4. In The Realms Of The Unreal
Jessica Yus remarkable documentary, IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL: THE MYSTERY OF HENRY DARGER (2004) is as close as were ever likely to get to a film of the staggeringly obsessive work that provides its main title. In 1973, the titular Darger, a janitor at a Chicago hospital, died. On removing his body and his small number of personal effects from his shabby apartment, it was discovered how this private and withdrawn man possibly autistic, though also troubled by the secret homosexuality that remained criminalised through most of his 82 years had spent much of his life. IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL or, to give it its full title, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion is a vivid phantasmagoria realised in almost as much detail as THE LORD OF THE RINGS, albeit the work of an alienated and fragile psyche. This strange cosmology posits the seven young Vivian sisters as the tragic heroines battling interplanetary tyrants who impose child slavery. Running to over 15,000 pages (and followed by a 10,000-page sequel, Crazy House, which, as the title suggests, really does tip over into insanity at times). The texts hybrid of Lewis Carroll-like fantasy and pulp sci-fi was complemented by painstakingly realised illustrations that combined Dargers own embellishments with found images and pictures traced from commercial publications. The effect veers from startling whimsy to bloody horror: as if pictures from a late Victorian childrens book had suddenly transformed into collage of a medieval hell, with the innocent young girl heroines (some of whom had penises, indicative of the authors sexual confusion) bound, tortured and slaughtered like the martyrs of the Catholic religion he was raised in. In Ms Yus documentary narrative, some of the illustrations come to life in animated sequences. It seems to be the nearest well ever come to a cinematic adaptation of this singularly obsessive epic though a possible Darger influence can be detected in some of the more extreme anime, where a childlike wondrousness and horror exist side by side. Its hard to believe that censorious Twitter types wouldnt go into apoplexy over unexpurgated cinematic Darger, as the mans inner visions make his feelings so easy to misinterpret. His obsession with the newspaper story of a murdered little girl is disturbing on the face of it but then his stated wish to form a Childrens Protective Society with his only friend seems to have been sincere, a sentiment inculcated by a difficult early life and his own institutionalisation as a child.