LAM-20

Dead Man On Campus

/ kevinhobbs

Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

One of the papers in A Nest of Vipers, edited by Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith (Sheffield Academic Press, 1990) is “The roommate’s suicide and the 4.0” by William S. Fox. Fox summarises this piece of contemporary American college lore as:

If your roommate commits suicide, you get a 4.0 that semester.
The value “4.0” means the highest marks available in each subject.

Dead Man on Campus is a feature film whose narrative is built round this concept. Josh (Tom Everett Scott) enters the medical programme at Daleman College on an academic scholarship. He intends to work hard but is distracted by his partying roommate Cooper (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and by Rachel (Poppy Montgomery) who becomes his girl friend. Josh’s early grades are so bad that he would find it impossible to achieve the average for the year which he requires to keep his scholarship. Cooper’s business-man father arrives on campus and threatens dire consequences if he does not start working, so both roommates are in trouble.

In a bar, an old drunk tells them of his experience at college, His roommate committed suicide and he benefitted from a college rule that “if your roommate kills himself you get straight As”. Cooper’s reaction is to suggest that Josh sacrifice himself but Josh rejecxts that idea, However, they decide to check out the College Charter in the library. In a section on suicide they discover that it does contain just such a provision. Cooper persuades Josh that they should arrange to have a suicidal student move in with them. They try to increase their knowldge of the circumstances in which suicide s are committed. Josh goes the the Psychology department for information where he is interviewed by Dr Durkheim. Durkheim wrongly assumes that Josh is himself contemplating taking his own life. [This is presumably a knowing reference to Emile Durkheim, the author of a famous sociological analysis of suicide,]

They focus on a number of potential suicides, including a paranoid who believes Bill Gates is trying to control his brain and a rock musician who only pretends to be suicidal to create an appropriate image. Having given up their attempts to benefit from the suicide rule, they find a friend, Pickle, who has swallowed pills and left a suicide note. Believing him to be already dead, they plan to move him into their room. However, Josh realises he is still alive and revives him. Cooper is angry that Josh has spoilt their last chance of good grades and they quarrel.

Josh climbs the College Tower and threatens to jump. A crowd gathers but Cooper succeed in “talking him down”. Once saved, Josh secretly tells Cooper that he figures that the college would not expel a student who had shown himself to be suicidal. He is correct and he stays on to study psychology rather than medicine. Cooper’s father, impressed by his success in saving Josh from suicide, agrees to finance another year at college. Things seem to have worked out well for them both, but they arrange for Pickle to move in with them, “just in case” things go wrong.

Dead Man on Campus was copyrighted in 1998 by Paramount Pictures. It is an MTV Production, directed by Alan Cohn and produced by Gale Anne Hurd. The story is credited to Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder. The screenplay is by Michael Traeger and Mike White.

The Cookie Thief

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Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

In her paper, “Preaching tolerance?” Folklore, 106 (1995) pages 21–30, Veronique Campion-Vincent discusses four short films which present variants of the legend she calls “Sharing by Error”. They were Blues, Black and White (Switzerland, 1987), Boeuf Bourguignon (Netherlands, 1988), The Lunch Date (USA, 1989) and Clin d”Oeil (France, 1991). To these may now be added a British film, The Cookie Thief, copyright 1998 by Big Daddy Film Company.

This film which is around 10 minutes long was shown in late 1999 on British television Channel Four’s series Shooting Gallery, which features short films. The Cookie Thief was produced written and directed by Toby Leslie and Hugh Currie who were interviewed briefly before the film was shown. They describe it as an “urban myth” and a “friend of a friend pub story” but also give as a source a poem by Sylvia Potts written in the 1960s. The poem is also noted as a source in the end credits of the film.

The story has a simplicity similar to the films discussed by Veronique Campion-Vincent. A woman (played by Honor Fraser) buys a bag of cookies, she to a station cafe and sits down at a table with her cofee. A man (Jack Davenport) wordlessly asks permission to sit at the same table. She sees him taking a cookie from what she believes to be her bag. She takes one herself and together the eat all the cookies in an atmosphere of mutual hostility. The woman leaves the cafe and catches her train. Once seated, she opens her handbag and finds there her own cookie bag, unopened.

