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H. P. Lovecraft - The Tree: Anthropomorphism of Flora

 

Hello my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.

Today I want to talk about trees, but not from a botanical and ecological perspective. I would like to think of trees biographically and psychologically. These two terms can already raise some questions: how to talk about trees if not through biology? Well... taking into account the countless ways that trees participate in human life and culture, let's say there are many other ways to think and discuss about them. Trees play a fundamental role in our existence: they produce the elemental air we breathe and filter all the dirt and corruption that we cause in the ecosystem. It is a true horror to imagine what life would be without them.

But we can go beyond this observation. Trees not only produce a physiological effect, but also fulfill as they have already fulfilled various psychological roles in human life. Our relationship with them is much more than preservation or stingy greed in wanting to extract them for economic interests. Trees have the power to affect us on a symbolic level as well. The various personal and collective meanings they can have, the individual and affective memories related to them: there are countless examples that I can use to demonstrate how trees also have a psychic influence on our lives. As much as this is not common nowadays, as cities practically devastated rural areas and the urbanization process brought with it the ruin of flora, allow me to remind you of the playful role that trees once played in people's lives. And how the memories they elicit make them a symbol of happy moments or a time when the relationship with space was different. Many who listen to me may not realize it, but trees were practically a toy in themselves, something natural, without the need for manufacturing. Climb on them to pick fruits, to spend time leaning against the canopy. Or even build tree houses using its branches as a base, creating real clubhouses or children's shelters. Make a swing using ropes, boards or tires. And it's not just with children that trees already had some symbolic value and psychic record. With teenagers too. To this day, there are still couples who engrave their names on tree trunks as a form of declaration and promise. If you have never seen a tree with the initials of names inside a heart out there, my dears, you need to walk around a little more in areas that are less gray and, preferably, without concrete nearby.

Can I talk about adults too? Of course I can. And this time I won't give too flowery examples, as I did before. I'll make it a little darker. Trees were also used for abominable things and were, in various historical moments, symbols that caused fear and communicated the most morbid. It was a daily occurrence in the Middle Ages to travel along the roads and find bodies hanging from branches and duly guarded by vultures, which in this horrible image had a source of sustenance for many days. And what about the Romans? Anthropological studies show that the most cruel and horrendous means of execution for the Caesars was crucifixion. But the Romans were not sawing trees, grinding stems and making them symmetrical. Of course not. A strong tree to support the weight of an adult body was more than enough for the butcher soldiers. There are even studies that address how ancient Jerusalem was full of olive trees and how these were used by the Romans for this purpose.

These historical elements are useful to reflect how trees can populate our imagination, whether in a positive or negative way. Inspired by them it is possible to enter the world of fantasy, but also to find the grotesque, the darkness. And you must know very well that Lovecraft is much more interested in the second part. Something I've always noticed watching movies, drawings and paintings is how fertile the human imagination is in terms of transmitting an anthropomorphic quality to trees. The shape of some large trees is not that far removed from the shape of our bodies and bizarrely some can actually look human. It's funny how trees can naturally acquire some traits on their surface that make us see human faces. Several cartoons had them moving the branches to use them as arms. Who doesn't remember the classic scene from the 1982 movie Poltergeist?

What I can still add to make your imagination even more fertile in this sense is the fact that large trees are incredibly long-lived. They live much longer than us and are capable of lasting centuries. If trees had eyes, how many lives have they not seen begin and end? If they had ears, how many voices, whispers, secrets would they not keep? Can you measure the amount of lives that have already inhabited a tree, that were born, lived and also died there, with or close to it? Given this longevity, trees are also great monuments. And it's not hard to imagine why some cultures, the Celtic for example, had such deep respect for them. Elder trees were treated as if they were an entity in their own right and it is precisely this domain of the mind that I want to enter. I believe Lovecraft manages to penetrate his common disconnections with reality and continuous immersion in his mythological world. In his adventures in moments of seclusion. The trees in this fantastic world cannot be explained by physics or biology alone. They contain extraordinary, supernatural elements and are full of symbolism and belief. So the trees become the entities I just mentioned.

