“ALMOST” BUT STILL NEVER
I couldn’t help but be highly amused by the ongoing success of a television program called simply “Finding Bigfoot”. They never find Bigfoot, of course, but that doesn’t seem to matter; what’s important is that there are always eager beavers who believe they are on “its” trail!
The show’s producers apparently wish to hoodwink an unsuspecting audience into believing their not-too-talented actors are constantly on the verge of finding Bigfoot, only they never do (surprise surprise!)
The artistic-technical team makes occasional use of eerie green-tinted color wash that feels rather spooky. From time to time—to keep the ratings up—they fabricate a tiny happening to bolster the illusion of impending success.
Obviously the whole show—from premise to production, from hype to hypnotic deceit—is based on a bogus claim . . . and yet it is popular enough to remain on the air!
Like H.L. Mencken quipped “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” The show proves his point perfectly!
In the meantime, real scientists have made amazing discoveries about dinosaurs that lived 100,000,000 years ago by uncovering ancient skeletal bones and fossilized footsteps.
SCIENCE AND HYPE
I wonder if the mesmerized Bigfoot viewing audience were given a choice between yet another smoke-and-mirrors episode of “we almost found Bigfoot this time” and a documentary about the discovery of a brand new set of dinosaur bones, which they would prefer?
I suspect at least half or more of the Bigfoot fan base would choose The Bigfoot Hoax. Fiction can be more stimulating to the untutored imagination than real science, which after all involves a foundation of knowledge to appreciate fully.
That seems to be a rather shameful conclusion for the state of Science-versus-Superstition in modern America but obviously all the “voodoo-hoodoo” shows have a higher conversion scale (myths to money)–derived from its “cash basis” popular following–than does real scientific discovery and research.
THE LOCH NESS MONSTER
It’s a bit creepy when the two approaches, fictional and scientific, must inevitably collide. For instance, scientific expeditions have been launched at Loch Ness to discover “the monster”. Boats have been equipped with the most modern equipment imaginable to detect underwater sounds, movements, and even geological formations: i.e., the possibility of a cave or lair for Nessie.
Several of these intrepid lake explorers once included “believers” who set out to prove that Nessie was real. Needless to say, they were sorely disappointed when their scientific probes turned up nothing. One seeker of the Loch Ness Monster went so far as to abandon publicly his previous position; he became a disappointed but honest skeptic who now realized the story was a myth!
Perhaps coincidentally, while Nessie was proving increasingly elusive, a revival began of the still older Scottish tale of a “Water Horse”, a story which fortuitously allows for the reopening of a slightly different chapter of lake mythology.
Now, luckily, The Water Horse and Nessie can merge or diverge as needed; the tourist trade remains booming and provides a tidy income to the local economy. Nessie will never die so long as enough people believe that Loch Ness is its true home.
NESSIE AND THE WATER HORSE
These tales allow old myths and superstitions to mingle inside active imaginations in a hybrid version of fantasy that maintains the Water Horse is really possible after all–even if conclusive proof that the one and only Loch Ness Monster exists cannot be produced right at the moment. (The boats with all their modern visual and recording equipment may have missed her lurking beneath the watery depths . . .)
The good Scottish people tend to be more realistic than the Americans traipsing around the West looking for Bigfoot. They don’t appear to be hell-bent on creating a new religion based on an old folktale. The Loch Ness Monster is simply an integral part of Scotland in a way that will never be true for Bigfoot as part of America.
The search “to find the Loch Ness Monster” ultimately seems less important to the good Scots people than what the story represents in terms of a unique Scottish cultural and national pride.
Wise choice, no doubt, since their glorious legend ran into one unfortunate circumstance: the lake is a bounded space that can be fairly well searched. By comparison, the American West involves untold millions of acres of land where Bigfoot and his family (if there is one) could hide out forever without being detected.