Although the makers of The Cookie Thief did not indicate any awareness of previous version, knowingly or unknowingly they have extended the range of relationships between the characters. Veronique Campion-Vincent points out that two of the four films she discussed involved a White Female and a Black Male. One involved two Females, one Black one White and one involved two Males, one Black and one White. In The Cookie Thief both the Male and the Female are White.

Angel & Devil on Your Shoulder 6

/ kevinhobbs

Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

In my first note on this topic, I mentioned a film Angel on my shoulder which at that time I had not seen. It was shown recently on BBC television, which has allowed me to clarify how the concept is employed in this context. The film, released by United Artists in 1946, concerns a dead gangster, played by Paul Muni, who is released from Hell by Mephistopheles, whose aim is to discredit a crusading judge by allowing the gangester to take over the judge’s body. The gangster is attracted to the judge’s fiancee and begins to move away from “bad” to “good” behaviour. They go to a clergyman’s home to ask him to marry them. The clergyman’s is interrupted while composing a sermon. In conversation, he says, in a way which suggests that he is quoting:

“Heed not Mephistopheles, my children, lest you suffer eternal damnation. When he whispers in your ear, turn away your head, and harken instead to the angel on your shoulder.”

The gangster asks: “What if you ain’t got no angel on you shoulder?” To this, the clergyman replies: “You have, if you live right, son”.

Can any reader suggest a source for this quotation?

Note that only the angel is explicitly said to be on the shoulder. Note too that it is Mephistopheles himself, not simple a devil, who is pictured as whispering in the ear. This could be done while sitting on the shoulder, but obviously equally well by a human sized figure standing beside you. Left and right does not appear as a feature in this case.

(The film, which was directed by Archie Mayo, was written by Harry Segall and Roland Kibbee, from an original story by Harry Segall.)

Angel & Devil on Your Shoulder 5

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Jean-Bruno Renard | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

Herge, the celebrated Belgian comic strip artist, has made use of the motif of the Good Angel and Bad Angel which stand on either side of every human being (and even of animals!)

A strip featuring the characters Quick and Flupke, which first appeared in the 1930s, was republished in Archives Herge: Quick et Flupke (Paris – Tournai: Casterman, 1978). When Flupke sees a poster for a Colonial Lottery, A devil appears and expresses the hope that he will buy a ticket. However, an angel reminds him that in his reading book it says that “Money doesn’t bring happiness”. The devil counters by pointing to the lottery slogan “Get money without working”. The angel reminds him of the ennobling power of work. The devil has the last word showing Flupke what work might be – carrying an advertising placard in the pouring rain.

Note that the devil and the angel both ressemble Flupke and are around his height. The devil stands on his left; the angel on his right.

In Tintin au Tibet (Casterman, 1958) the dog Milou (renamed “Snowy ” in English translations) is shown accompanied by a angel and a devil, each of which is portayed as standing on two legs like a human being but having a dog’s head just like Milou.

Angel & Devil on Your Shoulder 4

/ kevinhobbs

Jacqueline Simpson | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

A supplement to my note on angel and devil at one’s right and left shoulder. Will Ryan’s The Bakehouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (Sutton, 1999) mentions on page 55 the association of left with damnation on the basis of Matthew 25:33:

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left.

This is followed in 25:41 by:

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

Ryan goes on:

“Perhaps for this reason one of the euphemisms for the Devil in some parts of Russia is simply levyi, ‘the left one’… There was a common dualist belief in Russia that a child at birth was allocated not only a guardian angel, who always hovered on the right, but also an attendant devil, who took up his position on the left. Consequently many Russians would never spit to the right and would always sleep on their left side so as to be facing the angel and not see the devil in nightmares. This belief in a good and bad guardian spirit has analogues in Greek and Jewish popular belief.”

Ryan gives as references for the Greek belief, Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil, Princeton 1991, p. 178, and for the Jewish, Stanley Coren, The Left -Hander Syndrome, London 1992, pp. 12-13.

