“Based on Jonathan Swift’s Immortal Tale.” So reads the lone words in the first cell of Paramount pictures 1939 film adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels. In a testament to the canonical nature of Swift’s work, this film was the second-ever cell-animated Technicolor feature film to be released. However, the plot and themes of the film, at no point square with the presumed intent of the original text. Writers Dan Gordon Cal Howard wrote this work to appeal to an audience who is vacuous to the nth degree.

This film is the first occasion in which Jonathan Swift’s biting satire was completely absent from a work bearing the name of Gulliver’s Travels in order to market the story to children. It is in this neutered format that I first encountered the character of Gulliver, as he journeyed to Lilliput, but no further, played wingman in a love story, and generally behaved in an upstanding manner, wholly refraining from urinating or defecating on anything. Profound social commentary reduced two a mindless static and ultimately pointless cartoon.

The transformation of such a momentous work into vapid drivel to be eaten up by the piglets of western civilization speaks volumes about the intention of cultural institutions to pacify society by tampering with cultural memory. Up until the moment that I began to read the original work, I truly believed that the vapid PG rendition claiming to be Gulliver’s Travels was true to Swift’s vision (as claimed in the opening cell of the film). It took fewer than three pages to discovered how profoundly wrong I was. The bulk of society has not and will never read a true version of Swift’s work, and as such, because of Paramount in 1939, Ted Dansen in 1996, Jack Black in 2012, and the many children’s versions of the book circulated in between those times, in the mind of the mass, Gulliver was a gentlemen, Brodignag, the Yahoos, and the Houyhnhnms never existed, and Swift was a mindless ninny, another victim of the culture industry.

Rant over.

The setting is a post-industrial castle that defends the border of an unnamed kingdom. It is terrorized by a demon named Grendel, who kills the castle’s defenders, one by one. After fighting his way past several soldiers trying to keep anyone from entering or leaving, the warrior Beowulf offers his help to the castle’s king, Hrothgar, who welcomes his help.

Hrothgar has a daughter named Kyra, who is loved by Roland, the castle’s strongest soldier, but she does not return his affections. It is revealed that Hrothgar’s wife and Kyra’s mother, committed suicide when she found out Hrothgar had an affair. The woman he had an affair with was actually an ancient being who had originally lived on the castle’s lands. The affair resulted in an offspring, Grendel.

Beowulf and Grendel fight, wounding each other. Later, after recovering, they fight again and this time Beowulf rips Grendel’s arm off with a retracting cestus That night the castle celebrates as they believe Grendel is dead. Kyra declares her love for Beowulf and he returns her affection. Kyra tells him that she killed her previous husband after he abused her. Beowulf tells her that his mother is human and his father is Baal, “God of darkness, Lord of lies”. This explains his tremendous fighting prowess.

While Kyra is with Beowulf, everyone else in the castle is killed by Grendel’s mother. Beowulf attacks and kills Grendel and his mother by stabbing them. He then burns her body, while the flames also consume the castle. Beowulf barely escapes with Kyra. The castle is destroyed, with Beowulf and Kyra the only survivors.

Behold, the influence of canonical literature! What you have just read is the plot synopsis for the 1999 film Beowulf. This unfortunate one and thirty-five minute piece of excrement was, in all likelihood, much of North America’s first and last experience to the “story of Beowulf,” which, in case you hadn’t noticed, resembles the Anglo-Saxon epic in name alone. The movie stars Chris Lambert, star of such movies as Highlander and Mortal Kombat. I am trying to come to terms with what the discovery of this unholy relic says about cultural literacy and the role of canonical literature in the 21st century. I am searching for answers but inevitably arrive at the same disconnect: Why did the creators of this project tie their creation to the name of Beowulf? Surely the audience for a work of this ilk (made for TV, action/mental putrefaction) would find no additional allure in the work’s alleged canonical influence. I am truly vexed. Did financiers of the project believe that Beowulf’s name would draw in a more broad and diverse audience (and their wallets)? Or maybe, just maybe, did the creators of this project believe this film to be a viable part of the story of Beowulf; a genuine interpretation; a work of fan-fiction?

The mind reels.

