Mythology and Belief in Wake Up Dead Man

I’m clearly a fan of the Knives Out series. This is marking my fourth video essay on the topic, the third in a row, and I could probably find more things to say if other topics and case studies weren’t impatiently waiting for me to hurry up and just be done with it. But am I done with it? Time can only tell. But, let’s get into this month’s topic.

Mythology. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what I am. It’s what I do. Storytelling and mythology and folklore and fiction. And what really do they all have to do with each other - are these synonyms or not? Maybe that specific question isn’t really for me to answer today if ever at all, but mythology and the great interweaving of narratives is what I’m interested in.

All the Knives Out series have had an interesting complex weave of narratives. A lot of that has to do with the nature of mystery narratives. All whodunnits are at least two narratives braided together. I talk about this a bit more in my long-lost video on how Knives Out upended the whodunnit structure, but I’ll summarise here. As described by Tzvetan Todorov, a structuralist literary critic and sociologist, the whodunnit’s two narratives are the story of the crime itself (how it happened, who did it, why, etc.) and the second being the narrative of solving the mystery, sometimes focused on the detective. The exact nature of that second story is uncovering the nature of the first.

Sometimes, the stories are presented as exactly one after the other. We get the entirety of the story of the murder and the crime, and then this is followed by the second, in which the detective has none of the facts we, the viewers, do. Colombo did this quite effectively. But most whodunnits interweave these narratives, and force the viewer or reader to endure through the second just to learn the true nature of the first.

Like all whodunnits, Wake Up Dead Man has this interweaving narrative structure. Benoit Blanc and Father Jud are both trying to untangle the hidden mysteries of the first narrative, trying to see the story in its entirety despite it being in its current, fragmentary state. But there’s something extra going on in the interweaving nature of the stories in Wake Up Dead Man, one that reveals a lot about the nature of mythology and belief.

Because, basically, belief is not really all that simple. People like to talk about belief like it is, but it’s really not. In one of my more recent substack posts, I talked about how I was at a conference once where someone showed me their survey, and the first question was “Do you believe in God?” with a yes/no answer.

But, what does this mean? In what context and to what extend is believe? And is my understanding and definition of God the same as yours?

So, today, I wanted to talk about how the complex of mythologies work in Wake Up Dead Man and how they intersect with how belief is shown and detailed in the movie as well.

Let’s start with the idea of mythology itself. Don’t worry, this won’t become another one of those “Vivian sits around defining mythology for ages” things again - I’ve done that plenty of times in a variety of formats. But the important thing is to know that there are different understandings of mythology, and these different understandings are presented to us through different characters in Wake Up Dead Man.

We see these contrasted views more subtly plenty of times, but the first obvious conversation about it is when Father Jud and Benoit Blanc first meet. They have a conversation about belief and mythology in the church, which starts with Benoit discussing more about the architecture, and how tied in with that is the sense of disconnect he has with Christianity. He says it is as if “someone who has shone a light on a story I do not believe.” He continues by saying its something he wants to spend time picking it apart to get to the “truth”.

[bit of the scene]

What we see here is a common more colloquial understanding of mythology. Mythology is something inherently false. Benoit’s opinion on the nature of the story of Christianity does not change at all throughout the film. Even at the end, when he has his Damascus moment, he still remains unconvinced.

Geraldine: “You believe in God and all this mishegoss is real?”

Benoit Blanc: “No, no. God is a fiction. My revelation came from… from Father Jud.

In our contemporary society, the word “myth” is often just a synonym for “falsehood”. If something is “just a myth” it means it’s not real, not true, all a lie. But longtime viewers of my channel and follower of my work will know that this is a far simplistic view of mythology with a very complicated history.

In Wake UP Dead Man, we have other opinions on mythology. Father Jud is one of these. Let’s go back to that initial scene of Benoit Blanc and Father Jud chatting in the church on their first meeting. Benoit Blanc apologises for his very clear lack of belief, but Father Jud assures him that it’s fine - he’s speaking his own truth, but challenges the opinion by saying:

“You're right. It's storytelling. The rites and the rituals. Costumes, all of it. It's storytelling. I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true, that we can't express any other way except storytelling?”

Oh, Jud. Way to summarise the entirety of my academic existence in one comment.

In fact, this statement, this tension point of what kind of truth we’re talking about, is the whole point of the whole movie. We spend the entire movie hearing all sorts of different myths, with different people giving different ones different levels of belief, and the whole time we have to try and untangle the myths and wonder what forms of truth may be behind them, and for what people. What do they reveal to us, and what we take away from them.

Let’s start with this wonderful statement from Jud. Jud has two options before us: are the stories we are being fed a lie? Or is it a deeply profound truth?

Good question. But what is it we’re actually asking about here? Obviously, the conversation between Jud and Benoit is all about Christianity, though it starts with a particular question. When Benoit is first in the church, Jud says “You can really feel His presence here.” Benoit, therfore, talks not only about religion from the very human centred version of it, but his word of it being a “lie” seems to be focused on the existence of God, though perhaps its about a lot more than that, too.

That’s kind of the complicated thing when talking about the mythology of Christianity, whether its in the context of this movie or the context of life - there are many different stories, and elements and aspects of the belief, and people often float in a variety of spaces between them.

I’d have to have a copy of the script in front of me to be sure, but I believe this to be one of the only times Jud directly mentions God. Now, Jesus gets mentioned a whole lot. But God? This one is more subtle, and I think there’s an important reason for that. In my last video essay on Wake Up Dead Man, I talked about theories of reciprocity and the Christian idea of grace. In this, I talked about how others in the film seem to have a different idea of Jud’s actions than he has of his own. Jud talks about acting for others because of Jesus’s example - he acts to not only follow that same action but also to show that example to others. And it works, because it’s not Jesus or God that inspires Benoit Blanc for his moment of Grace, but Jud.

