is probably my favorite for the intellectually minded. Or Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian is a lighter read that does a good job of distilling the scholarly literature on the subject down into an accessible form.

How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated? [EDIT: See my revised answer to this question here.] This question flirts with a rhetological fallacy: an argument from silence. It suggests that the absence of a sentiment indicates God’s opposition to it. While the Bible’s mention of same-sex erotic acts are indeed negative, culture in Bible times did not understand sexual orientation as we do today. Sexual roles were defined by social status rather than by gender. (Since women were inherently of lower social status than men, gender was still woven in but under a different conceptualization than we have today.) Further, they thought that same-sex erotic behavior was born of sexual excess through a gluttonous loss of self-control, and indeed at the time, we have no record of socially accepted loving same-sex relationships between social equals. So it is no surprise that the Bible does not discuss same-sex erotic behavior within the kind of relationships we know today. Given the new information we have about the existence of sexual orientation, we must apply what we know about the broader witness of Scripture on human sexuality and morality in general. We know that sexual activity is not sinful per se, and we see in Genesis 2:18-24 that the central function of our sexuality is intimate connection to each other and ultimately the formation of the kinship bond (becoming “one flesh”)—family. These values—intimate connectedness and family—are strongly affirmed throughout scripture. In fact, many theologians would argue that our desire for intimate connectedness is a primary embodiment of the image of God in us. We can also consider the Bible’s description of love and the fruits of the spirit (1 Corinthians 13, Galatians 5). The sexual relationships that we mean to exonerate today abundantly facilitate and embody intimate connection, family, love and the fruits of the spirit in the same contexts that opposite-sex relationships do. If these are the virtues that make opposite-sex relationships a blessing to be celebrated, then they also are a blessing to be celebrated when realized in same-sex relationships.

What verses would you use to show that a marriage between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the church? What is it specifically about a man and a woman that makes them exclusively able to reflect the relationship of God to the church? This one also flirts with the fallacy of an argument from silence (see Question 2). It refers to Ephesians 5 which teaches that marriages ought to follow Jesus’ example in his relationship to his people. While cast in the example of a male-female marriage, that is no surprise (see Question 3). Further, the relationship of Jesus to the church is the relationship of a divine being to a group of men and women. This concept is entirely gender-neutral. The assertion that only a man and a woman can adequately depict Christ and the church suggests that only a man can depict Christ and only a woman can depict …men and women. Paul goes on to say that our deeply rooted need for intimate connection described in Genesis 2 is a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the church. We also have the story of Hosea, whom God told to marry a prostitute to depict God’s relationship to Israel (where the unfaithful prostitute represented Israel’s unfaithfulness to God). Same-sex couples experience all of the desire for intimate connection, faithfulness through hard times, mutual submission, and selfless love that opposite-sex couples do and so have every opportunity to experience and bear witness to God’s relationship to us as opposite-sex couples do. If you find the gender hierarchy within Paul’s description in Ephesian 5 to be essential, then I could see how you might wonder how two people of the same gender might achieve that hierarchy. There’s nothing stopping a same-sex couple from establishing a hierarchy in their relationship, but indeed most same-sex relationships are egalitarian. But consider two things: (1) Of the many aspects of a marriage and the mystery of human sexuality that might help us understand God’s relationship to us, the concept of God as the head of the church with a church submitting to God seems by far the least profound or mysterious and even patently obvious. (2) There are many (most?) straight Christians that believe the Bible points us on a trajectory away from gender hierarchy entirely (Galatians 3:28). These Christians form egalitarian marriages, yet Christians that subscribe to patriarchy don’t consider such marriages null and void simply because they are egalitarian. To hold same-sex marriages in question for their typically egalitarian nature is purely a double standard.

Do you think Jesus would have been okay with homosexual behavior between consenting adults in a committed relationship? Absolutely.

If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of marriage as being one man and one woman? He didn’t. The purpose of Jesus’ comment in Matthew 19 is to answer a question about divorce and not to define gender boundaries in marriage. It is no surprise that he speaks in terms of a male-female relationship when that is exactly what the Pharisees asked him about and when he is speaking to a culture that doesn’t even have same-sex marriage within their customs. Description is not prescription. Similarly, the Bible “reasserts” the order of the universe in Joshua 10, 1 Chronicles 16:30, and Psalms 96:10 where we see clearly that the Earth is fixed, and the sun moves around it. Galileo caused a major uproar in the church for claiming otherwise, unseating our firmament—God’s creation—from the center of everything. But solely from our experience we know that geocentrism is not in fact a reality and that these verses merely reflect the knowledge available to the people of the time.

When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do you think he was forbidding? Adultery, fornication, rape, pederasty… I’m not sure what the purpose of this question is.

If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1? There is a lot to say about Romans 1, but the most important concept for me is in fact reflected in the language of an “exchange” in this passage. As I described a little bit in my answer to question 3 and unlike our knowledge of sexual orientation today, people in Paul’s time thought that everyone in their “natural” state (with self-control and moderation) was attracted to the opposite sex and that same-sex erotic desire and behavior was likewise within everyone’s capacity, brought out and added to a person’s usual desires when lust spiraled into excess (beyond nature). This view of human sexuality is reflected in Paul’s language as he describes people who have been previously satisfied with opposite-sex acts but are now consumed with lust and exchanging those acts for same-sex acts in a fury of passion. This scenario is very unlike homosexuality but reflects very real practices of Paul’s time as well as his understanding of human sexuality. My point here is not to say that “Paul got it wrong!” As with everything in the Bible, we need to know WHY Paul wrote what he did just as much as we need to know what he wrote. Paul sees the orgy-like scenario he describes as something apart from God because it is licentious sexual excess. And I completely agree that sexual gluttony is apart from God’s will for us. I do not question Paul’s moral lesson; I question his knowledge of human sexuality much as I question ancient culture’s knowledge of orbital mechanics (see Question 6). For sources and a much more in-depth discussion on Romans 1, see Dr. James Brownson’s book Bible Gender Sexuality. For more about sexuality in ancient Rome, see Roman Homosexuality by Craig Williams.

Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out of heaven? Since it is self-evident that sin is sinful, I’m assuming this is a rhetorical question.

