Satanic meanings in Pebbles and Bamm Bamm's Let the Sunshine In

Mommy told me something
A little kid should know
It's all about the devil
And I've learned to hate him so

She said he causes trouble
When you let him in the room
He will never never leave you
If your heart is filled with gloom

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Smilers never lose
And frowners never win

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Open up your heart
And let the sunshine in

When you are unhappy
The devil wears a grin
But how he starts to runnin'
when the light comes pourin' in

I know he'll be unhappy
Cause I'll never wear a frown
Maybe if we keep on smiling
He'll get tired of hanging round

If I forget to say my prayers
The devil jumps with glee
But he feels so awful awful
When he sees me on my knees

So if you're full of trouble
And you never seem to win
Just open up your heart
And let the sunshine in

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Smilers never lose
And frowners never win

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Open up your heart
And let the sunshine in

LET THE SUNSHINE IN!

Blogger's attempt at explanation. Like everyone who watched The Flintstones (and everyone did, though its sappiness now astounds me), I remember this saccharine little duo with Pebbles and Bamm Bamm. The fact both of them were maybe eight months old and incapable of speech made no difference. There they were, suddenly sitting upright and performing this cheery little song, and to my ears then, that's all it was: a sappy little number sung by two sped-up chipmunk voices.

When I first discovered the words on YouTube, I was disbelieving. It couldn't be about the devil, could it? So I looked it up on Wikipedia, and to my astonishment, there it was:

"The most famous recording of this song was created for baby-boomers and featured Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm on The Flintstones "No Biz Like Show Biz" episode (which originally aired September 17, 1965). The clip of them performing this song was sometimes played during the closing credits in the show's final season (1965–1966), this episode being the opener of that season. Although Pebbles and Bamm Bamm went on to form a rock band as teenagers in the 1970s, they never approached the classic heights of their early childhood tune. The Flintstones version of the song was not stripped of its religious lyrics for inclusion in the show, and only the word "kids" was substituted. Original vocals were provided by Rebecca Page (as Pebbles) and her mother Ricky Page (as Bamm Bamm), who later became "The Bermudas" and then "The Majorettes". 

OK. So where exactly did this bizarre little ditty come from?

The first recording was called Open Up Your Heart and was performed by the Cowboy Church Sunday School (and don't ask me to tell you what THAT was). It was the sort of quasi-Christian song that was popular back then. I remember a lot of kids' TV shows ended with the host saying, "And remember, kids. . . always say your prayers." Prayers usually meant kneeling beside your bed with hands together, saying something like, "Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep./If I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Such a pleasant thing to recite before sinking into sleep, the possibility of death! No one seemed to think of these things and the effect they would have on children emotionally and spiritually. The whole thing was based on fear. Bland white Christianity was applied across the board in the culture as something which went without saying, and I remember everyone reciting the Lord's Prayer at the start of the school day.

But this little song is a lot more extreme.

Two little cartoon kids singing about "the devil" is extremely creepy, even if the song is already known in the popular culture. There are still parts of the world - hell, parts of MY world, not just the Southern U. S. - where this sort of philosophy would not be at all out of line. It seems to me it's meant to scare the hell out of kids, or at least force them to look cheerful all the time for fear of  Satanic reprisal. A very strange idea indeed.

Nuns from hell

EXPLICIT: crawling and mooing for Jesus

Don't try this at home! This is a Pentecostal service known as "The Toronto Blessing". It took place some time in the 1990s at a church near the Toronto airport, and started a nationwide movement of cackling and howling that went on for some years. But then it all went underground. Can't imagine why! The recent revival is much more sedate, and much of the crawling around, mooing and quacking (along with walking people on leashes, which I found especially kinky) has been toned down. Not only that - they're now claiming that hardly any of this actually happened! It was just tiny isolated little episodes which have been blown out of proportion by the usual villain, THE MEDIA. (Blame God for the rest.)

Most Pentecostals rail and thunder at this stuff and think it's the work of the devil. I DO think it's bullshit, and a form of getting yourself off, if you don't mind me saying so. Kenneth Hagin did some great work here, but it's extremely creepy. He walks around the crowd making "whoosh"ing noises at everybody while his helpers hold him up so he won't fall over. What scares me is that Hagin started off more-or-less "straight" - a normal, if there is such a thing, fundamentalist preacher. Then he got corrupted, I guess. It makes for very entertaining viewing, as do the disavowals by the OTHER right-wing/Pentecostal Christians. I guess there is a right and a wrong way to experience God.

Santa vs. Satan!

It just gets more incredible. I was SURE I was down to the bottom of the barrel with that Godawful Punch and Judy show with the Hitlerian Santa. But no! This is a truly unbelievable cinematic abomination starring, in one movie, Santa and Satan. They duke it out. They actually vie for ascendancy and control of the world, if not the universe, while little children look on. It's all extremely weird, even eerie. The movie was made on the cheap in Mexico and later dubbed into a kind of English.  I know Mexico is very big on all that Day of the Dead stuff, the sugar skulls, etc. But seriously? Here, the devil wears a skirt and dances badly. Santa just wheezily ho-ho-hos, as always.

