Cinematic Gnosticism

Page 29 May–June 2008 Cinematic Gnosticism Gary Lain Zeroville Steve Erickson Europa Editions http://www.europaeditions.com 352 pages; paper, $14.95 Steve Erickson’s novel Zeroville is a thematically complex narrative, employing aspects of Gnostic belief, a fascination for the autistic savant , and an encyclopedic knowledge of the movies and rock music of the 1970s in the service of an occult exploration of the mysteries at the heart of existence. The conflation of these seemingly noncomplementary tropes is skillfully done and provides an exotic thematic foundation for the linear plotting and for the characterization of the protagonist, cin éautistic film editor Vikar. However, the question “to what purpose” should be addressed, especially when considering the ambiguities surrounding this novel’s denouement. Is it enough to recast literally the cliché that my dream is in the cinema, the cinema embeds my dream? Gnosticism is a pre-Christian belief system that posits a fundamentally flawed material world from which only those souls possessed of an esoteric knowledge or gnosis can be ultimately liberated. Gnostics knew this world as the product of a demiurge , an imperfect and in some manifestations evil deity who is closely identified with the god of Abraham (thus, Gnosticism’s heretical nature). Indeed, the story of Isaac and his near sacrifice as proof of his fatherAbraham ’s devotion infuses Zeroville: it is cited repeatedly in the context of Vikar and his relationship to his own parents (though Vikar’s mother seems to lack Sarah’s sense of humor) and fundamentally informs his worldview. It is the source of Vikar’s obsession with his own mad Calvinist father (who whispers the story of Isaac to Vikar shortly before his own suicide) and of his abiding concern for the safety of children in general (his protection of Zazi, the daughter of his estranged lover Soledad, raises its own set of complications later in the novel). The moral questions surrounding the suffering of children as a fundamental atrocity of course are also found in writers as diverse as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, B. Traven, Jerzy Kosinski, and even Jack London, and can be traced to twentieth-century existential thought: this is a distinguished lineage. Given Zazi’s fate, however, it’s difficult to know how deeply all of this runs. Further, Gnostic themes of Zeroville can also fall within the novel’s historical timeline: the Nag Hammadi scrolls (also known as the Gnostic Gospels) were finally published in English in 1977, and thus fall nearly towards the narrative’s mid-point (though the scrolls themselves are never referenced). Gnosticism was a part of the fabric of the time, a dissident theological subtext. Even so, Vikar is more than a stalking horse for Gnostic precepts—he is, in Erickson’s terms, cinéautistic. And as such, he knows almost nothing of history, culture, or politics despite coming of age during one of the most culturally and politically charged eras in American history. Furthermore, he is bound by certain conventions of the thriller genre (which Erickson borrows successfully) and is thus subordinated to plot development in ways that allow little room for psychological depth or growth. But it’s inaccurate to say that Vikar as a character is flat in the postmodern sense. On the contrary, Vikar is in the traditional sense (one in which individuality and alienation are still possible) motivated; he is physically brave and aggressive; he is in some ways ascetic—despite several trysts with sexy and engaging women, he dies, technically, a virgin (exactly who or what was he saving himself for is another question); he is possessed of a parochial literalness, severity, and is devoid of humor, thus prompting the John Milius character—Viking Man—to dub him Vikar (misspelled in the punk fashion of the time); he’s enthralled by the cinema and (later) the punk music of his milieu, indicating a depth of feeling for the things that matter to him; signaling his depth of commitment to the cinema, he has images of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, in a scene from A Place in the Sun (1951), tattooed in his head; finally, he arrives at an intuitive mastery...