What sexual sins do you think they were referring to? Both of these verses employ a “vice list” to generally conjure up all manner of sin in the reader’s mind. I believe the authors meant to evoke all manner of sexual sin. I of course do not believe that gender has anything to do with sexual morality and so obviously don’t include consensual sex between married people of the same gender within the concept of “sexual sin.” 1 Corinthians 6:9 requires further comment, however. The two Greek words malakos and arsenokoites that appear here have more recently been combined and translated together as “homosexuals” and similar. I believe this is a translation error in the form of a gross over-generalization. There’s quite a bit I could say about that, but I’ll stick to the basics here. First, if the idea of a translation error seems offensive, consider that the translation of these words has in fact meaningfully changed over time already. They cannot all be right, and some are closer to capturing the moral logic of the authors than others. One might say very gently that “some translations are better than others.” The use of the word “homosexual” in newer translations is immediately suspect since the concept is relatively new and does not align with ancient understandings of human sexuality. Even if Paul had explicitly written “men who have sex with men,” we would still need to understand that Paul was under the impression that all same-sex erotic behavior was born of sexual gluttony by people who were no longer satisfied with their usual, pedestrian sexual conquests with the opposite sex. Put another way, Paul is not commenting on that which he doesn’t have in view: loving, committed, monogamous same-sex relationships. For a great treatment of translation in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, see Dr. Brownson’s book “Bible Gender Sexuality.” In a nutshell, our best information suggests that malakos and arsenokoites harken to sexual exploitation consistent with the most common forms of same-sex behavior in Paul’s time: master/slave scenarios, pederasty, and prostitution, which is also consistent with several older translations of these verses before the concept of sexual orientation emerged in the last century.

As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp? First, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t figure these things out on my own. I learned them from biblical scholars that have lived since our understanding of sexual orientation has emerged. Martin Luther once railed against Copernicus, calling him a “fool” for flouting holy scripture by advancing his notion that the Earth moves around the sun. I imagine Luther failed to grasp orbital mechanics. This question sits on a rhetological fallacy: appealing to authority. While these men were all great thinkers, that does not mean they were always right. The question is not whether I am more cleaver than Luther or any other scholar of old or what I might understand about the Bible. The question is whether we have new information about God’s creation available to us that they did not have. The answer is a big yes. These scholars failed to fully grasp human sexuality and could not, therefore, begin to see the interpretation of the Bible that LGBT-affirming Christians see today any more than Luther could have seen a heliocentric interpretation of the Bible without a telescope and an open mind.

What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned? I would use exactly the same arguments I would use in America and that I have been introducing here. They are based in factual observations that transcend culture. Our American missionaries taught most of these people to abhor homosexuals and encouraged or remained complicitly silent about legislation in some of these countries prescribing the death penalty and sparking witch hunts for gay and lesbian people. We are responsible for allowing our cultural conditioning to color our teachings in opposition to gender and sexual minorities, and we need to step up, confess our error and implore them to re-examine sexuality with new information and new eyes. Then we need to fall on our knees and ask forgiveness for the sin that we have visited upon every gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender person who has lost their livelihood, their faith, or their life because of our error.

Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman? That’s not my call to make. I do not know their motivations throughout this progression in their lives.

Do you think children do best with a mother and a father? No.

If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion? I point to the entire body of research on same-sex parented families. A recent study–the largest of its kind–conducted by researchers at the University of Melbourne found that children from same-sex families were just as happy and healthy as those from opposite-sex families. In fact, the children in same-sex families scored a little bit higher on measures of general health and family cohesion. As reported by Reuters, another recent “study-of-studies” co-authored by two professors at the University of Oregon and the University of Colorado “reviewed 19,000 studies and articles related to same-sex parenting from 1977 to 2013.” They found that there was some disagreement among studies in the 1980s, little disagreement in the 1990s, and a clear consensus emerging by 2000 “that there is no difference between same-sex and different-sex parenting in the psychological, behavioral or educational outcomes of children.” For an excellent review of the historical progression of cultural, medical, and political attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities, see Kathy Baldock’s book Walking the Bridgeless Canyon: Repairing the Breach Between the Church and the LGBT Community.

If yes, does the church or the state have any role to play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom and a dad? N/A

Does the end and purpose of marriage point to something more than an adult’s emotional and sexual fulfillment? Yes. First, as discussed in Question 4, the Bible teaches that marriage helps us understand God’s relationship to us, and I find no reason to believe that only the union of a man and a woman can represent that gender-neutral concept. Second, marriage is the seat of the family unit: the one-flesh bond to which we are driven by our sexuality (Genesis 2).

How would you define marriage? Marriage is a life-long commitment between two people before God.

Do you think close family members should be allowed to get married? This is irrelevant to the question of gender within sexual morality.

Should marriage be limited to only two people? This is also irrelevant to the question of gender within sexual morality.

On what basis, if any, would you prevent consenting adults of any relation and of any number from getting married? The purpose of this question is fuzzy to me. What sort of preventing are we talking about here? If we’re talking about legislation, I believe that the role of government within a democracy is to protect the freedoms of its people and to restrict the freedoms of one person or group only where they would violate those of another. I do not support legislation against any act that causes no collateral damage to the well-being of others, even if I have moral objections to that act. We don’t need sharia law in this country. If we’re talking about personal relationships, I would express my concern to anyone in whose life I had the privilege to speak if I thought they were bringing ruin upon themselves, but I would always listen first and last and never assume that I couldn’t be wrong.

Should there be an age requirement in this country for obtaining a marriage license? This also is irrelevant to the question of gender within sexual morality.

Does equality entail that anyone wanting to be married should be able to have any meaningful relationship defined as marriage? This question is very strange to me. What does it mean to “have [a] relationship defined as marriage?” Is someone submitting a petition to the Oxford English Dictionary? If a person wants to make a life-long commitment to a brick and call it a marriage, that’s their prerogative. It doesn’t fit within my definition of marriage, but we don’t get to play Language Police. I assume the author means to question the Supreme Court’s recent decision requiring all states to treat same-sex unions the same as they treat opposite-sex unions. First, we really must distinguish between marriage and government recognition thereof. If marriage is a life-long commitment between two people, then the government has no say in that. No law can prevent two people from making a commitment to each other, and no law ever has in the United States so far as I know. The government decides whether to accept registration of same-sex marriages thereby granting those couples the associated legal benefits. Equality means that everyone gets “equal protection under the law.” The Supreme Court says that means that heterosexual people get various legal and tax benefits if they register their committed relationships with the government, and homosexual people get the same benefits if they register their committed relationships with the government. If the person that marries a brick wants to register that commitment with the State, I’m sure s/he will enjoy the hospital visitation and inheritance rights when the time comes.