It is interesting how the background of the short story “The Tree” is built with pagan influences and passages that refer to gods that, even if they are of a western nature, date from ancient eras. Humanity next to lovecraftian entities always looks like a baby in chronological terms, when compared to the antiquity of the creatures represented. A primordial aura inhabits the tale, not only represented by the way the sculptor Kalos talks to the spirits he can hear near a garden of olive trees, which are supposed to be fauns and dryads, beings who accompany and praise the profane god Pan. But also like the whole lovecraftian description makes us feel like we are in an environment that has had little or no human influence. In this sense, the lovecraftian narrative structure points to something dark, incomprehensible to the worldly mind, which is what manifests itself on Mount Maenalus and serves as a source of inspiration for Kalos to sculpt fauns and dryads with astonishing precision, at the same time it is something that generates a certain fascination in us, something of a hypnotic nature. Lovecraft always works to reveal the existence of a desired beyond. An unknown source of knowledge. And although the consequences are not exactly those expected by the moral concept attributed by the human mind, a type of psychic structure quite different from the nature spirits represented here in the story, strangely humans still want to go down one more step, to go deeper and deeper. We know that this does not usually end well in lovecraftian writings, but I insist: it is important to note that this concept of “good” is very human. It is a moral value that comes from our species (and has little to do with lovecraftian beings). The other side, the beyond, the beings of nature do not necessarily have the same understanding, the same judgment.

The withering away of Kalos is concomitant with a kind of awakening to this other consciousness. When he asks his great friend Musides to bury him next to an olive tree seedling deposited near his head, Kalos does not appear to be insane, but just in another tune. It is a fact that he was sick in body. The constant contact with the fauns and dryads was apparently something that drained him of life energy. But Kalos does not appear to be sick of mental faculties, just inserted in a transitional process. In a kind of metamorphosis. It remains for our imagination to consider what Kalos actually talked to the fauns and dryads he heard. But the fact is that the story enters the domain of what I mentioned earlier as the anthropomorphism of trees, a characteristic attributed by human culture. The people passing by Mount Maenalus, now the tomb of Kalos and where the olive tree grew next to his body, is something that causes horror and fascination. The moonlight, the huge roots that broke through the tomb, the macabre aspect that constitutes the environmental image of the place is a fertile scenario for the human mind and that immortalizes Kalos and the tree, if we can separate one of the other at the end of the tale.

The fact that Kalos was buried with the olive tree and that it is described in the tale as an abnormal tree, which grew frighteningly in comparison with all the others, suggests that it was nourished by his body. But if we want to step into the realm of the supernatural, perhaps that could also mean that the tree is a continuation of Kalos' own life essence. Something that maybe he was fully aware that he would be, given his last moments and how he spoke more about things from the other world than this. As if he were immersed in the psychic reality of fauns and dryads, like a cocoon ready to be reborn and inhabit a completely different reality. It is interesting to see how the fate of Kalos is not limited to the manichaeism represented by Heaven and Hell. There remains the possibility of something beyond this duality, of another dimension, something that escapes the possibilities proclaimed by the most widespread beliefs in our culture. We enter the realm of mystery, but which is bizarrely represented in this lovecraftian tale through a mixture of incorporeal, spectral elements, with others of material, perfectly concrete dimensions such as the silhouette of the tree and the aberratic aspect of its roots. It is the presentation of speculative elements, but with enough impact and influence in the real field. And, therefore, I believe that it is something really plausible to think about the subjective, symbolic and fantastic relationships that we have with real trees. Have you ever seen an old, human-looking tree on a dark, moonlit night? Certainly not, but I'm sure it's something you can perfectly imagine.

Corvid greetings!

[English Version] H. P. Lovecraft - The Tree: Anthropomorphism of Flora

[English Version] Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven: Meanings of 'Nevermore'

Hello my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.

As a brazilian, from the perspective of someone born and raised in this tropical country, I feel comfortable saying that “The Raven” was and continues to be Poe's most influential poem for our people. It received the attention of important literary figures, who had a deep, notorious love for the text. The most responsible for bringing “The Raven” to us and, putting Poe on our radar was without a doubt the always admirable Machado de Assis, for whom I have deep respect (mainly for timeless works such as As Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas and O Alienista). He was the first to introduce it to us, publishing his portuguese translation in 1883. After him, others followed: Emílio de Menezes paraphrased the text already in the 20th century, in a sequence of eighteen sonnets, in 1917. In 1924, Fernando Pessoa present his translation, appreciated by many. In this list of translators, Gondin da Fonseca (1926), Milton Amado (1944, particularly my favorite version), Benedicto Lopes (1956), Cabral do Nascimento (1972), Alexei Bueno (1980) and Aluysio Mendonça Sampaio (1998) also gave their contributions.

