In Their Names, Let's Drink To True Love, For a Toad and a Scorpion Fell

I have to issue several warnings about this post:

First of all, it's about a movie that some of you have probably never heard of. It's called The Devil's Carnival, and it was created/produced/directed/paid for/bled-sweated-and-cried-over by a couple of guys named Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich. They collaborated on another fantastic movie you've never heard of called Repo! The Genetic Opera.

For the long and short of it, The Devil's Carnival is exactly that; three sinners go to Hell, and each one is subjected to a performance in Hell's carnival that echoes the sins of their lives. The neat twist to all of this? Terrance and Darren used Aesop's Fables to illustrate the sins. They used three fables; The Dog and Her Reflection; The Scorpion and the Frog; and lastly, Jupiter and His Due. Today's words are about The Scorpion and the Frog.

Second of all, this will contain a few spoilers about the movie, or at least, a part of it. So if you're one of those folks who doesn't want to be spoiled about a movie (that is now out on DVD, by the way, and available through Amazon, Hot Topic, Netflix, Hulu, and The Devil's Carnival website) then you might want to find yourself another post to read.

Lastly, I warn you that I am positive towards this movie. Like fanatically so. I went to the road show; I bought the Ringmaster VIP tickets; I bought the Ringmaster VIP DVD. I have the Road Show poster, signed by Darren and Terrance, framed and hung in my bedroom, right beside my framed print of Graverobber from Repo! The Genetic Opera. So when I say that I am positive towards this movie, I mean it. And anyone who doesn't have anything positive to say is welcome to hit the road.

If you're still hanging in here with me, that means you're actually interested in what I've got to say. This began in a surprisingly simple way; I watched the special features on The Devil's Carnival DVD. In one of the documentaries, Terrance briefly discusses the fables used in the movies, and how some people had accused them of "victim blaming" in the section dealing with the frog and the scorpion.

That irritated me; there are a lot of things you can accuse these men of; excessive creativity, lofty ambition (which they always follow through on!), owning their work, shilling like thieves, but the one thing you can't call them is inconsiderate. I mean, these are two men who packed up five or six other people in a van for months and did a road tour just to bring the movies to the fans. It's more than obvious they care about what they're doing, and who they're doing it for. And so to accuse them of something terrible like victim blaming... no. That just didn't sit well with me at all. At. All.

And so I brooded. And I stewed. And I watched The Devil's Carnival a couple of more times, just so I had everything straight in my head.

And then I started to write.

In the special features for The Devil's Carnival, Terrance Zdunich makes mention of the fact that some of the people who have watched the movie have complained about what happened to Tamara; that it was victim blaming because Tamara was killed by her loser violent boyfriend and that they were blaming her for what he had done.

There are a variety of stories and fables that deal with this particular concept, as does the Frog and the Scorpion. There is a story of a woman and viper that plays out exactly the same way; the woman offers to carry the viper inside her clothing across a river, to keep it warm and dry, and then dies when she is bitten by the snake. When she asks why, the viper answers, "You knew what I was when you chose to carry me."

To me, this sums up the idea behind both "The Frog and the Scorpion" and Tamara. Based on what we know of Tamara, she has had at least one, if not more, abusive, "bad boy" type boyfriends, and was murdered by one of them. Which is supported by a line from "Prick! Goes the Scorpion's Tale":

"She blushed as she walked by the water/Having known him the evening before/She liked how he spoke/But aware of his poke/Prick! Prick! Prick goes the scorpion's tale."

While it may not be a literal translation; she obviously did not know The Scorpion "the evening before," but given that the Carnies in the Devil's Carnival are archetypes of a sort, Tamara obviously knows the Scorpion's type.

The Scorpion has been caged by the Painted Doll; he is, for all intents, in jail. Tamara finds him in jail, lets him out, and though she should know better, she offers him trust. And a weapon, for fuck's sake. She has a switchblade that she turns over to the Scorpion without a thought. This is the first and second case of "you should know better."

And the idea of "you should know better" is not limited just to Tamara; in the Carnies' song "The Devil's Carnival," they touch on this;

"How they end depend On how you play your part/Fortunately how you played your part/Has got you here!"

That is, what happens in the Carnival echoes the "sin" that caused their deaths in the real world, and only by repudiating the sin can they earn redemption (as demonstrated by John's repudiation of his grief, thus earning him a ticket to Heaven.) But in Tamara's case it is most pertinent; she was murdered by a man precisely like the Scorpion, and should very much know better. And yet, she starts out her stint in the Carnival by making the same mistake over and over again; she is repeating the sin.

Tamara proceeds to make the same mistakes that got her killed; she follows the Scorpion through the Carnival midway, laughing and smiling and trusting the man she definitely should not be trusting. But that isn't the crux of the matter; Tamara finds the Scorpion with the Painted Doll, making out and kissing each other. At first, Tamara makes the right decision; she says she is going to leave. But she doesn't. Instead, she plays a coy game, trying to tease the Scorpion into choosing her, and while he doesn't, exactly, he does accuse her of being a liar, because she said she trusted him, and yet she is leaving him.

This, to me, is the point of no return. Tamara has a choice to make; she can leave the cheating, violent (knife-throwing; he "killed" both a cardboard bunny and a cardboard frog, which is as blatant a warning as could be) Scorpion and save herself, thus earning redemption, or she can make the choice in Hell that she made in life, which is what landed her in Hell in the first place. To trust, or not to trust, in essence.

Tamara chooses to trust the Scorpion; why, we don't know. We do not know what she means to gain from it, or why she makes this choice after seeing firsthand his unfaithfulness. But she continues the sin; she makes the same choices as the ones that brought her to Hell and to the Carnival in the first place. And, following that, she is killed again, in Hell, by the Scorpion, thus earning her a permanent place in the Carnival.

This isn't victim blaming. This is stupid-person-getting-what-they-deserve. Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer touches on this with the character of Anya; at one point she is discussing her past as a vengeance demon--a demon that takes revenge on cheating men on behalf of women. In the episode "Triangle," Anya says, "I mean, after you smite a few of 'em you start going 'my goodness, young lady... maybe you're doing something wrong here too.'"

And this, I think, is where Tamara's story ends up. She isn't an innocent; she isn't a victim being blamed because she is a victim. She is being asked, indirectly, by her visit to the Carnival, to take responsibility for the bad choices she made that brought her where she is. She isn't an innocent woman who was walking down the highway and got gunned down by a random murderer. She is a woman who consistently makes bad choices, and is suffering the consequences of those choices.

And that's about as far from victim blaming as you can get. Everything begins with choice; maybe it's not a great choice, sometimes, but you have one. So did Tamara, and she made the wrong one.