A
Series of Unfortunate Events S2
E10 ‘The Carnivorous Carnival: Part Two’ (2018)
Credit is due to whoever decided
on the points at which Netflix’s adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s Series of
Unfortunate Events1 was to be split into individual series; with
thirteen instalments to play with, various options were certainly possible, but
the one chosen makes for some pleasingly neat storytelling. The biggest mystery
set up in ‘The Austere Academy’, the first story of Series Two – namely, to
what do the mysterious letters VFD refer? – is resolved in ‘The Carnivorous
Carnival’, the finale of the same series. Well, I say ‘resolved’; there’s
plenty left that the three Baudelaire orphans don’t know, because that’s one of
the key themes or motifs or plot drivers of the whole saga, but they at least
find out – here be spoilers – that VFD stands for Volunteer Fire Department,
and that the aforementioned Volunteer Fire Department is a secret organisation which
uses codes and disguises and a special sort of miniature telescope with a
Swiss-army-knife-esque range of capabilities, and to which a host of people the
Baudelaires have encountered belong (or belonged, since most of those people
have now died in unfortunate circumstances). Their parents were in it. Their
former guardians Montgomery Montgomery and Josephine Anwhistle were in it. And
the repulsive villain Count Olaf, who has been scheming to get his hands on
their fortune by whichever unscrupulous means he thinks might work since
Episode One, is also apparently in it.
 |
| I don’t imagine these firefighters are volunteers, but you never know. |
This revelation explains rather a
lot. It explains why a secret passage runs from under the Baudelaire mansion
(or the site where it was before it was razed to the ground, rather) to the
lift shaft of an apartment block whose penthouse is owned by Esmé Squalor,
Count Olaf’s girlfriend. It explains why Jacques Snicket, who was doing his
very best to help the Baudelaires and their cause until Count Olaf murdered
him, had the same tattoo on his left ankle that Count Olaf does. It explains
why the various costumes in Madame Lulu’s back room, where the Baudelaires
found the documents that informed them about VFD, bear remarkable resemblance
to the various costumes with which Count Olaf has disguised himself at various
times in order to evade the authorities. What it doesn’t explain is how
individuals as noble as the Baudelaires’ parents could have belonged to the
same society as individuals as wicked as Olaf and Esmé. The trappings are the
same – the tattoo, the costumes, the special VFD spyglass – but the behaviours,
the purposes, the values, are so vastly different. So which side represents the
authentic version of what VFD is supposed to be?
That’s the question Klaus
Baudelaire asks Madame Lulu, aka school-librarian-turned-Volunteer Olivia
Caliban, as per my opening quotation. “Jacques said there was a time when VFD
was noble,” she replies. “They were dedicated to putting out fires, literal and
figurative. There was a schism. You know what that means?”
Klaus does, of course, because he’s
very well read. “A division between members of the same organisation.”
Olivia nods. “One side decided it
was better to start fires.”
So then, the organisation is
supposed to be a noble one, but some of its members diverged from that
authentic mission of putting out fires and started to do the opposite. They are
completely opposed to what VFD truly stands for – and yet they still bear its
trappings. They still have the tattoos and the costumes. They still know the
locations of the secret passages and the correct code phrases. They look as if
they belong to the organisation, to enough of an extent that an outsider might
suppose that the whole organisation were as wicked as they are. They are wolves
in sheep’s clothing.
Beware of false prophets, who come
to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognise
them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thorn
bushes? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears
bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear
good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown
into the fire. Thus you will recognise them by their fruits.2 – Matthew 7:15-20
 |
| Grapes, not on a thorn bush. Oh dear, I really want some grapes now. |
A false prophet bears the
trappings of a real one. He looks like a Christian; he knows the right things
to say. How can you tell whether he belongs to the authentic strand of the
Church, or the divergent strand that’s completely opposed to what the Church
truly stands for? Jesus tells us: by his fruits. Logically, a plant only produces
fruits according to what kind of plant it is – vine or thornbush, healthy or
diseased. That much is straight out of Genesis 1:12, as well. What a plant
produces reveals which sort of plant it is.
But what does that mean once
you step out of the metaphor and start trying to apply it to human beings? What
are these ‘fruits’ Jesus is talking about – these things that a false prophet
produces and may be identified by?