So many names only prove the fascination and admiration that “The Raven” awakens in brazilian readers. Something to be expected from a text that, despite its otherworldly aura, is filled with inspiring musicality, as well as incredibly precise rhythm and meter. “The Raven” is not only appreciated artistically speaking: it is also a source of study, bibliographic material that serves as didactic content in technical and aesthetic lessons. “The Raven” is a poem that, in addition to building once and for all the gothic style that characterizes Poe, makes explicit all the melancholy rooted in his writings. And I appreciate that. To understand a little more clearly where his mind and heart were when he wrote the poem, it might be necessary to remember the ups and downs he was experiencing until the moment he finally managed to publish it. It is important to say that the precise date of when Poe wrote “The Raven” is unknown: what we do know is the publication date, January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening Mirror. The poem was previously rejected on more than one occasion.

The period, mainly the last five years prior to publication, are somewhat enlightening about what ended up leaking in this poem, although Poe has defended, in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) that his approach to the poem was exclusively logical and methodical. However, I believe it is clear that, however much we use logic and technique, the character of a literary text never ceases to be emotional in its essence. This becomes quite evident when we realize the emotion present in the poem. The human aspect of our nature never leaves us even when we are looking for some accuracy in our writing. It’s not possible to losing our identity and totally repressing emotions when we are expressing ourselves artistically.

Conceptually, Poe was inspired by Charles Dickens to create his own talking raven. And it was Elizabeth Barret who elucidated and inspired the form of the composition mainly in terms of rhythm and meter. But other than that, I imagine what we discover reading “The Raven” are biographical fragments of a life that is in disgrace, about to delve into it even deeper. To justify this, let me recall some historical facts of Poe's brief life at that time. It is known that his riotous and undisciplined life led him practically to ruin. Poe was rejected from both an academic institution (more precisely at the University of Virginia) and a military one, in this case the West-Point Military Academy. A bohemian and adept at the illusory pleasures of alcohol, it was in Baltimore that he actually started to have a trade and earn some money (believed to have been $10 a week, writing for a weekly magazine). The turning point in Poe's life, which would lead him to more peaceful years, occurred precisely in one of the most controversial episodes of his biography: the marriage with his cousin Virginia Clemm. Virginia was only 13 years old, while Poe was already approaching his 30s. As the documentary sources on Virginia and Edgar are quite scarce and imprecise, some biographers disagree about the nature of the relationship: some believe that did not escalate to the sexual aspect, while others claim that this was certainly the case. Considering the time, I’m certainly with the second group and think that those who try to suggest that Poe did not have a sexual relationship with Virginia are just trying to clean up his image, which frankly has not been clean for many years. Poe was admittedly a troublemaker, given to carnal pleasures and it was precisely due to orgies and bohemian life that he was expelled from the institutions he frequented. It doesn't surprise me at all that he got involved with a teenager, as his life history pointed to that. I won't deceive you, my listener: several of the classic writers have bizarre and morally reprehensible episodes in their biographies and Poe was no exception. And I won't be the one trying to hide this facts.

That said, it goes on record that the marriage to Virginia did Poe good, mentally speaking. Dependent on alcohol, surprisingly it was the young woman who helped him to move away from drinking and to have some stability in the following years. By all accounts, Virginia had a huge influence on his behavior. The last years of the 1830s were, in this respect, the healthiest physically and mentally for Poe. That is until Virginia contracted tuberculosis in 1842. She died in 1847, aged 24, after 5 years of battle. And this period was precisely the one where it is believed that the poem “The Raven” germinated. In my perception, I can clearly feel Poe’s morbidity and suffering in the poem due to the sad and troubled moments he spent with Virginia. The black bird himself, as the one who heralds an omen and tragedy, makes me visualize Poe's fear of losing Virginia. His biography has evidence of extramarital affairs, but Virginia was the one who, in a way, supported the writer, kept him on track. When she died in 1847, Poe not only returned to heavy drinking, he himself died two years later, in 1849. I think that says a lot if you look at the whole mosaic. I believe that Lenora, mentioned in the poem, is certainly a pseudonym for Virginia. Whenever I hear this name in the poem, my mind sends me to her. The poet's poor wife, his benefactress, the woman who brought him moments of light and who was dying.

