6/6/06: Satanic silliness hits marketing heyday
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, June 4, 2006
As Stevie Wonder wrote, “Superstition ain’t the way.”
But the singer/songwriter never encountered the most beastly PR scheme: promoting a movie about the devil to be released on the day evil is supposedly going to rain across the Earth – 6/6/06.
Yep, drop that pesky “200” from the year and you get 666, the mark of the beast. It could be the end times, or it could be a lot of marketing going on. “The Omen,” 20th Century Fox’s remake of the 1970s horror flick about little Damien the Antichrist, is straight out of Hollywood, not hell, although some will argue the two are the same.
Plenty of others, from certain Christian evangelical groups to heavy metal bands, find significance in the day. While the former await Armageddon, the latter, notably the group Slayer, will launch its “Unholy Alliance” tour, subtitled, “Preaching to the Perverted.”
Scary or parody? A day of satanic power or a day of hype … especially on the heels of “The Da Vinci Code?”
Since the 666 phenomena only happens once a century, the believers and marketers must make the most of it. One major theme is: Will this be the day the Antichrist is born? The frenzy has led at least one pregnant British woman to vow not to give birth on her due date 6/6/06. Her doctors, however, won’t indulge her by inducing labor. Due dates are notoriously inaccurate, of course, unless you happen to be carrying Satan’s child. Would being born at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. on 6/6/06 be overdoing it? Is that too many sixes? What is four sixes the mark of? Santa?
The Times of London reports that not all pregnant women are so spooked – one intends to call her child Damien from the aforementioned “Omen,” while another plans to name her daughter Regan after the devil-possessed child in “The Exorcist.”
(Who would win at arm-wrestling? Rosemary’s Baby or Damien?)
But if 666 is so special, shouldn’t we be looking for an Antichrist born in 1906? Without fanfare, doomsday Web sites or movie releases? Why aren’t we focusing on some goatish guy with cloven hooves, say around 100 years old? Unless he’s already booked on “Leno”? (No, not Mick Jagger. He only wrote “Sympathy for the Devil.”)
Let’s leave this nonsense behind. Evil is real. Let’s not minimize its real day-to-day horror by confusing it with the movies and Internet conspiracy theories.
Unless, of course, the world ends on Tuesday. Then the 666 folks can say, “Told you so.”
