Erebus, Terror and Too Much Horror - AMC's Terror

 

AMC's adaptation of Dan Simmons' novel about the disastrous Franklin Expedition (1845 - ?) is truly fantastic TV drama. British have always been excellent makers of television drama, be it everlasting soap opera or great adaptation of Shakespeare, like Hollow Crown. Actors do fantastic job, Jared Harris does fantastic job as Captain Francis Crozier (1796 - ?), Ciaran Hinds plays pompous John Franklin (1786 -1847) brilliantly, and British new regular face Tobias Menzies plays Commander James Fitzjames (1813 - 1848) with same commitment as he always does. Terror is really good drama about the devastating hardships that men had to endure on this trip to icy hell and ultimately on their horrible deaths.

However... there is something that is causing more of those horrible deaths, something that wasn't there, a monster. A Tuunbaq from Inuit mythology emerges from the night or the mist and rips sailors apart. It is like author has asked help from a five year old, what could be killing men besides lead poisoning, tuberculosis, freezing to death, scurvy or murder? A monster.

On real Franklin Expedition there was plenty of real horror to cope with. On their way to find North-west Passage, their two ships, Erebeus and Terror, were trapped on ice twice, first in winter 1845-46. During that time three men died at tuberculosis, which was aided by lead that was used as a sealant on thousands of food cans ships carried. In TV series a young man called David Young dies and is buried on Beechey island, In real life he's name was John Torrington, and he become very popular by the photos taken from he's well preserved remains. 

Second, and permanent trapment happend in September 1846. Next summer did not thaw the ice as usually. More people died, including John Franklin. Lead must have been taking more victims as it cumulated on men's bodies, causing anemia, weakness and even madness. Lemon juice that was meant to fight scurvy lost it's potency and most of their cans were either leaking and thus going to rot, or poisoning effects of lead might have been discovered. First days without sunlight and then days without dark, surrounded by nothing but ice.  After being trapper 19 months, ships were abandoned and men started their travel to south, 800 miles.

Walking in cold temperatures is itself much for weak, malnourished bodies, add it pulling fully loaded boats is too much. If you sweat, you get too cold and froze to death. When they reached King William Land (now known to be an island), it was a barren wasteland without nothing to hunt in winter when climate can drop to -65, celsius that is. Then came possible mutinies, we really don't know. Only few literal pieces of evidence is found, one of them is Victory Point note, first placed on stone cairn in May 1847, when all was relatively well, and then re-visited at April 1848, with additions that tells how things have turned... not so well. 

Along the way south men died, some resorted to pure cannibalism. The found remains tells that clearly. In 1850 an Inuit saw some 40 men walking south. Last sighting was in 1851 when Inuit hunters saw only four men walking. Nobody of the 129 men survived. We don't know how most of them died. but what is certain that they suffered cold, hunger, exhaustion and madness. Then the death by freezing must have been felt like a comfort from heaven because of the warm feeling before ultimate death. 

No need for a monster.

Im Westen nichts Neues - Selbst jetzt

Still photo from Im Westen nichts Neues (2022, Netflix

Maybe it is a subjective feeling and only for me personally, that I feel certain events of the past has some inbuild feeling that comes with them. It is like some ancient reminiscent of the sorrow and pain that still haunts us.

I feel World War I as a gaping wound that has long ceased to bleed. It has turned into a void full of puss and infection. Abject rotten scar on the timeline of 20th century. However, maybe we all should feel like that way and feel that creeping sadness, hopelessness and the feeling that we are attending a long funeral.

Maybe that will stop us going into the madness of world war again. Then it is such a good thing that movies like these are made. You will watch it once... and once is enough.

                                                                          Never forget!

Covid-19 - There has been much worst

Victory Parade in Stockton, California, ca. 1918. Van Covert Martin. Holt-Atherton Special Collections (Western Americana), University of the Pacific Library

 

Covid-19 certainly is a dangerous disease. Status in January 7th 2022, 301 million cases and 5,49 million deaths so far. Modern medicine has adapt quickly to fight against this pandemic, vaccinations against it were developed in record time, so far portion of the fully vaccinated is 49,8% of the world population, with 9,21 billion shots given. Yet in kills people in fast pace, United States leading the statistics, Brazil and India following.

Now imagine a disease much worst with no vaccines available, killing the young and the able, and to make things much worst, at the time of brutal world war.

Just like many influenza (H1N1-virus) epidemics, it was an aviary based disease. There is three possible sources where it came from, first being from the Unites States Army-base at Camp Funston in Kansas at March 1918, rapidly spreading along with military preparing to war. Second possible source might have been the Chinese workers, Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) that had been ported to France by the British to do physical support work of the trench warfare. These first two sources include chickens, Camp Funston raised its own chickens among other animals, Chinese brought their own with them. Third source might have been carrier pigeons that was widely used to carry information, however that is much disputed.