“The Raven” is very biographical, even if the author as I mentioned referred to it as something technical and logical. However, I think that the great achievement of Poe is his ability to narrate scenes that deal with the emotional and supernatural experience in a very subjective way, allowing readers who associate the character with their own experiences, which they possibly had in life. This is quite interesting to see in the way Poe wrotes his texts. In them, we can see and feel the author as if he were the character, but at the same time, we can feel ourselves in the scenes. As if the raven was visiting and talking to us. Poe writes with impersonality, although he leaks elements of his own identity in every verse. And this promotes something rich for our experience, the possibility of reading a poem like “The Raven” with different optics. We read closely, in the epidermis, or even a little further away, as an external witness. And I believe that this is one of the qualities of the poem that makes it so interesting and compatible with other forms of art, such as cinema for example.

Briefly mentioning the events narrated, we accompany a lonely man by the fireplace on a dark night, consulting ancient science tomes in an attempt to remove from his mind the memory of the death of his beloved Lenora. Then he hears a knock on his bedroom door, opens and finds no one. However, the phenomenon repeats and he realizes that the sound was actually coming from the window. In the moment when it was opened, a raven came in, landing on a bust of the goddess Athena. The man then asks the black bird what his name would be, which he then responds saying “nevermore”, surprising the man who did not expect any response, although he had asked the question.

Shortly after, the man meditates that soon the raven will also flap wings and take his life, as well as many others who have passed through it before, taking away his hopes. The raven then repeats: "nevermore", as if he had read the man’s thoughts. Depressed, the man goes on to argue that the raven learned such an expression from some unfortunate master and that this was the only thing he knew. However, such a finding is not able to demotivate him to study and discover something more about the animal, and so he pulls up a chair and sits down facing the black bird. Staring at him, Lenora's memory returns to his thoughts, making the man feel the air thicker, as if he were in the presence of angels. He asks if this would be a divine sign for him to overcome Lenora's memory and thus, once again, the raven intervenes, implying that the man would never be free of his memories and, consequently, of his torment. This rouses his fury, excommunicating the raven and its prophecy. However, in a last act, he asks the bird if he would ever be reunited in Heaven with Lenora, where the raven repeats: “nevermore”. Accusing the bird of a lying, the man calls for him to return to the Plutonian coast, certainly a reference to Pluto, god of the dead in Roman mythology, an embodiment of Hades in Greek mythology. The raven, however, does not move. It continues resting on the bust of Athena, where the man then proceeds to admit that his soul will henceforth be trapped under the raven's shadow and will "nevermore" rise. And so the poem ends.

In the essay “The Philosophy of Composition”, Poe made it very clear that choosing the raven as the symbol for the poem was not random. The writer aimed to rely on the lugubrious tone that the bird evokes in the collective imagination of society, something that comes from classical mythologies and still persists. And Poe after that starts to play ambiguously, touching on the real and the mythological, but without pointing out where the text really is located. Mythological because, by evoking the symbology of the raven and making him speak, we would have the perception of the bird as a supernatural being. However, and at the same time, it is worth remembering that the author makes the bird mention only one word (nevermore), something that is not uncommon in the animal kingdom, especially when we talk about birds and their ability to learn and emit sounds. Ravens actually can do that. In this sense, the poem enters both the rational and the supernatural world at the same time: it is possible to interpret in both ways.

I think what really speaks louder, which is something more categorical, is the fact that the raven is an allegory of death. Regardless of how we interpret, its prophetic tone indicates finitude, reaffirms at all times the loss, the feeling of mourning, the impossibility of reuniting with the loved one and the fatalities of life. The raven becomes a symbol that represents all of this. And so, it causes torture by constantly reminding of loss, thus eliciting the desolation and revolt with death, a phenomenon that escapes our knowledge, power and which we cannot overcome.