If not, why not? See previous.

Should your brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with homosexual practice be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion? (An ironic request coming from the group that has fought so hard to prevent LGBT people and their allies from exercising their religious beliefs…) Should my brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with interracial marriage and racial equality be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion? Should Islamic extremists that believe they need to kill Christians be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs? Some Christians believe that gay people should be put to death. Should they be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs? Your right to exercise your religious beliefs stops where that action harms other people. You may think these examples are nothing like the denials of service that some Christians want to retain, but that disconnect between us is an embodiment of a more fundamental disconnect: many non-affirming Christians still insist that homosexuality is some kind of twisted mental disorder or reprobate desire while a growing majority of people look at gay people as a natural variation of the human species that deserves—that needs—to be able to form meaningful, intimate relationships in order to flourish (just like everybody else) and cannot do so with the opposite sex. The growing majority finds that the real harm lies in attempting to force celibacy on gay people or, heaven forbid, in attempting to “fix” us with reparative therapy. The laws of this land identify certain protected classes that have been marginalized within our society and make it illegal to discriminate against people for being within any of those classes. We can discriminate against incompetent people when hiring employees and discriminate against people with poor money management skills when offering loans, but once a majority of society agrees that discrimination against a certain people group is without merit, we all have to follow the laws that result. I believe that anti-discrimination laws should be passed nationwide adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes, and I believe that everyone, including Christians that don’t like it, should have to adhere to them within the public realm in exactly the same way that our racial and women’s equality laws work.

Will you speak up for fellow Christians when their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms are threatened because of this issue? See previous answer. I advocate equal protection under the law. Food for thought: Did Christians speak up for LGBT people when their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms were threatened because of this issue in the past decades?

Will you speak out against shaming and bullying of all kinds, whether against gays and lesbians or against Evangelicals and Catholics? Another irony, considering all the years that Christians have shamed LGBT people. I will handle those who have disdain for same-sex attraction the same as I will handle those who have disdain for dark skin color. I will endeavor to treat them with dignity and respect where possible, but I do believe there is a line at which society needs to say, “Shame on you for harming this people group.”

Since the evangelical church has often failed to take unbiblical divorces and other sexual sins seriously, what steps will you take to ensure that gay marriages are healthy and accord with Scriptural principles? The purpose of this question is not clear to me. I teach and encourage the same sexual morality for all marriages regardless of gender.

Should gay couples in open relationships be subject to church discipline? This is irrelevant to the question of gender within sexual morality. Should straight couples in open relationships be subject to church discipline? Whatever our answer, it should be the same in both cases.

Is it a sin for LGBT persons to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage? Again, this question has nothing to do with the morality of gender within sexuality. If it is a sin for straight persons to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage, then it is a sin for LGBT people, too.

What will open and affirming churches do to speak prophetically against divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery wherever they are found? This is another question that has nothing to do with the morality of gender within sexuality. It seems to be based on the misconception that LGBT-affirming Christians have decided to strategically ignore the Bible’s sexual morality where it is inconvenient when in fact we believe that we have improved our understanding of the Bible’s teachings and are following God’s will more closely than we were before we became affirming. The morality of divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery are questions separate from that of gender within sexuality. LGBT-affirming theology demonstrates only that gender is not a part of God’s sexual morality. It does not dispose of sexual morality as a whole, and it does not imply any mutual exclusivity between affirmation and the authority of the Bible.

If “love wins,” how would you define love? In my own words, love is selflessness. In the apostle’s words: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” –1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (Verses 8-13 are illuminating, too.)

What verses would you use to establish that definition? See previous.

How should obedience to God’s commands shape our understanding of love? We’re back to the misconception that affirming Christians don’t want to be obedient to God’s commands when in fact we believe that we are better following God’s commands. Answering nonetheless, the New Testament teaches us that the end goal of the law is fulfilled by love. (Matthew 22:36-40, Romans 13:8-10, Galatians 5:14) So love is obedience to God’s commands, and obedience to God’s commands is love. Where our actions harm our neighbor, we have departed from obedience to God (Romans 13:10).

Do you believe it is possible to love someone and disagree with important decisions they make? Of course. But stonewalling the pleas of another that our teachings are harming them is not loving.

If supporting gay marriage is a change for you, has anything else changed in your understanding of faith? Quite a lot over the years. I’ve grown in ways I never would have without this challenge to my faith. Mine is a far more mature faith than it was eight years ago, and I’d never want to go back. If I had to pick just one example: it has been humbling. My faith used to function within an arrogance that I was blind to. Now after realizing that I could be so wrong about a belief, I am lower and God is higher. I now grasp more vividly the inherent separation between my understanding of God’s word and God’s word.

As an evangelical, how has your support for gay marriage helped you become more passionate about traditional evangelical distinctives like a focus on being born again, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the total trustworthiness of the Bible, and the urgent need to evangelize the lost? This question is very strange to me. It seems like the author means to suggest that supporting gay marriage necessarily undermines these “evangelical distincitves” when that is by no means the case. Otherwise I don’t see increased passionate commitment to these principles as any kind of measure of the truth of a belief. Instead, we should measure the outcomes of our beliefs and actions against the fruit of the spirit described in Galatians 5:22-23 as well as the “fruit of the tree” as Jesus instructs us in Matthew 7:15-20.

What open and affirming churches would you point to where people are being converted to orthodox Christianity, sinners are being warned of judgement and called to repentance, and missionaries are being send out to plant churches among unreached peoples? Lots of them. But see previous question. Again, there is only one difference between the beliefs of an affirming and a non-affirming Christian, and that is the role of gender within sexual morality.

Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead? Once again, LGBT-affirming theology does not require a Christian to be less committed to the Church, Christ, or the Bible. At the most basic level of this conversation, we really must have this mutual understanding and respect for each other.

