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From: "Evelyn C. Leeper" <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: MT VOID, 03/28/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 39, Whole Number 2373
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THE MT VOID
03/28/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 39, Whole Number 2373

Editor: Evelyn Leeper, evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
All material is the opinion of the author and is copyrighted by
the author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent or posted will be assumed authorized for
inclusion unless otherwise noted.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to
     evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
The latest issue is at <http://www.leepers.us/mtvoid/latest.htm>.
An index with links to the issues of the MT VOID since 1986 is at
<http://leepers.us/mtvoid/back_issues.htm>.

Topics:
         PSA: Delete Your DNA from 23andMe
         Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group
         Picks for Turner Classic Movies in April (comments
                by Evelyn C. Leeper)
         THE DYBBUK (1938) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
         THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929) (film review
                by Mark R. Leeper)
         COCOON (letter of comment by Scott Dorsey)
         This Week's Reading (THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY)
                (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: PSA: Delete Your DNA from 23andMe

<https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-delete-your-data-from-23andme/>

"DNA-testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, which means
the future of the company's vast trove of customer data is
unknown. Here's what that means for your genetic data.

....

As uncertainty about the company's future reaches its peak, all
eyes are on the trove of deeply personal--and potentially
valuable--genetic data that 23andMe holds. Privacy advocates have
long warned that the risk of entrusting genetic data to any
institution is twofold--the organization could fail to protect it,
but it could also hand over customer data to a new entity that
they may not trust and didn't choose.

California attorney general Rob Bonta reminded consumers in an
alert on Friday that Californians have a legal right to ask that
an organization delete their data. 23andMe customers in other
states and countries largely do not have the same protections,
though there is also a right to deletion for health data in
Washington state's My Health My Data Act and the European Union's
General Data Protection Regulation. Regardless of residency, all
23andMe customers should consider downloading anything they want
to keep from the service and should then attempt to delete their
information."

The article includes instructions on how to go about deleting your
data.  [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Middletown (NJ) Science Fiction Discussion Group

April 3, 2025: MAROONED (1969) & "Marooned" by Martin Caidin (1969)
     <https://archive.org/details/marooned0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up>

===================================================================

TOPIC: Picks for Turner Classic Movies in April (comments by
Evelyn C. Leeper)

THURSDAY, April 10, 3:45 AM, The Dybbuk (1938) [see Mark's review
below]

MONDAY, April 28, 2:45 PM, The Mysterious Island (1929) [see
Mark's review below]

TUESDAY, April 29, 1:30 PM, Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet
Street (1982) [not the recent Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter
version]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE DYBBUK (1938) (film review by Mark R. Leeper)

[This review was first published in 1989.  THE DYBBUK is running
on TCM Thursday, April 10, at 3:45 AM.]

CAPSULE:  Paydirt!  A Yiddish film made in Poland in 1938 turns
out to be a little-known gem.  The film lacks a lot of what we
might consider high production values, but besides being an
unintentional artifact of the culture of Eastern European Jewry
wiped out in the Holocaust, it also turns out to be a haunting
horror film that deserves to be seen by all fans of 1920s and
1930s horror films.  At least one sequence, a grotesque dance,
ranks this film up with some of the best of German Expressionism.
Rating: +3 (-4 to +4).

Watching the 1938 Polish-made Yiddish film THE DYBBUK, one is only
too aware that the film is flawed.  Much of the acting is
exaggerated as it would be in a silent film.  Some of the
photography seems poor, as well as some of the editing.  At least
once the film cuts from a quiet scene to a loud scene and the
sudden sound causes the audience to jump.  It is true, however,
that in retrospect most of the faults seem hard to remember.  The
strongest memories of the film are beautiful images, some haunting
and horrifying.  And while taken individually many of the scenes
were less effective for me than they may have been for THE
DYBBUK's intended audience, this is a great mystical horror film,
perhaps one of the better horror films of the 1930s.

[Spoilers follow, though as with a Shakespeare play, one does not
see THE DYBBUK for plot surprises.]

Sender and Nisn have been very close friends since their student
days.  Now they see each other only on holidays.  To cement the
bond of their friendship they vow that if their respective first
children--each expected soon--are of opposite sexes then they will
arrange a marriage of the two children.  Sure enough, Sender has a
daughter Leyele, though he loses his wife in childbirth. Nisn has
a son, Khonnon, though an accident claims Nisn's life before he
can even see his new son or conclude his arrangement to marry
Khonnon to Leyele.

Years later Khonnon, now a Talmudic scholar, meets Leyele and they
fall in love.  Neither knows about the vow they would be married
and Sender does not know whose son Khonnon is.  The intense
Khonnon is already considering giving up his study of the Talmud
to study Kabalah, the great book of mystical knowledge and magic.
Sender three times tries to arrange a marriage with a rich but
rather sheepish young man.  Twice the plans fail and Khonnon
believes his magic has averted the arrangement.  The third time,
however, an agreement is reached.  Khonnon calls upon dark forces
to help him but is consumed by his own spell and found dead.  The
day of Leyele's marriage--in fact, during the marriage ceremony
itself--Khonnon's spirit returns from the grave as a dybbuk,
a possessing demon, and takes over the body of the woman he was
denied.  Leyele is taken to a great and pious Rabbi, now nearing
the end of his life and torn with self-doubts, who alone may have
the knowledge to remove the demon.

If some of this smacks of William Peter Blatty, it should be
remembered that this is a 1938 film based on a pre-World-War-I
play.  THE DYBBUK by S. Anski (a pen name for Shloyme Zanvl
Rappoport), along with THE GOLEM by H. Leivick (a pen name for
Leivick Halper), are perhaps the two best remembered (and most
commonly translated) plays of the great Yiddish Theater.  While
Yiddish folklore has many dybbuk and golem stories, and the play
THE GOLEM was based on an actual legend ("The Golem of Prague"),
THE DYBBUK was an original story involving a legendary type of
demon.  The film retells the story of the play, but remains very
different.  Other than plot there is not much of the play carried
over into the film.

All too commonly constraints of budget and even what appears now
to be inappropriate style rob some scenes of their effect.  Much
of the acting is exaggerated in ways that might have been more
appropriate to silent film or to the stage.  In fact, in some ways
this feels like an entire film done in a style much like the
early, good scenes of the 1931 DRACULA.  Director Michal Waszynski
could well be excused on the grounds that he was making the film
for a very different audience.  However, just occasionally,
a scene will be really supremely well done.  The best sequence of
the film is when Leyele, just before her marriage, is called upon
to dance with the poor of the town, as is traditional.  Leyele is
reluctant and the dance turns into a grotesquery culminating with
Leyele dancing with a figure of death.  The film is a showcase for
Yiddish songs, cantorial singing, and dancing, both traditional
and modern.  Much seems out of place, but this one dance creates
one of the most eerie and effective horror scenes of its decade.
THE DYBBUK stands as more than a good horror film.  It is also an
artifact of pre-Holocaust Yiddish film and of Eastern European
Jewish village life.  Curiously, for a Yiddish film some of the
stereotypes that appear could be interpreted as being
anti-Semitic.  We see a miser with exaggerated Jewish features
counting and recounting his coins.  We see what is intended to be
a great Rabbi looking pompous, fat, sloppy, and apparently lazy.
Why a Yiddish film would have such images is open to question.
Still, it is a pity that this film is not better known.  It
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