Corvid greetings!

[English Version] Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven: Meanings of 'Nevermore'

[English Version] Carnage: The extreme side of Spider-Man comics

Carnage: The extreme side of Spider-Man comics

“You're probably asking... WHY do I kill... well, simple answer. It's PRETTY. Waking up in the morning and knowing you're going to kill someone... it's a BEAUTIFUL THING. Makes me feel like a GUNSHIP, like my engine's only turning over when I'm MOVING and KILLING. Makes me feel like God on the first monday morning.” (Carnage)

“Norman, Norman, Norman. This is the price of doing business with me. Sacrifices have to be made. We have to make deep cuts! Ah ha haha haaa!” (Carnage)

“Here came the bride all dressed in white. I wish it was red... then you all be dead.” (Carnage)

Hello my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.

Today my subject will be Marvel, a franchise that accommodates one of its most family friendly heroes, Spider-Man. Sometimes, Marvel raised the tone to the point that its clothing supposedly intended for children and young people became a little questionable. This is what I want to discuss, highlighting one of its villains who, in my analysis, is the best example of this: Carnage.

Spider-Man comics have a feature that exudes the very personality and age group of its great hero and protagonist. He is young, inexperienced, serene and with a huge sense of humor. Peter Parker embodies all the characteristics of a good guy. Accompanying him from one web to another is like boarding an anti-stress train. He is a type of reading with a lot of adrenaline, but always filled with a light and friendly humor (and perhaps his stories are those that, at Marvel, have the most this vibe). This is Peter.

What would someone like Carnage be doing in a scenario like his? A scenario that, supposedly, would be safe for children and young teenagers to read freely and let their imagination run wild? Yeah... it's something curious, isn't it? And, for me, this first perception that Carnage leaves us with, that he would be something inappropriate for this audience, is what precisely makes him an interesting villain, because in addition to the red light going on for children, it also lights up for parents.

What makes a character a good villain? We can list many things. But, presenting himself as a real threat to the protagonist (one that cannot be underestimated) and also being the thing that causes tension in people who are off the pages (reading the material) are certainly some of the most important characteristics that every impactful villain need to have. Carnage was a real, straightforward aesthetic break with Spider-Man comics. The level of insanity and violence he brings was certainly a risk Marvel decided to take. To exposed its younger audience to some of the genocidal, bizarre scenes this character would be capable of pulling off (which, in itself, is somewhat controversial).

“But Raven, what do you mean? The Green Goblin was already a psychopath and is perhaps even more intense and extreme than Carnage”. Intense, yes. But not extreme. In my opinion, The Green Goblin remains a much more complex, interesting and well-crafted villain than Carnage. Perhaps he is the most outstanding Spider-Man villain of all time (something difficult to define, because there are other excellent villains to share the podium). The goblin's pleasure in chaos, his cruelty and ability to explode an infinity of things in a short period of time are notorious. This motherfucker loves to put out a fire with gasoline. His devilish laugh, mental instability, the financial resources he has to carry out all his cruelty. Yes, without a doubt, the Green Goblin is a much denser character. Norman Osborn is unhinged. Someone who alters his personas and there is a bipolarity in question. At one point, we have Norman, the tyrannical and greedy businessman. In another, there is the Green Goblin, the part of his personality that is capable of repressing the few moral vestiges that the powerful businessman has. There are variations of these moments, the Green Goblin is never a constant: it's as if he really changes clothes, wears his uniform in moments when Norman's mental health is more weakened. So we have moments of calm. What Norman's second personality is capable of doing, he would not do himself. Although he wasn't a man of integrity either, he wouldn't come to this point. And that creates hiatuses, moments for Peter Parker to breathe at least.