To be frank, John Donne’s plea in “Batter my Heart” is enough to make the Marquis de Sade hot under the collar. The author is literally praying to be “imprisoned” and “ravish[ed]” by God. This reader finds that a sadomasochistic reading of Donne’s poem provides a strikingly accurate portrait of a submissive’s relationship to a Dom’ in BDSM culture.

Donne uses the pounding rhythm of a blacksmith at the forge to say that God must “break, blow [and] burn” him, so that he may be made anew. The violence contained within the author’s request, as well as in the force of his delivery, is contrasted by the profound love he expresses for the one who he wishes to “o’erthrow [him], ‘and bend [His almighty] force to break” him. The explicit message is that Donne, the submissive, condones and will benefit from any harm that befalls him.

Donne’s poem accurately describes a submissive’s attempt to negotiate an S&M “scene”(the term which members of the BDSM culture use when referring to one whole S&M scenario between consenting adults) with a potential partner. The proposed “scene” includes many common themes of consensual S&M play, such as servitude, enforced chastity of the submissive, punishment and bondage.

The analogy between Donne’s request and S&M “play” becomes unarguable when one takes into account the fact that a many S&M “scenes” involve no sex of any kind, but rather, are merely the joyous union one person who loves to be hurt and belittled with another person who loves to give the little masochists what they so desperately want.

John Donne’s Heavenly Father is just a leather daddy in the sky.

John Milton’s Satan appears to be endowed with many of the characteristics of a typical hero. Strip Milton’s distain from the character of Satan, transport him to Scandinavia in around the 9^th century, and viola, Satan is Beowulf. Both Satan and Beowulf are endowed with a stature that far surpasses that of their peers. Satan, like Beowulf, possesses boundless optimism in the face of adversity and willingly undertakes seemingly impossible tasks in order to alleviate the suffering of his allies.

With good reason do Satan’s comrades look upon their leader with the upmost esteem. Lucifer encourages his fellows to seek autonomy in Heaven, rather than miserably acquiesce to the tyrannical rule of God, and, as Satan, refuses to relinquish his party’s right to self-governance even when chained to a lake of fire as punishment for his transgression. As when Beowulf faces Grendel’s Mother, Satan alone rises to the task of journeying across the abyss, in search of “deliverance for all.” The princes of hell, like Beowulf’s men, agonize over the absence of their commander, trying in vain to “find truce to [their] restless thoughts, and entertain the irksome hours, till [their] great chief return.”

Both Satan and Beowulf know that, as leaders, they must not charge a member of their cohort with a task that they would not do themselves. As Satan posits before embarking on his quest: “Wherefore do I assume these royalties, and not refuse to reign, refusing to accept as great a share of hazard as of honour, do alike to him who reigns, and so much to him due of hazard more, as he above the rest high honoured sits?”

It appears that it is not so bad to be “of the Devil’s party.”

Throughout the course of our examination of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, I have been struck by the beauty of the notion that characters actively “talk themselves into being.” That is, as the dialogues and debates of these fictitious pilgrims increase in breadth, the characters progressively come to be perceived less as characters, and more as living entities. A considerable portion of this affect is the result of Chaucer having forged a public sphere in which the integrity of his characters and the factuality of their stories are in a constant state of contestation. The more the author’s creations express themselves and interact with each other, the more their common and unique flaws are exposed. This exposition causes myself as a (flawed) reader to connect with the characters on a human level, and thus establishes a dynamic state of “being” within a static work of fiction.

My conception of “being,” it appears, involves entering into a state obvious imperfection. Within the cast of The Canterbury Tales, I bestow greatest degree of humanity upon those who are indisputably imperfect. This discovery spurred a great deal of reflection on what I consider to be “human attributes.” Extrapolating from my judgement of Chaucer’s characters, it appears that I view perfection, not as a human quality, but as a quality of the inanimate. The more distance Chaucer’s pilgrims place between themselves and a state of perfection, the more animate they appear.

Both the communication of ones faults to others (intentionally or otherwise) and the search for evidence of faults in others appear to be inherently human mechanisms for establishing community.

Thanks Chaucer, “tis an ill wind that blows no minds.”

Apologies for the pseudo-Cartesian mumbo jumbo.