When Paul at the end of Romans 1 rebukes “those who practice such things” and those who “give approval to those who practice them,” what sins do you think he has in mind? See Question 8. And as vice lists do, Paul is intending to evoke all manner of sin rather than just those listed.

#gay rights #gay christian #theology #thoughts #christianity #the bible #arguments #fallacy

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josiahduke · 9 years ago

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How Korkit Outsmarted Death

Considering the long bout of radio silence, I decided to put another Kazakh folk tale I translated up here. There were several stories about the grandfather of poets, Korkit, who spent his life running from Azrael, the angel of death. There is a strange and sad reflection of our own fears here. I will lead with a crudely translated poem that was included in the book of stories. Many thanks to my teacher, Amangul Nukhnabi, who helped me with every step of this translation.

In the world there is no place like the Altai, There was the Altai beteke golden grass At the Altai's edge there was a gold heaven Many years ago the Alash people dwelled there.

… In those days there was a hero of six nations, Of one blood with many, but of a different soul. He knew himself, and concerned himself with nothing, As a young man, he was nothing like you and your kind.

They named this hero's name Korkit, The kind country called the young man hero. Multitudes were surprised every day to see such a man, Korkit's character was pure white good.

… One day he awoke, as from dreaming, afraid, He carved the kobyz from the larch tree. He strung the horsehair through the kobyz to give it a voice The Altais echoed with his heart-voice sound

From the Kobiz came a mournful voice, He played the music like a steady trot. Sometimes, he played it like a wild foal, Sometimes, it moved like a calm yellow camel.

… He is the grandfather of the poets: Poet Korkit, In life, wherever he goes, he digs holes… Swimming in the tears of his eyes were songs played, The larch-instrument hugged to himself, lies Korkit.

--Magjan Jumabaev "Korkit"

Korkit saddled his fast flying horse and escaped from Death. But, no matter where he went, the Angel of Death Azrael and his gravediggers followed, unrelenting in their pursuit. Although sometimes, Azrael’s feelings of pity were awakened, so that even when he came nearby he could not take Korkit’s soul. One day, the dastardly angel constructed an ornate golden box in which to keep the soul of his treasured mark Korkit. Korkit knew the day would come he would die, yet he did his utmost to thwart fate.

One day, Korkit and the Angel of Death Azrael met face to face, and the Angel said to him, “Come inside this box!”

Korkit, being clever, had already composed an answer to this question, for when Death calls, lesser men are obliged to simply do whatever they are asked. “Very good. I will come inside the box, but it is small. How can I fit when the ceiling is only so high?” He held his hand out. “Why don’t you show me yourself how one might squeeze himself into that tiny space?”

Azrael, unaccustomed to simple questions, obliged Korkit and showed him how to enter the golden box. Once he was inside, Korkit leapt upon the lid and slammed it shut with a dull thud, latched the box and threw it into the nearby river. Just like that, Azrael floated down the swift current as the waves played at the sides of the box, but Korkit stayed alive. So, during that time, with the Angel of Death indisposed, people were not susceptible to Death’s snares, and their souls did not pass on.

In that time, a fisherman lived on the shores of the estuary that connects the sea and the river. One day, he spied a golden box shining in the current’s flow, and caught it in his net. When he opened the lid, immediately there shot out the enraged Angel of Death who emerged with a loud shout. The poor fisherman’s soul was snatched right away, and he died. Knowing he owed a debt of death, Azrael stole away into the night to search for Korkit. Any time one feels the soul-gatherer coming, he hears a sad music composed just for Korkit, and the Angel of Death plays it on his instrument for the people.

#Kazakh #kazakhstan #kobyz #folk tale #Korkit #death #mortality #mythology #myth #central asia #instrument #angel #gold #mongolia #poetry #anthropology #soul

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josiahduke · 9 years ago

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Why Asan Was Called "Mourner"

While I won't say I am proficient enough in the Kazakh language to do translations of my own, I do love myths and folk tales. During my time in Western Mongolia as a Kazakh language student, I found a large volume of old Turkish and Kazakh folk tales in the book shop and made it a regular part of my lessons to read through these stories. The process of reading through these tales was grueling (my tutor Amangul has a particularly patient spirit and helped me immensely through the process) and at the end I came away with several unique folk tales which I'd never read in English before.

I tried, with varying degrees of success, to preserve the idiosyncrasies of the language as it appeared in the original volume (In a future post, I will try to give an overview of the book itself and my process of translating it). The Kazakh language is full of its own quirks. While I don't think the following is a perfect translation of the original story, I hope it preserves some of the original's spirit and flavor. This particular piece was my favorite of all of them.

I'll also add: Kazakhs do not use the word "Effendi" or "Shangri-La", but I have used these terms for greater familiarity to Western readers.

Originally, Asan was simply Asan Effendi. He was very rich. One day, all the good and wealthy people met to discuss the latest gossip. "I heard one fisherman caught an obscenely large fish from the river," said one. After hearing the story of the exceptional fish, Asan went to the river to see this strange catch himself. At the river, he found several fishermen manning two nets. The famous and wise poet Atakti, also a seer, directed their movements. As Asan approached, the fishermen pulled the net ashore, brimming with fish.

In those days, there was a famous sage who had seven sons and one daughter. After the girl grew older, she grew lonely and told her brothers, "I need to get married. Please help me!" And so, following the natural logic of young and spirited men, the seven brothers made her a box of metal. Its outside was a fine silver design of suns and dragons, while the inside was furnished with lavish cushions, on which their sister might sit. After they had seated their proud sister inside comfortably, they sealed the box and sent it floating down the river.

As Asan Effendi watched, the second fisherman's net pulled out this singularly beautiful silver box from the river's flow. Spectators gathered round, and Asan, sensing an opportunity, declared his entitlement. "Oh! Good fisherpeople! Which do you want: the outside of the box or the inside?" he asked the fishermen. Although it never occurred to them that Asan hadn't so much as lifted a finger to recover the box, the fishermen racked their brains. "We will take the outside!" one of them said. "If this is so, then I will take whatever is inside!" exclaimed Asan.

The box was opened and an indescribably beautiful girl came out. Asan took her home before the fishermen could protest.

