![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Corrupt and the Cruel
Feb. 11th, 2026 10:15 amI'm having two lines of thought this morning that are converging. I'm thinking about the Epstein files and Gothic fiction. The connexion is ruthlessness and an untrustworthy world.
I haven't read the Epstein files because I don't have a year to devote to them. I'm amazed when articles say "only" three million or so e-mails have been released. The impression that any name just mentioned in the e-mails is an indication of shared guilt in Epstein's crimes has led to some people, like Jon Stewart, feeling compelled to explain brief mentions of their names in e-mails Epstein exchanged with various people. This morning I watched a video of physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explaining that her name is mentioned in one of the e-mails simply because Epstein knew someone who went to one of her conferences.
I like how she takes the opportunity to criticise the spreading lack of conscientiousness in her field. A lack of conscientiousness similarly exists in journalism which often seems not only driven for sensationalism but by personal vendettas. This is the impression I got from coverage of Neil Gaiman. I was reading the substack of TechnoPathology, the guy compiling evidence of the malfeasance in coverage of the allegations levelled at Neil Gaiman. TechnoPathology has shared posts from a sexual assault survivor named Effie who draws attention to one of the most obvious things about the Vulture article, which was the tone. It was not the dispassionate tone of a journalist but of someone crafting a narrative about a villain.
What ruthless and vengeful person have I been reading about lately? Oh, yeah, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Repeatedly throughout the book, characters ask Heathcliff if he doesn't have any morsel of compassion in his soul and proves again and again through his words and actions that he has none. No guilt haunts him unless it's the literal ghost of Catherine. It's a reminder that Gothic fiction was in many ways a reaction against the Romantics, specifically the love the Romantics had of nature and for the "Byronic hero", the hero who casts aside all fidelity to any kind of moral system and pursues only his own pleasures. Frankenstein, by the way, operates both as a work of Romantic fiction and Gothic fiction in this way. Mary Shelley's portrait of the creature simultaneously sympathises with and condemns him.
But characters in Gothic fiction, in its full bloom, like Heathcliff, like Dorian Gray, like Dr. Jekyll, like Captain Ahab, like the killers in Edgar Allan Poe's stories, all show us the horror and disaster wrought by men who act solely in the name of they own selfish urges. Generally they're not bothered internally but externally, by supernatural forces. In one of the Epstein files, Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein talk about Trump losing sleep because of dirt the two of them have on him. On the contrary, I think Trump sleeps perfectly well. He's shown again and again that he doesn't particularly care if he's seen as moral. As the title of Kurosawa Akira's 1960 movie says, "The Bad Sleep Well (悪い奴ほどよく眠る)". That movie was based on Shakespeare's Hamlet and it's noteworthy that it's not the murderer who's haunted in that story but the protagonist, Prince Hamlet. Likewise, Richard III isn't haunted, Goneril, Regan, and Edmund aren't haunted. If you want to find a bad person, look for someone who seems utterly content with his or her moral position.
I haven't read the Epstein files because I don't have a year to devote to them. I'm amazed when articles say "only" three million or so e-mails have been released. The impression that any name just mentioned in the e-mails is an indication of shared guilt in Epstein's crimes has led to some people, like Jon Stewart, feeling compelled to explain brief mentions of their names in e-mails Epstein exchanged with various people. This morning I watched a video of physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explaining that her name is mentioned in one of the e-mails simply because Epstein knew someone who went to one of her conferences.
I like how she takes the opportunity to criticise the spreading lack of conscientiousness in her field. A lack of conscientiousness similarly exists in journalism which often seems not only driven for sensationalism but by personal vendettas. This is the impression I got from coverage of Neil Gaiman. I was reading the substack of TechnoPathology, the guy compiling evidence of the malfeasance in coverage of the allegations levelled at Neil Gaiman. TechnoPathology has shared posts from a sexual assault survivor named Effie who draws attention to one of the most obvious things about the Vulture article, which was the tone. It was not the dispassionate tone of a journalist but of someone crafting a narrative about a villain.
What ruthless and vengeful person have I been reading about lately? Oh, yeah, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Repeatedly throughout the book, characters ask Heathcliff if he doesn't have any morsel of compassion in his soul and proves again and again through his words and actions that he has none. No guilt haunts him unless it's the literal ghost of Catherine. It's a reminder that Gothic fiction was in many ways a reaction against the Romantics, specifically the love the Romantics had of nature and for the "Byronic hero", the hero who casts aside all fidelity to any kind of moral system and pursues only his own pleasures. Frankenstein, by the way, operates both as a work of Romantic fiction and Gothic fiction in this way. Mary Shelley's portrait of the creature simultaneously sympathises with and condemns him.
But characters in Gothic fiction, in its full bloom, like Heathcliff, like Dorian Gray, like Dr. Jekyll, like Captain Ahab, like the killers in Edgar Allan Poe's stories, all show us the horror and disaster wrought by men who act solely in the name of they own selfish urges. Generally they're not bothered internally but externally, by supernatural forces. In one of the Epstein files, Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein talk about Trump losing sleep because of dirt the two of them have on him. On the contrary, I think Trump sleeps perfectly well. He's shown again and again that he doesn't particularly care if he's seen as moral. As the title of Kurosawa Akira's 1960 movie says, "The Bad Sleep Well (悪い奴ほどよく眠る)". That movie was based on Shakespeare's Hamlet and it's noteworthy that it's not the murderer who's haunted in that story but the protagonist, Prince Hamlet. Likewise, Richard III isn't haunted, Goneril, Regan, and Edmund aren't haunted. If you want to find a bad person, look for someone who seems utterly content with his or her moral position.