I suspect that the earlier examples of the belief will all turn out to say “at” one’s shoulder, or “at” one’s side, and that “on” is part of the modern tendency to miniaturize supernatural beings, especially fairies, but sometimes angels too. In Disney’s Pinocchio, does Jiminy Cricket perch on Pinocchio’s shoulder?

I have just been re-reading Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and was surprised to notice that the innocent and persecuted brother always sees his demonic brother standing to his right (not his left) glaring at him. However, I think this is due to the influence of the terrible Psalm 109 (“the cursing psalm”), a metrical version of which is quoted in the story.

This Psalm contains the lines:

Set thou the wicked over him; and upon his right hand
Give thou his greatest enemy, ev’n Satan, leave to stand.

Postscript: The reference to Everyman in my previous note on this subject was wrong. I was probably confusing it in my mind with Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus , where a bad angel and a good angel appear on stage from time to time, to argue with Faustus.

Black Humour and Bad Taste

/ kevinhobbs

Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

Lena Zavaroni died on Friday, 1st October 1999, at the age of 35. According to the Sunday Mail newspaper (3rd October 1999) she was “discovered” as a singer at the age of nine by the television programme Opportunity Knocks. She made a hit record, Ma, he’s makin’ eyes at me, and appeared before the Queen in the Royal Variety Show at the age of twelve, However, when 13 she developed anorexia nervosa. At 16 years of age she weighed only four stones. Her career faltered, a marriage failed and at the time of her death, according to the Sunday Herald (3rd October 1999) she was living in poverty in a council house. She died following surgery aimed at treating her anorexia.

On Tuesday 12th October, The Diary, a light-hearted column in The Herald newspaper published in Glasgow, contained the following brief item:

We hear that Lena Zavaroni has left £3m in her will. But it’s all in luncheon vouchers.

The Diary is credited to two journalists, Tom Shields and Ken Smith. The following day, 13th October, it contained a contribution signed by Tom Shields alone. It read in part:

The atrocious comment about Lena Zavaroni in yesterday’s Diary was my responsibility or, more accurately, irresponsibility. My colleague Ken Smith, expressed severe reservations. Others thought the reference frankly appalling and advised against putting it in print. I did not listen to them. I have worked on the basis that a good way of writing a Diary column is to tell the stories the way you might relate them to your pals in the pub. This wee item sounded fine in the pub. Obviously it should have been left in the pub. Or left unsaid. Perhaps I have been too long writing this Diary column.

He concluded by apologizing to the Zavaroni family “who will be burying Lina on Friday”. The following day, 14th October, the newspaper published four letters from readers criticizing it for carrying the joke. They were accompanied by an editorial apology. One of the letters referred to a previous “joke” in the Diary about the murder of the television presenter, Jill Dando.

However, on 15th October, a further letter in a somewhat different tone appeared:

The Lena Zavaroni item in Tom Shields’s Diary was in poor taste but he’s apologised and that should be the end of it. To be as consistently funny as the Diary you have to walk a thin line, and sometimes you’ll step over. But the predictable outcry from some of your correspondents is part of a worrying trend. It seems now that we are all supposed to fall in line with an emotional reaction to any news… We are expected to respond emotionally about people we have never met and know nothing about. Look at the ridiculous outpourings when Princess Diana died. Or the mounds of flowers which now descend at the scene of any public death, whether it’s a train crash or one person’s suicide off a motorway bridge.

There is much in this for the student of contemporary folklore to ponder. Tom Shields’s description of how he approaches the Diary work explains why his column is a rich source of modern lore and humour. He also reveals that the joke was being told in the pub within days of the death, This is a fact, pleasant or not. It was clearly objectionable to print it where friends and family could see it, but we cannot avoid the fact that people do exchange black humour in the aftermath of the death of famous people. I doubt whether the author of the last letter is right in referring to a “trend” in the treatment of prominent people. Consider past media accounts of the death of royalty, and the flowers placed at the scene of a tragedy are surely an example of a genuinely popular, or “folk”, response to being confronted by violent death.