All the way home, Asan babbled endlessly about how excited he was to have found a suitable wife. When they reached his home, the girl told Asan there needed to be three rules if she was to be his wife. "First: when we sleep at night, do not ask me any favors, or try to kiss me," she said. Somewhat bewildered, Asan agreed. "Second," said the Sage's daughter, "When you come home, please announce yourself--don't play peeping tom through the jabuktan above the door! It is rude!" Feeling somewhat cheated (for what husband doesn't enjoy spying on his wife occasionally?), Asan agreed. The Sage's daughter nodded her perfectly-formed head. "Third: I will not speak for the next three years. Do not explain my muteness to anyone; do not complain, and do not force me to speak. In three years' time, I will speak again, but you must trust me implicitly for the first three years of our marriage."

Still dazzled by his future wife's beauty, and feeling over-confident in his fortitude, Asan agreed with these three difficult rules. The two of them were married in the next week, and word quickly spread of Asan's exotic wife who could not speak.

"Asan Effendi is so wealthy, yet he married a broken woman!" they whispered. "Of all the beautiful girls in our tribe, none of them was good enough to meet his rich taste! So like the rich: so selfish!" they said.

Word reached Asan of the rumors, and this grieved him greatly, for he could say nothing to allay their doubts. "Perhaps my new wife simply needs some encouragement to speak. Perhaps she is just afraid," he thought. And so he designed a number of stratagems to entice her to speak. So he sent her to the Fabled Bazaars of Xanadu, famous for its multitude of shopkeepers who hawked their wares. He gave her a vague list of impossible trinkets to buy and then hired thieves to snatch them away just as she reached for the goods. "Surely she is moral and just enough to cry out against crime!" he thought. Yet his wife returned as mute as she had been.

Many months passed, and Asan grew more impatient. "She is silent because she secretly hates me," he thought. So he sent her out into the desert on a lonely caravan with no water. To his servants, he gave a number of skins brimming with khummuz (mare's milk) and gave them special instructions. After several days traveling into the wastes, his servants swigged the milk and then poured the rest onto the sand right in front of Asan's wife. "Surely her desire to survive will compel her to say something," thought Asan. But, weeks later, the caravan returned and his wife was as silent as she had ever been.

Asan Effendi had one very close friend. One day, he went to see him across the steppe. His friend said to him, "Listen to me, Asan. I'm your only friend, and yes, you are indeed very wealthy. But gold does not care for your well-being as I do. However, why did you marry a mute? Truly, you could have found a decent wife, yes? You've gone over the edge: in the middle of a village full of gorgeous women, you chose the broken one! If you needed help paying for a dowry, you could have asked me."

Asan heard his friend's words, but did not say anything. Yet his friend continued: "People say my friend, the foolish and rich Asan, couldn't pick a healthy donkey from a lame one if he's gotten this broken woman. They are beginning to doubt your business sense, my friend. This woman will ruin you. Please marry someone else!"

The opinions of others mattered most to Asan Effendi, and this news was very upsetting. He could stand the gossip of the washerwomen and the traders, but this was his best friend! So he said to his friend, "My wife will not speak for three years. It is her code of conduct, though it makes no sense to me. But, compared to the rest of my life, what is three years? Nothing! So please do not tell anyone I spoke of this. I only have to wait a little longer." He opened his heart and told the secret. However, he had also broken his sacred agreement with his wife.

When he returned home that evening, he found his wife naked, standing under the open tundikten (ger ring), basked in moonlight. Feathers covered her body, and her arms had metamorphosed into wings.

As her body changed, she spoke to Asan in a cold voice: "Ah, Asan, my darling: you have failed my test. I asked three things of you. Don't reach for me in the night, I asked, yet you sought favors. Don't spy on me in the evening, I said, and yet you arrive unannounced in the long evening. But it was the final rule--the most sacred trust--that you have broken, telling our secret to the world! Do you not think your friend will tell his wife, his friends, his servants? Speak once, and a secret is lost forever. Moreover, you sought to break our trust, sending me to Xanadu, to the desert! What sort of husband are you?

"Now I am not yours, and you are not mine. I have your child growing within my belly: I will now fly to Egypt and give birth to him there. Perhaps you will find him again one day. Now I shall leave you forever, my darling. Goodbye!"

She transformed into a pure-white crane and flew out of the ger, and within moments she was gone.

Asan Effendi sank into a depressed stupor. He traveled the world for seven years on a horse that ran faster than the wind, which he had purchased in Xanadu. Yet for all the lands he saw, he never saw his gorgeous wife. He looked for Shangri-La, and found Shangri-La, but she was not there. He rode the path to hell, but she was not there. Eventually, he returned home and old man and sat in mourning for his lost wife and son. And so he was called Asan the Mourner, for although he found Shangri-La, he would never let himself experience joy again. May we learn from his folly!

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josiahduke · 10 years ago

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The Metal Gear Solid Movie You've Never Seen + Thoughts on My Father

I got a piece published in Kill Screen last week. It was the last of three pitches I sent to my editor, sort of tacked onto the end. "He'll pick the first or second one," was my thought, but I was wrong. For better or worse, I've got my angle, and it's the expatriate angle.

"Living in Laos at the age of 17, I played a shit-ton of videogames. My dad and I had a weekly ritual where, after enjoying coffee and bagels at Joma cafe, we’d buy a cheap game at the morning market from our favorite DVD/game salesman. The Saturday after swearing off MGS3, I saw a new DVD on display: Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater: The Film. They’d made a movie?" -- Digging Into the Southeast Asian Bootleg Videogame Cutscene Economy

What I didn't write about was the significant role this Saturday morning ritual played into my relationship with my dad. I grew up loving him from a distance, sometimes closer, sometimes scared of him, often in awe, but the fact was that he worked the hard shift as a pilot, and his time was often spent providing for his family. Up until I turned 17, I'd never spent regular, significant time with him.

But I think we're both creatures of habit. "Whenever I go to a different city, I always try out their Rueben sandwiches," he told me recently. When I get into an airport, I buy myself a small black coffee and stare at it miserably while waiting for the gate to open. I also try to put on my best resting bitch face to discourage anyone from talking to me. It's nice not talking to anybody at eleven in the morning.