The lake is a limited geographical area susceptible to modern tools of technology, for better or worse, while Bigfoot is free to roam from Canada to Mexico or the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains–and perhaps points east as well!
Both groups of believers struggle bravely on, hoping one day to convince skeptics there is a rational material basis for their belief all along. Not that “believers” seem to mind all that much when science doesn’t support them since that does not seem to be their intellectual orientation in the first place.
A person has to be fairly unscientific and unsophisticated (gullible, in other words) to be tempted to believe such tales without hard evidence in the first place. They aren’t waiting for science to prove Bigfoot and Nessie exist; they are merely happily biding their time until the next report comes in of somebody somewhere catching a brief glimpse of Bigfoot or Nessie.
It is these “brief glimpses” (in themselves totally unsubstantiated) on which they build all their hopes and dreams of one day seeing with their own eyes such strange creatures: best in person but secondarily acceptable on video.
After all, a person can believe something because he or she wants to believe it, regardless of whether it is true or not. Defy all history, logic, and science: damn the sciences! Who cares for evidence or facts when discussing beliefs? The Medieval Mindset has not been entirely uprooted by modern life, plain and simple.
Today’s believers in monsters would have behaved similarly 500 years ago; they would have searched for witches and heretics and other such; most likely they gladly would have lent a hand in burning them alive, too!
BACK TO BIGFOOT
I often wonder if the Bigfoot Believers think about certain details: is there just one Bigfoot or is there a whole family or even a whole colony of them? If there is just one, just how old is it? Is it human or animal or a missing link?
The Bigfoot “experts” sometimes try to connect this myth with Native American stories that supposedly go back a long long way in time–but how far back is precisely the question. If decades or even centuries, then just how long could this one creature live?
The Bigfoot seekers see these “legends” as a kind of proof–not that they have anything physically real to point to other than what they perceive to be (or misinterpret to be) a similar-sounding tale from other cultures. There’s no more proof that the older tale is true than the modern one–even with all sorts of superior technology for recording sound and sights that we have today.
It’s akin to saying if one superstition in one culture has a similar counterpart in another culture, then that proves both are true. The similarity of superstitions around the world proves nothing of the sort; it only shows that lots of people have been ignorant, credulous, and foolish for a very long time–or it may simply prove that parents and story-tellers have exercised super-creative imaginations ever since human society began.
Indeed, dozens if not hundreds of superstitions have come and gone, the vast bulk of them having been readily discarded over the years as society evolves and its artistic, intellectual, and scientific qualities improve. How many half-man half-animal stories do we believe as true today?
We have to go back to the Greeks to get into the swing of things: half-man, half-horse (a centaur); half-lion, half-eagle (a griffin); half-man, half-goat (fauns and satyrs) . . . all quite stirring to the imagination but to be believed as real?
Let’s face it, old hoary tales are often unable to keep pace with modern society—but a few myths manage to survive into our own day and time–or new ones are created out of whole cloth to take the place of the disappearing ones.
Some myths have a small group of defenders willing to risk their all–like some great last stand at the Alamo–to keep them alive for a few more decades or a few more years. I saw Bigfoot, I swear it! (and took a picture but something happened to the camera and the photo disappeared–the creature put a hex on the camera!)
ANOTHER QUESTION
Another question that comes to mind, related to longevity, is this: whether animal or human or some missing link in between the two, how does Mr. Bigfoot reproduce if not with Mrs. Bigfoot? (I’m assuming he’s too primitive a creature to take advantage of an in vitro laboratory secretly constructed and hidden in the woods somewhere).
If two adults exist, how else could the happy couple give birth to the next generation of Little Bigfeet?
If there is no couple–happily married or no–then that returns us to our first question: how old is this Bigfoot?
Would it not eventually die of old age at some point or are we to believe it is either incredibly long-lived or perhaps immortal? Are there no aches or pains associated with aging even for a creature as mysterious as Bigfoot?