With Carnage it is different. Either you expel him from the face of the earth or send him to hell. There is no third option. Unlike Norman Osborn, who alternates personalities, Carnage is constant. “But, Raven, Carnage also has a duality, as he is hosted by the Venom symbiote strain (Eddie Brock).” Indeed. But what you have to keep in mind is that this strain that was born from the Venom symbiote does not have any moral remnants. The original symbiote parasitized Peter Parker and carried aspects of him even after it was abandoned. A gesture that even generated resentment. It made the symbiote look for someone who also resents Spider-Man, someone suitable to share this resentment and thus retaliate; this person was Eddie Brock. When he was with Brock, his personality, which is far from being honored like Peter’s, also leaves residual marks in the symbiote. That is, it inherits something from its hosts, it becomes part of the way the symbiote sees the world. These influences unite with the creature's own instinct and genetic characteristics, and this mixture gives rise to its moral compass.

The strain that originated Carnage does not have this. He is a new creature who has just literally been given birth, being left behind exactly when Venom pulls Eddie Brock out of jail, where he shared a cell with the psychopath Cletus Kasady. This strain contains only the genetic material that he inherited from Venom (his genes), which means that Carnage also has the abilities of Spider-Man, as well as Venom. But from a psychological point of view, the Carnage strain is more raw. More instinctual. Closer to a wild animal than a human being. And what is a symbiote if not a parasite, a predator of other living beings?

Having this essence, he finds in Cletus Kasady someone perfect to play his predatory and relentless instinct. Kasady is a complete psychopath with no regard for human life. As a human being, he is a monster, as monstrous as the strain itself. It's as if his organisms had found their soulmates, capable of fulfilling all the perverse and genocidal desires of both, without any censorship. Carnage gives Cletus the power he has always wanted to slaughter others, as he is a sadist, a genocide. At the same time, Cletus gives Carnage what Peter Parker and Eddie Brock denied themselves: a twisted moral compass, the absence of any censorship, authorization to feed and satiate his every desire without any repression.

Carnage refers to himself in the plural. Conceptually, the character is really more than one (two beings who came together). But, in the relationship between the Green Goblin and Norman (a being with two personalities) there are still incompatibilities, there are conflicts and short circuits. If Norman had been the Green Goblin in his full form, without any flaws, Peter Parker would be screwed. It would be very difficult to stop him. His crises helped Peter to expose the Goblin's weaknesses, make mistakes and thus be stopped.

With Carnage, we have a human and a symbiote in perfect harmony. And the parasitized is one of the worst humans the strain could have encountered. And for that very reason capable of such extremes as dismembering women and children in a public square. Yes... Carnage is able to do that, the comics showing it or not (it's something that is implied). Something too extreme for the Spider-Man scenario! And that is precisely what I have been trying to make clear during my speech, how this is something dissonant and even strange, uncomfortable to exist in this scenario that, in principle, would not enter into domains as macabre as this one. But let me be clear: I'm not complaining, I'm just observing. I like Carnage as a villain.

“But Raven, Carnage doesn't feature anything we haven't seen out there in action and horror movies.” Fact. However, we live in an age where few things shock us. We are very desensitized. In 1992, the year that the character appeared for the first time, the desensitization was already huge, something that even made his creation possible. At that time, villains, anti heroes and quite brutal vigilantes began to appear. The eighties paved this way a lot. But even so, in that context, it was something that still drew attention because of where the material was published. Anyone could find this genocidal carnage on a simple comic store. Is this common today? It is. But back then it wasn't that frequent and natural, let's say. It was unusual for a child of 6 or 7 years old to find a serial killer, insane psychopath and carver of innocents in a comic book, paying just a few dollars, the price of a school lunch.

“But Raven, when Carnage appeared in the comics, in the beginning we had more action, these bloodbaths were not drawn.” True. But the fact that they were not drawn doesn't mean they were not narrated or that they were not there. And in many situations narrating or just suggesting is much more efficient than showing visually. It's something that stimulates your imagination, makes scenes even more disturbing possible. Do you remember how we were introduced to the character Cletus Kasady? Right away, he was described as a boy with a very troubled childhood and pathological tendencies. His behavior clearly revealed that any psychologist could notice a comorbidity in him. From an early age Cletus tortured animals. This is even openly addressed in the comics, how he tortured his mother's dog. The boy killed his grandmother by pushing her down the stairs. If you want a comparison, something that illustrates more deeply for you what kind of child Cletus was, watch the movie “The Good Son”, a 1993 movie with MaCaulay Culkin.

