THE MT VOID
03/28/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 39, Whole Number 2373
Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
PSA: Delete Your DNA from 23andMe
Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
Picks for Turner Classic Movies in April (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE DYBBUK (1938) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929) (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
COCOON (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
This Week's Reading (THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: PSA: Delete Your DNA from 23andMe
<
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-delete-your-data-from-23andme/>
"DNA-testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, which means
the future of the company's vast trove of customer data is
unknown. Here's what that means for your genetic data.
...
As uncertainty about the company's future reaches its peak, all
eyes are on the trove of deeply personal--and potentially
valuable--genetic data that 23andMe holds. Privacy advocates have
long warned that the risk of entrusting genetic data to any
institution is twofold--the organization could fail to protect it,
but it could also hand over customer data to a new entity that
they may not trust and didn't choose.
California attorney general Rob Bonta reminded consumers in an
alert on Friday that Californians have a legal right to ask that
an organization delete their data. 23andMe customers in other
states and countries largely do not have the same protections,
though there is also a right to deletion for health data in
Washington state's My Health My Data Act and the European Union's
General Data Protection Regulation. Regardless of residency, all
23andMe customers should consider downloading anything they want
to keep from the service and should then attempt to delete their
information."
The article includes instructions on how to go about deleting your
data. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
April 3, 2025: MAROONED (1969) & "Marooned" by Martin Caidin (1969)
<
https://archive.org/details/marooned0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up>
===================================================================
TOPIC: Picks for Turner Classic Movies in April (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)
THURSDAY, April 10, 3:45 AM, The Dybbuk (1938) [see Mark's review
below]
MONDAY, April 28, 2:45 PM, The Mysterious Island (1929) [see
Mark's review below]
TUESDAY, April 29, 1:30 PM, Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet
Street (1982) [not the recent Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter
version]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE DYBBUK (1938) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This review was first published in 1989. THE DYBBUK is running
on TCM Thursday, April 10, at 3:45 AM.]
CAPSULE: Paydirt! A Yiddish film made in Poland in 1938 turns
out to be a little-known gem. The film lacks a lot of what we
might consider high production values, but besides being an
unintentional artifact of the culture of Eastern European Jewry
wiped out in the Holocaust, it also turns out to be a haunting
horror film that deserves to be seen by all fans of 1920s and
1930s horror films. At least one sequence, a grotesque dance,
ranks this film up with some of the best of German Expressionism.
Rating: +3 (-4 to +4).
Watching the 1938 Polish-made Yiddish film THE DYBBUK, one is only
too aware that the film is flawed. Much of the acting is
exaggerated as it would be in a silent film. Some of the
photography seems poor, as well as some of the editing. At least
once the film cuts from a quiet scene to a loud scene and the
sudden sound causes the audience to jump. It is true, however,
that in retrospect most of the faults seem hard to remember. The
strongest memories of the film are beautiful images, some haunting
and horrifying. And while taken individually many of the scenes
were less effective for me than they may have been for THE
DYBBUK's intended audience, this is a great mystical horror film,
perhaps one of the better horror films of the 1930s.
[Spoilers follow, though as with a Shakespeare play, one does not
see THE DYBBUK for plot surprises.]
Sender and Nisn have been very close friends since their student
days. Now they see each other only on holidays. To cement the
bond of their friendship they vow that if their respective first
children--each expected soon--are of opposite sexes then they will
arrange a marriage of the two children. Sure enough, Sender has a
daughter Leyele, though he loses his wife in childbirth. Nisn has
a son, Khonnon, though an accident claims Nisn's life before he
can even see his new son or conclude his arrangement to marry
Khonnon to Leyele.
Years later Khonnon, now a Talmudic scholar, meets Leyele and they
fall in love. Neither knows about the vow they would be married
and Sender does not know whose son Khonnon is. The intense
Khonnon is already considering giving up his study of the Talmud
to study Kabalah, the great book of mystical knowledge and magic.
Sender three times tries to arrange a marriage with a rich but
rather sheepish young man. Twice the plans fail and Khonnon
believes his magic has averted the arrangement. The third time,
however, an agreement is reached. Khonnon calls upon dark forces
to help him but is consumed by his own spell and found dead. The
day of Leyele's marriage--in fact, during the marriage ceremony
itself--Khonnon's spirit returns from the grave as a dybbuk,
a possessing demon, and takes over the body of the woman he was
denied. Leyele is taken to a great and pious Rabbi, now nearing
the end of his life and torn with self-doubts, who alone may have
the knowledge to remove the demon.
If some of this smacks of William Peter Blatty, it should be
remembered that this is a 1938 film based on a pre-World-War-I
play. THE DYBBUK by S. Anski (a pen name for Shloyme Zanvl
Rappoport), along with THE GOLEM by H. Leivick (a pen name for
Leivick Halper), are perhaps the two best remembered (and most
commonly translated) plays of the great Yiddish Theater. While
Yiddish folklore has many dybbuk and golem stories, and the play
THE GOLEM was based on an actual legend ("The Golem of Prague"),
THE DYBBUK was an original story involving a legendary type of
demon. The film retells the story of the play, but remains very
different. Other than plot there is not much of the play carried
over into the film.