Well, it’s always a good
principle, when one wants to know what something represents in the Bible, to check
out the contexts in which it shows up in the Torah, given that that’s the
exegetical core of the whole business. Most of the references to fruit (פְּרִי, p’rī) or producing fruit (פרה, prh) in the
Pentateuch are, predictably, about literal fruit, or about increased numbers of
human beings; the first instance of a metaphor similar to Jesus’ in Matthew 7
that I can find comes from this chunk of Deuteronomy:
For you know
how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we passed through the midst of the
nations through which you passed. And you have seen their detestable things,
their idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, which are with them. Beware
lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning
away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware
lest there be among you a root bearing poison and wormwood, and when he
hears the words of this oath, he blesses himself in his heart, saying, peace shall
be mine, though in the stubbornness of my heart I walk – to sweep away the
watered with the dry.3 – Deuteronomy 29:16-19
Here, then,
it’s really, really clear what the metaphor means: a plant that produces bad
stuff stands for a human being who is minded to serve gods other than the LORD;
more specifically, it stands for a human being who looks at what God has
said and thinks he’s going to be fine if he persists in indulging the
inclinations of his own heart. This fits with the whole false-prophet
thing: bad fruit isn’t being ignorant of what God has said, but rather knowing
what God has said, choosing to follow your own ways instead of his, and
declaring a blessing over your decision. A false prophet bears the trappings of
authenticity in that he’s aware of God’s revelation of himself, just like a
real prophet would be, but he is identifiable as false by the way he refuses to
be changed in accordance with that revelation. He is identifiable by the way he
does what he feels like, instead of what God commands – thereby committing
idolatry – and yet assumes that it will be well with him.
I’m pretty
sure I’ve seen “by their fruits shall ye know them” used as if it meant that we
can tell whether or not a ministry is faithful to God by whether or not it’s ostensibly
successful: did a lot of people show up and pray the prayer, kind of thing.
Ostensible success, however, is categorically not a good indicator of
faithfulness: if it were, the vast majority of the prophets in the Old
Testament would have to be relabelled as false ones.4 No, the kind
of fruit Jesus was talking about was just obedience, faith in practice. There
are going to be guys who talk the talk, he says – who bear the trappings, who
know the code phrases – but you’ll be able to tell they’re not the real deal by
their failure to walk the walk.
In a way, it’s
just obvious, really. At the end of ‘The Carnivorous Carnival’, Count Olaf sets
the whole carnival premises alight, destroying all the documents in Madame Lulu’s
back room along with everything else on site. He might bear the trappings of an
authentic Volunteer, but the fact that he’s going around starting fires instead
of putting them out shows that his allegiance is not to the true mission of
VFD.5 Likewise, if someone who bears the trappings of an authentic
Christian is nevertheless going around advocating following her own ways
instead of God’s – putting forward something other than Christ’s death and
resurrection as the means of salvation – that shows that her allegiance is not to the
true mission of the Church.
Outsiders
who don’t know the nature of the group might witness the wicked activities of
its false members and consequently wonder whether the whole group and its cause
isn’t likewise wicked – like Klaus wondered about VFD. Those of us who belong,
however, and know what our community’s true mission is, and that it is noble, can
tell the true members from the false ones by whether or not they pursue that
mission. We can tell false prophets by the fact that, although they know what
God says, they don’t let it shape their lives, and don’t see anything wrong with
that.
We’re going
to encounter false prophets – that much Jesus assures us of – and the more experience
we have of good fruit, the more easily we’ll be able to tell the bad. So let’s
strive not to make the mistake of blessing ourselves as we walk in the
stubbornness of our hearts, but rather to cling to the truth that blessing and
peace are only ours because Jesus shouldered the punishment for all our
stubbornness and idolatry, and, by gifting us his own righteousness in
exchange, changed our nature so that we can bear good fruit instead of bad. An
altogether Fortunate Series of Events, wouldn’t you say?
Footnotes
1 It’s well
good. I recommend: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80114990?trackId=13752290&tctx=0%2C0%2C6e24fb47-f7c4-4b21-86db-1d40811c331c-7688944%2C%2C.
2 Whole
chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+7&version=ESVUK.
3 Again,
whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+29&version=ESVUK.
You’ll have spotted that my translation differs slightly: I felt it was a tad
misleading to stick with the ESV’s ‘bitter fruit’ for ‘wormwood’, in that the
use of the word ‘fruit’ implied an even tighter connection between the two
passages I discuss in this post, and once one has made one change, that sort of
opens the floodgates for a host of others. My rendering is, predictably,
clunkier.
4 Consider,
say, Isaiah 6, where God explicitly tells Isaiah that nobody’s going to listen
to his prophecies: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+6&version=ESVUK.
5 And I
couldn’t very well leave without giving you a link to this hilarious song about
Count Olaf, now could I? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsS3reVFLJI
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