DJBenz wrote:
I think what you mean is, you thought the Japanese hadn't failed but now you're trying to cover up the fact by backpedaling.
This is exactly what I was thinking!
Alien Redrum wrote:
Which I guess leads to another kind of question, if there's one supreme good (upstairs) and one supreme bad (downstairs), why different rules? Asian horror films quite obviously have different rules than US ones.
This is a good question, and one I've thought about.
First though, you have to get out of the one above and one below viewpoint. They referred to plural ancient gods below, so I'd guess there were multiple ancient gods above too. And looking at it metaphysically, they're not necessarily good or evil, just maybe in balance of each other? Maybe opponents, maybe not. We don't know. If the upstairs was sabotaging the sacrifices to bring the downstairs back to power, I would think it was more about balance than competition. Also, since the downstairs were content to sleep and take sacrifices, I think that points to non-competitive deities too. Maybe what we think of as Upstairs are just a bunch of gods that don't even care about us, so they leave us alone and ignore us, while downstairs are a bunch of gods that are fascinated by us, and so they are constantly messing around with us all the time, to the point that it feels like torture to us. Neither is really good or evil, right?
There are a lot of theological and philosophical questions wrapped up here.
Anywhoo..
Why different rules? Because the rules have to mean something to the people culturally. The Japanese may not care that 5 douche bag kids get killed in a cabin. 9 9 year olds may have a magical number component as well as causing the same emotional pain or impact for the Japanese as 5 douche bag young adults do to the US. I think that's all there is to it. Take a civilization like the Aztecs or Mayans that were sacrificing dozens of people a day. What's 5 more once a year to the old gods, right? So, that would be fairly meaningless and they'd need something else.
In other words, I don't think the sacrifices are about a physical blood or body count so much as the emotions extracted during the process of the sacrifices. And since each culture has different morals and values, stimulating those emotions is going to be unique to the culture. Maybe in the UK they just have to talk loudly during tea, or make fun of the queen's dogs.