If “it” is a “he”, then what does “he” eat and where does “he” sleep? Is there no slowing down of his Bigfoot footprints, no tendency to make a mistake when trying to hide, no need of help and comforting as the trials and tribulations of age take their toll on his once great and mighty hulk of a frame?
I know some Bigfoot seekers will think such questions are ridiculous but I am only trying to follow their logic, not mine. Is Bigfoot like Methuselah, living hundreds of years, perhaps 969 years or longer?
It does seem odd to posit that as the answer. According to the Bible, Methuselah is the grandfather of Noah (and thus a link between Adam and Noah). It’s strange that a primitive apelike creature could live as long or longer than Methuselah who was such a very important person–but let it pass as of no great consequence.
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
Some of these inquiries make sense if you start with their proposition that Bigfoot is real and lives “out there”, for otherwise you are faced with the prospect of having to assert:
Bigfoot does not eat; he does not sleep; he does not have a wife; and he does not have children. If he does not have kids–since it is claimed that tales about him are supposedly as old as the hills–then it must mean he does not get older. If he does age, it must mean he is incredibly old. This creature can survive for decades or perhaps centuries!
If that seems preposterous then we must get back to the other set of questions about “his family”, which also may seem ridiculous. Most modern folk-tales have older versions, after all. Our modern myths and superstitions are usually reincarnated descendants from stories first appearing during an era of great ignorance and illiteracy.
There was once no logic or science to stop the spread of falsehood and rumor, myth and legend. Before our own modern era of industry and technology, there was hardly any countervailing force to oppose or slow down the trade in the titillating impossibilities of superstition and myth.
What is amazing is not that people in an era of ignorance and illiteracy believed such incredulous tales; what is amazing how so many people today—living in an era of modern science—can tenaciously cling to tales whose origins are always clouded in dusty obscurity and the impenetrable fog of a not-too-reassuring past.
Imaginary animals are one thing; torture and death to heretics is another.
Indeed, people today do not seem half-as-clever in imagining new monsters and creatures as our forebears were but one supposes it’s easier to inherit-and-tweak than to speculate and invent anew!
THE PAST IS THE PAST (OR IS IT?)
A few modern-born people seem to absolutely relish having a Medieval Mindset! They delight in re-capturing the old tales and exhibit a dogged determination to cling to the specters of the distant past (often as a cool way to make some extra bucks) There’s been a strong revival of interest in imaginative tales of Dragons, Fairies, Elves, Unicorns, Ghosts, Griffins, Centaurs, Mummies, Ogres, Vampires, Zombies, Witches and Warlords—to say nothing of monsters and aliens from outer space!
“Charmed” was a huge hit and many imitations soon followed; long before that show scored a resounding commercial success, however, there were other shows like “Bewitched” which also proved quite popular. True, some of these early shows appealed mainly to children (and naive adults) and featured humorous situations more often than scary threats . . . but that would change over time. Laughing was once considered good medicine.
Horror movies have become so popular and profitable that the genre has become self-sustaining. No matter how often the same basic plots are rehashed, there is always an audience that eats it all up:
First, the Good Guys are threatened by ____________ (fill in your own favorite threat)
Next, a few of the Good Guys’ friends are killed in disgusting horrible ways (the “fun part” of the movie!)
Finally, the nucleus of the very best and nicest Super Good Guys manages to survive by banding together. They miraculously figure out how to fight back—often employing some incredibly brilliant last-second strategy—to overcome monstrous odds to defeat that huge nasty Horrible Thing that was after them!
COUNTING UP SURVIVORS
Sometimes only one lucky couple survives after all this mayhem. Occasionally, if the screenwriter is feeling generous, a couple of their friends will also be alive to celebrate with them. Either through ingenuity or luck, these heroes defeat an invincibly evil thing and snatch victory (in this case survival!) from the jaws of defeat even under the most frightening and impossible of circumstances.