I won't inflict the whole movie on you. I've made a few choice gifs, which were hard to make because the length of the movie necessitated very large gif files. So these may or may not download, may download slowly, or may play jerkily until they decide to play correctly.

If you watch the gifs, you will either find yourself wanting to see the whole thing, or sweating with gratitude to have gotten away singed, rather than roasted by this Yuletide atrocity.

Just the juxtaposition of the Devil with Jolly Saint Nick is grotesque. The pieces just don't fit. That's why I made these gifs, to get you to believe me. Santa looks catatonic and his suit looks like it is made of vinyl, but that is beside the point.

Here is where Santa begins to realize that something is seriously amiss. He lights a sort of firecrackery-looking thing (Mexico is very big on firecrackers, too, sometimes with tragic results), which spins around and around. So does the devil, going into a weird kind of choreography.

The thing about this devil is, he has a really shitty costume. Long red underwear, it looks like, and red body makeup, but with these really loose, rattly ears. Maybe so he won't scare the kiddies too much. But just having the Prince of Darkness in a Christmas movie is too much for me to wrap my head around.

This is where Santa demonstrates the principle of "love thine enemy" by firing a cannon at his nemesis. Ah, the heavenly peace of Christmas, where God and the Devil shoot it out in the living room! Santa cackles with glee at the direct hit.

In retaliation, the devil pulls a knife on Santa - no, wait, it's a pair of scissors - and punctures some sort of bag of water, or vodka or some shit like that. Santa turns around and spits on him.

And I can't go on here. Whenever I close my eyes now, I see red.

Josh Duggar: let's read that first draft!

Thus, the abject, Jimmy-Swaggart-esque apology written by Josh Duggar's lawyers, before yet another lawyer edited the thing. Red-pencilled are the remarks that might be considered "litigious". In other words, too close to the truth.

Needless to say, Josh's little escapades led to TLC cancelling (after long and ratings-conscious deliberation) the wildly-popular paean to assembly-line babymaking in the Fundamentalist realm, 19 Kids and Counting.

So what will Josh do now? I think he ought to drag his sorry ass to jail for some serious time, but that won't happen. He'll twist things around so that if WE don't forgive him, there will be something wrong with us. We'll be choosing to hold bitterness in our hearts rather than surrender the whole icky mess to the Lord God Almighty and his sidekick, J. Christ.

But it's more likely TLC will choose to build another reality show around Josh. Shall we call it 19 Sins and Counting? 

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

"What did you do to his eyes?"

This is not the best gif technically, but it will do: it captures the "reveal", the most sublime moment in Rosemary's Baby, which I watched for the third time last night on DVD. 

Though this hardly seems possible, I saw it on TV in about 1969 - I know it's true because I watched it in the den when I was sleeping in the pull-out bed, and we  moved away later that year, so there were no more late-night fright nights. Back then, it usually took quite a few years for a movie to go from theatrical release to television, and then only in adulterated form. How could it have shown up on TV, pretty much intact, in only a year?

Then the movie completely disappeared. It never came on television, not even on Turner Classics. It was never re-released. I could not find a trace of it anywhere, so was finally forced to buy a rather shitty DVD with grainy quality, perhaps a knockoff.

43 years had gone by, but what I retained from that night in the pullout bed was amazing.

I remembered so much of it, in fact, it became apparent on second viewing that it had burned itself into my brain. Some movies barely register, but this one became part of my neural network.

Why? IT'S BLOODY GOOD. Everything about it is enthralling and strange, especially the dream sequences. Mia Farrow is excellent in it, creating sympathy while at the same time setting up doubt that any of this is real, that it isn't just a product of her fevered "pre-partum" brain.

And John Cassavetes - HE is the devil, as far as I am concerned. He is evil incarnate, far worse than the dotty old people chanting about Lord Satan. One of the creepiest scenes is when he tries to justify to Rosemary the sacrifice of their child to Satanic forces:

"Think of all we're getting in return."

Roman Polansky's reputation was forever besmirched by a statutory rape case, though the victim came out a few years ago and (bizarrely) came to his defense. That aside, there is no doubt that this is an inspired work. The sense of weirdness, of the world slipping sideways, the eerie tension juxtaposed with normalcy, does not let up for a second. It pulls tight and lets go, taking us with it.  That horrible sense of "they're all in it together", a prime feature of paranoia, plays on our fears of surrendering control. And having one special, beloved ally, one person who "gets it", then losing him to those dark forces,  is heartbreaking. 

OK, so then, why did I watch this masterpiece again? Because one of the networks decided to do a remake, which was so atrocious I only watched it to see how truly bad a remake could be.

In stark contrast with the original, nobody was good in this, and they changed all the best parts, including that astonishing "reveal" (one of the great moments in the horror genre). 

Leave it alone, I tell you! But nobody does. Did they think they could make this any better? They even wrecked the quirky charm of the short-skirt, go-go '60s by trying to "bring it up to date". 

But we've lost the ability  to make movies like this, that ruthlessly pull and claw at the emotions.  All is slash-and-splatter now, and somehow or other it does not have anywhere near the impact of a 98-pound waif  wielding a butcher knife. Married to Sinatra, in the bargain.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

Their Satanic Majesties will now take requests!