[ No. 5 ]

A gathering of angels

by Vicki Shuttleworth

The angels are gathering. As we side-slip into 1999, the West is being invaded by a host of angels -- but not necessarily those of the heavenly kind. Angels, both exalted and fallen, have become the vogue item of the 1990s, in much the same way that astrology was in the 1970s. Perhaps the most telling sign of this rising congregation is, that of the 400 or so mainstream films produced over the last 100 years with 'angel' in the title, 45 per cent of them have been released within the last 10 years. In America alone, around 70 per cent of the population say they believe in angels, with 46 per cent claiming to have a personal guardian angel (Harold Bloom, 1996).

Flick through today's fashion magazines and you're likely to find page after page of winged beings -- butterflies, fairies, and, angels. Angels have been embraced by the artistic elite -- Baz Luhrmann dresses his Juliet in an angel costume and Gilles Dufour (Chanel) designs a wedding dress for Mathilde Favier Agostinelli with tiny angel wings sprouting from the shoulders. Popular chat show host, Oprah Winfrey, has established an Angel Network and for regular Internet users there is an Angel Web Ring with around 350 sites devoted to angels, some even offering merchandise like The Angel Altar Kit -- a ready-made portable altar for vibing with the winged ones -- all yours for $17.95.

This preoccupation with angels is, of course, not new. It was probably just as intense during the 1890s when the West was experiencing a similar kind of pre-millennial tension. Waitresses in fashionable restaurants and cafes wore angel wings as they served their customers. Painters of the Decadence period crowded their works with angelic figures such as fairies and 'Souls' who were depicted as beautiful, angelic and highly eroticised women. The human models for these 'Souls' became real-life celebrities much like Elle McPherson or Claudia Schiffer and it was considered a social coup for a society hostess to have a 'Soul' attend her party. Angels were drawn with a kind of romantic complexity-- heroic, passionate, loving, lustful and even malevolent or destructive.

By contrast, the angels of the 1990s have fallen -- into domesticity. With the best of intentions, Oprah Winfrey is part of a movement to bring the angels down from the heavens. In an act of true democracy her Angel Network bestows on anyone, who helps others through acts of kindness, the title of 'angel' and she even names her 'Archangels' -- Princess Diana and Mother Theresa. Oprah's mass popularity places her at the forefront of a domestication of angels which Yale Professor, Harold Bloom ("Omens Of The Millennium"), sees as symptomatic of a contemporary debasement of spirituality. Even guardian angels, he says, are no longer sublime: they have become family pets, 'like a dog or a cat'.

Ironically, and probably much to the displeasure of the Christian Family Network, it is pop stars, like Nick Cave and Marilyn Manson with his Church of AntiChrist Superstar, who are keeping the spirit of the more traditional angels alive. Manson has received death threats for his anti-Church views and 'demonic' incitements to 'rape an angel', but he is apparently also pro self-enlightenment, pro individuality and definitely pro self-irony. His role as a reincarnated Prince of Darkness, or Archangel Lucifer, may enrage some Christians but it is also an endorsement of the idea that there is a powerful world of the spirit that is striving, evolving and reaching out to something beyond the physical. 'In fusing oppositions you create things that are stronger than the two ideas you started with', Manson says about the purpose behind his confrontational style.

There have been gatherings of angels for nearly 5000 years with each generation finding new meaning in their 'presence'. However, angels are an ideal distraction for a pre-millennial society such as ours. They are the ultimate symbol of transition -- half human, half god, a being caught between two worlds, offering both hope and uncertainty. But perhaps we are about to see the last of the angels, not only because they are being brought down to earth by popularists such as Oprah Winfrey, but because the new millennium will most probably belong, not to the West, but to the East and to a land with no angels -- China.

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