The number of actors and actresses killed off in quite dramatic ways will vary from show to show and movie to movie as will the location, time of day, and other such circumstances. The locale could be a desert (killer giant worms!) or a river (man-eating aquatic monsters!) or a mountain (the Abominable Snowman!) or anywhere else on the face of the earth where a frightful monster can go after them!
The Horrible Thing can come from below or above or even move straight across the landscape; it can appear on flat, hilly, or mountainous terrain; its unique lifestyle means it can be especially active in warm, humid, or frigid weather.
The actual number of persons who get killed can be low or high . . . while the precise details of the grotesque manner in which they are dispatched is left to the imagination of writer, director, photographer, and make-up artist. Some scripts are positively dripping in blood!
ENTER THE HYBRIDS
Lately, some of the once-much-beloved traditional monsters appear to be running out of steam; they don’t pack in the audience like they once did. The old plots are rapidly aging so new hybrid monsters are becoming ever more popular: what do you get if you cross a crocodile with a shark . . . or a piranha with an electric eel . . . or a dragon with a griffin . . . or any other imaginative breeding experiment gone suddenly and freakishly out of control!
You get one heck of an imaginative and scary movie, that’s what!
Another old trick made new again is to pit one famous monster against another—Frankenstein meets Dracula meets Wolfman! The audience gets to boo one monster and cheer for the other!
The Bad Guy Monster, if it plays its cards right, can become the Good Guy Monster by defeating a Villainous Creature even more hideous and deadly than itself! “King Kong versus Godzilla” would whet anybody’s appetite!
The new Hybrids and Monster vs. Monster clashes certainly provide great visual excitement for the thrill-me (“I’m going to scream!”) audiences even though a few prescient people can often guess the outcome of the story.
It doesn’t matter if the plot is transparent; even if members of the audience know what’s coming, they still relish every new scene of destruction and mayhem!
I’m not saying all these television programs and movies are copycat identical–there’s enough variation to blunt that claim–although if a person watches too many monster flicks in a row there’s a fairly good chance that a disturbing degree of mental mush and visual blurring may result.
Except for the most die-hard fans, all these monster movies begin to melt into one another. Kids describing the plot of one movie often get confused and include scenes from an entirely different film—it’s quite amusing to see!
Taken in small doses, horror movies provide a creative form of popular entertainment. On the other hand, taken in large doses, horror movies can become an obsession with some people; society would do well to watch out for the possible misdeeds of this genre’s biggest fans.
MONSTERS AND RELIGION
One supposes that all these monster tales, from Bigfoot to Loch Ness, have other unintended consequences besides entertainment inviting nightmares and copycat violence: these “monsters” also help support the evil spectral forms found within many religions.
Such beliefs once provided fuel to the power and prestige of the priestly class that proclaimed its right to mediate between ordinary humans and supernatural forces. From shaman to huckster, from ordained minister to brazen showman, the popularity of myths and superstitions always means gravy to their own craft of misdirection and misrepresentation.
If people foolishly believe in monsters and mythic creatures, the door is left wide open for the hucksters to earn a lucrative living at what they do best: convince people to believe in the huckster’s unique powers to interpret the divine will–which of course requires plenty of money in the collection plate if the mission is to continue.
Now I am going to end this essay here because I have the distinct feeling I am going to start losing readers. You see, a writer can mock the odd assortment of fools searching for Bigfoot and no great harm is perceived: the reader may joyfully agree! Even a fan of the show “Finding Bigfoot” can tsk-tsk his tongue to express his or her disappointment with me for how this present writer fails to understand that Bigfoot is real.
Neither the Laugher nor the Bigfoot Believer need get especially upset with the general tone of this blog post which is all done in fun. One reader can thoughtfully mull over the fact that well-equipped boats with the latest technology on extensive search expeditions across and under Loch Ness have yet to find any proof of the Monster: perhaps he’ll say “I knew it” or “not yet”.
