L. A. Marzulli Launching Nephilim TV Series; Plus: The Masculine Aesthetics of Fringe History TV

Nephilim conspiracy theorist L. A. Marzulli is asking his followers to give him more than $30,000 to buy equipment to launch his new show, Politics, Prophecy & the Supernatural, a program accessible via the Roku streaming service and YouTube that will explicitly link End Times Christianity, Enochian Watchers, and U.S. politics in a stew of fear, beginning in January. According to a recent review of one of Marzulli’s latest Watchers DVDs, Watchers 9: Days of Chaos, the Christian conspiracy theorist has taken to arguing that the U.S. government is engaged in a campaign to prepare the planet of the End Times by systematically destroying the environment. Marzulli sees the Nephilim’s influence in every current event, from the recent conservative outcry over Planned Parenthood and the conservative freak-out over Jade Helm to liberal concerns about environmental disaster, infrastructure collapse, and the disappearance of honeybees. The new show will be a regularly scheduled version of the DVD series, with planned daily End Times updates.

Meanwhile, Marzulli himself has written a blog post apparently endorsing the so-called “Serpent Seed” hypothesis, which states that in the Garden of Eden, the Serpent impregnated Eve and thus gave rise to the first evil hybrid being. He doesn’t explicitly state it as such, but it seems pretty clear that this is what he is driving at.
 
He recalls the scene in Genesis 3 when the Serpent has tempted Eve and God is punishing the Serpent, telling him that he will put enmity between the descendants of Eve and those of the Serpent (Gen. 3:15). Traditionally, this passage was understood as referring either literally to snakes or symbolically to demons or humans who have given themselves to Satanic temptation, but Marzulli prefers to see this as a literal Satanic bloodline, which can exist only through the actual mating of human beings with fallen angels to produce human hybrids who carry a demonic taint.
 
Marzulli identifies the Serpent as Satan and Satan as the fallen angel Lucifer, so he therefore concludes that the offspring of (presumably) Eve and Lucifer is the first Nephilim, since Nephilim are the product of humans mating with fallen angels. This first Nephilim, he says, is the progenitor of a line of evil humans who will eventually give rise to the Antichrist. “Is this Nephilim hybrid walking the earth now?” Marzulli asks. “Is he dwelling amongst men and women unnoticed?  Is he already here but yet to take up his position?” He cannot be speaking of a one-time modern Satan-human assignation since he argues that there must be a bloodline of Serpent-spawn that “culminates” in the Antichrist, just as the godly line of Seth culminated in Jesus Christ.
 
Marzulli, however, does not draw out the implications of his belief. If Eve, or one of her daughters, or whoever, gave rise to a line of Serpent seed, then it follows that certain human beings are inherently and genetically evil, literally the spawn of Satan. This raises theological problems, of course, but also practical ones: What, pray tell, does Mazulli expect us to do with these evil Nephilim once we identify them by their Serpent genes?
 
Finally, when I was watching Atlantis Found on the History Channel I saw a number of promotional spots for Hunting Hitler, and I noticed that they were reusing the graphic design from Search for the Lost Giants for the logo of the new show. Unfortunately, the art isn’t available to show you, but it made me stop to consider the aesthetics of History’s fringe history shows. Wow, but they all look alike! (Some of the similarity is due to the online template History uses for some web icons.) Do they have only one graphic designer working on these, or is there a house style that emphasizes masculine forms such as distressed boldface lettering? I think it’s broader than either since Discovery’s treasure hunting and outdoor adventure shows use the same style. I’m not sure, though, how this particular style took over from the earlier Indiana Jones-infused pulp fiction style that defined the genre for generations. I am tempted to read this as an attempt to impart an ersatz seriousness to displace the former jaunty and light approach, in keeping with the generally darker tone of 2010s television. The emphasis on masculine forms is self-evidence; there is hardly a woman to be found on the shows, and few in the audience either.