Anyhow it started at spring of 1918, spreading rapidly through forces, reaching the western front in France at mid April and Australia at June, thus travelling as fast as people possibly could in those days. All and all it came at four waves, the second in late 1918 being the deadliest.

As the war itself had been horrible with its industrial way to kill much people as possible, and in horrible conditions such as cold, damp, malnutrition, already diseased with many bacterial infections as dysentery, so was the disease. Imagine of being saved from the artillery barrage, bullets, the gas, being buried or burned alive etc. First wave was often begun with ordinary flu symptoms like soar throat, fever etc. The second wave was so brutal that I quote the words of Laura Spinney de describe it best:

      [...] during the second wave, the disease was much more serious, often complicated by bacterial pneumonia, which was often the cause of death. This more serious type would cause heliotrope cyanosis to develop, whereby the skin would first develop two mahogany spots over the cheekbones which would then over a few hours spread to color the entire face blue, followed by black coloration first in the extremities and then further spreading to the limbs and the torso[...]. 

 Thus if you were saved from the variety of the poisonous gasses that were used as a weapon, you still suffocated to death by the fluids that filled your lungs. 

Naval Training Station, San Francisco, California (Yerba Buena Island), ca. November 1918. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command

However it was not only the armies of the belligerent nations that suffered. It affected the civilian population of any nation, and as it killed the young and able men of the trenches it hit hard on the young and able men everywhere, the stronger the victim the harder the disease killed, it was totally wrestling with humans resistance. It saved much older population, which might have been due to immunity that have been gained from 1889 - 1990 pandemic. Because of the war the economies were low, food was scarce and meagre, all added with other diseases. Fighting nations often choose to censor the news of the disease, fearing it would tear down the morale, thus helping the disease to spread. 

As for the statistics, this epidemic has estimated 500 million suspected cases, death toll being harder to estimate, largest number being up to 100 million deaths. Compare this to statistics of that "great" war which victims being at its largest estimate being 22 million deaths.

Wear a mask or go to jail, 1918. Mill Valley Public Library/Internet Archive

Laura Spinney: Pale Rider

There is no death - its just a painting

 

Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 – 1931) : Tuonelan joella (By the River of Tuonela) (1903), Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki.

Tuonela, in Finnish folklore, is a place where you go after you are dead. Its not hell, nor it is a heaven. We all have to go there. It is on north, its dark and somber place where the dead wonder as spectres or ghosts. However, eternal prison it is not, we can come back if we like, such as to protect our beloved or posterity.

Even so, dead you are, and remain as a shadow. In this painting we can see the mere desperation on the eyes of deceased, as they wait their turn to cross the river that separates Tuonela from our world. People of all ages. A young timid girl undresses with shyness, a young woman cries in desperation, covering her eyes, while older people submit to their fate that they knew will become someday. Woman on the boat cries for maybe last time ever, realizing when the boat starts to move that this is it, here I go. Man who is pushing the boat might be the very boatman who takes deceased across the river, a Finnish version of Charon if you like. He's eyes are focused and calm, like concentrating on he's work. Across the murky water of the river rises mossy rocky wall, Old, long time fallen snag of a pine lies next to it. On the left we see bloody red swan of Tuonela.

On the very right corner of the painting we see a man holding a mason's trowel, looking away. He's expression doesn't show any agony of the situation. This is Akseli-Gallen Kallela himself. He painted this work as a preparatory painting for frescoes of the mausoleum of Jusélius in Pori. Fritz Arthur Jusélius had lost her daughter Sigrid to a tuberculosis in 1898, when she was just 11-years old, and wanted to build a mausoleum to commemorate her memory. Gallen-Kallela was commissioned to paint the frescoes inside. Work included six frescoes where death among life was the leading motif. Painter himself has lost he's daughter Impi Marjatta in 1895 as a child. Thus the sorrow and anguish that Jusélius felt was very familiar to him. That was the force that made the very frescoes and their preparatoty works one of the best paintings he ever produced.

After all this sorrow and desperation we have to take a closer look on this painting, there might be a an important message to all of us. Just above the undressing girl we see a reddish face looking straight to us, breaking the fourth wall. He is an another painter Pekka Halonen (1865 – 1933), the second real person in this play. Then we take another look at Gallen-Kallela on the right. Is he on this painting or standing in front of a painting? What is clear that trowel he is holding is a symbol of  freemasonry. Turn of the 20th century was an age of spiritualism and theosophy. Concepts that changed the very perspective on death. It stated that we don't die, we just change our form from physical to spiritual. Thus painters on this painting, Halonen and Gallen-Kallela, other looking to us, other looking away tells us with their indifference of depicted suffering, this is just a painting, this is not real, there is no death!