Another reader may disapprove of the writer for casting doubt upon such a wonderful tale, true or not: let children (and grown-ups) believe in Nessie if they wish! In neither case will the reader be particularly upset, but once this writer starts to link the absurdity of such tales as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster to Religion’s own genre of superstitious stories, watch out!
That becomes “personal” since most readers “know” that their own religion is true, however else they may feel about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, and their other equally hard-to-find friends.
A FINAL CURIOSITY
It is curious how most human beings can understand what folktales and myths are about and what social purpose they serve, while remaining unable to bring greater critical thought to assessing their own religious convictions!
One supposes that Religion supports, even demands, the constant invention of tales of monsters and creatures of every shape and form because these myths and folk tales do yeoman service in bolstering the ancient religious traditions. If such Monsters and Creatures “exist”, then certainly all other forms of religious superstitions and myths should get a free pass–they should be considered as equally credible.
If it is only a matter of belief—whether to say yea or nay to Nessie and Bigfoot—then a person can simultaneously validate his or her religious beliefs by affirming a belief in monsters. The two sets of beliefs go hand in hand.
It does not matter to Monster-Seekers-and-Believers that they seem unable to prove (to the satisfaction of doubters) that these Monsters really exist—any more than it would matter to them if Science were to demonstrate that their religious writings have unscientific “impossibilities” buried within them.
“Finding Bigfoot” is fair game for the imagination, for taunts and jokes, or for re-examining one’s beliefs . . . but not so the religious equivalent thereof whereby any such similar criticism is seen as a personal affront and an attempt to substitute science for faith. Religious faith is safe as long as Bigfoot lives!
THE LAST WORD: ENGLISH LOVES TO POKE
The verb form in the television show’s title is quite appropriate I should say, as the hunters after Bigfoot are always in the process of “finding” their Creature without ever achieving any real success: no show called “We Already Found Bigfoot” is in the works and most likely never will be . . . save as another carefully crafted hoax.
I think this verb form in the title is called a gerund of the present progressive tense, if I’m not mistaken, which describes an action ongoing in the present (not past, past perfect, pluperfect, future imperfect, subjunctive conditional past pluperfect future . . . which is something like “would be could have been should have been but never was” etc.)
“Finding” Bigfoot is a combination of fantasy and conditional improbability, linguistically-speaking.
I’m reminded of the comedian who had occasion to remark upon Jefferson’s phrase “the pursuit of happiness”. He interpreted it to mean people have the right to pursue happiness but they have no guarantee of ever catching it!
Likewise, these Bigfoot hunters have the right to remain forever in the middle of a process called “finding” Bigfoot . . . without running any real risk of actually finding him.
So, yes, on occasion, I tune the television channel to the men looking for Bigfoot, denying my skepticism and indulging for a brief moment the delusional illusion that, against all odds and probabilities, my belief will be proven wrong and that this will finally be the episode that will produce the Creature himself: captured at long last so we can all begin looking forward to a new series called “The Escape of Bigfoot”!
Then I take a long look at the green-lighted faces of the men on the screen when I experience a soul-tingling epiphany. I can literally see the hucksterism of the hoax shining through in clear and unmistakable fashion.
Then I am left once more where I was at the start, amused by the folly and absurdity of the whole premise!
And yet, this is entertainment in Twenty-First Century America. It is an atavistic byproduct of the Medieval Mindset produced by ambitious greedy dishonest men clinging to an imaginary world that no longer exists except in their warped imaginations and ill-disguised desire to profit through deception.
I am amused, disgusted, and alarmed: who put them in charge of maintaining such a hoax? And if we cannot successfully prevent or counter such nonsense, what does this tell us about our culture and our nation?
What does it say about what the future holds for the intellectual rise or fall of mankind???
I predict that the greenish guys on television will never find Bigfoot.
I only hope enough people will find a way to realize as much and come to their senses . . . before it is too late!
