THE CAMEL THAT GREW SIX WHEELS
Are Evil Masterminds taking over your world?
Sometimes it may seem that way. But Evil Masterminds really enjoyed their apex of popularity around the turn of the last century from the late 1800’s into the 1920’s. As we have moved from the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First, it is not surprising to see a revival of this phenomenon.
This year for Ramadan, Egyptian television will be showing a mini-series called KNIGHT WITHOUT A HORSE which incorporates elements of the Evil Mastermind phenomenon via a spurious document known as The Protocols of the Elders of Sion which originated during the time period in question, a time of great upheaval in the developed world during which the largest confederated empire in central Europe, the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, disolved. A multicultured entity which was nominally Roman Catholic, its downfall and the accompanying rivalries of ethnic and other groups engendered ugly competitive feelings. Even so, its end is often remembered sentimentally in popular culture by the romantic story of
Mayerling. This time period was also tumultuous in the Russia of the period where it culminated with the end of the Russian monarchy and the rise to power of the Communists.
Inspired in part by archeological findings and the shifting national identities ensuing from wars and empire reconfiguration, many people in this time period began looking to ancient Egyptian culture, ritual magic, astrology, spiritualism, exotic religions, Theosophy, and the occult for answers. And often the question on their minds was:
Who is behind all this?
Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) the author of
THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU MANCHU was also deeply steeped in alchemy, Theosophy, and all kinds of mysticism. The character he created was not just a villain or a criminal but the director of a vast network he had at his command. And he seemed to be the very embodiment of metaphysical Evil:
Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
-- Nayland Smith to Dr. Petrie,
The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, circa 1913 book form
In addition to the Fu Manchu books, Rohmer was the author of THE ROMANCE OF SORCERY recently republished as A GUIDE TO MAGIC, SORCERY AND THE PARANORMAL.
One of Dr. Fu Manchu’s antecedent’s may well have been that other well-known English evil-doer, Dr. Moriarty, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the author of Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty has been described as an all-encompassing super-criminal.
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web...[snip]...He does little himself. He only plans.
The French, too, had their counterpart in the personage of
Fantomas, done up in the inimitable Gallic style. Written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, Fantomas was a master of disguise who had a thousand identities and could appear out of nowhere to commit the most gruesome, seemingly gratuitous crimes.
"And what does this someone do?"
"Spreads terror!"
But the Evil Mastermind surely reached the pinnicle of development in Fritz Lang’s movie Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (der Spieler). Described as an urbane and elegant master criminal,
Dr. Mabuse was a hypnotist/psychiatrist and an expert manipulator who puts people into a position where they could be blackmailed so that he could corner the stock market. Inspired by a novel by Norbert Jacques serialized in a Berlin newspapers and the current events of the era, this 1922 film is a creepy classic.
Is this kind of entertainment harmful? Not if you don’t take it too seriously, it probably wouldn’t be. But there may be some impressionable people who can be drawn into it, just as there are impressionable people who have gotten drawn into Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire Role-Playing Games, Wagner’s Parsifal, and the Everquest Computer Game.
Will the Egyptian public be persuaded to believe in the Protocols myth because they see it integrated into a fictional mini-series? Will the producers of this TV entertainment FARES BILA JAWAD announce before-hand and periodically throughout that this mini-series is fictional? Or will they give their public the impression, if only by negligence, that this is a factual historical recreation?
How gullible is the Egyptian public?
Only they can answer that question.
Well, maybe only four wheels.
