Tuesday, September 14, 2004

LILITH ON THE SCI-FI CHANNEL:
Exclusive Look at Sci Fi's Darklight!
Source: Superhero Hype!
September 13, 2004

This Saturday marks the premiere of the new Sci Fi Channel original thriller Darklight, starring Shiri Appleby ("Rosswell"), and Superhero Hype! has an exclusive look at the film.

Shiri plays Lilith, an immortal demon based on mythology from the Kabbalah (According to legend, Lilith was the 1st wife of Adam in the Garden of Eden; she was tossed out and became a demon after she wouldn't sleep beneath Adam). In Darklight, she's the sexy, tormented anti-heroine who becomes humanity's last hope.

[...]

Darklight is an origin story, about the birth of Lilith as a super-heroine. "Lilith has amnesia, and she's living as an ordinary, 24 year-old woman (played by Shiri), trying to figure out her past. The circumstances of the movie force her to confront her true nature."

[...]

UPDATE: Seth Sanders e-mails:
Neat stuff. Those interested in the Jewish background of Lilith are encouraged to check out the earliest narrative source, the "Alphabet of Ben-Sira" (the whole text may be some kind of joke about misogyny, or a misogynist joke), conveniently translated in David Stern et al, Rabbinic Fantasies. Lilith's earlier history is strange--her character seems to begin with Lamashtu, the filthy, baby-killing Babylonian demoness who it is the job of Pazuzu (famous from the Exorcist) and the semidivine fish-men known as Apkallu to chase out. Her name, however, begins with an entirely different demon, the Sumerian LIL2 "wind." The name is re-etymologized as Lilitu from a Semitic stem *layl- or the like "night," hence the Lilith of Isaiah.

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