All too commonly constraints of budget and even what appears now
to be inappropriate style rob some scenes of their effect. Much
of the acting is exaggerated in ways that might have been more
appropriate to silent film or to the stage. In fact, in some ways
this feels like an entire film done in a style much like the
early, good scenes of the 1931 DRACULA. Director Michal Waszynski
could well be excused on the grounds that he was making the film
for a very different audience. However, just occasionally,
a scene will be really supremely well done. The best sequence of
the film is when Leyele, just before her marriage, is called upon
to dance with the poor of the town, as is traditional. Leyele is
reluctant and the dance turns into a grotesquery culminating with
Leyele dancing with a figure of death. The film is a showcase for
Yiddish songs, cantorial singing, and dancing, both traditional
and modern. Much seems out of place, but this one dance creates
one of the most eerie and effective horror scenes of its decade.
THE DYBBUK stands as more than a good horror film. It is also an
artifact of pre-Holocaust Yiddish film and of Eastern European
Jewish village life. Curiously, for a Yiddish film some of the
stereotypes that appear could be interpreted as being
anti-Semitic. We see a miser with exaggerated Jewish features
counting and recounting his coins. We see what is intended to be
a great Rabbi looking pompous, fat, sloppy, and apparently lazy.
Why a Yiddish film would have such images is open to question.
Still, it is a pity that this film is not better known. It
deserves to be thought of as a major film of its decade. I rate
it +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. Congratulations to the National
Center for Jewish Film for restoring this film. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
[This review was first published in 2010. THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
is running on TCM Monday, April 28, 2:45 PM.]
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929) is the first film version of the
Jules Verne novel. Well, sort of--Verne's novel did not have
dragons or duck people. THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is a bizarre
adaptation of the Jules Verne. No film adaptation is much like
the book, which would resemble ROBINSON CRUSOE with just a touch
of science fiction. In this version Lionel Barrymore plays Count
Andre Dakkar (alias Captain Nemo) on an island where he studies
deep seas. On the ocean floor he finds a race of what TCM calls
"fish men," but I would say they look more like they are wearing
duck suits. It has early two-strip Technicolor and sound
sequences, but it is really mostly a pre-sound film. MGM was
slowly moving to sound. The film may be more interesting as an
artifact than as a rip-snorting science fiction film.
(Note: MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is generally considered the literary
sequel to 20,000 LEAGUES. If you read the books you realize that
Verne makes the dates irreconcilable between the two novels.
20,000 LEAGUES is strictly post-Civil War. MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
begins during the Civil War. Nemo supposedly found his island
after the events of 20,000 LEAGUES and lived there six years
before the balloon landed. That would be 1859, but at the same
time after events of 1866.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: COCOON (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
In response to Evelyn's comments on COCOON in the 03/21/25 issue
of the MT VOID, Scott Dorsey writes:
[Evelyn wrote,] "Aliens come to Earth and give a bunch of people
immorality, and that's not science fiction? [-ecl]
Scott Dorsey commented:
That sounds more like STARSHIP EROS, the fine Danish SF porn film.
[-sd]
To which Evelyn can say only, "Ooops!! Proof that spell-checker
catches only misspelled words, not the *wrong* words!" [-ecl]
[Although I think STARSHIP EROS is actually French, not Danish:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269603/reference>. -ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY: ONE MAN'S HUMBLE QUEST TO
FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION'S ORIGINAL MEANING by A. J. Jacobs
(Penguin Random House, ISBN 978-0-593-13674-4) is a sequel of
sorts to his THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY. And he makes the same
"mistake" here that he made in his earlier quest: he treats
everything that is allowed as being required. In THE YEAR OF
LIVING BIBLICALLY, he talks about eating locusts, because they are
listed among the permitted foods. As I noted, so is duck, but
Jacobs did not seem to make sure he ate that.
And there is a quote from William Blake that Jacobs says applies
to both the Bible and the Constitution: "[We] both read the Bible
day and night /But thou read'st black where I read white."
One of the problems with "living constitutionally" versus "living
biblically" is that the latter consists of following a lot of
rules written primarily for the average person. Yes, there are a
lot of rules about Temple sacrifice that applied to only priests
and don't apply to anyone now, but there are hundreds of rules
that Jacob should be sure to follow ("don't eat pork", "don"t work
on the Sabbath", and so on). But the Constitution isn't like
that. There aren't hundreds of rules, and most of what is there
is how the government is structured, not rules. True, the
Congress is forbidden to pass ex post facto laws, but how is
Jacobs going to follow or break that rule? Almost all the main
part of original articles is not something Jacobs can "live". And
even many of the amendments that he could presumably interact with
get no mention (e.g., V through VII).
The first book suffered from trying to make something millions of
people already do seem quaint and weird. This one suffers from
trying to live according to something that was never designed as a
handbook to life.
But he does make a good point when he says that the literalists
and the originalists need to pay more attention to the Preamble,
in particular, to the phrase "promote the general Welfare." [-ecl]
===================================================================
Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole
world of new questions.
--Susanne K. Langer
MT VOID, 03/28/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 39, Whole Number 2373
Re: MT VOID, 03/28/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 39, Whole Number 2373