Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/523863
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 7 JUNE 2015 Opinion 25 where's that dratted Mexican imp got off to this time… No, in the name of all things foul and perfidious, NO! If you're going to dabble with black magic, at least do it with a bit of panache. 'Charlie Charlie' is the stuff of chocolate factories, for crying out loud. It's the name of comic characters with dogs called 'Snoopy'. And besides, with so many imaginary devils to choose from… why start at the bottom? It's a little like hiring a lawyer (in, oh, so many ways): if you can afford it and you want to get results, you go for a veteran with a proven track record in the field. Not some young whippersnapper no one's ever even heard of. Same (unsurprisingly) with devils. If you want results, go with the first generation of fallen angels. Summon Be'elzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Or Moloch, who is 'all for open war'. (Note: don't bother with Mammon, he's already been summoned and granted a Maltese passport through the IIP scheme). Heck, how about Lucifer himself? Right to the top of the food chain? And yet, with all these tried- and-tested demons to choose from, all just dying to get another shot in the limelight… who do schoolkids try to invoke these days? 'Charlie Charlie': the Mexican demon who only exists because he was invented as an internet meme last month to promote a horror film. Today's kids… they just don't get it, do they? But then… what about today's adults? Some 30 years ago, I was contemptuous of an entire school administration for its primitive, superstitious belief in devils and their presumed ability to infiltrate the world through the power of music. But at least, there was the music to object to. Yes, I can well understand how generations brought up on Bach and Haydn – and, in some of the younger cases, maybe Elvis and the early Beatles – would be utterly horrified by the slow introduction to the track 'Black Sabbath', on the eponymous album by the eponymous band. Rolling thunder in the distance. A lone church bell, striking forlornly in the rain. Then, that sudden, bone-crunching, distorted G-chord, searing through the darkness like a sweeping cut from the scythe of Death himself… Make no mistake, it's enough to make a grown man soil his trousers; and that's before you even get to hear Ozzie Osbourne's gut-wrenching cries of: 'Oh, no, no, please God help me…' Naturally, the fact that so many adults succumbed to this (intentional) effect of horror in rock music does not excuse them for their shocking ignorance in actually believing that the connection with Satanism was real. It merely confirms what a great goddamn bunch of records that 'trash' really was. But you can at least appreciate what it was that appalled them so much about our fascination with the dark side of the rockosphere. But today? The reaction of schools to the whole 'Charlie Charlie' thing was beyond hysterical, in all senses of the word. One school even summoned an exorcist to expel the little imp from the premises, in the event that students actually did summon him through the use of a piece of paper and two pencils. You can hardly blame the children for getting scared, can you? It's like the Ministry of Magic summoning the Dementors to Hogwarts in 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'… in the end, the Dementors turn out to be far more terrifying than anything Voldemort might have done had he actually been around. And this is the problem with the ongoing scaremongering concerning 'devil worship'. All the supposedly 'wiser' adults who are meant to be educating children about the bad, wicked world (in which there so much to fear that is REAL)… they're beside themselves with horror at the thought that an imaginary devil, concocted just the other week as a viral marketing stunt, might be running amok in the school corridors as we speak. So it's not the game called 'Charlie Charlie' itself that is currently terrorising those children out of their wits. It's the idea that the establishment they are brought up to believe and respect is actually endorsing this nonsense and giving it an aura of legitimacy. They are frightened because their school has become a factory of fear. So how about this as an idea to mitigate the 'Charlie Charlie' craze? Give the exorcist a miss next time round, and instead simply ask your physics teacher to give the class an explanation of why two pencils balanced on one another might impart the illusion of metaphysical kinesis. I imagine it would go something like this: the one placed on top is precariously balanced and subject to both the pull of gravity and the exertion of any other force upon it… such as, say, a gust of wind, or the collective breath of half a dozen schoolchildren crowded around it at the same time. As there are only four places the pencil may 'point towards' when it inevitably moves… for move it will… and the two 'No's' and 'Yesses' cancel each other out… that leaves a 50% percent chance of getting either a 'Yes' or a 'No' to any question you ask, and zero per cent chance that anything else will happen. The rest is filled in with your imagination. Devils and demons certainly do not come into it at all, as they didn't come in (except as conscious references) to the music they tried to ban at my old school. And again, this should hardly surprise us. They are, after all, only a figment of the imagination to be filed alongside 'monsters under the bed'. Only a child would take either seriously. shock-and-horror factory I suppose it's sort of commendable that such a solid, well- founded tradition of schoolyard pseudo- Satanism has been kept alive over the generations I would like to receive the newspaper MaltaToday for a period of one year. 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