Faustian compacts

[Dave Rawson]

I'll join Don Shane in recommending "The Devil & Daniel Webster" as one of the 
all-time best (if currently little known) motion pictures.

Among its many charms is Walter Huston's impish glee as the devil. Huston's 
award-nominated uncanny physicalization evokes not so much an immediately 
malevolent demon, but rather an icon of secular theism, free from responsibility 
and consequence, both an unrestrained goat-rutting Pan and some 
ancient-from-the-dawn-of-time sprite cleverly accreted with cute Irishisms, a 
simple anti-Puritan temptation of relaxation from the rigid codes of Yankee 
behavior. In short, the embodiment of the quintessential contradiction of the 
American immigrant, driven by ambition to succeed and sick at heart from the 
honest effort required.

Though the theme is as large as history and timeless as human experience, it is 
refined and simple in delivery. Its cinematic effects are limited compared to 
today's standards of computer designed fantasy, but all the more effective for 
their black-and-white techniques of character lighting and brilliant editing 
(especially the restored Salomesque dance sequence -- usually subjected to 
censorious scissors -- presaging by more than a half-decade Minnelli's dizzying 
waltz in Madam Bovary, itself a parallel secular Faustian compact, albeit 
feminine in character). I also seem to recall an effective sort of pixilated 
sequence of the frenetically reactive Mr. Scratch on hearing the final verdict 
of the jury of hand-picked American peers.

BTW, the incandescent chiaroscuro uplighting of this jury, Americans all, as 
they slowly shamble up from their sulfurous sepulcher (the headstone of which is 
essentially the jury box), announced in litany, one by one, was breathtaking and 
hackle-raising to this ten-year-old-at-the-time who had only recently learned of 
Blackbeard and Simon Girty and Benedict Arnold. The music won an Academy Award 
for Bernard Hermann (of later "Psycho" fame).

Regardless, the film is memorable at many, many levels and I recommend it to 
anyone, especially those who are modern and breezy about the law of unintended 
consequences. A simple tale well-told.

Faustian compacts are nothing new. Work-for-hire creators trade their efforts 
for the wide-spread recognition that working on well-known characters can bring, 
but the fame is hollow because the characters are not one's own (which would 
likely never attain such fame and recognition on their own) and exploitation is 
the rule, not the exception in gaining mass-appeal.

Goethe and Shakespeare are among the most famous dramatists of these kinds of 
tales, but ancient texts of short-term gain sacrificing long-term goals are 
a'plenty. Aeosop aside, the ravenous, thick-headed, contemptuous Esau trading 
away his entire future beneficence for the moment's satisfaction of a bowl of 
hearty porridge from his scheming younger brother, Jacob, comes to mind as does 
the very Fall of Man, himself, gaining an all-knowing self-consciousness and 
sensate nature, bounded by this very distinction as an irrevocable separation 
from the immortal immateriality that both precedes and succeeds it, heightened 
to poignancy by the inarguable evidence that the gift of temporality is 
inevitably, well, temporary. Thus, the conscious or unconscious choices as to 
how to spend one's time, literally how one redeems one's life itself, is central 
to every being.

Frankly, I think a down-on-his-luck, none-too-bright duck is ripe for such a 
re-telling of this most ancient of all tales of temptation. Say, "The Duck & 
Daniel Webfoot" or some such.

I'd like to take a moment to thank this community for the many hours of 
interesting discussion that takes place here and for the almost infinite 
patience and care of those who compile the all-things-Disney-character-comics 
databases.

Likely those of us, especially writers who are not instantly recognizable on 
sight by the style of artwork that contains our tales, and, thus, the inevitably 
more hidden toilers in the midst of the more famous -- we are likely to be 
little remembered in passing, save within the scant credits a few interested 
souls choose to record.

For that small, fleeting recogniton we give thanks!

It may be that hope is the smallest and most fragile of all gifts given to man, 
but it is simlutaneously the most enduring and acessible. Any may have it at any 
time from any circumstance for the simple seeking of it, and that seeking is, in 
itself, everything.

May you all find the coming holidays bright and filled with hope.