In Laos, we had our own patterns. My dad and I would go to Joma cafe, get ourselves a bagel egger each and some bitter/sweet ice coffee, then head over to the morning market. I'd buy myself a game, we'd window shop past all the other stalls lighting their incense, and eventually drive home. I'd sometimes try to tell him why I was excited about a game.

"They look like porcelain dolls," he pointed at my freshly-bought copy of FFIX.

"Yeah but the story."

The thing we consistently connected on was Soul Calibur II. My dad and I must have logged about 300 hours together on it. He always played Kilik, the pole-brandishing upstart, but I played around with a variety of other characters. Every evening or two, we'd congregate in front of our TV, turn up the A/C and square off. I could just out-dance him with the fencing Raphael, but he could beat the leatherclad hypersexual Voldo with a few deft cracks of his quarterstaff.

But all that was just fun. As I sampled more and more of the Playstation catalogue, the games began to feel more serious than silly to my teenaged brain. I felt my throat parch when I heard Tidus talk about his old man Jecht in Final Fantasy X. The muscles in my arms went taught when I imagined the Precursor civilization in Jak 2, and late nights spent playing Kingdom Hearts made me think deeper things about Disney and J-pop than they perhaps deserved. I wrote a crappy fantasy novel that was all steampunk and anime-flavor. I grew my hair long and tried to unsuccessfully cultivate a scraggly tuft of facial hair.

There were nights when my dad was working hard at his desk just behind me when I wanted him to turn around and watch me playing these games. I'd replay the most overwrought and emotional scenes in the hopes that he'd turn around and look on. Occasionally, he'd come over with a bowl of ice cream and eat in silence as I shaved off the last Hit Points of a massive shadowbeast or mecha-giant.

I didn't have the temperament or physicality to make him proud on the football field, so I wanted to impress him with light shows and critical hits. I was Quentin Coldwater of The Magicians, sick-spirited and desperate to prove myself. I was a magician playing to a blind audience. Despite all my attempts to get his attention, I never got the affirmation I wanted, because let's face it: games can seem pretty silly. It's not all that fun to watch someone play a turn-based battle RPG, even if the limit breaks are pre-rendered cutscenes.

Maybe if I'd actually said it out loud?

"Dad, I want you to be interested in this because I'm your son."

It gets more ridiculous when I say it explicitly

"Dad, I want you to watch the blue lion man and little Japanese girl and emo blitzball player take down the undead astral projection of an effeminate blue-haired man's deceased mother. I want you to be impressed that I can navigate a set of arcane menus to defeat this weird-ass monster."

"Dad, I want you to watch me airboard as a goateed elf-eared man with a fuzzy ocelot through a desert and beat this time limit. Even though I will fail multiple times, I'd love it if you could cheer me on or be invested in this game you are not playing."

"Hey dad. I want you to endure Haley Joel Osment's whining about the power of friendship in Neverland while he fights off Captain Hook's pirate minions with a massive key and overlarge boots."

The logic of the JRPG--or most video games in general--is a tall order for anyone. So maybe it's good that my dad and I took refuge in our usual routine, eating ham and eggs on a bagel in a well-ventilated western coffee shop, buying our games from the same guy every Saturday every week for months on end. The ritual made more sense than either of us must've made to each other at the time, and eventually it did pay off.

A year passed; I cut my hair and started applying to colleges in the US. We grew into familiarity with each other, even if we didn't understand each other completely, and some evenings I'd pass him the controller and ask him to try out a boss or a minigame. If nothing else, we could boot up Soul Calibur II and duel it out.

Read my Kill Screen article here. Share this with your friends or spread it around on Facebook if you enjoyed the read.

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josiahduke · 10 years ago

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Mark Doty's "Esta Noche" and Who the Hell Am I Anyway?

This is a slightly-confessional piece I wrote for a college assignment. We picked poems and wrote responses. I chose to get too personal with mine.

"Esta Noche" by Mark Doty

In a dress with a black tulip’s sheen la fabulosa Lola enters, late, mounts the stairs to the plywood platform, and begs whoever runs the wobbling spot to turn the lights down

to something flattering. When they halo her with a petal-toned gel, she sets to haranguing, shifting in and out of two languages like gowns or genders to please have a little respect

for the girls, flashing the one entrancing and unavoidable gap in the center of her upper teeth. And when the cellophane drop goes black, a new spot coronas her in a wig

fit for the end of a century, and she tosses back her hair—risky gesture— and raises her arms like a widow in a blood tragedy, all will and black lace, and lipsyncs "You and Me

against the World." She’s a man you wouldn’t look twice at in street clothes, two hundred pounds of hard living, the gap in her smile sadly narrative—but she’s a monument,

in the mysterious permission of the dress. This is Esta Noche, a Latin drag bar in the Mission, its black door a gap in the face of a battered wall. All over the neighborhood

storefront windows show all night shrined hats and gloves, wedding dresses, First Communion’s frothing lace: gowns of perfection and commencement,

fixed promises glowing. In the dress the color of the spaces between streetlamps Lola stands unassailable, the dress in which she is in the largest sense

fabulous: a lesson, a criticism and colossus of gender, all fire and irony. Her spine’s perfectly erect, only her fluid hands moving and her head turned slightly to one side.

She hosts the pageant, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and men come in from the streets, the trains, and the repair shops, lean together to rank the artifice of the awkward or lovely

Lola welcomes onto the stage: Victoria, Elena, Francie, lamé pumps and stockings and always the rippling night pulled down over broad shoulders and flounced around the hips, liquid,

the black silk of esta noche proving that perfection and beauty are so alien they almost never touch. Tonight, she says, put it on. The costume is license

and calling. She says you could wear the whole damn black sky and all its spangles. It’s the only night we have to stand on. Put it on, it’s the only thing we have to wear.

I always felt cheated for people not letting me be myself. When I was five, my parents dressed me up in a papery blue shirt and neat kakhi shorts and took me to church. I could handle the first hour. I sang in the choir and watched Bible characters move around on the felt boards in Sunday school.

The second hour, when I sat through adult church, was unbearable. The shorts would chafe my legs and I always had to go to the bathroom and the chairs were too hard and I didn’t like standing up so long for the hymns. I felt stifled.

