Films that Mishandle the Faustus Story

damn_yankees_1955

Film Friday

The baseball playoffs, which concluded with a San Francisco win over the Texas Rangers this past week, have had me thinking about the Faustus story and how many modern renditions of the story get it wrong. If this seems like a leap, let me explain.

The Texas Rangers used to be the Washington Senators, a storied franchise that, year after year, lost to the New York Yankees, baseball’s perennial powerhouse. In the 1950’s this frustration led to the Broadway musical/Hollywood film Damn Yankees in which Joe Hardy, a diehard Senators fan, sells his soul to the devil in exchange for his team winning the American League championship. This is accomplished through Joe becoming a powerful rookie hitter. When the Rangers this year beat the Yankees to win the American League pennant, I scanned their roster wondering which player was now soulless.

Actually, to be accurate, the Texas Rangers didn’t used to be those Washington Senators. The original Washington Senators moved to Minnesota and then a second Washington Senators team was set up and then it moved to Texas. But don’t worry about following all of that. I’m just using this as an occasion to complain about the way that too many movies sell the Faustus story short.

Basically, they fail to grasp the true nature of soul-selling, which is as ugly a business as there is. In the Christopher Marlowe play, when the devil’s henchman first shows up he is so horrific that Faustus orders him to change his appearance. He doesn’t want to see what is really involved, which is violating one’s essence. Because they use the sell-souling story as a formula without wrestling with what the soul means, the movies I have in mind empty the story of its essential content.

Which is okay, I guess. But comedy can explore substantive issues no less than tragedy so these movies miss out on a great opportunity.  Don’t think that you are learning anything about the nature of the soul when you watch them.

In Damn Yankees, Joe Hardy gets to have everything: he sells his soul, achieves fame, realizes that love is more important than fame, gets his soul back, and then becomes famous anyway. The idea that the desire for winning can cause people to sacrifice their principles (we see this all the time) and the idea that people will act out of integrity to become famous (we also see this all the time) are dismissed as shallow concerns. Joe both finds true love and sees the Senators win the pennant. Only in America.

The Cohn Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou isn’t any better. Its character Tommy Johnson is a version of the famous blues musician Robert Johnson who (legend has it) sold his soul to the devil for his skill on the guitar. The directors love playing with the idea of his having sold his soul, but there is no substance to the idea. In becoming an accomplished musician, Johnson would actually have been listening to the voice of his soul, not selling it. He would have “sold it” only if he had turned his back on his gift.

 

There are a couple of episodes of the Simpsons where characters sell their souls. Homer sells his for a donut in an episode that owes its plot to Stephen Vincent Benet’s The Devil and Daniel Webster. Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for (I believe) a vintage comic book. They are humorous but don’t make much sense.

In Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls (2009), a film I watched with my film group last week, a character feels so burdened down by his soul that he puts it in cold storage. Unfortunately for him, it is stolen and sold on the black market in Russia. (People in the movie traffic in souls as people traffic in human organs, and there are special soul mules who, like drug mules, carry souls across national borders, where they are extracted and sold.) For a while, he ends up with a replacement soul, belonging to a Russian woman in a menial job, but decides he wants his own soul back.

The film is somewhat clever but ultimately unsatisfactory. It fails to offer any interesting insights into the nature of the soul which, after all, is not a thing or even something that can be defined.  The film quotes Descartes as saying that the soul is located in the pineal gland, but that just means it shares Descartes’ limited view of the soul.

A more useful discussion occurs in Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore, who associates the soul with “genuineness and depth.” Moore writes that the soul is simultaneously beyond life and “tied to life in all its particulars—good food, satisfying conversation, genuine friends, and experiences that stay in the memory and touch the heart.” The gratitude we feel when we receive gifts, the warmth we experience when we serve others, are signs of soul. Soul is present when we are enlarged and ennobled by a work of art. We encounter it when we are lifted up in public worship services and comforted in private prayer. Soul presides in our love of other human beings.

In sum, because the Faustus story is culturally familiar, it provides comic filmmakers with a useful cultural framework, but they seldom take on its broader ramifications.

Maybe some of the problem lies with a misunderstanding that Faustus himself demonstrates in Marlowe’s play. Faustus only thinks that he sells his soul to the devil. In fact, the soul can’t be sold because it is not a material object, not a noun. It is only because he is thinking materially that Faustus thinks that his contract with the devil, signed in his own blood, is final. But as the good angel tells him repeatedly, he can always turn back to his soul (and turn back to God).

The movies I’ve been talking about all start with the premise that the soul can be sold. This forestalls any deeper discussion.

An exception is The Devil’s Advocate, starring Al Pacino as the devil. Keanu Reeves plays an unscrupulous lawyer whose life becomes empty as he uses his legal brilliance on behalf of evil clients.

The film sometimes indulges in caricature and becomes overly dramatic, but it has an ending that (in my eyes) somewhat saves it. Reeves sees the error of his ways, turns toward the good, and rejects both his crooked client and the devil. Everyone is deeply impressed with his actions and begins praising him. Someone mentions political office. As the Reeves character basks in their praise, we see the devil back on the scene. He hasn’t left after all. He has just been fashioning a more subtle temptation.

We’ve had many great movies that show the costs of violating our essence (Citizen Kane for one, The Godfather for another). Living as we do in a wealthy and materialistic society, we are in particular danger of losing sight of what is truly valuable.  Good stories can help us remain true, and the Faustus plot continues to be timely. It’s just not being used very well.

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