For Jud, belief is not about historical truth, but rather example of action. It’s about finding the best of human activity and community creation and fostering it into being. Believing in Jesus is thus believing in action and believing in community.

For Simone, belief is about action as well, but miracle. There is, therefore, an idea that one can believe “enough”, that belief is something to win at. By achieving the pinnacle of belief, the miracle healing she is so wishing for can occur. It is not about God, His existence or non-existence, it’s rather about the possible actions which can occur if one does belief enough or properly.

Monsignor Wicks acts in a way that is examplar as well, though in direct contrast to Jud’s. Wicks and Jud are, throughout much of the film, directly juxtaposed and contrasted. Where Jud represents actions based on warm acceptance and Jesus, Wicks represents the vengeful violent actions of Old Testament God. Perhaps some Biblical scholar, or at least a Christian - as I am neither - may be able to take the character contrasts of Old vs New Testaments in Wicks and Judd further.

Martha is an interesting character, because at first it appears that she has full belief in Monsignor Wicks. Belief in Wicks seems to somehow contrast with belief in Christianity. They are not always the same thing, but rather like some kind of strange Venn Diagram which might actually not really have any kind of perfect overlaps. At first, it appears Martha exists in that overlap between Christianity and Wicks, but it becomes clear by the end of the film this is not the case. Her belief is not necessarily with Wicks, but rather with Prentice, Wicks’s grandfather. As soon as Prentice’s will is being questioned by Monsignor Wicks, Martha directly acts to protect the Church and her belief in Prentice.

Belief, itself, is really complicated. We can believe in different forms of things, have different ideas of what a “true” thing can even mean. Take two people in the same church, even the same age and demographic, and what they believe, why or how can all be so different. Sociologist Abby Day, for example, showed that some people attend churches despite not believing in God at all, but because they seek the community fostered in these spaces.

There is no collective social scientific definition to the word belief on its own. Which, for returning viewers to my channel, will know that’s not uncommon. Belief has joined the ranks of mythology as things people will spend the rest of our academic lives arguing about the meaning of. So I’m not going to even bother here. What I will say, though, is something I’ve written about multiple times before.

And that is that belief is like a communal pool. I think these are a very American thing because I haven’t seen them too often here in the UK, but I think the metaphor can still be understood. At the pool, there are people who like to cannonball into the deep end, fully immersing themselves in the waters of belief. But others may sometimes dive, and sometimes sit to the side. Others may dog paddle, floating above the water, because they don’t want to get their hair wet. There are some who sit on the side of the pool, their feet in the pool. And others who never get in the water at all, but are happy to read a book and watch the fun and enjoy the sun. And yet, all of these people are still at the pool.

This is why belief can be so difficult to describe or define. Because even though we can say they are all “believing”, it looks just as different as people at the pool, and can be defy any collective definition that ropes all of these different approaches and experiences together. Who am I to say that the person whose reading a book and chatting with their friend whose feet are in the pool isn’t there? Or the person who likes to dip in and out, but enjoys just being around others?

Which is why that question from Jud is so important. Because what is it that people are doing? Why are they here? What’s the reason for each of those congregation members for being in that pew, and what are they getting out of it? What do they believe in?

I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true, that we can't express any other way except storytelling?”

Stories and myths are so powerful because they connect us to these feelings that are so complicated to explain. Like Jud says, sometimes we can’t express ourselves in any other way than a story. And the more complicated an emotion, the more complicated a narrative.

So let’s get back to the movie. And the complicated interweaving of the narratives and mythologies that both we as a viewer, and Benoit as a character, are intending to unravel. Some of these, he succeeds in unravelling. Others, he doesn’t.

Like most whodunnit stories, there are at least two narratives going on. The first is the story of the murder - a fragmentary story which encapsulates the actions taken and the reasons why. Then there’s the story of the solving of a crime - another fragmentary story whose sole purpose is uncovering the bits and pieces of the first.

These stories are definitely present in Wake Up Dead Man, but there are other connecting narratives, too. These narratives have different levels of connections of belief or practical action. We have the mythology of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude - the Church run by Monsignor Wicks. At its core is the story of Grace, Monsignor Wicks’s mother, otherwise known as the Harlot Whore. This narrative also remains somewhat fragmentary. While we get insights to aspects of what Grace’s life may have actually been like, we remain somewhat outside still, unfulfilled and unfinished. We’re left to wonder at the way her father stared at her through that window. Was it out of disgust? Or out of lust? We’re left not knowing.

We also have the previously mentioned variety of Christian myths. Because, yes, there are a varieties of approaches and mythologies of Christianity. Monsignor Wicks’s mythology of Christianity is described and presented. Jud’s mythology of Christianity is also present, pitted against its other myth in a battle of fists and actions.

Both these Christianities being intermingled with each other is why the mythology of Grace, and the mythology of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude is so fragmentary and complicated. We’re viewing it through the eyes of one myth while also feeling and trying to understand the other side through the eyes of the other. And these its the mythology of the church building and of Grace that leads us to the mythology of the murder, and the mythology of the solving. All five narratives are so intimately interwoven that it’s hard to discuss one without running into the threads of the other.

And each of these narratives also has a complicated nature of belief at its helm, with multiple people playing and existing in different levels to different extends and for different purposes. Belief in a mythology, regardless of the myth, has multiple forms it can take, and this is exemplified in the complicated belief experiences of each of the congregation, who clings to different words, different thoughts and different meanings to the stories.

So, what is it? Is it a story of a lie? Or a story of a truth deeply embedded within us? It probably depends on who you ask, and what story you’re talking about. But that’s the beautiful thing about stories - it’s never a straightforward answer.