Cletus's family was completely dysfunctional. His personality was being deformed within a family circle where there was only violence. His father murdered his mother, which left the kid an orphan and had him transferred to an orphanage. There, his aloof behavior only brought more problems. For years he was bullied not only by the other orphaned boys, but he was physically and emotionally abused by the staff as well. This whole scenario ended up developing misanthropic tendencies in Kasady. Misanthrope is the one who hates humanity, who has an aversion for it. Kasady was never welcomed, respected, much less offered this to anyone. For him, people were worms, which should be used according to his goals. Afterwards, preferably discarded when they lost their purpose and in the most cruel way possible. Cletus always took pleasure in torturing any living being. To him, his opponents were inferior minds and should die without exception. His life in the orphanage did not fail to add to his homicidal record: he kills the director of the institution and even pushes a girl (Manny Calderon) in front of a bus just because she refused to go out with him. Later, he even burns down the entire orphanage.

Cletus Kasady is a real maniac. And I believe that by becoming Carnage in union with the Venom strain, he made Peter Parker's life even more intense and extreme. He is much, much more dangerous than Venom. Eddie Brock followed his own moral code, and not infrequently he even sometimes acted as a vigilante when he felt inclined to do so. Venom's rivalry with Spider-Man is something more pronounced in his concept. At many points, Venom's obsession with making Peter Parker pay for abandoning him is something that only creates headaches for Peter. It's clear that Venom will try to hit him where it hurts, involving characters that are part of his life, people he loves. But, it is a more directed hatred and resentment. Venom became a public order problem at times, as Dr. Octavius and the Green Goblin himself? No doubt. But, the symbiote is quite obsessed and has a directed hatred. As for Carnage, well... like I said, he's a misanthrope. His mere existence already puts the life of the whole city at risk. Carnage fulfills what the original symbiote, which came to Earth, did not fulfill: when we think of an alien body falling to Earth, we imagine infection, disease, the human species being decimated. An attack from another world. But the symbiote that found Parker and then Brock is almost so narcissistic that, deep down, he just wants to have a good time. Do what seems interesting to him. He does not manage to build miraculous plans and great conspiracies to destroy the Earth, because his life here has given him many possibilities and pleasures until then. Life on Earth is pleasant for the symbiote. Humans are useful to him, to the point that he doesn't consider putting them into extinction.

But Carnage? Completely different story. The extermination of living things is his motivation. He takes macabre pride in being an agent of human pain. Chaos is not enough for him, he wants to see death. Buildings painted with human blood. People in a row falling into a meat grinder machine. And this machine is Carnage himself. In this sense, when Carnage is around, the aesthetics of the Spider Man universe tend to change. Jokes and Peter's typical good humor tend to become lumps in the throat, cold sweat and fear. There is no room for jokes with Carnage. If he gets even more concerned about making good impressions or being the center of the spotlight, people will die. Carnage is evil in the purest sense, needing all attention and effort focused against him. Something that even Venom understands and helps Peter to fight this genocidal maniac. With Carnage around, there's no tomorrow for any living being on his target. The strain's union with Cletus Kasady's evil is so profound that the two have become one. Cletus can't remove the symbiote from his body like Peter and Eddie does. In the amorphous and grotesque image of Carnage, we see a mass of muscle, bone and blood. A form that Cletus adores and is proud of: he now looks on the outside what he always was on the inside, a monster.

With all of these things taken into account it's possible to understand why Carnage was never adapted into a live action movie alongside Spider-Man (at least so far). There is a sequel to Venom’s film, of course, but Peter Parker's universe is still strongly marked by a perception that he is a friend for all ages, for the family to sit on the couch, together, and have fun with a good laugh. Cinema still hasn't been able to remove the hero from this infantile-juvenile image, something that prevents a movie from realizing all the potential and evil essence that a character like Carnage demands. And honestly I think that is unlikely to happen. Carnage, like Spawn, are characters that don't just inhabit the sci-fi and the fantastic... they inhabit, more deeply, the horror genre. And this is a genre where Spider-Man will hardly be portrayed in cinema. The most we will see of a meeting between Peter and the villain will be along the lines of the old cartoon from the 90's. Something else I'm quite skeptical.

Corvid greetings!

Zenón Barriga y Pesado (Chaves): um personagem amplo (sem trocadilhos)