Bad Elmo

By now, most people have heard about the killer Elmo doll. If you have not, here's a link to bring you up to speed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFcV65FrAfY. While many people seem shocked by this, I express no surprise. I've always known that Elmo was evil (check this out for further evidence: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfmfuseaction=vids.Channel&ChannelID=93756406). Personally, I don't think he was threatening to kill the kid. Rather, I think he was trying to command the kid to kill.

The question that remains for me is what kind of entity is Elmo? Generally, the Sesame Street muppets can be taxonomized into three groups. Kermit and Big Bird are enchanted animals or, more likely considering the folklore (particularly as documented by the Grimms), enchanted humans that have been transmogrified into their animalistic totems. Bert and Ernie by contrast are homosocial humans, which at the time would have been regarded as just as aberrant as their bestial counterparts. And then we have characters like the Count, Grover and Cookie Monster which are unambiguously members of the monstrous races. The Count, clearly based on the Stokerized construct of Dracula, is a striga (pl. strigoi), a vampiric creature of Eastern European/Byzantine origin with a predilection for feeding upon children. The origins of Grover and Cookie Monster are more difficult to determine, but their similarities of features and bluish hues are suggestive of an Indus locus genius, in which case they would likely be raksashas, or Hindu demons.

But what about Elmo? In terms of morphology, he resembles Grover and Cookie Monster, indicating a demonic genealogy. His coloration, however, precludes easy association with creatures of the Indus region. His name, moreover, is Italian, derived from Germanic dialects, so he's probably of Western European (Carolingian/Ottonian) descent or possibly Nordic. While Norse mythology is populated by monsters, they are not really demons per se, although creatures like Hel and Fenrir do have demonic counterparts in the Christian mythos (understandable, considering the early Church's propensity for grafting "pagan" beliefs onto their own doctrine as a means of making easy converts to the faith). Aside from this, Elmo's coloration again precludes a Nordic origin (not blonde enough). Through the process of elimination, we are left with a Western European genesis. This determination is reinforced by the common depiction of demons in Western European (read: Christian) cultures as having a distinctly red pigmentation (e.g. Hellboy). We must therefore conclude that Elmo is the Devil. To be certain, Christianity allows for many devils (Beelzebub, Mammon, Asmodeus), so we cannot conclusively state that Elmo is Lucifer himself. But in the final analysis, does it really matter?