I’d squawk and kick and breathe heavy to get my parents’ attention until my Dad would hiss at me to be quiet and deal with it. I always looked forward to unclipping my bow-tie and changing out my Sunday best for my Aladdin tank top and purple shorts. They were much more comfortable.

When I turned seven my parents left our house in New Mexico and started doing deputation to raise money for missions work overseas. We lived in a big van with shutters and a TV in the back, moving from city to city, speaking at church services, staying with relatives in the area. I’d wake with the sunlight bleeding through the shutters, my face pressed against the window.

Every week my Dad drove the family to more early morning services, old diabetic deacons and good-natured twentysomethings who would pinch mine and my brother’s cheeks. I never knew which state we were in or where we would go next. My home waited overseas in some hazy ideal full of the alien and the strange.

And when I got there it didn’t feel like home at all. It was just another place. We lived on the edge of a large rice patty and I dressed in a school uniform that itched in the heat. I sat around during lunches not talking to anyone because I wasn’t really there. Why should I make temporary friends? After a few months of language school, my parents packed up and took us to another island, where my Dad flew airplanes and we climbed trees in the backyard after school.

Years later we came back to America and stayed with my grandparents. I grew two more chins and read Animorphs and The Neverending Story in the elementary school hall while my classmates made fun of me, called me fat and a faggot for reading. It was my first cold winter, so my parents bought me a thick green jacket padded with down. I wore it every day. Buttoned it up so my paunch wouldn’t show so much.

Winter changed to spring, and then to summer, and I still wore that coat. I wouldn’t take it off. I could laugh and not worry about anyone seeing my belly. I’m pretty sure I mowed several acres lawn wearing that coat. But then it started to smell bad. Something had started growing in it. After careful inspection, my parents had to peel it off me and throw it away.

In my mind, I still look just like I did the day they threw out the coat. You aren’t born with an identity. You wrap it around yourself as the years pass. You take one off, put another one on. Maybe you’re a feminist or gay or a jock or a Republican, or a log cabin feminist who just happens to play football. Maybe you’re a jerk no matter what label you assume. Maybe you’re the nicest guy anyone will ever meet, encased in a woman's body. Or maybe, like me, you’re still the same shivering, awkward kid from fifth grade who read too many books, who just wants a coat to hide inside.

#poetry #ekphrasis #ekphrastics #identity #club #art #overseas #missionary #faith #gender #coat #moving #change #neuroses

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josiahduke · 10 years ago

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A True Gothic (Redux)

Back in 2011, I started an internship at Kill Screen magazine. (They're an excellent magazine.) They treat games with the kind of respect I imagine the medium will receive in university classrooms fifty years from now--but they don't actually take themselves that seriously. It's a good thing. A really good thing.

The first piece I ever published was an analysis of the disturbing psycho-sexual terror game Haunting Ground. It's an amazing game. It's an awful game. It's exploitative and gross and weirdly beautiful and atmospheric and I swear the PS2 processor was loaded down mostly because it had to animate every polygon of the gorgeous blonde protagonist's chest.

My essay has disappeared from the site in one of Kill Screen's many renovations. I'm reposting it here in case anyone is interested, along with the artwork that was commissioned for the piece. Also: this appeared as part of a short-lived but kind of cool exchange with Pitchfork? In case you didn't notice, I'm kind of proud of this piece.

A True Gothic

It’s a scene most of us have seen a hundred times over: a narrow hall fringed with old pillars, leering gargoyles, candles recently snuffed. Lightning flashes through a long row of windows, the wind batters against the intricately cut buttresses, and deep inside the castle is a beautiful young woman biting her lip, taking careful steps down the hall. Suddenly there’s a crack of thunder, and a looming shadow jumps from behind one of the many statues, bellowing threats: the girl screams and runs the other way. This is Haunting Ground.

Ann Radcliffe, a pioneer of the literary gothic romance, used terror as a mechanic of self discovery. It’s a concept our culture has dumped for cheap scares and thrills in cinema and games: our fears embody something deeper, perhaps darker than we’d like to admit. Terror is another word for self-discovery.

So much of modern horror—in gaming and cinema—is built upon a framework laid by the literary greats 300 years ago in the form of the gothic romance. Now when I write “gothic romance” I don’t mean Twilight-style romance or anything Tim Burton has ever created. I mean the actual literary tradition begun midway through the 18th century, which influenced Shelley’s Frankenstein, and later Poe’s macabre writing. These were the kinds of stories that basically all began with “It was a dark and stormy night” and featured a young attractive virgin running through a broken-down castle from a rapist or lecherous uncle. The genre as a whole was exploitative and weirdly voyeuristic. Once writers like Ann Radcliffe and Percy Bysshe Shelley took hold of the form, the public came to love it.

These tropes—dark, brooding castle; beautiful innocent virgins; paintings with moving eyes—were merely the trappings of the gothic, as laid down by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto and perpetuated in Lewis’ The Monk and de Sade’s Justine. While these writers always cultivated a dark atmosphere of dread and suspense, the dark heart of the genre was rape.

Chances are you haven’t played Haunting Ground (Demento in Japan). Released in 2005, the game is a strange brew of gothic horror, psych0sexual torment, and dog training. Most notably, the game was cowritten by Noboru Sugimura, who penned the scripts for several Resident Evil titles and Clock Tower 3. The premise is cookie-cutter gothic: abandoned castle seasoned with basic run-and-hide gameplay, along with a set of perverted antagonists. This twisted drama epitomizes the traditional Gothic form of rampant lust and imperiled innocence. Haunting Ground’s gameplay is almost identical to that of Clock Tower, though the execution here is noticeably more refined, and more unified in tone, than its inspiration. However, most reviewers weren’t impressed. Released in the wake of Resident Evil 4, the game seemed tired and old-fashioned. Game Informer’s review called it “unquestionably less fun than doing one’s taxes” while Charles Herold of The New York Times wrote it contained “a mix of clever ideas and petty annoyances.” Yet while the environment and defenseless protagonist were lauded, nobody seemed to catch on to Haunting Ground’s blatant homage to the gothic form.

