MEET MR. LUCIFER
A 1953. British comedy film.. A working-class neighborhood in London. England “getting itself back on its’ feet” after World War Two. A young married couple starting a new life together, a home, a family. One night, in a loving embrace, she whispers in his ear: “darling, I really want one!” The young husband’s eyes light up, the promise of some pre-natal bliss…till she elaborates on what the “one” is that she truly needs: a television!
A veteran thespian with a drinking problem, reduced to playing a cartoon Devil in a fairy-tale pantomime, to ever-dwindling audiences, misjudges the crude mechanics that elevate him up from the basement onto the stage, knocks himself unconscious. As the good-fairy improvises on an unoccupied puff of smoke and the devilish powers of invisibility, the intoxicated actor is transported up into the sky to meet the “real” Devil. Less cartoonishly garbed, but with the obligatory horns, Mr. Lucifer recruits him to play supporting roles, to a much bigger audience, in the Devil’s latest scheme to take control of the world: a television in every living-room!
Mass production already underway. The factories humming. Weapons of war now on the back-burner, conveyor-belts all over the country pouring forth humanity’s hope for the future! You may never have to leave your couch again! Let the world come to you! In gloriously animated black-and-white! A miracle of technology! A marvel of mesmerism! Entertainment, drama, comedy, spectacle, expertise in anything and everything, and all the news that’s fit to know, palatably edited and lavishly produced to suit even the least active of brains. A drug for all ages! Democracy, addiction and progress as one magic trick after another. God’s blessing or the Devil’s curse? According to this movie there is no doubt it is the Devil at work and play. But it is a comedy, so we shouldn’t take it too seriously…Without the agony would there be no ecstasy? No nightmares, no dreams?
The young wife gets her television, glues to it every night, with friends and neighbors and the marriage soon goes on the rocks. An old-schooled accountant, solitary but not un-cheery old chap, is gifted a television-set for accepting a reluctant early retirement. Before long his basement apartment is a party-hub as neighbors gather around his TV. He finds it sublimely exhilarating and goes to great pains to provide drinks and snacks. Till he is in so much debt, he has to sell the television, quit his apartment and go live on the streets. A humorless mother-hen-pecked bachelor becomes besotted with a “lonely heart” songstress in lovely lovingly screened close-up and so personally serenading only him, it steals his brain away! And at the same time every week. He begins dressing for the occasion. A spring in his step and a kindly word for everybody. So long as we have something to look forward to! Till she is suddenly “taken off the air”! Life becomes a true torture. He begins treating everybody even worse than he did before!
But it is a comedy, so there has to be a happy ending. At least for the young married couple. They discard the TV. He get s a promotion and pre-natal promise resumes. As for the other two scenarios, collateral damage? As for the veteran thespian, he regains consciousness, resumes his pantomime Devil persona, only now he’s been bewitched with the powers of 3-D. He leaps out from the proscenium to the thrill and horror of the packed audience already blinded by their willingly adopted magical dark glasses! And the mischievously malevolent finale smirk on his full-screen close-up face implies he either really is the Devil Himself or at least an actor who has sold his soul for a packed audience and a starring role… and there is no going back on it now…
I’d never heard of this film till recently. I watched it on you-tube. I saw many old black-and-white British movies on television while I was growing up in England. I have no memory of MEET MR. LUCIFER. Was the BBC trying not to put ideas in my head? Or did they just think it wasn’t funny enough? It wasn’t that funny. The only time I laughed: the good fairy improvising on an empty puff of smoke and the demonic powers of invisibility…
But given the current 24-7 proliferation of mass televised surveillance, inside and outside our realities, I could consider it a prescient premise. pre-dating Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”. And the subsequent quandry as to what the message is and who or what is delivering it. Control perception, you control behavior.
As soon as you realize your dream has come true, reality re-sets back in. And now you have a lot to live up to. You’ve lost track of ground-zero flesh and blood and time passing. When you’re walking on air, like Wile E. Coyote, just don’t look down. The fall could be fatal or at least some broken bones. Does aging and death always come as a shock to superstars? Or are you just another victim of predictive programming?
As soon as you realize your own reality simply doesn’t measure up. So many false gods of biblical proportion. Dreams and nightmares by proxy. Addiction normalized. Scrolling-screen junkies? It’s a crash course in not crashing into yourself. To consider progress is not a blessing is but old-school blasphemous negativity.
Television, in all forms, sizes and devices is a 24/7 commercial for itself. If it’s not explicitly selling you a product, it is implicitly selling you a craving for something you don’t yet have. The dream-factory entered so deep in your nervous-system you can willingly watch your worst nightmares and consider it entertainingly therapeutic catharsis. The lines between fact and fiction perennially blurred.
To believe in manufactured artifice as the solution to all humanity’s ills and well-being must be pagan materialism at its’ finest. How refined do we need to be to live and die in peace? Should you get down on your knees and pray you won’t get fooled again? Who are you, really?
“I wish, I wish, but I wish in vain. I wish I were a maid again. But a maid again I never shall be, till apples grow on an orange tree!” Hey, we’ve got a product for that dilemma!
On the day before I was conceived, I had this beautiful thought, how lovely it would be to have some good feelings! It was the same thought I had the day after I died. On the day I was born I first knew the wonder, the miracle, the magic, the horror and the fear of being alive in this world. On the day I died, the only fear I had left was having to say goodbye to it all!
Does an apple ask a pear, how shall I grow? Does an eagle spend its’ life learning how to be a crow? Does a man not know he needs a woman, even though he’s never met one yet?
And you know something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones!?????
Have you ever seen a dream walking away so fast, you can only keep up with it in your nightmares?
