by adolphus on 22 Jul 2023, 06:11
Hi everyone,
Having recently re-watched I Come in Peace, I've been reading through this thread and want to share, for my first post here, a few thoughts about the film. I'm a literary scholar and I like to think about stories analytically, so I'm going to focus on themes, underlying ideas, symbolism, etc. And for this post, I'm going to concentrate on the movie's Christmas setting. This post is also a contribution to the discussion Jox had with the creators of the I Must Break This Podcast about the relevance of the Dark Angel title.
The Christmas-time setting of the film makes for a bit of an odd juxtaposition given the violent story it surrounds. It's even stranger to me that this setting is frequently alluded to visually (opening with the car crashing through the Christmas tree lot, the clip from It's a Wonderful Life, and so on) but (almost) never commented on by the characters.
The setting at Christmas does, however, sharpen the film's bleak view of urban decay, which was such a trope of the 80s and early 90s. Almost without fail, whenever Christmas is referenced, it is through characters that are vile, angry, and violent (the "Merry Fucking Christmas" of the first victim and the drunk Bail Bonds business owner watching It's a Wonderful Life) or hopeless (the homeless woman). The logic here I think is that this world is so bad that even Christmas doesn't bring it any joy. And that's significant because in the Christian tradition Christmas marks the birth of Christ who brings humanity salvation. In this sense, the world of I Come in Peace seems abandoned by god.
The Christmas setting also connects with the title, Dark Angel. Obviously, Talec evokes a fallen angel and anti-Christ. He literally falls from the sky and his white hair and gigantic stature give him an angelic appearance. The scene from It's a Wonderful Life playing in the background is the famous one about angels getting wings too.
Christ is called the "Prince of Peace." Talec announces himself similarly. And again, it's the ironic juxtaposition of the two that the film works on. Instead of Christ on Christmas, it's an alien drug dealer who uses our bodies as his dope factory. It marks how far down mankind has fallen. You could even say that Talec is stealing heaven from us when he sucks the endorphins out of our brains.
It might seem far fetched, but I can't help but think that the film's multiple references to whiteness are also part of its religious motif. There's the White Boys, of course, but also, Talec's hair, and the heroin. In each case, the color white, which symbolizes purity, represents instead the opposite. White is a color strongly associated with Christmas. So again, the perversion of whiteness is the perversion of Christmas and the perversion of Christ and Christianity.
Talec is even crucified at the end. Pay attention to the way he positions his hands when he is impaled.