Fiona Belli, an innocent blonde amnesiac, wakes up naked, caged in the basement of a crumbling castle hidden away in an obscure patch of woods. She escapes wearing naught but a towel and, after donning a skirt that covers maybe a quarter of her thighs, sets out to explore her family’s inheritance. Little time passes before she runs into Debilitas, the groundskeeper, an addled brute who towers over Fiona. Having never progressed past a mental age of three, he is clearly unaware of the physical attractions that draw him to Fiona. He knows that he intensely wants to possess her, to hold her close like a doll. He stares at her for a moment, then throws his arms up monster-style and chases her across the grounds.

The young and helpless Fiona, much like Matthew Gregory Lewis’ Antonia in his 1896 novel The Monk, is “as helpless as a plaster statue demolished by an earthquake.” The Monk was essentially (for the time) a torture porn in literary form about a priest named Ambrosio and his eventual rape and murder of a young girl. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that the grotesquery was proof of a “low and vulgar taste,” while the critic David MacDonald has written that “The Monk was an eloquent evil … [a] poison for the multitude.”

The gothic form thrives upon the helplessness of its protagonist. Fiona can run, cower in a wardrobe, and in brief moments of valor, kick her assailants in the knee. Eventually she finds a friend in Hewie, a snowy-white dog who fights tooth and nail to save her, but she rarely ever “defeats” her assailants. The best she can hope for is to survive.

Each of Haunting Ground’s four antagonists (that’s right—just four) are compelled by successively more warped desires. Fiona escapes Debilitas only to find herself drugged by the castle’s maid Daniella. In what may be the game’s most disturbing scene, Fiona wakes up to find Daniella first caressing her, then pressing hard on her belly, whispering, “I am not complete.” Fiona wisely flees, with the maid rushing after her brandishing a piece of razor-sharp glass. Just as Fiona delves deeper into the castle, her assailant’s desire becomes even more depraved. Daniella has only one desire: She wants to cut out Fiona’s womb and sew it into her own body.

This obviously wasn’t the kind of thing you’d see in print in the 18th century. Barrenness, however, is a driving force in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, which laid the groundwork for every other gothic story. Sweet young Isabella finds herself pursued by the diabolical Manfred, who wants an heir because his wife Hippolyta is barren.

Haunting Ground’s characters are obsessed with the female form. Daniella screams at mirrors, intensely jealous of Fiona’s beauty. She accuses Fiona of wasting what she most desires: virginity. The symbolism in Daniella’s death is crudely ironic: cornered in a skylit room, Fiona assembles a set of mirrors and tricks Daniella into seeing her own reflection. The timbre of her screams cracks the glass and a long, jagged shard impales her through the navel, a cruel mockery of the procreative penetration she had desired.

Horror is too often concerned with cheap scares. Character growth is secondary. Writer William Godwin tried to capture “a series of adventures of flight and pursuit ... [with the] fugitive in perpetual apprehension [and] fearful alarm” in the gothic adventure. In Dead Space, excellent sound design and copious amounts of gore eviscerate all sense of self and safety, propelling the player into a perpetual adrenaline rush. Amnesia: The Dark Descent plays with lighting and perception to similar effect. Neither game is particularly concerned with its characters’ personal journeys, however. Isaac’s journey through Dead Space is mere escape and survival; in Amnesia, Daniel’s task is one of recovery rather than growth.

Fiona’s journey is one of coming into womanhood. She isn’t merely running from enemies: she is fleeing parts of herself she can’t bear to face head on. It is only when she is forced to turn and fight that she can make true progress. When Fiona defeats Debilitas’ disturbingly infantile lust, she is overcoming her fear of stasis, of remaining a child. When Daniella dies, Fiona puts to rest the jealous narcissism of her femininity. The last two—Ricardo and Lorenzo—embody her deeper fears: the former, of men, and the latter, her own desire.

The game’s final act is the most frenetic, the least coherent. Fiona finds herself pursued by the butler Ricardo who chases her through increasingly surreal rooms shouting, “Lend me your womb!” Where the literary Gothic antagonists’ lust was tempered with propriety, Ricardo has no scruples, no compunction. He hunts Fiona with ruthless efficiency, disemboweling her parents, shooting her dog, laying countless traps, all so he can rape her.He embodies everything Fiona hates about men: he is the murderer, the rapist, the pervert. His corpse is barely cold when Fiona meets her lecherous ancestor Lorenzo Belli. The threat at this point is unclear until Lorenzo miraculously grows young and handsome and gives pursuit. Fiona is finally confronted with her own desire: yes, her sexy grandpa is courting her in a really strange, aggressive way, and the truly disturbing thing is that she actually likes it. Her escape is cartoonish, almost parodic, with Lorenzo’s flaming corpse in literal “hot pursuit”, consumed by his own desire.

Fiona can never claim any sort of victory throughout the game. Most gothic stories have a protector, a character who steps forward to save the virgin in distress. While Fiona has her dog Hewie to defend her, the true protector in Haunting Ground is the player, who feeds her, hides her from her pursuers, and eventually sets her free.

Ann Radcliffe distinguished two kinds of fear. “Terror and horror are so far opposite,” she wrote, “that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.” In her dichotomy, terror is the sublime, the surreal. It’s Dante descending into hell. It’s James Sunderland leaving Silent Hill for good. It’s the admission of some great secret. Horror is opaque, all entrails and scares. In it, symbol and meaning are eschewed for ephemeral sensation. Horror is cheap.

In a game that provides unlockable dominatrix costumes, it’s difficult to define Fiona as anything more than a doll. If Haunting Ground were merely a novel, one could write it off as voyeuristic torture-porn. As a game, however, it concerns itself more with the player’s journey. As Fiona’s protector, the player guides her past every pitfall, much like Theodore from Otranto strove to preserve the life (and virtue) of Isabella. When one strips away the tawdry trappings of character and circumstance, the goal of the gothic form is to cut deep to the soul and uncover the lies and fears to which we cling. While Fiona’s screams are pre-recorded, ours are not. Haunting Ground draws us out of ourselves—to shout at the screen when Fiona trips, to grit our teeth when the villain falls, and to sigh with relief when she finally leaves the castle behind.

I recently published a narrative review with Kill Screen. You can read it here. If you liked this, get on my mailing list. I'll send out occasional updates on my projects. And leave a comment or share this nonsense.

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